Covington Has Cheap Rehabs
I just read the Power of One column on urban pioneering ("Urban Frontier," issue of April 20-26). Covington has a similar program to the one described, as well as several other rehabbing initiatives. In fact, Covington's program is more comprehensive and has fewer rules than the Cincinnati program described.
I bought an abandoned house from the city's Department of Housing in 1994 for $1 and was given $22,000 in a no-interest, deferred loan status towards the rehab. All I had to finance was the remaining amount it took to complete the house. The $22,000 doesn't need to be paid back until I cease to be owner/occupant or until I retire the first mortgage, whichever comes first. It's also retired at the rate of $500 per year for every year I live in the house.
The city of Covington also has several "matching" dollar programs for rehabbing of housing that you own or purchase through ordinary sources. A friend of mine already owned a house that needed quite a bit of help, and he received $22,000 from the city that he then matched dollar for dollar to complete his rehab. For more information, you should contact Roger Bell at Covington's Department of Housing at 292-2146.
I had such a fantastic time doing my rehab, I plan to do it again. I'm currently driving around Covington looking for abandoned houses.
-- Dawn Ramsey, dar7@cdc.gov
Don't Censor the Censored
Sonoma State's Project Censored does an important job, but its list should more properly be termed "the year's top unsuccessfully censored stories" ("Read All About It ... or Not," issue of April 20-26). These are stories which the powerful mainstream has suppressed but which still found their way into fairly prominent publication in Mother Jones, The Nation, Village Voice, professional journals and bulletins, public radio stations and the alternative press. For each of these stories there are hundreds we'll never know (and a few we may yet learn of), more completely suppressed. I hope more ways can be found to enable those stories to get out and make a difference.
And, by the way, CityBeat published the digests of only the first 10 of Project Censored's "top 25 censored stories," unintentionally maintaining the censorship of the other 15, which often include the most interesting. Why not print the rest over subsequent issues of the paper, say as two double-pages of seven or eight each?
-- William Messer, The Campaign Against Censorship in the Arts
Editor's Note: The article and lists we printed came from the San Francisco Bay Guardian, which didn't supply digests of censored stories 11-25.
Clinton Censor
I was disappointed in your "top censored stories of 1999" ("Read All About It...or Not," issue of April 20-16). How could you not include what is possibly the top censored story ever -- the Juanita Broderick story.
Has an incumbent president ever faced such serious charges from such a credible witness? Yet NBC chose to sit on this tory until after the impeachment hearings were over, and then they didn't advertise its airing. I'm a political junkie, and I never would have known the show was going to air had I not heard about it that day on the radio.
What's more, President Clinton has never really denied Broderick's accusations of rape. When asked about it, all he said was, "I stand by the statement of my lawyer." So what did his lawyer say? He said -- and I'm paraphrasing -- any allegation that the president sexually molested Broderick is outrageous.
Let's translate this into Clintonese (you know, "It depends on what the definition of 'is' is"). In the first place, the attack took place when Jimmy Carter was president. Secondly, sexual assault is what Clinton did to Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey -- Broderick accused him of rape. Finally, when this occurred Broderick was Mrs. Hickey -- there was no Juanita Broderick.
Yet, despite all that, the so-called mainstream media chose not to pursue this story. Actually, there were two stories to come out of this episode: the allegations themselves and the way the press abdicated its responsibility in order to please their master, Bill Clinton.
-- Don Gilligan, Rossmoyne
Reveal Your Conflicts
CityBeat has had notable success in recent years at building a reputation for journalistic integrity. So I was surprised and deeply disappointed by your decision to publish a column ("Give Us Liberty," March 23-29) over a psuedonym by an author with serious conflicts of interest.
The column goes to great lengths to explain, justify and praise the activities of a local anti-censorship organization. What you do not reveal to the reader is that the piece was authored by the founder of that organization. This is about the same as letting an artist write a positive review of her own exhibition under an assumed name, leaving readers with the impression that independent judgement has been exercised.
Shame on you. The cause of free artistic expression is much too important to muddy the waters by such an obvious breech of the faith of CityBeat readers. If you are proud of the people you allow to write for your newspaper, you should be proud to tell us their names. And if someone clearly has an investment in a topic, that fact should be clearly revealed.
-- Charles Desmarais, Director Contemporary Arts Center
