In his Wednesday, January 17 “Steve’s Marketplace” News Leader column veteran journalist Steve Nicklas detailed his August 2021 personal observation of illegal aliens arriving at Jacksonville International Airport.
An alternative use for the News Leader?
Absent from his column was how he had a major national news story snatched from him by the short-sightedness of the paper’s former editor, Scott Byran.
Last week current editor Dishman displayed her petty-mindedness and amateurism by editing out of Steve’s column a sentence reading: “Alongside popular syndicated blogger Dave Scott, we broke the story in August 2021, months before the lame-street national media.”
Dishman added insult to injury as Steve’s original August 2021 column was spiked by Bryan for a week, depriving Steve and the News Leader of a national scoop thereby enabling me to break it nationwide in my national Biz Pac Review column. That column and the BPR article can be read at http://www.davescottblog.com/jax-airport-a-hub-for-illegals-riding-the-biden-express-while-americans-are-running-for-their-lives-in-afghanistan/ The BPR article was picked up by the New York Post as front page news and continued to spread nationwide from there. The News Leader sat on it for a week, but by then it was old news, much to Steve’s chagrin and the newspaper’s detriment.
Illegals deplaning in Jacksonville far away from the main terminal.
The story continues to make daily headlines as blue state politicians demand the Biden administration stop transporting illegals to their overwhelmed states and cities while at the same time demanding federal funds to pay the enormous cost of accommodating those illegals already there.
It’s bad enough when another news outlet beats a reporter to a story but having your own editors sabotage you is inexplicable.
Steve was alerted to the 2021 flights packed with illegals by a source he cultivated at the airport. I also followed up on that tip, and we both headed to an isolated runway off Pecan Road to await the flights. We were eventually rewarded with a national news story, or at least I was, thanks to the pettiness and narrowmindedness of the leftist amateurs running the News Leader. Steve was flat on his back in his end zone, sacked by his own team.
What drives people like current News Leader Editor Dishman to hamstring her staffers, particularly an experienced award-winning journalist like Nicklas? She nitpicks and second guesses the popular Nicklas yet gives free reign to the amateurish left wing extremists Tweedledum Mark Tomes and Tweedledee Chuck Oliva, a pair of radical idealogues who make Hamas look laid back.
Steve’s January 17 unedited column ran in the online Florida Citizens Journal https://www.citizensjournal.net/steves-marketplace-on-illegal-migration-2 and other northeast Florida print and online news outlets that carry his syndicated piece. Only News Leader Editor Dishman red penciled it. Does News Leader Publisher Foy Maloy still come to the office? If so where is he amidst all this editorial malfeasance?
The exceptionally untalented Dishman validates what Baltimore media mogul David Smith, Chairman of Sinclair Media, observed when declining a New York Magazine interview in 2018: “The print media is so left wing as to be meaningless dribble which accounts for why the industry is and will fade away. Just no credibility.”
The online Fernandina Observer’s playacting journalist, city flack, and Black Lives Matter activist, Mike Lednovich, has sympathetic possers at the News Leader with whom he can compare notes.
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Speaking Of Lousy Journalism: Doesn’t it seem odd that the main stream media haven’t probed deeper into the bizarre Jeffrey Epstein episode?
A variety of mysteries surround the late Epstein and his antics including the most inexplicable: What did this guy, who was a former schoolteacher, do to become a billionaire? Did he apply the techniques gleaned from the same “Get Rich Fast” book that Hunter Biden read?
What were the services or products Epstein produced that led to his wealth? Were they the same ones honed by Joe’s degenerate son, Hunter? Was he blackmailing his wealthy associates? Did he use young girls as an enticements for them to bankroll whatever projects he was peddling?
And how did Epstein die? Nobody is buying the preposterous scenario that he hung himself on a bed with bedsheets he wasn’t supposed to have in his jail cell. Why didn’t he have a cellmate, as required? Does anybody believe that the guards who were supposed to check on him every 15 minutes dozed off or were surfing the Internet or that the two cell surveillance cameras suddenly crapped out at the same time?
It’s a crime that the media are covering up for Epstein’s influential pals.
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Cream & Sugar Please, Hold The Terrorism: Starbucks Workers United, the union that represents Starbucks employees nationwide, refused to condemn the Hamas terrorists that slaughtered 1,200 people in Israel October 7, but gleefully posted “Solidarity with Palestine” Internet statements when Israel’s military retaliated against the killers in Gaza. These caffeinated morons now wonder why so many people are boycotting their locations. The union and Starbucks’ suits should be squirming, as they’re unable to explain why certain customers (Jews, Asians, etc.) don’t matter to them. How does attacking Israel and supporting terrorism help Starbucks employees?
There ae plenty of friendly, cozy, and nonpolitical coffee houses to patronize hereabouts including my favorite, the Amelia Island Coffee Shop at downtown’s 207 Centre Street.
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A Shocking Revelation: Leftist politicians across the country are telling us that electric vehicles are the future, that there is a huge market for these cars and trucks. If that’s the case then why are they mandating regulations and offering tax incentives instead of letting the market work?
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Poison Ivy: Harvard graduate Lance Morrow, a senior fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Center and author of “The Noise of Typewriters: Remembering Journalism”, questioned his alma mater in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial asking how the disgraced former Harvard President Claudine Gay, a women with a meager academic record, was allowed to stay on the university’s staff with a salary of more than $900,000 annually.
“The cost of a four-year Harvard education these days is estimated at $334,000,” he wrote. “Instead of firing her for cause, it will be as if Harvard had decided that a dozen undergraduate’s painfully assembled tuitions are to be allocated each year to finance Ms. Gay’s opulence and soothe her bruised feelings.”
Morrow scorned Harvard’s current culture of “…woke hysteria over pronouns and microaggressions and the atmosphere of doctrinaire self-pity. Let it be morning again in Cambridge, Mass., and not the bitter ideological dusk of the woke, which feels like Walter Ulbricht’s East Germany in the 1950s”, he wrote.
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Speaking Of Diversity Equity & Inclusion: Long before Claudine Gay whined that her forced resignation as President of Harvard was fueled by “racial animus”, conservative author, essayist and baseball enthusiast George Will noted that a significant date in America’s civil rights progress involved African-American baseball player Frank Robinson in 1974 when he was hired as manager of the Cleveland Indians, becoming the major leagues’ first black manager. “But” added Will, “an even more important milestone of progress occurred in 1977, when the Indians fired him. That was colorblind equality.”
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And the Answer Is “Kamala Harris”: In the not too distant future her name will be the answer to the following question in trivia quizzes: “Who was the least valuable U.S. governmental employee in history?”
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I Spoke At Davos – Sort Of: Reading news reports about the 54th annual World Economic Forum recently held in Davos, Switzerland, reminded me of when I was part of the 12th event in 1982. I didn’t actually attend but my words and thoughts did.
At the time I headed up Management Communications for IBM’s Paris-based Europe, Middle East & Africa Division (EMEA), which was run by Kaspar V. Cassani, a Swiss-German gentleman, who eventually became vice chairman of the computer giant’s board.
Cassani, a soft spoken gentleman with a German accent, tasked me with cobbling together his talk about the convergence of data processing and telecommunications. This was about five years prior to the introduction of cell phones and when the Internet was in its conception stage. Fax machines were the text messaging devices of the day. Cassani tossed out his ideas to me, I wove them together and he traveled to Davos with a talk titled “The Information Highway”, crammed with predictions and concepts that are commonplace realities today.
Cassani always opened his presentations by greeting his audience with the word: “Welcome.” Since he spoke with a German accent I was always tempted to write the first line as he pronounced it – “Velcome” but never did, which was probably wise.
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Curious Combination: Fernandina entrepreneur, restaurateur, and former City Commissioner Tim Poynter recently announced his candidacy for another shot at a Commission seat. Poynter, who lost his last campaign, is running for the slot being vacated by the term-limited Chip Ross.
Poynter selected former commissioner and mayor Arlene Filkoff as his campaign manager but his choice of Genece Minshew for treasurer could be problematic. The choice of Minshew will have voters wondering if Poynter agrees with the former head of the local Pride group to make Fernandina a gay vacation destination, something she advocated but refused to admit or deny during her losing run for a commission seat in the last election three years ago
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Praiseworthy Peter: Last Friday a comment appeared here from someone calling himself Peter Praiseworthy that left me and many others chuckling. Mr. Praiseworthy’s attempt at spoofing everyone and everything associated with this column was entertaining, clever, creative, and humorous. He spared no one, including me in his witty parody. He accomplished all of this without resorting to vulgarities, rage, partisan politics, or name-calling. If Mr. Praiseworthy wants a fun non-paying job there is an immediate opening for him as editor of the Amelia Island News Wrecker, the annual tabloid newspaper parody of the local community.
Once is enough–there is no need for a former commissioner, having served their term, to be seated again. They had 4 or 8 years–let others have a chance. We need fresh approaches, not rebaked old ones.
Let’s not forget Tim Poynter and Arlene Filcoff served on the city commission that was responsible for the debacle at the city Golf Course. Millions of dollars spent to turn it into the “goat ranch” that it still is today!
Poynter would make the perfect Commissioner for Shakedown City. He was last in office when the city unsuccessfully defended its unlawful impact fees. He was still there when the city brought suit in an attempt to validate those same unlawful fees to retire a municipal bond issued to pay the exorbitant price for the water system. The court found those fees to be unlawful, again! Then the city engaged a new consultant who recommended they change the name of the unlawful fees from impact to capacity fees. By the way, my memory is Ms Filkoff was a commissioner back then too. So, if shakedowns are your theme Poynter and Filkoff are your team. It would be rewarding to see Poynter back with the same city consigliere he worked with before on those two losing law suits.
Dave, congratulations on being carried by the Yule News. My hope is they develop into a solid local alternative to the leftward bias of the News Leader.
Dave, I just read your column from last week (I’ll read this week’s column sometime in February – hey, I’m a slow reader), and I was gobsmacked to learn that the City Manager of Fernandina Beach is paid $250,000 per year to live here and meet certain undisclosed requirements. Here I am living here and meeting certain undisclosed requirements for nothing! I could use an extra $250k, and really, how hard can the job be? Of course the requisite meetings would be a snoozefest, and coming into the office now and then would be tedious. But I suppose I can hang around City Hall a few hours a week, searching online for stuff to spend my salary on, and barking at my minions to get me coffee. The city won’t have to pay anybody $60,000 to find me, since I’m already here; I’ll just take a modest signing bonus of, say, $30,000 – that way, my first service to the city will be saving the taxpayers $30,000 (”on day one,” as we politicians like to say). Hey, I think I’m already getting the hang of public office!
Haha, good one – that made me laugh !
THE NEWS LEADER
Let’s be fair, Foy Malloy is a complete gentleman. Unfortunately, he’s sold his soul to the city for the price of advertising. Dave, you’ve lived in Texas, it’s called “all hat, no horse”. Foy says all the right things but, believe in what he does not what he says. Foy says what he is, but observe the artifacts of his efforts, which fall significantly short of his self-evaluation.
Agreed! Spot on Glen
Citizens Journal Florida has never edited out a word of Dave Scott’s columns we publish, except for an occasional typo or grammatical glitch. We get more complaints about his column than any other writer’s. So, why do we continue to run it? Because Dave presents the hard truths, even if sometimes delivered in an overly harsh way.
Recently a new writer told me that she didn’t want her article to appear in the same issue as a Dave Scott column. My response will be: sure- we just won’t run yours.
We also run all of Steve Nicklas’ columns he sends us, with the only time delays being what he imposes.
I don’t agree with, but certainly understand the desire to create, promote, and sustain a right-leaning echo chamber where only filtered “hard truths” are allowed for publication. Fortunately, more balanced sources abound to address a presumptive presidential nominee who hopes a recession is around the next corner, doesn’t want a bipartisan agreement on border security to pass, and is now suffering the consequences of his delusional belief that he can murder someone in Central Park and get away with it. Party Above Country, or alternatively, Trump above country is the Republican mantra for all except a few brave. HALEY for PRESIDENT!
Why do you even bother? Haley is the “chosen” of the elite and big corporations. Surely you’ve done the research or are you just running on sound bites taken out of context and your hatred?
Yes Fred, I’ve done enough research to know that Trump was the recipient of donations and support from the elite and big corporations in 2016, and again in the 2020 election cycle. Which of course begs the question, why are you bothered by Haley getting the same attention this time around?
2016: Trump about 21 million dollars, Clinton over 200 million, 21 million from one donor. I wouldn’t exactly say that Trump received enough from big corporations and elites to make a difference.
Laughable… that is what you are. You know your buddy Joe hasn’t got a chance in Hell to be reelected, so you opt for Haley. LOL
Dave, where are your witty and informative local news stories lately? I have depended on your updates regarding our City Council and County Commission to keep me informed on local issues. Hopefully you will find some stories to help inform those of us that enjoy your writing.
Does anyone ever say it ANY BETTER than you do, Dave?? I so look forward to your Blogs, and to your COMMON SENSE ‘take’ on everything! BRAVO to you! And also to Steve Nicklas! Patriots like you, two, warm my heart, and continually give me that “boost of energy” (that Starbucks does NOT do, sadly, anymore!) to continue MY fight against the Progressive Liberal insanity we see nationwide – the Border, our legal and justice system, the media, our educational system, our economy, ad infinitum. God bless you… Thank you for loving our country and for all it STILL stands for, thanks to people like you!