Tiger Woods: A drive we’ll never forget

Tiger Woods SUV accident has raised questions about the world's top golfer. Photo: Whitehouse.gov

So, the world’s greatest golfer is human.

Tiger Woods, the man who routinely drives a golf ball more than 300 yards, can’t drive his Cadillac Escalade 30 yards.  At least he couldn’t at 2:25 a.m. Friday  without hitting a fire hydrant and his neighbor’s tree.

How long will it be before a late night show host uses that line?  For the record, you read it here first.

The crash sent Woods to the hospital. His lips were cut, he had blood in his mouth; his wife smashed a rear window with a golf club to get him out; he briefly lost consciousness.

As many reporters following the story have since noted:

“There are also plenty of questions, among them: Where was he going at 2:25 a.m. Friday? Why was there no word from the Woods’ camp for nearly 13 hours after the accident? Police hope Woods can answer some of them Saturday. Two troopers tried to talk to the world’s No. 1 golfer Friday evening, but his wife said he was sleeping and they agreed to come back Saturday.”

The accident followed a National Enquirer story claiming Woods had been seeing a New York night club hostess, and that they recently were together in Melbourne, where Woods competed in the Australian Masters.

The woman, Rachel Uchitel, denied having an affair with Woods when contacted by the AP.    “The story stands for itself,” National Enquirer executive editor Barry Levine told the AP on Saturday.

Shhhh! It’s tough to expect privacy when your success is based on performance, image and marketing.  Note that Woods, the first athlete with career earnings to top $1-billion,   has earned more from his commercial endorsements, cars, razor blades,  Nike golf products,  Gatorade, Upper Deck, etc., than his golf championships.

This could be the best or worst thing to happen to Woods. If Tiger’s legion of fans, and I happen to be one, believe he’s deceptive in his explanation of this episode, his image will suffer.

If Tiger fans believe he’s honest, even should he admit fault, Wood’s image could remain relatively untarnished.  It might even improve if Woods, for a moment, becomes human.  America loves its sports legends.  Sometimes, America loves them more when we see them pulling their pants on one leg at a time.

Kaiser survey: American health care benefits continue to erode

An annual survey released this week finds more American workers are seeing their health care benefits eroded.

The Kaiser Family Foundation survey, released Tuesday, obtained in-depth responses from more than 2,000 private firms and non-federal public employers and echoes one of my other blog’s call (Dear Congress: Fix our health care system )  for Congress to do something to address this problem.

Here’s a thumbnail of the survey’s findings:

• Forty percent of the employers surveyed said they would likely to increase the amount their workers pay out of pocket for doctor visits.
• Almost as many said they are likely to raise annual deductibles and the amount workers pay for prescription drugs.
• Nine percent said they plan to tighten eligibility for health benefits; 8 percent said they plan to drop coverage entirely.
• Forty-one percent of employers said they are “somewhat” or “very” likely to increase the amount employees pay in premiums — though that would not necessarily mean employees would pay a higher percentage of the premiums.

USA Today: “An average family health insurance policy now costs more than some compact cars, and four in 10 companies will likely pass more of that expense on to workers.” The increasing costs “underscore warnings by President Obama about the growing cost of health insurance and were embraced by Democratic lawmakers who are pushing for legislation to change the nation’s health care system. … The annual survey of more than 2,000 companies also found that 40% of small-business employees enrolled in individual health plans pay annual deductibles of $1,000 or more. That’s almost twice the number who paid that much in 2007″ (Fritze, 9/16).

The authors of the study said the findings underscore the need for federal action to rein in health care costs.

According to the survey, annual health care premium increases for families totaled 13 percent in 2002 and 2003 but have held steady at 5 percent since 2007.

However, premiums have continued to rise faster than wages and overall inflation, the survey found. Though family premiums for 2009 rose 5 percent, during the 12-month period ending in April, general inflation fell 0.7 percent.

The Health Research and Educational Trust partnered in the survey.  It’s affiliated with the American Hospital Association.

Troubling future trends

A major business lobby weighed in Tuesday, saying that if current trends continue, annual health-care costs for employers will rise 166 percent over the next decade — to $28,530 per employee.

“Maintaining the status quo is simply not an option,” said Antonio M. Perez, chief executive of Eastman Kodak and a leader of the Business Roundtable. “These costs are unsustainable and would put millions of workers at risk,” Perez said in a statement.

The Wall Street Journal: “Business groups that have opposed House versions of a health bill say they are warmer toward the version emerging from Sen. Max Baucus’s Finance Committee, which places less-onerous requirements on employers. … The House version of the health legislation would require some employers to pay as much as 8% of payroll as a fine if they don’t offer coverage to workers. Under the Senate Finance measure, employers who decline to provide coverage would face a smaller penalty, and in narrower circumstances.” But employers are still concerned that “a provision to tax insurance companies on generous health-insurance benefits could get passed onto employers. Some groups also say the Senate proposal doesn’t go far enough to lower overall health-care costs” (Adamy, 9/16).

Ernie Harwell: Saying goodbye as only Ernie can

Ernie Harwell, legendary Detroit baseball announcer calls the Historic Championship Game at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan in 2007. Photo courtesy; Brenda Hendricks

If you’ve ever heard the voice of sports announcer Ernie Harwell, it’s hard to forget his distinctive tone and style.

Meet the 91-year-old Harwell in person and you’ll never forget his twinkling eyes, buoyant optimism, class and curiosity about life.

Ernie Harwell’s life is coming to an end.

Harwell recently announced that he has an incurable tumor around his bile duct.  Harwell says he will not undergo surgery, chemotherapy or radiation treatment.  Instead, Harwell is staying home, spending time with family and friends.  In typical Harwell fashion, Ernie described to the Detroit Free Press how he looks at the closing chapter in his life.

“We don’t know how long this lasts,” Harwell said in the interview where he announced his condition. “It could be a year, it could be much less than a year, much less than a half a year. Who knows?

“Whatever’s in store, I’m ready for a new adventure. That’s the way I look at it.”

I count myself among the many fortunate people who call Ernie a friend. During my years as a TV news anchor in Detroit, our paths  crossed at charity events and Tigers baseball games.  I can only guess how many thousands of charity events Ernie was part of over the years.  He gave so much of himself. He has always been encouraging. No matter how early or late, Ernie has always been there when it matters.

Ernie always made everyone feel like family, even if we only knew him from his Tigers baseball play calling for four decades.

Harwell spent 55 seasons broadcasting in the Major Leagues, the last 42 of them in Detroit. He became known as the radio voice of the Tigers through generations of fans, from the 1968 team that won the World Series to the ‘84 club that did the same. He was honored with the Ford C. Frick Award from the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1981, and was honored by the Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame in 1989.

What makes Ernie Harwell such a great person?  He always acknowledges friends, family and admirers. “I’d like to thank them for their loyalty and support over the years,” said Harwell of his many fans, adding, …”And their affection, which I don’t know whether I deserve or not, but I accept it.”

Ernie Harwell is also great writer of prose.  Eleven years ago, I was guest hosting a morning show for Lansing radio station WJIM.  Baseball season was about to begin. I called Ernie Harwell at home with a request;  Would he read his closing remarks from his 1981 induction speech into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY?   Like he’s done so often, Ernie obliged.

Below is what Ernie said in his Cooperstown speech.  But listen here and you’ll delight at how Ernie said it differently for our radio audience 11 years ago.

Baseball is the President tossing out the first ball of the season and a scrubby schoolboy playing catch with his dad on a Mississippi farm.

A tall, thin old man waving a scorecard from the corner of his dugout. That’s baseball.

And so is the big, fat guy with a bulbous nose running home one of his (Babe Ruth’s) 714 home runs.

There’s a man in Mobile who remembers that Honus Wagner hit a triple in Pittsburgh forty-six years ago. That’s baseball.

So is the scout reporting that a sixteen year old pitcher in Cheyenne is a coming Walter Johnson. Baseball is a spirited race of man against man, reflex against reflex. A game of inches. Every skill is measured. Every heroic, every failing is seen and cheered, or booed. And then becomes a statistic.

In baseball democracy shines its clearest. The only race that matters is the race to the bag. The creed is the rulebook. Color merely something to distinguish one team’s uniform from another.

Baseball is a rookie. His experience no bigger than the lump in his throat as he begins fulfillment of his dream. It’s a veteran too, a tired old man of thirty-five hoping that those aching muscles can pull him through another sweltering August and September.

Nicknames are baseball, names likeZeke and Pie and Kiki and Home Run and Cracker and Dizzy and Dazzy.

Baseball is the cool, clear eyes of Rogers Hornsby. The flashing spikes of Ty Cobb, an over aged pixie named Rabbit Maranville.

Baseball just a came as simple as a ball and bat. Yet, as complex as the American spirit it symbolizes. A sport, a business and sometimes almost even a religion.

Why the fairy tale of Willie Mays making a brilliant World’s Series catch. And then dashing off to play stick ball in the street with his teenage pals. That’s baseball.

So is the husky voice of a doomedLou Gehrig saying., “I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth.”

Baseball is cigar smoke, hot roasted peanuts, The Sporting News, ladies day, “Down in Front”, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, and the Star Spangled Banner.

Baseball is a tongue tied kid from Georgia growing up to be an announcer and praising the Lord for showing him the way to Cooperstown.

This is a game for America. Still a game for America, this baseball!

TV Blooper- Why verbal punctuation’s important

The BBC’s Jonathan Charles has some problems with punctuation. He should pause after saying his name.  Instead, he suggests that the description following his intro is about him, not Jaycee Dugard.

Exploring the Wild Kingdom

Click here to see a trailer of Exploring the Wild Kingdom

A documentary produced by Barney McCoy and the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in collaboration with NET Television.

Few television programs had the impact of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. A dream fulfilled for creator and executive producer Don Meier, Wild Kingdom was appointment television for 34 million viewers each Sunday. Wild Kingdom was the definition of a television wildlife program for a quarter century. In the process it helped inspire an environmental consciousness in a new generation of viewers.

Wild Kingdom also pioneered the use of color film and synch-sound, to bring wild animals from lush jungles, scorching deserts, and icy arctic expanses into television homes across America.

This was visceral television. Charging elephants covered in dust and sweat. Blood stained lions devouring prey they had been run to earth. No program before captured it as well as Wild Kingdom.

Marlin Perkins, director of the St. Louis Zoo, was Wild Kingdom’s iconic host. He was the show’s avuncular voice of authority. Paired with younger, telegenic co-hosts like Jim Fowler, Peter Gros, and Stan Brock, the always affable Perkins was a great fit for Wild Kingdom. He was a respected naturalist. Perkins talked about wildlife in ways his audience understood. While his youthful co-hosts wrestled alligators and dodged venomous snakes, Perkins put these exciting encounters into context.

Sometimes, Perkins got involved too.  Millions of people remember the Wild Kingdom episode where Perkins thrashed away in a South American swamp wrestling a snapping 20 foot anaconda before it was roped and bagged.

Each week, Wild Kingdom took its family oriented audience on an unrivaled television wildlife adventure. But this program, with its unpredictable wildlife encounters, not only entertained its audiences it also influenced its their attitudes about wildlife and
habitat preservation.

Marlin Perkins wasn’t the only reason the show became the most popular wildlife program in America.  Behind the scenes was a shrewd storyteller.  Producer Don Meier had the skill and instincts to continually reinvent the program. In our documentary “Exploring the Wild Kingdom,” we will follow the dynamic evolution of the series as it evolved. Audiences will experience the physical and technical challenges faced by series creator Don Meier, a Nebraska native and broadcast pioneer.

When the program began, the cameras visited animals in the safety of a zoo. When the program reached its peak, the cameras went into the “Wild Kingdom” to experience animals in their own habitat. It went beyond artificial zoo walls, taking viewers into the animal’s world of jungles, deserts, and savannas. Wild Kingdom’s audience saw wildlife behavior with an intimacy it had never experienced before. Wild Kingdom crews invented new equipment and cinematography techniques to meet the demands of the harsh environments in which they frequently worked. They used lasers to help their cameras stay focused on swift moving wildlife.  They developed dual cameras so Wild Kingdom photographers could simultaneously capture close-up and wide-angle film shots of wildlife.

But perhaps even more importantly, Wild Kingdom began featuring scientists and researchers who stressed wildlife research. The show helped pioneer an ecological perspective.  It made it clear that wild animals should be preserved and that wildlife can’t survive without an environmentally sound native habitat.

This environmentally sophisticated point-of-view established a tone and style for wildlife programming that endures today. Wild Kingdom’s pioneering format continues to be copied by today’s TV wildlife shows and networks.

Dear Congress: Fix our health care system

Dear Congress,

You too President Obama.

The latest study on the impact on health care costs should encourage you to do something for the people who elected you to office.

The study, by the American Journal of Medicine, concludes that nearly two out of three bankruptcies stem from medical bills. Even people with health insurance face financial disaster if they experience a serious illness, the new study shows.

The health problems that left patients with the highest out-of-pocket expenses were ranked as follows:

• Neurologic (i.e., multiple sclerosis): $34,167
• Diabetes: $26,971
• Injuries: 25,096
• Stroke: $23,380
• Mental illnesses: $23,178
• Heart disease: $21,955

A New York Times article said the study likely understated the full scope of the problem because the data were collected before the current economic crisis.  In 2007, medical problems contributed to 62.1 percent of all bankruptcies. Between 2001 and 2007, the proportion of all bankruptcies attributable to medical problems rose by about 50 percent.

“The U.S. health care financing system is broken, and not only for the poor and uninsured,” the study authors wrote. “Middle-class families frequently collapse under the strain of a health care system that treats physical wounds, but often inflicts fiscal ones.”

Mr. President and members of Congress:  You enjoy some of best health care benefits in the country, much of it paid for with taxpayer dollars.  Most of you don’t have to worry about how you’d pay medical bills if you or a family member suffered a serious illness. Most of your constituents do.

Many of you receive contributions from the health care lobby.  This raises fair potential-of-conflict questions about your representation of  the financial interests of the health care industry versus the health care interests of constituents.

We  must all consider the drop in productivity this nation will experience if more Americans are wiped-out by  health care costs or if a growing number of Americans forgo preventative health care, not because they fail to qualify for it, but because they can’t afford it.

A  report released last month by Health Care for America Now, a citizens’ coalition backing health care reform, studied 400 mergers involving health insurers over the last 13 years. The HCAN study concluded that the single largest provider of small group health care coverage controlled a median market share of 47 percent in 2008. The American Medical Association says 94 percent of insurance markets in the United States are highly concentrated.

Robert L. Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future wrote about the issue recently:

“The result are soaring prices – with health care premiums up, on average, more than 87 percent over the past six years.  Profits at 10 of the country’s largest publicly traded health insurance companies in 2007 rose from $2.4 to 12.9 billion (428 percent ) from 2000 to 2007.  The CEOs of these companies in 2007 alone collected an average compensation of $11.9 million each.

Nice work if you can get it.The concentration of insurance markets and the lack of private competition provide compelling reasons for the Congress to establish a public plan like Medicare as an option for those seeking insurance. Give consumers a real choice. The public plan would provide both a benchmark for private plans and much needed competition in what are now perversely concentrated markets.“

Does it help our economy and national well being if a growing number of Americans with health care insurance decide not to seek basic preventative health care because they can’t afford the minimum care?

Shouldn’t the idea of  preventative health care be to avoid major illnesses and the costs associated with them?

Why do a growing number of Americans have health care insurance, not to stay healthy, but to avoid financial collapse from  a catastrophic health care problem?

It’s up to you Mr. President and Congress- Stop talking about this problem and find realistic solutions to address this broadening health care crisis.

If you do,  you’ll probably upset the powerful health care lobby which spent spent $128 million lobbying in this year’s first quarter.  That’s more than any other industry, according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Perform the job we elected you to do for this country.  America needs real health care reform without the distractions of the health care lobby.  It’s a must if Americans and America are to remain physically and financially healthy.

ABC News to open bureau at University of Nebraska-Lincoln

I’m very excited to report that the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln will be home to a News on Campus ABC News bureau this fall.

A select group of CoJMC students have been selected for paid fellowship positions in the bureau. They will be producing news stories that could air on ABC News and will also generate content for the ABC News on Campus Web site and the ABC News Web site.

Four University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Journalism and Mass Communications students have been selected for the ABC News on Campus program.

• Emily Ingram, bureau chief

Ingram is a news-editorial and advertising double major and expects to graduate in May 2010. She has worked for the Lincoln Journal-Star, the Daily Nebraskan and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. This summer she will work for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

• Elicia Dover, reporter

Dover is a broadcasting and news-editorial double major and expects to graduate in May 2010. She has worked for Fox News in New York, Fox 16 News in Little Rock, Ark., Husker Vision and the Daily Nebraskan.

• Brandi Kruse, reporter

Kruse is a broadcasting major and expects to graduate in May 2010. She has worked as a reporter and anchor for KFOR radio in Lincoln and as an intern at both NET and KOLN/KGIN TV in Lincoln.

• Alina Selyukh, reporter

Selyukh is a broadcasting and news-editorial double major and expects to graduate in May 2010. She has worked for NationalJournal.com in Washington, D.C., CNN in Moscow, the Daily Nebraskan and was an intern at NET in Lincoln and RIO TV in Samara, Russia.

It’s an amazing opportunity for CoJMC students.

Faculty adviser for the program is Kathryn Christensen, former executive producer for ABC World News Tonight and a professor in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications.

Under the program, CoJMC will establish a multimedia news gathering bureau at Andersen Hall. The bureau begins operation this fall semester. It will be modeled on a network news bureau and staffed primarily by juniors, seniors and graduate students selected by ABC News and CoJMC faculty.

The bureau will be fully equipped with its own state-of-the-art camera equipment, computers and editing software. The bureau chief will receive a fellowship in the amount of $2,500 for the semester and and will also visit ABC News headquarters in New York as part of the program. Three bureau reporting staff will each receive fellowships of $2,000 for the semester.

UNL joins ABC News on Campus bureaus established at Arizona State University, University of Florida, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Texas at Austin and Syracuse University.

ABC News on Campus provides an opportunity for students to report on stories and produce a wide array of content for ABC News digital and broadcast platforms. ABC will actively engage in training students, and our students will be part of a conference call early every weekday morning.

The program is open to all journalism students. Strong writing, reporting and visual skills (video and still photography) are important.

Not all students will excel in every area, so we will endeavor to build a bureau where participants’ skills complement each other. Because those chosen to be members of the bureau will spend 15-20 hours a week on ABC work,  student can’t plan to enroll in more than 12 credit hours during the semester or hold outside jobs.

Students who are accepted must be at least 19 years of age, hold a valid current driver’s license and automobile insurance and will be required to sign the ABC News on Campus Participant Agreement, a copy of which is available in the main office at Andersen Hall.

During the past eight years, CoJMC has been a national leader in training students in classes offering online journalism.

Recently I blogged (University of Nebraska-Lincoln J-School ramps up online journalism) about additional changes in our college designed to uniformly emphasize new media journalism skills in most of the courses we teach. The announcement of the ABC campus bureau at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln furthers that mission.

The new curriculum shift places a deeper, more thorough emphasis on awareness, understanding and application of online journalism skills and the training will begin in the freshman year.

These changes are based on basic realities:

• Multi-tasking journalism skills are the norm, not the exception for working journalists and communicators today.
• Many journalists who have survived job cuts were those who added new media skills to their existing journalism skills.
• Most newspapers, networks, magazines, radio stations and television stations are increasingly producing online content as they seek ways to vertically integrate content across print, broadcast and online venues.
• They’re doing this to produce new income streams to replace traditional ones that have declined over the past decade.
• They’re also doing this to reach growing audiences that are increasingly turning to the Internet for information.

This is a fabulous opportunity for our students to work with and learn from professionals at a national broadcast news network. It also underscores the progressive journalism programs offered by UNL’s College of Journalism and Mass Communications as it trains our future generations of journalists.

Pelosi- When the view gets cloudy

Nancy Pelosi, shown Thursday, said yesterday that her criticism of the Bush administration is separate from her "respect" for the CIA. (By Lauren Victoria Burke, Associated Press)

House  Speaker Nancy Pelosi isn’t the first politician who seems to have lost contact with reality. She’s just the latest who’s view of reality has been clouded by political expediency.

Pelosi claims the CIA misled her about harsh interrogation techniques six years ago when she was a member of the House Intelligence Committee.

Those techniques qualify as torture based on International Red Cross and , the third convention of the Geneva Convention.

Those torture techniques also put knock us down to the same gutter level as terrorists and further encourage them to attack us.

Pelosi claims she wasn’t told waterboarding had been used to interrogate terror suspects until an aide informed her after other lawmakers had been briefed by the CIA in 2003.

Now Republicans and members of Pelosi’s own party say she’s:

• a. dishonest
• b.  confused
• c. forgetful
• d. all of the above

The CIA said Pelosi, as a ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, received a Sept. 4, 2002, “briefing on EITs” and their use with al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah, who was waterboarded.

Pelosi claims the CIA’s timeline is wrong, but the head of the CIA is defending his agency. Leon Panetta, a Democrat, pushed back last week  in a letter to CIA staff. Panetta wrote that the agency’s response to congressional inquiries about the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah were truthful. “Ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened,” he said in the letter.

Former GOP House Intelligence Committee Chairman-turned-Bush CIA chief Porter Goss has also added his views. Goss wrote a piece for the Washington Post claiming Pelosi and others “understood what the CIA was doing” and “gave the CIA our bipartisan support.”

The nonpartisan Web site, PolitiFact.com, has given Pelosi an unambiguous “false” rating on its Truth-O-Meter, with the explanation:

“At PolitiFact, we normally would be reluctant to make a Truth-O-Meter ruling in a he-said, she-said situation, but in this case, the evidence goes beyond the competing accounts from Pelosi and Goss. We are persuaded by the CIA time line, which the agency says is based on “an extensive review of (the CIA’s) electronic and hardcopy files.”

The dispute over Pelosi’s knowledge of the interrogation techniques leaves politicians in both parties pointing fingers of blame.

What nobody’s done is take responsibility. Isn’t that a cornerstone of every great democracy?

President Barack Obama has strongly resisted calls for the creation of a truth commission, something Pelosi has vocally supported. Such a panel, Obama has said, would devolve into partisan finger-pointing. I think we’ve already arrived at that destination.

I believe we need a commission to investigate alleged abuses of the Bush administration. It should not include politicians. It could include qualified investigators selected by a bi-partisan committe of politicians.

Why have a commission investigate?

James O. Goldsborough, former foreign correspondent for The New York Herald Tribune said it best:

“One of the lessons of the Nuremberg Nazi Trials was that when human rights crimes are committed the chain of responsibility goes to the top. Officials willing to inflict torture and lawyers ready to find legal justification for it do not issue the orders. They are collaborators and collectively guilty just as were Hitler’s so-called “willing executioners,” but responsibility starts at the top.

We have had torture used against us in war, and in fact waterboarding was prohibited by the U.S. military precisely because the Japanese used it against us in World War II.”

Sure, there are those who claim that given a necessary choice between evils, the right choice is the lesser evil. Thus, this logic goes, that information obtained via torture saves lives.

That logic is refuted by the interrogators themselves. AsGoldsborough has pointed out:

“Ali Soufan, one of Zubaydah’s FBI interrogators, says everything learned from Zubaydah was learned before the CIA took over and the torture began. Col. Steven Kleinman, former Air Force intelligence officer, told the Senate Armed Services Committee: “To think that one can use physicality or heavy stress to obtain useful, reliable information is not backed up by operational experience and is not backed up by one shred of scientific evidence.”

Portions of this posting used news items and information  from the New York Times and TheWashington Post.

A sweet farewell to Candicus season

Enough Peeps are manufactured each year to circle the globe twice.

This Easter Sunday passes with no small regret.

It’s the formal end of Candicus, the six month season of high powered candy sales and consumption.

Candicus begins with Halloween, followed by Christmas and Valentines day,  before  sweetly ending on  Easter Sunday.

If you look in the dictionary, you will find no definition for Candicus. It’s a name, a season really, that I invented to commemorate the sheer presence of sweets in our lives- Everything from candy corn and chocolate to jelly beans and, yes, Peeps.  It’s a multi-billion dollar candy industry driven by your sweet tooth and mine.

Here are some Candicus facts:

•  Easter is the second most important candy-eating occasion of the year for Americans, who consumed 7 billion pounds of candy in 2001, according to the National Confectioner’s Association.
• In 2000, Americans spent almost $1.9 billion on Easter candy, while Halloween sales were almost $2 billion; Christmas, an estimated $1.4 billion; and Valentine’s Day, just more than $1 billion.
•  Ninety million chocolate Easter bunnies are produced each year. Chocolate bunnies should be eaten ears first, according to 76 percent of Americans. Five percent said bunnies should be eaten feet first, while 4 percent favored eating the tail first. (Vote for your favorite way to eat a bunny at www.infoplease.com, too). 
•  Americans buy more than 700 million Marshmallow Peeps, shaped like chicks, as well as Marshmallow Bunnies and Marshmallow Eggs, making them the most popular non-chocolate Easter candy.
•  Americans consume 16 billion jellybeans at Easter, many of them hidden in baskets. If all the Easter jellybeans were lined end to end, they would circle the globe almost three times.
•  Halloween, also known as Candicus Kick-off Day,  is the number one holiday for candy sales. U.S. sales neared $2.1 billion last year. 
• Candy corn appeared to be the all around candy favorite as Americans  purchased 20 million pounds of the corn shaped treat according to the National Confectioners Association.

Jelly beans- A Candicus staple

Sadly, Candicus ends on Easter, a day when Christian adults and children alike munch Peeps, chocolate Easter bunnies, jelly beans and other Easter edible sweetness.

The National Confectioners Association predicts Easter candy sales will reach $2 billion this year, up from $1.846 billion in 2008.

Business is strong at the big candy makers like Hershey, Nestle and Cadbury, all of which saw double-digit jumps in profits for 2008.

”We rarely have huge spikes or declines regardless of what’s going on with the economy,” Susan Fussell, spokeswoman for the National Confectioners Association told the Miami Herald. ”Candy is such a part of our lives in so many ways. There are traditions and customers in the United States that revolve around candy.”

So, why not call it Candicus?  

With teary regret, Candicus draws to an end. The only hope that keeps me going is knowing that a new day will dawn tomorrow…and Walgreens will markdown today’s Easter treats at 50 percent off.

The Big-Three automakers: Echoes from the past

I visited the beloved state of Michigan last month where I once anchored the news at WKBD-TV in Detroit and at WILX-TV in Lansing. I must say I was saddened by what I saw and heard.

During the ten years we lived in the Great Lakes State, my wife and I celebrated the births of our two daughter. I earned my masters degree at Michigan State University. Many of the friendships we cultivated in Michigan still exist today. It’s a state where a long feared reality has become a bitter reality Michigan may never recover from.

Despite decades of warnings that Michigan had to diversify its economy  from its all encompassing automobile industry, the state’s failure to do so has left it in an economic mess.

Tens of thousands of autoworkers have lost jobs. The unemployment rate is 12 percent.

The Big-Three automakers have shrunk to a shadow of themselves and may die completely despite multi-billion dollat federal bailouts for two of the Big-Three.

This week, President Barack Obama virtually fired General Motors CEO  Rick Wagoner. Chrysler was told to complete an alliance with Italy’s Fiat as both U.S. carmakers teetered on the brink of bankruptcy.

Chrysler and GM are being kept alive by $17.4 billion in federal loans. At risk are about 77,000 GM and Chrysler jobs in Michigan.

Ford, the relative bright spot of the moment, hasn’t sought U.S. financial assistance as Chrysler and GM have. On the other hand, Ford hasn’t had a profitable year since 2005. It had a record loss of $14.7 billion in 2008.

“I think we better face up to it that Michigan was a great state,” said Gerald Meyers, a University of Michigan business professor and the former chairman of defunct American Motors Corp.

Gerald Meyers

“Michigan is now going to descend into a wonderful place to live, a great place to vacation and a fine producer of agricultural products,” Meyers said.

Automakers insist they see signs of life in the marketplace. But March was another dismal month for US car sales, as consumers clung to their old vehicles in the face of America’s economic woes.

General Motors sales were down 45 percent, compared with the same month a year ago. Ford slid 41 percent, while Chrysler was down 38 percent.

Jack Lessenberry

Jack Lessenberry is a Wayne State University professor and commentator on Michigan Radio and recently wrote about corresponding with the legendary Jack Casey, who has been a public affairs analyst for more than forty years.

In 1957, Casey came to Detroit to be a reporter for the Free Press.

Here’s what Casey told Lessenberry:

“The first major story I worked on was the release of a major economic study by a University of Michigan team about Michigan’s future.”  What did it say?

Jack Casey

“Well, the bottom line was that Michigan must get off its dependence on the auto industry. “So what happened?” he said. “Nothing. The attitude in the industry was, ‘ ‘Why change? We are smarter and nobody can match us.’”

Lessenberry cotinues:

“Well, we know what eventually happened. After years of decline, by the end of last year, the entire industry was on the point of collapse. Former President Bush threw Chrysler and General Motors a lifeline then. Today, President Obama is announcing his plan to help the domestic auto industry survive.

Nobody is likely to be completely happy with the Obama plan. As we saw last December, a significant faction in Congress thinks the government should just pull the plug and let those two once-mighty automakers declare bankruptcy and, maybe, go out of business.

On the other hand, the Detroit News complained yesterday that the president should stop “bad-mouthing” the auto industry. That’s evidently because he said “There’s been a lot of mismanagement (of it) over the last several years.”

This is an industry that has been losing millions an hour for years, while at the same time stoutly resisting any kind of major and necessary change. If that’s good management, Three Mile Island was one heck of a well-run nuclear power plant.

By the way, polls show a majority of voters outside Michigan don’t think the President should “bad mouth” the domestic automakers. They think he should just let them die.

What we have to realize is that the President’s cuffing the automakers around a bit for their past sins is not only justified, it is probably politically necessary if he is going to help them now.

Everything I’ve heard from President Obama on this so far has smacked of extreme common sense. Last week, he said he thought that while it is appropriate for taxpayers to provide help, the price should be that the industry reform itself.

Now it is time for a some common sense on our part. The domestic auto industry may survive. But here’s the important thing to remember.  It will never be what it was.  Not only will its market share continue to shrink; never again will masses of unskilled kids be able to leave high school and get good paying jobs on the assembly line, jobs that will last for life. That’s over, forever.

Yes, we need to save the auto industry if we can. But the more important debate should be about how to invent a new future for the rest of us. And we better get started.

After all, we’re only about half a century behind.”