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  • Focus is on Nyc Charter Schools

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  • Colbert Vote Skyrockets

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  • Cablevision’s James Dolan has string of losses

    As the chairman of Madison Square Garden, the company that owns the hapless New York Knicks, James L. Dolan should have already known a lot about losing.

    But Dolan, 51, who is also a blues/rock singer, has learned even more about embarrassing defeats during the last few weeks.

    Already vilified in the New York press as a rich kid whose dad gave him the Knicks as a plaything, Dolan is now depicted as a boss who tolerates bad behavior and bad language in the office.

    In addition, a Dolan family plan to make Cablevision Systems Corp. a private company has been rejected by shareholders.

    Cablevision, a dominant player in the New York City area, owns Madison Square Garden, which, in turn, owns the Knicks, the MSG Network, hockey’s New York Rangers, the New York Liberty of the Womens National Basketball Association and Radio City Music Hall.

    All in all, Dolan may be finding new wisdom in the first lines of one of his bands’ songs: “Who told you life would be easy? Who said you would smile every day?”

    On Oct. 2, a federal jury in Manhattan found that Madison Square Garden and Knicks coach Isiah Thomas had sexually discriminated against one of its executives.

    The verdict came after a trial that made the Knicks front office seem like a locker room where boys were, alas, boys.

    The Garden was ordered to pay $8.6 million to the executive, Anucha Browne Sanders. The jury found that the company had created a hostile work environment and that it fired Browne Sanders in retaliation for her complaints about inappropriate language and advances.

    The jury ordered Dolan, president and chief executive officer of Cablevision Systems, to pay Browne Sanders $3 million for the retaliatory firing.

    His father, Charles F. Dolan, the founder of HBO, is Cablevision’s chairman and founder.

    Several Dolan family members also serve on the company’s board. Among them is Lawrence Dolan, Charles’ brother and the owner of the Cleveland Indians.

    On Wednesday, shareholders rejected a $10.6 billion bid by the Dolan family to take Cablevision private. The Dolans had offered $36.26 a share. Some major shareholders said the price was too low.

    Charles and James Dolan, who have sometimes feuded, put the best face they could on the rejection, saying in a joint press release:

    “We see today’s outcome as a vote of confidence in the prospects of Cablevision, its management team, its 20,000 employees and the industry’s future.”

    James Dolan’s total compensation for 2006 was $8.71 million, Forbes magazine reported.

    Some of his earnings, over $300,000, have gone to political candidates, mostly Democrats. This year he has given to the presidential campaign of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

    Dolan is also the lead singer and rhythm guitarist of JD & the Straight Shot.

    According the band’s website, mixing business and music gives Dolan “a sense of balance in his life.”

    The Rocky Mountain News in Denver described the band’s first album, as getting “grudgingly good reviews.”

    The grudging praise sometimes comes from Knicks fans. The team has not had a winning season since 2000-2001, despite a high payroll.

    After 2005-2006 losing season, the club found itself in a soap opera feud with its coach of one year, Larry Brown. The melodrama ended with the Knicks buying out Brown’s contract for $18.5 million.

    Last season, the team won 33 games and lost 49, certainly enough to make Dolan sing the blues.

  • Cablevisions James Dolan Has String of Losses

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  • The Real Dirty Sexy Money

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  • Mays and McCombs, the original Radioheads

    The radio business has been very good to Lowry Mays and Billie Joe “Red” McCombs.

    In 1972, they formed the San Antonio Broadcasting Company to buy an FM station for $125,000.

    Thirty-five years later, that company is called Clear Channel Communications and it owns more than 1,000 stations. Its shareholders recently approved a $19.5 billion private equity buyout that values Mays’ stock at more than $1.1 billion and McCombs’ shares at about $190 million. The deal is expected to close before the end of the year.

    In early 2000, when Clear Channel shares hit $95, the founders’ stock would have been valued at more than twice as much as now.

    Still, not a bad rate of return, especially when the founders’ families hold a significant stake in Live Nation, spun off from Clear Channel in 2005. Live Nation is trying to perform the same consolidation magic in the entertainment industry that Clear Channel did in radio.

    Another affiliate, Clear Channel Outdoor, trades publicly, but most of its stock is held by Clear Channel.

    In addition to making money, Clear Channel has made important connections.

    Along with Mays, his two sons, Mark and Randall, and McCombs, current board members include former Oklahoma congressman J.C. Watts and Ted Strauss, a former senior managing director of Bear, Stearns & Co. Strauss’ brother, Robert, was a long-time adviser to presidents, Republican and Democrat. Ted Strauss’ late wife, Annette, was mayor of Dallas.

    Former directors include Dallas billionaire Tom Hicks and Vernon Jordan, a presidential adviser to Bill Clinton.

    Live Nation’s directors include movie producer Harvey Weinstein and Henry Cisneros, the former U.S. secretary of housing and urban development, and a former mayor of San Antonio.

    In San Antonio, McCombs may be best known as a car dealer, but his business dealings range widely. He is a past owner of the Minnesota Vikings of the NFL and the San Antonio Spurs and Denver Nuggets of the NBA.

    Both McCombs and Mays have top-ranked business schools named after them, the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin and the Mays Business School at Texas A&M.

    Clear Channel has been criticized for homogenizing radio across the country. Some of its controversies have involved Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern, the Dixie Chicks and Madonna.

    Critics link Lowry Mays’ conservative politics to company decisions, such as when some Clear Channel stations stopped playing Dixie Chicks songs after they criticized President Bush because of the Iraq war.

    Clear Channel disputes that. “The radio company that banned the Dixie Chicks was Cumulus Media, not Clear Channel,” the company says in a “Know the Facts” section of its Web site. Some Clear Channel stations, in fact, increased their airplay of the Chicks, the company says.

    Live Nation’s recent $120 million deal with Madonna certainly belies any notion of retribution against the Material Girl and her politics.

    For Mays and McCombs, the original Radioheads, business seems to trump partisanship.

  • The Inherent Muckety of Times Wedding Announcements

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  • Mays and Mccombs the Original Radioheads

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  • Dui is a Death Sentence for Lost Cast Members

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  • Veco Corruption Trial Begins

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  • Robert Chambers Arrested Again

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  • The Office Staff Tries to Exhaust All Possibilities

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  • Mukasey Hearings Double As Yale Reunion

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  • Newspaper Lobbyists May Lose a Moneymaker

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  • Henry Cisneros, Madonna and the Big O

    All directorships are not alike. Just ask Henry Cisneros.

    The former secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development makes a lot more money on the board of Countrywide Financial, the giant mortgage lender, but he must be having more fun at Live Nation, the concert promoter and entertainment company. Especially now during the mortgage meltdown.

    Countrywide is cutting jobs, writing off bad loans, and dealing with an SEC inquiry into stock sales by CEO Angelo Mozilo. Some are even calling for a much wider probe of the company and its practices.

    At Live Nation, meanwhile, the big news is Madonna’s $120 million concert and promotion deal.

    Sure, at Countrywide board meetings, Cisneros gets to kick back with former NBA great Oscar Robertson, the Big O, who is a fellow director. But at Live Nation, Cisneros’s fiduciary responsibility extends to Madonna, who was given $25 million in stock.

    Cisneros earned compensation worth $358,966 at Countrywide last year and $110,721 at Live Nation, according to company filings.

    In September, the San Antonio Express-News noted that Cisneros had sold 5,000 shares of Countrywide for $200,462 (about $40 a share) in May and quoted him saying he was holding onto the rest of his stock to show his “support for the company.” Countrywide shares closed at about $16.50 Thursday.

    In 2000, Cisneros helped form a company, now called CityView, which focuses on urban housing. The former president of Univision Communications and a former mayor of San Antonio, Cisneros currently sits on the board of the Broad Foundation.

  • Henry Cisneros Madonna and the Big O

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  • Jibjab Tries to Animate the Campaign

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  • Blackwater’s Cofer Black stays in the shadows

    While CEO Erik Prince has been the public face of Blackwater USA during recent weeks of intense government and media scrutiny, the often outspoken Cofer Black, company vice chairman, has kept out of the limelight.

    Black, one of the nation’s eminent authorities on combatting terrorism, is deeply involved in the network of Blackwater-related companies. He also serves as chairman of Total Intelligence Solutions and is CEO of Black Group, LLC.

    With more than 30 years of service in the Central Intelligence Agency, Black is known as a superspy. He helped catch the international terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as \”Carlos the Jackal\” and in 1999, was named head of the CIA’s Counter-Terrorism Center.

    That role put him in the hot seat on Sept. 11, 2001. Black would later tell the 9/11 Commission that he had lacked the resources to effectively combat the wordwide terrorist threat.

    An August 2007 report by the CIA’s inspector general said bureaucratic breakdowns at the agency enabled the 9-11 hijackers to evade authorities and complete the attacks. The report criticized Black by title, but not by name.

    Black left the State Department in November 2004. Three months later, he joined Blackwater.

    He also serves as senior adviser for counterterrorism and national security issues with the Mitt Romney presidential campaign. Romney declined to comment about Blackwater after company guards shot and killed at least 11 Iraq civilians in September.

    Although Black brings a wealth of experience and connections to Blackwater, his persona evidently does not match the image that the company is now trying to project.

    Prince is young and clean-cut, while Black is middle-aged, jowly and gray. Prince, a former Navy SEAL, has a ramrod military bearing. Black is a rather frumpy bureaucrat.

    After seeking advice from public relations experts at Burson-Marsteller, Prince provided cool, professional testimony to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He did a media blitz that included interviews with 60 Minutes, Wolf Blitzer, Charlie Rose and Newsweek.

    Black’s most publicized appearance in recent weeks was a speech at the Texas Tech International Cultural Center in Lubbock, Texas.

    \”As you know, my company as been in the news a little bit,\” he said then, according to a report in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.

    Black, on the other hand, seems to be doing his best to stay out of the news.

  • Blackwaters Cofer Black Stays in the Shadows

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  • You, too, could be a loser someday

    The script has changed.

    Pointing to Al Gore, parents throughout the country may be telling their children that if they study hard, lead good lives and not become president they could be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

    Gore is the co-winner of this year’s Peace Prize for sounding the alarm on global warming. He shares the prize with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

    While Gore may have fashioned a grand comeback, a look at the post-defeat careers of other recent unsuccessful presidential wannabes shows that there can be life, a good life at that, after losing. All have found things to do, sometimes lucrative things, and many have held elective office, most often in the U.S. Senate.

    And if Gore should ever want to try again for the presidency, he can take hope from Richard Nixon, a true comeback artist.

    Like Gore, Nixon served as vice president for eight years.

    Like Gore, he lost a close race for the presidency.

    And then, eight years later, Nixon was elected president.

    But a look at the list of presidential losers from the major parties since 1960 shows that Gore has many models to follow.

    2004: John Kerry, Democrat. After losing to George H.W. Bush, he has remained in the U.S. Senate. First elected to that body in 1984, he won a fourth term in 2002.

    2000: Al Gore, Democrat. He won the popular vote, but lost the electoral vote to George W. Bush. Since losing, he has taught journalism in college, served on corporate boards (Apple) and starred in the award-winning documentary on climate change, An Inconvenient Truth.

    1996: Bob Dole, Republican. He gave up his seat in the Senate to concentrate on the presidential race, which he lost to Bill Clinton, a Democrat. After his defeat, Dole has practiced law and given speeches. He has been a spokesperson for various products and causes and a TV commentator.

    1992: George H.W. Bush, Republican. Vice president under Ronald Reagan, he served one term as president and lost a re-election bid to Clinton. Since leaving the presidency, he has raised money for various causes and, like Clinton, given many speeches.

    1988: Michael Dukakis, Democrat. Governor of Massachusetts when he lost to Bush, he served the final two years of his third term. Since then he has been a professor of political science at Northeastern University and a visiting professor at UCLA. He also served on the board of directors of Amtrak.

    1984: Walter Mondale, Democrat. A former senator from Minnesota and a former vice president, he lost to President Ronald Reagan. Since losing, he has practiced law and taught. He was ambassador to Japan from 1993 to 1996. He has remained active in party politics and in 2002 stood in for Paul Wellstone on the ballot in Minnesota after Wellstone died in a plane crash just 11 days before the election.

    1980: Jimmy Carter, Democrat. After losing his bid for re-election, he has devoted himself to humanitarian and diplomatic causes. In 2002, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

    1976: Gerald Ford, Republican. He served a little more than two years as president after Nixon’s resignation. After losing to Carter, Ford retired, moved to California, served on corporate boards and gave speeches. He died in 2006.

    1972: George McGovern, Democrat. After losing to Nixon, he remained in the Senate until January 1981. From 1998 to 2001, he was the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. agencies for food and agriculture in Rome. In 2001, he was named a U.N. global ambassador on world hunger.

    1968: Hubert H. Humphrey, Democrat. After losing to Nixon. He was elected to the Senate from Minnesota in 1970, returning to a body in which he had served for 16 years. He died in 1978 while in office.

    1964: Barry Goldwater, Republican. He was finishing his second six-year term in the Senate in 1964 and did not seek re-election. After losing to Lyndon Johnson, he ran for the Senate from Arizona again in 1968 and won the first of three more terms. He died in 1998.

    1960: Richard Nixon, Republican. He lost to John F. Kennedy after serving eight years as vice president under Dwight Eisenhower. He was elected president in 1968, re-elected in 1972 and resigned in 1974, in the wake of the Watergate scandal. He died in 1994.