Weather Channel In Sex Storm

On block, cable network seeks cloak on anchor harassment details

MAY 6--As The Weather Channel's owner negotiates a multibillion-dollar sale of the cable outlet, the network's lawyers are angling to keep secret the details of a blistering arbitration ruling in favor of a former anchorwoman who charges that she was subjected to unrelenting sexual harassment by her male co-anchor, who was "romantically obsessed" with her and frequently made crude remarks like, "Will you lick my swizzle stick?" Hillary Andrews, 38, contends that the cable network's brass turned a blind eye to the harassment because her co-anchor, Bob Stokes, was popular with viewers and scored high ratings. According to recent court filings, Andrews won her arbitration case three months ago and the final ruling was "highly critical of conduct by both Stokes and TWC management." The network is now seeking to keep details of the arbitrator's 17-page report secret, while Andrews wants to publicly file the document in a lawsuit she has brought against the 50-year-old Stokes in a Georgia state court. In an April 24 federal court filing, an excerpt of which you'll find below, Andrews reported that "TWC fired Stokes the day after" the arbitration award was issued on January 31 and is now "understandably eager to assure that the Arbitrator's findings and conclusions never see the light of day." Stokes did not respond to a phone message left at his home and his attorney, Jeff Kent, declined comment on the court actions. Court records show that Andrews was paired with Stokes after her September 2003 hiring, and that she replaced a female "on-camera meteorologist" who had worked with Stokes for three years. According to Andrews's lawsuit against Stokes, the prior anchor was abused daily by him and "routinely hid in the women's dressing room in between shifts to avoid contact with him." The woman, Andrews alleged, was forced out of TWC after repeatedly complaining to management about Stokes's harassment. Andrews claims that "history quickly repeated itself" when Stokes began harassing her, though his behavior was "worse for [her] than for her predecessors because Stokes was sexually attracted to her and romantically obsessed with her." Stokes, she claimed, made crude sexual remarks to her, leered at her chest, and followed her into the women's dressing room. He also allegedly questioned her "over and over again, non-stop" about her sex life, and once noted, "It tortures me when you wear those heels and skirt." When she rebuffed his advances, Andrews charged, Stokes's "hostility and volatility became a constant" and he sought to "sabotage" her on-air performance and even resorted to insulting her during live shows. Though initially "loath to complain" about Stokes for fear of "career suicide," Andrews eventually reported his behavior to TWC officials and sought a reassignment with a new co-anchor. Instead, Andrews alleged, she was relegated to a series of undesirable assignments, including "the overnight shift--the same assignment [TWC] had given Ms. Andrews's predecessor after she complained about Stokes." Andrews filed her arbitration claim shortly before her three-year contract expired in August 2006. According to recent press accounts, The Weather Channel's owner, Virginia-based Landmark Communications, has been accepting bids for the network, which it optimistically values at $5 billion. Suitors for the cable channel (and its popular weather.com web site) reportedly include a Who's Who of media giants, including CBS, NBC Universal, Time Warner, Comcast, and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation

Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let's look at some environmentalist predictions they would prefer we forget.

At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind."

C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed."

In 1968, professor Paul Ehrlich, former Vice President Al Gore's hero and mentor, predicted that there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and "in the 1970s . . . hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death."

Ehrlich forecast that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and that by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million.

Ehrlich's predictions about England were gloomier: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."

In 1972, a report was written for the Club of Rome warning that the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992.

Gordon Taylor, in his 1970 book "The Doomsday Book," said Americans were using 50% of the world's resources and "by 2000 they (Americans) will, if permitted, be using all of them."

In 1975, the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning, "The World as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000."

Harvard biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." That was the same year that Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look magazine, that by 1995 "somewhere between 75% and 85% of all the species of living animals will be extinct."

It's not just latter-day doomsayers who have been wrong; doomsayers have always been wrong.

In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced that there was "little or no chance" of oil being discovered in California, and a few years later they said the same about Kansas and Texas.

In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last only another 13 years. In 1949, the secretary of the interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight. Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey advised us that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. The fact of the matter, according to the American Gas Association: There's a 1,000- to 2,500- year supply.

Here are my questions:

In 1970, when environmentalists were making predictions of man-made global cooling and the threat of an ice age and millions of Americans starving to death, what kind of government policy should we have undertaken to prevent such a calamity?

When Ehrlich predicted that England would not exist in the year 2000, what steps should the British Parliament have taken in 1970 to prevent such a dire outcome?

In 1939, when the Department of the Interior warned that we only had oil supplies for another 13 years, what actions should President Roosevelt have taken?

Finally, what makes us think that environmental alarmism is any more correct now that they have switched their tune to man-made global warming?

Here are a few facts:

More than 95% of the greenhouse effect is the result of water vapor in Earth's atmosphere. Without the greenhouse effect, Earth's average temperature would be zero degrees Fahrenheit.

 

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Sen. Barack Obama’s only legislative accomplishment in Washington so far is the passage of “the most sweeping ethics reform since Watergate,” which was designed to “to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over.” Well the lobbyists didn’t get the message. Since liberals took over Congress, profits for the top lobbying firms in Washington have soared . The reason is simple: liberals want to increase government control over the economy through mandates and regulation to achieve their social engineering goals. This market intervention inevitably ends up picking winners and losers in the marketplace. Firms, therefore, have a very strong incentive to spend money in Washington to make sure they aren’t crushed by Congress.

The fight over ethanol mandates is a perfect case in point. Supported by an alliance of environmentalists and corn growers, the use of biofuels in motor fuels was first mandated in 2005. Then in 2007, the Energy Independence and Security Act more than doubled the amount of biofuels mandated for 2008 and more than tripled the number for 2015. These mandates have diverted 25% of the U.S. corn crop from food to fuel in 2007 and will divert almost 35% in 2008. Since the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) was enforced, the price of corn has jumped from $2.06 a bushel to $4 a bushel.

These rising food prices are exacerbating the worldwide food crisis and negatively impacting the economy here at home. Texas Gov. Rick Perry writes in his letter asking the Environmental Protection Agency for a waiver from the RFS: “The difference of $1.94/bushel equates to a negative impact on the Texas economy of $1.17 billion since the RFS has come about. And now, with the implementation of the new RFS, some estimates peg corn prices at $8.00/bushel for the 2008 crop, which would result in a negative impact to Texas of $3.59 billion.”

Not everybody is hurt by these higher corn prices, though. The mandate works as a transfer of wealth from American consumers to the nation’s corn farmers, who love the mandates. That is why the American Farm Bureau has attacked Perry’s waiver request and it is why Obama, again this Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” defended the Illinois corn growers’ ethanol business.

But ethanol mandates are just an appetizer for a much larger big business feast should a liberal Congress be paired with a liberal White House. There is a reason major corporations like General Electric extend Earth Day into an Earth Week scare fest. GE already spends more than $20 million lobbying the federal government and a global warming cap-and-trade system, properly written to GE’s advantage, could score the company billions in profits from subsidies and mandates for its alternative energy businesses. By co-opting the environmental movement, savvy businesses like GE can end up as huge winners while the American consumer loses with sky high energy prices.

Fortunately, Americans are beginning to catch on to this game. A Rasmussen Reports survey shows that 54% of American adults believe that the push for alternative energy sources is driving up food prices. Tired environmentalist arguments against new oil exploration are becoming punchlines. And even Obama is admitting that nuclear power should be part of the policy fix for high energy prices.

Fuel Prices have risen over 300 % for the American consumer, in the E.U. its risen only 90% vs. the Euro. This price shock is only now rifling through our economy. Independent truckers have been absorbing much of these increases with savings and bank credit. They are at the end of their money. Increases of 50% or more will be needed to continue to bring food to you and me. Real 3^rd world type hyper-inflation is at the beginning stages in our economy.

Reluctant Predictions

1. Inflation rates of more than 30% per year.
2. Food spoiling in fields and in distributions centers.
3. Shortages of foodstuffs and common continence items.
4. Tightening of Credit to slow the depreciation of the dollar that will force many small businesses out of business.
5. A recession if we are lucky, but it will be a depression for many that are affected from the coming business contractions.
6. The Misery Index will again be with us at 60-80%. That’s 30% Inflation, 20+ % Unemployment and 20% Interest Rates.

Hope I’m Wrong. You'll be able to tell by December.