Neosho Daily News Managing Editor and General Manager Buzz Ball was kind enough to fill me in today about his trip to Roggen, Colo., to see the illustrious House No. 6, the revolutionary way of taking care of chicken odor which should keep any Neosho resident from being worried about any potential problems that could be caused by Moark's upcoming expansion.
"I flew out there and back on Wednesday, Feb. 9, I was given the opportunity to see the plant first-hand," Ball wrote.
He added, "Nothing in that story was from a press release. All was original from me based on interview and first-hand experience. Plus,all the photos were taken by me."
Ball said, "We flew out from KCI on Frontier Airlines at approximately 10:30 a.m. and returned that evening about 6:45 p.m., I think. So it was a very long day."
I appreciate The Daily's help in clearing the air about the House No. 6 story. It is good that the Neosho Daily News and Liberty Group Publishing were willing to foot the bill to allow the Daily to be able to investigate first-hand a subject of great importance to many readers.

The next battle between Nexstar and cable officials will take place in Amarillo, Texas.
Nexstar CEO Perry Sook told those attending the Bear Stearns Media Conference in Palm Beach earlier today that Nexstar will pull its Amarillo station off the cable provider there at the end of this month.
That will make five markets in which Nexstar has refused to grant retransmission rights to cable providers unless they pay 30 cents per customer per month. In addition to KODE and KSNF being removed from Cable One in Joplin, the company has taken its stations in Shreveport, La., San Angelo, Texas, and Abilene, Texas, off the cable providers in those cities.
"This is a fight we have to fight as an industry and we need to win," Sook said, adding that he has had "a dozen and a half (broadcasters) behind us."
Nexstar had been anticipating this battle for quite a while, Sook said, noting that the company had only negotiated two-year deals, instead of the more typical three-year deals with cable companies during the last negotiating sessions.
Sook insisted that the strategy is paying dividends for Nexstar and the company has only lost about a third as much advertising as it had anticipated, saying that it was a "low six-figure number."
Sook said the cable companies in Joplin, Shreveport, Abilene and San Angelo have lost 15 to 20 percent of their customers and that Echostar's Dish Network has done extremely well in Joplin, Shreveport and Abilene. Abilene turned out to be a fortuitous situation for Nexstar as Echostar pushed up its timetable to coincide with Nexstar's battle with Cox Communications. Dish Network had not been scheduled to begin transmitting local signals in Abilene until the end of 2006.
Not only have some advertisers stayed right with Nexstar during these confrontations, but the company has even brought in new advertising, Sook said, citing Grandy's, a fried chicken restaurant in San Angelo. Grandy's started advertising after the San Angelo station was removed from Cox, Sook said.
"Their business is up 38 percent. People are finding a way to get our signal."
Sook was challenged by one of the investor-types in attendance who noted that Nexstar is leveraged seven and a half times and is confronting the cable systems and losing advertisers. "This is scary stuff," the questioner said, adding, that he could see a possibility of Nexstar filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in two years.
Sook suggested that his questioner keep his eye on the prize, which is the extra stream of revenue which could come if the cable systems give in. That would mean an additional $20 million a year for the company, he said. "We are fully backed by our board. Our advertising losses have not been catastrophic."
If the Nexstar strategy is not working, Sook said, then why is Cox Communications offering its customers in Bossier City, La., 20 percent off their cable bills if they stick with Cox despite the loss of Nexstar's local station. Sook said he had talked to a Cox customer there who could not understand why Cox was paying $20 a month to its customers to avoid paying $30 a month to Nexstar.
***
Nexstar CEO Perry Sook emphasized his company's dedication to its local news product during his presentation at the Bear Stearns Company's annual Media Conference today. "Our strength has been our local news franchise," he said. The news franchises, the company's duopolies (markets in which it owns and operates more than one station such as Joplin and Springfield) and its dedication to cost control will make it successful, Sook said.
Nexstar offers more news programming than anyone other than the 24-hour news stations, Sook said. The company has 529 1/2 hours of local news, more than any TV company out there."
Sixty-eight percent of Nexstar's money comes from local advertising, Sook said, saying that the company, on average, gets 63 percent of the ad revenue in the communities in which it has duopolies.
***
The decision by the National Democratic Committee to write off Missouri in the 2004 presidential election, cost Nexstar $750,000, Sook said. The Democrats elected to put their money into other battleground states.
The decision not only damaged Nexstar, but probably enabled Matt Blunt to defeat State Auditor Claire McCaskill for governor.
The lack of a competitive U. S. Senate race in Arkansas also hurt the company, Sook said.

Investors and employees of Leggett & Platt, the Carthage-based Fortune 500 company, received good news today with the issuing of the company's annual report.
"Sales in 2004 exceeded our prior record," the report, which was filed with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission, said, "and earnings increased substantially. Margins also improved for the full year. During the year, we were challenged by rapidly escalating steel costs, but we were successful in recovering most of the higher costs through selling price increases."
The company also set record sales of $5.09 billion in 2004, according to the report. "Same location sales increased from the combined effect of inflation, unit volume growth, and currency rate changes."
Net earnings were up 39 percent to $285 million, the report said, with earnings per share increasing from $1.05 in 2003 to $1.45 in 2004. Factors contributing to the increase, according to the report were:
-Sales increase
-Gains from the company's steel rod mill
-Improvements in the Fixture and Display operations
-Gains on sales of buildings no longer used in operations

Leggett & Platt Chairman of the Board and CEO Felix E. Wright, 69, received nearly $1.3 million in compensation from the company during the past year, according to the company's annual report, filed today with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission.
Wright received $816,000 in salary and a $474,096 bonus for a total of $1,290,096. Other top officials of Leggett and their compensations for last year were:
-David S. Haffner, 52, president, chief operating officer, $652,000 salary, $325,094 bonus, $977,094 total.
-Karl G. Glassman, 46, executive vice president, president, residential furnishings segment, $489,000 salary, $203,184 bonus, $692,184 total.
-Robert A. Jefferies, Jr., 63, senior vice president, strategic planning, $278,615 salary, $115,626 bonus, $394,241 total.
-Jack D. Crusa, 50, senior vice president, president specialized products segment, $250,000 salary, $99,138 bonus, $349,138 total.
The report noted that Leggett pays the non-employee members of its board of directors $24,000 annually and an additional $4,500 for attending each meeting. Non-employee advisory directors receive $3,000 annually and $4,500 for attending meetings. The directors are paid $500 for each telephone meeting and $1,200 for each committee meeting they attend. The chairman of the company's Audit Committee receives $6,000 annually, while the chairman of the compensation committee receives $3,500, the chairman of the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee $3,500, and the presiding director receives an additional $6,000 annually.
Directors may elect to defer their cash compensation into the company's deferred compensation plan, according to the report.
***
The attorney for former Newton County Sheriff Ron Doerge filed suggestions to support the dismissal of a lawsuit brought against Doerge by a former jail inmate.
Donald R. Allen claims that Doerge, Bob Sullivan, and C. O. Topper of the Sheriff's Department failed to make sure he was provided with proper medical treatment while he was in the county jail.
Attorney Peter Lee of Springfield claims that Allen did not go through the proper channels at the jail. "(Allen) was quite familiar with the request/grievance process at the Newton County Jail, and easily could have filed grievances regarding his medication by marking the form as a grievance and stating his complaint. The evidence shows he failed to do so."
Lee also said that Allen has not provided any medical evidence to back his claims. "plaintiff himself admits he could not discern a difference in his physical condition due to the alleged failure to provide him with medication."
Finally, Lee said Allen had not produced any evidence that Doerge, Sullivan, and Tupper knew of the risk to Allen's safety and disregarded that risk.
This is the third time, the former sheriff's lawyer has asked for the lawsuit to be dismissed.
***
Former Sarcoxie minister Donald Peckham's appeal of two sodomy convictions was dismissed with prejudice today by the Missouri Southern District Court of Appeals, meaning he cannot refile his motion.
Peckham filed a motion Feb. 18 asking that his appeal be dismissed.
He pleaded guilty in October to two counts of sodomy with underage boys. He was sentenced to seven years on one count and 15 years on the other.
***
The scheduled trial for former O'Sullivan Industries official Gary Reed Blankenship was put on hold today.
The trial, which was scheduled for April 4, was postponed, according to Newton County Circuit Court documents.
Blankenship is awaiting trial after being arrested last month as a result of another of Diamond Police officer Jim Murray's Internet stings. Blankenship allegedly set up a meeting over the Internet with someone whom he believed was a 13-year-old girl. When he arrived at the meeting, he was arrested by a Newton County officer and charged with eight counts of possession of child pornography, one count of enticing a child, and one count of promoting obscene material to a minor.
***
It seems like it has been a long time since KHST, 101.7 on your radio dial, was Lamar's radio station (the HST, of course, stands for Harry S Truman). In its latest incarnation, started this month, KHST is now Joplin's Classic Rock- 101.7.
***
Radio and Television Business Report says EchoStar's Dish Network and DirecTV are making a killing off Nexstar Broadcasting's battle with Cox Communications and Cable One. The magazine offers no figures, but does quote the latest Echostar advertisements in the Abilene-Sweetwater Texas area, where Echostar just last week added the local Nexstar NBC affiliate, as well as other local stations.
"Television viewers in the Abilene-Sweetwater area who want to watch NBC now have two choices - - rabbit ears or the crystal clear, all-digital quality of Dish Network at a price still lower than cable."

I received an e-mail a few moments ago telling me that Neosho Daily News Managing Editor Buzz Ball has, indeed, visited House No. 6, the egg-laying operation of Boulder Valley Egg Co. in Roggen, Colo., so he did have first-hand knowledge of the operation and could give a first-hand description of what the area looks like. That is good to know, though I wish it could have been pointed out in the article.
Apparently, there were photos taken by Buzz Ball that ran with the article in the newspaper. I don't believe those photos were included with the internet Daily (though I could be wrong about that, too).
I would still like to see a closer look at Moark's operations across the U. S. Anytime a commercial farming operation locates in an area you have an ongoing news story...the constant weighing of the value of the jobs the facility creates and the money it pours into the community, as opposed to the possibility of damage to the environment, reduction in property values, and the possibility of odor.
What is it that makes Moark a villain to the people of Riverton, Kan., but nothing more than another corporate friend to the people of Neosho, at least according to the local coverage?

A program that is helping approximately 360 students in this area and has helped many others in the past is on the chopping block in President Bush's budget proposal.
At a time when President Bush is suggesting extending the so-called reforms of his No Child Left Behind to ensure accountability in high schools, he is suggesting the elimination of a program that has long been proven to be successful with just the kind of people who have not been receiving a quality education. In fact, the president is suggesting that this program be eliminated and all of the savings be directed to his new initiative.
At Crowder College in Neosho, Upward Bound serves 300 students, while 60 students are enrolled in the program at Missouri Southern State University in Joplin. An explanation of the program is provided on Crowder's website:
"The Crowder College Upward Bound programs provide 300 high school participants in Newton, McDonald, Barry, Jasper, Lawrence, Dade, Barton, Bates, Vernon, and Cedar counties in southwest Missouri with an opportunity to complete a course of college preparatory study, which equips them for success in postsecondary education.
"The highlight of the project is the College Prep Academy in which the participants spend five weeks in residence on the Crowder College campus. Participants engage in college prep curriculum part of the day and work with faculty on topical research projects (e.g alternative energy, stream ecology, archaeology, etc. for math/science participants and journalism, art history, health, etc. for regular Upward Bound participants) for the remainder of the day.
"Participants who have completed their secondary education and are preparing to attend college in the fall to take part in the Bridge. The Bridge gives graduates the opportunity to enroll in Crowder College courses and make final preparations for college. The final week of the College Prep Academy consists of a cultural trip to a metropolitan area (Chicago, Dallas, Washington, D. C., etc.). Participants are awarded for academic progress during the summer and can earn up to $60 a month.
"During the academic year, participants attend Closer to College, once per month. Participants work on study skills, technical writing, data analysis, attend student success workshops, and receive ACT preparation assistance. Participants also receive tutoring after school and are awarded up to $40 per month for academic progress during the academic year."
The participants do not pay for this program, except for a $50 fee for the trips. Once the student is accepted for the program, he or she is in it all the way through high school and through the Bridge part of the program.
The Crowder Upward Bound program also has a Math Science section for students interested in getting a four-year degree in a math, science, or technology-related field.
The biggest problem with Upward Bound, according to U. S. Department of Education officials is that it actually appeals to students who want to make something of themselves. It doesn't reach that target area, the "at-risk" students, those in danger of dropping out.
"The efforts to serve students through Upward Bound are certainly earnest and in no way should be diminished, "Education Department spokesman C. Todd Jones told the Los Angeles Times. "But just because these programs are doing their work faithfully and with great passion doesn't mean they are best suited to meet the needs of the local communities in which they are working."
The program, which was created as a part of President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty is one of the longest-running federal education programs. It serves half a million high school students at 1,400 sites, according to the Times. In the year 2000, the Times article said, 92 percent of the Upward Bound students who graduated from high school enrolled in college.
***
Today's Neosho Daily News indicates that the Daily did not have a reporter available to cover the preliminary hearing of Edward Meerwald, 51, Noel, who allegedly was driving drunk when his car veered off Highway 86 and killed James Dodson, 69, Neosho, and Dodson's granddaughter, Jessica Mann, 7, Joplin.
Though the Daily's John Ford's article is well-executed, this is one of those stories where, if it is at all possible, the newspaper should have had an in-person presence just to demonstrate the importance it attaches not only to the story, but to the issues involved.
When you are not there, you have to rely on information coming from only one source, in this case the prosecution. You cannot provide the reader with any information on the atmosphere in the courtroom or any telltale details that the reader might think is important, but which might not readily occur to the prosecuting attorney during an interview.
Of course, with a small staff some things are not going to be covered, but this is one of those events that was scheduled far enough in advance that it should have been possible to find someone to offer in-person coverage.
***
I am still bothered by a recent article written by the Daily's managing editor Buzz Ball, in which he extolls the virtues of a Roggen, Colo., hen-laying operation. The article begins, "Approximately 50 miles northeast of Denver, Colo., in the sleepy little town of Roggen, lies a hen-laying operation that has become the envy of and even the model for similar operations (including Neosho) throughout the nation."
It continues, "Nestled on the flat upper desert of Colorado, with the Rocky Mountains peaking on the western horizon, is the Boulder Valley Egg Co. A casual drive by this operation that has six hen-laying houses would not cause one to do a second glance. But then again, that driver doesn't know the real story of the Boulder Valley Egg Co., but more specifically about House No. 6."
I would be surprised if Neosho Daily News readers know the real story either. The description of the area is done rather well, but has Mr. Ball actually been there? Does this information come from personal observations, a handout by the Roggen Chamber of Commerce, a brochure from the Boulder Valley Egg Co.? The reader cannot tell, because that information is not provided.
This article was a sidebar to an article announcing Moark's intention to expand its operations in Neosho. Apparently, this was Moark's effort to assure Neosho residents that there would be no environmental problems from this expanded facility.
What makes House No. 6 important, Ball's article says, well, let's just use his words:
"Constructed less than a year ago, House No. 6 has already become the model for current remodeling operations in Neosho and for future operations throughout the Moark industry. House No. 6 is a state-of-the-art hen-laying facility that is quickly setting the standard for the industry.
Are these Buzz Ball's words, are they taken from a company brochure or were they spoon-fed by a Moark representative since apparently Moark owns House No. 6, even though that is never made clear in the Daily's article.
If House No. 6 is the envy of the industry why does a Google search for it only turn up one mention...that same Neosho Daily News article? Were any efforts made to check with officials in Colorado's equivalent of the Department of Natural Resources or with the EPA or with Roggen city officials to see if there have been any problems with Boulder Valley Egg Co?
If there have been, readers need to know about it. If there haven't been, that would probably go a long way toward easing Neosho residents' fears about this chicken operation expansion.
***
The controversy over former Webb City High School student Brad Mathewson's ill-fated lawsuit against the school and Principal Steven Gollhofer over not being allowed to wear a Gay Pride t-shirt, has completely subsided, but the issue that it brought up is one that is being fought in many settings all across the United States every day.
As anyone who reads The Turner Report knows, I was no fan of Mathewson or his lawsuit because it appeared to be designed mainly to draw attention, similar to Michael Newdow's continuing efforts to ban "one nation under God' from the Pledge of Allegiance.
An issue of the Chicago Sun-Times this week featured an article about a similar type of lawsuit that began in an Illinois elementary school and though it doesn't have a high-concept gay rights issue to propel it into the national limelight, it does paint a horrid picture of the lengths some officials will use to stifle free speech in the schools.
Eighth grade gifted students at Beaubein Elementary School (apparently, this elementary school is for grades K-8) were threatened with suspension and confined to their classrooms for wearing t-shirts with the word "Gifties" on them.
Though the 27 students are now in high school, the article said, they are continuing the court battle. Last week, U. S. District Judge Amy St. Eve allowed the case to be certified as a class action lawsuit.
The Sun-Times related how the lawsuit started. In 2003, a vote was held for a class shirt and apparently the "Gifties" idea won with that name on the front and a caricature of a boy walking a dog on the back. School administrators didn't like the winning concept, so they tossed out the results, never telling for sure which concept had won and refusing to answer any questions about it.
Students and parents challenged the election, but got nowhere, according to the Sun-Times article. The students decided to wear the shirts anyway, though they had been asked not to. The principal told them they would be suspended for five to seven days. That never took place, but the protesting students did find themselves being punished in other way for exercising their First Amendment right to free speech.
"The students say (principal Chris) Kotis confined them to their classrooms and denied them access to different parts of the school. Administrators wouldn't allow them to use the bathroom unless they removed the shirts, according to the students. At one point, they were forced to write an essay describing whether they felt worthy or using the computer lab, the lawsuit says. Later, the school allegedly threatened disciplinary action against any student who signed a petition supporting the T-shirt."
The students are asking that their records be cleared of any disciplinary infractions and similar occurrences be prevented in the future.
"Freedom of expression is not just about fighting for big issues but defending small issues, too" 16-year-old Michael Brandt told the Sun-Times. "That's what we did."

Former Sarcoxie minister Donald Peckham has dropped his attempt to have his prison sentence on two sodomy counts dismissed.
Court records indicate that Peckham filed papers Feb. 18 asking that his appeal of his conviction be dismissed. Peckham was sentenced in September to seven years on a second degree sodomy count and 15 years on a first degree sodomy count in connection with sexual activity with underaged boys.
Peckham, 72, filed his appeal Dec. 22.
Peckham had a long history of allegations involving similar problems when he was the pastor at several Methodist churches in Kansas dating back three decades, according to an investigative report by The Joplin Globe.
Jasper County Prosecuting Attorney Dean Dankelson told The Globe last year that his office was investigating allegations that Dankelson had abused as many as 12 children.
***
A settlement in the lawsuit in the age discrimination lawsuit filed by former KODE weather reporter Marny Stanier Midkiff against the Weather Channel may come after discovery is completed, according to documents filed this week in U. S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
Ms. Midkiff, who went by her maiden name of Marny Stanier as an on-camera meteorologist (OCM)on the Weather Channel, claimed she was dismissed because of her age and sex. She had worked there since April 13, 1987.
In her petition, Ms. Stanier claimed that her boss, the Weather Channel's senior vice president of programming and production Terry Connelly "openly expressed animosity toward older female OCMs. He spoke freely of his goal to 'young up' The Weather Channel. At one point, Connelly announced, 'we're old and we can't be...our ratings are going down.' "
Connelly used terms such as "matronly" and "dowdy" to describe the older female OCMS, according to the petition. In June 2003, he hired an image consultant to "help the women look younger and sexier," the petition said.
In the fall of 2003, a "reorganization" of personnel took place. Both of the female OCMS in their 40s, Ms. Stanier and Terri Smith, were fired. Their supervisory duties were turned over to a man. "He turned over their on-camera work to the younger males and females he had been hiring and continued to hire during the 'reorganization," the petition said.
"He did not consider Ms. Stanier for any of the OCM openings, although she was dramatically more qualified than the younger individuals he hired." Ms. Stanier was 41 when she was fired.
Attorneys for Ms. Stanier indicate they will be looking into "age and sex-biased comments and actions by individuals participating in the decision" when they begin the discovery process.
They will also look for "treatment of similarly situated employees."
Her lawyers said they anticipate seeking a protective order so that the Weather Channel cannot disclose "confidential business and personnel records and information to persons other than the plaintiff, her trial counsel and professional assistants."
The filing included a list of 20 potential witnesses, including former Weather Channel CEO Bill Burke, Lee Davis, the consultant who put on the forums for OCMs, two other OCMs who were fired, and a number of people who allegedly witnessed discriminatory statements and actions. Other witnesses may be added after the discovery process, according to the filing.
Ms. Stanier is asking for back pay, benefits, reinstatement and/or front pay, lawyers' fees, other "appropriate damages."

Edward Meerwald was bound over for trial today after his preliminary hearing in Newton County Circuit Court on two charges of involuntary manslaughter and a charge of resisting arrest.
According to news reports, Missouri Highway Patrol Sgt. Joe Curless testified that Meerwald said he had been drinking and appeared drunk shortly after the car he was driving ran off Highway 86 July 30 and struck James Dodson, 69, Neosho, and Dodson's granddaughter, Jessica Mann, 7, of Joplin, killing them.
Curless and Assistant Newton County Coroner Lee Ireland were the only witnesses who were called.
The next step in the case is an arraignment in trial court at which time a trial date will be sent. The case was returned to Newton County after a series of delays in Jasper County Circuit Court, where it had been sent on a change of venue.
***
The Rubbermaid Three didn't even make it a year.
O'Sullivan Industries Executive Vice President-Operations Michael Orr announced his resignation effective March 4. Orr will be taking a position with "another company" according to information filed with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission.
Orr was one of two Newell Rubbermaid officials brought in by million-dollar CEO Bob Parker, himself a former Newell Rubbermaid official. The announcement of Orr's resignation was terse and was limited to one brief paragraph.
How this will affect the changes in management and direction that Parker has said have greatly improved the prospects of O'Sullivan was not mentioned in the CEO's proclamation from O'Sullivan's new corporate headquarters in an Atlanta, Ga., suburb.
During a January filing with the SEC, Parker said, "Organizational changes and a focused strategic plan are beginning to manifest themselves in the marketplace." Despite the manifestation, the company lost $12.1 million during the second quarter of the fiscal year.
***
A Jerico Springs man was indicted by a federal grand jury on weapons charges today.
Jeremy Bass, 34, was indicted by the panel as he awaits trial in Barton County on a drug charge.
The indictment says that on Nov. 11 in Barton County, Bass, who was convicted on drug possession charges Feb. 7, 2001, in Barton County Circuit Court, possessed "firearms and ammunition, to wit: a Browning .30-06 caliber semi-automatic rifle, a Browning, .338 caliber bolt action rifle, Model A-Bolt, 61 rounds of FC .30-06 SPRG ammunition, 20 rounds of Winchester 30-06 SPRG ammunition, and 53 rounds of W-W Super .338 Win Mag ammunition," all in violation of federal code.
Barton County court records indicate Bass has 9 a.m. April 12 hearing in Barton County Circuit Court on a drug possession charge. He also received a suspended sentence on another drug charge in 1998, according to court files.
***
A former McDonald County deputy and Seneca police officer will be given more time to file pretrial motions, according to an order filed today in U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri.
Randy Hance is awaiting an April 25 trial on federal weapons charges and is being held without bond in the Greene County Jail. The order says he will have until March 21 to file motions.
As noted earlier in The Turner Report, Hance was ordered held without bond after U. S. attorneys presented letters purportedly written by him that indicated he might be intending to murder his ex-wife, then commit suicide.
***
After his company posted record fourth quarter and 2004 results, Saga Communications CEO Ed Christian told Radio and Television Business Report today that he was "sick of seeing articles bashing the broadcasting business as being in dire straits."
He noted that other broadcasters had also had record ratings. More information on Saga's fourth quarter report was featured in the Feb. 24 Turner Report.
Locally, Saga owns the KOAM and KFJX television stations.
***
Check out the new redesigned Missouri Southern State University website homepage. The homepage, which premiered Feb. 4 is designed to support more browsers, including Navigator, Firefox and Internet Explorer, according to an article in this week's Chart, the campus newspaper.
"It's redesigned with more homepage links," Rod Surber, public information director, told reporter Kathleen Cunningham. "Students and visitors have a visibility-incorporated page, text-only page, and non-flash page. The accessibility is improved and can accommodate major browsers."
I'm not sure what all that means, but the site looks sharp. Check it out at www.mssu.edu
***

If former Newton County Sheriff Ron Doerge gets his way, his hand-picked successor, Ken Copeland, may soon find himself on the wrong end of a federal lawsuit.
Doerge's lawyer, Doug Harpool of Springfield filed a motion in U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri today to remove Doerge as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by former prisoner Oscar Alvarez and have him replaced with Copeland.
Alvarez filed the lawsuit against Doerge and the Newton County Sheriff's Department, claiming that two former jailers allowed two inmates to get into Alvarez' cell and administer a beating to him.
In what is clearly one of those tricky legal maneuvers, Harpool said, "On or about Dec. 13, 2004, plaintiff Oscar Alvarez filed his complaint against defendants Ron Doerge Newton County Sheriff and the Newton County Sheriff's Department. On or about Jan. 1, 2005, Ken Copeland assumed the office of Newton County sheriff.
"Plaintiff has filed his complaint against the Newton County sheriff and the Newton County Sheriff's Department.
"Ron Doerge is no longer the sheriff of Newton County
"Pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 25, upon Ron Doerge's departure from the office of Newton County Sheriff Ken Copeland, his successor, should be automatically substituted as a party.
"As a result, Ken Copeland in his official capacity as Newton County sheriff is now the real party in interest in this action.
"Wherefore, defendants Ron Doerge and the Newton County Sheriff's Department pray for an order substituting Ken Copeland as the named Newton County sheriff in the place of Ron Doerge and for such further relief as the court deems just."
There is absolutely no truth to the rumor that Doerge suggested that Alvarez has no legal standing to file a lawsuit since other people now occupy the cell he was in when the incident allegedly occurred.
***
The judgment of the Southwest City Council has to be questioned with its decision to go into closed session to discuss whether it should bring charges against former City Clerk Dehonna Shields, who a recent state audit indicated stole more than $10,050 from the city.
Technically, the council probably was adhering to the Missouri Open Meetings Law, which permits closed meetings for litigation purposes, this is a different situation. This is not a matter of deciding on strategy for a lawsuit. This was simply a decision on whether to bring criminal charges against someone accused of stealing money from the taxpayers...and the taxpayers had a right to hear every argument for and against that decision.
What elected officials...and their attorneys...seem to forget is that the Sunshine Law does not mandate that meetings involving personnel, litigation, or real estate be held behind closed doors. It says they "may' be taken into the back room. Any elected body can opt to hold deliberations on these matters in public, but most city councils and boards of education use any available pretext to meet in secret.
It should be added that the litigation area is the only one the Southwest City Council could have used to legally close the meeting. The all-encompassing "personnel" does not play a role in this one. You can only a close meeting to hire, fire, discipline, or promote an employee. In this case, this person is no longer an employee...and apparently for good reason.
***
John Ford's article on the Southwest City meeting in today's Neosho Daily News gave the reader the feeling that he was actually there (at least at the open part of the session). The Daily needs to find a way to get Ford put on more major stories. He is an experienced professional on a mostly inexperienced staff. Having him back in action on a regular basis would not only improve the readability of the newspaper, but it would also provide the younger staff members with an example of how to effectively bring out the best in a story.
***
Nexstar Broadcasting, owner of KSNF and de facto owner of KODE in Joplin, just had its hand strengthened in its battle with Cox Communications in Abilene, Texas. Both the Abilene Reporter News and Multichannel News are reporting that for the first time, Echostar's Dish Network will be able to provide local stations, including Nexstar's KHRC, to the Abilene area.
The availability of the local stations on Dish Network in Joplin is one reason why Nexstar felt confident enough to take the step of pulling its programming from Cable One in Joplin.
Gayle Kiger, vice president and general manager for Nexstar in Abilene, told the Reporter News that Nexstar had negotiated a contract with Dish Network and that the company is paying Nexstar for transmitting its signal.
Cox's vice president for public affairs Morris Wilkes, said his company competes with satellite in nearly every market. "Once potential customers see the various hoops they have to jump through to get satellite, we hope that they see that cable is a good service and stay with us," he told the Reporter News.
One small hangup: "Anybody who wants local channels in the Abilene area is going to need a second dish," Dish Network spokesman Steve Caulk told the newspaper. Depending on which satellite plan the customer is using, he may have to pay extra.
***
The talk on Seneca Forums at www.senecaforums.com is about the decision of High School Principal Ron Wallace to ban representations of the Confederate flag at the school. Apparently, most of the members of the school's state qualifying wrestling team created quite a stir at the state meet when they wore hats with Confederate flags on them.
***
A 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, March 16, hearing has been scheduled for Travis Wyrick, the Joplin teen who faces a felony charge of leaving the scene of an accident in connection with the January hit-and-run death of Joplin High School senior Jamison Alexander.
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Net income for Saga Communications, owner of KOAM-TV, was down slightly in the final quarter of 2004, according to a press release issued by the company today.
Net income stood at 4.1 million, (20 cents per fully diluted share) compared to $4.5 million (21 cents per fully diluted share) in 2003.
The press release said net operating revenue increased 9.6 percent to approximately $36.1 million, while operating income increased 1.4 percent to approximately $8.7 million and station operating expense increased 9.6 percent to approximately $25 million.
News was good for the year ending Dec. 31, according to the news release. Net income increased 14.1 percent to approximately $15.8 million, compared to $13.9 million for 2003.
Saga owns five television stations, including KOAM and KFJX in the Joplin area, as well as 55 FM and 27 AM stations, three state radio networks, and two farm radio networks.
**
The second-best dividend growth record among Fortune 500 companies continued, according to a news release issued today by Carthage-based Leggett & Platt.
The company's dividends have increased annually for 34 straight years, the release said. "One share purchased in 1971 would today receive annual dividends of $32.40, or 90 times the original dividend. The company knows of only one other Fortune 500 company that has achieved as long a string of consecutive annual dividend increases at the growth rate Leggett has sustained."
Leggett & Platt's first quarter results are scheduled to be released after the market closes on April 21, according to the news release.

I made an error in the information on Roy Blunt and the Social Security meeting. It has been removed from the blog. I thank the first person who told me about the mistake and I am grateful that my command of the English language is such that I don't have to resort to the words used by the second.
***
The Carthage R-9 Board of Education voted Monday night to enter into a contract with Newton Learning to operate the district's summer school.
Add Carthage to the school districts that probqbly cannot understand the Diamond R-4 School District's quixotic lawsuit against Newton, the summer school arm of Edison Schools.
With the addition of Carthage, Newton Learning is now operating summer schools for Sarcoxie, McDonald County, and East Newton in this area and there may be others.
While I still have reservations about education-for-hire, I did see first hand during the summer of 2002 when Edison operated the Diamond summer school that Edison paid the teachers (at a far better rate than the school district) gave the school district a truckload of supplies, all of which it was allowed to keep, provided a curriculum that was in line with the Missouri MAP tests and also provided plenty of gifts for the students who attended the summer session.
And after all that has said, no one seems to deny that the summer school raked in about $200,000 in profits. Though R-4 Superintendent Mark Mayo initially said that Edison ended up costing Diamond money, a later quote from Board President Dr. Wayne Webb in the Joplin Globe indicated that was not the case and that Edison had, in fact, made money for Diamond. The local school district just disputed the amount and, as far as I can determine, has been the only school district to ever take this kind of dispute with Edison to court.
Mayo has said that other area school districts have had problems with Edison, but it appears that the school districts he has named, never used Edison for summer school, though they may have considered it.
***
The ability of cities' to hold down rates for the lowest tier of cable services may be coming to an end, the Fayetteville, Ark., city attorney told the city council Tuesday night.
Cox Communications has filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission saying there is no longer a need for cities to regulate the pricing because of increased competition for television services, including satellite dishes and offerings that will soon be provided by companies such as SBC, according to this morning's Northwest Arkansas Times.
The city attorney told the council there was no reason for the city to fight the petition since it had never been able to negotiate with Cox anyway. "The change would just take away something that has caused us grief," attorney Kit Williams said.

Less than a month after his arrest in an Internet sex sting, former O'Sullivan Industries official Gary Blankenship is back on the computer again.
Sources at O'Sullivan Industries indicate that Blankenship has e-mailed many of his former co-workers to tell them that he is innocent of the charges that have been filed against him and asking them not to believe what they have been reading about him in newspapers or seeing and hearing about him on television.
Apparently, Blankenship has been sending the e-mails from a relative's computer. His own company laptop was taken as evidence when he was arrested and reportedly contained disturbing images that contributed to his arrest on eight charges of possession of child pornography.
Despite Blankenship's immediate resignation from his position at O'Sullivan Industries, the Blankenship affair has been another black mark on a company reputation that had suffered locally during the past few months with the move of its corporate headquarters to Atlanta, Ga., and the removal or resignation of members of the O'Sullivan family, as well as many other top officials who had been with O'Sullivan for two or three decades.
Not all O'Sullivan officials were caught by surprise by the information of the secrets that were reportedly contained on Blankenship's company computer. After other employees had discovered that Blankenship apparently had been using the computer to download images that should not have been on there, the information was reportedly sent to higher-ups in the company, who took no action against Blankenship.
During a time when members of O'Sullivan Industries' founding family and other officials who helped make the company into a success were being shown the door, the new top officials, all transplants from Newell Rubbermaid, apparently decided that Blankenship was one person whom they wanted to keep on the O'Sullivan team.
Blankenship resigned late last month shortly after he was arrested in one of Diamond police officer Jim Murray's internet sex stings. Murray posed as a 13-year-old girl and set up a meeting with the 55-year-old Blankenship in Blankenship's home town of Neosho. Blankenship reportedly also used a webcam to allow the "teenage girl" to see him gratifying myself.
His preliminary hearing on the eight possession of child pornography charges as well as one count each of enticing a child and promoting obscene material to a minor, is scheduled for April 4 in Newton County Circuit Court.
Blankenship is free on $100,000 bond. He will be represented by prominent Springfield trial attorney Dee Wampler.
***
Broadcasting and Cable magazine reports that Cox Communications employees in Abilene and San Angelo, Texas, went just a little further than the Cable One employees in Joplin in handing out rabbit-ear antennas so their customers could continue to receive programming from a Nexstar station that was pulled off the cable company's lineup at the end of December.
"Employees were costumed in cute little bunny ears and t-shirts with the logo 'Got Ears?' One employee in each system donned a full bunny outfit to greet subscribers." Cox's Abilene franchise handed out 800 antennas, according to the article, while the San Angelo franchise distributed 2,800.
***
While Cox says it has lost 1,000 subscribers in those Texas communities since the end of December, the number in Joplin has reportedly been about 800 and it is not clear how many of those are due to the Nexstar situation and how many are simply normal churn.
Reportedly advertising for the Nexstar stations in the Missouri and Texas markets is down some, but not nearly as much as had been predicted by many observers.
***
The joint legislative committee trying to work out a solution to problems with Missouri's public education funding was scheduled to meet again tonight. The committee members included Rep. Kevin Wilson, R-Neosho.
***
Earlier this week in The Turner Report, I mentioned the Lamar Democrat's use of a Democratic Party press release in its Saturday edition that talked of Bubs Hohulin being illegally awarded the contract for the Lamar license office. I initially read the news release, which was never described as such on the Democrat's website, for which you can find a link elsewhere on this page. My copy of the actual newspaper arrived in the mailbox today and I was shocked to discover that this press release was bannered across the top of page one.
The public was probably aware that the information was a press release since it so obviously was written by someone with the Democratic party, but that information should have been provided by the Democrat editor.
It seems reminiscent of 1990 when Hohulin was first elected to the Missouri House of Representatives. At that time, the Democrat ran no articles about the young Iantha farmer who was trying to upset longtime Democratic incumbent Jerry Burch. After all, Burch was a state powerhouse who was rumored to be thinking of a run for lieutenant governor. The only articles in the Democrat that year up until the election were page-one stories about Burch. Only after Hohulin's grass roots campaign knocked off the heavily-favored Burch did the Democrat began running anything about Hohulin.
As with the 1990 coverage of the state representative campaign, Saturday's Democrat did not feature any press release from Hohulin or from any representative of Governor Matt Blunt or of the Missouri Republican Party.
***
Once again, the new media has come up with a scoop that has been picked up on by the traditional media. Today's Springfield News-Leader carried a story on Doug Wead, the former friend of President Bush who released a number of private conversations he taped with the president when Bush was governor of Texas. Wead spent many years in Springfield as an author, Amway distributor, and Assemblies of God minister. That was also featured on Missourinet today, but I read it over the weekend on former News-Leader reporter Ron Davis' blog, Chatter at http://homepage.mac.com/rondavis/iblog/index.html
***
U-Haul of Phoenix, Ariz., reports that Fayetteville, Ark., is the number one top growth city in the United States with 10.3 percent more families moving to the city than leaving, according to today's Arkansas Business.

Cable One viewers in Joplin have been exposed to numerous stations in the spots formerly held by KODE and KSNF. Since Jan. 1, we have seen HBO Family, Fox Movie Channel, Boomerang, Discovery for Kids, Soapnet, the Golf Channel, and the Hallmark Channel, among others.
Cox Communications is also showcasing some of its upper-tier channels in Abilene, Texas, as Nexstar Broadcasting has pulled KRBC, the NBC affiliate, from Cox's lineup.
Temporary channels, according to an article in the Feb. 17 Abilene Reporter News are the Do It Yourself Network, National Geographic Channel, Gospel Music Channel and HBO Family.
Morris Wilkes, Cox vice president for public affairs, told the Reporter News that losing KRBC permanently would be a "grave disservice" and he hopes Cox and Nexstar can come to an agreement.
Perry Sook, Nexstar CEO, told the newspaper, "It could be a permanent situation from our perspective. We don't expect the cable companies to necessarily change their position, and we don't plan to change ours."
None of the Cox franchises in Missouri, including Lamar and Carthage, lost Nexstar stations KSNF and KODE, thanks to a last-minute maneuver in which the company transferred the stations from its Arkansas unit, which had a deadline of Feb. 1 to its Kansas unit, which has a contract that lasts until next year.
***
The Diamond R-4 School District's teachers rank somewhere in the middle of the new Spring River Valley Conference as far as pay is concerned, but the district ranks number one in another area.
The raise the Board of Education gave to Superintendent Mark Mayo at its most recent meeting made Mayo the highest paid superintendent in the conference, at least going by figures from last year. Not one superintendent in the Spring River Valley Conference schools is making as much this year as Mayo will make during the 2005-2006 school year and that total will increase to $72,100 for the 2006-2007 school year.
Of course, undeniably the R-4 Board of Education must have wanted to sew up Mayo before he jumped ship and took his talents to another school district. They were so afraid of losing him that they locked him up for two years after this one. Despite having a contract for next year, reports from sources in the East Newton R-6 School District indicate that Mayo submitted an application for that district's superintendent position when it was vacant. He was not called in for an interview, according to the same sources. It is not known whether he submitted an application for the Neosho R-5 superintendent position.
Now that the district has the highest paid superintendent in the conference and a finely-tuned high school barbecue team the sky is the limit.

A Bell County, Texas, grand jury issued three capital murder indictments last week against a 2004 East Newton High School graduate in connection with the November 2004 deaths of four people connected with a Killeen, Texas, strip club.
The Temple, Texas, Telegram reported that Timothy Doan Payne, 19, a soldier at Fort Hood, was indicted along with Richard Lee Tabler, 26, of Killeen. Tabler was identified in print reports as a disgruntled former employee of the Teazers nightclub and purportedly was involved in gang activity.
In a December interview with the Dallas Morning News, Bell County Sheriff Dan Smith described the deaths as coming as the result of a "sinister and gruesome plot" to kill Teazers employees who had wronged Tabler. The Morning News reported that Tabler had been fired from the nightclub for dealing drugs and fencing stolen property.
Those allegedly shot to death by Tabler while Payne videotaped the murders, according to printed reports were: Tiffany Dotson, 18, a blond dancer from California; Amber Benefield, also known as Zoe, 16, a runaway from Louisiana; Mohamed Amine Rahmouni, the bar manager and a native of Morocco; and Haitham Zayed, who was described by authorities as most likely being a bystander who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Payne had been assigned to Fort Hood for less than a month, according to the Morning News. Both men allegedly confessed to their involvement in the murders, though Tabler later recanted in an interview with the Morning News. Sheriff Smith said Tabler told him he was angry at being banned from Teazers, so he lured the manager to a rural stretch of road outside Killeen on Nov. 26, allegedly to sell him stolen property. Rahmouni arrived with Zayed and reportedly Tabler shot them to death as Payne taped the action.
Two days later, the two men allegedly lured Miss Dotson and Miss Benefield to a deserted road with the promise of crack cocaine. When they arrived, Tabler reportedly shot them to death, with Payne once again operating the videocamera.
Club employees told the Morning News they had a hard time believing that the victims had anything to do with drugs or with stolen property.
Though nothing has been mentioned to link Payne with gang activity, there has been a serious problem over the past few years with Fort Hood soldiers becoming involved with local gangs, according to printed reports.
Payne and Tabler could receive the death penalty or life in prison without possibility of parole if convicted. Tabler is being held in lieu of $8 million bond, while a $4 million bond has been set for Payne.
***
O'Sullivan Industries will close its Australian operations by June 30, according to a filing last week with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission. The reason given: "sales in the region were not sufficient to support the infrastructure required." Seventeen employees will lose their jobs, according to the filing.
The closing will cost O'Sullivan between $1.5 million and $2.2 million, the filing said. "Of this amount, between $400,000 and $700,000 will represent cash charges related to severance, termination of leases and other agreements, and costs to administer the winding down of these operations. Between $1.1 million and $1.5 million will be used as a reserve against our inventories in Australia."
The closure came after the quarterly report issued by O'Sullivan last week which showed that the company went further into the red in the second quarter, posting a net loss of $12.1 million.
***
I don't have all of the results but apparently KQYX 1450 news/talk broke into the top five in the most recent Arbitron ratings. The number one station as usual was KIX 102.5.
***
A special meeting of shareholders of Kmart Holding Corp and Sears, Roebuck and Co. will be held March 24 to vote on the proposed merger of the companies. The meeting, according to today's St. Louis Business Journal, will be held at Sears headquarters in the Chicago suburb of Hoffman Estates, Ill.
***
The danger of taking a press release and running it unchanged as news was demonstrated last week in The Lamar Democrat. The newspaper apparently took a Democratic Party news release about Governor Matt Blunt's awarding of a license fee office to former State Representative Bubs Hohulin and ran it verbatim. No mention was made of the source of the article.
It began, "The Missouri Democratic Party filed an ethics complaint on Wednesday against Governor Matt Blunt, Revenue Director Trish Vincent and Martin "Bubs" Hohulin, who was illegally awarded a no bid contract to operate the Lamar Revenue Fee Office. Blunt gave this political payoff to Hohulin, a former Republican state representative, even though he is a full-time state employee for a Republican Missouri State Senator Carl Vogel in Jefferson City receiving a salary in excess of $48,000 a year, plus benefits."
It would not have been much too trouble for The Democrat to have balanced this news release with one from the Republican side, or better yet, making a couple of phone calls or doing a little bit of research and presenting a more complete story to its readers.
***

A lawsuit filed by Missouri school districts seeking equity in the foundation formula could backfire.
An article in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch indicates that many of the smaller school districts in the lawsuit could be putting themselves out of business if they succeed in reforming the formula, through which Missouri public schools are funded.
The article said 43 percent of Missouri's school districts have 500 students or less and many of those may be forced to shut down or consolidate.
That would not be good news, Tom Quinn with the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, told the Post-Dispatch. "For many communities, that's all they've got. If they lose their schools, they lose their community and their sense of identity. That revolves around the school."
Missouri legislators working on fixing the formula have suggested rewarding districts that consolidate, according to the article. Illinois is already doing that.
If the schools that are suing the state prevail, Craig Wood, a professor of education finance at the University of Florida told the Post-Dispatch, "that will move the consolidation issue to the front burner."
Marty Strange, policy director for the Rural School and Community Trust, a nonprofit group agreed. "If rural people are going to file suit and seek relief in court, they better be prepared to win in the legislature, otherwise their reward will be the death penalty."
***
The threat of judicial intervention has forced the General Assembly to address the inequities of the Foundation Formula, but the Republican leadership in the Senate appear to resent that and want to make sure that it never happens again.
On Thursday, senate leaders, including Sen. Gary Nodler, R-Joplin, announced their support for a constitutional amendment that would keep the courts out of educational funding issues. Governor Matt Blunt also said he supported the proposal. He was quoted in an Associated Press article as saying, "I don't think courts have a right to impose a tax increase on the people of this state."
No one wants to see the courts do that, but the problem has not been caused by the courts but by legislators who will not do what it takes to reform a badly-flawed system.
Legislators representing wealthier school districts won't support any kind of reform that would reduce some of the funding those districts receive. Legislators representing smaller, poorer school districts, don't force those districts to examine ideas such as consolidation and shared services that would improve their situations.
When neither side budges, taxpayers end up footing the bill for dramatic increases in overall funding, which add to the money the poorer districts have, but continue to leave the entire formula lopsided. Some poorer (and poorly performing) school districts are spared the ax and continue to be non-performing drains on taxpayer money.
Nodler was joined by Senate Majority Leader Charlie Shields in endorsing the proposal. Oddly enough, a 2004 report issued by a committee headed by Shields indicates that legislators hardly ever address problems with the education funding formula until a lawsuit or the threat of a lawsuit exists.
The AP article indicates the senators were careful to stress that the proposed constitutional amendment only seeks to prevent schools from suing the state, not individuals, but that is not the way the wording of the proposed amendment reads. It says, "The power to determine public school funding shall not fall within the province of the judiciary." No mention is made of an exception for individual lawsuits.
The proposed amendment is another in an increasing series of dangerous steps being taken by the Republican-led legislature. Many of their so-called reforms are designed to protect and enrich their friends in the business, medical, and insurance fields. This one is far more dangerous. It threatens to eliminate the constitutional check on their growing power. Having a judiciary that reviews the constitutionality of laws and offers recourse to Missourians who are not satisfied with legislative actions, is an important and necessary part of our system.
It is a shame that our elected officials have little so understanding of our political system and why it works.
***
A former Newton County Jail prisoner who is representing himself in a lawsuit against former Sheriff Ron Doerge appears to have run into some problems.
In a document filed Friday in U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, Donald R. Allen says he cannot properly respond to the sheriff's motion for summary judgment "because his files is not up here."
In the summary judgment motion, Doerge's attorneys asked for Allen to pay for their costs and expenses. Allen says he can't do that because when he is out of prison "he is on disability Social Security benefits."
The case is scheduled to come to trial this summer. Allen says he did not receive proper medical care while he was in the Newton County Jail.
***
The U. S. Attorney's office on Friday entered more letters purportedly written by Randy Hance in order to keep him in jail without bond.
Hance, a former McDonald County deputy and Seneca police officer, is in jail without bond awaiting an April 25 trial on federal weapons charges.
The latest batch of letters, following letters that were filed with U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri earlier this week, were sent to Hance's former girlfriend, who lives in Kansas.
The letters are filled with hate and one obscenity after another, which will not be printed on this site. One of the milder comments used by Hance was "I hope death comes for you soon. All you do is breath (sic) good air and take up space. The only sex you can get comes in a box and says batteries not included."
The earlier batch of letters, written about earlier this week in The Turner Report, convinced authorities that Hance planned to murder his former wife, Connie Hance, then kill himself.
***
Jury selection began Friday for a billion dollar lawsuit brought by Revlon Chairman Ronald Perelman against the Morgan Stanley investment banking firm.
Perelman claims Morgan Stanley knew that the Sunbeam company was in bad financial shape in 1998 when he sold Sunbeam his 82 percent stake in the Coleman company for $1.5 billion in Sunbeam stock.
A few months after the deal, according to the Wall Street Journal, Sunbeam disclosed that it had the serious financial problems that eventually led to its bankruptcy.
As the Journal puts it, "The lawsuit cuts to the heart of an issue on Wall Street. What is the responsibility of a stock underwriter or banker in terms of identifying problems at a company it counts as a client, and to whom is the underwriter responsible?"
Perelman is seeking $2.7 billion in damages.
The Sunbeam Company, now owned by Jarden Corporation, has a plant in Neosho.
***
Joplin television viewers are not as upset with Nexstar Broadcasting about the removal of KODE and KSNF from Cable One as viewers in other areas are about the removal of other Nexstar stations.
At least that's what Nexstar CEO Perry Sook and COO Duane Lammers told reporter John Boyd of the San Angelo, Texas, Standard Times.
Sook told Boyd that editorials in the San Angelo newspaper had made the feeling stronger against Nexstar in that market than in Joplin, Abilene, Texas, or Bossier City, La.
Lammers said it was hard to tell what public sentiment was. "No one's going to call us up and tell us, 'Gosh, we think you're right."
He failed to mention if anyone was calling him and saying, "Gosh, we think you're wrong."

Another television broadcasting company has announced its support for Nexstar's strong stance against cable companies Cox Communications and Cable One.
David Smith, CEO of Sinclair Broadcasting, told Multichannel News that his company is foursquare behind Nexstar. "They deserve a lot of credit and I hope they succeed," Smith told the magazine. "I think Perry (Nexstar CEO Perry Sook) is in a unique situation because he is using the opportunity that he has in small markets. In a three-station marketplace, it just seems to be that the consuming public's view of the world is going to be 'If I can't watch the basketball games on CBS or Desperate Housewives" on ABC or whatever' they are not going to be deprived of that opportunity, and they will go where they have to go to get it."
Though Smith did not tell Multichannel News where he got his figures, he said he had heard "staggering numbers" of cable viewers had switched to satellite dishes in the markets, including Joplin, where Nexstar has pulled its signals from the local cable franchises.
Smith indicated that letting the local stations such as KODE and KSNF leave will hurt the cable industry more than it will hurt Nexstar. He told Multichannel News, "Once they leave, there's no reason to come back."

It appears that Governor Matt Blunt's decision to award the Lamar license bureau contract to former State Representative Bubs Hohulin may just be the tip of the iceberg in what I hope no one calls Licensegate.
The Kansas City Star earlier today wrote about more of those to whom contracts were awarded, including Tracy Graves, wife of U. S. Attorney Todd Graves, and Mrs. Graves' brother, Todd Bartles.
Even though there is no doubt that these type of plum jobs were also awarded by recent Democratic governors Bob Holden and the late Mel Carnahan, what makes these appointments different, Missouri Democrats charge, is that Todd Graves' jurisdiction as a U. S. Attorney is western Missouri and Jefferson City, meaning that he would be responsible for any investigation into state government. Democratic Party spokesman Jack Cardetti told the Star, "The confidence of the people in the U. S. Attorney's investigations has now been severely harmed. This does not pass the smell test." Cardetti said the appointments showed a lack of judgment and integrity on Blunt's part, according to the Star article.
The decision to award Hohulin a fee office was criticized because he is already on the state payroll as an assistant to State Senator Carl Vogel, R-Jefferson City, earning more than $30,000 a year.
Hohulin told The Joplin Globe he does not intend to give up his job, and if he did to decide to accept the office, his wife, Marilyn, would be running it. A Turner Report reader notes that an ad was placed in this weeks XChanger 2, a free shopper serving the Barton County area, advertising for employees for the license bureau, indicating that the new management is taking over.
The ad reads, "Taking applications for Lamar License Bureau. Full or part time available, requires some Saturdays. Good personality and attention to detail a must. Apply at 1206 Cherry Street, Lamar, Mo."
***
Pittsburg State University's newspaper, The Collegio, reports in an article written by Joslyn Buck, that a fixture in area musical broadcasting has called it quits. The final original broadcast of "Swing Shift" a weekly jazz program,was held Friday, Feb. 4, on KRPS, the college's public radio station. The program's host, Dave Bevan, is retiring at age 89, after being host for the show for the past seven years. Repeats will fill the show's Friday night time slot until the end of the month.
Bevan told the Collegio, "I got to see some of the original big bands and I liked the music and I got to be pretty knowledgeable about it. I am glad to see young people interested in jazz today. It's a part of American history and not something that should just die out."
Ironically, at least as far as KRPS is concerned, that may be exactly what happens. KRPS' station manager told the Collegio he expects the station to go in a new direction with its replacement programming.

Two Jasper County Jail inmates allege the facility is a hotbed of racism.
In yet another prisoner lawsuit, this one filed today in U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, inmates Sean Harris and James Bailey are asking for half a million dollars in damages from Sheriff Archie Dunn "because the racial racism is known to the supervisors and correctional staff, also administration." As you may have guessed from the wording of that last sentence, the prisoners are representing themselves.
It's never quite clear which prisoner had done what to him. The complaint reads, "Feb. 12, 2005, I've been attacked by three racist white men, names unknown, knots on head, black eyes, cheek swollen, face bruised, body beat up. Every night I suffered racially motivated slurs, nigger, coon, darkie for example. Racism has not been forgotten and should be abolished."
Harris, who wrote the complaint for the two, then added, "I look forward to the federal courts to look into this facility because these Caucasian men are saying any nigger come in here they are going to try and kill. I'm not the first black men this has happened to. This violates my constitutional rights for equal protection of the law. The facility placed us, Mr. James Bailey, Jr. James Clark lives in dangerous conditions by placing them in a racist pod D, which is deliberate indifference and cruel and unusual punishment violating fifth and eighth amendments."
Harris said, "I want the court to grant me relief by declaring actual and punitive damages. Also, find this facility guilty for allowing the racism to go as far as it is going."
Harris indicated he wrote the complaint because Clark has a "reading and writing disability."
Jasper County court records indicate Harris is awaiting trial on third degree assault and forgery charges, while James awaits trial on a second degree arson charge.
***
Morale in the Jarden Corporation is high, CEO Martin Franklin said in a news release issued today. Jarden recently completed a buyout of American Household, the company which owns the former Sunbeam plant in Neosho.
"With the closing of the American Household transaction in January 2005," Franklin said, "we are excited by the tremendous opportunities the addition of such brands as Coleman, First Alert, Mr. Coffee, Oster and Sunbeam will bring to Jarden. Morale in the company is high as both management and employees recognize the cross-selling and cost saving opportunities that exist in our expanded group. We are focused on executing our strategic plan and are optimistic about our prospects for 2005 and beyond."
Jarden had record sales and operating earnings for the year, according to the news release, with net sales increasing 42.7 percent, to $838.6 million, compared with $587.7 million in 2003. During the fourth quarter, net sales increased 23.6 percent to $236.7 million, compared to $191.5 million for the same quarter last year.
***
Though there is little doubt the Missouri General Assembly also needs to be looking at the insurance industry as one of the causes of state problems and not just trial lawyers, some of the provisions in HB 392, which passed the House this week by a 106-52 margin, have some merit.
The bill prohibits shopping for counties or judges that might be favorable to lawsuits. Instead, the cases must be filed in the county where an injury allegedly occurred. This, Rep. Steve Hunter, R-Carl Junction, said in his newsletter this week, will "help curb the filing of unnecessary lawsuits. This change in law will cut down on lawsuits and help keep doctors in Missouri.
Another part of the bill eliminates joint and several liability, a process which allows lawyers to sue different people and if the one who has money is only one percent at fault that person can end up footing the whole bill if other defendants cannot pay. "Current law allows someone that was only one percent at fault in a $500,000 lawsuit to be forced to foot the entire bill, even if someone else that was 99 percent at fault is able to pay but isn't willing to do so," Hunter wrote. "HB 393 helps to stop this unfair practice by making people personally responsible for the consequences of their own actions, rather than the actions of someone else."
The joint and several liability was one reason behind the lawsuit filed by the Phipps family of Lamar several years back against drunk driver Neley Milner, who killed eight-year-old Julie Phipps and permanently damaged Jerry Phipps and his daughter Abby when he rammed his vehicle into the back of their car while driving at a speed of more than 100 miles an hour in 1995. The Phipps family sued Milner, who obviously was the person most responsible for the death and injuries and the Ford Motor Company for alleged faulty design of their car. A jury cleared the company of any wrongdoing, but the Phipps family had no hope of ever getting any money from Milner. It was a sad situation, but there was no reason why Ford should have been at risk of paying a multi-million dollar settlement in this case.

Bubs Hohulin is no longer in the Missouri House of Representatives, but the Lamar Republican still finds himself the center of controversy.
Hohulin, who works as an assistant to State Senator Carl Vogel, R-Jefferson City, was recently awarded a driver's license office in Lamar by Governor Matt Blunt.
A story issued less than two hours ago by the Kansas City Star indicates that state Democrats have filed a complaint with the Missouri Ethics Commission about the appointment. According to the article, "Democrats said state law prohibits state employees from doing work for an agency for compensation beyond their regular salary without a competitive bid. Hohulin told The Star he has not decided if he will accept Blunt's offer, but if he does, he will continue to pull down his $30,000 salary as a senate assistant and allow his wife, Marilyn Hohulin, to run the revenue office.
A spokesman for the governor's office said the governor does not believe his appointment of Hohulin was illegal.
***
Cox Communications is following in Cable One's footsteps and is giving away antennas to its customers after being forced to remove Nexstar station KSLT, a CBS affiliate, from its system in San Angelo, Texas, according to John Boyd's article in today's San Angelo Standard-Times.
Cox was a little slower on the trigger than Cable One was when it began handing out the free antennas in Joplin even before it had to remove Nexstar stations KODE and KSNF from its system. The Standard-Times article indicated that many customers had already bought antennas.
As expected, Nexstar COO Duane Lammers had comments for the media. "I think this is basically over and I don't think we'll be back on cable," he told the Standard-Times. While the penny a day (30 cents a month per subscriber) price has been bandied about in the media, the Standard-Times article indicated what most observers had already anticipated. The article said, "Nexstar initially asked for a penny per day per Cox cable subscriber over the next year, with escalating rates for the next several years, before it would sign a new retransmission consent agreement allowing KLST to return to the Cox cable lineup." Nexstar later just asked Cox to "agree in principle to payment of some kind," according to the article.
***
U. S. District Court Judge Richard E. Dorr issued an order today, directing that convicted child molester Martin Eck be compelled to answer questions from lawyers representing Jasper County Sheriff Archie Dunn and the Jasper County Commission within 20 days or have his lawsuit against them dismissed.
Eck is suing the county officials for $10 million after he allegedly was unable to get dental care while he was being housed in the county jail.
The lawyers arrived at Eck's prison Jan. 28 and he refused to answer questions until he had a lawyer. He indicated his mother was trying to hire one for him.
***
The attorney for former McDonald County deputy and Seneca police officer Randy Hance is attempting to keep threatening letters purportedly written by Hance from being admitted into evidence. Hance is being held without bond awaiting trial on weapons charges.
Shawn Askinosie, the prominent Springfield attorney who is representing Hance, filed objections in U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri to the government's plan to submit copies of threatening letters written by Hance to the Kansas victim. Government lawyers had asked that the judge examine the letters before making any decision on granting bond to Hance.
Askinosie said the evidence "was not presented at the detention hearing and thus is an attempt by the government to offer the district court new evidence" and the court should deny the government's request.
More information about other evidence in the Hance case can be found in the Feb. 14 Turner Report.
***
Another change of judge took place in the involuntary manslaughter case against Edward Meerwald, 50, Noel. Kevin Selby will preside over the preliminary hearing when it takes place 1 p.m. Friday, Feb. 25, in Division 3, Newton County Circuit Court. Judge John LePage, the second judge to be assigned to the case after it was refiled in Newton County recently recused himself.
Meerwald was allegedly driving drunk when his car left Highway 86 and hit James Dodson, 69, Neosho, and Dodson's granddaughter, Jessica Mann, 7, Joplin, when they were walking in Dodson's driveway. Meerwald is charged with two felony counts of involuntary manslaughter and one count of resisting arrest.
The case had been moved to Jasper County on a change of venue, but Newton County Prosecuting Attorney Scott Watson elected to drop charges there and refile charges in Newton County to try to get the case to trial faster.
***
A 9:30 a.m. April 4 preliminary hearing has been scheduled for Gary Reed Blankenship, Neosho, who faces 10 charges after being arrested in connection with another of Diamond police officer Jim Murray's internet sex stings.
Blankenship, 55, who resigned as an official at O'Sullivan Industries in Lamar after his arrest, faces one count of enticing a child, one count of promoting obscene material to a minor, and eight counts of possession of child pornography.
***
Great story on KODE tonight about the newly-found freedom of Aurora resident Ted White, Jr., who served six years in prison, until he was granted a new trial and was found not guilty. But correct me if I am wrong, didn't KOAM do that same story last week?

Officials in Bossier City, La., are taking Cox Communications to court in an effort to get the local Nexstar station, KTAL-TV, an NBC affiliate, back on the system.
The lawsuit was filed Monday in Bossier Parish District Court, according to the Shreveport Times. City officials said Cox was violating its franchise agreements which require the cable operator to air the local broadcast stations. KTAL was removed from Cox on Feb. 2 after it refused to pay the 30 cents per customer per month Nexstar was asking for retransmission rights.
***
International Flavors and Fragrances, owners of the Jasper Popcorn plant, are requesting that seven more lawsuits filed against the company be moved from Jasper County Circuit Court to U. S. District Court.
In documents filed today, the company is asking to have cases filed by Jane Fast Adams, Carthage; David and Tracy Vance, Jasper; Justin and Stacy Bishop, Joplin; Reina Haywood, Lamar; Jennieve Bricker, Jasper; Crystal Elwood, Drexel; and John Winningham, Lockwood, moved out of Jasper County.
Petitions to move five other cases were filed last week, as mentioned in The Turner Report.
Twenty-eight lawsuits were filed against the company from people who claimed a butter flavoring used by company officials caused them to have severe respiratory problems.

"Sorry, brother, but I can't live this way any more. Too much pain, too much heartache. We have shared so many wonderful times together, it was a hell of a party."
With those words, Randy Hance said goodbye to his brother. He meticulously detailed what was to be done with his property and told his brother to beat up his ex-wife's boyfriend. "He is part, a big part of why this happened."
What Hance intended to do, federal officials say, is to murder his ex-wife, then kill himself.
In a series of letters, written to his brother, his aunt, his children, and his former girlfriend, Hance, a former McDonald County deputy and Seneca police officer, planned everything about his death, down to naming the people he wanted to serve as his pallbearers.
The letters were filed today in U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri as part of the U. S. government's efforts to keep Hance in jail without bond on weapons charges while he awaits his April 25 trial.
Hance was indicted Dec. 15 by a federal grand jury for possessing firearms and ammunition while under an order of protection. The indictment said that on Nov. 23 Hance was under a full order of protection for threatening and harassing his former wife Connie Hance. The order was issued after he had repeatedly threatened Ms. Hance, according to the indictment.
"The threats and harassment included defendant putting a gun to Ms. Hance's head, threatening telephone calls in which (he) threatened Ms. Hance's life and repeated visits by (him) to Ms. Hance's residence."
He was also under a second protection order at that time, court records indicate, after he "repeatedly threatened and harassed a former paramour in the state of Kansas."
Hance was arrested Nov. 23 after Ms. Hance saw him outside her home and called 911. "Prior to his arrest," the court documents said, "the defendant had told Ms. Hance that something bad was going to happen to her on that date."
When he was arrested, he was in possession of a shotgun, a .40 caliber pistol and a Ruger M77 rifle, along with more than 150 rounds of ammunition. Two of the weapons were loaded and ready to fire, according to the court documents.
After he was arrested, Hance consented to a search. Officers found a spiral notebook containing the messages to friends and family members. "These letters indicated that (Hance) intended to murder Ms. Hance and then kill himself."
After he was arrested, court records indicated, he was placed in the Greene County Jail in Springfield, "where he attempted to commit suicide."
The government won the first round Friday when Judge Richard Dorr ordered that Hance continue to be held without bond, but Hance's lawyer, Shawn Askinosie of Springfield, one of the top criminal defense attorneys in southwest Missouri, says that order should be rescinded since possession of a firearm while under an order of protection is not a violent offense.
Government lawyers filed Hance's unsent letters today in an effort to ensure that Hance stay behind bars. A letter to his aunt indicates that he planned to send her the title to his truck, with instructions to sell it to pay for his funeral. "If any is left, just give it to the kids equally,"
he wrote.
He asked to be buried on land that he owns, but instructed, "I do not want Connie by me for any reason" He said that "Connie's land and money should go to the children."
"I tried so hard to be a good police officer and those crooked scum at Mac County would not let an honest cop like David and I do an honest job. I haven't done everything right in my life, but when I put that badge on I did.
"It's all gone now, my family, the hunting days are over, and most of my energy to live is gone, also. I go to sleep hurting and wake up the same way.
"Please pray for my soul."

Five lawsuits against International Flavors and Fragrances have been moved from Jasper County Circuit Court into federal court.
The lawsuit filed by Lawanna Arthur was removed from the local court Thursday and lawsuits filed by Anna and Edward Rea, rural Greenfield; Oma Baker, Golden City; Ronald Bennett, Lamar; and Christy and Ronald Walker, Jasper; were removed Friday, according to federal court records.
Those suits were all brought by former employees of the Jasper Popcorn Company against the company that owns the Jasper plant. Each of the former employees is suffering from severe respiratory ailments that have been traced to materials used in the plant.
The lawsuits are among 28 filed against International Flavors and Fragrances.
One lawsuit, filed by Linda Redman, Joplin, was settled just before the jury returned a verdict on April 30, 2004. Another Jasper County jury ruled in favor of Eric and Cassandra Peeples, Carthage, and awarded them $20 million, $18 to Peoples and $2 million to his wife.
A third Jasper County jury ruled in favor of International Flavors and Fragrances in a suit brought by former workers Dustin Smith, 25, Alba; Evelyn Standhardt, 60, Carthage; Marge Unruh, 51, Jasper; and Velma Ingalls, 34, Iantha.
The lawsuits claim that the butter flavoring used at the Jasper plant contains the chemical diacetyl, which according to health experts caused the workers to contract bronchilotis obliterans, a rare lung disease that cuts off the airways and causes shortness of breath.

A bill to increase the penalty given to offenders such as the one who killed James Dodson, 69, Neosho, and his granddaughter Jessica Mann, 7, Joplin, has been re-introduced in the Missouri House of Representatives.
Rep. Marilyn Ruestman in sponsoring the bill, formerly sponsored by Rep. Kevin Wilson. Wilson is listed as a co-sponsor.
HB 526, which received its first reading Wednesday, makes it a Class A felony to commit involuntary manslaughter if the driver accused:
-Has a blood alcohol level that is at least one and a half times the legal limit.
-If a fatality occurs as a result of that person leaving the highway.
Similar legislation is being sponsored in the State Senate by Sen. Gary Nodler, R-Joplin.
Mr. Dodson and Miss Mann died July 31 after they were hit by a car driven by Edward Meerwald, 51, Noel, who was allegedly drunk at the time. Meerwald's car left Highway 86 and struck the two as they were walking in Mr. Dodson's driveway.
Newton County Prosecuting Attorney Scott Watson recently refiled charges against Meerwald, essentially starting the process all over again since it had become stalled with one delay after another in Jasper County Circuit Court, where it had been moved on a change of venue. Meerwald is charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter and one count of resisting arrest.
The local legislators thought their bill to increase the penalties for this crime were necessary after discovering that Meerwald, if convicted, could be out of prison within a couple of years.
***
The Joint Committee on Education, which includes Rep. Kevin Wilson, R-Neosho, will continue its work on redoing the Foundation Formula, through which public elementary and secondary schools are funded, when it meets 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 15, in Senate Committee Room 1.
***
Here is a bill that is going nowhere, but you have to give the lady credit for trying.
Senate Minority Floor Leader Maida Coleman, D-St. Louis, has introduced a bill which would prohibit a parent, sibling or child of a statewide elected official from registering as a lobbyist. The bill is obviously targeted at Governor Matt Blunt, whose brother and stepmother are lobbyists and whose sister has indicated that she may do some lobbying.
The bill has some merit, but it is going nowhere in the Republican-led Senate.
***
Saga Communications, owner of KOAM-TV, will release its fourth quarter and full-year 2004 results at 11 a.m. Thursday, Feb. 24, according to PR Newswire.
***
The fourth quarter and 2004 results for Jarden Corporation, owner of the Sunbeam plant in Neosho, will be released Thursday, Feb. 17.
***
More people have come to The Turner Report searching for Nexstar Broadcasting than any other subject during the past week. Approximately 70 percent of those who reached this blog by via a search engine (and who entered something other than Turner Report) were searching for Nexstar.
Other search engine terms included: Malorie Maddox, Cox Communications, John Boruk, Tracy Turner, Edward Meerwald and southwest Missouri meth.
***
Nexstar Broadcasting has vigorously defended its practice of establishing so-called duopolies, television markets in which it has more than one station. In the Joplin area, Nexstar owns KSNF and for all practical purposes, also owns KODE.
The company has claimed in its filings with the Federal Communications Commission that the practice has enhanced its ability to serve the public.
In comments filed Jan. 2, 2003, Nexstar argued for the relaxation of FCC rules regarding multiple ownership in a market. "Over the past several years, the number of radio and TV stations has increased; cable, DBS, DARS and Internet access have all expanded; and daily and weekly local newspapers remain readily available. Relaxation of the Local TV Multiple Ownership Rule will not impact this vast diversity of available media and likely will only increase it."
Nexstar claimed that in markets where it has arrangements with other stations it has "initiated new newscasts, expanded coverage with existing newscasts and made technical improvements to their newscasts by adding Doppler radar systems or satellite uplink trucks."
The company claimed the FCC could relax its rules and not decrease competition. "Viewers, programmers, and advertisers all have multiple media choices, not just broadcast television."
Relaxing the rules wouldn't stifle local programming, Nexstar claimed, it would increase it.
"Under Nexstar's agreements in Wilkes-Barre-Scranton, Joplin, Erie, and Peoria, Nexstar currently produces news for its own station and the Mission or Sinclair station in the market. Although the stations share some content, each station also includes news content which is unique to that station."
The filing pointed out that in Joplin and Wilkes Barre-Scranton, "although the Nexstar-owned and Mission-owned stations share a single news director, each station has its own management-level employee to ensure that a news broadcast over his/her respective station is focused on the needs of that station's viewers."
In one section of its filing, Nexstar claims that "ownership of more than one television station in a market produces substantial public interest benefits."
As an appendix to the filing, Nexstar attempted to show how its operation of two stations has benefited Joplin. "Nexstar and Mission Broadcasting, Inc., have a shared services agreement in place between Nexstar's station KSNF and Mission's station KODE-TV under which the parties have increased news coverage in the market, produced and aired the Missouri Southern University Football Coaches Show, which had not been broadcast for more than four years and resurrected "Our Kids," a locally-produced public service campaign promoting the general well-being of children in the Four-State area. In addition, KODE-TV introduced a "Toys for Kids" campaign.
Nexstar also promoted KSNF's civic involvement in a Dec. 28, 2004, filing with the FCC.
Under the title "KSNF Joplin-Pittsburg Localism Initiatives" the company listed the following:
Local News- The company listed its newscasts, said it devotes 15 percent of its daily programming to local news and added "We have an individual assigned to update our web site on a daily basis with current news. We also direct people to our web site for additional news and information."
Local Public Affairs- In this category, Nexstar trumpeted a 30-minute Saturday morning program, "It's All About Youth," and its morning show, "Hometown Today," which "highlights local public affairs and community issues on a daily basis. This is accomplished with in-studio interviews and live segments from special community events."
Programming- Nexstar noted that it pre-empted network programming to air a PSU Division II playoff game, it produces and airs the PSU coaches show Sunday nights at 10:30 p.m., it pre-empted network programming to air the second Missouri governor's debate and it broadcasts the Carthage Maple Leaf Parade every October. "This is a three and a half hour live broadcast of the state of Missouri's largest parade with 175 plus entries and 45,000 spectators."
Emergency Programming- "We have invested over $1 million in the latest Doppler radar equipment so that we can provide the public with early notice of severe weather. We have a comprehensive severe weather plan in place and go to great lengths to keep the public informed about severe weather." Nexstar also said it goes live "at any time of the day or night for on-the-scene coverage of any emergency situation," and it participates in AMBER and EAS alerts.
Station participation in community activities- In this area, Nexstar noted the Children's Miracle Network Telethon, being a Partner in Education with area schools and The Joplin Globe and broadcasting live "twelve times per year from local high schools allowing them to showcase their school."
***
The open letters to Cable One viewers have been removed from the home pages at the KSN and KODE websites. These had been listed on both under the "news" category, though they were clearly biased advertising copy for the stations.

During the same time in which the company is trying to pay down more than half a billion dollars worth of debts, Nexstar Broadcasting paid Perry Sook one of the biggest bonuses given to any CEO in the country.
A Jan. 13 Associated Press article reported that Nexstar is making efforts to pay off $600 million worth of debt. During the past year, the man whose responsibility is to get that debt under control, Sook, was paid a bonus of $4,325,000, according to Securities and Exchange Commission documents.
Nexstar is the owner of KSNF and de facto owner of KODE-TV in Joplin.
***
Earlier, I wrote that the Neosho Daily News had not written about the lawsuit filed by the relatives of James Dodson and Jessica Mann against Edward Meerwald, Noel, the man who allegedly was drunk when the car he was driving crashed into them and killed them last July.
The Daily has written about that. I apologize for the error and have removed that reference from the blog.

I just finished reading the Saturday Joplin Globe, which featured coverage of Thursday night's Diamond R-4 Board of Education meeting.
Superintendent Mark Mayo will be around for another two years, according to the article (they had to sew him up quickly since he is in such demand from other school districts). He will receive $70,000 for the 2005-2006 school year and $72,100 for the 2006-2007 school year.
The Globe reported that High School Principal Jim Cummins will receive $55,100, Middle School Administrative Assistant Danny DeWitt $41,080, and Elementary Principal Deanna Yokley $53, 200.
I won't get into a discussion on the relative merits of the administrators, but Mayo's own choice for principal, Cummins, will receive $1,900 more per year than elementary principal Yokley though she has been principal for seven or eight years and Cummins has only completed one year and did not have his administrative degree when he was hired last year.
This certainly opens the board to charges of favortism at the least and sex discrimination at the most.
***
State Representative Ed Emery, R-Lamar, joined the battle with Rep. Kevin Wilson, R-Neosho, to see which one can kiss up to new Governor Matt Blunt the most.
In his column in the Wednesday Lamar Democrat, Emery referred to Blunt's State of the State message as "historic in its clarity and vision."
"What a breath of fresh air he provided to the conservative majority," Emery wrote.
***
While The Democrat offered page-one space Wednesday to the Dade County Commission budget, yet another meth lab story, and a story telling what township races will be on the April ballot, it has yet to print a story about the arrest of top O'Sullivan Industries official Gary Reed Blankenship on sex charges in Newton County. (Blankenship resigned from O'Sullivan shortly after his arrest.)
The newspaper still has not printed anything about O'Sullivan Chairman of the Board Daniel O'Sullivan resigning...and that was four months ago. Apparently the removal of the last vestiges of the O'Sullivan family from the business Tom O'Sullivan brought to the community 41 years ago is not big enough news to knock a meth lab off page one.
Wednesday's edition did include O'Sullivan Industries' press release on its second quarter results, but that information, though it affects Lamar's biggest employer, was buried on page 8 of the paper, along with a story on Dr. Kay's Magic Show coming to Lamar.

A convicted child molester who is suing Jasper County Sheriff Archie Dunn and the County Commission for $10 million because he did not receive adequate dental care while he was in the county jail refused to answer questions from the county's lawyers during a Jan. 28 deposition.
Martin Anthony Eck, 42, gave his name and age and that was about it. When asked if he had a lawyer to represent him, Eck said, "My mother is in the process of getting me one as we speak.
"I do not know at this time who it is. But she is getting me one."
After attorney Peter Lee said, "Before we begin this deposition, one of the--," Eck interrupted him saying, "I'm not gonna make any statements until I have a chance to talk to my lawyer," according to the deposition."
Under questioning by Lee, Eck said he had not been contacted by any lawyers and had not received any correspondence from lawyers.
County attorneys have asked the judge in U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri to compel Eck to give a deposition within 30 days or to throw the case out of court.
***
The new media is beginning to play an important role in getting the news out. Neosho Forums' administrator broke another story Friday in the ongoing circus surrounding former Newton County Sheriff Ron Doerge.
Jack Dickens, who goes by the name Admin on the website, broke the story that a federal Hatch Act complaint has been filed against Doerge with the Office of Special Counsel. Hatch Act violations take place when elected officials participate illegally in politics.
Using Doerge's recent admonition by the Missouri Ethics Commission as a springboard, the complaint claims he improperly influenced the election of current Sheriff Ken Copeland.
The documents, which are featured at www.neoshoforums.com claim that Doerge "directly or indirectly" coerced Sheriff's Department employees to endorse Copeland.
The complaint, which had the name of the complainant redacted, notes the July 28, 2004, political ad in the Neosho Daily News in which Doerge endorsed Copeland. "Ken Copeland won the primary election and afterwards he publicly announced that he would not have won if Sheriff Doerge had not endorsed him as a candidate," the complaint said.
That July 28 ad listed supporters of Copeland's election including: Doerge, Chris Jennings, chief deputy; Lt Bob Loudermilk, reserve deputy; Larry Kenn, detective; James Defrates, deputy; Rico Engberg, detective; William Pike, detective; Dwayne Allen, detective; Keith Mills, deputy; C. A. Davidson, deputy; Bill Hayes, deputy; Frank Harris, major; Richard Leavens, captain patrol commander; N. Trevor Williams, detective; R. Scott Whitman, detective; Donn Hall, deputy; Dan Cooper, deputy; Randy Scott, detective; Henry Stout, detective; Roger Koren, evidence officer; David Trimble, deputy; and Richard Geller, detective.
TV ads that aired on KSNF and KODE with Doerge endorsing Copeland were also cited, as was an endorsement by Major Frank Harris on Copeland's website.
"As a citizen and voter of Newton County," the complainant said, "this upsets me as the sheriff and some of his deputies endorsed a candidate which not only influenced the elections, but did so while having received federal funding in the past and possibly presently." The federal funding is what makes Doerge's actions a possible violation of the Hatch Act.
The Ethics Commission sent the letter of admonition to Doerge after determining that taxpayer funds were used to support a candidate.
The full complaint and comments on it can be found at Neosho Forums.
***
Another new media source that has played a key role in keeping a watchful eye on government is www.nevada-revealed.org , which has thoroughly publicized the audits of the city of Nevada, the last of which was unveiled by the state auditor's office last week.
I am sure the Nevada Daily Mail covered the information in its print edition, but for some reason it has not shown up on the newspaper's website. Anyone wanting information about the audit has to go to either Nevada Revealed or to the state auditor's website.
***
The Diamond R-4 Board of Education may have as many as four new members after the April election, but those new board members will be stuck with Mark Mayo through at least June 30, 2007.
The R-4 Board, reportedly voted 7-0 to extend the superintendent's contract an additional year, even though he already has a contract that would take him through the next school year.
The board also voted unanimously to rehire High School Principal Jim Cummins and Middle School Principal Danny DeWitt and voted 5-2 with Janice Stirewalt and Steve Johnson casting the dissenting votes to rehire Elementary Principal Deanna Yokley.
As my former student Michelle Nickolaisen pointed out in her blog, www.secedingfromsociety.com school officials did not place the agenda for the board meeting on the district website www.diamondwildcats.org until sometime during the day the meeting was held, Thursday, Feb. 10. Not posting an agenda more than 24 hours a day before a meeting would be a violation of the Missouri Sunshine Law, but as was noted in The Turner Report Feb. 10, Diamond school officials post their agenda on a window at the door at the high school, where students and school employees might see it, but no other district patrons.
The agenda placed on the website, the only vehicle through which it is available to the public, contained no mention that any of the hirings were to be voted on Thursday night.
While I'm mentioning the work being done by the new media, Michelle Nickolaisen and another former student of mine, Alicia Bradley, who is also a sophomore at Diamond High School, provide interesting and insightful commentary (as well as occasional nonsense, but hey, they are students) on their blogs. Alicia's can be found at www.writingkills.blogspot.com . Both of them would be great writers for the high school newspaper or for the school website, but so far this year there has been no high school newspaper (at least not the last time I heard which was sometime last month) and after using the website for school news updates last year, that practice has been discontinued during the 2004-2005 school year.
Though journalism no longer seems to be a necessary item at the high school, all is not lost on the intellectual front. Thanks to the guidance of Superintendent Mayo and his new high school counselor, who also used to work for the Southwest R-5 School District, Diamond now has a barbecue team which will travel across the state looking for new frontiers to conquer.
That alone is certainly worth an extra year on the old contract.
***
Cox Communications, owners of cable franchises in Carthage and Lamar, were hit with some unfavorable publicity Friday when the Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil insider trading charges against Frank R. V. Loomans, the company's former manager of investor relations.
According to the Associated Press story, the SEC alleges Loomans made at least $285,505 illegally by using "sensitive information about Cox not available to the public to trade the stock options in a brokerage account in the name of his father, Luc F. Loomans, between July 2000 and July 2001."
He also is alleged to have illegally made money on Concurrent Computer Corp. stock.
***
The Neosho Daily News reported in its Friday edition that McDonald County Associate Circuit Court Judge John LePage will oversee the newly-refiled involuntary manslaughter case against Edward Meerwald, 51, Noel.
Meerwald allegedly was intoxicated when the car he was driving killed James Dodson, 69, Neosho, and Dodson's granddaughter, Jessica Mann, 7, of Joplin.
The case was moved back to Newton County earlier this month after County Prosecuting Attorney Scott Watson tired of delays in Judge Joseph Schoeberl's court in Jasper County, where the case had been moved on a change of venue.
When the charges were refiled, Watson added a resisting arrest count.
***
KSNF's 10 p.m. coverage of the annual Lincoln Days gathering at the Ramada Inn in Joplin today featured an interesting note from weekend anchor Courtney Cullor.
"KSN's own Jim Jackson was emcee at Lincoln Days," Ms. Cullor said.
The Lincoln Days event is a partisan Republican get-together, which tonight featured Governor Matt Blunt, and U. S. Senator Kit Bond as speakers. The Nexstar station's willingness to have Jackson participate in the event and even publicize his participation is questionable. It certainly doesn't give area Democrats (the few that exist) any reason to be confident in KSN's coverage of their activities or of Republican activities.

After the 30-minute special extolling the virtues of local television and of satellite dishes, in the interest of equal time, The Turner Report will present the advantages of cable over satellite:
-Cable services can be bundled with high-speed internet services at a discount.
-No extra charge for local channels
-Reception that is not affected by bad weather like satellite
-Additional outlets free of charge
-Strong local technical support located in your community.
Those are not actually my selling points for cable. They do not come from Cable One, nor do they come from Cox Communications.
Those reasons why cable is preferable to satellite come from Atlantic Broadband, the 16th biggest cable company in the United States. Atlantic Broadband is a relatively new entrant into cable television, but has quickly established itself. It was started by a Boston private equity firm ABRY Partners...the same ABRY Partners that owns controlling interest in Nexstar Broadcasting.
During the half-hour Nexstar infomercial COO Duane Lammers lambasted Cable One, because it is owned by corporate giant The Washington Post, which also owns Newsweek Magazine and other properties.
He made it sound as if the big, bad Washington Post was bringing all of its power down on tiny, courageous Nexstar. What Duane Lammers failed to mention was the large media portfolio owned by his bosses from ABRY Partners.
Among the other companies owned by ABRY are:
-Consolidated Theatres- a regional megaplex movie theater circuit
-Charleston Newspapers- publishers of both the Charleston Gazette and Charleston Daily Mail in West Virginia.
-Muzak- a subscription music service
-Country Road Communications- a rural wireline telecom provider
-Network Communications- a leading North American publisher
-Citadel Communications- Owner and operator of leading radio station clusters in mid-sized markets.
-Sullivan Broadcasting Company- a leading operator of Fox-affiliated broadcast television stations in mid-sized cities.
-Hispanic Yellow Pages Network- Targets Hispanic areas across the U. S.
-Monitronics- A leading provider of security monitoring devices for residential and business customers.
-Connoisseur Communications- owner and operator of leading radio station clusters in small and mid-sized cities.
-Dolan Media Company- provides business information services to law, credit, finance, construction and commercial real estate industries.
At the same time that one ABRY company is telling customers in the Joplin area, plus customers in Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana, that cable companies are out to milk the public, cheat broadcast stations, and are inferior to satellite, another ABRY company is telling customers in the upper Midwest, Pennsylvania, Delaware and the Miami, Fla., areas that cable is far superior to satellite.
Atlantic Broadband is not the only cable company owned by ABRY. According to the ABRY website, the investment firm also owns WideOpenWest, or WOW, which is even larger than Atlantic Broadband, ranking as the number 13 cable operator in the U. S., providing services in the suburbs of Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, and southeast Michigan.
Lammers did not tell the audience about Atlantic Broadband or WideOpenWest, and he certainly did not mention anything about either of those companies actually paying that penny per day price to local broadcasters for retransmission of their signals.
One last bit of irony...It wasn't long ago that the newscasts on the Nexstar stations in Joplin covered a staged protest by the local Echostar/DISH Network provider, targeting Cable One.
ABRY's website carries the following news release, issued Dec. 3, 2004, with a Johnstown, Pa., deadline: "Atlantic Broadband, the digital video and internet provider that began operating here in March, has issued a protest to Echostar, the $5.7 billion distributor of DISH Network satellite programming, saying it is misleading Pennsylvania consumers in a negative ad campaign aimed at cable TV operators."
For those who have forgotten, or who did not get the opportunity to see Nexstar's 30-minute infomercial, its title was "TV Cable Fable."
Aesop couldn't have told it better.

Stay tuned "if you want to be educated," about the truth about the battle between Nexstar Broadcasting and Cable One.
No, that wasn't an ad promoting the 30-minute Nexstar infomercial that ran earlier tonight on KODE and KSNF. That was KODE news anchor Jimmy Siedlecki shilling for his bosses...during the 6 p.m. newscast.
The newscasts of the two Nexstar stations have suffered the most during this battle royal and it continued tonight. I did not see how or if KSNF promoted the infomercial during its newscast, but since it is the station with actually has Nexstar's name attached to it, I find it hard to believe that it might have gone unmentioned.
The total eradication of the barrier between news and advertising continued at the beginning of "TV Cable Fable," the catchy title given to the infomercial, when it was opened by KSN-KODE News Director Larry Young, who primarily served to introduce Nexstar COO Duane Lammers, who then went into his half-hour spiel.
"Let me apologize for any inconvenience our disagreement has caused you and your family," Lammers said. He briefly reviewed the history of cable television, then noted that the local stations have "created a legacy of serving our communities with pride and distinction." Lammers continued to dispute the cable companies claim that they should not have to pay for free television, by noting that the companies have been packaging the local stations with other stations that people do not want. He compared the practice to getting a drink of water at a fountain, which costs nothing, but if it is packaged as bottled water, you have to pay for it.
During the half hour telecast, Lammers:
-Indicated Nexstar would continue fighting the battle with other cable companies as its retransmission contracts come up.
-Urged people to sign up with Dish Network and said that Direct TV will soon have the capability to broadcast the local stations in the Joplin area.
-Said that Saga, owner of KOAM-TV, is supporting Nexstar's position and that it, too, would be fighting to be paid for its broadcasts when its contracts are up.
A particularly amusing segment had Lammers answering e-mail from KODE and KSNF viewers. Apparently, no one responded to the call for e-mail messages with anything important to say since one of the e-mail writers simply told Nexstar he agreed with its stance and another asked what appeared to be a planted question.
The writer asked if the situation between Nexstar and the cable companies could cause KODE and KSNF employees to lose their jobs. Lammers said there would be "absolutely no layoffs or any job losses as the result of this conflict." He did not mention if his company might find another excuse to lay off employees.
Any readers from other areas besides Joplin in which these Nexstar infomercials have aired, I would appreciate if you could get in touch with me and give me details about those programs.
I would also love to hear from anyone from Saga, owner of KOAM. What Lammers said is clearly at odds with interviews KOAM General Manager Danny Thomas gave the Pittsburg Morning Sun recently, in which he said KOAM would not take any such stance and, in fact, criticized the coverage being given to the rival stations, noting that KOAM has more viewers anyway.
***
Michelle Nickolaisen, in her blog "Seceding from Society" at www.secedingfromsociety.blogspot.com notes that the Diamond R-4 Board of Education is meeting tonight to discuss extending Superintendent Mark Mayo's contract another year beyond the next school year.
"Wow - our school board amazes me," she wrote. "They're required to have notification of board meetings up, right? Well, they posted one sometime between six A.M. and now. Guess when the meeting is? Tonight. At like, 6:30 or 6:45. Supposedly they're going to renew Mayo's contract. "
Actually, Michelle, I happened to check the site during my planning period today (about 11 a.m.) and it hadn't been posted at that juncture. The Missouri Sunshine Law requires notices of meetings to be posted at least 24 hours in advance. However, I am sure the letter of the law is being followed, if not the spirit. I would guess the agenda was posted in a window or on a door at the high school...where the only people who would see it are students who are not likely to attend anyway.
Of course, if the board does agree to extend Mayo's contract to the end of the 2006-2007 school year, maybe he will be close to actually earning the doctor title he has been using in front of his name. (My understanding is that his "doctor" title comes from his law degree, and that he is just starting on his educational doctorate.)
It should be pointed out that Michelle's information about the proposed extension to Mayo's contract did not come up from the agenda, which features no such information. The closed session involves personnel and other some reasons, but no mention is made of the superintendent's contract. Only a list of people who are going to make presentations and their general areas of discussion are mentioned for the open session.
***
No Child Left Behind requirements are going to increase the number of MAP tests that Missouri schools have to give. Considering that many Missouri schools dropped a number of MAP tests due to cuts in state funding, how is the state planning on funding the increase or will the testing increase stretch the budgets of already underfunded school districts?
NCLB requires students to be tested in math and reading each year between third and eighth grade. Currently, tests are given in the following fashion:
Third grade- Communication Arts
Fourth grade- math
Fifth grade- no tests
Sixth grade- no tests
Seventh grade- communication arts
Eighth grade- math
Ninth grade- No tests
Tenth grade- math
Eleventh grade- communication arts
Twelfth grade- no tests.
Beginning next year, the tests will be given to the following:
Third grade- Communication arts, math
Fourth grade- communication arts, math
Fifth grade- Communication arts, math
Sixth grade- Communication arts, math
Seventh grade- Communication arts, math
Eighth grade- Communication arts, math
Ninth grade- No tests
Tenth grade- math
Eleventh grade- Communication arts

It will be interesting to see if the state legislature comes up with a way to cover the costs of eight extra tests, as well as improve the foundation formula through which public schools are funded.

One of the things that kept Barton County perking during the 1980s and early 1990s was its diversified economy. The city had a strong manufacturing base, thanks to O'Sullivan Industries and Thorco, a strong retail base, and a strong agricultural base.
The recent shenanigans involving the operation of O'Sullivan Industries and its million-dollar CEO Bob Parker have Barton County residents hoping that this pillar of the manufacturing segment is going to continue to be the area's chief employer.
President Bush's announces that farm subsidies will be severely cut as part of his budget request to Congress could severely damage the agricultural base.
U. S. Department of Agriculture statistics indicate that during the years between 1995 and 2003, Barton County farmers received $59,316,861 in farm subsidies, including $5,384,975 in 2003. The largest amount, thanks to disaster subsidies, was $12,179,007 in 2001. And this is despite the fact that none of the top 749 recipients in the state in 2003 come from Barton County. The top Barton County recipient that year with $75,748 was John Gardner Farms, Inc., which received $869,285 between 1995 and 2003.
The only other Barton County farming concern in the top 1,000 in 2003 was Crabtree Brothers in Liberal at $65,811.
Other area counties were not affected as much as Barton County, but still received large amounts of money, according to USDA statistics. Jasper County received $33,494,146 between 1995 and 2003, with $2,991,312 in 2003, Newton County farmers received $12,399.53 in the nine-year period, including $1,241,555 in 2003. McDonald County received $2,337,921 between 1995 and 2003, including $353,897 in 2003.
***
In an effort to bring customer service and accountability to the Department of Revenue's contract license offices, Governor Matt Blunt named new operators for each of them today, including former State Representative Bubs Hohulin in Lamar, and John Putnam in Carthage.
According to a news release from the governor, Blunt required prospective agents to "submit a business plan demonstrating their commitment to meeting the needs of Missouri citizens." These plans included details on financial responsibilities and office operations, the news release said.
Agents will be required to keep the offices open on Saturdays.
Agents for other contract offices will be announced at a later date, according to the news release.
***
Nexstar COO Duane Lammers was in Joplin Tuesday and his 30-minute infomercial about the alleged abuses of cable TV and the wonders of satellite will be presented at 6:30 p.m. Thursday on KSNF AND KODE.
Nexstar CEO Perry Sook told Radio & Television Business Report in its February issue that his stations may never return to the Cox and Cable One systems it has cut off. He terms the loss of ad revenue by the Nexstar stations as "fairly inconsequential," saying it has only been about a third of what had been expected. "There have been some cancellations, but in a company that does a quarter billion dollars in ad revenues, it has been merely a six-figure number," Sook told the magazine. "When you compare that to what is at stake, which would be getting paid from every wired home in our universe, obviously the fight is worth fighting."
Sook told the magazine the cable systems have been hurt far more than the Nexstar stations. He said if his company were to receive 25 to 30 cents per subscriber per month for its signal that it would make more than $20 million extra per year.
Sook is scheduled to be profiled in the March issue of the magazine.
***
La-Z-Boy's quarterly report showed sales up, operating margin down, and another ode to the joys of outsourcing.
Though the company's press release, as expected, touted the $26 million increase in net sales, operating margin was down from 5.3 percent last year to 3.9 percent during the most recent quarter.
No mention of outsourcing was made in the news release, but it was there in black and white in the company's filing with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission. "During the first quarter of fiscal 2004, we announced the closing of three of our casegoods group manufacturing facilities," the SEC filing said. "This action was the result of underutilization of certain manufacturing facilities as we transitioned to more foreign-sourced products in order to be competitive with imported furniture."
The filing noted that 480 jobs were lost as a result of that move, though it said 75 other jobs had been created. La-Z-Boy CEO Kurt Darrow has said in published interviews, including one in the Aug. 11 Toledo Ohio Blade that the company would continue to send as much of its production as possible overseas to increase profit margins.
One area of La-Z-Boy that is safe for the time being is the upholstery area, including the plant at Neosho because Chinese facilities are not ready to take on that kind of work. Darrow indicated he would keep an eye on the Chinese plants to determine when they would be ready.

A McDonald County jail inmate's lawsuit against former Sheriff Robert Evenson and deputy Michelle Amos, among others was dismissed today in U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri.
According to court documents, William Shane Poole did not correct technical problems in his petition, even after being given an extension from Jan. 12 to Feb. 4 to do so.
U. S. District Judge Gary Fenner dismissed the case without prejudice, meaning Poole can file it again.
In the lawsuit, which was filed Dec. 21, Poole asked for an audit of the prison commissary, claiming that money is missing from inmate accounts.
He said prison officials did not allow him to receive much-needed medication, causing him to have seizures and forcing his hospitalization. Poole says he filled out a postage request form to send a letter to the circuit clerk, but it was "brought back and torn up in front of me by Michelle Amos."
Lt. Amos also ignored staff memos to provide Poole with his medication, he claimed.
Poole also sent in grievance forms filled out by he and two other prisoners, all of which he indicates were corrected by Lt. Amos, though the deputy's signature on the forms is virtually illegible. In one dated Dec. 12, 2003, she denied a request by Poole to use the canteen and to see the sheriff, scolding him for not spelling using and sheriff correctly. Someone should have gone over her work since she wrote, "Peroids and commas need to correctly," then with a flourish, added, "Denied- ask your lawyer."
Another Poole grievance, dated Dec. 4, was returned with an "F" grade and "-50" written on it. Poole was complaining about a deputy not giving him soap to shower with and being disrespectful toward him, even though Poole was told if he wouldn't play with the soap he could probably have some.
On the same day, inmate Don Barkfelt also received an F, according to a copy of a grievance form entered into Poole's petition. Barkfelt wrote, "Was refused soap to take a shower and was very out of line with his language with us this morning." Lt. Amos replied, "Great story and introduction, but need and ending to this story."
The third grievance filed over the soap situation, submitted by Joe Darryl Andrews, was also graded F. "English helps" and "sentence doesn't make sense" were written on the grievance form. "Please rewrite the request so it can be read and written correctly."
Poole claims that when he filled out a form to file his lawsuit, it was torn to pieces in front of him by Lt. Amos. "(She) smiled at me as she tore up another sheet of paper that had dates and times on it. I did keep one sheet and that is the information that I am sending you to keep secure," Poole wrote.
***
The attorney for former Newton County inmate Oscar Alvarez is asking for a jury trial in his lawsuit against former Sheriff Ron Doerge. In documents filed today in U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, Steven J. Blair, Alvarez' attorney, asked for the jury trial in their case against Doerge, who they claim was in charge of two jailers who allegedly permitted him to be beaten.
In the lawsuit, filed Nov. 22 in U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missori, Alvarez claimed that on Feb. 22, 2004, jailers Adam Brandon Babbitt and Shane Steven Smith, arranged for his brutal beating at the hands of another prisoner. He says that since the two men were working for Doerge, that Doerge is ultimately responsible for their actions.
In the response to the complaint, Kristen Baird Roubal, attorney for former Newton County Sheriff Ron Doerge and the Sheriff's Department, claimed it did not happen and, if it did, it was against Sheriff Doerge's policy.
The claim that it did not happen comes despite Doerge's firing of the two deputies because of their involvement in the incident.
The two former deputies were charged with misdemeanor third degree assault, then later the charges were amended to felonies.
As revealed earlier this week in The Turner Report, Doerge may have ignored evidence that could have cleared the two jailers and saved himself from this most recent lawsuit.
This evidence included an affidavit signed by another Cell Block A inmate saying Alvarez and another inmate had concocted a plan to have Alvarez beaten to prevent him from being deported. At the time, Alvarez was facing a felony charge of non-support which, if he had been convicted, would have been enough to have forced him to leave the United States.
It appears that the sheriff only accepted the word of four inmates, including Alvarez and the man who beat him that the cameras were turned off, although there was no other evidence that that was what had happened.
More information on the latest developments in the Doerge-Alvarez case was featured earlier this week in The Turner Report.

A bill by State Rep. Kevin Wilson, R-Neosho which would allow the courts to impound the vehicles driven by a person convicted of driving while intoxicated or excessive blood alcohol content was reintroduced today.
The bill is co-sponsored by Marilyn Ruestman R-Joplin, and Bryan Stevenson, R-Webb City.
***
This should come as no big shock but State Sen. Gary Nodler, R-Joplin, says he has been totally won over by new Governor Matt Blunt after initial concerns about his youth and inexperience.
In an interview aired today on Missouri Southern State University's Newsmakers program, Nodler said, "All of the concerns about his youth have been replaced with excitement."
Nodler said the three biggest concerns facing the General Assembly this year are tort reform, workmen's compensation reform and fixing the foundation formula through which Missouri public schools are funded.
Nodler said he expects opposition but no major problems in dealing with the first two issues, but the foundation formula repairs will be much more difficult. Nodler serves as chairman of the Senate's Education Committee.
***
Viewers who have enjoyed the family-friendly programming of PAX-TV might prepare themselves. Its demise appears imminent. Reporter Marc Berman of Mediaweek wrote today that PAX laid off 50 workers "signaling the potential end of the struggling seventh broadcast network."
Among those laid off, according to the article, were the network's president, East Coast vice president, senior vice president of programming, senior vice president of promotion and advertising, vice president of national promotions, and vice president of station operations.
***
Nexstar Broadcasting, owner of KSNF-TV and de facto owner of KODE will report its fourth quarter earnings and year-end financial results during a 10 a.m. conference call and webcast Friday, March 4, according to a company news release.
To access the call, people may dial 1-800-310-1961. A replay will be offered through March 11 by dialing 1-888-203-1112, the news release said.
***
Former ice skater and tabloid darling Tonya Harding was in Miami, Okla., over the weekend with two boxers she represents, according to the Miami News-Record.
***
Nexstar Broadcasting CEO Perry Sook will be profiled in the March issue of Radio & Television Business Report. A major topic will be the company's ongoing battle with cable companies such as Cable One and Cox Communications over retransmission of its signals.
Radio & Television Business Report editors have indicated they believe this issue may be ready to break out on a national scale next year when many group owners have indicated they will also demand payment for retransmitting their signals.
***
The Neosho Daily News is back to placing the byline "From Staff Reports" on articles that its staff had nothing to do with. The Feb. 4 edition's lead story was a news release from the Missouri House of Representatives on Rep. Kevin Wilson's appointment to the Special Joint Committee on Education Funding. It appeared that the only work Daily staffers did on the story was typing it up and adding the phrase "From Staff Reports" to it. Why they simply can't tell that it is a news release is something I cannot understand. Readers deserve to know where their information comes from.
The Jan. 31 issue was even worse with three of the four page one articles labeled as "From Staff Reports." These articles included a report on unemployment rates, from which staffers did choose statistics from local counties to emphasize, "YMCA director tenders resignation' which appeared to be a news release and "Council to consider water loss proposal, printing the city council agenda. The Monday edition of daily newspapers is always a little thin, but let's label these stories as what they are. They are not staff reports.
***
A reader asked if something had happened with the charges against Gary Reed Blankenship, the former O'Sullivan Industries official who was arrested after an Internet sting by Diamond police officer Jim Murray.
Blankenship's name, for some reason, does not show up when it is entered on the all courts section in the case.net system under which Missouri court records are filed, but it does show up when the search is limited to Newton/McDonald County. There has been no change in the status of the case since Blankenship's arraignment last week.

Former Newton County Sheriff Ron Doerge may have ignored evidence that could have cleared two jailers who were fired, then later convicted of misdemeanor assault in connection with the beating of an inmate who is now suing Doerge and the Newton County Sheriff's Department.
Oscar Alvarez claims that on Feb. 22, 2004, jailers Adam Brandon Babbitt and Shane Steven Smith arranged for his brutal beating at the hands of another prisoner. Doerge told Joplin Globe reporter Dena Sloan in March 2004 that his investigation had determined that the cameras trained on Alvarez' cell had been turned off for a few minutes so the cell door could be opened and two prisoners let in, one to stand watch and the other to beat up Alvarez. Another prisoner also received a less serious beating in the incident.
In his response to Alvarez' lawsuit, Doerge claims to be "without adequate knowledge or information sufficient to form a belief as to the truth of the factual allegations."
This response appears to be more than just a typical attorney's reply to an allegation made in a lawsuit. The felony charges against Smith and Babbitt in connection with the case were amended to misdemeanors in exchange for their Alford plea. In an Alford plea, the defendant does not actually plead guilty, but admits there was enough evidence to convict if the case had gone to trial.
Smith and Babbitt were never told that the Sheriff's Department had evidence that could have either cleared them or at the least created reasonable doubt. This evidence included an affidavit signed by another Cell Block A inmate saying Alvarez and another inmate had concocted a plan to have Alvarez beaten to prevent him from being deported. At the time, Alvarez was facing a felony charge of non-support which, if he had been convicted, would have been enough to have forced him to leave the United States. One day before Doerge gave the interview to Ms. Sloan of the Globe, the charge against Alvarez was amended to a misdemeanor, enabling him to stay in this country.
The sheriff also apparently only accepted the word of four inmates, including Alvarez and the man who beat him that the cameras were turned off, although there was no other evidence that that was what had happened and each of the men had something to gain by telling the story.
The man who admitted to beating Alvarez and the other inmate had already been convicted, but was waiting in line for a trip to the Department of Corrections, where he would have considerably more freedom than he had at the Newton County Jail.
Alvarez' hearing, the one which would have almost directly led to his deportation, was scheduled for later that week. His cellmate, who also claimed he was beaten, was looking for special favors from the sheriff, ones which had been denied right up until the time of the alleged beating, but then were suddenly granted.
No evidence ever existed, other than the inmates' story that anyone ever actually entered their cell. The videotape system used in the Newton County Jail had numerous incidents of the picture fading in and out... incidents which happened on a regular basis anyway because of the use of the same videocassettes over and over again. The time stamp on the machine never showed that it had been shut off at any point.
After Smith and Babbitt were fired, another inmate in the cellblock signed an affidavit saying he had heard Alvarez and his cellmate come up with the plan. When they entered their Alford pleas, the two jailers had no idea the affidavit existed.
Both men, indicating they felt they had been railroaded by the sheriff, later filed lawsuits against him in Newton County Circuit Court. Both cases were later dismissed.
***
A new governor with family ties to all sorts of lobbyists has many people in Missouri concerned. Those concerns were expressed in an article by political writer Steve Krause in this morning's Kansas City Star.
The article noted that Blunt's younger brother, Andy, a lobbyist, has picked up several new clients since the inauguration, although he has removed his name from the list of those registered to lobby the governor.
Andy Blunt's list of clients includes Miller Brewing, SBC Communications, UPS, Phillip Morris, and the Missouri Hospital Association.
Blunt's younger sister, Amy, the article said, has just been hired to work in the government affairs office of prominent Kansas City law firm Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin. She has not yet registered as a lobbyist, but says she may in the future.
The governor's father, Seventh District Congressman Roy Blunt, is married to the chief lobbyist for Altria, the parent company of Phillip Morris.
The Blunts are saying all the right things about how they are conducting their business and they should be given the benefit of the doubt, but Matt Blunt has already shown favortism toward big business interests by the makeup of the screening committees he used to find people to appoint to his administration.
State newspapers have reported that the head of the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations was chosen by a committee consisting entirely of big business connections, with no one representing the labor side of the equation.
When it came time to choose people to oversee the insurance industry in Missouri, Governor Blunt chose a group from the insurance industry to decide who would do that. That should give us plenty of confidence in the results.
Blunt's State of the State message, in which he decried large jury awards in civil suits and abuse in the workers' compensation program, saying in both situations that insurance premiums were going skyhigh...without even exploring the possibility that part of the problem might be with the insurance industry, also shows what direction the governor is coming from.
Earlier this week, the governor, whose brother and stepmother are tobacco industry lobbyists dared to criticize a jury verdict against a different tobacco company, Brown and Williamson.
It appears that Calvin Coolidge was right as far as Missouri is concerned, the business of government is business and Matt Blunt apparently intends to make sure those interests are his top priority.
***
Two former KSNF employees and Nexstar Broadcasting COO Duane Lammers were featured prominently in a racially-charged wrongful dismissal lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in 2002.
Christina Clark, a former morning news anchor on Nexstar Broadcasting station KBTV in Beaumont, Texas, sued the station after its general manager, Paul Wise, formerly the general manager of KSNF, fired her in late 2001. Ms. Clark claimed that both Wise and her co-anchor, former KSNF weekend weatherman Brad McMullan, had made racially insensitive remarks. In her lawsuit, Ms. Clark said she went to Lammers for help with the situation, told she would get some, then was fired the same day.
Nexstar settled the lawsuit with Ms. Clark on May 20, 2003, with no details being given in the court record.
Ms. Clark, an African-American, began working for Nexstar on Dec. 19, 2000, co-anchoring the 6 a.m. news program with a second African-American female Candice Jones, and McMullan.
"Several months after (Ms. Clark) began employment, the janitor, Paris Armstrong, made many sexually inappropriate comments to her," the lawsuit petition said. ""This occurred for over one month. (Ms. Clark) complained to her supervisor, Karen Blum. Ms. Blum told (her) that Mr. Armstrong has a history of this behavior and referred (Ms. Clark) to Paul Wise, general manager. Mr. Wise told (Ms. Clark) that he did not want to discipline Mr. Armstrong for personal reasons." Ms. Clark says Wise did not keep her complaint confidential, a violation of company policy.
Ms. Clark alleges that in July 2001, McMullan "made a racially inappropriate comment concerning the Elian Gonzales story. Once they were off the air, (Ms. Clark) informed him that his comment was offensive to many and that they should refrain from making those kinds of racist comments."
Ms. Clark indicates that McMullan went to Wise, who had also been his boss at KSNF and complained about her. Shortly afterward, she was called into the office by "Paul Wise, the general manager of the station and a friend of Mr. McMullan. Mr. Wise informed (Ms. Clark) that while she was co-anchor with Mr. McMullan, she 'needed to be on the same page as Brad." Mr. Wise also told (her) that other African-Americans have caused trouble, and she was lucky to have the job because blacks usually are not co-anchors, and (Ms. Clark's) skin was light enough for the job."
After that, she said, Wise began to criticize her. "Specifically, Mr. Wise criticized Ms. Clark for her hair and wardrobe, although he had never done this in the past. Furthermore, Mr. Wise told (her) that he had received an e-mail saying that she was 'crazy', but he refused to produce a copy for (her) review. Mr. Wise also told (Ms. Clark) that he had faced racial discrimination charges in the past, and that he had beaten those charges."
Ms Clark says the "retaliation from Ms. Wise" escalated. On Sept,. 17, 2001, she faxed a letter to Nexstar's corporate office, the procedure outlined in the company handbook.
"In this correspondence, (Ms. Clark) informed the corporate office of Mr. Wise's comments concerning previous charges of racial discrimination which he had 'beaten." Ms. Clark said she talked with Susana Schuler, Nexstar's corporate news director, and told her of Wise's retaliation and said she was afraid she would be fired. Ms. Schuler told her she wouldn't be fired, according to the lawsuit.
Four days later, Wise told Ms. Clark she was being fired. Later that day, she called Duane Lammers, who was Nexstar vice president at the time. "Mr. Lammers was under the impression that (Ms. Clark) was still employed at Channel 4, and he stated that he had specifically instructed Mr. Wise not to take any action concerning (her) employment with Channel 4. Later that day, however, Mr. Wise phoned (Ms. Clark) to reiterate that she had been fired."
In their answer to Ms. Clark's complaint, Lammers denied ever talking with Ms. Clark and the Nexstar officials claimed they didn't even know Ms. Clark was African-American. They conceded she had sent a fax to Ms. Schuler.
Ms. Clark initially asked for $300,000 in actual damages, attorney's fees, and expenses.

The latest public relations offensive by Nexstar Broadcasting, including a half-hour diatribe against the cable industry on its Texas stations and one to be shown later this week on KODE and KSNF is an indication that the company is not getting what it had hoped for from its strongarm stance against the cable companies.
An article in Broadcasting Today indicates that the company has already cut off more than 120,000 cable customers. And while many of those people are still seeing the Nexstar stations by using antennas or by switching to satellite dishes, many others are simply doing without the stations and living quite nicely.
That makes it imperative for Nexstar to push the Dish Network and other satellite providers with stunts such as the 30-minute infomercials here and in Texas. Of course, it might have made more sense for Nexstar COO Duane Lammers to have put on these half-hour programs while he still had the people watching his stations.
But the company can still rake in a few bucks by convincing those who still have cable and are using antennas to make a complete switch to satellite since the dish companies, unlike cable, do pay the local stations for their signals.
Nexstar's plan of offering bonus spots to advertisers to compensate for the loss of potential customers has not been successful, the Broadcasting & Cable article said. In Abilene, Texas, Gary Grubb, advertising buyer for Lawrence Hall Chevrolet, told the magazine he has shifted about half of his advertising to other stations.
Lammers told the magazine the loss of cable has been no big deal, but his half-hour specials indicate otherwise. ""Our losses so far are below what we thought," he told the magazine, indicating that plenty of homes in the markets affected did not have cable anyway and other homes are serviced by other cable companies. "In Joplin, Mo., it affects just one out of eight homes," he said.
The magazine confirmed other published reports and Lammers' own story that he waved a penny in the air during the first meeting with Cox Communications officials last week. He told the officials he wanted them to acknowledge that the Nexstar stations were worth at least a penny to them. "If you agree to the concept, we'll give you the stations back right away. We know we'll get somewhere between one cent and 30 cents." He kept his penny, the article indicated.
Lammers is characterizing Nexstar as a freedom-fighting hero in this television war. "We have to do this," he told Broadcasting & Cable. "This is about the survival of local television."
For Nexstar, this battle may be more than just fighting for a principle. The company is highly leveraged, according to SEC documents, and could desperately use another source of income..the kind of income the cable companies could provide if they give in to Nexstar's blackmail.
***
Springfield attorney Dee Wampler, who recently hired on as the attorney for accused pervert Gary Reed Blankenship, 55, of Neosho, has another high-profile case, according to today's Kansas City Star.
Wampler was hired by Blankenship after the former O'Sullivan Industries official was arrested after arranging a meeting over the internet with what he thought was a 13-year-old girl and running smack into waiting police officers when he arrived. Blankenship is free on $100,000 bond.
The Star article said Wampler is representing Shannon Braden, a Reed's Spring High School student who is charged with one count of attempted forcible rape and one count of accepted forcible sodomy in connection with an incident involving a 15-year-old girl who was allegedly assaulted in a boys restroom at the high school.
***
It appears 103.5 has delayed its switch from an oldies format to country until Feb. 15. It initially had been scheduled for Feb. 1. Hopefully, we'll have a few hundred more delays. The last thing this area needs is another country station.
***
Nice work by the Neosho Daily News's John Ford following up on the item featured earlier this week in The Turner Report about arbitrator James Newberry being selected to see if lawsuits against former Newton County Sheriff Ron Doerge and the mayor and city council of Southwest City can be worked out before they go to trial.
Ford's articles added some information and background to the report on this blog.
***
A few more people have been introduced to The Turner Report thanks to an article by John Boyd of the San Angelo, Texas, Standard-Times, which was also printed in the Abilene Reporter News today.
Boyd wrote, "Turner's web log or 'blog' has become an important source for information on the dispute (between Nexstar Broadcasting and cable companies), averaging 160 visitors per day - relatively low number by Internet standards, but high when put in the context of who's logging on.
"Journalists, cable industry executives and members of local and state governments all regularly visit The Turner Report," Boyd's article said.
One of those people, the article said, is Tom Basinger, vice president of Cable One, who is quoted as saying, "He often seems to know a lot and knows it pretty soon. And when he writes about it, it's not just a sort of, 'here are the facts.' He takes stands and expresses opinions.' "
Boyd wrote about how I began my blog, quoting the message I gave my students last year. "I told them that by writing every day, I wasn't asking them to do anything that I wasn't doing."
The article continued, "Turner said he combs through an average of 200 e-mails per day and every news site he can find to keep his blog up to date and informative. The result is a unique and authoritative voice in the cable industry dispute, Basinger says.
''With the Turner Report,'' Basinger said, ''you never know what's going to be on it the next time you look.''
I thank Mr. Basinger for the kind words and Mr. Boyd for a well-written article.
***
One of my favorite people in the world is my former student Michelle Nickolaisen, who is never afraid to say what she thinks, no matter how many people hold different views from hers. Michelle was one of the students who I encouraged to try blogging during my final year of teaching in the Diamond school system.
She is now a sophomore at Diamond High School and her blog, "Seceding From Society" at www.secedingfromsociety.blogspot.com is one that I check every day, though she doesn't update it anywhere near as often as I would like.
On Friday, she talked about something that happened in her American Government class.
Apparently, some students were telling highly inappropriate jokes about Jews, which her teacher, Mr. Withers, took offense to when he happened to hear one of them.
After Mr. Withers silenced the young man, the talking in the class continued until the students noticed Mr. Withers was sitting in front of the class with a picture of the Auschwitz gates. A student asked him if that was because of the joke.
No, Mr. Withers said, noting that "today is the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz."
The student said he felt bad about the joke.
I'll let Michelle tell the rest:
"Yeah," you should. SIX MILLION PEOPLE DIED! MAN, THAT'S HILARIOUS!"
By now the class is veeery silent. We spent a lot of the rest of the class talking about the Holocaust.
The whole incident made me very happy. That makes me sound kind of twisted, but the people around here truly sicken me with their apathy sometimes. And I have never seen a teacher yell at somebody for those jokes and it's about damn time. Last year when we were studying WWII and did a section on the Holocaust we actually had somebody say to the teacher, "Um, why are we going over this? I mean, no offense, but nobody really cares what happened to the Jews..." I think Mr. Withers actually managed to get it through some of their thick skulls that it wasn't just a teensy incident, that it was a horrible dark awful thing and if you try and make light of it, in any way, you are shaming all of the six million innocent people, men, women, and children, people just like you and me, who died for no good reason than hate. Many of whom never even got the most basic human right of a burial. They had no marker, no gravestone, no eulogy, nothing to remember them by but a name and a story that needs to be told.
And most important, if the dark stain of it fades, if we mock and make light, we are doing exactly what the horrible people who did this would have wanted.
If we forget, we might let it happen again.
***
Did I mention that Michelle is only a sophomore? Some of the other students' attitudes she describes scare me, but as long as our schools have students like Michelle Nickolaisen, I feel a lot more comfortable about our future.

Travis Wyrick, 18, Joplin, the man facing a felony charge of leaving the scene of an accident, is free from jail after posting $25,000 bond Thursday.
The next hearing for Wyrick, who is charged in connection with the hit-and-run death of Joplin High School senior Jamison Alexander, had a hearing scheduled for 9:30 a.m. Feb. 23 in Jasper County Circuit Court.
***
The latest novel by former Joplin Globe and Pittsburg Morning Sun investigative reporter Max McCoy is plugged in today's Pittsburg Morning Sun.
McCoy's book is about a reporter who is a native of Baxter Springs, Kan., who uncovers a right-wing conspiracy to steal a nuclear weapon and start armageddon. "Hinterland" is being published by Leisure Books.
McCoy will talk about his book and sign copies of it 6:30 p.m. Monday at the Pittsburg Public Library.
***
A few notes on the recently-announced acquisition of Pulitzer, parent company of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch by Lee Enterprises out of Iowa:
According to the St. Louis Business Journal, two Pulitzer shareholders have filed a class-action suit against Pulitzer, claiming $64 per share price paid by Lee for the company was nowhere near enough. One of the two men filed his suit Feb. 2, while a similar lawsuit was filed Jan. 31, according to the publication.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch featured a humorous take by star columnist Bill McClellan on the change of ownership. Earlier, when it appeared Pulitzer was going to be purchased by Gannett, owner of the Springfield News-Leader, McClellan wrote a hilarious column, in which he purposely kissed up to Gannett, singing the virtues of its flagship newspaper, USA Today.
In Friday's Post-Dispatch, McClellan wrote, "Actually, I never liked Gannett. More to the point, I like everything about Lee. Let me frank about that. I have never seen anything associated with any Lee that I didn't like. The chicken? It's the best. The jeans? Better than Levis. Robert E. Lee? The finest general in the Civil War.
"That's something to consider. I bet if Robert E. Lee were to name his favorite Union general, it would be my great-great-great-grandfather, George B. McClellan. General George refused to march south. He did not want to do battle with his good friend, Bobby Lee, and he was relieved of command because of his refusal. In other words, the Lees and the McClellans go way back."
***
A study released Friday by the Federal Communications Commission indicates that cable TV prices are increasing, but at a slower rate than they have been. The annual report says the overall monthly rate for cable service increased by 5.4 percent over the 12-month period ending Jan. 1, 2004 from $42.99 to $45.32. It had gone up 7.8 percent the previous year.
***
Readers on most computer screens are no longer able to see any local news on the screen when they click on KODE's website. Unless you have a giant computer screen, the only items visible on the top of the KODE homepage are the latest self-serving pronouncement by parent company Nexstar Broadcasting and the holdover letter to Cable One customers.
The message is headlined "Questions Answered Concerning KODE and Cable Carriage" and reads like this:
"As you know, the KODE signal is no longer available on certain cable systems within the station's viewing area. Cable One has removed the signal from the systems it controls, while Cox cable with its systems in Carthage and Lamar has gone to extraordinary lengths to keep the station on those systems. Cox has conceded the value of the station to its systems by taking these steps to keep them in their lineup. Within the next few days, KODE will air a special program about the cable issues as they pertain to KODE. The Chief Operating Officer for Nexstar Broadcasting, Duane Lammers, will address the matter and answer questions concerning KODE and cable carriage. If you have questions you would like to ask, please e-mail them to cablequestions@kode12.tv."
The same message is at the top of KSNF's home page, with the only difference being the substitution of KSN for KODE. The slightly different layout of KSNF's homepage allows the viewer to be able to see a couple of news stories in addition to the new message and the letter to Cable One subscribers. It appears to me to be another slap in the face at the news departments at both local stations.
***
Speaking of Cable One, on its 6 p.m. news, KOAM carried a brief story on the company's $3,000 donation to the financially-troubled Boys and Girls Club of Joplin. The cameras from KODE and KSNF (both owned by Nexstar) were nowhere to be seen. You could make a legitimate argument that other stories are more worthwhile than another company making another donation to another cause, but there are two legitimate reasons why the Nexstar cameras should have been rolling for this news story.
First, KODE and KSNF have both been carrying stories about the court hearings of former Boys and Girls Club director Rob Clay, whose alleged embezzling is cited as the reason for the non-profit organization's financial problems. That gives the story a hard news peg. It's not just another fluff item.
Second, it would have been a smart public relations move for the Nexstar stations to cover news involving Cable One, even if it placed the company in a positive light. This photo opportunity gave Nexstar a chance to prove that its stations' news departments will fairly cover the news, even when it is positive news about an antagonist.
You can make a good case for not covering the check presentation...were it not for the extensive coverage of the Clay hearings, and it it were not for Nexstar officials' ongoing battles with Cable One and their shameless efforts to use their news departments as shills in that battle.
Coverage of Friday's Cable One-Boys and Girls Club story would have been a brilliant public relations maneuver and could have restored a bit of the reputations of the news departments of KODE and KSNF...reputations that Nexstar has done everything within its power to tarnish.
***
Despite the meddling of Nexstar officials, the beleaguered news departments at the Joplin stations have managed to put together some nice stories on a daily basis. One that was particularly well done was KODE's Alan Cavanna's piece on the closing of the Greyhound station in Carthage/
Cavanna did what good reporters should always do with feature stories of this nature. He got out of the way and let the subject of the story do the talking, in this case, Lorene Denney, who has run the Carthage Greyhound station for the past three decades.
***
And for those of you who were not aware, Sweeps Month began Thursday which means the local stations will have all kinds of special news reports during the next four weeks. The viewership of the stations during the three sweeps months (February, May, and November) determines how much the stations can charge for their advertising rates. Simply put, the more viewers you have, the more money you can charge.

The Joint Committee on Education will have its initial discussion on the Foundation Formula, through which Missouri public schools are funded, during an 8 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 8 meeting. State Senator Gary Nodler, R-Joplin, serves on the committee.
***
Finally, a member of this area's House of Representatives contingent will have a voice on education matters. On Thursday, Rep. Kevin Wilson, R-Neosho, was appointed to a special committee on education funding.
***
Third quarter financial results for La-Z-Boy Inc will be reported after the closing of trading on the New York Stock Exchange Tuesday, Feb. 8.
***
The Associated Press reports that Governor Matt Blunt criticized a $20 million judgment against tobacco company Brown & Williamson, citing it as an example of the need for reform in Missouri's court systems.
Unmentioned in the article is Blunt's conflict of interest in matters regarding the tobacco industry, which has been hit hard by lawsuits during the past several years. Blunt's brother and his stepmother are both lobbyists for the Phillip Morris company.
***
The Carthage Press reports that Nexstar Broadcasting COO Duane Lammers will be in Joplin Tuesday, Feb. 8, to film a 30-minute special in which he will talk about the history of cable television and talk about the situation currently going on in this area with the issue of rebroadcasting rights.
It would be nice if the program were taped by Nexstar's advertising department and did not involve any of KODE or KSNF's news personnel, since I am sure this program is not going to be providing a balanced view of the issue.
At least that's the way it will be if Nexstar follows the pattern it has already established. A similar program was shown in the San Angelo, Texas, area earlier this evening and not only served as a half-hour advertisement for Nexstar, but also for Echostar/Dish Network.
I am sure KODE and KSNF viewers in this area would prefer to be watching reruns of "Seinfeld" and "Friends" at that time.
Lammers told The Press the special "will urge people to drop cable in favor of the Dish Network." It will air at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 10, on both stations.
The Press article also indicated that Nexstar may go to court to settle its dispute with Cox Communications, which is continuing to air the two Joplin stations on its services in Carthage and Lamar through a legal maneuver that puts the stations in Cox's Kansas region, which has another year to go on its contract with Nexstar.
***
Arkansas Business reports that Beverly Enterprises of Fort Smith which owns a skilled nursing facility in Anderson, has filed a letter with the Securities and Exchange Commission rejecting a proposed takeover attempt by Formation Capital.
The letter follows a Jan. 27 letter in which Beverly President and CEO criticized Formation Capital CEO Arnold Whitman for "acting in bad faith" during the takeover attempt. Formation filed documents with the SEC last week indicating it had offered Beverly $11.50 per share for the company or $1.2 billion for its nursing homes. Formation already owns eight percent of Beverly.
In response, Beverly adopted a shareholder rights plan to guard against the takeover.
***
The popularity of former KODE anchor Malorie Maddox continues. Over the past several weeks more than 50 people have reached The Turner Report by entering Ms. Maddox' name into a search engine, slightly more than double the next most widely used search term "Nexstar."
Other search terms that have been used more than 10 times include: Cox Communications, Cable One, O'Sullivan Industries, Robert Parker, Edward Meerwald, and Ron Doerge.
During the past few days, Joplin teen Travis Wyrick, who is charged with felony leaving the scene of an accident in connection with the hit-and-run death of Joplin High School senior Jamison Alexander, has been the subject of several searches.
The most popular search engine for people looking for the Turner Report has been Google, followed by Yahoo, MSN, Netscape, Alta Vista, Hotbot, and Webcrawler.
The most popular link to this blog has been from Lamarmo.com, followed by Wildcat Central and Neosho Forums.

The last-minute legal maneuvering by Cox Communications to keep KODE and KSNF on its systems in Lamar, Carthage, and other Missouri communities has the appearance of being nothing more than a legal shell game, or perhaps an illegal shell game. The courts will most likely end up deciding that, since Nexstar Broadcasting indicated in today's Joplin Globe that the situation is headed to court.
This appears to be the first victory Nexstar has won in the public relations game since Cox's move smacked of desperation, and as Nexstar COO Duane Lammers told the Globe, "I find it ironic that they don't value our stations enough to pay for them, but yet they'll spend any amount of time and energy to cheat to keep them."
Whether you agree with the company's stance or not, Cable One's decision not to pull any such shenanigans comes off as a much more principled stand than what Cox did Wednesday.
Of course, this could be just a delaying tactic by Cox so it can keep the status quo until the Federal Communications Commission decides on the Cox complaint against Nexstar.
***
Many Joplin-area homes are built over sites that are on old mining property and a group of South Middle School eighth graders are trying to do something about it.
I was one of four judges for the second annual Project Citizen at South. Eighth grade social studies teacher Rocky Biggers once again tackled the herculean task of having each of his six classes put together a project designed to make people aware of a problem, study different methods that have been used to handle similar problems in other places, then present a public policy and an action plan to get that policy put into effect.
Among the projects submitted by this year's classes: Proposals for a study hall to help students deal with ever-increasing amounts of homework, the addition of a character-teaching program currently being used in the Neosho School District to eliminate the teacher advisory program at South and allow more time for a study hall (two groups had the study hall idea), replacing a low-water bridge in a dangerous area, providing a bicycle path from 20th to 50th, and the mine subsidence project.
Monday afternoon after school, we judged the students' portfolios. Tuesday night, in the SMS auditorium, the students made their presentations, then responded to tough questioning from the judges.
The two winning projects will attend the state Project Citizen competition in Jefferson City, which I believe will be held later this month.
The winning projects were the mining subsidence project and a proposal to put a daycare center at Joplin High School to help cut down on the dropout rate.
***
This morning's Globe's article about students' lack of understanding of the First Amendment points out one of the dangers of the test-obsessed educational culture in which we live. No Child Left Behind and other such initiatives are well-meaning, but get us away from the original purpose of public schooling...to educate children to become good citizens and help them learn how to participate in or society.
I have found that if students are taught about the First Amendment by someone who knows what it is all about, they understand it. That is not always happening. Many times, the knowledge that would build greater participation in our society is being withheld so we can prepare students to make more money when they get into the work world.
We have allowed big business to turn schools into training factories. Instead of teaching students the basics of reading, writing, mathematics, science, civics, and critical thinking that helped build the core of our society in the past, we are spending more and more time moving them in the direction of whatever corporate America wants.
Eventually, what that does is to ensure that the people who have the money and who run big business will continue to be the people who run this country since these are the people who are being placed in private schools which are not operated under the principle of what is good for stockholders is good for our country.
These misplaced values have also required more and more students to attend colleges, simply because they have to have it in order to have a decent job. That has not been the case in the past, and should not be the case now. When the stock market rewards companies that cut workers and move jobs overseas or allows one merger after another to take place with each one costing hundreds of jobs you are forcing people to go into debt for more schooling or job training. Then when those jobs are eliminated or outsourced, overqualified people are forced to take low-paying jobs in order to survive.
If students are not taught their First Amendment rights by someone who has an understanding of what those rights are, society will continue to move so far in that direction that it will be impossible to turn back.

It took a girl from the big city to bring the most fitting end to a story on the death of Galena Police Chief Ken Horn.
"Final radio call, off duty to home," KOAM's Cheryl Tirol, a Chicago native, ended her report on today's funeral service during the just-completed opening segment of the 10 p.m. news. Ms. Tirol, who has been Channel 7's point reporter on its biggest stories over the past several weeks had just the right touch of sadness and sentimentality to her story without allowing it to become maudlin, which is easy to do with stories that revolve around death.
This kind of story gives viewers insight into the thought process that goes into news reporting, whether it be television or newspaper. My rule on this kind of story was to let the events and the people tell the story and stay out of the way. The emotion will come across without the reporter having to hype it.
That was the way Ms. Tirol handled the story.
KODE and KSNF chose another path...one that I am sure led to many complaints with more to come. During their early evening newscasts, both stations showed the body of Ken Horn, even leading off their newscasts with the photo.
KODE repeated the affront to dignity during its 10 p.m. newscast. I was switching back and forth, but as far as I can tell, KSNF did not. If that was the case, I would probably attribute it the veteran guidance of anchor/editor Jim Jackson.
KOAM, while thoroughly covering the funeral, maintained a respectful distance, not taking any photos of the deceased.
I recall the one time when I broke that cardinal rule of decent, humane coverage by accident, not noticing that the foot of a dead woman was visible in an accident photo. I received vicious letters to the editor for the next couple of weeks, as well as a number of phone calls, and deservedly so.
As far as the job done by the reporters from KODE and KSNF (which sent anchor Tiffany Alaniz), I had no problems except they appeared to be trying to top each other with attempts to tear at the heartstrings.
This is one case where a better idea might have been to utilize the power of a picture. Let photos and silence tell the story. That, or a restrained effort like that of Ms. Tirol is the way to handle the story.
The Carthage Press used half of a page one in January 1999 to cover the funeral of eight-year-old murder victim Doug Ringler. I wrote the lead story, our columnist Ron Ferguson, a former Carthage police officer, wrote a page-one column, and there may have been a sidebar story, I don't remember.
In fact, the only vivid recollection I have of that paper was the art added by our award-winning photographer/staff writer Ron Graber (now The Press' editor). Ron had a picture of a framed photo of Doug from the front of the Bykota Church where the funeral was held and a photo of the release of a single balloon outdoors after the funeral to signify Doug's ascent to heaven. I can't imagine any words I might have written telling the story any better.
***
A study issued today by professors at St. Louis University indicates that Governor Matt Blunt's recommended cuts to the Medicaid program could cost 288 jobs in Jasper County, 30 in Barton County, 18 in Dade County, 48 in McDonald County, and 84 in Newton County.
The study was not a spur-of-the-moment undertaking after Governor Blunt's State of the State message last week, but was compiled after former Governor Bob Holden recommended cuts to Medicaid last year.
Blunt's recommended cuts are six times as much as those recommended by his predecessor.
The report, written by Joel D. Ferber, J. D., Heather Bednarek, Ph. D., and Muhammad Islam, Ph.D, said, "Our economic analysis found that for every $1 million that the state spends on Medicaid, the resulting federal matching funds generate 42 jobs and over $3 million in business activity in Missouri."
Using those findings, the study said Governor Holden's proposed cuts in 2004 said would have caused the state to lose more than 2,049 jobs, $150 million in economic activity, $73 million in wages, and $5.4 million in tax revenue.
The study's findings were consistent with those in 17 other studies reviewed in a recent Kaiser Commission report.
Multiplying the study's findings by six may not be entirely accurate, but would bring some clarity to what Governor Blunt has proposed. In addition to the job forecast, the counties would see the following approximate reductions in business activity: Barton County, $4.5 million; Dade County, $1 million; Jasper County, $19 million; McDonald County, $2.4 million; and Newton County, $6 million.
Reduction in income, using the same formula, would be: Barton County, $760,000; Dade County, $450,000; Jasper County, $9 million; McDonald County, $1.1 million; and Newton County, $3.2 million.
***
Monett school officials are not saying anything about the sudden removal of high school band director Craig Smith from the classroom, saying only that he has been placed on administrative leave.
The former Lamar High School band director has been replaced on an interim basis by assistant director Rebecca Fillingham, according to tonight's Monett Times.
From all appearances, Smith's time with the school district is most likely over. "Steps have been taken to bring in additional faculty and support needed to make sure the band students get the support and instruction necessary to continue the strong tradition of Monett bands," Superintendent Charles Cudney told The Times.
The article indicated letters have been sent to all parents and students telling them about the move. An administrator gave the students the same message in person Monday.
***
"Are you looking for a newsroom that rewards enterprising reporters?" That's how The Joplin Globe worded its ad which appeared today on a national journalism website. The ad continues, "We are looking for an individual with the skills to dig beneath the surface and provide readers with compelling daily coverage of the news that most affects their lives."
No word on whether this is a change of policy by The Globe.
***
John Hall's latest KOM League Report features an interesting bit of trivia. Dick Fiedler, a pitcher for the Joplin Miners minor league baseball team in 1950 is most likely the only person to be connected with two very dissimilar baseball legends.
Fiedler was a member of the University of Southern California's 1948 national championship baseball team under the guidance of legendary coach Rod Dedeaux. That team won of two of three baseball games against Yale that year, pulling off a triple play in one of the games. Yale's first baseman was a fellow named George Herbert Walker Bush.
John Hall has just finished writing his third book about area minor league baseball of a half century ago. He has helped keep the old minor league teams alive with his books, e-mail newsletters, and by sponsoring reunions.
***
The Carthage Press, Joplin Globe and Multichannel News are reporting that Cox Communications has reorganized its management system, putting the Missouri franchises in its Kansas division, thus enabling it to continue broadcasting KODE and KSNF programming for the next year.
The maneuver came at the last minute as the two stations were scheduled to be pulled off Cox franchises in Carthage, Lamar, and other cities today.
The most complete coverage of the maneuver was offered by Kaylea Huston in The Press. None of the three media outlets had been able to reach Nexstar COO Duane Lammers to get a comment at the time their articles were written.
Cox's Missouri franchises, also including Monett and Aurora, had been in the company's Arkansas region, which had to stop carrying the Nexstar stations' signals today.
Cox could not pull the same maneuver with its franchise in Bossier City, La., which had to drop KTAL-TV, an NBC affiliate owned by Nexstar. The city attorney there hand delivered a letter to the Cox office saying the company had violated its exclusive franchise agreement with the city by not carrying KTAL.
"We will take them to court," if Cox doesn't put KTAL back on the cable, City Attorney Jimmy Hall told KTBS-TV in Shreveport, La.
Lammers told the TV station, "I asked Cox to make a commitment to pay a penny for our signal. They refused to do that, so we're at a complete impasse."
KTBS was unable to get a comment from anyone representing Cox.
***
CBL & Associates, the new owners of Northpark Mall in Joplin, had good news for stockholders today. An Associated Press article indicates the company pulled in 36 percent more in revenue, beating earlier expectations.
Quarterly funds from operations totaled $96.8 million, the article said, up from $71.1 million a year earlier.
***
The same neutral arbitrator has been selected to hear arguments in two federal lawsuits to see if trials can be avoided.
Jim Newberry, Springfield, has been selected to serve as arbitrator in the lawsuit filed by former Southwest City Police Chief Ron Beaudry against the Southwest City Mayor and City Council, and he will also arbitrate the lawsuit filed by former prisoner Oscar Alvarez against former Newton County Sheriff Ron Doerge.
The documents announcing Newberry's appointments in those lawsuits were filed today in U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri.
More information on those lawsuits can be found in earlier editions of The Turner Report.

Cox Communications officials in Bossier, La., face more problems than the ones in Carthage and Lamar following the removal of a Nexstar station from their system.
According to this morning's Shreveport Times, Bossier city officials have sent Cox a letter telling the company it has violated its agreement with the city by not providing it with the local station.
The letter was written after the city attorney reviewed Cox's contract with Bossier, which dates back to 1977. The agreement said Cox must provide the signals of three local stations, including the station which is now owned by Nexstar.
No mention was made of any action that might be taken against the cable company.
***
Those who have been following Nexstar's battles with Cable One and Cox should read Carthage Press Editor Ron Graber's commentary on the subject at www.carthagepress.com Graber expresses the sentiments of many who have been disgusted by the entire fiasco and doesn't pull any punches while doing so.
***
The Missouri Senate voted Tuesday to remove the $50 limit on gifts senators can receive from lobbyists...since so many legislators are breaking the rule anyway. The senators who supported the move pointed out that the information is available on the Missouri Ethics Commission website anyway. They didn't point out how only a handful of their constituents will ever go to that site to check out how much their elected officials are receiving from lobbyists, or how few media outlets will take the time to do so either.
***
Private Equity Week reports that after its recapitalization is completed, Leonard Green & Partners, the Los Angeles financial firm that owns the major portion of Liberty Group Publishing, will still own more than 90 percent after the deal is completed. Liberty owns the Neosho Daily News, Carthage Press, Neosho Post, and Big Nickel, as well more than 300 other publications across the United States. The $330 million recapitalization was first reported on this site.
***
While the state continues to teeter on the brink of financial distress, a quarter of a million dollars was spent on Governor Matt Blunt's inauguration. Of course, that money did not come from taxpayers, but from big corporate interests trying to curry favor with the governor. Carthage-based Leggett & Platt donated 10 percent of the total, according to information released Tuesday by the governor's office.
Before anyone mentions it, yes, I am unaware that there was nowhere near the million dollars former governor Bob Holden spent on his inauguration. If this blog had been in operation at that time, I would have ripped into him, too. And, of course, we all know how his one term worked out, though hopefully that memory will fade in time.

The best known criminal defense attorney in southwest Missouri has been hired by accused pervert Gary Reed Blankenship.
The former O'Sullivan Industries official, who resigned his position as director of strategic marketing after his arrest, has hired Dee Wampler III. That and the immediate posting of $100,000 bond indicate Blankenship has money to spare.
He will need it to pay the high-powered Wampler, who immediately began earning that money today, filing a number of motions during his client's arraignment in Newton County Circuit Court.
Wampler filed a motion to dismiss the case, as well as a motion to lower the bond, a motion to require disclosure of any evidence the prosecution has against Blankenship, 55, Neosho.
Another motion requests disclosure by court order. Wampler is expected to claim that Blankenship was entrapped by Diamond police officer Jim Murray, who claimed the Neosho man as the latest victim of one of his internet stings by pretending to be a 13-year-old girl during an internet chat.
Blankenship has been charged with eight felony counts of possession of child pornography, one count of attempted enticement of a child and one count of promoting obscenity.
A pre-trial conference is scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 16.
***
FCC officials will look into Cox Communications' complaint against Nexstar Broadcasting, according to an article in this morning's Texarkana Gazette.
As mentioned last week in The Turner Report, Cox filed the complaint against Nexstar, which owns KSNF and is the de facto owner of KODE as the deadline approached for Nexstar to remove its stations from Cox's franchises in Lamar and Carthage. Cox claims Nexstar has not negotiated in good faith. Nexstar is asking Cox for 30 cents per customer per month. When Cable One in Joplin turned down that same proposal, Nexstar pulled its stations off that cable franchise.
Nexstar COO Duane Lammers told the Texarkana paper that it was Cox that had not negotiated in good faith.
"We're the ones that put a proposal out," Lammers told The Gazette. "There was no new proposal put forth by them. We're very capable and able to demonstrate that we have negotiated in good faith."
According to the Gazette article, the FCC will ask Nexstar for a response, then return to Cox for its response before any decision will be made.
The Cox complaint was also made against Mission Broadcasting, the alleged owner of KODE, according to the Gazette article.
The filing says, "Cox therefore asks the Commission, on an emergency basis, to require Nexstar and Mission to commence negotiations immediately and in good faith, and to take such other actions as are necessary to restore local television service to local viewers, by, for example finding that the public interest requires that these local stations be made available immediately to local viewers pending resolutions of all issues between parties."
The complaint accuses Nexstar of being "coercive" and making demands that are "outrageous and unreasonable," according to the Gazette article.
Lammers told the Gazette that Nexstar plans on answering the complaint in the next two weeks.