There’s something profoundly tragic about the failed presidency of Barack Obama. He was supposed to be a new kind of president, a man who embodied hope and would transcend petty politics and even race. Instead, we’re left with a downgraded America that is stagnating under the weight of its bloated government. As tragic as that alone is, even this is but a mere symptom of Mr. Obama’s larger fundamental failure: He simply does not trust the Americans who entrusted him with the presidency.
Most presidents, we believe, ascend to the Oval Office, but for the 44th president, the reverse seems true. Whatever majesty the White House can muster must rise to the grandiosity of Barack Obama. “We are the ones we have been waiting for,” said the man who writes autobiographies and later would claim to control the rise of the oceans.
As recently as this month, the food-stamp president of 13 million unemployed Americans declared himself the fourth-most-accomplished president in the history of the United States, eclipsing, in his own mind, President Reagan and even our nation’s father, George Washington. That in only three years. Barack the Magnificent won’t allow trivialities like $15 trillion debts or historic national credit downgrades dissuade him.
Mr. Obama may care deeply for America, but he believes in only one thing: Barack Obama. And you are not Barack Obama.
Where once the American flag was hailed universally as the ultimate symbol of freedom, we who live under it have slowly but surely surrendered our liberties to an insatiable government. Consider our decline in just the past two generations. Our grandfathers, who stood against evil and shed their blood to stop it, never would have tolerated their own government becoming so totalitarian that it would dictate to them what car they should drive, what (if any) health insurance they should choose or even what light bulb they should buy.
Has our generation been worthy of earlier Americans’ sacrifices? Or have we surrendered their hard-fought victories in return for false promises of a big-government utopia that never materializes? Look no further than the politicians we elect. We have chosen as our president a man who believes we are unworthy, not of the previous generations’ sacrifices, but rather unworthy of freedom itself.
The sum total of Mr. Obama’s political philosophy, the unifying theme of his presidency, amounts to this: You cannot be trusted to live as a free American.
President Obama’s first major legislative action, the failed $787 stimulus, revealed his fundamental distrust of free Americans. A president who actually trusts his people would stand aside as they freely chose how to invest their capital and their labor. Mr. Obama, on the other hand, simply doesn’t believe you are smart enough to know what’s best for you. He commandeered nearly $1 trillion dollars from the taxpayers and redirected it as he saw fit. That he squandered billions on crony boondoggles such as the Solyndra solar-panel company or laughable efforts to measure the malt-liquor habits of Buffalonians and the like is evidence merely of his incompetence. That he trusted only himself to allocate taxpayers’ money in the first place - even if he had had the capacity to do so brilliantly - is evidence of a much larger offense: This president distrusts his subjects.
Obamacare is a modern-day monument to government arrogance. So untrustworthy are Americans that they cannot be allowed to decide for themselves whether to purchase health insurance or, if so, how much. Likewise, physicians are too untrustworthy to provide you with care without first consulting the government’s “best practices” guidelines. Obamacare would solve both.
Untrustworthy bankers would become angelic under the restrictions of Dodd-Frank. Untrustworthy bloggers would fall in line under the Stop Online Piracy Act. Untrustworthy manufacturers would create the only jobs worth having under the dictates of the National Labor Relations Board. And untrustworthy energy consumers would act responsibly only under the restrictions of “cap and trade” or at least a dictatorial Environmental Protection Agency.
For statists like Mr. Obama, no matter how bloated our government has become, America is forever just one legislative act away from utopia, if only those untrustworthy Americans would just get in line. The man who ran on hope has instead embraced a tragic pessimism that views all free Americans with disdain as either incompetent rubes in need of his salvation or unrighteous villains in need of his rules. Either way, Mr. Obama embraces a command-and-control government and rejects American freedom.
Mr. Obama’s distrust of Americans is his fatal flaw, and Republicans would be wise to exploit it fully. The GOP should resist the temptation simply to become a cleverer version of autocrats who pull the same powerful levers of government but in different directions. Instead, they should become the party that embraces liberty.
If the 2012 election is between Republicans and Democrats or even between conservatives and liberals, Republicans might win. But if the election is instead between a bloated, ineffectual government that distrusts its subjects and Americans who still yearn to breathe free, Republicans will win. Only then will voters have a dramatic choice between a party that trusts Americans to be free and a party that does not.
Dr. Milton R. Wolf, a Washington Times columnist, is a radiologist and President Obama’s cousin. He blogs at miltonwolf.com.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
The dirty secret in Uncle Sam’s Friday trash dump
Releasing information on the Friday before a big holiday is a time-tested way to bury bad news. So when the Government Accountability Office’s fiscal 2011 financial statements for the federal government were released on the Friday before Christmas, it made sense to read them closely.
Since 1997, the United States has been a rare example of a government willing to publish financial statements using accrual accounting, which counts the cost of promises made as well as cash paid out. And the GAO’s professionalism over the years has won it a reputation for impartiality and effectiveness.
That professionalism is evident in the GAO analysis of the net present value of the Social Security and Medicare promises Washington has made to Americans. “Net present value” means the total that would have to be set aside today to pay the costs of these programs in the future. The government puts these numbers in appendices, rather than in headlines. But the costs are real.
In fiscal 2011, the cost of the promises grew from $30.9 trillion to $33.8 trillion. To put that in context, consider that the total value of companies traded on U.S. stock markets is $13.1 trillion, based on the Wilshire 5000 index, and the value of the equity in U.S. taxpayers’ homes, according to Freddie Mac, is $6.2 trillion. Said another way, there is not enough wealth in America to meet those promises.
If the government followed corporate accounting rules, that $2.9 trillion increase would be added to the $1.3 trillion cash deficit for fiscal 2011 that has been widely reported. And a $4.2 trillion deficit is something that Americans need to know about.
The Treasury acknowledges the need to show an accrual-based deficit, but the only retirement accruals it includes in its “Citizen’s Guide” to the GAO numbers are for promises to direct government employees and veterans. Promises to the rest of Americans are excluded, even though they are multiples larger than the $10.2 trillion of government debt held by the public.
The latest GAO numbers are particularly interesting because of a change in accounting standards that requires the government to explain why the cost grew by $2.9 trillion. Fully $1.5 trillion of that reflects the aging of all 312 million Americans by one year. In the GAO report from fiscal 2001, the cost of promises was $17 trillion. The growth in the cost from $17 trillion to $33.8 trillion averages about $1.7 trillion per year. The GAO doesn’t specify numbers for the other nine years, but one suspects that aging has driven most of the growth in the cost of the promises.
The cost would have been a lot worse but for two assumptions that the GAO found questionable.
First, Medicare’s cost projections assume legally required decreases in reimbursement rates to doctors that Congress has ignored for years — the so-called doc fix. For these projections to be realized, Congress would have to abide by its own cost controls and allow an immediate 27 percent cut to doctors’ rates, which is very unlikely.
Second, the Medicare projections assume that the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) will reduce health-care cost growth by 1.1 percent per year, despite doubts voiced by the GAO and a panel appointed by the Medicare board of trustees.
The panel and the GAO recommended including an alternate scenario in the year-end figures, in which the doc fix continues and the ACA cost reductions do not materialize. The result is a $12.4 trillion increase in the cost of the promises, to more than $46 trillion. Given Congress’s history with the doc fix, and the general paralysis in Washington, it’s hard to argue with the GAO’s lack of confidence in Congress’s ability to honor its own cost controls.
If the government were a company, its huge and growing off-balance-sheet liabilities would set off alarm bells. But investor confidence has not been lost — Treasurys can still be sold at very attractive yields.
Confidence has been shaken, though, among the American people. Congress’s approval ratings are at record lows. Anger is flaring across the political spectrum, reflecting a sense that something has broken in our country.
In such an environment, is it right to release critical financial information the Friday before Christmas? Is it acceptable that politicians are not required to describe the cost of the promises they have made?
In 1990, the government required that companies begin to account for the net present value of retirement promises, not just current-year cash flows. General Motors began complying in 1992; and it recorded a $33.1 billion (pretax) charge to reflect the value of its promises up to that point, which led to what was then the largest annual loss in U.S. corporate history. Seventeen years later, the “free until accounted for” promises were a major factor in GM’s bankruptcy.
The United States is stronger than General Motors. And the good news is that small changes in health-care cost trends have a large impact on the government’s long-term promises. Our system is fixable. But our politics are toxic, and each side is dug into an ideological trench. In such an environment, when hard choices need to be made about promises and taxes, why should information be buried in an appendix?
Americans deserve better. One way for Washington to start earning back our trust is by giving us all the information, even if it is unpleasant.
Since 1997, the United States has been a rare example of a government willing to publish financial statements using accrual accounting, which counts the cost of promises made as well as cash paid out. And the GAO’s professionalism over the years has won it a reputation for impartiality and effectiveness.
That professionalism is evident in the GAO analysis of the net present value of the Social Security and Medicare promises Washington has made to Americans. “Net present value” means the total that would have to be set aside today to pay the costs of these programs in the future. The government puts these numbers in appendices, rather than in headlines. But the costs are real.
In fiscal 2011, the cost of the promises grew from $30.9 trillion to $33.8 trillion. To put that in context, consider that the total value of companies traded on U.S. stock markets is $13.1 trillion, based on the Wilshire 5000 index, and the value of the equity in U.S. taxpayers’ homes, according to Freddie Mac, is $6.2 trillion. Said another way, there is not enough wealth in America to meet those promises.
If the government followed corporate accounting rules, that $2.9 trillion increase would be added to the $1.3 trillion cash deficit for fiscal 2011 that has been widely reported. And a $4.2 trillion deficit is something that Americans need to know about.
The Treasury acknowledges the need to show an accrual-based deficit, but the only retirement accruals it includes in its “Citizen’s Guide” to the GAO numbers are for promises to direct government employees and veterans. Promises to the rest of Americans are excluded, even though they are multiples larger than the $10.2 trillion of government debt held by the public.
The latest GAO numbers are particularly interesting because of a change in accounting standards that requires the government to explain why the cost grew by $2.9 trillion. Fully $1.5 trillion of that reflects the aging of all 312 million Americans by one year. In the GAO report from fiscal 2001, the cost of promises was $17 trillion. The growth in the cost from $17 trillion to $33.8 trillion averages about $1.7 trillion per year. The GAO doesn’t specify numbers for the other nine years, but one suspects that aging has driven most of the growth in the cost of the promises.
The cost would have been a lot worse but for two assumptions that the GAO found questionable.
First, Medicare’s cost projections assume legally required decreases in reimbursement rates to doctors that Congress has ignored for years — the so-called doc fix. For these projections to be realized, Congress would have to abide by its own cost controls and allow an immediate 27 percent cut to doctors’ rates, which is very unlikely.
Second, the Medicare projections assume that the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) will reduce health-care cost growth by 1.1 percent per year, despite doubts voiced by the GAO and a panel appointed by the Medicare board of trustees.
The panel and the GAO recommended including an alternate scenario in the year-end figures, in which the doc fix continues and the ACA cost reductions do not materialize. The result is a $12.4 trillion increase in the cost of the promises, to more than $46 trillion. Given Congress’s history with the doc fix, and the general paralysis in Washington, it’s hard to argue with the GAO’s lack of confidence in Congress’s ability to honor its own cost controls.
If the government were a company, its huge and growing off-balance-sheet liabilities would set off alarm bells. But investor confidence has not been lost — Treasurys can still be sold at very attractive yields.
Confidence has been shaken, though, among the American people. Congress’s approval ratings are at record lows. Anger is flaring across the political spectrum, reflecting a sense that something has broken in our country.
In such an environment, is it right to release critical financial information the Friday before Christmas? Is it acceptable that politicians are not required to describe the cost of the promises they have made?
In 1990, the government required that companies begin to account for the net present value of retirement promises, not just current-year cash flows. General Motors began complying in 1992; and it recorded a $33.1 billion (pretax) charge to reflect the value of its promises up to that point, which led to what was then the largest annual loss in U.S. corporate history. Seventeen years later, the “free until accounted for” promises were a major factor in GM’s bankruptcy.
The United States is stronger than General Motors. And the good news is that small changes in health-care cost trends have a large impact on the government’s long-term promises. Our system is fixable. But our politics are toxic, and each side is dug into an ideological trench. In such an environment, when hard choices need to be made about promises and taxes, why should information be buried in an appendix?
Americans deserve better. One way for Washington to start earning back our trust is by giving us all the information, even if it is unpleasant.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Where No Mortgage News Is Fit to Print
The New York Times op-ed page and the left-wing echo chamber.
When Joe Nocera was given a regular op-ed column in the New York Times, there was kind of a collective “uh-oh” among people who have watched the gradual slide of that page into Krugmanism and ideological irrelevance. I was one of them, but thought there might be some hope. Some of his columns in the Times business section had suggested a glimmering of a willingness to consider other points of view and even facts.
At first, I was disappointed. As he said in today’s column, he called my dissent from the majority report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission “lonely” and “loony.” That was fairly nasty, but I have been called much worse by the hard Left. We had a few more skirmishes, and then he made a truly serious error, blindly following his lefty views in calling the Tea Party “terrorists.” At that point, I wrote him:
Joe: Weren’t you one of the ones on the left who blamed Gabby Giffords’ shooting on right-wing rhetoric? As the victim of some very vicious and threatening e-mails from the left, I find it somewhat peculiar that you and your colleagues would be stirring up the dogs of war by calling your opposition terrorists at war on America. This sounds a bit hypocritical (or worse) to me. Wouldn’t it be better for someone in your position—writing for a newspaper that (given your recent attack on the WSJ) must stand for sober non-ideological discussion—to call for civility, rather than stirring up hatred? Would I be wrong to consider you no better than those who send me equally unbalanced e-mail? Peter
His response, I agreed, would be confidential; but a little while later, he publicly retracted the charge, and I wrote him again to note the praise he then received from the New York Times ombudsman.
I thought, at this point, that he would avoid following his colleague Paul Krugman over the ideological cliff. It was Krugman who famously wrote—when Fannie and Freddie were coming apart—that all the right-wing talk about those two firms acquiring subprime loans were lies. They weren’t even allowed by law to do so, said Krugman, once again following ideas he’d heard in the left-wing echo-chamber rather than doing even the most basic research into the facts. Krugman has disgraced himself as a scholar, but I still had some hope for Nocera.
During the past summer, I pointed out to him that another of his colleagues, Gretchen Morgenson, along with Josh Rosner, had written a book, Reckless Endangerment, that blamed the financial crisis largely on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That certainly didn’t penetrate; he’s now back in full-blinder mode refusing to look at facts—indeed, not even reading the things he cites as facts—in order to make an ideological point that will keep him in tune with the editorial position of his employer.
Nocera’s column today follows the SEC’s suit against Fannie and Freddie executives for “materially false” disclosures about the exposure of each firm to subprime loans. News articles over the weekend make clear what the SEC is arguing, so I won’t do it in this piece. Suffice it to say that in order to claim that Fannie, Freddie, and their executives misstated their exposure to subprime loans, the SEC had to decide what a subprime loan was. Reasonably, as is clear from the complaints, they concluded that a subprime loan was one that had a higher rate of serious delinquency (more than 90 days overdue) than a prime loan. It turns out that the standards used by the SEC are more inclusive than those my American Enterprise Institute colleague Ed Pinto and I have been using, and more inclusive than those I used in my dissent from the majority report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. Fannie and Freddie had even more low quality loans than we’d thought.
But Nocera’s column is full of errors that show he has not—as he claimed—read the complaints. For example, he states that there are “no damning e-mails in the complaint, with executives contradicting their public statements.” No. No e-mails, but the complaint against Freddie has something worse—that, over many years, the firm coded hundreds of billions of dollars in mortgages it was acquiring as “subprime” or “subprime-like,” even though its executives were reporting to the public and investors that their exposure to subprime loans was “less than 1 percent.” As to e-mails, those have already been published in an article by Charles Calomiris in the Wall Street Journal several weeks ago. He quoted from the chief risk officer of Freddie telling the chairman that the loans they were buying were poor quality and would cause losses. But the risk officer was ignored.
Even more seriously, he notes that the complaints didn’t have any “default data.” Leaving aside the question of whether that was necessary to show material misstatements about their subprime exposures, the complaints cite high rates of “serious delinquency,” which is of course a mortgage that is virtually in default, but not yet foreclosed. Since Fannie and Freddie are now insolvent, and have already cost the taxpayers about $150 billion, one would think there would be little argument about whether the loans they held were in fact subprime. But Nocera manages to do so, largely by following the absurd argument—another product of the left-wing echo-chamber—that Fannie and Freddie’s loans were not subprime because others were worse.
Now, in Noceraworld, even the SEC is part of the Wallison/Pinto cabal. Nocera writes: “The [SEC’s] complaint is extraordinarily weak. Taking cues from the Wallison/Pinto school of inflated data, it claims that Fannie and Freddie failed to reveal to investors the true extent of their subprime portfolios.” Ah, the power! I hope we can exercise it responsibly.
When Joe Nocera was given a regular op-ed column in the New York Times, there was kind of a collective “uh-oh” among people who have watched the gradual slide of that page into Krugmanism and ideological irrelevance. I was one of them, but thought there might be some hope. Some of his columns in the Times business section had suggested a glimmering of a willingness to consider other points of view and even facts.
At first, I was disappointed. As he said in today’s column, he called my dissent from the majority report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission “lonely” and “loony.” That was fairly nasty, but I have been called much worse by the hard Left. We had a few more skirmishes, and then he made a truly serious error, blindly following his lefty views in calling the Tea Party “terrorists.” At that point, I wrote him:
Joe: Weren’t you one of the ones on the left who blamed Gabby Giffords’ shooting on right-wing rhetoric? As the victim of some very vicious and threatening e-mails from the left, I find it somewhat peculiar that you and your colleagues would be stirring up the dogs of war by calling your opposition terrorists at war on America. This sounds a bit hypocritical (or worse) to me. Wouldn’t it be better for someone in your position—writing for a newspaper that (given your recent attack on the WSJ) must stand for sober non-ideological discussion—to call for civility, rather than stirring up hatred? Would I be wrong to consider you no better than those who send me equally unbalanced e-mail? Peter
His response, I agreed, would be confidential; but a little while later, he publicly retracted the charge, and I wrote him again to note the praise he then received from the New York Times ombudsman.
I thought, at this point, that he would avoid following his colleague Paul Krugman over the ideological cliff. It was Krugman who famously wrote—when Fannie and Freddie were coming apart—that all the right-wing talk about those two firms acquiring subprime loans were lies. They weren’t even allowed by law to do so, said Krugman, once again following ideas he’d heard in the left-wing echo-chamber rather than doing even the most basic research into the facts. Krugman has disgraced himself as a scholar, but I still had some hope for Nocera.
During the past summer, I pointed out to him that another of his colleagues, Gretchen Morgenson, along with Josh Rosner, had written a book, Reckless Endangerment, that blamed the financial crisis largely on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That certainly didn’t penetrate; he’s now back in full-blinder mode refusing to look at facts—indeed, not even reading the things he cites as facts—in order to make an ideological point that will keep him in tune with the editorial position of his employer.
Nocera’s column today follows the SEC’s suit against Fannie and Freddie executives for “materially false” disclosures about the exposure of each firm to subprime loans. News articles over the weekend make clear what the SEC is arguing, so I won’t do it in this piece. Suffice it to say that in order to claim that Fannie, Freddie, and their executives misstated their exposure to subprime loans, the SEC had to decide what a subprime loan was. Reasonably, as is clear from the complaints, they concluded that a subprime loan was one that had a higher rate of serious delinquency (more than 90 days overdue) than a prime loan. It turns out that the standards used by the SEC are more inclusive than those my American Enterprise Institute colleague Ed Pinto and I have been using, and more inclusive than those I used in my dissent from the majority report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. Fannie and Freddie had even more low quality loans than we’d thought.
But Nocera’s column is full of errors that show he has not—as he claimed—read the complaints. For example, he states that there are “no damning e-mails in the complaint, with executives contradicting their public statements.” No. No e-mails, but the complaint against Freddie has something worse—that, over many years, the firm coded hundreds of billions of dollars in mortgages it was acquiring as “subprime” or “subprime-like,” even though its executives were reporting to the public and investors that their exposure to subprime loans was “less than 1 percent.” As to e-mails, those have already been published in an article by Charles Calomiris in the Wall Street Journal several weeks ago. He quoted from the chief risk officer of Freddie telling the chairman that the loans they were buying were poor quality and would cause losses. But the risk officer was ignored.
Even more seriously, he notes that the complaints didn’t have any “default data.” Leaving aside the question of whether that was necessary to show material misstatements about their subprime exposures, the complaints cite high rates of “serious delinquency,” which is of course a mortgage that is virtually in default, but not yet foreclosed. Since Fannie and Freddie are now insolvent, and have already cost the taxpayers about $150 billion, one would think there would be little argument about whether the loans they held were in fact subprime. But Nocera manages to do so, largely by following the absurd argument—another product of the left-wing echo-chamber—that Fannie and Freddie’s loans were not subprime because others were worse.
Now, in Noceraworld, even the SEC is part of the Wallison/Pinto cabal. Nocera writes: “The [SEC’s] complaint is extraordinarily weak. Taking cues from the Wallison/Pinto school of inflated data, it claims that Fannie and Freddie failed to reveal to investors the true extent of their subprime portfolios.” Ah, the power! I hope we can exercise it responsibly.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Gingrich's Past vs. Romney & Obama's
By Thomas Sowell
If Newt Gingrich were being nominated for sainthood, many of us would vote very differently from the way we would vote if he were being nominated for a political office.
What the media call Gingrich's "baggage" concerns largely his personal life and the fact that he made a lot of money running a consulting firm after he left Congress. This kind of stuff makes lots of talking points that we will no doubt hear, again and again, over the next weeks and months.
But how much weight should we give to this stuff when we are talking about the future of a nation?
This is not just another election and Barack Obama is not just another president whose policies we may not like. With all of President Obama's broken promises, glib demagoguery and cynical political moves, one promise he has kept all too well. That was his boast on the eve of the 2008 election: "We are going to change the United States of America."
Many Americans are already saying that they can hardly recognize the country they grew up in. We have already started down the path that has led Western European nations to the brink of financial disaster.
Internationally, it is worse. A president who has pulled the rug out from under our allies, whether in Eastern Europe or the Middle East, tried to cozy up to our enemies, and has bowed low from the waist to foreign leaders certainly has not represented either the values or the interests of America. If he continues to do nothing that is likely to stop terrorist-sponsoring Iran from getting nuclear weapons, the consequences can be beyond our worst imagining.
Against this background, how much does Newt Gingrich's personal life matter, whether we accept his claim that he has now matured or his critics' claim that he has not? Nor should we sell the public short by saying that they are going to vote on the basis of tabloid stuff or media talking points, when the fate of this nation hangs in the balance.
Even back in the 19th century, when the scandal came out that Grover Cleveland had fathered a child out of wedlock -- and he publicly admitted it -- the voters nevertheless sent him to the White House, where he became one of the better presidents.
Do we wish we had another Ronald Reagan? We could certainly use one. But we have to play the hand we were dealt. And the Reagan card is not in the deck.
While the televised debates are what gave Newt Gingrich's candidacy a big boost, concrete accomplishments when in office are the real test. Gingrich engineered the first Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 40 years -- followed by the first balanced budget in 40 years. The media called it "the Clinton surplus" but all spending bills start in the House of Representatives, and Gingrich was Speaker of the House.
Speaker Gingrich also produced some long overdue welfare reforms, despite howls from liberals that the poor would be devastated. But nobody makes that claim any more.
Did Gingrich ruffle some feathers when he was Speaker of the House? Yes, enough for it to cost him that position. But he also showed that he could produce results.
In a world where we can make our choices only among the alternatives actually available, the question is whether Newt Gingrich is better than Barack Obama -- and better than Mitt Romney.
Romney is a smooth talker, but what did he actually accomplish as governor of Massachusetts, compared to what Gingrich accomplished as Speaker of the House? When you don't accomplish much, you don't ruffle many feathers. But is that what we want?
Can you name one important positive thing that Romney accomplished as governor of Massachusetts? Can anyone? Does a candidate who represents the bland leading the bland increase the chances of victory in November 2012? A lot of candidates like that have lost, from Thomas E. Dewey to John McCain.
Those who want to concentrate on the baggage in Newt Gingrich's past, rather than on the nation's future, should remember what Winston Churchill said: "If the past sits in judgment on the present, the future will be lost." If that means a second term for Barack Obama, then it means lost big time.
Copyright 2011, Creators Syndicate Inc.
If Newt Gingrich were being nominated for sainthood, many of us would vote very differently from the way we would vote if he were being nominated for a political office.
What the media call Gingrich's "baggage" concerns largely his personal life and the fact that he made a lot of money running a consulting firm after he left Congress. This kind of stuff makes lots of talking points that we will no doubt hear, again and again, over the next weeks and months.
But how much weight should we give to this stuff when we are talking about the future of a nation?
This is not just another election and Barack Obama is not just another president whose policies we may not like. With all of President Obama's broken promises, glib demagoguery and cynical political moves, one promise he has kept all too well. That was his boast on the eve of the 2008 election: "We are going to change the United States of America."
Many Americans are already saying that they can hardly recognize the country they grew up in. We have already started down the path that has led Western European nations to the brink of financial disaster.
Internationally, it is worse. A president who has pulled the rug out from under our allies, whether in Eastern Europe or the Middle East, tried to cozy up to our enemies, and has bowed low from the waist to foreign leaders certainly has not represented either the values or the interests of America. If he continues to do nothing that is likely to stop terrorist-sponsoring Iran from getting nuclear weapons, the consequences can be beyond our worst imagining.
Against this background, how much does Newt Gingrich's personal life matter, whether we accept his claim that he has now matured or his critics' claim that he has not? Nor should we sell the public short by saying that they are going to vote on the basis of tabloid stuff or media talking points, when the fate of this nation hangs in the balance.
Even back in the 19th century, when the scandal came out that Grover Cleveland had fathered a child out of wedlock -- and he publicly admitted it -- the voters nevertheless sent him to the White House, where he became one of the better presidents.
Do we wish we had another Ronald Reagan? We could certainly use one. But we have to play the hand we were dealt. And the Reagan card is not in the deck.
While the televised debates are what gave Newt Gingrich's candidacy a big boost, concrete accomplishments when in office are the real test. Gingrich engineered the first Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 40 years -- followed by the first balanced budget in 40 years. The media called it "the Clinton surplus" but all spending bills start in the House of Representatives, and Gingrich was Speaker of the House.
Speaker Gingrich also produced some long overdue welfare reforms, despite howls from liberals that the poor would be devastated. But nobody makes that claim any more.
Did Gingrich ruffle some feathers when he was Speaker of the House? Yes, enough for it to cost him that position. But he also showed that he could produce results.
In a world where we can make our choices only among the alternatives actually available, the question is whether Newt Gingrich is better than Barack Obama -- and better than Mitt Romney.
Romney is a smooth talker, but what did he actually accomplish as governor of Massachusetts, compared to what Gingrich accomplished as Speaker of the House? When you don't accomplish much, you don't ruffle many feathers. But is that what we want?
Can you name one important positive thing that Romney accomplished as governor of Massachusetts? Can anyone? Does a candidate who represents the bland leading the bland increase the chances of victory in November 2012? A lot of candidates like that have lost, from Thomas E. Dewey to John McCain.
Those who want to concentrate on the baggage in Newt Gingrich's past, rather than on the nation's future, should remember what Winston Churchill said: "If the past sits in judgment on the present, the future will be lost." If that means a second term for Barack Obama, then it means lost big time.
Copyright 2011, Creators Syndicate Inc.
Monday, December 19, 2011
One president, please, with a side of Rice - Washington Times
Republican diners haven't yet picked their entree, but they've narrowed it down to the steak or the fish. Still, just as interesting as their main course will be their side selection: Will they go for a drab salad, or something more exciting? Maybe a spicy Rice dish?
Yes, that Rice: Condi. She's rested and ready - and buff.
America's first black female secretary of state is quietly positioning herself to be the top choice of the eventual Republican presidential nominee, ready to deliver bona fide foreign-policy credentials lacking among the candidates. The 56-year-old has recently raised her profile, releasing her memoir in November and embarking on a monthlong book tour.
After 2 1/2 years as a professor at Stanford, Miss Rice is reportedly getting "antsy" to get back into the political game. "She's ready to go," said one top source.
Ready indeed. She still rises at 5:30 a.m. and runs through a vigorous P90X workout. (Her guns are now a match for those of first lady Michelle Obama.) Sure, she's been playing a lot of golf, and no doubt banging on the piano (sometimes with cellist Yo-Yo Ma), but she's clearly ready for more.
Her addition to the ticket, which wouldn't come until late next summer, would dramatically change the dynamics of the 2012 election. As a black woman - her family has roots in the Deep South stretching back to before Civil War era, and worked as sharecroppers after emancipation - she would mute Democrats' charges of racism among conservatives, especially tea party members. And her sex would likely prompt moderate women to take a serious look at the Republican ticket.
Plus, her selection would be a giant chess move to counter the expected replacement of Vice President Joseph R. Biden with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Sure, the White House denies and denies, but that should really make any political watcher more suspicious. One White House insider even told me that the position swap was the only reason Mrs. Clinton joined the administration in the first place.
Unlike 2008, when Miss Rice repeatedly played down all suggestions that she might like to join the Republican ticket as the vice presidential candidate, she is actively staying mum, while quietly encouraging speculation that she is ready to run.
Clearly, the 2012 election is shaping up to be all about the U.S. economy. Everything Mr. Obama has tried has failed, so American voters are looking for someone who can actually fix the problems. But what the Republican presidential hopefuls lack is foreign-policy experience.
Cue Miss Rice. With Vladimir Putin set to reascend to the Russian presidency, the Soviet scholar is perfectly suited for what's coming next.
Of course, like any black conservative (see Cain, Herman), she is mostly reviled in the black liberal community. In the midst of the Bush administration, Eugene Robinson, a columnist for The Washington Post, asked, "How did she come to a worldview so radically different from that of most black Americans?" Funny thing is, she is, unlike Barack Obama, an "American black."
And Miss Rice, in her inimitable way, had a response. "Why would I worry about something like that?" she said about the criticism. "The fact of the matter is I've been black all my life. Nobody needs to tell me how to be black."
The White House, through its Chicago mafia, was intent on taking out Mr. Cain. Unfortunately, he proved an easy target. But they were clearly frightened by a strong American black, even as a veep candidate. And yes, it won't be Mr. Cain - he is completely done.
But imagine the debate, whether it's against Mr. Biden or Mrs. Clinton: Miss Rice would bring a huge resume - not to mention a real understanding of the world, on which top Democrats seem to clueless. Talk to Iran? Um, maybe not. Negotiate with Mr. Putin: Been tried, doesn't work. And all issues of race would be moot.
There are a few other women available as down-ticket choices: Rep. Michele Bachmann will certainly be considered, as will Nikki Haley, the South Carolina governor who last week endorsed Mitt Romney. But nearly no one on the Republican side - man or woman - can deliver what Miss Rice can. And while you haven't yet heard her name when the political pundits tick off the top tier of vice-presidential players, you're about to. Starting today.
• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at jcurl@washingtontimes.com.
© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
Yes, that Rice: Condi. She's rested and ready - and buff.
America's first black female secretary of state is quietly positioning herself to be the top choice of the eventual Republican presidential nominee, ready to deliver bona fide foreign-policy credentials lacking among the candidates. The 56-year-old has recently raised her profile, releasing her memoir in November and embarking on a monthlong book tour.
After 2 1/2 years as a professor at Stanford, Miss Rice is reportedly getting "antsy" to get back into the political game. "She's ready to go," said one top source.
Ready indeed. She still rises at 5:30 a.m. and runs through a vigorous P90X workout. (Her guns are now a match for those of first lady Michelle Obama.) Sure, she's been playing a lot of golf, and no doubt banging on the piano (sometimes with cellist Yo-Yo Ma), but she's clearly ready for more.
Her addition to the ticket, which wouldn't come until late next summer, would dramatically change the dynamics of the 2012 election. As a black woman - her family has roots in the Deep South stretching back to before Civil War era, and worked as sharecroppers after emancipation - she would mute Democrats' charges of racism among conservatives, especially tea party members. And her sex would likely prompt moderate women to take a serious look at the Republican ticket.
Plus, her selection would be a giant chess move to counter the expected replacement of Vice President Joseph R. Biden with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Sure, the White House denies and denies, but that should really make any political watcher more suspicious. One White House insider even told me that the position swap was the only reason Mrs. Clinton joined the administration in the first place.
Unlike 2008, when Miss Rice repeatedly played down all suggestions that she might like to join the Republican ticket as the vice presidential candidate, she is actively staying mum, while quietly encouraging speculation that she is ready to run.
Clearly, the 2012 election is shaping up to be all about the U.S. economy. Everything Mr. Obama has tried has failed, so American voters are looking for someone who can actually fix the problems. But what the Republican presidential hopefuls lack is foreign-policy experience.
Cue Miss Rice. With Vladimir Putin set to reascend to the Russian presidency, the Soviet scholar is perfectly suited for what's coming next.
Of course, like any black conservative (see Cain, Herman), she is mostly reviled in the black liberal community. In the midst of the Bush administration, Eugene Robinson, a columnist for The Washington Post, asked, "How did she come to a worldview so radically different from that of most black Americans?" Funny thing is, she is, unlike Barack Obama, an "American black."
And Miss Rice, in her inimitable way, had a response. "Why would I worry about something like that?" she said about the criticism. "The fact of the matter is I've been black all my life. Nobody needs to tell me how to be black."
The White House, through its Chicago mafia, was intent on taking out Mr. Cain. Unfortunately, he proved an easy target. But they were clearly frightened by a strong American black, even as a veep candidate. And yes, it won't be Mr. Cain - he is completely done.
But imagine the debate, whether it's against Mr. Biden or Mrs. Clinton: Miss Rice would bring a huge resume - not to mention a real understanding of the world, on which top Democrats seem to clueless. Talk to Iran? Um, maybe not. Negotiate with Mr. Putin: Been tried, doesn't work. And all issues of race would be moot.
There are a few other women available as down-ticket choices: Rep. Michele Bachmann will certainly be considered, as will Nikki Haley, the South Carolina governor who last week endorsed Mitt Romney. But nearly no one on the Republican side - man or woman - can deliver what Miss Rice can. And while you haven't yet heard her name when the political pundits tick off the top tier of vice-presidential players, you're about to. Starting today.
• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at jcurl@washingtontimes.com.
© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Daily Maverick :: Amundsen, Scott, Shackleton: gentlemen adventurers of Antarctic
Amundsen, Scott, Shackleton: gentlemen adventurers of Antarctic
For men of the early twentieth century, the polar caps were the last real geographic extremities remaining to be conquered and explored. The goal of reaching the South Pole first set up a classic competition between British and Norwegian explorers, Robert F Scott and Roald Amundsen. J BROOKS SPECTOR looks back on the race into nothingness.
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Twenty-five years ago, I helped put together an international festival in Japan to celebrate the spirit of exploration. The project was the brainchild of Yuichiro Miura, the man who had once skied down Mt. Everest – and then climbed it again at the age of 75, just because it was there. Miura had also arranged for Sir Edmund Hillary, the man who had first conquered that mountain, to join this event. My task was to bring a team of active duty US astronauts to participate. All of these explorers were obviously brave – but they were also unusually modest and much given to denigrating their own uniqueness – whatever they had done was only because they were part of a larger team.
A subtext for the gathering was to add a final punctuation mark at the end of the age of Earth-bound exploration and – in those more innocent years before the Challenger disaster – to encourage the redirection of humanity’s energies onward into space exploration. We now know, of course, that it would be much harder, but then we could have learned much of that from a contemplation of the varied fates of the three contemporary polar explorers – Amundsen, Shackleton and Scott – as well.
The great terrestrial age of exploration, of course, had begun in the fifteenth century with the early voyages of men like Vasco da Gama and Columbus; continued through great voyages of exploration and science like those of Cook, Franklin and Darwin; and then reached a culmination with Amundsen’s march across Antarctica to the South Pole, a hundred years ago on 14 or 15 December (depending on which day of the antipodean International Date Line he had been standing on).
For men of the early twentieth century, save for a few mountains like Everest and K-2, the polar caps were the last real geographic extremities remaining to be conquered and explored. The optimism of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras made it seem certain everything was within the grasp of humankind – or shortly would be. Once Robert Peary and Mathew Henson had reached the North Pole in 1909 (even though their achievement remains disputed by champions of another would-be claimant, Frederick Cook), Antarctica was the one big geographic prize left. However, British derring-do and a near-mythic stiff upper lip – plus more lethal romanticism and obdurateness – were outdone by meticulous Scandanavian planning and preparation. The goal of reaching the South Pole first ultimately set up a classic competition between British and Norwegian explorers, Robert F Scott and Roald Amundsen.
Captain Robert Falcon Scott had already commanded a UK government-funded expedition to the Antarctic in 1901-04, years before his fatal journey. Scott’s three-man party joined him with his friend, Dr Edward Wilson and another adventurer-scientist, Ernest Shackleton. This expedition came within 660km of the Pole – and Scott returned home a national hero. However, following this trip, Scott and Shackleton had a less than friendly parting of the ways, leading Shackleton to skipper his own four-man expedition in 1907-09. This privately supported effort got a far as 160km of the Pole on 9 January 1909 before they too were forced to turn back. As a US Public Broadcasting Corporation documentary described Shackleton’s expedition:
“Shackleton earned the admiration of generations of explorers by making the agonising decision to turn back within 97 miles of the pole rather than risk the lives of his men. Writing to his wife Emily, he quipped, ‘I thought you'd rather have a live donkey than a dead lion.’ A second party, including Sir Douglas Mawson, was the first to reach the South Magnetic Pole with an epic 1,260-mile march and to scale the volcanic Mount Erebus. The expedition also supported significant scientific research.”
Robert Falcon Scott
When Scott learned that his former expedition mate’s latest effort had also failed, Scott decided to go for a second try. Given his own status as a certified national hero, Scott ended up making his preparations under the glare of full-on media attention, unaware that yet another rival was secretly planning to claim the prize instead.
Norwegian Captain Roald Amundsen was also a highly regarded explorer, having navigated the North West Passage above Canada and Alaska, as well as having been one of the first men to winter south of the Antarctic Circle. Amundsen’s dream since childhood had been to be the first person to reach the North Pole, but once that goal was snapped from his grasp, he turned his attention southward instead. In contrast to Scott’s efforts, Amundsen carried out his preparations close-hold to prevent anyone from trying to stop him.
Meanwhile Scott continued with his highly public prep, even deciding to take along some paying guests, such as army captain Lawrence Oates who volunteered to take charge of the draft ponies. Scott’s expedition left Cardiff in June 1910. En route to the Antarctic, Scott stopped in Australia where he received an enigmatic telegram from the Atlantic island of Madeira that read: “Beg leave to inform you Fram [Amundsen’s ship] proceeding Antarctic. Amundsen”.
Amundsen, still playing a very close hand, did not tell his crew where they were headed until reaching Madeira, where he offered them the opportunity to disembark if they wished – although none did. Amundsen’s team all had significant experience in the Arctic and he was convinced that using cross-country skis and sled dogs would be the best way to carry out a race across the Antarctic.
In January, Scott’s party set up camp on Ross Island in McMurdo Sound, just off the continent. Scott had planned to use the route Shackleton had pioneered, up the Beardmore Glacier and then on to the Polar Plateau to the actual goal. Prior to the actual run, his supply teams set up food and equipment caches along the planned route. However, these advance trips led to breakdowns of Scott’s motorised transports and also inflicted real suffering on his draft ponies. As a result, the main “One Ton” supply depot ended up being placed less far south than Scott had planned – setting in motion some of the fatal problems that doomed Scott’s return from the Pole.
By contrast, Amundsen had correctly guessed there was a viable alternative to the Shackleton route. The Norwegian expedition arrived at the Bay of Whales in January, about 640km from the British camp, and they took a risk in placing their base camp on the ice sheet. Using dog teams to preposition supplies, these were placed further south than Scott's supplies. Amundsen set off for the Pole early in the season but severe temperatures of -40°C drove the Norwegians back to their base, leading to a mutiny among the team. Amundsen then regrouped and dropped the size of the Polar party from eight down to five and this smaller group left for their race to the Pole on 20 October, using some fifty dogs in teams.
Roald Amundsen
Ten days later, Scott left his own base camp with support parties, motorised sleds, dogs and ponies for his own run at the Pole. Amundsen was aware of Scott's motorised transports (certainly an innovation back in 1911) but he did not know that mechanical failures had led to their abandonment, setting Scott’s run in trouble from the beginning. Along the way, it became clear that his ponies were unsuited for the extreme conditions and they were successively killed to provide meat for the explorer team. Eventually the men began to pull their supply sleds themselves after the dog teams were sent back as well – something that exhausted the men as well. As a BBC documentary described Scott’s motivation in making the men haul their supplies explained, it “was exhausting work but Scott believed it was less cruel than using animals and more noble.”
By contrast, Amundsen’s group was making fast progress via the Axel Heiberg Glacier and across the Polar Plateau. And at 3pm on 15 December 1911 (or 14 December, depending on that date line question), the Norwegians reached the Pole where expedition team member Olav Bjaaland took the historic photos and Amundsen wrote in his diary, “So we arrived and were able to plant our flag at the geographical South Pole. God be thanked!” Amundsen's tasks now were to make a safe return and be first with the news of his achievement.
By then, Scott had chosen his final team for the last push, adding a fifth man to the group, Scotsman Lt. Henry “Birdie” Bowers, because his character appealed to Scott. Bowers was strong, versatile and determined. However, while making it a five-man group supplemented manpower, it created new difficulties with rations and fuel.
Scott and his final team reached the Pole on 17 January 1912; but it was more than a month after Amundsen had left. Bowers saw the Norwegian camp and cached supplies, as well as their marker flag and a note for Scott to deliver to the Norwegian king in the event Amundsen did not make it home. But by that time the temperature had dropped even lower than it had been for Amundsen. As a result, Scott’s diary entry was significantly gloomier than his rival’s: “The POLE. Yes, but under very different circumstances from those expected. Great God! This is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority.”
Then Scott’s men began to die. Petty Officer Evans died on 17 February. A month later, Captain Oates, now crippled with frostbite, walked out of the party's tent on his 32nd birthday. Scott wrote Oates had said as he left “I am just going outside and may be some time.” Scott added “We knew that Oates was walking to his death... it was the act of a brave man and an English gentleman.” Only a few days later, the three remaining team members were waiting for death in a swirling blizzard, even as their supply depot was just 17kms away. Scott’s last diary entry read “We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity but I do not think I can write more – R Scott.”
Thirty-five years later, English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote the musical score for the heroic UK film, “Scott of the Antarctic”. He eventually reshaped the themes into his evocative “Symphony Antarctica”. Besides the usual orchestra and an augmented percussion section, Vaughan Williams added the organ, a women’s chorus, a solo soprano, a narrator and a wind machine.
The composer selected texts to come at the beginning of each movement, drawing from works by Shelley; Psalm 104; Coleridge and Scott’s own diary entry that read: “I do not regret this journey; we took risks, we knew we took them, things have come out against us, therefore we have no cause for complaint.”
Well-loved recordings of this work feature Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson for the voiceovers. The work makes it easy to contemplate Scott’s doomed expedition – and, with it, the passing of the last vestiges of splendid amateurism in exploration. DM
For men of the early twentieth century, the polar caps were the last real geographic extremities remaining to be conquered and explored. The goal of reaching the South Pole first set up a classic competition between British and Norwegian explorers, Robert F Scott and Roald Amundsen. J BROOKS SPECTOR looks back on the race into nothingness.
Tweet
Twenty-five years ago, I helped put together an international festival in Japan to celebrate the spirit of exploration. The project was the brainchild of Yuichiro Miura, the man who had once skied down Mt. Everest – and then climbed it again at the age of 75, just because it was there. Miura had also arranged for Sir Edmund Hillary, the man who had first conquered that mountain, to join this event. My task was to bring a team of active duty US astronauts to participate. All of these explorers were obviously brave – but they were also unusually modest and much given to denigrating their own uniqueness – whatever they had done was only because they were part of a larger team.
A subtext for the gathering was to add a final punctuation mark at the end of the age of Earth-bound exploration and – in those more innocent years before the Challenger disaster – to encourage the redirection of humanity’s energies onward into space exploration. We now know, of course, that it would be much harder, but then we could have learned much of that from a contemplation of the varied fates of the three contemporary polar explorers – Amundsen, Shackleton and Scott – as well.
The great terrestrial age of exploration, of course, had begun in the fifteenth century with the early voyages of men like Vasco da Gama and Columbus; continued through great voyages of exploration and science like those of Cook, Franklin and Darwin; and then reached a culmination with Amundsen’s march across Antarctica to the South Pole, a hundred years ago on 14 or 15 December (depending on which day of the antipodean International Date Line he had been standing on).
For men of the early twentieth century, save for a few mountains like Everest and K-2, the polar caps were the last real geographic extremities remaining to be conquered and explored. The optimism of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras made it seem certain everything was within the grasp of humankind – or shortly would be. Once Robert Peary and Mathew Henson had reached the North Pole in 1909 (even though their achievement remains disputed by champions of another would-be claimant, Frederick Cook), Antarctica was the one big geographic prize left. However, British derring-do and a near-mythic stiff upper lip – plus more lethal romanticism and obdurateness – were outdone by meticulous Scandanavian planning and preparation. The goal of reaching the South Pole first ultimately set up a classic competition between British and Norwegian explorers, Robert F Scott and Roald Amundsen.
Captain Robert Falcon Scott had already commanded a UK government-funded expedition to the Antarctic in 1901-04, years before his fatal journey. Scott’s three-man party joined him with his friend, Dr Edward Wilson and another adventurer-scientist, Ernest Shackleton. This expedition came within 660km of the Pole – and Scott returned home a national hero. However, following this trip, Scott and Shackleton had a less than friendly parting of the ways, leading Shackleton to skipper his own four-man expedition in 1907-09. This privately supported effort got a far as 160km of the Pole on 9 January 1909 before they too were forced to turn back. As a US Public Broadcasting Corporation documentary described Shackleton’s expedition:
“Shackleton earned the admiration of generations of explorers by making the agonising decision to turn back within 97 miles of the pole rather than risk the lives of his men. Writing to his wife Emily, he quipped, ‘I thought you'd rather have a live donkey than a dead lion.’ A second party, including Sir Douglas Mawson, was the first to reach the South Magnetic Pole with an epic 1,260-mile march and to scale the volcanic Mount Erebus. The expedition also supported significant scientific research.”
Robert Falcon Scott
When Scott learned that his former expedition mate’s latest effort had also failed, Scott decided to go for a second try. Given his own status as a certified national hero, Scott ended up making his preparations under the glare of full-on media attention, unaware that yet another rival was secretly planning to claim the prize instead.
Norwegian Captain Roald Amundsen was also a highly regarded explorer, having navigated the North West Passage above Canada and Alaska, as well as having been one of the first men to winter south of the Antarctic Circle. Amundsen’s dream since childhood had been to be the first person to reach the North Pole, but once that goal was snapped from his grasp, he turned his attention southward instead. In contrast to Scott’s efforts, Amundsen carried out his preparations close-hold to prevent anyone from trying to stop him.
Meanwhile Scott continued with his highly public prep, even deciding to take along some paying guests, such as army captain Lawrence Oates who volunteered to take charge of the draft ponies. Scott’s expedition left Cardiff in June 1910. En route to the Antarctic, Scott stopped in Australia where he received an enigmatic telegram from the Atlantic island of Madeira that read: “Beg leave to inform you Fram [Amundsen’s ship] proceeding Antarctic. Amundsen”.
Amundsen, still playing a very close hand, did not tell his crew where they were headed until reaching Madeira, where he offered them the opportunity to disembark if they wished – although none did. Amundsen’s team all had significant experience in the Arctic and he was convinced that using cross-country skis and sled dogs would be the best way to carry out a race across the Antarctic.
In January, Scott’s party set up camp on Ross Island in McMurdo Sound, just off the continent. Scott had planned to use the route Shackleton had pioneered, up the Beardmore Glacier and then on to the Polar Plateau to the actual goal. Prior to the actual run, his supply teams set up food and equipment caches along the planned route. However, these advance trips led to breakdowns of Scott’s motorised transports and also inflicted real suffering on his draft ponies. As a result, the main “One Ton” supply depot ended up being placed less far south than Scott had planned – setting in motion some of the fatal problems that doomed Scott’s return from the Pole.
By contrast, Amundsen had correctly guessed there was a viable alternative to the Shackleton route. The Norwegian expedition arrived at the Bay of Whales in January, about 640km from the British camp, and they took a risk in placing their base camp on the ice sheet. Using dog teams to preposition supplies, these were placed further south than Scott's supplies. Amundsen set off for the Pole early in the season but severe temperatures of -40°C drove the Norwegians back to their base, leading to a mutiny among the team. Amundsen then regrouped and dropped the size of the Polar party from eight down to five and this smaller group left for their race to the Pole on 20 October, using some fifty dogs in teams.
Roald Amundsen
Ten days later, Scott left his own base camp with support parties, motorised sleds, dogs and ponies for his own run at the Pole. Amundsen was aware of Scott's motorised transports (certainly an innovation back in 1911) but he did not know that mechanical failures had led to their abandonment, setting Scott’s run in trouble from the beginning. Along the way, it became clear that his ponies were unsuited for the extreme conditions and they were successively killed to provide meat for the explorer team. Eventually the men began to pull their supply sleds themselves after the dog teams were sent back as well – something that exhausted the men as well. As a BBC documentary described Scott’s motivation in making the men haul their supplies explained, it “was exhausting work but Scott believed it was less cruel than using animals and more noble.”
By contrast, Amundsen’s group was making fast progress via the Axel Heiberg Glacier and across the Polar Plateau. And at 3pm on 15 December 1911 (or 14 December, depending on that date line question), the Norwegians reached the Pole where expedition team member Olav Bjaaland took the historic photos and Amundsen wrote in his diary, “So we arrived and were able to plant our flag at the geographical South Pole. God be thanked!” Amundsen's tasks now were to make a safe return and be first with the news of his achievement.
By then, Scott had chosen his final team for the last push, adding a fifth man to the group, Scotsman Lt. Henry “Birdie” Bowers, because his character appealed to Scott. Bowers was strong, versatile and determined. However, while making it a five-man group supplemented manpower, it created new difficulties with rations and fuel.
Scott and his final team reached the Pole on 17 January 1912; but it was more than a month after Amundsen had left. Bowers saw the Norwegian camp and cached supplies, as well as their marker flag and a note for Scott to deliver to the Norwegian king in the event Amundsen did not make it home. But by that time the temperature had dropped even lower than it had been for Amundsen. As a result, Scott’s diary entry was significantly gloomier than his rival’s: “The POLE. Yes, but under very different circumstances from those expected. Great God! This is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority.”
Then Scott’s men began to die. Petty Officer Evans died on 17 February. A month later, Captain Oates, now crippled with frostbite, walked out of the party's tent on his 32nd birthday. Scott wrote Oates had said as he left “I am just going outside and may be some time.” Scott added “We knew that Oates was walking to his death... it was the act of a brave man and an English gentleman.” Only a few days later, the three remaining team members were waiting for death in a swirling blizzard, even as their supply depot was just 17kms away. Scott’s last diary entry read “We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity but I do not think I can write more – R Scott.”
Thirty-five years later, English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote the musical score for the heroic UK film, “Scott of the Antarctic”. He eventually reshaped the themes into his evocative “Symphony Antarctica”. Besides the usual orchestra and an augmented percussion section, Vaughan Williams added the organ, a women’s chorus, a solo soprano, a narrator and a wind machine.
The composer selected texts to come at the beginning of each movement, drawing from works by Shelley; Psalm 104; Coleridge and Scott’s own diary entry that read: “I do not regret this journey; we took risks, we knew we took them, things have come out against us, therefore we have no cause for complaint.”
Well-loved recordings of this work feature Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson for the voiceovers. The work makes it easy to contemplate Scott’s doomed expedition – and, with it, the passing of the last vestiges of splendid amateurism in exploration. DM
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Japan's Terrible Miscalculation
Japan's Terrible Miscalculation - http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/285095/pearl-harbor-day-infamy-jim-lacey
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
On Pearl Harbor
William Halsey could not hide his dismay and anger. When asked later about how America would recover, Halsey replied, “When this war is over the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell.” America had found the first of its fighting admirals.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Barkley not invited to Heisman ceremony
Reminds of all that is wrong with college football and why he current system must be brought down. One of the nominees who was invited isn't even the best (best his numbers) at his position in the nation. How does that work and who do we burn at the stake for putting us through this?
Also, a possible winner could be someone suspended for doing wrong? Wasn't that the whole point behind handing USC their ass and screwing Barkley and others out of bowls and possible national titles & trophies.
It's fucking criminal and even coaches are now standing up and voicing this concern, which may (if espnsec allows) bring change to the system of college football as a while, but do not hold your breath due to the tv money involved.
Oh and how the eff does a two loss team get seated higher than every one loss team for a bowl they had no chance (in a normal world) of getting without some serious rigging?
Forget it. USC is not playing until next year, so until spring ball football is over for me.
Also, a possible winner could be someone suspended for doing wrong? Wasn't that the whole point behind handing USC their ass and screwing Barkley and others out of bowls and possible national titles & trophies.
It's fucking criminal and even coaches are now standing up and voicing this concern, which may (if espnsec allows) bring change to the system of college football as a while, but do not hold your breath due to the tv money involved.
Oh and how the eff does a two loss team get seated higher than every one loss team for a bowl they had no chance (in a normal world) of getting without some serious rigging?
Forget it. USC is not playing until next year, so until spring ball football is over for me.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
PAC 12 Commissioner Larry Scott must love this.
Smooth move Larry! Putting on a sham show for the inaugural PAC 12 championship game. USC already beat both games playing in it, and now no one gives a rats ass about the outcome. 
Siri knows the truth.
Siri the new iPhone assistant knows just about everything there is to know about college football. 
Monday, November 14, 2011
Obamacare Is Bigger than Roe v. Wade
This morning, as expected, the Supreme Court agreed to take up Obamacare. What was unexpected — and unprecedented in modern times — is that it set aside five-and-a-half hours for the argument. Here are the issues the Court will decide:
Whether Congress has the power to enact the individual mandate. – 2 hours
Whether the challenge to the individual mandate is barred by the Anti-Injunction Act. – 1 hour
Whether and to what extent the individual mandate, if unconstitutional, is severable from the rest of the Act. – 90 minutes
Whether the new conditions on all federal Medicaid funding (expanding eligibility, greater coverage, etc.) constitute an unconstitutional coercion of the states. – 1 hour
In addition to the length of argument, which we can expect to be heard over multiple days in March or April, perhaps the biggest surprise is the Court’s decision to review that fourth issue. There is no circuit split here — in large part because 26 states are already in this one suit — and no judge has yet voted to uphold what also be described as a claim that the federal government is “commandeering” the states to do its bidding. The Court probably took the case precisely because so many states have brought it; that former solicitor general Paul Clement is their lawyer also doesn’t hurt. As a practical matter, this could be a bigger deal than the individual mandate because, while Congress had never before tried an economic mandate, it certainly does attach plenty of strings to the grants it gives states — and the spending power is thought to be even broader than the power to regulate commerce.
In any event, the Supreme Court has now set the stage for the most significant case since Roe v. Wade. Indeed, this litigation implicates the future of the Republic as Roe never did. On both the individual-mandate and Medicaid-coercion issues, the Court will decide whether the Constitution’s structure — federalism and enumeration of powers — is judicially enforceable or whether Congress is the sole judge of its own authority. In other words, do we have a government of laws or men?
Whether Congress has the power to enact the individual mandate. – 2 hours
Whether the challenge to the individual mandate is barred by the Anti-Injunction Act. – 1 hour
Whether and to what extent the individual mandate, if unconstitutional, is severable from the rest of the Act. – 90 minutes
Whether the new conditions on all federal Medicaid funding (expanding eligibility, greater coverage, etc.) constitute an unconstitutional coercion of the states. – 1 hour
In addition to the length of argument, which we can expect to be heard over multiple days in March or April, perhaps the biggest surprise is the Court’s decision to review that fourth issue. There is no circuit split here — in large part because 26 states are already in this one suit — and no judge has yet voted to uphold what also be described as a claim that the federal government is “commandeering” the states to do its bidding. The Court probably took the case precisely because so many states have brought it; that former solicitor general Paul Clement is their lawyer also doesn’t hurt. As a practical matter, this could be a bigger deal than the individual mandate because, while Congress had never before tried an economic mandate, it certainly does attach plenty of strings to the grants it gives states — and the spending power is thought to be even broader than the power to regulate commerce.
In any event, the Supreme Court has now set the stage for the most significant case since Roe v. Wade. Indeed, this litigation implicates the future of the Republic as Roe never did. On both the individual-mandate and Medicaid-coercion issues, the Court will decide whether the Constitution’s structure — federalism and enumeration of powers — is judicially enforceable or whether Congress is the sole judge of its own authority. In other words, do we have a government of laws or men?
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Thursday, September 29, 2011
"Fast And Furious" Just Might Be President Obama's Watergate
Frank Miniter, who wrote this piece, is the author of Saving the Bill of Rights and The Ultimate Man’s Survival Guide.
Why a gunrunning scandal codenamed “Fast and Furious,” a program run secretly by the U.S. government that sent thousands of firearms over an international border and directly into the hands of criminals, hasn’t been pursued by an army of reporters all trying to be the next Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein is a story in itself.
But the state of modern journalism aside, this scandal is so inflammatory few realize that official records show the current director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), B. Todd Jones — yes the individual the Obama administration brought in to replace ATF Director Kenneth Melson Aug. 30 in an effort to deflect congressional criticism — also has questions to answer about his involvement in this gunrunning scandal.
Fast and Furious was an operation so cloak-and-dagger Mexican authorities weren’t even notified that thousands of semi-automatic firearms were being sold to people in Arizona thought to have links to Mexican drug cartels. According to ATF whistleblowers, in 2009 the U.S. government began instructing gun storeowners to break the law by selling firearms to suspected criminals. ATF agents then, again according to testimony by ATF agents turned whistleblowers, were ordered not to intercept the smugglers but rather to let the guns “walk” across the U.S.-Mexican border and into the hands of Mexican drug-trafficking organizations.
When the Gunrunning Program Began
A Jan. 8, 2010 briefing paper from the ATF Phoenix Field Division Group VII says: “This investigation has currently identified more than 20 individual connected straw purchasers…. To date (September 2009-present) this group has purchased in excess of 650 firearms (mainly AK-47 variants) for which they have paid cash totaling more than $350,000.”
This is an important fact because the U.S. Justice Department hasn’t made it clear to tell congressional investigators when the Fast and Furious operation began and who authorized it; as a result, this ATF briefing paper’s mention of September 2009 is thus far the earliest we can trace the operation.
The next important event we know of occurred in October 2009 when the ATF’s Phoenix Field Division established a gun-trafficking group called “Group VII.” Group VII began using the strategy of allowing suspects to walk away with illegally purchased guns, according to a report from the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the staff of Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. The report says, “The purpose was to wait and watch, in hope that law enforcement could identify other members of a trafficking network and build a large, complex conspiracy case…. Group VII initially began using the new gunwalking tactics in one of its investigations to further the Department’s strategy. The case was soon renamed ‘Operation Fast and Furious.’”
This report and later official explanations from the ATF say the Fast and Furious program was created to deal with the problem that arresting low-level suspects doesn’t necessarily help ATF agents get to the heads of Mexican cartels.
On Oct. 26, 2009, a month or so after Fast and Furious seems to have been initiated, a document shows that a teleconference was held between 13 officials. One of the issues discussed was the possible “adoption of the Department’s strategy for Combating Mexican Drug Cartels.” The officials listed to have been in on the call included Kenneth Melson, who was then the director of the ATF, Robert Mueller, the director of the FBI and a number of attorneys with the U.S. Department of Justice. B. Todd Jones, the current director of the ATF, was not listed in the document, but the title he held in September 2009 is listed as being in on the conference call. It doesn’t take much reporting to find out that in September 2009 Jones was the chair of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee (AGAC) and so was at least supposed to be in on the conference call. (When asked about the teleconference, an ATF spokeswoman told us “we don’t discuss active investigations.”)
Of course, we don’t know precisely what was discussed in the teleconference, but given that the Fast and Furious program likely began a month or more before the teleconference, and given that it was a new program designed to send firearms over an international border, it would seem odd if Fast and Furious was not discussed and therefore that Jones, at the very least, had heard about the program in October 2009; though, unless further documents come out as to what was said, he certainly has deniability.
Gun Storeowners Become Pawns
For political context we now need to step back to April 16, 2009 — four or five months before we think Fast and Furious began. On this day President Barack Obama was visiting Mexico. While there he said, “This war is being waged with guns purchased not here but in the United States … more than 90% of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that lay in our shared border.”
This 90% statistic was, to be kind, math so shoddy a third grader should know better.
The figure was based only on guns the Mexican government sent to the ATF for tracing. On April 2, 2009, Fox News reported that, according to statistics from the Mexican government, only about a third of the guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico are submitted to the ATF. The Mexicans, as it turns out, only send guns to the ATF they think came from the U.S. Also, many guns submitted to the ATF by the Mexicans cannot be traced. As a result, the reporters determined that only 17% of guns found at Mexican crime scenes have been traced by the ATF to the U.S.
Now, because President Obama used the made-up 90% figure to push political positions — he was using the statistic to argue that the U.S. needs more gun-control laws — it’s difficult not to sniff politics in what happened next.
Later in 2009 the ATF started the Fast and Furious program by allowing firearms to be smuggled from U.S. gun stores into the arsenals of Mexican criminal gangs. As these guns wouldn’t be seen again until they resurfaced in crimes (there were no tracking devices installed or other means to trace these guns), the only purpose for letting these guns “walk” seems to be to back up the president’s position that guns used in Mexican crimes mostly come from the U.S. (Though the Obama administration insists the gun sales were a part of a new crime-fighting technique.) Also, given the cover up that has ensued since Fast and Furious broke, it doesn’t seem like a conspiratorial leap to conclude that politics mixed with policy to create this crazy program. (But again, administration officials insist this wasn’t about politics.)
Gun storeowners have a right to think it was about politics.
Sometime around September 2009, ATF agents began pressuring gun storeowners in Arizona to sell firearms to people the ATF thought would sell the guns to Mexican cartels and gangs. As gun-storeowners can’t do business without federal licenses, and because the ATF has the authority to shut down a gun store if the establishment’s paperwork isn’t in order, these requests were likely taken as orders. This put the gun storeowners in a catch-22: the law requires them to report suspicious activity and not to sell to people they think are breaking the law, yet the ATF was telling them to sell to suspicious people who wanted to buy AK-47s by the dozen.
Actually, it’s even worse than that: According to court records obtained by Fox News, two of 20 alleged smugglers who were later indicted in the Fast and Furious investigation had felony convictions. As gun-stores must run a person’s name through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) before selling that person a firearm, this should have stopped these felons from buying even one measly.22 rifle.
Congressional and law-enforcement sources say this situation suggests the FBI, which operates the NICS system, had to have knowingly allowed the purchases to go forward after consulting with the ATF. Given that we know the director of the FBI was in on at least one early meeting on this issue, this seems logical.
One store, Lone Wolf Trading Company in Glendale, Ariz., soon became the smuggler’s favorite. Andre Howard, owner of Lone Wolf Trading Company, declined to comment to us about Fast and Furious because he is under a congressional subpoena; however, recordings taped by Howard of him speaking to an ATF agent have been released by the U.S. Department of Justice. One of the suspects the ATF was watching as he bought guns from Lone Wolf Trading Company was Jaime Avila. He allegedly bought AK-47s at Lone Wolf Trading Company that turned up at a crime scene in which drug smugglers killed a U.S. Border Patrol agent (more on this to come). The other was Uriel Patino. As the ATF watched, he bought hundreds of firearms from Lone Wolf Trading Company and reportedly sold them to Mexico’s brutal Sinoloa drug cartel
Meanwhile, on March 10, 2010, an internal e-mail from George T. Gillett Jr., assistant special agent in charge to David Voth, the ATF’s Phoenix Group VII supervisor, and others, said that ATF Acting Director Melson and ATF Deputy Director Billy Hoover “are being briefed weekly on this investigation and the recent success with [redacted] so they are both keenly interested in case updates.”
This email was released by Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) just before a June 15, 2011 investigative hearing of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee to show that officials in Washington, D.C., knew about this program.
As it turns out, ATF leadership was actually able to follow some of these illegal purchases live on closed-circuit television. In a news release in June 2011, Rep. Issa said as much: “Acting Director Melson was able to sit at his desk in Washington and himself watch a live feed of straw buyers entering the gun stores and purchasing dozens of AK-47 variants.”
Given that the director of the ATF, a department that is overseen by the U.S. Justice Department, was watching closed-circuit television of illegal gun sales that officials knew were likely to cross the U.S.-Mexican border, is it even conceivable that Attorney General Eric Holder didn’t know about this secret program? And if he didn’t, shouldn’t he have?
ATF Agents Begin Protesting
ATF field agents soon began to question the sanity of letting guns “walk.”
Evidently to quell internal dissension, on March 12, 2010 David Voth, the ATF’s Phoenix Group VII supervisor, sent an e-mail to field agents that said, “Whether you care or not people of rank and authority at HQ are paying close attention to this case and they also believe we (Phoenix Group VII) are doing what they envisioned the Southwest Border Groups doing.” Voth’s e-mail went on to say, “It may sound cheesy, but we are ‘The Tip of the ATF spear’ when it comes to Southwest Border Firearms Trafficking. We need to resolve our issues at this meeting. I will be damned if this case is going to suffer due to petty arguing, rumors or other adolescent behavior. If you don’t think this is fun you’re in the wrong line of work — period.”
ATF field agents were sending protests up their chain of command, because, as ATF Special Agent John Dodson told the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee on June 15, 2011, he and fellow agents were regularly ordered to abandon surveillance of suspicious gun purchases “knowing all the while that just days after these purchases, the guns that we saw these individuals buy would begin turning up at crime scenes in the United States and Mexico.”
ATF Special Agent Olindo James Casa also said at the June hearing that “on several occasions I personally requested to interdict or seize firearms, but I was always ordered to stand down and not to seize the firearms.”
Meanwhile, Mexican drug cartels were evidently finished sighting in their U.S.-bought AK-47′s and looking for bigger guns. On April 2, 2010, Voth sent an email to a government-redacted recipient that said, “Our subjects purchased 359 firearms during the month of March alone, to include numerous Barrett .50 caliber rifles.” These .50-caliber rifles are used for sniping by U.S. Special Forces and are a favorite of long-range shooters in America.
So far ATF officials seemed to be blissfully ignorant of how misguided this strategy would turn out to be.
Just as ATF agents feared, on Dec. 14, 2010, in the dark of night in a remote canyon in Rio Rico, Ariz., some of the firearms sent over the border to arm Mexican drug runners were used in a gun battle with the U.S. Border Patrol. During the gunfight, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, 40, was killed by suspected operatives of a Mexican drug-smuggling organization. After a battle that U.S. Border Patrol officers started by shooting bean bags at smugglers armed with AK-47s, police arrested four suspects and recovered three firearms from the scene that have since been traced to Fast and Furious.
Dodson’s greatest fear had become reality. He said before the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee: “We knew the next time we’d see the guns would be at crime scenes. And not the first crime these guns were used in, but at the last.”
When asked how he thought sending guns into Mexico could lead to busts of drug cartels, Dodson replied, “I have never heard an explanation from anyone involved in Operation Fast and Furious that I believe would justify what we did.”
If that wasn’t moving enough, during the same congressional hearing held last June, Josephine Terry — the mother of slain U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry — was asked if there is anything she would like to say to whomever approved Fast and Furious. After taking a moment to regain her composure, she said, “I don’t know what I would say to them, but I would like to know what they would say to me.”
Right after the shooting, we do know what some ATF officials were saying to each other. The day after Agent Terry was killed an e-mail exchange among ATF agents at 7:45 p.m. confirmed that two of the weapons that Jaime Avila had purchased as part of Operation Fast and Furious were found at Terry’s murder scene. The names on the e-mail were redacted by the government, but the email says, “The two firearms recovered by ATF this afternoon near Rio Rico, Arizona, in conjunction with the shooting death of U.S. Border Patrol agent Terry were identified as ‘Suspect Guns’ in the Fast and Furious investigation [REDACTED].” A third gun was later linked to the scene.
The Cover Up Begins
About five weeks before Agent Terry was slain, the 2010 election took place and the U.S. House of Representatives succumbed to Republican control in January 2011. This gave Rep. Issa a chance to investigate as whistleblowers came forward.
Meanwhile, as freshmen congressmen were settling into their new offices, on Jan.19, 2011, the ATF finally arrested the straw purchasers. On Jan. 25, 2011 Phoenix Special Agent in Charge William Newell held a press conference announcing the indictment of 20 people the ATF had been watching purchase firearms. However, when asked if agents purposefully allowed weapons to enter Mexico, Newell said, “Hell, no.” (In a “supplemental statement,” provided to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on July 26, 2011, Newell clarified his statements by saying agents did not knowingly allow thousands of weapons to reach criminal hands.)
Evidence soon showed this to be less than true.
On Jan. 27, 2011, Sen. Grassley wrote a letter to ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson that said: “Members of the Judiciary Committee have received numerous allegations that the ATF sanctioned the sale of hundreds of assault weapons to suspected straw purchasers, who then allegedly transported these weapons throughout the southwestern border area and into Mexico….”
Grassley requested that the ATF brief his staff on the matter.
Days later, on Jan. 31, 2011, Grassley wrote a second letter to Melson that claimed whistleblowers were being targeted. Grassley wrote, “This is exactly the wrong sort of reaction for the ATF. Rather than focusing on retaliating against whistleblowers, the ATF’s sole focus should be on finding and disclosing the truth as soon as possible.”
Despite growing evidence, on Feb. 4, 2011, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote Sen. Grassley and denied that the U.S. Justice Department “sanctioned” the sale of guns to people they believed were going to deliver them to Mexican drug cartels.
Then, on Feb. 15, 2011, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata was murdered in Mexico. The Associated Press reported (on Feb. 28), based on an unnamed source, that the weapon used to kill Zapata “was shipped through Laredo with the possible knowledge of the ATF.”
A week later, on Feb. 23, 2011, CBS Evening News ran a story on Operation Fast and Furious that included interviews with ATF whistleblowers who said they’d objected to the program. With pressure building, on March 8, 2011, the U.S. Justice Department told Sen. Grassley that the matter would be reviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General; however, this internal investigation seems to have become the official excuse for not giving congressional investigators everything they’re demanding.
On March 22, 2011 President Obama was finally asked about Operation Fast and Furious. The question came from Univision, a Spanish-language network. “Well, first of all,” answered President Obama, “I did not authorize [Fast and Furious]. Eric Holder, the attorney general, did not authorize it. There may be a situation here in which a serious mistake was made. If that’s the case, then we’ll find — find out and we’ll hold somebody accountable.”
On May 3, 2011, Attorney General Holder testified to the House Judiciary Committee. Rep. Darrell Issa and Holder had an exchange about Operation Fast and Furious. After a series of questions, Holder answered, “I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.”
Rep. Issa hasn’t been satisfied with this answer. He later said, “Are we confident that Eric Holder knew it much earlier? No. Did he know it earlier than he testified? Absolutely.”
On June 29, 2011 a reporter asked President Obama about the matter at a White House news conference. Obama said in part: “I’m not going to comment on the current investigation…. As soon as the investigation is complete, appropriate action will be taken.”
But just days later, on July 4, 2011, Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson surprised some by speaking to congressional investigators from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee. Melson met with investigators with his personal attorney present — not Justice Department attorneys.
The next day Rep. Issa and Sen. Grassley wrote a letter to Attorney General Holder about Melson’s testimony. The letter says Melson “claimed that ATF’s senior leadership would have preferred to be more cooperative with our inquiry much earlier in the process. However, he said that Justice Department officials directed them not to respond and took full control of replying to briefing and document requests from Congress.”
Melson was pointing to a cover up at the U.S. Justice Department while refusing to be a scapegoat. However, Tracy Schmaler, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice, said to us on Sept. 27, 2011 that no cover up is occurring. He said, “We have turned over thousands of documents, just what documents do you want?
Obviously perplexed with what to do with Melson, the U.S. Justice Department moved Melson to a new post inside the ATF, a position that protects his retirement package. Perhaps this is some of the “appropriate action” President Obama said would be taken, if so, more appropriate action soon followed.
The Obama administration next promoted some of the officials who ran the program. William G. McMahon, who was the ATF’s deputy director of operations in the West, William D. Newell, and David Voth, who were both field supervisors who oversaw the Fast and Furious program out of the agency’s Phoenix office, were promoted to positions in Washington, D.C. Voth is the one who said in an email, “If you don’t think [Fast and Furious] is fun you’re in the wrong line of work — period.” And, when asked if guns were being allowed to cross the southern border, Newell is the one who said, “Hell, no.” Yet both got cushy desk jobs in D.C.
Then, as if to shine a spotlight on how political the Fast and Furious operation always was, last August the Obama administration announced new firearm-reporting regulations that gun stores in southern border states must follow—this when gun storeowners have done everything asked of them and as the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the trade association that represents firearms manufacturers, pays for a longstanding program called “Don’t Lie for the Other Guy” (www.dontlie.org ) that combats illegal gun sales by raising awareness.
Also, the National Rifle Association has been on top of this story from the beginning. Chris W. Cox, the NRA’s chief lobbyist now says, “It would be a serious miscarriage of justice if no one is held accountable for this deadly scandal. The President and his Justice Department cannot run away from this. The NRA will make sure that every member, hunter, gun owner, and indeed every American, knows the truth about this reckless operation.”
Given all the politics and the cover up that even the former ATF director says has occurred, could operation Fast and Furious have been about anything other than pushing for new gun-control laws? And given all of this obfuscation from the Obama administration, isn’t this scandal comparable to the cover up that surrounded Watergate? After all, both administrations forgot that America is a country that reveres its freedom of the press and that in America officers speak out when misguided policies get cops killed. Here mothers testify before Congress when they find out a secret government program, and a stupid one at that, got their son killed.
Not that morality ends at the American border. To stress this point, Rep. Issa held a conference call with journalists on September 21 in which he said Marisela Morales, Mexico’s attorney general, is reporting that at least 200 Mexican deaths can now be traced to weapons from the Fast and Furious program.
And so the investigation and the bloody aftermath continue….
Frank Miniter is the author of Saving the Bill of Rights and The Ultimate Man’s Survival Guide
Why a gunrunning scandal codenamed “Fast and Furious,” a program run secretly by the U.S. government that sent thousands of firearms over an international border and directly into the hands of criminals, hasn’t been pursued by an army of reporters all trying to be the next Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein is a story in itself.
But the state of modern journalism aside, this scandal is so inflammatory few realize that official records show the current director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), B. Todd Jones — yes the individual the Obama administration brought in to replace ATF Director Kenneth Melson Aug. 30 in an effort to deflect congressional criticism — also has questions to answer about his involvement in this gunrunning scandal.
Fast and Furious was an operation so cloak-and-dagger Mexican authorities weren’t even notified that thousands of semi-automatic firearms were being sold to people in Arizona thought to have links to Mexican drug cartels. According to ATF whistleblowers, in 2009 the U.S. government began instructing gun storeowners to break the law by selling firearms to suspected criminals. ATF agents then, again according to testimony by ATF agents turned whistleblowers, were ordered not to intercept the smugglers but rather to let the guns “walk” across the U.S.-Mexican border and into the hands of Mexican drug-trafficking organizations.
When the Gunrunning Program Began
A Jan. 8, 2010 briefing paper from the ATF Phoenix Field Division Group VII says: “This investigation has currently identified more than 20 individual connected straw purchasers…. To date (September 2009-present) this group has purchased in excess of 650 firearms (mainly AK-47 variants) for which they have paid cash totaling more than $350,000.”
This is an important fact because the U.S. Justice Department hasn’t made it clear to tell congressional investigators when the Fast and Furious operation began and who authorized it; as a result, this ATF briefing paper’s mention of September 2009 is thus far the earliest we can trace the operation.
The next important event we know of occurred in October 2009 when the ATF’s Phoenix Field Division established a gun-trafficking group called “Group VII.” Group VII began using the strategy of allowing suspects to walk away with illegally purchased guns, according to a report from the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the staff of Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. The report says, “The purpose was to wait and watch, in hope that law enforcement could identify other members of a trafficking network and build a large, complex conspiracy case…. Group VII initially began using the new gunwalking tactics in one of its investigations to further the Department’s strategy. The case was soon renamed ‘Operation Fast and Furious.’”
This report and later official explanations from the ATF say the Fast and Furious program was created to deal with the problem that arresting low-level suspects doesn’t necessarily help ATF agents get to the heads of Mexican cartels.
On Oct. 26, 2009, a month or so after Fast and Furious seems to have been initiated, a document shows that a teleconference was held between 13 officials. One of the issues discussed was the possible “adoption of the Department’s strategy for Combating Mexican Drug Cartels.” The officials listed to have been in on the call included Kenneth Melson, who was then the director of the ATF, Robert Mueller, the director of the FBI and a number of attorneys with the U.S. Department of Justice. B. Todd Jones, the current director of the ATF, was not listed in the document, but the title he held in September 2009 is listed as being in on the conference call. It doesn’t take much reporting to find out that in September 2009 Jones was the chair of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee (AGAC) and so was at least supposed to be in on the conference call. (When asked about the teleconference, an ATF spokeswoman told us “we don’t discuss active investigations.”)
Of course, we don’t know precisely what was discussed in the teleconference, but given that the Fast and Furious program likely began a month or more before the teleconference, and given that it was a new program designed to send firearms over an international border, it would seem odd if Fast and Furious was not discussed and therefore that Jones, at the very least, had heard about the program in October 2009; though, unless further documents come out as to what was said, he certainly has deniability.
Gun Storeowners Become Pawns
For political context we now need to step back to April 16, 2009 — four or five months before we think Fast and Furious began. On this day President Barack Obama was visiting Mexico. While there he said, “This war is being waged with guns purchased not here but in the United States … more than 90% of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that lay in our shared border.”
This 90% statistic was, to be kind, math so shoddy a third grader should know better.
The figure was based only on guns the Mexican government sent to the ATF for tracing. On April 2, 2009, Fox News reported that, according to statistics from the Mexican government, only about a third of the guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico are submitted to the ATF. The Mexicans, as it turns out, only send guns to the ATF they think came from the U.S. Also, many guns submitted to the ATF by the Mexicans cannot be traced. As a result, the reporters determined that only 17% of guns found at Mexican crime scenes have been traced by the ATF to the U.S.
Now, because President Obama used the made-up 90% figure to push political positions — he was using the statistic to argue that the U.S. needs more gun-control laws — it’s difficult not to sniff politics in what happened next.
Later in 2009 the ATF started the Fast and Furious program by allowing firearms to be smuggled from U.S. gun stores into the arsenals of Mexican criminal gangs. As these guns wouldn’t be seen again until they resurfaced in crimes (there were no tracking devices installed or other means to trace these guns), the only purpose for letting these guns “walk” seems to be to back up the president’s position that guns used in Mexican crimes mostly come from the U.S. (Though the Obama administration insists the gun sales were a part of a new crime-fighting technique.) Also, given the cover up that has ensued since Fast and Furious broke, it doesn’t seem like a conspiratorial leap to conclude that politics mixed with policy to create this crazy program. (But again, administration officials insist this wasn’t about politics.)
Gun storeowners have a right to think it was about politics.
Sometime around September 2009, ATF agents began pressuring gun storeowners in Arizona to sell firearms to people the ATF thought would sell the guns to Mexican cartels and gangs. As gun-storeowners can’t do business without federal licenses, and because the ATF has the authority to shut down a gun store if the establishment’s paperwork isn’t in order, these requests were likely taken as orders. This put the gun storeowners in a catch-22: the law requires them to report suspicious activity and not to sell to people they think are breaking the law, yet the ATF was telling them to sell to suspicious people who wanted to buy AK-47s by the dozen.
Actually, it’s even worse than that: According to court records obtained by Fox News, two of 20 alleged smugglers who were later indicted in the Fast and Furious investigation had felony convictions. As gun-stores must run a person’s name through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) before selling that person a firearm, this should have stopped these felons from buying even one measly.22 rifle.
Congressional and law-enforcement sources say this situation suggests the FBI, which operates the NICS system, had to have knowingly allowed the purchases to go forward after consulting with the ATF. Given that we know the director of the FBI was in on at least one early meeting on this issue, this seems logical.
One store, Lone Wolf Trading Company in Glendale, Ariz., soon became the smuggler’s favorite. Andre Howard, owner of Lone Wolf Trading Company, declined to comment to us about Fast and Furious because he is under a congressional subpoena; however, recordings taped by Howard of him speaking to an ATF agent have been released by the U.S. Department of Justice. One of the suspects the ATF was watching as he bought guns from Lone Wolf Trading Company was Jaime Avila. He allegedly bought AK-47s at Lone Wolf Trading Company that turned up at a crime scene in which drug smugglers killed a U.S. Border Patrol agent (more on this to come). The other was Uriel Patino. As the ATF watched, he bought hundreds of firearms from Lone Wolf Trading Company and reportedly sold them to Mexico’s brutal Sinoloa drug cartel
Meanwhile, on March 10, 2010, an internal e-mail from George T. Gillett Jr., assistant special agent in charge to David Voth, the ATF’s Phoenix Group VII supervisor, and others, said that ATF Acting Director Melson and ATF Deputy Director Billy Hoover “are being briefed weekly on this investigation and the recent success with [redacted] so they are both keenly interested in case updates.”
This email was released by Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) just before a June 15, 2011 investigative hearing of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee to show that officials in Washington, D.C., knew about this program.
As it turns out, ATF leadership was actually able to follow some of these illegal purchases live on closed-circuit television. In a news release in June 2011, Rep. Issa said as much: “Acting Director Melson was able to sit at his desk in Washington and himself watch a live feed of straw buyers entering the gun stores and purchasing dozens of AK-47 variants.”
Given that the director of the ATF, a department that is overseen by the U.S. Justice Department, was watching closed-circuit television of illegal gun sales that officials knew were likely to cross the U.S.-Mexican border, is it even conceivable that Attorney General Eric Holder didn’t know about this secret program? And if he didn’t, shouldn’t he have?
ATF Agents Begin Protesting
ATF field agents soon began to question the sanity of letting guns “walk.”
Evidently to quell internal dissension, on March 12, 2010 David Voth, the ATF’s Phoenix Group VII supervisor, sent an e-mail to field agents that said, “Whether you care or not people of rank and authority at HQ are paying close attention to this case and they also believe we (Phoenix Group VII) are doing what they envisioned the Southwest Border Groups doing.” Voth’s e-mail went on to say, “It may sound cheesy, but we are ‘The Tip of the ATF spear’ when it comes to Southwest Border Firearms Trafficking. We need to resolve our issues at this meeting. I will be damned if this case is going to suffer due to petty arguing, rumors or other adolescent behavior. If you don’t think this is fun you’re in the wrong line of work — period.”
ATF field agents were sending protests up their chain of command, because, as ATF Special Agent John Dodson told the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee on June 15, 2011, he and fellow agents were regularly ordered to abandon surveillance of suspicious gun purchases “knowing all the while that just days after these purchases, the guns that we saw these individuals buy would begin turning up at crime scenes in the United States and Mexico.”
ATF Special Agent Olindo James Casa also said at the June hearing that “on several occasions I personally requested to interdict or seize firearms, but I was always ordered to stand down and not to seize the firearms.”
Meanwhile, Mexican drug cartels were evidently finished sighting in their U.S.-bought AK-47′s and looking for bigger guns. On April 2, 2010, Voth sent an email to a government-redacted recipient that said, “Our subjects purchased 359 firearms during the month of March alone, to include numerous Barrett .50 caliber rifles.” These .50-caliber rifles are used for sniping by U.S. Special Forces and are a favorite of long-range shooters in America.
So far ATF officials seemed to be blissfully ignorant of how misguided this strategy would turn out to be.
Just as ATF agents feared, on Dec. 14, 2010, in the dark of night in a remote canyon in Rio Rico, Ariz., some of the firearms sent over the border to arm Mexican drug runners were used in a gun battle with the U.S. Border Patrol. During the gunfight, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, 40, was killed by suspected operatives of a Mexican drug-smuggling organization. After a battle that U.S. Border Patrol officers started by shooting bean bags at smugglers armed with AK-47s, police arrested four suspects and recovered three firearms from the scene that have since been traced to Fast and Furious.
Dodson’s greatest fear had become reality. He said before the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee: “We knew the next time we’d see the guns would be at crime scenes. And not the first crime these guns were used in, but at the last.”
When asked how he thought sending guns into Mexico could lead to busts of drug cartels, Dodson replied, “I have never heard an explanation from anyone involved in Operation Fast and Furious that I believe would justify what we did.”
If that wasn’t moving enough, during the same congressional hearing held last June, Josephine Terry — the mother of slain U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry — was asked if there is anything she would like to say to whomever approved Fast and Furious. After taking a moment to regain her composure, she said, “I don’t know what I would say to them, but I would like to know what they would say to me.”
Right after the shooting, we do know what some ATF officials were saying to each other. The day after Agent Terry was killed an e-mail exchange among ATF agents at 7:45 p.m. confirmed that two of the weapons that Jaime Avila had purchased as part of Operation Fast and Furious were found at Terry’s murder scene. The names on the e-mail were redacted by the government, but the email says, “The two firearms recovered by ATF this afternoon near Rio Rico, Arizona, in conjunction with the shooting death of U.S. Border Patrol agent Terry were identified as ‘Suspect Guns’ in the Fast and Furious investigation [REDACTED].” A third gun was later linked to the scene.
The Cover Up Begins
About five weeks before Agent Terry was slain, the 2010 election took place and the U.S. House of Representatives succumbed to Republican control in January 2011. This gave Rep. Issa a chance to investigate as whistleblowers came forward.
Meanwhile, as freshmen congressmen were settling into their new offices, on Jan.19, 2011, the ATF finally arrested the straw purchasers. On Jan. 25, 2011 Phoenix Special Agent in Charge William Newell held a press conference announcing the indictment of 20 people the ATF had been watching purchase firearms. However, when asked if agents purposefully allowed weapons to enter Mexico, Newell said, “Hell, no.” (In a “supplemental statement,” provided to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on July 26, 2011, Newell clarified his statements by saying agents did not knowingly allow thousands of weapons to reach criminal hands.)
Evidence soon showed this to be less than true.
On Jan. 27, 2011, Sen. Grassley wrote a letter to ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson that said: “Members of the Judiciary Committee have received numerous allegations that the ATF sanctioned the sale of hundreds of assault weapons to suspected straw purchasers, who then allegedly transported these weapons throughout the southwestern border area and into Mexico….”
Grassley requested that the ATF brief his staff on the matter.
Days later, on Jan. 31, 2011, Grassley wrote a second letter to Melson that claimed whistleblowers were being targeted. Grassley wrote, “This is exactly the wrong sort of reaction for the ATF. Rather than focusing on retaliating against whistleblowers, the ATF’s sole focus should be on finding and disclosing the truth as soon as possible.”
Despite growing evidence, on Feb. 4, 2011, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote Sen. Grassley and denied that the U.S. Justice Department “sanctioned” the sale of guns to people they believed were going to deliver them to Mexican drug cartels.
Then, on Feb. 15, 2011, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata was murdered in Mexico. The Associated Press reported (on Feb. 28), based on an unnamed source, that the weapon used to kill Zapata “was shipped through Laredo with the possible knowledge of the ATF.”
A week later, on Feb. 23, 2011, CBS Evening News ran a story on Operation Fast and Furious that included interviews with ATF whistleblowers who said they’d objected to the program. With pressure building, on March 8, 2011, the U.S. Justice Department told Sen. Grassley that the matter would be reviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General; however, this internal investigation seems to have become the official excuse for not giving congressional investigators everything they’re demanding.
On March 22, 2011 President Obama was finally asked about Operation Fast and Furious. The question came from Univision, a Spanish-language network. “Well, first of all,” answered President Obama, “I did not authorize [Fast and Furious]. Eric Holder, the attorney general, did not authorize it. There may be a situation here in which a serious mistake was made. If that’s the case, then we’ll find — find out and we’ll hold somebody accountable.”
On May 3, 2011, Attorney General Holder testified to the House Judiciary Committee. Rep. Darrell Issa and Holder had an exchange about Operation Fast and Furious. After a series of questions, Holder answered, “I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.”
Rep. Issa hasn’t been satisfied with this answer. He later said, “Are we confident that Eric Holder knew it much earlier? No. Did he know it earlier than he testified? Absolutely.”
On June 29, 2011 a reporter asked President Obama about the matter at a White House news conference. Obama said in part: “I’m not going to comment on the current investigation…. As soon as the investigation is complete, appropriate action will be taken.”
But just days later, on July 4, 2011, Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson surprised some by speaking to congressional investigators from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee. Melson met with investigators with his personal attorney present — not Justice Department attorneys.
The next day Rep. Issa and Sen. Grassley wrote a letter to Attorney General Holder about Melson’s testimony. The letter says Melson “claimed that ATF’s senior leadership would have preferred to be more cooperative with our inquiry much earlier in the process. However, he said that Justice Department officials directed them not to respond and took full control of replying to briefing and document requests from Congress.”
Melson was pointing to a cover up at the U.S. Justice Department while refusing to be a scapegoat. However, Tracy Schmaler, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice, said to us on Sept. 27, 2011 that no cover up is occurring. He said, “We have turned over thousands of documents, just what documents do you want?
Obviously perplexed with what to do with Melson, the U.S. Justice Department moved Melson to a new post inside the ATF, a position that protects his retirement package. Perhaps this is some of the “appropriate action” President Obama said would be taken, if so, more appropriate action soon followed.
The Obama administration next promoted some of the officials who ran the program. William G. McMahon, who was the ATF’s deputy director of operations in the West, William D. Newell, and David Voth, who were both field supervisors who oversaw the Fast and Furious program out of the agency’s Phoenix office, were promoted to positions in Washington, D.C. Voth is the one who said in an email, “If you don’t think [Fast and Furious] is fun you’re in the wrong line of work — period.” And, when asked if guns were being allowed to cross the southern border, Newell is the one who said, “Hell, no.” Yet both got cushy desk jobs in D.C.
Then, as if to shine a spotlight on how political the Fast and Furious operation always was, last August the Obama administration announced new firearm-reporting regulations that gun stores in southern border states must follow—this when gun storeowners have done everything asked of them and as the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the trade association that represents firearms manufacturers, pays for a longstanding program called “Don’t Lie for the Other Guy” (www.dontlie.org ) that combats illegal gun sales by raising awareness.
Also, the National Rifle Association has been on top of this story from the beginning. Chris W. Cox, the NRA’s chief lobbyist now says, “It would be a serious miscarriage of justice if no one is held accountable for this deadly scandal. The President and his Justice Department cannot run away from this. The NRA will make sure that every member, hunter, gun owner, and indeed every American, knows the truth about this reckless operation.”
Given all the politics and the cover up that even the former ATF director says has occurred, could operation Fast and Furious have been about anything other than pushing for new gun-control laws? And given all of this obfuscation from the Obama administration, isn’t this scandal comparable to the cover up that surrounded Watergate? After all, both administrations forgot that America is a country that reveres its freedom of the press and that in America officers speak out when misguided policies get cops killed. Here mothers testify before Congress when they find out a secret government program, and a stupid one at that, got their son killed.
Not that morality ends at the American border. To stress this point, Rep. Issa held a conference call with journalists on September 21 in which he said Marisela Morales, Mexico’s attorney general, is reporting that at least 200 Mexican deaths can now be traced to weapons from the Fast and Furious program.
And so the investigation and the bloody aftermath continue….
Frank Miniter is the author of Saving the Bill of Rights and The Ultimate Man’s Survival Guide
ObamaCare: It Can Only Get Worse
By Debra Saunders
On Tuesday, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan gave a talk at Stanford's Hoover Institution on what should become the Republican Party's template behind its bid to "repeal and replace" Obamacare. Ryan cited the unintended consequences that employer-paid health care plans have delivered: "The system that shields us from the cost of services has actually left us paying much, much more."
On the same day, the Kaiser Family Foundation released a report that bolstered Ryan's argument. Over the past year, average annual cost for employer-sponsored health care plans rose 9 percent. Premiums have more than doubled since 2001. The average annual premium is now $15,073 per family -- and that doesn't include out-of-pocket payments.
With premiums rising higher than inflation, those numbers are biting into workers' paychecks. And there's little employers can do other than raise employee contributions from an average of $1,787 per family 10 years ago to $4,129 today.
The Affordable Care Act, signed by President Barack Obama, was supposed to rein in runaway health care costs. How's that going? Not as advertised. Even before the ACA takes full effect in 2014, today's mandates -- such as a requirement that employers offer coverage for adult children up to the age of 26 and that some plans provide free preventive care -- must be a factor in the cost spurt. The Kaiser report estimates that 2.3 million adult children were added to their parents' employer-sponsored plans because of the law.
Democrats complain about employers choosing to sit on their money and not hire. But their health care mandates serve as a tax on hiring workers.
It can only get worse. As providers consolidate, consumers' options decrease. Ryan told reporters after his talk that he sees a future in which, as with utilities, there are a mere "handful" of providers. That can't be good for consumers.
Ryan is probably the bravest Republican in Washington, because he trusts voters enough to lay out a GOP alternative. He crafted a budget, passed by the House, that would change Medicare into a "defined contribution" program in 2022. In essence, seniors would receive vouchers to purchase their own health plans.
The idea was to give seniors a stake in holding down health costs and the options necessary to do so. (Obamacare tries to control Medicare costs through the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which can set payments -- and arguably drive doctors out of Medicare.)
The Hoover talk brought the defined-contribution approach to employer-sponsored health care.
Under the status quo, many employees have neither the motivation nor the wherewithal to shop for the best care at the best price. The GOP plan would provide a $5,700 refundable tax credit to families, but workers would pay income tax on their employers' contributions.
Savings could result in one of two ways. Employers would have more flexibility in choosing coverage. Or employees could choose their own plan -- and take it with them if they wanted to start a business.
The result would be universal care but in a system, Ryan told me in an interview, that "reconnects the buyer and the seller." The downside: It could be more work for consumers. The upside: Employees actually might be able to pocket future raises instead of handing them over to an insurance company.
dsaunders@sfchronicle.com
On Tuesday, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan gave a talk at Stanford's Hoover Institution on what should become the Republican Party's template behind its bid to "repeal and replace" Obamacare. Ryan cited the unintended consequences that employer-paid health care plans have delivered: "The system that shields us from the cost of services has actually left us paying much, much more."
On the same day, the Kaiser Family Foundation released a report that bolstered Ryan's argument. Over the past year, average annual cost for employer-sponsored health care plans rose 9 percent. Premiums have more than doubled since 2001. The average annual premium is now $15,073 per family -- and that doesn't include out-of-pocket payments.
With premiums rising higher than inflation, those numbers are biting into workers' paychecks. And there's little employers can do other than raise employee contributions from an average of $1,787 per family 10 years ago to $4,129 today.
The Affordable Care Act, signed by President Barack Obama, was supposed to rein in runaway health care costs. How's that going? Not as advertised. Even before the ACA takes full effect in 2014, today's mandates -- such as a requirement that employers offer coverage for adult children up to the age of 26 and that some plans provide free preventive care -- must be a factor in the cost spurt. The Kaiser report estimates that 2.3 million adult children were added to their parents' employer-sponsored plans because of the law.
Democrats complain about employers choosing to sit on their money and not hire. But their health care mandates serve as a tax on hiring workers.
It can only get worse. As providers consolidate, consumers' options decrease. Ryan told reporters after his talk that he sees a future in which, as with utilities, there are a mere "handful" of providers. That can't be good for consumers.
Ryan is probably the bravest Republican in Washington, because he trusts voters enough to lay out a GOP alternative. He crafted a budget, passed by the House, that would change Medicare into a "defined contribution" program in 2022. In essence, seniors would receive vouchers to purchase their own health plans.
The idea was to give seniors a stake in holding down health costs and the options necessary to do so. (Obamacare tries to control Medicare costs through the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which can set payments -- and arguably drive doctors out of Medicare.)
The Hoover talk brought the defined-contribution approach to employer-sponsored health care.
Under the status quo, many employees have neither the motivation nor the wherewithal to shop for the best care at the best price. The GOP plan would provide a $5,700 refundable tax credit to families, but workers would pay income tax on their employers' contributions.
Savings could result in one of two ways. Employers would have more flexibility in choosing coverage. Or employees could choose their own plan -- and take it with them if they wanted to start a business.
The result would be universal care but in a system, Ryan told me in an interview, that "reconnects the buyer and the seller." The downside: It could be more work for consumers. The upside: Employees actually might be able to pocket future raises instead of handing them over to an insurance company.
dsaunders@sfchronicle.com
Holding Obama's Party Accountable
Barack Obama is on a far worse political trajectory than Jimmy Carter was. First, the Democrats lost Sen. Ted Kennedy's seat to a Republican in ultraliberal Massachusetts who campaigned against Kennedy's signature issue of national health insurance. Nothing that dramatic happened while Carter was President.
Then Democrats suffered historic, grievous losses in the 2010 midterm elections, with a New Deal size loss in the House of 63 seats, and a loss of 6 seats in the Senate. In Jimmy Carter's 1978 midterms, Democrats lost only 15 seats in the House and 3 seats in the Senate.
Now in the recent special election in New York City, Democrats have begun to lose seats they haven't lost since before the New Deal.
That is so fitting, because President Obama is not an anomaly in today's Democrat party. Quite to the contrary, he represents the party's heart and soul today, which is well to the Left now even of George McGovern in 1972. Witness the reelection of Far Left San Francisco Democrat Nancy Pelosi as House Democrat leader even after the historic voter repudiation of the Pelosi Democrat House majority in 2010. Witness the choice of Far Left screamer Debbie Wasserman Schultz as leader of the Democratic National Committee. Witness Obama EPA Chief Lisa Jackson, Obama Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, and the numerous similar, utterly clueless, ideologically rigid, far left appointees throughout the Obama Administration.
That is also so well deserved, because of what the Democrats are doing to our nation, even as their power starts to wane. Historically, for the American economy, the deeper the recession the stronger the recovery. Based on that historical record, we should be nearing the end of the second year of a booming recovery by now.
But almost four years after the last recession started, there still has been no real recovery. Unemployment is stuck over 9%, with unemployment among African-Americans, Hispanics, and teenagers at depression level double-digit rates for at least 2 years now. Real wages and incomes are falling, back to levels last seen over 30 years ago. Poverty is soaring to new records as well, with more Americans suffering in poverty than any time since the Census Bureau started keeping records over 50 years ago.
As a result, we are on track now for an historic conservative victory in 2012, far bigger even than in 1980.
The Do-Nothing Senate
In the Democrat majority-controlled Senate, 23 Democrat seats are subject to elections in 2012, with 6 of those open seats involving a retiring incumbent. Only 10 Republican seats are subject to election, with only two retirements from safe seats in Texas and Arizona. Let's compare the record of this Democrat-controlled Senate with the record of what the Republican-controlled House has already accomplished this year.
The first act of the Republican House was to pass repeal of Obamacare, reducing future taxes and spending by trillions. The Senate has failed to act on this at all.
The Republican House passed the budget proposed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, which would cut federal spending by $6.2 trillion over the first 10 years alone, and permanently balances the budget soon after that, as scored by CBO. Government spending as a percent of GDP would ultimately be reduced by 40% from current levels.
The Democrat-controlled Senate has failed to pass any budget at all, as required by law, for the second consecutive year now. At least they had the good sense to vote down Obama's proposed runaway budget, 97-0. But the failure to pass any budget leaves the government subject to possible shutdown this fall.
The Democrat Senate has also fought tooth and nail against every spending cut. They even threatened to shut down the entire government last week because the House Republicans funded emergency FEMA disaster relief spending with $1.5 billion in offsetting spending cuts, half of one thousandth of the entire federal budget. The cuts were to a Department of Energy corporate welfare loan program, like the program that just lost half a billion in taxpayer funds in the Solyndra bankruptcy scandal. Senate Democrat Majority Leader Harry Reid said this microscopic spending cut to a program with no valid justification was "not an honest effort at compromise," as quoted in USA Today on Monday. The shutdown was averted only because FEMA decided it didn't need the emergency funding after all, meaning the Senate Democrats were successful in nullifying the negligible spending cut.
The House also passed a Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would eliminate the government's power to run a deficit and increase the national debt. The Democrat-controlled Senate has failed to pass it.
To restore the creation of new jobs, the House passed the Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act, which would stop the imposition of federal regulatory burdens on farmers and small businesses that would impede job creation. The Democrat-controlled Senate has failed to do anything to stop the runaway regulatory burdens of the Obama Administration, killing jobs and the economy.
The House has also passed the Energy Tax Prevention Act, prohibiting any federal agency from imposing a national energy tax, which would only further destroy jobs and shortcircuit economic recovery. But the Democrat-controlled Senate has failed to act on it.
To restore the production of American energy, creating new high paying jobs and producing increased federal revenues from the resulting increased economic growth, the House has passed the Putting the Gulf of Mexico Back to Work Act, the Reversing President Obama's Offshore Moratorium Act, the Restarting American Offshore Leasing Now Act, and the Jobs and Energy Permitting Act. The House has also passed the North American-Made Energy Security Act, which would require the federal government to determine by a date certain whether to allow construction of the Keystone XL pipeline bringing Canadian oil to America's Gulf refineries. That would produce tens of thousands of new jobs and billions in increased federal revenues, but approval has been pending for the entire nearly 3 years of the Obama Administration.
But the Democrat-controlled Senate has failed to act on any of these bills either.
The House has also passed The Consumer Financial Protection and Soundness Improvement Act, which would restrict the new unelected Consumer Financial Protection Bureau adopted in Obama's Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill from imposing any regulations that hurt job growth. Once again, no action from the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Obama, now campaigning for reelection non-stop around the country, is already trying to blame a Do-Nothing Congress for his failures. But the Republican-controlled House has already been quite active in passing legislation to address the nation's problems. It is the Do-Nothing Democrat-controlled Senate that has failed to act on any of the House's accomplishments or even pass a budget as required by law, effectively failing to show up for work.
It is the 23 Democrats whose seats are up for election this year, almost half of all Senate Democrats, that make this Senate record possible, fighting to the bitter end even the smallest budget cut. Make sure your friends, neighbors and relatives know that by the time the election rolls around next year. Make sure they don't get fooled again by Democrat candidates claiming they are different, and not Obamanistas. Every one of those Democrat Senate seats make the Obama record of trashing America possible.
Keeping Faith with the Voters, to Their Political Risk
House Republicans, indeed, fought bravely and successfully in insisting this past summer on spending cuts equal to the debt limit increase, forcing some major spending cuts on President Obama and Senate Democrats. But the Republicans have suffered in the polls for doing so. How dare they demand such spending cuts instead of just routinely approving the debt increase as in the past?
But the House Republican majority was elected precisely to end business as usual in Washington in regard to spending, deficits and debt. What they did during the debt limit fight only kept faith with the voters that overwhelmingly elected them in 2010.
The Washington Post, however, reported on September 24, "Polls showed that voters were appalled by what they viewed as a naked display of political brinkmanship that risked destabilizing the U.S. economy." GOP pollster Bill McInturff was cited as concluding that "Voters lost faith [during the debt limit fight] in the ability of both President Obama and Congressional Republicans to 'make the right decisions about the economy.'" But McInturff said, "congressional Republicans had taken the bigger hit…with 81 percent of those surveyed saying they had little or no confidence in the judgment of the GOP."
The Post also cited veteran political analyst Charlie Cook as saying over the debt limit fight that "if lawmakers continue down this path, the 2012 election could bring the biggest, broadest anti-incumbent year of postwar history, with voters indiscriminately tossing out lawmakers in both parties." Cook is quoted as saying, "I don't know what these guys think they're doing, but it looks like they're committing political suicide."
Even some libertarians I know who have condemned Republicans in the past for failing to cut spending think they went too far in demanding spending cuts in the debt limit fight. Yet some Tea Party grassroots activists condemn House Republicans for too easily giving in without getting enough in spending cuts.
A Paul Revere Moment: America at Risk
This raises an important, fundamental question. Is the Right becoming too fractured to hold together to give Obama and the Democrats the beating in 2012 they have so richly earned? The decentralized Tea Party has so far been mostly brilliant in maintaining political effectiveness while not breaking apart the opposition to Obama. Libertarians have to recognize as well we are dealing with a new, mortal danger to the nation in the Obamanistas. Every patriot has to think through how to be most effective politically in reversing the Left's so far soft authoritarian coup in Obama’s Democrat party.
House Speaker John Boehner and his House majority need to stop being so passive in taking the verbal broadsides of Obama and the Democrat-controlled media. They have one unexploited advantage. They each have home districts all across the country where they are all well known and have thorough access to the media. They need to pursue a more aggressive campaign mode media strategy in getting the word out now on their record and the issues to their local districts. They need to recognize Obama has started campaign 2012 now and start competing on the issues.
The voters have a responsibility too not to be so easily misled by the Democrat-controlled media, and to help spread the word locally to those who are not paying enough attention. This is a Paul Revere moment. America is fundamentally at risk. Patriots need to act now with effective, organizing political action to save the country from an ongoing Marxist takeover.
A crucial battle is going on right now in the Republican presidential race, which the conservatives are presently losing. Too many conservatives in the race are dividing up the conservative vote and leaving the lead to the more moderate. Republicans need to nominate an articulate leader who can take on Obama in debate, and who will make the most of the sweeping conservative victory in store, like Reagan did. We need to have more focus both on who is credible in taking on Obama, and who has the principled spirit and experienced effectiveness in making the most of the coming historic victory with New Deal-sized Republican Congressional majorities.
Grassroots patriots also need to take the battle to the enablers. Publicly challenge and hold accountable the Obama corporate cronies funding the Obama campaign in return for taxpayer funded payoffs. Locally challenge and hold accountable the brain dead Obamanista supporters who so fundamentally misunderstand the roots of American prosperity that they would vote for a Marxist takeover that would mean the decline and fall of America.
Most fundamentally, blame the entire Democrat party for Obama and what he is doing to America. Don't let your friends, neighbors and relatives fall for shysters claiming that they are different from Obama and the other Democrats. If they are different, let them run as independents or Republicans, and be part of the solution rather than part of the gravely threatening problem.
Then Democrats suffered historic, grievous losses in the 2010 midterm elections, with a New Deal size loss in the House of 63 seats, and a loss of 6 seats in the Senate. In Jimmy Carter's 1978 midterms, Democrats lost only 15 seats in the House and 3 seats in the Senate.
Now in the recent special election in New York City, Democrats have begun to lose seats they haven't lost since before the New Deal.
That is so fitting, because President Obama is not an anomaly in today's Democrat party. Quite to the contrary, he represents the party's heart and soul today, which is well to the Left now even of George McGovern in 1972. Witness the reelection of Far Left San Francisco Democrat Nancy Pelosi as House Democrat leader even after the historic voter repudiation of the Pelosi Democrat House majority in 2010. Witness the choice of Far Left screamer Debbie Wasserman Schultz as leader of the Democratic National Committee. Witness Obama EPA Chief Lisa Jackson, Obama Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, and the numerous similar, utterly clueless, ideologically rigid, far left appointees throughout the Obama Administration.
That is also so well deserved, because of what the Democrats are doing to our nation, even as their power starts to wane. Historically, for the American economy, the deeper the recession the stronger the recovery. Based on that historical record, we should be nearing the end of the second year of a booming recovery by now.
But almost four years after the last recession started, there still has been no real recovery. Unemployment is stuck over 9%, with unemployment among African-Americans, Hispanics, and teenagers at depression level double-digit rates for at least 2 years now. Real wages and incomes are falling, back to levels last seen over 30 years ago. Poverty is soaring to new records as well, with more Americans suffering in poverty than any time since the Census Bureau started keeping records over 50 years ago.
As a result, we are on track now for an historic conservative victory in 2012, far bigger even than in 1980.
The Do-Nothing Senate
In the Democrat majority-controlled Senate, 23 Democrat seats are subject to elections in 2012, with 6 of those open seats involving a retiring incumbent. Only 10 Republican seats are subject to election, with only two retirements from safe seats in Texas and Arizona. Let's compare the record of this Democrat-controlled Senate with the record of what the Republican-controlled House has already accomplished this year.
The first act of the Republican House was to pass repeal of Obamacare, reducing future taxes and spending by trillions. The Senate has failed to act on this at all.
The Republican House passed the budget proposed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, which would cut federal spending by $6.2 trillion over the first 10 years alone, and permanently balances the budget soon after that, as scored by CBO. Government spending as a percent of GDP would ultimately be reduced by 40% from current levels.
The Democrat-controlled Senate has failed to pass any budget at all, as required by law, for the second consecutive year now. At least they had the good sense to vote down Obama's proposed runaway budget, 97-0. But the failure to pass any budget leaves the government subject to possible shutdown this fall.
The Democrat Senate has also fought tooth and nail against every spending cut. They even threatened to shut down the entire government last week because the House Republicans funded emergency FEMA disaster relief spending with $1.5 billion in offsetting spending cuts, half of one thousandth of the entire federal budget. The cuts were to a Department of Energy corporate welfare loan program, like the program that just lost half a billion in taxpayer funds in the Solyndra bankruptcy scandal. Senate Democrat Majority Leader Harry Reid said this microscopic spending cut to a program with no valid justification was "not an honest effort at compromise," as quoted in USA Today on Monday. The shutdown was averted only because FEMA decided it didn't need the emergency funding after all, meaning the Senate Democrats were successful in nullifying the negligible spending cut.
The House also passed a Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would eliminate the government's power to run a deficit and increase the national debt. The Democrat-controlled Senate has failed to pass it.
To restore the creation of new jobs, the House passed the Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act, which would stop the imposition of federal regulatory burdens on farmers and small businesses that would impede job creation. The Democrat-controlled Senate has failed to do anything to stop the runaway regulatory burdens of the Obama Administration, killing jobs and the economy.
The House has also passed the Energy Tax Prevention Act, prohibiting any federal agency from imposing a national energy tax, which would only further destroy jobs and shortcircuit economic recovery. But the Democrat-controlled Senate has failed to act on it.
To restore the production of American energy, creating new high paying jobs and producing increased federal revenues from the resulting increased economic growth, the House has passed the Putting the Gulf of Mexico Back to Work Act, the Reversing President Obama's Offshore Moratorium Act, the Restarting American Offshore Leasing Now Act, and the Jobs and Energy Permitting Act. The House has also passed the North American-Made Energy Security Act, which would require the federal government to determine by a date certain whether to allow construction of the Keystone XL pipeline bringing Canadian oil to America's Gulf refineries. That would produce tens of thousands of new jobs and billions in increased federal revenues, but approval has been pending for the entire nearly 3 years of the Obama Administration.
But the Democrat-controlled Senate has failed to act on any of these bills either.
The House has also passed The Consumer Financial Protection and Soundness Improvement Act, which would restrict the new unelected Consumer Financial Protection Bureau adopted in Obama's Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill from imposing any regulations that hurt job growth. Once again, no action from the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Obama, now campaigning for reelection non-stop around the country, is already trying to blame a Do-Nothing Congress for his failures. But the Republican-controlled House has already been quite active in passing legislation to address the nation's problems. It is the Do-Nothing Democrat-controlled Senate that has failed to act on any of the House's accomplishments or even pass a budget as required by law, effectively failing to show up for work.
It is the 23 Democrats whose seats are up for election this year, almost half of all Senate Democrats, that make this Senate record possible, fighting to the bitter end even the smallest budget cut. Make sure your friends, neighbors and relatives know that by the time the election rolls around next year. Make sure they don't get fooled again by Democrat candidates claiming they are different, and not Obamanistas. Every one of those Democrat Senate seats make the Obama record of trashing America possible.
Keeping Faith with the Voters, to Their Political Risk
House Republicans, indeed, fought bravely and successfully in insisting this past summer on spending cuts equal to the debt limit increase, forcing some major spending cuts on President Obama and Senate Democrats. But the Republicans have suffered in the polls for doing so. How dare they demand such spending cuts instead of just routinely approving the debt increase as in the past?
But the House Republican majority was elected precisely to end business as usual in Washington in regard to spending, deficits and debt. What they did during the debt limit fight only kept faith with the voters that overwhelmingly elected them in 2010.
The Washington Post, however, reported on September 24, "Polls showed that voters were appalled by what they viewed as a naked display of political brinkmanship that risked destabilizing the U.S. economy." GOP pollster Bill McInturff was cited as concluding that "Voters lost faith [during the debt limit fight] in the ability of both President Obama and Congressional Republicans to 'make the right decisions about the economy.'" But McInturff said, "congressional Republicans had taken the bigger hit…with 81 percent of those surveyed saying they had little or no confidence in the judgment of the GOP."
The Post also cited veteran political analyst Charlie Cook as saying over the debt limit fight that "if lawmakers continue down this path, the 2012 election could bring the biggest, broadest anti-incumbent year of postwar history, with voters indiscriminately tossing out lawmakers in both parties." Cook is quoted as saying, "I don't know what these guys think they're doing, but it looks like they're committing political suicide."
Even some libertarians I know who have condemned Republicans in the past for failing to cut spending think they went too far in demanding spending cuts in the debt limit fight. Yet some Tea Party grassroots activists condemn House Republicans for too easily giving in without getting enough in spending cuts.
A Paul Revere Moment: America at Risk
This raises an important, fundamental question. Is the Right becoming too fractured to hold together to give Obama and the Democrats the beating in 2012 they have so richly earned? The decentralized Tea Party has so far been mostly brilliant in maintaining political effectiveness while not breaking apart the opposition to Obama. Libertarians have to recognize as well we are dealing with a new, mortal danger to the nation in the Obamanistas. Every patriot has to think through how to be most effective politically in reversing the Left's so far soft authoritarian coup in Obama’s Democrat party.
House Speaker John Boehner and his House majority need to stop being so passive in taking the verbal broadsides of Obama and the Democrat-controlled media. They have one unexploited advantage. They each have home districts all across the country where they are all well known and have thorough access to the media. They need to pursue a more aggressive campaign mode media strategy in getting the word out now on their record and the issues to their local districts. They need to recognize Obama has started campaign 2012 now and start competing on the issues.
The voters have a responsibility too not to be so easily misled by the Democrat-controlled media, and to help spread the word locally to those who are not paying enough attention. This is a Paul Revere moment. America is fundamentally at risk. Patriots need to act now with effective, organizing political action to save the country from an ongoing Marxist takeover.
A crucial battle is going on right now in the Republican presidential race, which the conservatives are presently losing. Too many conservatives in the race are dividing up the conservative vote and leaving the lead to the more moderate. Republicans need to nominate an articulate leader who can take on Obama in debate, and who will make the most of the sweeping conservative victory in store, like Reagan did. We need to have more focus both on who is credible in taking on Obama, and who has the principled spirit and experienced effectiveness in making the most of the coming historic victory with New Deal-sized Republican Congressional majorities.
Grassroots patriots also need to take the battle to the enablers. Publicly challenge and hold accountable the Obama corporate cronies funding the Obama campaign in return for taxpayer funded payoffs. Locally challenge and hold accountable the brain dead Obamanista supporters who so fundamentally misunderstand the roots of American prosperity that they would vote for a Marxist takeover that would mean the decline and fall of America.
Most fundamentally, blame the entire Democrat party for Obama and what he is doing to America. Don't let your friends, neighbors and relatives fall for shysters claiming that they are different from Obama and the other Democrats. If they are different, let them run as independents or Republicans, and be part of the solution rather than part of the gravely threatening problem.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Sir Alex Ferguson claims football has sold soul to TV 'devil'
Sir Alex Ferguson has accused football of selling its soul to television and claimed that broadcasters do not pay enough money given the amount of control they exert over the game.
The Manchester United manager used his first in-depth BBC interview for almost a decade to berate the corrosive influence of television on the fixture list, despite the hundreds of millions of pounds it contributes to Manchester United's bottom line and its centrality to the business plan of the club's controversial owners.
"When you shake hands with the devil you have to pay the price. Television is God at the moment," said Ferguson, who agreed that broadcasters had "too much power". "It shows itself quite clearly because when you see the fixture lists come out now, they can pick and choose whenever they want the top teams on television," he added.
"You get some ridiculous situations when you're playing on Wednesday night in Europe and then at lunchtime the following Saturday. You ask any manager if they would pick that themselves and there'd be absolutely no chance."
Ferguson also said that broadcasters should pay more for the rights to live football, given the Premier League sold its product to more than 200 countries. "When you think of that I don't think we get enough money," he said.
The Premier League secured around £3.5bn from its most recent round of television deals, which run until the end of next season. About £2.1bn was generated from domestic rights sales, including about £1.8bn for live rights from BSkyB and ESPN, and £1.4bn from overseas broadcasters.
BSkyB refused to comment on Ferguson's observations but sports broadcasting insiders pointed out that Ferguson's views did not reflect the fact that each club must be shown live a minimum of 10 times and a maximum of 26, nor that other factors affected the scheduling of matches. They include policing issues and the ongoing tussle over the fixture calendar between domestic football bodies, Uefa and Fifa.
"Sir Alex's comments always have to be taken seriously – he is a very wise and experienced football man," Brian Barwick, a former FA chief executive and controller of sport at ITV, told the BBC.
"But on this one, I do think Manchester United have almost had a lion's share of TV revenue over a period of time and it has helped build a fantastic stadium in Old Trafford and helped build Sir Alex's teams with star players." Others pointed to the explosion in broadcasting income over the past two decades and the degree to which it drives Manchester United's commercial strategy, which relies on international TV exposure to drive its global sponsorship strategy.
Under the Premier League's distribution formula, which includes an equal share plus a merit payment and facility fees depending on the number of times each club is shown, Manchester United earned £60.4m from domestic TV last season.
The club's most recent financial results, to the year ending June 2011, showed that media income amounted to the club's biggest revenue stream, bringing in £119.4m. Commercial income, increasingly driven by overseas exposure on TV, rose to £103.4m from £81.4m the previous year.
The global reach afforded to the club by TV has been claimed as a major driver behind the plan to float a minority stake in Manchester United on the Singapore stock exchange.
The Football Supporters' Federation backed Ferguson's stance, albeit for different reasons. "The contract with Sky and ESPN ought to leave more control with the Premier League over the fixture calendar," said its chairman, Malcolm Clarke. "They should try and minimise the disruption to the number of matches being played on Saturday at 3pm. And they should be trying to minimise the number of long journeys for supporters on a Monday night.
"If you gave the Premier League more control, it might reduce the value of the rights in the marketplace but that should be a price football is prepared to pay."
Despite Ferguson's comments, there is no suggestion that the Glazers are planning to try to break away from the Premier League's collective selling model in order to maximise revenues.
In contrast to Spain, where the big two clubs do their own deals with television companies, the Premier League's income is shared out on a more equitable basis. Real Madrid recorded £129.9m in media revenues and Barcelona £145.8m, according to to the 2011 Deloitte Money League. United were the Premier League's highest earners last year, with and Blackpool the lowest with £39.1m.
The Glazers are believed to be convinced of the merits of the collective model but are determined to better exploit the limited rights that clubs have within their control by signing deals with international telecom and media companies.
In remarks that are likely to come as little surprise to those who have been on the receiving end of the Scot's famously fiery temper, David Beckham and Paul Ince included, Ferguson also admitted in the same interview: "I'm a confrontational character. I don't like people arguing back with me. I maybe have a short fuse."
The Manchester United manager used his first in-depth BBC interview for almost a decade to berate the corrosive influence of television on the fixture list, despite the hundreds of millions of pounds it contributes to Manchester United's bottom line and its centrality to the business plan of the club's controversial owners.
"When you shake hands with the devil you have to pay the price. Television is God at the moment," said Ferguson, who agreed that broadcasters had "too much power". "It shows itself quite clearly because when you see the fixture lists come out now, they can pick and choose whenever they want the top teams on television," he added.
"You get some ridiculous situations when you're playing on Wednesday night in Europe and then at lunchtime the following Saturday. You ask any manager if they would pick that themselves and there'd be absolutely no chance."
Ferguson also said that broadcasters should pay more for the rights to live football, given the Premier League sold its product to more than 200 countries. "When you think of that I don't think we get enough money," he said.
The Premier League secured around £3.5bn from its most recent round of television deals, which run until the end of next season. About £2.1bn was generated from domestic rights sales, including about £1.8bn for live rights from BSkyB and ESPN, and £1.4bn from overseas broadcasters.
BSkyB refused to comment on Ferguson's observations but sports broadcasting insiders pointed out that Ferguson's views did not reflect the fact that each club must be shown live a minimum of 10 times and a maximum of 26, nor that other factors affected the scheduling of matches. They include policing issues and the ongoing tussle over the fixture calendar between domestic football bodies, Uefa and Fifa.
"Sir Alex's comments always have to be taken seriously – he is a very wise and experienced football man," Brian Barwick, a former FA chief executive and controller of sport at ITV, told the BBC.
"But on this one, I do think Manchester United have almost had a lion's share of TV revenue over a period of time and it has helped build a fantastic stadium in Old Trafford and helped build Sir Alex's teams with star players." Others pointed to the explosion in broadcasting income over the past two decades and the degree to which it drives Manchester United's commercial strategy, which relies on international TV exposure to drive its global sponsorship strategy.
Under the Premier League's distribution formula, which includes an equal share plus a merit payment and facility fees depending on the number of times each club is shown, Manchester United earned £60.4m from domestic TV last season.
The club's most recent financial results, to the year ending June 2011, showed that media income amounted to the club's biggest revenue stream, bringing in £119.4m. Commercial income, increasingly driven by overseas exposure on TV, rose to £103.4m from £81.4m the previous year.
The global reach afforded to the club by TV has been claimed as a major driver behind the plan to float a minority stake in Manchester United on the Singapore stock exchange.
The Football Supporters' Federation backed Ferguson's stance, albeit for different reasons. "The contract with Sky and ESPN ought to leave more control with the Premier League over the fixture calendar," said its chairman, Malcolm Clarke. "They should try and minimise the disruption to the number of matches being played on Saturday at 3pm. And they should be trying to minimise the number of long journeys for supporters on a Monday night.
"If you gave the Premier League more control, it might reduce the value of the rights in the marketplace but that should be a price football is prepared to pay."
Despite Ferguson's comments, there is no suggestion that the Glazers are planning to try to break away from the Premier League's collective selling model in order to maximise revenues.
In contrast to Spain, where the big two clubs do their own deals with television companies, the Premier League's income is shared out on a more equitable basis. Real Madrid recorded £129.9m in media revenues and Barcelona £145.8m, according to to the 2011 Deloitte Money League. United were the Premier League's highest earners last year, with and Blackpool the lowest with £39.1m.
The Glazers are believed to be convinced of the merits of the collective model but are determined to better exploit the limited rights that clubs have within their control by signing deals with international telecom and media companies.
In remarks that are likely to come as little surprise to those who have been on the receiving end of the Scot's famously fiery temper, David Beckham and Paul Ince included, Ferguson also admitted in the same interview: "I'm a confrontational character. I don't like people arguing back with me. I maybe have a short fuse."
Friday, September 23, 2011
Rick Perry Is Right on In-State Tuition for Immigrants in Texas
A Texas law supported by Republican presidential candidate and Texas Governor Rick Perry to provide in-state tuition for children of illegal immigrants when they attend college has gotten a lot of attention recently. It was the primary focus of several heated exchanges at last night’s debate and was widely criticized on Twitter as well, but Perry’s opponents and the media are giving an inaccurate picture of the law and its effects.
First of all, here’s a review of what the law actually entails.
Texas law permits a child who has lived in the state of Texas for at least three years and graduated from a state high school to qualify for in-state tuition at a Texas college or university, on the condition that the child agrees to pursue full citizenship.
Now let’s look at how many students qualified under this rule.
According to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, in FY2010, 16,476 students qualified for in-state tuition under TEC 54.052(a)(3), the Texas statue governing this program. That number represents only one percent of total enrollment in Texas public universities; community, technical, and state colleges; and public health-related institutions.
Only one-percent. One-percent. The likes of Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and others would have you believe it was a program run amok where these students were defrauding a system, unfairly taking advantage of this status, and ruining higher education for every other Texan. In a state with more than a million students in public institutions of higher learning, 16,476 students is a drop in the bucket.
Despite what you may be lead to believe, this was not a highly partisan bill that narrowly squeaked by on a tight party-line vote in the Texas legislature. In fact, only four legislators voted against the measure. The national media, and those politicians from outside the state of Texas may be quick to criticize this law and label it as extremist, but in reality it’s not.
This program makes a difference by offering these kids a helping hand to a quality education they may not receive otherwise. It does not destroy the ability of other Texas to get into school. In the end, it doesn’t even make a significant impact on the budgets of these colleges and universities. For instance, the Permanent University Fund that supports the flagship universities in Texas gets a substantial portion of its money from oil. They own an immense amount of land in West Texas and that land happens to be rich in black gold, pumping reliable dollars into the coffers of these schools. Tuition only makes up about a quarter of their overall funding.
These students have lived in Texas, some the required three years, some nearly their entire lives. As part of this program students must have graduated from a Texas high school, most likely a public one, paid for in part by the state. Shouldn’t they have the chance to receive the same services at the rate that other students who graduated from a Texas high school do?
These children should not be punished for the illegal acts of their parents. Many families risk life and limb to get to America so their children can have the opportunity to attend college and achieve the American dream.
It may not be true in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, or Minnesota, but in Texas there are a high number of Hispanic immigrants, some of whom are illegal. The means by which they’re allowed to slip past a border all but neglected by the federal government is for another conversation, but the fact remains that they are here and serve as valued members of the community, and are an integral part of the Texas culture. Hispanics are not political pawns to be thrown around by candidates seeking to score cheap political points by demagoguing an entire race.
Besides the fact that Republicans will be shut out of power for ages to come if they alienate Hispanics, it’s entirely inappropriate and un-American to punish the children of immigrants who may have fled their dysfunctional, failing, or dangerous homeland for a better life here in America. These are students who only get this in-state tuition rate if they commit to becoming legal citizens. Their tuition isn’t waived altogether, it’s just provided at the rate that every other Texas resident pays.
Now I’m not lobbying for blanket amnesty, and neither was Rick Perry – he’s on record opposing the federal DREAM Act – but the picture of this legislation painted by his opponents in this election is entirely inaccurate. I’m sure someone from the Romney camp will read this and use his favorite line these days, “nice try,” but the statistics show this for what it truly is, a program that does not punish these students, these future citizens, whose parents came to this country illegally. Instead it helps them become educated, productive citizens of these United States.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
First of all, here’s a review of what the law actually entails.
Texas law permits a child who has lived in the state of Texas for at least three years and graduated from a state high school to qualify for in-state tuition at a Texas college or university, on the condition that the child agrees to pursue full citizenship.
Now let’s look at how many students qualified under this rule.
According to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, in FY2010, 16,476 students qualified for in-state tuition under TEC 54.052(a)(3), the Texas statue governing this program. That number represents only one percent of total enrollment in Texas public universities; community, technical, and state colleges; and public health-related institutions.
Only one-percent. One-percent. The likes of Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and others would have you believe it was a program run amok where these students were defrauding a system, unfairly taking advantage of this status, and ruining higher education for every other Texan. In a state with more than a million students in public institutions of higher learning, 16,476 students is a drop in the bucket.
Despite what you may be lead to believe, this was not a highly partisan bill that narrowly squeaked by on a tight party-line vote in the Texas legislature. In fact, only four legislators voted against the measure. The national media, and those politicians from outside the state of Texas may be quick to criticize this law and label it as extremist, but in reality it’s not.
This program makes a difference by offering these kids a helping hand to a quality education they may not receive otherwise. It does not destroy the ability of other Texas to get into school. In the end, it doesn’t even make a significant impact on the budgets of these colleges and universities. For instance, the Permanent University Fund that supports the flagship universities in Texas gets a substantial portion of its money from oil. They own an immense amount of land in West Texas and that land happens to be rich in black gold, pumping reliable dollars into the coffers of these schools. Tuition only makes up about a quarter of their overall funding.
These students have lived in Texas, some the required three years, some nearly their entire lives. As part of this program students must have graduated from a Texas high school, most likely a public one, paid for in part by the state. Shouldn’t they have the chance to receive the same services at the rate that other students who graduated from a Texas high school do?
These children should not be punished for the illegal acts of their parents. Many families risk life and limb to get to America so their children can have the opportunity to attend college and achieve the American dream.
It may not be true in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, or Minnesota, but in Texas there are a high number of Hispanic immigrants, some of whom are illegal. The means by which they’re allowed to slip past a border all but neglected by the federal government is for another conversation, but the fact remains that they are here and serve as valued members of the community, and are an integral part of the Texas culture. Hispanics are not political pawns to be thrown around by candidates seeking to score cheap political points by demagoguing an entire race.
Besides the fact that Republicans will be shut out of power for ages to come if they alienate Hispanics, it’s entirely inappropriate and un-American to punish the children of immigrants who may have fled their dysfunctional, failing, or dangerous homeland for a better life here in America. These are students who only get this in-state tuition rate if they commit to becoming legal citizens. Their tuition isn’t waived altogether, it’s just provided at the rate that every other Texas resident pays.
Now I’m not lobbying for blanket amnesty, and neither was Rick Perry – he’s on record opposing the federal DREAM Act – but the picture of this legislation painted by his opponents in this election is entirely inaccurate. I’m sure someone from the Romney camp will read this and use his favorite line these days, “nice try,” but the statistics show this for what it truly is, a program that does not punish these students, these future citizens, whose parents came to this country illegally. Instead it helps them become educated, productive citizens of these United States.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Trojans start to feel the rush
LOS ANGELES -- It’s amazing how little we’ve learned about this USC football team through the first three games.
Matt Barkley and Robert Woods are good. The early-season schedule, not so much.
This coaching staff and USC’s collective fandom sit and hope this team grows into a personality. It has an offensive identity -- those two guys. “Barkley to Woods” figures to be the phrase of 2011, maybe the only memorable connection when it’s all said and done.
But there is another group on this team that has the potential to take over games, to help carry this team back from the morass of mediocrity to a potentially dominant position in college football again. Thus far, we’ve only seen glimpses and furtive glances.
Some of the most talented guys on this roster teased us again in Saturday’s close-but-not-quite-dominant 38-17 win over Syracuse. The USC defensive line isn’t what it should be yet, but it’s getting close. It has seven days before it absolutely has to arrive or this season might unravel slowly, the way it did a year ago.
“I’m waiting to see it. I really am,” said defensive coordinator Ed Orgeron. “It hasn’t happened yet. We’ve shown spurts, but obviously we’ve got a lot of ball left to play.”
Syracuse quarterback Ryan Nassib is an efficient guy and he was beginning to get comfortable Saturday, far more at-home than a quarterback from a rebuilding program ever should look playing in the Coliseum -- a place that once had the power to unnerve. Nassib was so rattled, he completed all 11 of his passes in the first quarter.
By the third, it looked as if he and his Orange teammates were actually starting to believe they could do what five of the previous 12 USC opponents had done here: win.
Then things started to cave in.
Syracuse had gotten to within 24-10 and Nassib hit Nick Provo on a 33-yard strike to push the ball all the way to USC’s 37-yard line. USC needed somebody to do something big, somebody to knock Nassib out of his rhythm and get the message through that this program may be down, but it still can land a punch.
Nassib dropped back on third-and-eight and was enveloped in the collective embrace of Nick Perry, Shane Horton and DaJohn Harris, the gang-sack ending a drive that had started with so much promise. Syracuse was backed up on its next drive and Wes Horton hit Nassib this time, dropping him at the Syracuse 10. The Trojans had only three sacks, but two of them were at that pivotal juncture in the third quarter.
“We just kept coming,” Harris said.
Teams have tended to avoid these guys. The USC defense is seeing a lot of quick drops and play-action plays, opponents hoping to offset the Trojans’ big athletes by putting the heat on the secondary. But they should have opportunities in the upcoming week. The Trojans figure to get their toughest test yet at Arizona State, where Brock Osweiler has thrown for an average of 290 yards per game. But he’s also 6 feet 8, 240 pounds and will take his time in the pocket looking for deep hits in Dennis Erickson’s offense.
Now, would be as good a time as any for the USC defensive front to prove it’s as good as the recruiting services claimed. Perry might be the most impressive athlete on USC’s team, Devon Kennard was a highly decorated recruit who has bounced between linebacker and defensive end and has yet to leave a permanent mark. Harris is turning into a force on the interior. Christian Tupou is the most experienced player in the group.
“Every game, we’re going to come out here and be dominant out here,” Perry said. “That’s going to be key in some of these big games.”
Orgeron keeps waiting. He challenges these guys during position group meetings. But being a defensive end is kind of like being a closer in baseball. People don’t want to hear about the details. You either got the save or you didn’t. You either got the sack or you didn’t.
“His big emphasis is, we’ve got all the talent in the world in the D-line room, but we’ve got to show it on Saturdays,” Kennard said. “The hype doesn’t matter, what we could be or what we can be. We’ve got to put it on film.”
The man who would be veep
The battle for the Republican presidential nomination is just heating up. But the choice of running mate is as good as settled, at least if the Beltway buzz is to be believed.
Many party insiders feel that the attractions of Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) for the second spot on the ticket are irresistible.
“Right now, he is head and shouders above everybody else,” Florida-based GOP strategist Rick Wilson told The Hill. (Wilson supported Rubio during his 2010 Senate bid, but did not work for the campaign.)
Garlands have been hurled Rubio’s way with conspicuous frequency in the past few weeks.
“Rubio has the most important ingredient of any leader: vision,” conservative columnist Cal Thomas wrote.
Former George W. Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen last week contrasted the “depressing” performance of the Republican presidential candidates on foreign policy with that of Rubio. The Floridian recently “stepped forward to do what the other candidates should have: lay out a clear foreign policy vision,” Thiessen wrote on his Washington Post blog.
Thiessen and Thomas were reacting to two major speeches.
The first came late last month at the Ronald Reagan Library in California. There, Rubio laid out a worldview that sounded strikingly magnanimous.
“Conservatism is not about leaving people behind,” he said. “Conservatism is about empowering people to catch up, to give them the tools at their disposal that make it possible for them to access all the hope, all the promise, all the opportunity that America offers. And our programs to help them should reflect that.”
Rubio turned his attention to foreign policy last Tuesday, with an address at the Jesse Helms Center in North Carolina. Though the speech assailed the Obama administration, it also put a wide stretch of water between Rubio and the GOP’s paleoconservative wing.
“If we refuse to play our rightful role and shrink from the world, America and the entire world will pay a terrible price,” he insisted.
Rubio seemingly ruled out being part of a presidential ticket next year when, during an appearance on “Meet the Press” in May, he told host David Gregory: “I won’t consider it. I don’t want to be the vice president of the United States.”
Still, whether those denials of interest would remain as firm if he were asked to be on the ticket is an open question. Would he really turn down such a request, which would surely be accompanied by beseechings that he had a duty to help his party?
“It would be difficult to say no, especially if someone made the argument that you could be decisive in a number of key states,” said Wilson.
Rubio is a gifted orator. The narrative of his life, rising as the son of hardworking immigrants, resonates widely. Superficially — but importantly — he is telegenic, young, has a discernible sense of humor and a taste in music that extends to rap and hip-hop.
“He has the quality of a young, suburban father,” conservative commentator and National Review blogger Reihan Salam told The Hill. “There are many ways in which he appears very ‘normal.’”
The senator’s mainstream appeal has led to him becoming a talking point far beyond the usual Washington-centric forums. His name popped up out of the blue earlier this month on the popular podcast by sports journalist Bill Simmons, when a guest abruptly announced, “Rubio is a rock-solid lock [for a vice-presidential nomination]. You can take that to Vegas. He’s 1-5.”
Rubio’s ethnicity is, and will continue to be, a major focus. For a party that has struggled to win minority support — and is particularly concerned about its failure to gain traction with the fast-growing Hispanic population — Rubio has a potent appeal.
GOP strategist and Univision analyst Hector Barajas notes the mere fact that Rubio can speak English and Spanish with equal fluency is a big advantage. More broadly, he added, the senator “is someone who can have a kinda ‘family conversation’ with the Latino community.”
A 2012 ticket that included Rubio as the running mate “ would be good for our community and good for our party,” Barajas said.
The relationship between Rubio and the Hispanic community is not without complications, however. For a start, Cuban-Americans have tended to be somewhat discrete from the broader Hispanic population, and have traditionally skewed heavily Republican. On that basis alone, Rubio’s appeal to centrist or left-leaning Hispanics might be more muted than some expect.
Rubio has also cleaved to positions on illegal immigration that are little different from most of his Republican comrades — and are antithetical to advocates within the Hispanic community. He opposed the DREAM Act, which would allow illegal immigrants who had come to the United States as minors to become legal residents, subject to a number of conditions.
University of South Florida professor Seth McKee draws an intriguing parallel regarding the tension between Rubio’s identity and his political positions.
“It’s like the way Sarah Palin did not really have strong appeal to women, except for the fact that she was a woman. Marco Rubio does not have a strong natural appeal to Hispanics, except for the fact that he is Hispanic,” he said.
Salam, who admires Rubio in general, admitted that “I wouldn’t say that the Democrats would have no arrows in their quiver if it came to attacking a ticket that Rubio was on.” The senator’s stated desire to reform Social Security by raising the retirement age might be one vulnerability, he added.
Still, in a party that is not exactly awash with rising stars, Rubio shines brightly. Few people doubt that he has national ambitions, whatever his protestations to the contrary.
According to University of South Florida professor Susan MacManus, the possibility of him being the Number Two on a 2012 presidential ticket is “the buzz that has been circulating in Florida for quite some time.”
There are two schools of thought on his willingness to push himself for that role, overtly or covertly, she said.
On the one hand, he seems such an attractive candidate that he need not hurry onto the very biggest stage. He could bide his time.
On the other, “if he really feels the party will win next year, that changes the calculation.”
The party might well feel its chances of victory are boosted by having the senator on the ticket.
For the man himself, the lure of becoming Vice President Rubio might be too enticing to resist — even if that position would still be one step away from the ultimate destination that many of his supporters predict.
Source:
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/182219-marco-rubio-the-man-who-would-be-veep
Many party insiders feel that the attractions of Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) for the second spot on the ticket are irresistible.
“Right now, he is head and shouders above everybody else,” Florida-based GOP strategist Rick Wilson told The Hill. (Wilson supported Rubio during his 2010 Senate bid, but did not work for the campaign.)
Garlands have been hurled Rubio’s way with conspicuous frequency in the past few weeks.
“Rubio has the most important ingredient of any leader: vision,” conservative columnist Cal Thomas wrote.
Former George W. Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen last week contrasted the “depressing” performance of the Republican presidential candidates on foreign policy with that of Rubio. The Floridian recently “stepped forward to do what the other candidates should have: lay out a clear foreign policy vision,” Thiessen wrote on his Washington Post blog.
Thiessen and Thomas were reacting to two major speeches.
The first came late last month at the Ronald Reagan Library in California. There, Rubio laid out a worldview that sounded strikingly magnanimous.
“Conservatism is not about leaving people behind,” he said. “Conservatism is about empowering people to catch up, to give them the tools at their disposal that make it possible for them to access all the hope, all the promise, all the opportunity that America offers. And our programs to help them should reflect that.”
Rubio turned his attention to foreign policy last Tuesday, with an address at the Jesse Helms Center in North Carolina. Though the speech assailed the Obama administration, it also put a wide stretch of water between Rubio and the GOP’s paleoconservative wing.
“If we refuse to play our rightful role and shrink from the world, America and the entire world will pay a terrible price,” he insisted.
Rubio seemingly ruled out being part of a presidential ticket next year when, during an appearance on “Meet the Press” in May, he told host David Gregory: “I won’t consider it. I don’t want to be the vice president of the United States.”
Still, whether those denials of interest would remain as firm if he were asked to be on the ticket is an open question. Would he really turn down such a request, which would surely be accompanied by beseechings that he had a duty to help his party?
“It would be difficult to say no, especially if someone made the argument that you could be decisive in a number of key states,” said Wilson.
Rubio is a gifted orator. The narrative of his life, rising as the son of hardworking immigrants, resonates widely. Superficially — but importantly — he is telegenic, young, has a discernible sense of humor and a taste in music that extends to rap and hip-hop.
“He has the quality of a young, suburban father,” conservative commentator and National Review blogger Reihan Salam told The Hill. “There are many ways in which he appears very ‘normal.’”
The senator’s mainstream appeal has led to him becoming a talking point far beyond the usual Washington-centric forums. His name popped up out of the blue earlier this month on the popular podcast by sports journalist Bill Simmons, when a guest abruptly announced, “Rubio is a rock-solid lock [for a vice-presidential nomination]. You can take that to Vegas. He’s 1-5.”
Rubio’s ethnicity is, and will continue to be, a major focus. For a party that has struggled to win minority support — and is particularly concerned about its failure to gain traction with the fast-growing Hispanic population — Rubio has a potent appeal.
GOP strategist and Univision analyst Hector Barajas notes the mere fact that Rubio can speak English and Spanish with equal fluency is a big advantage. More broadly, he added, the senator “is someone who can have a kinda ‘family conversation’ with the Latino community.”
A 2012 ticket that included Rubio as the running mate “ would be good for our community and good for our party,” Barajas said.
The relationship between Rubio and the Hispanic community is not without complications, however. For a start, Cuban-Americans have tended to be somewhat discrete from the broader Hispanic population, and have traditionally skewed heavily Republican. On that basis alone, Rubio’s appeal to centrist or left-leaning Hispanics might be more muted than some expect.
Rubio has also cleaved to positions on illegal immigration that are little different from most of his Republican comrades — and are antithetical to advocates within the Hispanic community. He opposed the DREAM Act, which would allow illegal immigrants who had come to the United States as minors to become legal residents, subject to a number of conditions.
University of South Florida professor Seth McKee draws an intriguing parallel regarding the tension between Rubio’s identity and his political positions.
“It’s like the way Sarah Palin did not really have strong appeal to women, except for the fact that she was a woman. Marco Rubio does not have a strong natural appeal to Hispanics, except for the fact that he is Hispanic,” he said.
Salam, who admires Rubio in general, admitted that “I wouldn’t say that the Democrats would have no arrows in their quiver if it came to attacking a ticket that Rubio was on.” The senator’s stated desire to reform Social Security by raising the retirement age might be one vulnerability, he added.
Still, in a party that is not exactly awash with rising stars, Rubio shines brightly. Few people doubt that he has national ambitions, whatever his protestations to the contrary.
According to University of South Florida professor Susan MacManus, the possibility of him being the Number Two on a 2012 presidential ticket is “the buzz that has been circulating in Florida for quite some time.”
There are two schools of thought on his willingness to push himself for that role, overtly or covertly, she said.
On the one hand, he seems such an attractive candidate that he need not hurry onto the very biggest stage. He could bide his time.
On the other, “if he really feels the party will win next year, that changes the calculation.”
The party might well feel its chances of victory are boosted by having the senator on the ticket.
For the man himself, the lure of becoming Vice President Rubio might be too enticing to resist — even if that position would still be one step away from the ultimate destination that many of his supporters predict.
Source:
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/182219-marco-rubio-the-man-who-would-be-veep
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