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SCOOTER ROOTER Paul McAdamis isn’t
your typical scooter hobbyist — the man means business. When gas prices hit the $4 per gallon mark and kept
going up, McAdamis parked his pick-up truck and purchased a black Yamaha
Vino 125. He now scoots to Memorial Hospital, where he works as a clinical
laboratory scientist, and everywhere else in town — sometimes with
his new wife, Katie, in tow. He rides rain-or-shine, wearing a slicker and booties
during wild weather. McAdamis wanted others to join in the fun, so a
couple of weeks ago, he formed the Springfield Scooter Club. He recruits
new members by flagging down scooter passersby and hosted the club’s
first jaunt through Washington and Lincoln parks last weekend. The next SSC round-up will head out at 2 p.m.
Saturday, June 28, from Grab-a-Java on Sixth Street. McAdamis says the
day’s destination will depend on who shows up and how fast they can
scoot. For more information, check out
www.springfieldscooterclub.com.
GATEHOUSE OR POOR HOUSE? Not long ago, Fairport, N.Y.-based GateHouse Media
was one of Wall Street’s favorite newspaper chains. Industry analysts
praised the firm’s business model, which focused on gathering
clusters of small-circulation titles and emphasizing local news.
What a difference a year, a soft advertising climate,
rising fixed costs, nervous shareholders, and a worsening economy make.
GateHouse’s stock is trading at around $3, down from a 52-week high
of $19.60 per share. And now Editor &
Publisher, the nation’s oldest journal
covering the newspaper biz, in a story about newspaper companies and debt,
is characterizing GateHouse as one of the most leveraged. “If
there’s a poster boy for the newspaper debt crisis, it’s
GateHouse Media,” write Mark Fitzgerald and Jennifer Saba in this month’s E & P.
Analysts quoted in the article paint an especially
gray picture for the State Journal-Register’s parent company. One points to GateHouse’s
above-normal debt ratio and “flat to declining” organic growth
coupled with “a lofty dividend.” Another media expert cited by
Fitzgerald and Saba warns that GateHouse “is in pretty bad
trouble.”
GateHouse’s credit rating is poised for a
possible downgrading by Moody’s Investor Service. Meanwhile, Mike Reed, GateHouse’s
chief executive officer, seems unfazed. Because his company’s
single-digit first quarter revenue loss was better than other media
firms’ double-digit dips, Reed believes they’ll eventually see
a turnaround, E & P reports.
DRIVING EXCITEMENT Scott McCoy grew up
across the street from Pontiac Correctional Facility, “within rifle
range of the guard tower,” he says. In fact, he recalls a guard
frequently sharing his lunch with neighborhood kids by lowering his
unwanted bananas on a string. He also remembers taping an occasional inmate
riot on his Beta Max camcorder. Now 37, all grown up and mayor of Pontiac, McCoy is
fighting to keep his neighborhood maximum-security prison open in the face
of Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s proposal to close the 137-year-old facility. Under
Blago’s plan, Pontiac’s 1,600 inmates would move to the
northwest corner of the state, to the spanking new Thomson Correctional
Facility — built in 2001 and never occupied. “Why is he targeting Pontiac? It’s an
older facility, but it’s been kept up. It’s state of the art,
and the second largest employer [behind Caterpillar] in our county,”
McCoy says. Hoping to dissuade the Gov from making “a
stupid decision,” McCoy plans to bring him face-to-face with the
people who care about the prison by having two photographers perched on
fire trucks take a photo of supporters — all mega-hundred of them
— Saturday morning at 10:30 in beautiful downtown Pontiac. Mayor
McCoy hopes they’ll all stick around for the Pontiac Cruise car show
later that day. McCoy is less concerned about the preference of the
inmates — 75 percent of whom come from Chicagoland. “I really
don’t care. They don’t get a choice,” he says.
“What I care about are jobs and the economy.”
CAT DIDN’T GET THEIR TONGUES “Take responsibility! Do the right
thing!” chanted Matt Gaines, an organizer for the Stop CAT Coalition, which accuses
Peoria-based machinery manufacturer Caterpillar of profiting from what the
group characterizes as Israel’s human rights abuses against
Palestinians. Ten minutes later, after several more outbursts,
security officials removed Gaines and two fellow protestors from last
week’s Caterpillar board of directors meeting in Chicago. “We were speaking for Palestinians who
couldn’t be there,” Gaines says. An international boycott and divestiture campaign
against Caterpillar has been underway since 2003, when one of the
company’s bulldozers was reportedly involved in the death of Rachel Corrie, an American
activist who was protesting the demolition of Palestinian homes and olive
orchards by Israel’s government. Close to 70 demonstrators carried banners and picket
signs outside the downtown meeting. Three investors voiced support for a
resolution requesting a full report “on Caterpillar’s foreign
sales of weapons-related products, and other equipment and services related
to those products for the past 10 years, including the country of
destination for the products,” according to a proxy statement. Caterpillar’s board denied the request,
however, stating that the company “does not manufacture or sell
weapons or weapon systems.”
SPRINGFIELD REPRESENTS As Katie Jasmon planned “Attacking MG,” she didn’t
know how many people would show up, so she didn’t set any goals and
she didn’t get her hopes up. But now she’ll tell you that the event’s
turnout was just as perfect as the weather. More than 200 runners and walkers trekked around the
Sacred Heart-Griffin track and nearly 100 swimmers dove into the Eisenhower
Pool on June 14 in efforts to raise research funds and awareness for
myasthenia gravis — a rare, incurable muscle disease that struck
Jasmon in 2007 [see Amanda Robert, “Defying the odds,” June 5].
The final contribution total isn’t tallied yet,
Jasmon says, but it looks like well over $20,000 will soon be on its way to
the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of Illinois.
This article appears in Jun 12-18, 2008.
