By Joel Thurtell
About the time somebody hacked joelontheroad on August 17, New York Times business columnist Floyd Norris wrote about Capital Appreciation Bonds in California.
Why, he even credited me, in kind of a backhanded way, with being first to report the monstrous debt taken on by Poway Unified schools in San Diego, California. But he linked to the third of my Poway stories, May 12, 2012. By that time, I’d broken the story on May 1 in “CABs = compound trouble for California,” and added to it on May 10 in “Disaster shadows Poway.”
As I say, The Times linked to my third Poway story: “CAB scam in Poway,” on May 12.
My aim from last April, when I started blogging about California CABs, has been to get media attention to this financial travesty in hopes the California Legislature will do what Michigan’s Legislature did 18 years ago: ban CABs.
But I couldn’t write about it.
I was mute.
I went to blog about The Times and found a Google warning that my site was infested with a virus. Beware!
We’re not a big operation. We’re not a medium-sized news organization. In fact, we are so tiny an operation that the only way I can justify saying “we” is to make up names for my columnists.
Melanie Munch, food critic.
Floyd Inkjet, media watchdog.
Ned Yardline, sports columnist.
Peter Pizzicato, music critic.
The only nonfiction member of my staff, besides me, is Peppermint Patti, the best-paid columnist. She happens to be a lapdog.
That’s all by way of explaining that when my site went down, I couldn’t simply call my IT department and demand immediate action.
So, I hired a free lance Internet trouble fixer and after a week, after google had inspected us and determined we are virus-free, I got joelontheroad back.
By then, I’d nearly forgotten my fleeting mention in The Times.
But now that I’m blogging again, I plan to write a column wherein I’ll explain why it happened that what Floyd Norris called “a Michigan blogger” broke the story of how a California school district borrowed $105 million and will repay almost a billion smackers.
And how similar CAB scams are going on all around California.
And how the Michigan Legislature banned CABs 18 years ago, after reading my stories in the Detroit Free Press.
Stay tuned.
