Michael Ryan is Closed-Minded to the Facts

Re: "The closed-minded professor," from the February 27th edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

Once again, a conservative pundit knocks the president for being an intellectual by reminding everyone that he's a professor. The title of this editorial is ridiculous. As if republicans were open-minded. It may be true that the president rejected most republican ideas about health care, but it's at least equally true that republicans rejected his ideas.

Moreover, this column is hypocritical to the max. Countless letters to the editor have pointed out that the U.N. ranks the U.S. 37th in the world in quality of health care and JAMA ranks the U.S. 11th out of the 12 industrial nations in health care quality, yet in Mr. Ryan insisted that the U.S. has the best health care in the world. Surely, he's aware of the facts.

Instead, he ignores them and shouts out USA number 1 when in reality the richest country on earth ranks a disgraceful 37th.

Mr. Ryan is without a doubt far more close-minded than the president.

What a jerk!

In fact this entire editorial page is offensively one-sided and makes me want to cancel my subscription again. Unfortunately, I just renewed it. The only reason I take the Augusta Chronicle is for Georgia Bulldog football news. Otherwise, I would subscribe to USA Today.

Incredibly, Michael Ryan Denies Partisan attacks on the President

Re: "What partisan attacks?" from the February 25th edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

Michael Ryan, along with republicans and conservative pundits, has been making incessent partisan attacks on the president, yet in this column he asks "What partisan attacks?"

Does he read his own column?

He claims nobody is making personal attacks on the president, and even makes the laughable claim that republicans are taking it easy on Obama because he's the first black president.

Mr. Ryan, himself, has referred to the president as a cold fish (because of lack of emotion following the Texas shooting), arrogant, and stupid (because he mispoke and claimed there were 57 states). These are criticisms of Obama's personal traits, not his politics, so I think it's safe to say these were personal attacks as is his labeling of Obama as a radical leftist. Obama has cut taxes, increased troops in Afghanistan, and approved new nuclear power plants--hardly a far left agenda. Referring to him as a "radical leftist" is simply a mindless partisan attack.

Mr. Ryan is so stupid, he doesn't even realize his admission of racism. His suggestion that conservatives have been taking it easy on Obama because he's black (which is an outright falsehood) is an admission that they treated Obama differently because of his race.

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Star Parker lied her ass off again in her column "Time for a new generation."

She claimed "the black poverty rate, at twice the national average, has hardly budged since the late 1960's

I looked it up at www.census.gov. In 1965 the black poverty rate was 65%. In 1969 after Lyndon Johnson's great society program went into effect, it dropped to 39%. In 2001 (the latest year stats are available) it was 30%. That's a 9% point drop and it would probably be more, if not for the welfare reform of the 1990's. That's a lot more than the "hardly budged" she claims.

By comparison the national average poverty rate in 1969 was 13%. So in 1969, the black poverty rate was triple the national average. In 2006 the poverty rate was 16%. So today the black poverty rate is slightly less than twice the national average. Of course, there's still work to be done, but that's a huge improvement.

Michael Ryan regurgitates Conservative Bloggers' Lies about Global Warming

Re: "Today's forecast: Increased doubt," from the February 16th edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

I can't find the original source of these lies. There are many conservative bloggers in addition to Fox News pundits who have been giving misleading interpetations of some comments made by Phil Jones, a British climate scientist. Nevertheless, this column is potentially another example of Mr. Ryan's plagiarism. I'm 100% sure he didn't come up with the idea to intentionally mislead people about what Dr. Jones said. Here are the facts:

Mr. Ryan (repeating what many other conservative bloggers and Fox News pundits said and wrote) claimed that Dr. Jones said that there has been no significant warming since 1995 and that the earth may have been warmer in medieval times.

According to www.realclimate.org, this is what Dr. Jones actually said. "While the globe has nominally warmed since 1995, it is difficult to establish the statistical significance of that warming given the short nature of the time interval (1995-present)."

That's a big difference from what conservative bloggers are claiming. In other words Dr. Jones is merely stating that the time interval wasn't long enough to determine whether the warming (which is occurring) is of statistical significance. Conservatives try to make it sound like no warming is occurring. Furthermore, Dr. Jones said there isn't enough data to determine whether the earth may have been warmer in medieval times, not as conservatives claim, he was saying it may have been warmer. BTW, that the earth was warmer during medieval times is fed into climate scientists' models, so this isn't some big gotcha point.

Mr. Ryan's column cites a poll showing that 29% of meteorologists think global warming is a scam, and he comes to the conclusion that the science is in doubt. This is another sample of Mr. Ryan's stupidity. Meteorologists are not climate scientists. Most are not even college graduates. Meteorologists are basically pretty people trained to forecast short term weather. Their main attribute is to look good in front of the camera.

Mr. Ryan notes, as further evidence casting doubt on global warming, some typos in the IPCC report. A few typos in a scientific report don't disprove greenhouse gas theory. This is a pretty asinine claim.

And finally, Mr. Ryan states, "Now that there is considerable doubt about the data being relied upon to push such policies (cap and trade, etc.)..."

This last statement is just wrong. There is no debate within the scientific community that man is contributing to global warming. The debate is entirely political with conservatives taking the anti-science side. The best proof of this is that Mr. Ryan's column is on the political opinion page--not a scientific journal.

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Re: "Don't cry for Bayh," from the February 18th edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

I don't take issue with the main point of this editorial--that Bayh really quit because he was being more seriously challenged than the media reported. I take issue with Mr. Ryan's statement that "Bayh bows out after a year of consistent votes for the far left and wildly unpopular Obama agenda."

What far left agenda could that be? Does Mr. Ryan mean the tax cuts for 95% of Americans, the increase in troops sent to Afghanistan, or the approval of two nuclear power plants in Burke County that the Mr. Ryan supported in the column above this one. Oh yeah, that sounds like a real far-left agenda.

And if Obama's agenda is so unpopular, how did he get elected just last year?

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I guess Mr. Ryan thinks he needs support. The guest editorial written by James Sanderson is merely a regurgitation of Mr. Ryan's lies about cap and trade causing job losses. The biggest lie in this column is when Mr. Sanderson wrote that democrats are raising taxes on people. No they aren't. They reduced taxes on 95% of us.

I happen to disagree with tax cuts at the current time. I think taxes should be increased on everybody too, but especially the rich. I know that's unpopular, but taxes are always unpopular. That doesn't make them unnecessary.

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Star Parker's column ("Social Security reform cooking again after years on the back burner.")from February 16th is just stupid. In this column she demonstrates her ignorance over where payroll taxes go. She writes as if it goes into the Social Security fund. There is no Social Security fund--payroll taxes go into the general tax fund along with income taxes.

She remarks how Social Security and Medicare "reflects the inevitable failure of social engineering." She needs to study census statistics on poverty rates which have dropped decisively since these programs have been implemented.

Star Parker is just an idiot hypocrite as I've noted on earlier blogs. She's alive today, thanks to the social programs she's so critical of. Without them, she would've likely starved to death long ago.

Michael Ryan Stupidly Allows Libel on his Editorial Page

Re: "Requiem for a Corruptocrat," by Michelle Malkin from the February 15th edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

I was never a fan of John Murtha.  Though he was a democrat, he always seemed like a crooked republican to me.  Ms. Malkin's invented word (corruptocrat) does apply to Murtha.  But he was right about the Haditha massacre so I disagree with the bulk of her essay. Nevertheless, this is all beside the point.

Ms. Malkin made a libelous charge in this column.  She wrote that Murtha died because of "botched gall bladder surgery."  No ma'am!

The news outlets reported that he died from complications due to gall bladder surgery.  There's a big difference.  Most likely, doctors performed the surgery correctly--it's a simple procedure.  It's more likely he died from an infection which can occur regardless of how well the surgery went.  It's quite possible Murtha waited too long to have surgery and he had jaundice and/or an infection that already spread before he was even operated on.  Jaundice can be caused when the gall bladder duct is blocked.

Creators syndicate should not have released this column without editing out Ms. Malkin's sloppy accusation.  Michael Ryan should not have run it.

But I've demonstrated how sloppy he is himself--he didn't even realize the mistake Malkin made.

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Re: "Lead by getting out of the way," from this same edition.

Mr. Ryan makes a confused statement in the column.  He writes "Most rational economists...would agree that the best way government could really help stimulate the economy in the long term is to get out of the way--through tax cuts, regulatory reform, spending cuts, and incentives for the free market to break back into a gallop."

This is what Obama is supporting.  It seems curious that Mr. Ryan would be attacking politicians who are trying to do the things that he writes are necessary.

But the worst thing about this column is Mr. Ryan's bad writing.   He uses a terrible simile.  Get this: "...this Congress, boasting an approval rating embarrassed by that of brussel sprouts, doesn't seem to know how jobs are created anyway."  Not only is this a terrible simile, but it should be Brussels sprouts.  Mr. Ryan's editor was asleep on this one.

Then, Mr. Ryan again feeds his readers the bullshit claim that a 3% increase in taxes on people making $250,000 a year is going to somehow bust the recovery.

As I've written before, those low taxes, when in effect, did not keep us out of a recession.  There's just no evidence that tax cuts stimulate the economy.

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Re: "Not their cup of tea," from the February 14th edition of the Augusta Chronicle.

Mr. Ryan makes a blind idiotic defense of the tea party, while whining about how the "left wing media" hates the Tea Party movement.

Mr. Ryan claims the Tea Party movement isn't racist.  Can he not see the signs these people carry?  The ones depicting President Obama as a monkey. 

Just the day before, he ran a column written by Bonnie Alba comparing Obama with Hitler.  The Tea Party idiots also are always carrying signs depicting Obama as a Marxist, and Nazi, and the comic book villain, the Joker. What a bunch of incoherent ignoramuses.

Speaking of comic books, Mr. Ryan whines about an anti-Tea Party comment in a recent issue of Captain America.  That's the purpose of his column--to gripe about the evils of the left wing media in the comic book business.  Hey, comic books were invented by liberal Jewish artists.  If conservatives don't like it, well, they have Fox News and all of AM talk radio.  They've got nothing to complain about here--they've got plenty of their own "hate" media.

Michael Ryan 's Ridiculous Conclusion

Re: "Meet you at the food court!" from the February 12th edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

One can be for or against the government's help when it comes to solving America's obesity problem, but to say the U.S. is well on the way to becoming a "police state," just because the government wants to kick junk food vending machines out of school and educate people about a healthy diet is ridiculous hyperbole.

One thing is certain--the increasing number of fat people in this country is an obvious failure of the free market.

Unhealthy processed foods are cheap and profitable; healthy foods cost more.  Poor people tend to reach for these cheap boxes of shit (I wouldn't even call most of it real food), and that's why we are facing this disastrous health crisis.

This is one time where the government does need to step in with an education program.  There are too many people who are completely ignorant of nutrition, and I don't see the free market advertising fresh fruits and vegetables on an equal billing with chips, candy, and empty calorie soft drinks.

Educating people on how to eat is not something akin to a police state.  Once more, Mr. Ryan just exposes how utterly stupid he is.

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Re: "Inefficient by nature," from the February 13th edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

This column is laughable.  Mr. Ryan is telling us how inefficient the government is compared to free market businesses, when he's taking a paycheck from a bankrupt company.

Does anybody else see the humor in this? 

The notion that private businesses are more efficient than the government is a total myth.

The examples Mr. Ryan uses are weak.  First he notes how most of the stimulus money intended for wind farms went to foreign countries.  So what?  If the U.S. government stimulates the world economy that still helps us because the world economy is connected to ours.  It's not the U.S. government's fault that American businesses were too incompetent to take advantage of the deal.  Clearly, the free market is to blame, if Mr. Ryan thinks there's something wrong with this.  

The problem at the local sheriff's office is  not enough money.  The city government is too cheap (or doesn't have its priorities straight) to spend enough on the upkeep of the law enforcement building.  It's got nothing to do with government inefficiency.

Contrary to Mr. Ryan's theme, throwing money at problems generally does fix them eventually.  There's no evidence that private industry is more efficient than the government.

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Re: "For Tea Party participants, it's simply the 'American Cause.'" by Bonnie Alba from the same edition.

This idiot nut compared President Obama with Adolf Hitler.  Mr. Ryan's a stupid ass for letting this guest column appear on his editorial page.

Anyone who compares our democratically elected president with a dictator responsible for the deaths of millions just has no credibility whatsoever and should not be published in any respectable medium.

Michael Ryan Tells a Big Fat Lie

Re: "Not Without a Fight," from the February 8th edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

Michael Ryan makes the false claim that the Obama administration wants to end secret ballots in workplace elections over whether to unionize.  

President Obama supports H.R. 1409--The Employee Free Choice Act.  This document is available as a link at www.americanpregressaction.org/issues/2009/03/efca101.html

There is nothing in this act that outlaws secret ballots.  It merely makes it easier for new unions to organize by giving workers the option of forming a new union if the majority of workers sign an authorization card.

The real reason businesses don't like this proposed law is because it would prevent them from delaying the recognition of newly formed unions.  The law simply states that once a new union is formed by majority vote within an industry, the business must meet and begin negotiating with them within 10 days, and if no agreement is made within 90 days, they go to a federal mediator.

Tightwad business crooks like Billy Morris don't like unions because they might have to pay their workers a decent wage and have them work in safe environments.  I worked for the Augusta Chronicle--it was low pay and dangerous work.  I know for a fact that circulation department workers definitely need a union.

Moreover, contrary to Mr. Ryan's bogus claims, the cause of the recent recession was due to there being too many underpaid workers.  Paying workers a better wage would improve the economy.  Increasing pay has never killed jobs as the chamber of commerce falsely claims will happen.

Michael Ryan Wonders if Common Sense will Prevail when He Has None Himself

Re: "Will common sense prevail?" from the February 7th edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

Once again, Mr. Ryan is freaked out about the budget deficit.  Yet, a few weeks ago, he suggested an income tax moratorium.  As I've written before, he has no credibility on this issue because he actually thinks eliminating taxes would be a viable policy.

It's true the U.S. government needs to reign in spending, but it's necessary to increase taxes as well to help balance the budget. Increasing taxes is politically unpopular, virtually dooming any political party that supports this as a method of reducing the deficit.  Until we get politicians with the guts to increase taxes and cut government spending, the budget will continue to spiral out of control.  

Note that Mr. Ryan mentions Social Security and Medicare as programs that cost too much, but he makes no mention of the illegal, immoral, and unnecessary war in Iraq.

Conservatives just have no integrity.  Helping out our fellow man is a waste of money, but blowing him to smithereens is untouchable spending and not even included in the official budget.  How obscene.  

The related editorial below Mr. Ryan's, written by Charles Krauthammer is entitled "The Great Peasant Revolt."  This is in reference to the Tea Party movement.  The Tea Party just paid Sarah Palin $100,000 to make a speech.  I doubt peasants can afford to pay that much just to hear a nervous schoolgirl criticize our president for having a good education which is what she did when she said, "We need a commander and chief, not a Harvard Lawyer."  The statement was received with cheers.

This quote and the positive response proves that Tea Party nuts think intelligence and education are bad things.

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Re: "Greedy union fat cats are behind first lady's anti-obesity campaign," by Michelle Malkin from the February 5th edition of the Augusta Chronicle.

Ms. Malkin writes about the "evils" of school lunches in this column.  She's critical of the SEIU, an organization that represents school cafeteria workers.  What's she afraid of--that a school cafeteria worker might make a dollar?

Ms. Malkin has no credibility whatsoever.  Mr. Ryan should be ashamed of himself for letting this ridiculous woman spew her stupid opinions on his page.

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Mr. Ryan has yet to retract his factually challenged column which I noted in my last blog entry. BTW, I contacted Alan English the managing editor of the news department.  He informed me that he has nothing to do with the editorial page, so I retract my statement suggesting he approves of Mr. Ryan's plagiarisms.

There.  I admitted I was wrong about something.

Will Michael Ryan?

Will Michael Ryan Issue a Retraction?

Re: "Is American pre-eminence ending?" from the February 3rd edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

Michael Ryan quotes Washington Post pundit, Richard Cohen, who wrote that the Christmas Day bomber was given his Miranda rights and since then his "subsequent silence is a scream that something went wrong."  Of course, Mr. Ryan agrees with this ignorant fiction and uses it to criticize the Obama administration for being lax on security issues.

Mr. Ryan didn't read page 5 A of his own newspaper.  To be fair, he probably didn't know about it and wrote this editorial before the associated press article was released.  Nevertheless, he should write a retraction.

The article I'm referring to is entitled "Nigerian offers intelligence on terror planning," from page 5 of this same edition of the newspaper.  Apparently, this news has been leaked.  The Christmas Day bomber has cooperated with the FBI and has been giving good information.  The Obama administration had been trying to keep this valuable cooperation secret so they can follow leads.  Nevertheless, the news debunks critics who claimed that the terrorist would clam up, just because he had been read his rights.

Will Mr. Ryan issue a retraction tomorrow?  I wouldn't hold my breath.

Further on in this editorial, which is nothing more than a hodgepodge of his usual baseless criticism of the president, Mr. Ryan writes that the administration wants to levy "more and more taxes on those people and entities that create jobs and which will be key to growth and progress."  This is just a lie.  Obama is merely letting Bush's unsuccessful, temporary tax cuts for the rich expire.  The top rate will go from 36% back to 39% which is the same as it was ten years ago.  Big deal. 

Hey, those tax cuts were in place for ten years.  How did that work out?  Didn't we just go into a severe recession?  That should be evidence enough that tax cuts do not stimulate the economy, but conservatives will never learn.

Mr. Ryan cries about the big deficit, but he has no credibility on this issue--not since he suggested a moratorium on all income taxes in an earlier column which I discussed in a previous blog entry.

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I've noted before that Cal Thomas is always a day late and a dollar short.  In his column "Obama and the republicans," he writes that "the 26 page booklet containing Republican ideas on the economy, jobs, energy and national security...should put to rest the fiction that Republicans have presented no ideas on these and other subjects."

He should have watched the Daily Show with Jon Stewart the other day.  Mr. Stewart made fun of the document.  He showed that when all the crap, such as the Table of Contents, blank pages, and self-aggrandizing pages, were removed it only contained 4 pages...and the whole thing proved to be obsolete.  At the end of the paper, the document claimed that if enacted, these republican policies would solve all our problems by December...of 2009.

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Psychotic letter of the week award goes to Dan Duncan of Aiken.  His solution to welfare and foreign aid is to send all of America's poor people to third world countries where they can live like kings because of the lower standard of living in these countries.

Georgia Regional, where are you?

Michael Ryan didn't Think it was Dumb when Bush Did It

Re: "Terrorists don't deserve it," from the February 2nd edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

Michael Ryan calls the Obama administration's decision to try terrorists in civilian court one of the dumbest moves by any presidential administration in memory.

He's got a short memory.  The Bush administration tried and convicted the shoe bomber and the 20th hijacker just a few years ago.  Mr. Ryan didn't think those trials were stupid.

However, if a democratic president does the exact same thing that a republican president did, all of a sudden, he thinks it's "galactically stupid."  

Can anyone say blind partisanship?  Can anyone say there's no such word as "galactically?" Can anyone say using a made up word is stupid in itself?

I'm really disgusted with America's pathetic and cowardly not-in-my-backyard attitude.  

The sky is not going to fall just because we bring terrorists to justice in civilian courts.

Michael Ryan's Imagined Double Standard in the Media

Re: The section called the bottom line from the January 31st edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

Mr. Ryan complains that the media ignored James O'Keefe's so-called expose` of ACORN but have been all over the story of his attempted bugging of Senator Landrieu's telephones.

In my opinion the media's coverage of O'Keefe's slander of a worthwhile organization such as ACORN was way overblown. O'Keefe has lied before. He said that none of the ACORN offices turned him away, when in fact, a police report proves that at least one office even called the cops on him. Mr. Ryan claims that O'Keefe "embarrassed" the media "with his takedown of ACORN." I wouldn't call slandering and lying about a worthy charitable organization embarrassing the media.

Mr. Ryan writes "Oh puhleeze," in exasperation when some compare this to Watergate and he makes the absurd claim that it's not clear O'Keefe was attempting to tap the phone lines.

It's obvious to anyone with common sense what O'Keefe was up to--he was using dishonest tactics to dig up dirt on a democrat.

Incidentally, I think it's girly to use the term "puhleeze." Mr. Ryan uses unprofessional, girlish, and cliche`d phrases in his writing. Maybe Alex English, or whoever his boss is, won't fire him for plagiarism, but at the very least, they should fire him for using "puhleeze" in an editorial.

Yuck!

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Re: "Heaping helpings of hate," from the February 1st edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

Here, Mr. Ryan is just whining. He lists five samples of over-the-top commentary by liberal pundits as examples of a lack of civility. I agree that some of these are over-the-top, especially the one made by Keith Olbermann which Jon Stewart parodied on the Daily Show. I disagree though that Bill Maher's comment should be included in this list. As noted in an earlier blog entry about Mr. Ryan's taking offense to an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Mr. Ryan has little sense of humor. Mr. Maher was joking, and the joke is funny, because it's true. Glenn Beck is a psycho--the guy sees ridiculous conspiracies in everything. Mr. Ryan doesn't like it because Glenn Beck is one of the sources he frequently plagiarizes.

Mr. Ryan came up with a list of five. Check out www.mediamatters.org for hundreds of examples of over-the-top comments made by conservative pundits.

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Re: "Even critics should wish the Chronicle owner well in reorganization effort," by Paul Simon also from the January 31st edition of the Augusta Chronicle.

Ah, where to begin? I used to work for the Augusta Chronicle in the circulation department. I have so many stories I could tell about their sorry management. Billy Morris broke every labor law in the book. The working conditions were dangerous, and the demands upper management made on the little guys were outrageous.

I think I'll start by recounting an example of Chronicle stupidity at its finest.

One Sunday, I was scheduled to be off. I was awoken by a call at 2:00 am ordering me to report downtown immediately to the circulation department because the press broke down and the papers wouldn't be ready until 12:00 pm. So they literally ordered me to come in early on my day off to sit and wait and do nothing for ten hours. Logically, they should have let everybody sleep in so we would be well rested to throw all the paper routes the carriers wouldn't be able to throw because the papers were going to be out so late. But logic was not their strong suit.

Maybe Billy Morris should have invested some of his capital on a working printing press instead of his stupid museum of art. That's another thing that always pissed me off when I worked there. The pay and the benefits were so meager, and this fascist asshole is blowing money on art.

Another time I got in big, big trouble because I was honest with a carrier. The management decided to terminate a carrier's contract. So I was supposed to lie to the carrier (by making some excuse as to why I needed to ride with him) and make a tape recording of the route thereby preparing myself to run the route after they cut him loose. I told the guy the truth and still made the tape , thus executing my job successfully.

Ooh man! You would have thought I'd stolen $10,000 from them. Three supervisors grilled me for being honest. The carrier had sent a letter to the Vice President, praising me for telling the truth and condemning the higher ups. It was well-meaning on his part, but bad for me, because he didn't realize the Vice President would come down on the side of the dishonest business practice. The supervisors told me lying was justified because "this is a business." That was their sole reasoning.

The last time I got in trouble while working in the circulation department didn't bother me too much but illustrates how poorly run that business is. In the wee hours of the morning the papers for about 50 routes were dropped at a warehouse on Reynolds Street--a high crime neighborhood. Nobody had a key so we always had to leave the warehouse unlocked. This went on for 6 months. The accounting department didn't like it because they had a computer and other equipment in there that could have easily been stolen. So finally one day, they had a meeting and passed keys out to the circulation managers. I missed that meeting because my wife had a stroke that day and almost died. No one told me about the keys. A few days later, I was the last person to leave the drop and I left the warehouse unlocked. The next day, a homeless wino slept in the warehouse, and he was there when the papers were delivered in the wee hours.

Oh, they were furious. Who left the door unlocked? They figured out I was the last one at the drop and they came down on me. I was in trouble because the door was unlocked...but it had been unlocked for 6 months!

Anyway, I explained why I didn't have a key, and they gave me one.

I was polite enough not to tell them to take the key and shove it.

It's no surprise to me that the Chronicle is bankrupt.