I remember feeling very alien when I first came to Richmond in 1985. This place and its people are very different than rural Texas where I grew up.

I grew up with Houston Public Radio playing in the background, and WMUB provided an instant reminder of home. The station, operated out of Miami U. has undergone lots of changes over the years, from playing primarily jazz to becoming a talk radio station, and there have been many times when the young college news readers would grate on my nerves. But there was plenty to love about the local station.

All to be gone come March 1st, when the station becomes a repeater for Cincinnati Public Radio:

(OXFORD, OH, January 22, 2009) - Miami University and Cincinnati Public Radio (CPR) are actively negotiating an operating agreement for CPR to manage WMUB, in order to continue to provide public radio services to listeners of WMUB while addressing the university’s projected budget deficit.

WMUB has broadcast from Miami University for 58 years. However, due to its rural location and signal strength, it has not been able to achieve the audience and listener pledges that urban-based public radio stations receive. Consequently WMUB receives more than $500,000 in annual direct subsidy from the university plus more than $300,000 in indirect support.

Link (Press release).

Analysis: CAFOs caused road damage (Pal-Item): “Two feeding operations in Randolph County caused $57,000 in damage to its roads last year, according to an analysis given to Delaware County planning officials.”

Michael Lewis and David Einhorn’s editorial in the NYT is a must read. Most of it is just stating the obvious, but since the obvious has been flatly denied for a decade - it is worth saying:

The American International Group, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, General Electric and the municipal bond guarantors Ambac Financial and MBIA all had triple-A ratings. (G.E. still does!) Large investment banks like Lehman and Merrill Lynch all had solid investment grade ratings. It’s almost as if the higher the rating of a financial institution, the more likely it was to contribute to financial catastrophe. But of course all these big financial companies fueled the creation of the credit products that in turn fueled the revenues of Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s.

These oligopolies, which are actually sanctioned by the S.E.C., didn’t merely do their jobs badly. They didn’t simply miss a few calls here and there. In pursuit of their own short-term earnings, they did exactly the opposite of what they were meant to do: rather than expose financial risk they systematically disguised it.

Link