The crystal ball says ...

In an attempt to foresee the future, we borrowed 99-year-old Stutta Bubba's crystal ball -- one of her prized possessions from the old country -- and used it to predict the Herald-Standard's endorsement in the three-way race for two Democratic nominations for Fayette County commissioner.

If past patterns hold true, the newspaper will make this endorsement on Sunday, two days before Tuesday's primary election. That's the earliest it can publish something that it hopes will have an impact, while at the same time sucking up every possible advertising dollar from all candidates in the field.

We wiped off the fingerprints from Stutta Bubba's crystal ball, which she says was last used to predict whether we could believe what officials were telling us about the Fayette County Strategic Plan. You remember that, don't you? It was the dog-and-pony show whereby a gaggle of elected and appointed officials proclaimed that through their superb planning efforts, Fayette County was indeed on the move toward greatness.

"Zey patted zemselves on ze back zo hard, I tink zey broke zum bones," recalled Stutta Bubba, her wink proving that she didn't fall for it.
The Strategic Plan turned out to be, well, not so strategic -- unless you consider the region's highest unemployment rate and the second-biggest population loss in Pennsylvania to be worthy goals.

Back to the endorsement: We don't need a crystal ball to predict that the Herald-Standard will wholeheartedly endorse incumbents Vince Vicites and Vince Zapotosky. Seeking to throw everyone a bone, we predict they will praise challenger Al Ambrosini as a good guy with some good ideas, and as someone they would encourage to run for a different office to gain more experience.

We predict they will pay vague homage to the job done by the Vinces, and say that this
"team" deserves four more years to show what it can do before being shown the door, blah, blah, blah.

We can't foresee exactly what accomplishment they could praise the Vinces for, considering that any attempt to do that would be a real stretch of the facts. (Asking state or federal officials for grant money doesn't count in our book, because any county commissioner can and will do that.)

But you can be sure that one thing WON'T be mentioned: The $50,000 grant of county "tourism" money that rescusitated the newspaper's mothballed HSTV operation. When Republican commissioner Angela Zimmerlink raised a very legitimate question about the propriety of tax dollars ultimately being used to rent a newspaper-owned building, it didn't take long for the Herald-Standard to turn on the county's premiere watchdog, saying she had "turned into the worst kind of politician."

That's a supremely unfair assessment, of course, but it shows what can happen when you question the newspaper's revenue stream. Vicites and Zapotosky saw, and see, no problem with the arrangement. This may be because the new "tourism" channel has made a priority of broadcasting -- you guessed it -- Fayette County commissioner meetings! (We're still trying to figure out what those meetings have to do with tourism promotion, unless Vicites starts showing up dressed as Gen. George C. Marshall and Zapotosky dons the attire of the Marquis de Lafayette.)

In his Dec. 5, 2010 column entitled, "Ethics issues taken seriously," Herald-Standard editor Mark O'Keefe actually wrote, "If we can make money by renting one of our buildings, we have to do it." Does anyone besides us see the irony between that statement and the headline? The likely truth is, if any reporter or editor owned a building and entered into the exact same rental arrangement, he or she would probably be fired. (We hear former editor Mike Ellis was made to walk the plank for his involvement in a TV channel in Latrobe, 50 miles away.)

While Zimmerlink was being castigated as "the worst kind of politician," the Herald-Standard put on its kids gloves and served up a nice little fluff piece entitled, "Vicites witnesses other side of jury duty" (Jan. 11, 2011). In it, we got to read big news such as:

Vicites said he didn't make any attempt to get out of fulfilling his duty.

It was the first time the commissioner was called to serve on jury duty.

Although Vicites did not get chosen to serve on any of the juries that heard cases. he fulfilled his civic duty.

We can just hear someone saying, "Stop the presses!" for that news.

By the way, a new round of Fayette County tourism grants was awarded in late April, 24 to be exact. The Brownsville Area Revitalizatin Corp. got $5,000 for Nemacolin Castle. The Connellsville Area Historical Society got $9,000 for Gibson House. The Fayette County Agricultural Improvement Association, which runs the Fayette County Fair, got $39,902. The State Theater Center for the Arts in Uniontown got $30,000.

And the Redstone Foundation got $20,000 of these tourism funds "for administrative expenses, contracted services with the television studio, rent, purchasing of editing equipment, and the cost of making a short video."

It wouldn't surprise anyone in the patch if the "short video" ended up being used to promote the broadcast of Fayette County commission meetings on Fayette County TV.