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<p><a href="" type="internal">The Faith Angle Forum</a>&#160;is a semi-annual conference which brings together a select group of 20 nationally respected journalists with 3-5 distinguished scholars on areas of religion, politics &amp; public life.</p>
<p>“Evangelicalism &amp; American Life”</p>
<p>Prouts Neck, Maine</p>
<p>Speakers:</p>
<p>Dr. Nathan Hatch, Professor of History &amp; Provost, University of Notre Dame</p>
<p>Dr. Grant Wacker, Associate Professor of History of Religion in America, Duke University Divinity School</p>
<p>Respondent:</p>
<p>Hanna Rosin, Religion Reporter,&#160;The Washington Post</p>
<p>Moderator:</p>
<p>Michael Cromartie, Vice President, Ethics &amp; Public Policy Center</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>DR. NATHAN HATCH:&#160;Americans have long considered religious liberty to “be a crowning achievement of their revolution and at the heart of their national identity. They have also naturally linked liberty of conscience to such legendary heralds as Roger Smith and William Penn, who struggled against heavy odds to achieve religious freedom during the colonial era. After independence a strange coalition of humanists and evangelicals — including Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the Baptists Isaac Backus and John Leland — joined forces to ensure that religion would not serve as an engine of civil policy.</p>
<p>To focus on such individuals creates a narrative of religious freedom as a heroic enterprise. Without underestimating the symbolic role of these champions of liberty, however, we may usefully consider whether there truly was such a close connection between intention and outcome. Perhaps, as the historians Sidney Mead and Perry Miller argue, most early Americans were not following the cloud and pillar of high principle but rather walking down the road to religious freedom without knowing it.</p>
<p>In retrospect, the evolution of religious freedom in North America seems so natural and uncomplicated — almost foreordained — that it is easy to overlook how unusual, even extravagant, was the hothouse of religious diversity within those colonies that became the United States. By the middle of the eighteenth century, any traditional European churchmen would have found the religious environment of America disruptive and disorienting. Colonial America surged with religious diversity well before any theory could fully explain or justify it. The weakness of the English state and the strength of commercial capitalism conspired to make North America a haven for a variety of British and European dissenters, many of whom had compelling religious or ethnic reasons to flee the Old World. Religion became massively deregulated in the English colonies, not by design, but because of governmental and ecclesiastical weakness. This functional deregulation of religion is a stark contrast to the centralist tradition that characterized both the Spanish and the French experience in America.</p>
<p>English North America was also distinctive for the remarkable and unprecedented wave of immigration that mixed English, German, Swiss, Scottish, Scotch-Irish, Dutch, and African ethnic groups. Religious persecution accounted for some of them. French Huguenots barred from Quebec helped build Charleston, Philadelphia, and New York, while Jews fleeing the Inquisition in Spain and Brazil also established communities in Charleston and New York.</p>
<p>In the twenty years before the American Revolution, about 300,000 people poured into English America — a number equivalent to the entire Spanish migration to America during the colonial period. As many as 16,000 flooded into the English colonies each year, more than the total number of French settlers to Quebec in 150 years. “The movement of hundreds of thousands of displaced Europeans and Africans into the half-billion acres that lay east of the Mississippi,” Bernard Bailyn has written, “produced a culture unlike any other then known.”</p>
<p>I would suggest that within this culture religious liberty developed, in a legal sense, by default: the withering of state and ecclesiastical authority allowed rampant religious improvisation. At the time of the Revolution, for instance, South Carolina had what Richard Hofstadter called a “vacant establishment.” On paper, the Anglican church was the official establishment, and around Charles-ton it had some institutional coherence. Yet for commercial reasons South Carolina had always welcomed promising settlers, whatever their religious convictions, and Presbyterians actually outnumbered Anglicans. The back country of the colony, moreover, simmered with religious and ethnic dissent. With the exception of New England, the British colonies in North America had given up a monopolistic relationship between religion and the state prior to the adoption of the First Amendment.</p>
<p>The experience of the revolution and of building a democratic polity further undermined the already fragile foundations of church tradition. Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists, closely tied to elite institutions and civil authority, had a difficult time competing in the religious free market of the early republic. While they commanded a certain high ground of culture and power, they were too weak to restrain upstart vernacular religious movements that blurred the distinction between church and popular religion. Lay driven, voluntary, participatory, and enthusiastic, these movements became endemic. Methodists, a counterculture in England, outstripped all other churches in the United States and helped to define its core culture.</p>
<p>Colonial America bequeathed a unique and untidy diversity to the United States. The early republic, in turn, profoundly altered the relationship of class and religion in America. The upper classes in the United States would never control religion; nor would its diverse and democratized churches allow the state to control or centralize cultural life. No other Western democracy, not even Canada, would develop a system of higher education so decentralized, independent of state control, and open to the entrepreneurial efforts of religious dissenters.</p>
<p>Recognizing the religious diversity within the thirteen states, members of the Constitutional Convention adopted the First Amendment, which prohibited any governmental establishment of religion and guaranteed free exercise of religious choice. Jefferson’s drive for religious liberty had arisen from his assumption that religious corruption sprang from the privileged status of established churches. Freedom of religion, Jefferson thought, would release churches from ecclesiastical hierarchy and sectarian enthusiasm and set them on a path of rationality and restraint.</p>
<p>What Jefferson actually witnessed, however, was anything but measured decorum. He and other Founders who lived into the first decades of the nineteenth century were deeply disturbed by the rising revivalist and populist faiths that were transforming the classical republic of their dreams into a “fiery furnace of democracy.” The early republic was swept off its feet by what Sean Wilentz deemed “one of the most extraordinary spells of sectarian invention that the nation and world has ever seen.” The most powerful social movement of the new nation was the very embodiment of enthusiasm and authoritative religion — the Methodists.</p>
<p>That the Methodists would achieve such a formidable position in the new United States was curious and unexpected. At the dawn of the American republic, New England Congregationalists, Middle Colony Presbyterians, and Southern Anglicans cast a dominant shadow in society, politics, and religion. While a few followers of John Wesley had made their way to colonial cities, the Methodists were not yet a separate church from the Anglicans and were insignificant in the American religious economy.</p>
<p>The explosive growth of the Methodist Episcopal Church was a surprising development in a republic that shunned state-sponsored religion. The American followers of John Wesley, who could boast no more than four ministers and 300 lay people in 1771, were threatened with extinction during the revolution. All their leaders except Francis Asbury returned to England, leaving the Methodist faithful to struggle with the stigma of Toryism throughout the war.</p>
<p>Under the tireless direction of Asbury, however, the Methodists advanced from Canada to Georgia by emphasizing three themes that Americans found captivating: God’s free grace, the liberty of people to accept or reject that grace, and the power and validity of popular religious expression–even among servants, women, and slaves. Led by uneducated preachers committed to sacrifice and travel, the Methodists organized local classes — or cells — and preaching circuits at a rate that alarmed more respectable denominations. Between 1776 and 1850, Methodists in America experienced a miraculous growth. Comprising less than 3 per cent of all church members in 1776, Methodist ranks swelled to encompass more than 34 per cent of all church members by 1850, becoming by far the largest religious body in the nation.</p>
<p>Unlike Methodism in Great Britain, moreover, which remained a dissenting movement despite its strength and never occupied the high ground of culture and power held by the Church of England, Methodism in America came to embody the nation’s preeminent religious and cultural ethos. The whole American style, which emphasized sincerity and openness rather than form and privacy, became “Methodist.” While the culturally prestigious style remained Anglican in England, enthusiasm of all kinds — religious, cultural, and personal — reigned in America.</p>
<p>The message and structure of Methodism also embodied a liberal conception of reality that broke decisively with the pre-revolutionary pursuit of homogeneous community. As a movement of self-conscious outsiders, Methodism embraced pluralism, competition, and the marketing of religion in every sphere of life — far beyond the narrow confines of ecclesiastical space. The Methodist itinerant Peter Cartwright recounted how a Presbyterian minister objected to his starting another church within the “bounds of his congregation.” Cartwright responded that his were a free people in a free country and they would do as they pleased.</p>
<p>Disestablishment in the early republic was not attributable solely to law. Rather, the free religious market emerged as the presumptive authority of traditional churches withered. While European churches were shoring up their authority following the convulsion of the French Revolution and Napoleon, America’s established churches and their college-educated ministers continued to read sermons and staid liturgies despite a tremendous assault. In&#160;The Churching of America, 1776-1990,&#160;Roger Finke and Rodney Stark point out that, as a percentage of religious adherents, between 1776 and 1850 Congregationalists dropped from 20 to 4 per cent, Presbyterians from 19 to 11.6, and Episcopalians from 15.7 to 3.5.</p>
<p>It is difficult to give a coherent account of this period. Churches and religious movements after 1800 operated in a climate of tottering ecclesiastical establishments; the federal government had almost no internal functions; and the rampant migration of people continued to short-“circuit old networks of personal authority. Established religious institutions linked to the upper classes remained too weak to make a whole society accept their language and analysis. In America’s rapidly expanding society, fluid structures of institutional control allowed new and dynamic religious movements to take root and thrive. There was virtually unlimited social space, without hardened distinctions of social class or religious denomination.</p>
<p>As Americans moved into new areas — from the hill country of New England, to the Ohio River Valley, to central Tennessee and Kentucky — staid churches could not make the transition. On the New England frontier, the slow-growing Congregationalists established only five churches during the 1790s while Baptists started twenty-six new congregations and the Methodists started nine. By 1800, these dissenters outnumbered Congregationalists by three to one. By 1810, only one in eight back-country communities had a Congregational church. Similar conditions prevailed on the frontier in Kentucky and Ohio, where the Methodists easily outstripped the Presbyterians.</p>
<p>In the young United States, religious power, influence, and authority were dispersed and based on popular appeal. Nothing better illustrates this fact than the marked pluralism of religious publishing, which exploded in the early nineteenth century and stood in sharp contrast to the tightly controlled and centralized traditions of publishing in Quebec and in Latin America. The historian Gaylord P. Albaugh has estimated that, of the 605 distinct religious journals founded in America by 1830, only 14 had existed before 1790. Journals appeared as quickly as they vanished, creations of common people for a broad popular audience. Before 1789, all religious journals had issued from either Boston, New York, or Philadelphia. By 1830, religious journals had been published in 195 different cities and towns and in every state but Mississippi. Of the 70 locations with such publications still active in 1830, over half were west of the Alleghenies.</p>
<p>These vernacular religious movements, which arose in the wake of religious liberty, blurred the distinctions between church and popular religion. While outbreaks of enthusiasm were common in European and British Christianity in the era of the democratic revolutions, America was unique because of the absence of a revived state church. In the United States, high culture was too weak to inhibit or restrict enthusiastic popular religiosity, and the cultural periphery remained far more powerful and unobstructed. In this ideal climate for churches growing out of the popular culture, the Methodists and Mormons thrived.</p>
<p>Both Methodism and Mormonism broke decisively with the kind of churches that had dominated the American colonies. They succeeded because they were willing to market religion outside traditional ecclesiastical space and to cater to the interests of specific market segments — a proliferation that Adam Smith had predicted would result with government deregulation of religion. Both movements empowered ordinary people by taking their deepest spiritual impulses at face value, by shattering formal distinctions between lay people and clergy, by providing an arena for the entrepreneurial instincts of religious upstarts, and by communicating the gospel message in the vernacular — in preaching, print, and song. Methodists and the Mormons were also strikingly alike in two other ways: in their focus on the reality of the supernatural in everyday life, and in their recruitment and organization of disciplined bands of young followers who were hungry for achievement, sacrificial in their zeal, and driven by a sense of providential mission.</p>
<p>In the first two decades of the nineteenth century, Methodist experience brimmed with overt enthusiasm, supernatural impressions, and reliance on prophetic dreams and visions, as is evident from Methodist journals and autobiographies. Methodism dignified religious ecstasy, unrestrained emotional release, and preaching by blacks, by women, by anyone who felt the call. Two African-American women who became successful Methodist exhorters, Jarena Lee and Zilpha Elaw, were dramatically converted through direct revelation and found guidance in prophetic dreams. The most celebrated and notorious Methodist itinerant of his day, “Crazy” Lorenzo Dow, was celebrated as a holy man with unusual powers. Even Nathan Bangs, who eventually set his face to rid Methodism of the stigma of enthusiasm, began his itinerant career as a white-hot enthusiast. The historian John Wigger argues that the defining characteristic of American Methodism under Francis Asbury was not a theological abstraction but a quest for the supernatural in everyday life.</p>
<p>In America, the rapid expansion of Methodism created conditions that allowed women and African-Americans to assume religious leadership. The Methodists gave women extraordinary freedom to speak, encouraging them to share their religious experiences in public, and also granted African-Americans the right to preach the Gospel. They even ordained black ministers, though some attempted to keep black leaders on the fringe of the movement. This gave rise to independent black churches, the first being the African Methodist Episcopal Church found-ed by Richard Allen in Philadelphia.</p>
<p>By the time Joseph Smith announced his prophetic mission, the Methodist Episcopal Church was pushing enthusiasm to the margins, but the popular yearning for divine intervention in day-to-day experience remained. Joseph Smith issued a clarion call to a militant supernaturalism: a demonstrable revelation from heaven, the reality of miracles and apostolic gifts, and a sure and ongoing channel of prophecy. “I am a God of Miracles,” the Lord proclaimed in the&#160;Book of Mormon, and the “Latter-day Saints insisted on taking that claim literally.</p>
<p>Mormons and Methodists shared a common longing for the miraculous power of the biblical world. They also shared a genius for organizing and consolidating the expansion of their faiths. Methodists and Mormons were, at their core, youth movements with an extraordinary capacity to mobilize people for a cause and to build an organization sustained by obedience and discipline rather than ties of parish, family, and patronage. In both movements a battery of young leaders without elite pedigree constructed fresh religious ideologies around which the movement coalesced.</p>
<p>Mormons and Methodists were also both driven by a consuming passion to convert the unconverted. They saw an urgent missionary purpose as the principal reason for their existence, and their preaching was aimed at warning people of the wrath to come. Their proselytizing took the form of a relentless and systematic deluge. Unlike the young itinerants of the early eighteenth-century Great Awakening, whose efforts were largely uncoordinated and short-lived, these movements developed regimented and ongoing schemes for sending out lay preachers to the most remote pockets of American civilization. Both Methodists and Mormons, furthermore, rejected the Puritan tradition of painstaking study. Mormon preachers — who included hatters, cobblers, glaziers, potters, and farmers — were advised against using careful forethought, written notes, or detailed plans. Their overriding goal was to convince the unconvinced by whatever means possible.</p>
<p>The organizational genius of Methodists and Mormons was to embrace and empower common people in a system that was centrally directed in a fixed, even authoritarian way. In their early years, both movements were volatile and unstable, as a variety of fledgling and self-ordained leaders vied for influence, tested the limits of the prescribed authority, and frequently defected to form their own churches. Yet Mormons and Methodists, unlike Disciples and Baptists, swore by institutional coherence. In the face of clamoring dissent — sometimes fueled by democratic impulses, sometimes by visionary ones — Methodists and Mormons were willing to exercise discipline, even ruthlessly, to preserve a movement in the name of God.</p>
<p>In their authoritarian extreme, the Latter-day Saints symbolize the disorienting instability that accompanied a free-market religious economy — its crisis of authority and its failure to integrate meaning or to care for the lonely and forlorn. The primitive Mormons were an apocalyptic sect, intent on expansion and willing to unsheathe the sword in retaliation for the persecution of their own. At its inception, Mormonism throbbed with diversity, multiple revelations, and an array of spiritual gifts, but internal dissent and external threats led Smith to deny freedom of thought and demand the strictest loyalty to his commands. In 1843, Smith announced that all earthly commitments were null and void save the ones sealed by himself. No human obligation — even the solemn vow of marriage — had any meaning unless it was sanctioned by the prophet Joseph. As divine prophet, military general, political boss, and even candidate for the presidency of the United States, Smith consolidated power into his own hands and equated obedience to his will with compliance to the divine will. In submitting to their prophet and revelator, Mormon followers were willing to dismiss the architecture of classic Christian theology and practice. In Missouri and Illinois, such radicalism led to persecution that, far from disbanding the movement, set in motion the pilgrimage to Utah, where the Mormons flourished.</p>
<p>This religious marketplace — what one Congregational missionary to Illinois called in 1829 “religious anarchy” and “a sea of sectarian rivalries” — could give rise to intolerance and sometimes even persecution. As in the case of Joseph Smith, denials of religious liberty were generally a function not of government but of popular action, of mobs. It was not the oppression of the powerful that dissenters had to fear in America, Alexis de Tocqueville noted, but the tyranny of the majority. During the 1830s and the 1840s, mob action was rampant in America — against Catholics in Boston and Philadelphia, against Mormons in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, and against abolitionist preachers in a variety of locations.</p>
<p>Intolerance and persecution, nonetheless, were rarely effective in suppressing religious dissent. Instead, the availability of space in the United States meant that dissent and pluralism generally proceeded apace. America’s vast hinterland allowed the oppressed Mormons to trek beyond the writ of law or mob rather than be crushed in Missouri and Illinois. The very experience of that pilgrimage solidified the identity of the Latter-day Saints and helped Brigham Young turn a highly fragmented and fragile apocalyptic sect into a major religious community.</p>
<p>Severe popular prejudice against Roman Catholics, particularly with respect to education, emboldened the immigrant Catholic Church to begin its own system of parochial education and, in time, its own colleges and universities. To a lesser degree, mid-nineteenth-century Methodists felt discriminated against by Calvinists, who controlled most colleges. They responded by founding thirty-five colleges between 1840 and 1860 and another thirty-five plus between the Civil War and 1900.</p>
<p>In the United States, religious liberty proceeded with almost unrestrained fury, generating a popular culture “awash in a sea of faith” and unmediated by traditional religious leaders or government officials. The people of America turned out to be more free to practice religion than their European cousins. This does not mean that Americans possessed greater foresight or tolerance; it simply means that their institutions were too weak and their communities too diverse to restrain the religious whirlwind that descended upon them. At the founding of the republic, no one wanted or envisioned such a state of religious freedom. However, the deregulation of religion, the popular contagion of the American Revolution, the vast expanse of land, and the continual mixing of peoples all conspired to make religion a pervasive, if divisive, reality in American life.</p>
<p>DR. GRANT WACKER:&#160;I would like to offer a cultural profile of evangelicals in modern America, that is, in post-World War II America. Some historical references are inevitable, but my primary focus is on the modern scene.</p>
<p>To offer a profile, of course, I must first identify the people I am talking about. Who are these evangelicals? Anecdotal insights can be revealing. Suppose someone comes up to you on a big-city bus and says, “Is this seat saved? Oh, incidentally, are you?” That’s a tip-off that you are probably sharing your seat with an evangelical rather than a high-church Episcopalian. An evangelical can also be defined as someone who really,&#160;really&#160;likes Billy Graham, while a fundamentalist is someone who really likes Billy Graham but worries that he’s going soft on liberals. Another chestnut, which historian Joel Carpenter borrows from Bob Jones, Sr., is that an evangelical is someone who says to a liberal, “I’ll call you a Christian if you’ll call me a scholar.”</p>
<p>Social science probably gives us less insight than the anecdotal evidence does into what the evangelical animal is. First, the data vary wildly. Under the strictest definition, evangelicals number only a few million, but with some criteria the figure can go as high as 50 million. I think the best estimate, which I draw from Christian Smith, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina, is that roughly 25-29 per cent of Americans are associated with conservative Protestant churches. Smith bases this figure on massive polling that his research team has done, as well as on general surveys. But whether it’s 20 million or 40 million, we’re dealing with a lot of people.</p>
<p>I call these people “culturally self-conscious evangelicals,” which is a much broader category than “Christian Right.” Politically active members of the Christian Right probably number no more than a couple hundred thousand, but the number of evangelicals who could be mobilized on a given issue swells rapidly to millions. Though the definitions become very loose when the count goes that high, I would argue that what evangelicals&#160;believe&#160;is central to any reasonable definition.</p>
<p>Belief is important, because that is how evangelicals instinctively define themselves. While the Jewish community, for instance, may give preeminence to ritual rather than to doctrinal affirmation, evangelicals give preeminence to belief. There is a great deal of flexibility in how they manifest those beliefs in ordinary life, but no evangelical would ever say, “Oh, well, it really doesn’t matter what you think about the birth of Jesus Christ.” To them it&#160;does&#160;matter. Belief counts. That is the first crucial tenet of evangelicalism.</p>
<p>Its second crucial tenet — the theologian’s “formal principle” — is the authority of the Bible. All Protestants believe in the authority of the Bible, of course, and all Christians believe in the Bible in one way or another. But evangelicals distinguish themselves on the religious landscape by their insistence that the Bible be interpreted without benefit of the church, the community, or the clergy. In other words, one reads the Bible and makes a judgment as to what it means. A well-known Pentecostal once said, “We believe that God has no grandchildren.” That reveals a great deal about the ethos and the deepest assumptions of the movement. There are no grandchildren. All evangelicals are responsible for doing their own reading and making their own decisions — which is not to say that they actually do so, only that they have the desire to do so. Most evangelicals will add to the point about the authority of the Bible their belief that the Bible doesn’t make mistakes–the doctrine of inerrancy — and that the best way to understand it is to interpret it as literally as possible. But the bottom line is the authority of the Bible.</p>
<p>Evangelicals’ third item of belief, or their “material principle,” is the necessary affirmation of Jesus Christ’s redeeming act on the cross. Theologians call it “justification by faith”; most evangelicals would simply say, “God has taken care of the past. He has taken care of our brokenness, our sins, whatever defiles us.” Sometimes this affirmation can generate a kind of unappealing smugness: “My problem has been taken care of. Now what about yours?” So there are both positive and negative implications to this manifestation of faith.</p>
<p>A fourth, more implicit belief among most evangelicals is that some parts of the Bible are more significant than others. Such variations in emphasis have, in fact, generated the variety of denominations within the evangelical family: Pentecostals, Holiness groups, Advent-ists, Baptists, African-American Baptists and Methodists, and several others. Almost all these bodies have come into existence because they have stressed one particular part of the Bible, usually a passage in the New Testament. Pentecostals, for example, focus on the practice of speaking in other tongues, which the book of Acts describes as having occurred on the day of Pentecost; this they take to be normative for the devout believer.</p>
<p>A fifth evangelical tenet is that time counts. Evangelicals talk about millennialism of all sorts. The great majority of them are pre-millennialists, who think that Christ will return to earth before the millennium, a period when peace and righteousness will prevail on earth. Some are post-millennialists, who think he will return&#160;after&#160;the millennium. A few are a-millennialists, who believe that the millennium is in the heart rather than being an actual time on earth. But however they see the future, all their eschatological schemes involve a sense that time counts; we fritter it away at our peril. Of course, evangelicals may be as likely to fritter away their time as anyone else, but they feel guilty about it. They feel that they should be doing the Lord’s work.</p>
<p>Lastly, evangelicals believe strongly in the autonomy of the individual, and particularly the individual decision. They stress that every individual must, of necessity, make a personal decision to follow Christ. God has no grandchildren; everyone must make his or her own decision. If you had asked evangelicals back in the 1950s to name their favorite radio program, they might well have said, “The Hour of Decision.” They probably would have liked it, not only because of Billy Graham, but also because of the title itself. This emphasis on autonomous decision-making, moreover, bleeds into a related emphasis on autonomous churches. Even those that are hierarchically structured, like Methodist churches, display considerable freedom at the local level.</p>
<p>In addition to these distinctive beliefs, evangelicals display distinctive behavior patterns. The first distinctive behavior is evangelizing. One simply does not have the good news of the Gospel unless one shares it. Though Christian Smith’s recent work and extensive polling data show that evangelicals are very reluctant to buttonhole people and share their faith, they feel they&#160;should&#160;do so, and they try to. A very important Southern Baptist periodical is called&#160;Tell — not Take It and Hold It,&#160;or&#160;Keep It to Yourself, but&#160;Tell. One prominent evangelical preacher insisted that it was important to keep the cookies on the bottom shelf. In other words, make the message accessible.</p>
<p>The second noteworthy behavior is the embrace of social reform. The particular causes change — from temperance in the 1820s and abolition in the 1840s, through prohibition in the 1920s, to abortion and school prayer more recently — but evangelicals’ desire to change society is part of their cultural DNA. This effort to reach out creates inevitable friction with the elite secular culture. In many of their reform campaigns, evangelicals deny the validity of the public-private distinction so precious to the Enlightenment culture. If abortion is wrong for me, they reason, it’s wrong for everybody. If it is wrong for everybody, it’s wrong for me. These are social concerns, corporate concerns.</p>
<p>A third behavioral characteristic — especially glaring in the last twenty years — is the adversarial posture toward the wider culture. In the past this posture has at times receded, and evangelicals have become more accommodating toward the culture. In the last quarter century, however, the adversarial posture has been dominant. Such representative voices as Tim and Beverly LaHaye describe a great secular humanist conspiracy out there. Most evangelicals also see the wider culture as full of defrauders: pseudo-scientists who know the scientific evidence for creationism but refuse to let it enter the classroom; dishonest educators who tell local school boards they are teaching value-free social science when in truth what they teach is packed with an agenda; historians of religious history who hijack the American story and suppress the role of Christians; liberal clergy who leave out a vast amount of the historic Christian story when they preach. These people and others like them are duplicitous and cannot be trusted. While evangelicals don’t have much of a problem with the openly unsympathetic John Deweys of the world, they fear and resent the wolf in sheep’s clothing.</p>
<p>Their disgust at such duplicity has not only animated the Christian Right but also created an unprecedented pan-evangelical sense of a common threat. In recent years — very recent — Southern Baptists, Pentecostals, and Mormons have begun joining hands, despite their deep theological differences, to oppose defrauders.</p>
<p>In dealing with the outside world, evangelicals favor a variety of tactics. One is what Robert Wuthnow has called “procedural rationalism.” By this he means that they file lawsuits, elect people to town councils, follow the rules, do what they can do to set venues. While I don’t think that such actions have been terribly effective, procedural rationalism is certainly part of the evangelical tool kit.</p>
<p>A more important tactic is the effort to gain control of the key symbols of society. Think about the title “Moral Majority.” Who is going to claim to be part of an immoral minority, except tongue in cheek? Most people want to think of themselves as part of a moral tradition that is widely shared. Think how evangelical groups try to do their work, in one way or another, in Washington, D.C. Most have some kind of an organization there; others, like Promise Keepers, have made symbolic gestures “there. Washington itself is key. The desire to gain symbolic control is also behind the issue of school prayer. I doubt that any evangelical thinks prayer in schools has much catechetical value, but most do credit its symbolic significance.</p>
<p>The last behavior pattern I would highlight, and probably the most important of late, is the effort among evangelicals to take control of their own lives. The burgeoning home-schooling movement offers the premier, but not the only, example of this tactic. Evangelicals are trying, in a very pragmatic way, to create parallel institutions where their values can be played out.</p>
<p>This catalogue of evangelical beliefs and behaviors does not address, of course, two crucial questions: What brought evangelicalism into existence in the first place? What gives it its particularly visible, aggressive edge in American life today?</p>
<p>To understand the origins of the evangelical tradition, and its prominence, we need to look at the ideology of modernity. One critical feature of modernity is the Enlightenment emphasis on individual choice, which lies at the heart of the church-state distinction. David Bebbington, a marvelous historian of evangelicals in England, has in fact argued that evangelicalism is properly understood, not as a reaction to the modern world, but as an expression of it. Evangelicalism is the premier expression of modernity, precisely because it emphasizes choice and the conscious embracing of one’s life. But the downside of that choice is the denial of tradition.</p>
<p>Here’s the rub. Evangelicals embrace part of modernity, the emphasis on individual choice, but they worry about and react against other parts, especially those that would deprive them of God’s special acts in the Bible and in history. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, traditional supernaturalism came under attack in many spheres, and especially in biblical criticism. The Bible became a book among other books, opened to tools of investigation. In addition, the study of evolution, the emergence of anthropology, and the growing awareness of world religions all supported the assumption that God does&#160;not&#160;act in special ways. In other words, God is accessible to all, and the divine is simply a part of culture. This notion of the divine is what we often call romanticism, and it can be argued that romanticism is far more important than secularism for understanding evangelicals. Secularists are not the problem; romantics are the problem. Because they see the divine in all of culture, in all of history, they neutralize it. Secularists we can deal with; romantics are dangerous because of their perceived duplicity.</p>
<p>Of greater consequence for evangelicals even than the ideology of modernity, however, are the distinctive social arrangements that have accompanied modernization, such as compartmentalization, centralization, and bureaucratization. Modernization forces a mixing of communities and of world views. The interstate highway system, for example, has had the effect of mixing up society, of forcing people into proximity, in ways that were unimaginable before the 1950s. Effective contraceptives have dramatically increased the possibility of both geographic and occupational mobility. All kinds of late-twentieth-century social arrangements bring about a mixing that would not take place in a less modernized society.</p>
<p>Faced with such mixing, evangelicals have become enormously self-conscious about who they are. And their awareness of this identity is particularly evident in their reactions to the federal government. Perhaps the feature of modernization that has had the profoundest effect on evangelicals is the growth of the federal government. That growth increases the ability of government, and of other mass structures, to intrude upon the enclave, and this is what creates in evangelicals their sense of being besieged. Kevin Phillips has written, “The world of Manhattan, Harvard, and Beverly Hills was being exported to Calhoun County, Alabama, and Calhoun County did not like it.”</p>
<p>Now, this sense of being besieged is discussed by many different groups. All talk about how the rest of the world is intruding on them. But not all react the way evangelicals react. Evangelicals react organizationally. They&#160;do&#160;something about it. They have the resources, the money, and a social location that makes it possible for them to mobilize, to organize, to publish, to get on the air waves, to create schools. They don’t create universities — they are singularly inept at that — but they are very good at creating schools and colleges and para-church organizations.</p>
<p>There is extraordinary strength and density in the evangelical infrastructure. Part of this is historic, part a sense of mission, part has to do with the real or perceived necessity of defending themselves. Evangelicals follow the maxim “the best defense is an offense.” Their aim is to restore a traditional world, even if that world is for the most part an illusion — a Norman Rockwell world of small towns and summer nights and stable values. It never existed, but they think it did, and they are mobilizing to restore it.</p>
<p>What then keeps them going? I suggest that there are three sustaining factors that go beyond all the cultural reasons already discussed. The first, which is counterintuitive, is that they provide a place for women. While women may be excluded from the pulpit, they have an extraordinary range of obligations and opportunities within the evangelical world. The second factor that helps evangelicals continue to thrive is the emphasis upon biblical authority, which provides a great sense of security. And lastly, most evangelicals believe in an eschatology that tells them they are part of a larger design. Life isn’t just an accident. As Martin Marty has said, “Religion makes sad hearts glad or it does nothing at all.” That’s true of all Bible-based religious traditions, and it’s certainly true of the evangelical tradition at its best. Historians, journalists, and social scientists should keep that in mind.</p>
<p>HANNA ROSIN:&#160;My experience in the evangelical world is that of an outsider, and I can speak about it only as an outsider and a journalist. I’ve tried to discover the wider cultural significance of today’s evangelical fervor. Do America’s evangelicals represent a certain cultural vanguard about to usher in another Great Awakening and an era of social reform, or do they merely represent pockets of seething nostalgia, some sort of counterculture?</p>
<p>But first I want to talk about my credentials as an outsider. I come from a family that, like many, has become successively less religious over the generations. The easiest way to summarize this heritage is to describe a time when I was in Israel and four generations of my family were living in the same house. On the Sabbath, my great-grandmother would just not move — not because she was 100 years old but because she believed it was a sin even to chew on the Sabbath. We would sit at the table and not move so as not to offend God. My grandmother would move, but only to go to the synagogue. I remember going with her to her Orthodox synagogue, where the women were confined to a dark chamber behind dingy curtains. The rationale for this was that the women would distract the men, which struck me as preposterous at the time because my dear grandmother didn’t pose that sort of threat.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, my mother was the first generation formed by a Zionist education, which turned all religion into Israeli national myth. She could tell you everything about the Jewish resistance to the Romans at Masada, for instance, but almost nothing about the importance of Yom Kippur. And then there’s me, now out of Israel and wondering what it’s all about.</p>
<p>I now find myself, moreover, a religion reporter. I wrote about evangelicals a little bit at&#160;The New Republic,&#160;mostly contemptuously and without much understanding. When I first heard the former California congresswoman Andrea Seastrand, I thought that her descriptions of her apocalyptic visions of California and the Second Coming were absolutely off the wall. But after a year of spending a lot of time in the evangelical world, I’ve come to think it’s the&#160;Washington Post&#160;newsroom that’s crazy. I now have the feeling that everyone is an evangelical, that I could get on any plane in America and ask the person sitting next to me, “When did you accept Jesus Christ?” and he or she wouldn’t even blink. Back in my newsroom, however, no one will believe me when I tell them that 44 per cent of Americans are biblical creationists. They think it’s time to transfer me off my beat.</p>
<p>Grant Wacker was right to draw attention to evangelicals’ refusal to recognize the validity of the public-private distinction. My own experience entirely confirms this. Some of the people I write about call me at home all the time because, to them, there is no distinction between my public life as a reporter and my private life as a person.</p>
<p>I am also the target of their missionary zeal. When I’m out on the beat, people always ask, “What are you?” I’m not a reporter, I’m an opportunity for evangelizing, so they want to know who and what I am. When I tell them I’m Jewish, they’ll say, “So you’re a Messianic Jew,” as if that were the most natural thing in the world. One time, at a Waffle House, a preacher I was interviewing just kept staring at me. I became uncomfortable and couldn’t eat, and he finally said, “You know, you look just like Jesus Christ. You have the blood of Jesus running through you!” Another time, in Kansas, a guy played good cop/bad cop in his efforts to get me to convert. He stared at me intently, without blinking, and said, “Hanna, I love you.” And I thought, “God, we just met!” That was the good cop side. Then the bad cop started to talk to me about the Second Coming and the pit of hell. Neither of those tactics worked, but they impressed me. As I’ve wandered through the world of evangelicals, I’ve discovered that their religion is not theoretical. It is a living faith for them. As Grant Wacker said, it affects their behavior all the time.</p>
<p>My day-to-day experience, however, doesn’t answer the fundamental question: Do these small episodes in Kansas, Alabama, and elsewhere add up to anything? To the Fourth Great Awakening? To a cultural vanguard? Can we put it all together? At the end of his great book&#160;Revivals, Awakening, and Reform, William McLoughlin speculated about the religious meaning of the 1960s. Was that decade an example of a Great Awakening? Are we in another period of, as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell say, a great spiritual revival? When I look around, this period does not seem comparable to the one in which nineteenth-century New England teemed with religious prophets and the quest for the supernatural in everyday life lasted a generation. That period added up to something large — to a definition of what it means to be an American and what America’s place is in God’s universe. It actually redefined the culture.</p>
<p>Today’s ferment seems to have less transformative potential. The structure of churches and the craving for respectability are obstacles. With Methodists now exemplars of the middle class, the churches seen as heralding a great revival are the evangelical Calvary churches and the charismatic Vineyard churches that started out in California. A short time ago the Vineyard churches were quite radical, converting barefoot surfers to go out into the world and work for Jesus. But they’ve already begun their quest for respectability. Like the Methodists before them, Vineyard churches have already moved on to wanting to populate the country with Vineyard churches and develop an institutional structure. So they’ve lost a bit of their spontaneity and spark.</p>
<p>The megachurches may also sabotage a more sweeping spiritual revival. They are so media-ready and so ready to respond to all their members’ needs that they may subsume discontent too quickly. Lastly, new churches that thrive because of a cult of charisma and one personality, such as that of Lon Solomon at the McLean Bible Church in Virginia, are unlikely to survive into the next generation.</p>
<p>In exploring how the legacy of the sixties fosters or undercuts spiritual revival, I’ve noticed another interesting phenomenon. The therapeutic jargon that evangelicals so love to hate has become, ironically, the idiom of many of evangelicals’ own churches. It is common in these churches to hear that the parable of Moses and the burning bush is a story about depression, and that David is a story about leadership. At the close of a rousing sermon at a megachurch in Virginia, the minister declared, “Jesus is your greatest anti-depressant.” Songs refer to Jesus as your buddy. At the church Kenneth Starr attends, the emphasis is on the members’ various self-help groups. While religion is ostensibly about something larger, it often seems to be about something small and narrow, such as whether you are depressed or what happened to you at home that day. As Robert Wuthnow has written, God has become quite domesticated.</p>
<p>At the same time, this therapeutic impulse co-exists with a kind of traditionalism. A study of child-rearing practices concluded that while evangelicals use physical forms of discipline more than others, they also hug their kids and cry with their kids more than others. This synthesis seems to encapsulate the traditional and therapeutic sides of evangelicals today.</p>
<p>As evangelicals now embrace the therapeutic, they resist the supernatural. The tale of Cassie Bernall, the young woman who died in the Columbine shooting, is revealing. A sort of teenage revival sprouted around her, but people quickly became uncomfortable with the view of Cassie as a spiritual martyr. Her parents published a book detailing her troubled childhood, saying she had simply found happiness in one way. They tried very hard to bring the story many notches down, from being about something big and supernatural to being about something much smaller, domesticated, and manageable.</p>
<p>Lastly, I think that affluence is hindering a sweeping revival. It’s true that increasing modernization and sub-urbanization have generated many new anxieties and that modern evangelicals react viscerally to the soul-lessness of the suburbs, of the malls, of public education. They feel that they have too much contact with the world. On the other hand, however, the suburbs provide a competing idea — the idea that there is too much to lose. It’s hard to think about the end of the world when you’re somewhat affluent. A survivalist family I met in Kansas was worried about the Second Coming. They talked to me about how they wanted to buy a generator in case the power went out, but they wondered where to put it so that it wouldn’t ruin their garden. A nice suburban life creates problems for apocalyptic visions.</p>
<p>There is a contradiction. Ken Starr’s evangelical congregation is typical of many. It defines itself as a place that heals broken people, but it looks like a sterile suburban church. It doesn’t display much bleeding in the hallways. Rather, it is a very orderly place, where people come in to worship for an hour and then leave. Several cycles of people come through on a Sunday morning. It feels very proper and suburban; it’s already straining for respectability. The same is true of the Calvary churches and Vineyard churches: they may rail against modernity and over-sexualized teenagers, but they do so in sermons that are full of references to Madonna.</p>
<p>All this makes evangelical social work quite convenient but not radical or transforming. Changing the world comes entirely through individual reform. No larger dimension is required. If you believe you have the power to change yourself, and are working every day to change yourself, you don’t need to think about the structural reasons for poverty or about what should be done for the underclass. You see poverty and AIDS and other problems as symptoms of human flaws. If people just found Jesus, then they would overcome their problems. Social reform at a large level is unnecessary.</p>
<p>MICHAEL CROMARTIE: Thanks to you all. I’d like to ask Grant Wacker to tell us a little about the data in Christian Smith’s new book&#160;Christian America? What Evangelicals Really Want.</p>
<p>DR. WACKER: Smith’s data come from a multi-year project that involved a lot of telephone sampling and assiduously focused on what ordinary people in the pew think. Most striking is how paradoxical, how inconsistent the data are. By standards of systematic theology, many of those interviewed made little sense. They readily affirmed virtually contradictory claims at the same time. The other key finding, Smith says, is that evangelicals are a great deal more likable than their leaders. They are very humane people who have the same problems that everybody else does. It’s their leaders who often display this kind of jut-jaw mentality.</p>
<p>KATHY LEWIS, Dallas Morning News:&#160;I have a basic journalistic question for Hanna. How do you arrange your visits to churches? Do you go invited or unannounced?</p>
<p>MS. ROSIN:&#160;It depends. Another thing I’ve learned about evangelicals is that they are not phone people. You can call them 800 times and they won’t call you back, but they love you when you show up. So if I need to talk to a pastor who’s not calling me back, I just go. As soon as evangelicals see your face, they love you. In a way, they are nice people to report about; they are very easy to get along with, just as Grant said. In another way, of course, I’m uncomfortable hearing “I love you” from people I’ve never met before. It’s not part of my tradition, and it’s certainly calculated. In effect, Southern Baptists give out guidebooks about how to treat strangers in a church, how to invite them over immediately. Their extreme friendliness is almost a caricature.</p>
<p>Whether they trust me or not is also beside the point, because they have a mission to accomplish. They are sort of fatalistic about my writing. They expect someone at the&#160;Washington Post&#160;not to be on their side, and they are pleasantly surprised when sometimes I am. But all their interactions with me give them a chance to reaffirm their faith, to define themselves in reaction to me and my clinical, evaluating attitude. A reporter has the opposite mentality of an evangelical. That makes my job hard because I’m exactly what evangelicals don’t like.</p>
<p>DR. HATCH:&#160;A wonderful book called&#160;Defenders of God, by Bruce Lawrence and Frederick Denny, points out that no traditional religious fundamentalists — be they Jewish, Islamic, or Protestant — like to be studied, to be the objects of analytic attention. (Nor do historians, for that matter.)</p>
<p>E. J. DIONNE,&#160;The Washington Post: My questions relate to politics, and the first is for Professor Hatch. Two prominent Methodists are running for office in 2000 — George Bush and Hillary Clinton — and it strikes me that the two represent two different sides of Methodism. She represents a very strong social-reforming tradition, and he repre-sents reform through individual self-improvement. Would you comment on that?</p>
<p>DR. HATCH: I think your perception is accurate. In some ways Methodism is like America — a big tent with many different ways to fit in. Radical Pentecostalism and Holiness had Methodist roots, after all. But despite their fiery beginnings, Methodists were building Gothic churches by the 1850s. It’s a full, amorphous tradition that certainly has a strong activist element. Hillary Clinton comes out of that, with a 1960s sort of coloring. And among Southern Methodists, Texas Methodists, there is still a strong revivalist tradition, which Bush reflects.</p>
<p>DR. WACKER:&#160;Looking at a cross section of America at its core is a lot like looking at the Methodist church today. In a sense, saying that somebody is a Methodist tells you nothing anymore.</p>
<p>MR. DIONNE: My other question is whether something is shifting in terms of the political engagement of evangelicals. Not that the Christian Coalition is going to go away, but there is a sense — from people like Paul Weyrich and Cal Thomas, as well as on the ground — that evangelicals are entering a period of radical withdrawal similar to their withdrawals after the Scopes trial and Prohibition. I’m curious about where you think this movement is going.</p>
<p>DR. WACKER: I’ll try to separate my answer into two entities: the culturally self-conscious evangelicals I discussed, and the much smaller, more active subgroup called the Christian Right. It does seem to me that the Christian Right is in a moment of retrenchment. Certainly its leaders — Paul Weyrich, Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed, Cal Thomas, and Chuck Colson — are in a tempered mood. They are not despairing but reflective, eager to stop and reassess.</p>
<p>But I don’t see retrenchment in the larger group. While not exuberant, perhaps, that basic, church-going component of many millions of people is quite stable. These evangelicals are expecting neither huge successes in the near future — although that would please them — nor a great deal of loss. In a wonderful book called&#160;Redeeming&#160;America, Michael Lienesch likens evangelicalism to the cyclical spectacular phenomenon of a comet. When a comet comes back, it looks flashy and aberrational, but it does so with quite a bit of regularity. The press, nevertheless, always seems to be taken unawares by the evangelical phenomenon and looks like the proverbial deer in the headlights.</p>
<p>DR. HATCH:&#160;I think that Hanna made some good points about the effect on evangelicals of suburbanization, materialism, and therapeutic Christianity. Their universe is not radical; it’s very much part of core, middle-class society. Evangelicals face all the dilemmas that other middle-class people face. In a culture that is fragmenting, that is becoming more secular and more religious at the same time, they are just trying to make some sense of it all. I don’t see anything that could be called revival.</p>
<p>JAY AMBROSE, Scripps Howard News Service:&#160;It may not be a revival, but I think that a lot of people, not just evangelicals, are responding to the large problem of modernity by asking religious questions. They recognize that modernism has brought us to extreme relativism and left us with little to hold on to. For instance, we hear all the time that all cultures are of equal value, and yet we know that they are very different in some important respects. We are told that there are no final truths that can be objectively ascertained. I once heard Carl Sagan say on TV, “This is science: there is no difference in kind between humans and other animals.” What I wonder is whether we aren’t seeing many Americans today reaching out for something more than our modern-day culture is delivering. Isn’t this why bookstores are now filled with religious books? I know this is a big question.</p>
<p>DR. WACKER:&#160;And it’s a terribly important question, but it may have a surprising answer. One interesting finding of Smith’s extensive religious survey is how&#160;little&#160;the distinctive questions of modernity trouble ordinary people. What trouble them are the enduring questions that have troubled folks for millennia: Why did my wife die? Why did my children go astray? Why is there so much suffering, disease, and poverty? While the elites may worry about the problem of modernity, most people seem more consumed by the perennial human problems.</p>
<p>DAVID SHRIBMAN, The Boston Globe: I’d like to shift back to politics. Prior to the elections of 1988, 1992, and 1996, religious conservatives seemed to be a far more prominent and consequential group of voters, particularly in the Republican primaries, than they are now, at a similar point in the political cycle. God does not seem to be taking part in this election. Is that true? If so, why?</p>
<p>DR. WACKER: It seems true, but I don’t know why.</p>
<p>DR. HATCH:&#160;I sense there’s a backlash against the kind of shrill, partisan message that people heard during the impeachment crisis. A lot of evangelicals are good, middle-class, suburban people who want morality but morality without the partisan&#160;rancor.</p>
<p>MR. SHRIBMAN: Do you consider the religious conservative movement that began with Carter and continued through Reagan and Robertson to be one of the main moments in twentieth-century religious history? Is it historically significant?</p>
<p>DR. HATCH: Yes. I think the decline of the mainline churches and the rise of evangelicals is indeed a central story of the second half of the twentieth century. The fact that George W. Bush and Elizabeth Dole are both self-proclaimed evangelicals is significant, and I suspect that they are more representative of evangelicals than the Christian Coalition is. They take a certain stance, but it’s not shrill.</p>
<p>JODY HASSETT, ABC News: I’d like to know more about why a large number of evangelicals are now defecting to Orthodoxy and Catholicism. I tend to think that says more about the psychology of evangelicalism than about its theology.</p>
<p>DR. HATCH: A lot of thoughtful people within the evangelical world do seek a real religious tradition and are drawn to Orthodoxy and to the Roman Catholic Church. The structures and seeker-friendliness of evangelical Christianity can make it seem more like a market than a church. By always catering to people’s feelings and needs, evangelicals undermine their ability to sustain a viable religious tradition that focuses on human obligations to a transcendent being.</p>
<p>MS. ROSIN:&#160;The early Methodists created a more emotional witnessing. Why do their religious responses seem more authentic and transcendent to you than those of their current heirs?</p>
<p>DR. HATCH: The early Methodists wanted real conversions from one thing to another. They would tell you to take off your fancy clothes, cut your long hair, and radically change your life. They didn’t appeal to people to make them feel better; they made a transformative demand by preaching that the divine was very active in the world.</p>
<p>MICHAEL BARONE, U.S. News &amp; World Report: Having described much of the politics of the last dozen years or so as an argument between therapy and discipline, I am fascinated to discover the amount of therapy that exists in the culture of churches I had assumed embraced discipline. Now I discover that they rely on therapy, just as many therapeutic organizations — Alcoholics Anonymous, for example — rely on discipline. Some drug rehabilitation programs even put you back in jail if you slip up. Most institutions now recognize, as parents long have, that a mixture of therapy and discipline is the best way to achieve desired results. The problem is finding the most effective balance.</p>
<p>ELLIOTT ABRAMS, Ethics &amp; Public Policy Center:&#160;I’d like to know whether the evangelical population is more or less fixed, like the American Catholic population or the American Jewish population, or do different people float in and out of the movement? Stability certainly affects any movement’s political impact.</p>
<p>DR. JOHN GREEN, University of Akron:&#160;Evangelicals are a very fixed portion of the population who are able to retain their young in the faith better than most traditions. There’s been much less change over the last fifty years than we might imagine. It’s an identifiable population that persists. There is, however, a lot of flux in American religion, period — particularly among Catholics and mainline Protestants — and even more so in the large secular population. If anybody moves, secular people move.</p>
<p>DR. HATCH:&#160;We should also note that new religious influences continually sweep across denominational traditions, introducing new kinds of worship and music in both Protestant and Catholic congregations. How does Elizabeth Dole, whose family is deeply Presbyterian, suddenly become an evangelical? She considers herself both Presbyterian and evangelical.</p>
<p>DR. WACKER: In the last twenty years we have witnessed a growing willingness among evangelicals to identify themselves generically. We see that elsewhere as well. For example, when the occasion demands, Native Americans do not identify themselves tribally but as Native Americans.</p>
<p>BARBARA BRADLEY, NPR: According to statistics, about 40 per cent of the people who join megachurches leave within a couple of years. That certainly indicates a kind of churning. Is the megachurch simply a demographic phenomenon that appeals to baby-boomers who like self-help groups and professional-sounding music? Is it, therefore, likely to fade and be replaced in the evangelical movement by a different model, like the first-century model of home churches? Is the megachurch running out of steam because its theology is shallow? Will it evolve into something else? What might supplant it?</p>
<p>DR. HATCH: I don’t see it running out of steam. In suburban areas the megachurch is a multifaceted organization that can target a lot of people. It’s in tune with the shape of modern society.</p>
<p>DR. WACKER:&#160;A distinguished sociologist named Steve Warner has spoken about the internal structure of megachurches and revealed that the “mega” is an illusion. In fact, these churches break up into a great many cells. Each is an aggregation of cells that mirrors small-town America drawn together in one large parking lot.</p>
<p>MS. ROSIN: I’ll add that the children of baby-boomers really like megachurches. Every suburban megachurch has a youth cell and a youth minister, and sponsors all sorts of youth revivals and meetings.</p>
<p>DR. WACKER: One thing that megachurches don’t have, however, is cemeteries, which indicates a lack of long-term commitment to traditions over generations.</p>
<p>DEBORAH HOWELL, Newhouse News Service: I’d like to turn to the supernatural element, which was so strong in America’s early history, and ask, Why did supernaturalism go away? Is there evidence that it might return? Many New Age religions certainly manifest supernaturalism.</p>
<p>DR. HATCH:&#160;Growing respectability stamps it out. The early Methodist leader Nathan Bangs had visions and dreams early in his career and believed in the miraculous. Then he went to New York, became more respectable, and worked to purge that element from the movement. His own tradition bothered him.</p>
<p>DR. WACKER:&#160;I differ with Nat on this. I think supernaturalism is always there. It just moves from one group to another. Today Pentecostals and Mormons still exhibit some supernaturalism, and charismatics, many of whom are Episcopalians and Roman Catholics, are as wide open to it as they were generations ago.</p>
<p>KENNETH WOODWARD, Newsweek:&#160;I have been studying contemporary miracles. The miracles of the Bible are signs and wonders that were given meaning by an interpretive community. The miracles people claim today, on the other hand, are very vague. They don’t belong to a particular community but have to do only with the self, the transcendent self. They are less religious than spiritual. This spiritual tradition is important to Pentecostals, but the Catholic tradition, my own tradition, is very rational. We believe that God operates in the world through special divine action, so we need miracles and process them through the saints. We prove where God has acted and where he hasn’t in an interesting combination of faith and rationalism. I also happen to think that when everything becomes a miracle — when people claim that God found their car keys and the like — then nothing’s a miracle anymore.</p>
<p>PETER BEINART, The New Republic:&#160;I’m interested in group identity and have been struck by the way evangelicals and members of other religions differ when they speak about themselves. Catholics, like Ken Woodward, and Jews almost always use the pronoun “us,” but my sense is that people who have an evangelical background never talk about “us.” They talk about “them.” Obviously, this is related to the fact that evangelicals see the elite institutions — the media and the universities — as adversarial in a way that most Catholics and Jews don’t. But doesn’t this pose a problem for journalists and academics? The media and the universities should try to figure out a way in which evangelicals can speak as self-consciously evangelicals. It’s important to control the dissemination of knowledge about one’s own group, to write one’s own history, as Jews do, for instance.</p>
<p>DR. HATCH:&#160;That’s a most interesting observation. Evangelicals continue to be very populist, and when their leaders acquire more education, they tend to develop a certain distance from their own tradition. I would say that I am an evangelical Presbyterian, but I am also a believer who feels like a person without a country. I’m the son of a mainline Presbyterian minister, a graduate of an evangelical college, and a professor at a Roman Catholic institution, and I feel somewhere in between. Like a lot of my evangelical peers who have become scholars, I think of myself as evangelical but with a sense of distance and of appreciation of other Christian traditions.</p>
<p>MS. BRADLEY: Are intellectuals embarrassed to be classified as evangelicals because evangelicals are considered anti-intellectual?&#160;Are&#160;they anti-intellectual, across the board?</p>
<p>DR. HATCH: Evangelicalism is a popular movement with many of its own institutions that parallel those in mainline culture. It has separate colleges, separate Bible institutes, separate seminaries. People who come out of those institutions do have to adjust when they move into the mainstream. They are not immediately accepted, even though the general understanding of evangelicals is more sophisticated today than it was twenty years ago.</p>
<p>Elias Smith, Joseph Smith, and other interesting figures of the early republic were popular geniuses, but they were untrained in traditional ways. They were substantive, but they didn’t read Aristotle. The same holds true today among many Pentecostals, evangelicals, and fundamentalists. Their leaders are talented but populist, and they come across in angular ways. They are not on the same page as those who received their liberal arts education at Yale. People of learning who come out of the evangelical tradition, therefore, are ambivalent about acting as its spokesmen. Over the last generation, on the other hand, there has been an intellectual maturing of the movement as more evangelicals have become more educated.</p>
<p>MR. AMBROSE: Why do evangelicals inspire such extraordinary fear? The Christian Coalition especially inspires fear, and yet what impact is it having? The popular culture is certainly immune. Evangelicals are accused of wanting to impose their values on the whole of society, but so do environmental groups and many other liberal groups.</p>
<p>DR. WACKER:&#160;To some extent, evangelicals bring criticism on themselves by talking about missionizing all the time. It’s not surprising that outsiders sometimes take them seriously. Most groups hold normative views about the way society ought to be structured, but evangelicals make such a big deal of it that it gets them into trouble. For a couple of centuries, evangelicals did indeed have a broad power base. Historically, they have been associated with power, with the ability to impose their will upon broader segments of the population. This creates the impression, false though it may be, that they have power now and can use it in malign ways.</p>
<p>The behavior of irresponsible evangelical leaders also casts light on the subject of embarrassment. Many faithful evangelicals may shun the designation because they are embarrassed by a lot about the tradition and find it hard to defend publicly.</p>
<p>JACK WERTHEIMER, The Jewish Theological Seminary:&#160;I’m interested in hearing about internal religious coercion, rather than about imposing values on others. To what extent do peer pressure, ostracism, or other forms of coercion operate within the institutions themselves?</p>
<p>MS. ROSIN:&#160;Coercion is definitely present. James Dobson and others like him are very absolutist. For example,&#160;Dobson doesn’t make a distinction between&#160;Penthouse&#160;and&#160;Vogue;&#160;there’s no continuum of “bad culture.” It’s bad or good, and his followers must conform at every level. He’s particularly adamant about the evils of homosexuality. The only thing he has&#160;relented on is divorce. For whatever reason, divorce has become vaguely acceptable, in certain situations. You cannot be a gay person and be in James Dobson’s empire, but you can be a divorced person.</p>
<p>GREGG EASTERBROOK, The New Republic:&#160;I’d like to ask how immigration affects the growth of religious movements. Where do the million recent immigrants fit in? Do they become evangelicals or join more established churches?</p>
<p>DR. GREEN:&#160;The data show that about 20 per cent of Hispanic and Latino immigrants are Pentecostals, and many of the rest are nominally Catholic but may not be particularly religious. When they come to the United States, they confront our enormous religious kaleidoscope and, like many immigrant groups in the past, they begin to join churches. Evangelical churches have been particularly effective at recruiting both Latinos and Asian immigrants. A large portion of Asians attend evangelical churches, and another substantial group are&#160;attracted to mainline Protestant churches. One of the fastest growing components of the United Methodist Church is Korean Methodists. So immigration does have an effect. It both reinforces existing churches and generates new ones. Many churches we now take for granted were considered to be new and strange a hundred years ago. American religion has always been, and continues to be, reinvigorated by immigration.</p>
<p>MR. BARONE:&#160;I have examples from my own travels. Many Brazilian immigrants in Framingham, Massachusetts, belong to the Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal denomination that has more members in Brazil than in the United States. In Latin America, as well as among Latinos here, the evangelical and Pentecostal churches are truly competitive with the Catholic Church. Contrary to their image among many American political commentators, Latinos are not ready to vote in the way that the bishop tells them.</p>
<p>MR. WOODWARD:&#160;I’d like to return to the question of just who evangelicals are. As a working journalist, when should I use the word evangelical? I would lop off most Pentecostals and also Southern Baptists. But if I eliminate those two communities, who’s left? The number of evangelicals is then substantially reduced.</p>
<p>DR. WACKER:&#160;In the 1920s, a pastor named J. C. Massey noted that there were fundamentalists and damn fundamentalists. One draws distinctions as the occasion requires, and I think that in some ways Southern Baptists and Pentecostals are indeed different from Wheaton College evangelicals. But historians and journalists gain a great deal by thinking in terms of a small&#160;e. Evangelicals do share a common culture that has increasingly seen itself as a counterculture, and this has created a sense of fidelity to a pan-evangelical group.</p>
<p>MR. CROMARTIE:&#160;Thanks again to our three speakers, Nathan Hatch, Grant Wacker, and Hanna Rosin, and thanks to each participant in this stimulating conversation about evangelicalism and American life.</p> | false | 1 | faith angle forum160is semiannual conference brings together select group 20 nationally respected journalists 35 distinguished scholars areas religion politics amp public life evangelicalism amp american life prouts neck maine speakers dr nathan hatch professor history amp provost university notre dame dr grant wacker associate professor history religion america duke university divinity school respondent hanna rosin religion reporter160the washington post moderator michael cromartie vice president ethics amp public policy center 160 dr nathan hatch160americans long considered religious liberty crowning achievement revolution heart national identity also naturally linked liberty conscience legendary heralds roger smith william penn struggled heavy odds achieve religious freedom colonial era independence strange coalition humanists evangelicals including thomas jefferson james madison baptists isaac backus john leland joined forces ensure religion would serve engine civil policy focus individuals creates narrative religious freedom heroic enterprise without underestimating symbolic role champions liberty however may usefully consider whether truly close connection intention outcome perhaps historians sidney mead perry miller argue early americans following cloud pillar high principle rather walking road religious freedom without knowing retrospect evolution religious freedom north america seems natural uncomplicated almost foreordained easy overlook unusual even extravagant hothouse religious diversity within colonies became united states middle eighteenth century traditional european churchmen would found religious environment america disruptive disorienting colonial america surged religious diversity well theory could fully explain justify weakness english state strength commercial capitalism conspired make north america variety british european dissenters many compelling religious ethnic reasons flee old world religion became massively deregulated english colonies design governmental ecclesiastical weakness functional deregulation religion stark contrast centralist tradition characterized spanish french experience america english north america also distinctive remarkable unprecedented wave immigration mixed english german swiss scottish scotchirish dutch african ethnic groups religious persecution accounted french huguenots barred quebec helped build charleston philadelphia new york jews fleeing inquisition spain brazil also established communities charleston new york twenty years american revolution 300000 people poured english america number equivalent entire spanish migration america colonial period many 16000 flooded english colonies year total number french settlers quebec 150 years movement hundreds thousands displaced europeans africans halfbillion acres lay east mississippi bernard bailyn written produced culture unlike known would suggest within culture religious liberty developed legal sense default withering state ecclesiastical authority allowed rampant religious improvisation time revolution instance south carolina richard hofstadter called vacant establishment paper anglican church official establishment around charleston institutional coherence yet commercial reasons south carolina always welcomed promising settlers whatever religious convictions presbyterians actually outnumbered anglicans back country colony moreover simmered religious ethnic dissent exception new england british colonies north america given monopolistic relationship religion state prior adoption first amendment experience revolution building democratic polity undermined already fragile foundations church tradition episcopalians presbyterians congregationalists closely tied elite institutions civil authority difficult time competing religious free market early republic commanded certain high ground culture power weak restrain upstart vernacular religious movements blurred distinction church popular religion lay driven voluntary participatory enthusiastic movements became endemic methodists counterculture england outstripped churches united states helped define core culture colonial america bequeathed unique untidy diversity united states early republic turn profoundly altered relationship class religion america upper classes united states would never control religion would diverse democratized churches allow state control centralize cultural life western democracy even canada would develop system higher education decentralized independent state control open entrepreneurial efforts religious dissenters recognizing religious diversity within thirteen states members constitutional convention adopted first amendment prohibited governmental establishment religion guaranteed free exercise religious choice jeffersons drive religious liberty arisen assumption religious corruption sprang privileged status established churches freedom religion jefferson thought would release churches ecclesiastical hierarchy sectarian enthusiasm set path rationality restraint jefferson actually witnessed however anything measured decorum founders lived first decades nineteenth century deeply disturbed rising revivalist populist faiths transforming classical republic dreams fiery furnace democracy early republic swept feet sean wilentz deemed one extraordinary spells sectarian invention nation world ever seen powerful social movement new nation embodiment enthusiasm authoritative religion methodists methodists would achieve formidable position new united states curious unexpected dawn american republic new england congregationalists middle colony presbyterians southern anglicans cast dominant shadow society politics religion followers john wesley made way colonial cities methodists yet separate church anglicans insignificant american religious economy explosive growth methodist episcopal church surprising development republic shunned statesponsored religion american followers john wesley could boast four ministers 300 lay people 1771 threatened extinction revolution leaders except francis asbury returned england leaving methodist faithful struggle stigma toryism throughout war tireless direction asbury however methodists advanced canada georgia emphasizing three themes americans found captivating gods free grace liberty people accept reject grace power validity popular religious expressioneven among servants women slaves led uneducated preachers committed sacrifice travel methodists organized local classes cells preaching circuits rate alarmed respectable denominations 1776 1850 methodists america experienced miraculous growth comprising less 3 per cent church members 1776 methodist ranks swelled encompass 34 per cent church members 1850 becoming far largest religious body nation unlike methodism great britain moreover remained dissenting movement despite strength never occupied high ground culture power held church england methodism america came embody nations preeminent religious cultural ethos whole american style emphasized sincerity openness rather form privacy became methodist culturally prestigious style remained anglican england enthusiasm kinds religious cultural personal reigned america message structure methodism also embodied liberal conception reality broke decisively prerevolutionary pursuit homogeneous community movement selfconscious outsiders methodism embraced pluralism competition marketing religion every sphere life far beyond narrow confines ecclesiastical space methodist itinerant peter cartwright recounted presbyterian minister objected starting another church within bounds congregation cartwright responded free people free country would pleased disestablishment early republic attributable solely law rather free religious market emerged presumptive authority traditional churches withered european churches shoring authority following convulsion french revolution napoleon americas established churches collegeeducated ministers continued read sermons staid liturgies despite tremendous assault in160the churching america 17761990160roger finke rodney stark point percentage religious adherents 1776 1850 congregationalists dropped 20 4 per cent presbyterians 19 116 episcopalians 157 35 difficult give coherent account period churches religious movements 1800 operated climate tottering ecclesiastical establishments federal government almost internal functions rampant migration people continued shortcircuit old networks personal authority established religious institutions linked upper classes remained weak make whole society accept language analysis americas rapidly expanding society fluid structures institutional control allowed new dynamic religious movements take root thrive virtually unlimited social space without hardened distinctions social class religious denomination americans moved new areas hill country new england ohio river valley central tennessee kentucky staid churches could make transition new england frontier slowgrowing congregationalists established five churches 1790s baptists started twentysix new congregations methodists started nine 1800 dissenters outnumbered congregationalists three one 1810 one eight backcountry communities congregational church similar conditions prevailed frontier kentucky ohio methodists easily outstripped presbyterians young united states religious power influence authority dispersed based popular appeal nothing better illustrates fact marked pluralism religious publishing exploded early nineteenth century stood sharp contrast tightly controlled centralized traditions publishing quebec latin america historian gaylord p albaugh estimated 605 distinct religious journals founded america 1830 14 existed 1790 journals appeared quickly vanished creations common people broad popular audience 1789 religious journals issued either boston new york philadelphia 1830 religious journals published 195 different cities towns every state mississippi 70 locations publications still active 1830 half west alleghenies vernacular religious movements arose wake religious liberty blurred distinctions church popular religion outbreaks enthusiasm common european british christianity era democratic revolutions america unique absence revived state church united states high culture weak inhibit restrict enthusiastic popular religiosity cultural periphery remained far powerful unobstructed ideal climate churches growing popular culture methodists mormons thrived methodism mormonism broke decisively kind churches dominated american colonies succeeded willing market religion outside traditional ecclesiastical space cater interests specific market segments proliferation adam smith predicted would result government deregulation religion movements empowered ordinary people taking deepest spiritual impulses face value shattering formal distinctions lay people clergy providing arena entrepreneurial instincts religious upstarts communicating gospel message vernacular preaching print song methodists mormons also strikingly alike two ways focus reality supernatural everyday life recruitment organization disciplined bands young followers hungry achievement sacrificial zeal driven sense providential mission first two decades nineteenth century methodist experience brimmed overt enthusiasm supernatural impressions reliance prophetic dreams visions evident methodist journals autobiographies methodism dignified religious ecstasy unrestrained emotional release preaching blacks women anyone felt call two africanamerican women became successful methodist exhorters jarena lee zilpha elaw dramatically converted direct revelation found guidance prophetic dreams celebrated notorious methodist itinerant day crazy lorenzo dow celebrated holy man unusual powers even nathan bangs eventually set face rid methodism stigma enthusiasm began itinerant career whitehot enthusiast historian john wigger argues defining characteristic american methodism francis asbury theological abstraction quest supernatural everyday life america rapid expansion methodism created conditions allowed women africanamericans assume religious leadership methodists gave women extraordinary freedom speak encouraging share religious experiences public also granted africanamericans right preach gospel even ordained black ministers though attempted keep black leaders fringe movement gave rise independent black churches first african methodist episcopal church founded richard allen philadelphia time joseph smith announced prophetic mission methodist episcopal church pushing enthusiasm margins popular yearning divine intervention daytoday experience remained joseph smith issued clarion call militant supernaturalism demonstrable revelation heaven reality miracles apostolic gifts sure ongoing channel prophecy god miracles lord proclaimed the160book mormon latterday saints insisted taking claim literally mormons methodists shared common longing miraculous power biblical world also shared genius organizing consolidating expansion faiths methodists mormons core youth movements extraordinary capacity mobilize people cause build organization sustained obedience discipline rather ties parish family patronage movements battery young leaders without elite pedigree constructed fresh religious ideologies around movement coalesced mormons methodists also driven consuming passion convert unconverted saw urgent missionary purpose principal reason existence preaching aimed warning people wrath come proselytizing took form relentless systematic deluge unlike young itinerants early eighteenthcentury great awakening whose efforts largely uncoordinated shortlived movements developed regimented ongoing schemes sending lay preachers remote pockets american civilization methodists mormons furthermore rejected puritan tradition painstaking study mormon preachers included hatters cobblers glaziers potters farmers advised using careful forethought written notes detailed plans overriding goal convince unconvinced whatever means possible organizational genius methodists mormons embrace empower common people system centrally directed fixed even authoritarian way early years movements volatile unstable variety fledgling selfordained leaders vied influence tested limits prescribed authority frequently defected form churches yet mormons methodists unlike disciples baptists swore institutional coherence face clamoring dissent sometimes fueled democratic impulses sometimes visionary ones methodists mormons willing exercise discipline even ruthlessly preserve movement name god authoritarian extreme latterday saints symbolize disorienting instability accompanied freemarket religious economy crisis authority failure integrate meaning care lonely forlorn primitive mormons apocalyptic sect intent expansion willing unsheathe sword retaliation persecution inception mormonism throbbed diversity multiple revelations array spiritual gifts internal dissent external threats led smith deny freedom thought demand strictest loyalty commands 1843 smith announced earthly commitments null void save ones sealed human obligation even solemn vow marriage meaning unless sanctioned prophet joseph divine prophet military general political boss even candidate presidency united states smith consolidated power hands equated obedience compliance divine submitting prophet revelator mormon followers willing dismiss architecture classic christian theology practice missouri illinois radicalism led persecution far disbanding movement set motion pilgrimage utah mormons flourished religious marketplace one congregational missionary illinois called 1829 religious anarchy sea sectarian rivalries could give rise intolerance sometimes even persecution case joseph smith denials religious liberty generally function government popular action mobs oppression powerful dissenters fear america alexis de tocqueville noted tyranny majority 1830s 1840s mob action rampant america catholics boston philadelphia mormons ohio missouri illinois abolitionist preachers variety locations intolerance persecution nonetheless rarely effective suppressing religious dissent instead availability space united states meant dissent pluralism generally proceeded apace americas vast hinterland allowed oppressed mormons trek beyond writ law mob rather crushed missouri illinois experience pilgrimage solidified identity latterday saints helped brigham young turn highly fragmented fragile apocalyptic sect major religious community severe popular prejudice roman catholics particularly respect education emboldened immigrant catholic church begin system parochial education time colleges universities lesser degree midnineteenthcentury methodists felt discriminated calvinists controlled colleges responded founding thirtyfive colleges 1840 1860 another thirtyfive plus civil war 1900 united states religious liberty proceeded almost unrestrained fury generating popular culture awash sea faith unmediated traditional religious leaders government officials people america turned free practice religion european cousins mean americans possessed greater foresight tolerance simply means institutions weak communities diverse restrain religious whirlwind descended upon founding republic one wanted envisioned state religious freedom however deregulation religion popular contagion american revolution vast expanse land continual mixing peoples conspired make religion pervasive divisive reality american life dr grant wacker160i would like offer cultural profile evangelicals modern america postworld war ii america historical references inevitable primary focus modern scene offer profile course must first identify people talking evangelicals anecdotal insights revealing suppose someone comes bigcity bus says seat saved oh incidentally thats tipoff probably sharing seat evangelical rather highchurch episcopalian evangelical also defined someone really160really160likes billy graham fundamentalist someone really likes billy graham worries hes going soft liberals another chestnut historian joel carpenter borrows bob jones sr evangelical someone says liberal ill call christian youll call scholar social science probably gives us less insight anecdotal evidence evangelical animal first data vary wildly strictest definition evangelicals number million criteria figure go high 50 million think best estimate draw christian smith sociologist university north carolina roughly 2529 per cent americans associated conservative protestant churches smith bases figure massive polling research team done well general surveys whether 20 million 40 million dealing lot people call people culturally selfconscious evangelicals much broader category christian right politically active members christian right probably number couple hundred thousand number evangelicals could mobilized given issue swells rapidly millions though definitions become loose count goes high would argue evangelicals160believe160is central reasonable definition belief important evangelicals instinctively define jewish community instance may give preeminence ritual rather doctrinal affirmation evangelicals give preeminence belief great deal flexibility manifest beliefs ordinary life evangelical would ever say oh well really doesnt matter think birth jesus christ it160does160matter belief counts first crucial tenet evangelicalism second crucial tenet theologians formal principle authority bible protestants believe authority bible course christians believe bible one way another evangelicals distinguish religious landscape insistence bible interpreted without benefit church community clergy words one reads bible makes judgment means wellknown pentecostal said believe god grandchildren reveals great deal ethos deepest assumptions movement grandchildren evangelicals responsible reading making decisions say actually desire evangelicals add point authority bible belief bible doesnt make mistakesthe doctrine inerrancy best way understand interpret literally possible bottom line authority bible evangelicals third item belief material principle necessary affirmation jesus christs redeeming act cross theologians call justification faith evangelicals would simply say god taken care past taken care brokenness sins whatever defiles us sometimes affirmation generate kind unappealing smugness problem taken care positive negative implications manifestation faith fourth implicit belief among evangelicals parts bible significant others variations emphasis fact generated variety denominations within evangelical family pentecostals holiness groups adventists baptists africanamerican baptists methodists several others almost bodies come existence stressed one particular part bible usually passage new testament pentecostals example focus practice speaking tongues book acts describes occurred day pentecost take normative devout believer fifth evangelical tenet time counts evangelicals talk millennialism sorts great majority premillennialists think christ return earth millennium period peace righteousness prevail earth postmillennialists think return160after160the millennium amillennialists believe millennium heart rather actual time earth however see future eschatological schemes involve sense time counts fritter away peril course evangelicals may likely fritter away time anyone else feel guilty feel lords work lastly evangelicals believe strongly autonomy individual particularly individual decision stress every individual must necessity make personal decision follow christ god grandchildren everyone must make decision asked evangelicals back 1950s name favorite radio program might well said hour decision probably would liked billy graham also title emphasis autonomous decisionmaking moreover bleeds related emphasis autonomous churches even hierarchically structured like methodist churches display considerable freedom local level addition distinctive beliefs evangelicals display distinctive behavior patterns first distinctive behavior evangelizing one simply good news gospel unless one shares though christian smiths recent work extensive polling data show evangelicals reluctant buttonhole people share faith feel they160should160do try important southern baptist periodical called160tell take hold it160or160keep but160tell one prominent evangelical preacher insisted important keep cookies bottom shelf words make message accessible second noteworthy behavior embrace social reform particular causes change temperance 1820s abolition 1840s prohibition 1920s abortion school prayer recently evangelicals desire change society part cultural dna effort reach creates inevitable friction elite secular culture many reform campaigns evangelicals deny validity publicprivate distinction precious enlightenment culture abortion wrong reason wrong everybody wrong everybody wrong social concerns corporate concerns third behavioral characteristic especially glaring last twenty years adversarial posture toward wider culture past posture times receded evangelicals become accommodating toward culture last quarter century however adversarial posture dominant representative voices tim beverly lahaye describe great secular humanist conspiracy evangelicals also see wider culture full defrauders pseudoscientists know scientific evidence creationism refuse let enter classroom dishonest educators tell local school boards teaching valuefree social science truth teach packed agenda historians religious history hijack american story suppress role christians liberal clergy leave vast amount historic christian story preach people others like duplicitous trusted evangelicals dont much problem openly unsympathetic john deweys world fear resent wolf sheeps clothing disgust duplicity animated christian right also created unprecedented panevangelical sense common threat recent years recent southern baptists pentecostals mormons begun joining hands despite deep theological differences oppose defrauders dealing outside world evangelicals favor variety tactics one robert wuthnow called procedural rationalism means file lawsuits elect people town councils follow rules set venues dont think actions terribly effective procedural rationalism certainly part evangelical tool kit important tactic effort gain control key symbols society think title moral majority going claim part immoral minority except tongue cheek people want think part moral tradition widely shared think evangelical groups try work one way another washington dc kind organization others like promise keepers made symbolic gestures washington key desire gain symbolic control also behind issue school prayer doubt evangelical thinks prayer schools much catechetical value credit symbolic significance last behavior pattern would highlight probably important late effort among evangelicals take control lives burgeoning homeschooling movement offers premier example tactic evangelicals trying pragmatic way create parallel institutions values played catalogue evangelical beliefs behaviors address course two crucial questions brought evangelicalism existence first place gives particularly visible aggressive edge american life today understand origins evangelical tradition prominence need look ideology modernity one critical feature modernity enlightenment emphasis individual choice lies heart churchstate distinction david bebbington marvelous historian evangelicals england fact argued evangelicalism properly understood reaction modern world expression evangelicalism premier expression modernity precisely emphasizes choice conscious embracing ones life downside choice denial tradition heres rub evangelicals embrace part modernity emphasis individual choice worry react parts especially would deprive gods special acts bible history beginning late nineteenth century traditional supernaturalism came attack many spheres especially biblical criticism bible became book among books opened tools investigation addition study evolution emergence anthropology growing awareness world religions supported assumption god does160not160act special ways words god accessible divine simply part culture notion divine often call romanticism argued romanticism far important secularism understanding evangelicals secularists problem romantics problem see divine culture history neutralize secularists deal romantics dangerous perceived duplicity greater consequence evangelicals even ideology modernity however distinctive social arrangements accompanied modernization compartmentalization centralization bureaucratization modernization forces mixing communities world views interstate highway system example effect mixing society forcing people proximity ways unimaginable 1950s effective contraceptives dramatically increased possibility geographic occupational mobility kinds latetwentiethcentury social arrangements bring mixing would take place less modernized society faced mixing evangelicals become enormously selfconscious awareness identity particularly evident reactions federal government perhaps feature modernization profoundest effect evangelicals growth federal government growth increases ability government mass structures intrude upon enclave creates evangelicals sense besieged kevin phillips written world manhattan harvard beverly hills exported calhoun county alabama calhoun county like sense besieged discussed many different groups talk rest world intruding react way evangelicals react evangelicals react organizationally they160do160something resources money social location makes possible mobilize organize publish get air waves create schools dont create universities singularly inept good creating schools colleges parachurch organizations extraordinary strength density evangelical infrastructure part historic part sense mission part real perceived necessity defending evangelicals follow maxim best defense offense aim restore traditional world even world part illusion norman rockwell world small towns summer nights stable values never existed think mobilizing restore keeps going suggest three sustaining factors go beyond cultural reasons already discussed first counterintuitive provide place women women may excluded pulpit extraordinary range obligations opportunities within evangelical world second factor helps evangelicals continue thrive emphasis upon biblical authority provides great sense security lastly evangelicals believe eschatology tells part larger design life isnt accident martin marty said religion makes sad hearts glad nothing thats true biblebased religious traditions certainly true evangelical tradition best historians journalists social scientists keep mind hanna rosin160my experience evangelical world outsider speak outsider journalist ive tried discover wider cultural significance todays evangelical fervor americas evangelicals represent certain cultural vanguard usher another great awakening era social reform merely represent pockets seething nostalgia sort counterculture first want talk credentials outsider come family like many become successively less religious generations easiest way summarize heritage describe time israel four generations family living house sabbath greatgrandmother would move 100 years old believed sin even chew sabbath would sit table move offend god grandmother would move go synagogue remember going orthodox synagogue women confined dark chamber behind dingy curtains rationale women would distract men struck preposterous time dear grandmother didnt pose sort threat meanwhile mother first generation formed zionist education turned religion israeli national myth could tell everything jewish resistance romans masada instance almost nothing importance yom kippur theres israel wondering find moreover religion reporter wrote evangelicals little bit at160the new republic160mostly contemptuously without much understanding first heard former california congresswoman andrea seastrand thought descriptions apocalyptic visions california second coming absolutely wall year spending lot time evangelical world ive come think the160washington post160newsroom thats crazy feeling everyone evangelical could get plane america ask person sitting next accept jesus christ wouldnt even blink back newsroom however one believe tell 44 per cent americans biblical creationists think time transfer beat grant wacker right draw attention evangelicals refusal recognize validity publicprivate distinction experience entirely confirms people write call home time distinction public life reporter private life person also target missionary zeal im beat people always ask im reporter im opportunity evangelizing want know tell im jewish theyll say youre messianic jew natural thing world one time waffle house preacher interviewing kept staring became uncomfortable couldnt eat finally said know look like jesus christ blood jesus running another time kansas guy played good copbad cop efforts get convert stared intently without blinking said hanna love thought god met good cop side bad cop started talk second coming pit hell neither tactics worked impressed ive wandered world evangelicals ive discovered religion theoretical living faith grant wacker said affects behavior time daytoday experience however doesnt answer fundamental question small episodes kansas alabama elsewhere add anything fourth great awakening cultural vanguard put together end great book160revivals awakening reform william mcloughlin speculated religious meaning 1960s decade example great awakening another period pat robertson jerry falwell say great spiritual revival look around period seem comparable one nineteenthcentury new england teemed religious prophets quest supernatural everyday life lasted generation period added something large definition means american americas place gods universe actually redefined culture todays ferment seems less transformative potential structure churches craving respectability obstacles methodists exemplars middle class churches seen heralding great revival evangelical calvary churches charismatic vineyard churches started california short time ago vineyard churches quite radical converting barefoot surfers go world work jesus theyve already begun quest respectability like methodists vineyard churches already moved wanting populate country vineyard churches develop institutional structure theyve lost bit spontaneity spark megachurches may also sabotage sweeping spiritual revival mediaready ready respond members needs may subsume discontent quickly lastly new churches thrive cult charisma one personality lon solomon mclean bible church virginia unlikely survive next generation exploring legacy sixties fosters undercuts spiritual revival ive noticed another interesting phenomenon therapeutic jargon evangelicals love hate become ironically idiom many evangelicals churches common churches hear parable moses burning bush story depression david story leadership close rousing sermon megachurch virginia minister declared jesus greatest antidepressant songs refer jesus buddy church kenneth starr attends emphasis members various selfhelp groups religion ostensibly something larger often seems something small narrow whether depressed happened home day robert wuthnow written god become quite domesticated time therapeutic impulse coexists kind traditionalism study childrearing practices concluded evangelicals use physical forms discipline others also hug kids cry kids others synthesis seems encapsulate traditional therapeutic sides evangelicals today evangelicals embrace therapeutic resist supernatural tale cassie bernall young woman died columbine shooting revealing sort teenage revival sprouted around people quickly became uncomfortable view cassie spiritual martyr parents published book detailing troubled childhood saying simply found happiness one way tried hard bring story many notches something big supernatural something much smaller domesticated manageable lastly think affluence hindering sweeping revival true increasing modernization suburbanization generated many new anxieties modern evangelicals react viscerally soullessness suburbs malls public education feel much contact world hand however suburbs provide competing idea idea much lose hard think end world youre somewhat affluent survivalist family met kansas worried second coming talked wanted buy generator case power went wondered put wouldnt ruin garden nice suburban life creates problems apocalyptic visions contradiction ken starrs evangelical congregation typical many defines place heals broken people looks like sterile suburban church doesnt display much bleeding hallways rather orderly place people come worship hour leave several cycles people come sunday morning feels proper suburban already straining respectability true calvary churches vineyard churches may rail modernity oversexualized teenagers sermons full references madonna makes evangelical social work quite convenient radical transforming changing world comes entirely individual reform larger dimension required believe power change working every day change dont need think structural reasons poverty done underclass see poverty aids problems symptoms human flaws people found jesus would overcome problems social reform large level unnecessary michael cromartie thanks id like ask grant wacker tell us little data christian smiths new book160christian america evangelicals really want dr wacker smiths data come multiyear project involved lot telephone sampling assiduously focused ordinary people pew think striking paradoxical inconsistent data standards systematic theology many interviewed made little sense readily affirmed virtually contradictory claims time key finding smith says evangelicals great deal likable leaders humane people problems everybody else leaders often display kind jutjaw mentality kathy lewis dallas morning news160i basic journalistic question hanna arrange visits churches go invited unannounced ms rosin160it depends another thing ive learned evangelicals phone people call 800 times wont call back love show need talk pastor whos calling back go soon evangelicals see face love way nice people report easy get along grant said another way course im uncomfortable hearing love people ive never met part tradition certainly calculated effect southern baptists give guidebooks treat strangers church invite immediately extreme friendliness almost caricature whether trust also beside point mission accomplish sort fatalistic writing expect someone the160washington post160not side pleasantly surprised sometimes interactions give chance reaffirm faith define reaction clinical evaluating attitude reporter opposite mentality evangelical makes job hard im exactly evangelicals dont like dr hatch160a wonderful book called160defenders god bruce lawrence frederick denny points traditional religious fundamentalists jewish islamic protestant like studied objects analytic attention historians matter e j dionne160the washington post questions relate politics first professor hatch two prominent methodists running office 2000 george bush hillary clinton strikes two represent two different sides methodism represents strong socialreforming tradition represents reform individual selfimprovement would comment dr hatch think perception accurate ways methodism like america big tent many different ways fit radical pentecostalism holiness methodist roots despite fiery beginnings methodists building gothic churches 1850s full amorphous tradition certainly strong activist element hillary clinton comes 1960s sort coloring among southern methodists texas methodists still strong revivalist tradition bush reflects dr wacker160looking cross section america core lot like looking methodist church today sense saying somebody methodist tells nothing anymore mr dionne question whether something shifting terms political engagement evangelicals christian coalition going go away sense people like paul weyrich cal thomas well ground evangelicals entering period radical withdrawal similar withdrawals scopes trial prohibition im curious think movement going dr wacker ill try separate answer two entities culturally selfconscious evangelicals discussed much smaller active subgroup called christian right seem christian right moment retrenchment certainly leaders paul weyrich jerry falwell ralph reed cal thomas chuck colson tempered mood despairing reflective eager stop reassess dont see retrenchment larger group exuberant perhaps basic churchgoing component many millions people quite stable evangelicals expecting neither huge successes near future although would please great deal loss wonderful book called160redeeming160america michael lienesch likens evangelicalism cyclical spectacular phenomenon comet comet comes back looks flashy aberrational quite bit regularity press nevertheless always seems taken unawares evangelical phenomenon looks like proverbial deer headlights dr hatch160i think hanna made good points effect evangelicals suburbanization materialism therapeutic christianity universe radical much part core middleclass society evangelicals face dilemmas middleclass people face culture fragmenting becoming secular religious time trying make sense dont see anything could called revival jay ambrose scripps howard news service160it may revival think lot people evangelicals responding large problem modernity asking religious questions recognize modernism brought us extreme relativism left us little hold instance hear time cultures equal value yet know different important respects told final truths objectively ascertained heard carl sagan say tv science difference kind humans animals wonder whether arent seeing many americans today reaching something modernday culture delivering isnt bookstores filled religious books know big question dr wacker160and terribly important question may surprising answer one interesting finding smiths extensive religious survey how160little160the distinctive questions modernity trouble ordinary people trouble enduring questions troubled folks millennia wife die children go astray much suffering disease poverty elites may worry problem modernity people seem consumed perennial human problems david shribman boston globe id like shift back politics prior elections 1988 1992 1996 religious conservatives seemed far prominent consequential group voters particularly republican primaries similar point political cycle god seem taking part election true dr wacker seems true dont know dr hatch160i sense theres backlash kind shrill partisan message people heard impeachment crisis lot evangelicals good middleclass suburban people want morality morality without partisan160rancor mr shribman consider religious conservative movement began carter continued reagan robertson one main moments twentiethcentury religious history historically significant dr hatch yes think decline mainline churches rise evangelicals indeed central story second half twentieth century fact george w bush elizabeth dole selfproclaimed evangelicals significant suspect representative evangelicals christian coalition take certain stance shrill jody hassett abc news id like know large number evangelicals defecting orthodoxy catholicism tend think says psychology evangelicalism theology dr hatch lot thoughtful people within evangelical world seek real religious tradition drawn orthodoxy roman catholic church structures seekerfriendliness evangelical christianity make seem like market church always catering peoples feelings needs evangelicals undermine ability sustain viable religious tradition focuses human obligations transcendent ms rosin160the early methodists created emotional witnessing religious responses seem authentic transcendent current heirs dr hatch early methodists wanted real conversions one thing another would tell take fancy clothes cut long hair radically change life didnt appeal people make feel better made transformative demand preaching divine active world michael barone us news amp world report described much politics last dozen years argument therapy discipline fascinated discover amount therapy exists culture churches assumed embraced discipline discover rely therapy many therapeutic organizations alcoholics anonymous example rely discipline drug rehabilitation programs even put back jail slip institutions recognize parents long mixture therapy discipline best way achieve desired results problem finding effective balance elliott abrams ethics amp public policy center160id like know whether evangelical population less fixed like american catholic population american jewish population different people float movement stability certainly affects movements political impact dr john green university akron160evangelicals fixed portion population able retain young faith better traditions theres much less change last fifty years might imagine identifiable population persists however lot flux american religion period particularly among catholics mainline protestants even large secular population anybody moves secular people move dr hatch160we also note new religious influences continually sweep across denominational traditions introducing new kinds worship music protestant catholic congregations elizabeth dole whose family deeply presbyterian suddenly become evangelical considers presbyterian evangelical dr wacker last twenty years witnessed growing willingness among evangelicals identify generically see elsewhere well example occasion demands native americans identify tribally native americans barbara bradley npr according statistics 40 per cent people join megachurches leave within couple years certainly indicates kind churning megachurch simply demographic phenomenon appeals babyboomers like selfhelp groups professionalsounding music therefore likely fade replaced evangelical movement different model like firstcentury model home churches megachurch running steam theology shallow evolve something else might supplant dr hatch dont see running steam suburban areas megachurch multifaceted organization target lot people tune shape modern society dr wacker160a distinguished sociologist named steve warner spoken internal structure megachurches revealed mega illusion fact churches break great many cells aggregation cells mirrors smalltown america drawn together one large parking lot ms rosin ill add children babyboomers really like megachurches every suburban megachurch youth cell youth minister sponsors sorts youth revivals meetings dr wacker one thing megachurches dont however cemeteries indicates lack longterm commitment traditions generations deborah howell newhouse news service id like turn supernatural element strong americas early history ask supernaturalism go away evidence might return many new age religions certainly manifest supernaturalism dr hatch160growing respectability stamps early methodist leader nathan bangs visions dreams early career believed miraculous went new york became respectable worked purge element movement tradition bothered dr wacker160i differ nat think supernaturalism always moves one group another today pentecostals mormons still exhibit supernaturalism charismatics many episcopalians roman catholics wide open generations ago kenneth woodward newsweek160i studying contemporary miracles miracles bible signs wonders given meaning interpretive community miracles people claim today hand vague dont belong particular community self transcendent self less religious spiritual spiritual tradition important pentecostals catholic tradition tradition rational believe god operates world special divine action need miracles process saints prove god acted hasnt interesting combination faith rationalism also happen think everything becomes miracle people claim god found car keys like nothings miracle anymore peter beinart new republic160im interested group identity struck way evangelicals members religions differ speak catholics like ken woodward jews almost always use pronoun us sense people evangelical background never talk us talk obviously related fact evangelicals see elite institutions media universities adversarial way catholics jews dont doesnt pose problem journalists academics media universities try figure way evangelicals speak selfconsciously evangelicals important control dissemination knowledge ones group write ones history jews instance dr hatch160thats interesting observation evangelicals continue populist leaders acquire education tend develop certain distance tradition would say evangelical presbyterian also believer feels like person without country im son mainline presbyterian minister graduate evangelical college professor roman catholic institution feel somewhere like lot evangelical peers become scholars think evangelical sense distance appreciation christian traditions ms bradley intellectuals embarrassed classified evangelicals evangelicals considered antiintellectual160are160they antiintellectual across board dr hatch evangelicalism popular movement many institutions parallel mainline culture separate colleges separate bible institutes separate seminaries people come institutions adjust move mainstream immediately accepted even though general understanding evangelicals sophisticated today twenty years ago elias smith joseph smith interesting figures early republic popular geniuses untrained traditional ways substantive didnt read aristotle holds true today among many pentecostals evangelicals fundamentalists leaders talented populist come across angular ways page received liberal arts education yale people learning come evangelical tradition therefore ambivalent acting spokesmen last generation hand intellectual maturing movement evangelicals become educated mr ambrose evangelicals inspire extraordinary fear christian coalition especially inspires fear yet impact popular culture certainly immune evangelicals accused wanting impose values whole society environmental groups many liberal groups dr wacker160to extent evangelicals bring criticism talking missionizing time surprising outsiders sometimes take seriously groups hold normative views way society ought structured evangelicals make big deal gets trouble couple centuries evangelicals indeed broad power base historically associated power ability impose upon broader segments population creates impression false though may power use malign ways behavior irresponsible evangelical leaders also casts light subject embarrassment many faithful evangelicals may shun designation embarrassed lot tradition find hard defend publicly jack wertheimer jewish theological seminary160im interested hearing internal religious coercion rather imposing values others extent peer pressure ostracism forms coercion operate within institutions ms rosin160coercion definitely present james dobson others like absolutist example160dobson doesnt make distinction between160penthouse160and160vogue160theres continuum bad culture bad good followers must conform every level hes particularly adamant evils homosexuality thing has160relented divorce whatever reason divorce become vaguely acceptable certain situations gay person james dobsons empire divorced person gregg easterbrook new republic160id like ask immigration affects growth religious movements million recent immigrants fit become evangelicals join established churches dr green160the data show 20 per cent hispanic latino immigrants pentecostals many rest nominally catholic may particularly religious come united states confront enormous religious kaleidoscope like many immigrant groups past begin join churches evangelical churches particularly effective recruiting latinos asian immigrants large portion asians attend evangelical churches another substantial group are160attracted mainline protestant churches one fastest growing components united methodist church korean methodists immigration effect reinforces existing churches generates new ones many churches take granted considered new strange hundred years ago american religion always continues reinvigorated immigration mr barone160i examples travels many brazilian immigrants framingham massachusetts belong assemblies god pentecostal denomination members brazil united states latin america well among latinos evangelical pentecostal churches truly competitive catholic church contrary image among many american political commentators latinos ready vote way bishop tells mr woodward160id like return question evangelicals working journalist use word evangelical would lop pentecostals also southern baptists eliminate two communities whos left number evangelicals substantially reduced dr wacker160in 1920s pastor named j c massey noted fundamentalists damn fundamentalists one draws distinctions occasion requires think ways southern baptists pentecostals indeed different wheaton college evangelicals historians journalists gain great deal thinking terms small160e evangelicals share common culture increasingly seen counterculture created sense fidelity panevangelical group mr cromartie160thanks three speakers nathan hatch grant wacker hanna rosin thanks participant stimulating conversation evangelicalism american life | 6,292 |
<p>Staff Report, NASCAR Wire Service</p>
<p>Distributed by The Sports Xchange</p>
<p><a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Clint_Bowyer/" type="external">Clint Bowyer</a>‘s bubble picture looks OK. Not great, but OK. He doesn’t exactly need a win to make the playoffs, but that’s certainly the easiest path.</p>
<p>And coming into this season, that’s as much as you could ask for when it came to the veteran of 12 full-time Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series seasons.</p>
<p>Entering 2017, Bowyer has finished outside the top 15 in points in three consecutive seasons, and last year endured his worst season, finishing 27th.</p>
<p>But a renewed optimism enveloped the Kansas native, as he joined powerhouse Stewart-Haas Racing, with Ford as its new manufacturer.</p>
<p>Now Bowyer’s a contender, and only 31 points outside the all-important final playoff spot. If you ask him, he should be better.</p>
<p>“We’ve come close to victory several times this year,” Bowyer said. “That’s what can be so frustrating. You are only one or two spots away from where you want to be, but there’s a huge difference between first and everything else in this business.”</p>
<p>The good news: Bristol’s on deck with Saturday night’s Bass Pro Shops NRA Night Race (7:30 p.m. ET on NBC). Bowyer finished second in the Monster Energy Series’ first trip to Bristol in April, and has top 10s in three of the last four races at the Tennessee short track (and in the top five in two of those).</p>
<p>“I’m the hunter, not the hunted,” he said. “So it’s a lot of fun to go into this weekend knowing that you’ve got to go out there and chase that guy down or chase those guys down and, hopefully, pop off a win here and just put it all to bed.”</p>
<p>Annett hoping to stay on the right side of the bubble</p>
<p>JR Motorsport’s driver Michael Annett is once again on the hot seat — residing in the 12th and final playoff spot in the NASCAR Xfinity Series standings.</p>
<p>Still, the position could be worse. He is a somewhat comfortable 34 points ahead of 13th-place Ryan Sieg. In 21 starts this season, Annett has posted five top 10s and an average finish of 18.1.</p>
<p>Fortunately for Annett, he has outperformed his closest combatants at Bristol, posting an average finish of 13.6 at the half-mile compared to the average finishes of Sieg (20.1).</p>
<p>And in Friday night’s Food City 300 (7:30 p.m. ET on NBCSN), Annett will have a little more motivation. His boss, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Dale_Earnhardt/" type="external">Dale Earnhardt</a> Jr., will compete in the NASCAR Xfinity Series for the first time in 2017, driving the No. 88 Goody’s Mixed Fruit Blast Chevrolet.</p>
<p>“After two road courses in a row, it will be nice to get back to what we do the majority of the season,” Annett said. “I’ve run pretty well at Bristol in the past, and we were 10th in the spring, so we’ll take our (No. 5) Pilot Flying J Chevy up there this weekend and try to do it again. The playoffs are approaching, and it’s time to get some momentum going.”</p>
<p>Race Weekend Guide</p>
<p>Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series</p>
<p>Race: Bass Pro Shops NRA Night Race</p>
<p>Place: Bristol Motor Speedway</p>
<p>Date and Time: Saturday at 7:30 p.m. ET</p>
<p>Tune-in: NBC, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio</p>
<p>Distance: 266.5 miles (500 laps); Stage 1 (Ends on lap 125), Stage 2 (Ends on lap 250), Final Stage (Ends on lap 500)</p>
<p>What to Watch For: Only three races remain in the regular season, and only three playoff spots remain. … Three drivers with previous wins at Bristol have yet to secure a playoff spot: <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Matt_Kenseth/" type="external">Matt Kenseth</a>, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Joey Logano. … Logano, in particular, very much needs a win — something he’s done with regularity at Bristol. He has two Bristol wins, including one in the 2015 Night Race. … <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Martin_Truex/" type="external">Martin Truex</a> Jr. can clinch the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series 2017 Regular Season Championship if he leaves Bristol with a 121-point lead over second place. He currently holds a lead of 129 points over second place <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kyle-Larson/" type="external">Kyle Larson</a>.</p>
<p>NASCAR Xfinity Series</p>
<p>Race: Food City 300</p>
<p>Place: Bristol Motor Speedway</p>
<p>Date and Time: Friday at 7:30 p.m. ET</p>
<p>Tune-in: NBCSN, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio</p>
<p>Distance: 159.9 miles (300 laps); Stage 1 (Ends on lap 85), Stage 2 (Ends on lap 170), Final Stage (Ends on lap 300)</p>
<p>What To Watch For: Of the nine drivers currently inside the top 12 in NASCAR Xfinity Series championship points without a win this season, JR Motorsport’s <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Elliott_Sadler/" type="external">Elliott Sadler</a> is the only competitor who has previously won at Bristol. … Even without a win, there’s a strong likelihood that Sadler clinches a spot in the playoffs this weekend. He needs to score only five points to lock up a spot. … <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Joe_Gibbs/" type="external">Joe Gibbs</a> Racing’s <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Erik-Jones/" type="external">Erik Jones</a> drove the No. 18 Toyota to Victory Lane at Bristol earlier this season. Jones is not entered, but his teammates <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kyle_Busch/" type="external">Kyle Busch</a> (No. 18), Matt Tifft (No. 19) and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Daniel-Suarez/" type="external">Daniel Suarez</a> (No. 20) will take their shot at the season sweep and bringing home the trophy for the organization. … Dale Earnhardt Jr. will make his first NASCAR Xfinity Series start since April 23, 2016 at Richmond.</p> | false | 1 | staff report nascar wire service distributed sports xchange clint bowyers bubble picture looks ok great ok doesnt exactly need win make playoffs thats certainly easiest path coming season thats much could ask came veteran 12 fulltime monster energy nascar cup series seasons entering 2017 bowyer finished outside top 15 points three consecutive seasons last year endured worst season finishing 27th renewed optimism enveloped kansas native joined powerhouse stewarthaas racing ford new manufacturer bowyers contender 31 points outside allimportant final playoff spot ask better weve come close victory several times year bowyer said thats frustrating one two spots away want theres huge difference first everything else business good news bristols deck saturday nights bass pro shops nra night race 730 pm et nbc bowyer finished second monster energy series first trip bristol april top 10s three last four races tennessee short track top five two im hunter hunted said lot fun go weekend knowing youve got go chase guy chase guys hopefully pop win put bed annett hoping stay right side bubble jr motorsports driver michael annett hot seat residing 12th final playoff spot nascar xfinity series standings still position could worse somewhat comfortable 34 points ahead 13thplace ryan sieg 21 starts season annett posted five top 10s average finish 181 fortunately annett outperformed closest combatants bristol posting average finish 136 halfmile compared average finishes sieg 201 friday nights food city 300 730 pm et nbcsn annett little motivation boss dale earnhardt jr compete nascar xfinity series first time 2017 driving 88 goodys mixed fruit blast chevrolet two road courses row nice get back majority season annett said ive run pretty well bristol past 10th spring well take 5 pilot flying j chevy weekend try playoffs approaching time get momentum going race weekend guide monster energy nascar cup series race bass pro shops nra night race place bristol motor speedway date time saturday 730 pm et tunein nbc prn siriusxm nascar radio distance 2665 miles 500 laps stage 1 ends lap 125 stage 2 ends lap 250 final stage ends lap 500 watch three races remain regular season three playoff spots remain three drivers previous wins bristol yet secure playoff spot matt kenseth dale earnhardt jr joey logano logano particular much needs win something hes done regularity bristol two bristol wins including one 2015 night race martin truex jr clinch monster energy nascar cup series 2017 regular season championship leaves bristol 121point lead second place currently holds lead 129 points second place kyle larson nascar xfinity series race food city 300 place bristol motor speedway date time friday 730 pm et tunein nbcsn prn siriusxm nascar radio distance 1599 miles 300 laps stage 1 ends lap 85 stage 2 ends lap 170 final stage ends lap 300 watch nine drivers currently inside top 12 nascar xfinity series championship points without win season jr motorsports elliott sadler competitor previously bristol even without win theres strong likelihood sadler clinches spot playoffs weekend needs score five points lock spot joe gibbs racings erik jones drove 18 toyota victory lane bristol earlier season jones entered teammates kyle busch 18 matt tifft 19 daniel suarez 20 take shot season sweep bringing home trophy organization dale earnhardt jr make first nascar xfinity series start since april 23 2016 richmond | 542 |
<p>HOUSTON TEXANS (4-9) AT JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS (9-4)</p>
<p>GAME SNAPSHOT</p>
<p>KICKOFF: Sunday, 1 p.m. ET, EverBank Field. TV: FOX, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Chris-Myers/" type="external">Chris Myers</a>, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Daryl-Johnston/" type="external">Daryl Johnston</a>, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Laura-Okmin/" type="external">Laura Okmin</a> (field reporter).</p>
<p>SERIES HISTORY: 32nd regular-season meeting. Texans lead series, 19-12. Houston had won the last six meetings over the past three years before the Jaguars ended the streak with a 29-7 win in the season opener on Sept. 10. Jacksonville had not won dating to Dec. 5, 2013, when it posted a 27-20 win in Jacksonville. The Jaguars won both games that year (beating Texans twice in a 12-day span) to end another five-game Texans winning streak.</p>
<p>KEYS TO THE GAME: Houston has struggled to stop the pass, ranking 26th in the league, while Jaguars QB <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Blake-Bortles/" type="external">Blake Bortles</a> has had a hot hand in the last two games, posting passer ratings of 119.8 and 123.7. It isn’t likely the Jaguars will pull back with Bortles having completed 71 percent for 577 yards, four touchdowns and no interceptions the last two weeks.</p>
<p>In addition, Bortles has been sacked only once in the last two games. He’ll have the benefit of having the offensive line intact for a second straight week. Rookie receivers Keelan Cole and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Dede-Westbrook/" type="external">Dede Westbrook</a> have been the two top receivers and are playing like veterans instead of first-year players.</p>
<p>With the Texans having lost their two best pass rushers ( <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/JJ-Watt/" type="external">J.J. Watt</a> and Whitney Mercilus) for the season, Bortles should have the time to find open receivers and post some big numbers.</p>
<p>The Jaguars’ running game also looked sharp last week vs. Seattle, with the offensive line returning to its original look of the first four weeks, the first time since Week 4. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Leonard-Fournette/" type="external">Leonard Fournette</a> also appeared healthy with a 101-yard effort although he did not practice Wednesday with a quadriceps injury.</p>
<p>Offensively, the Texans plan to use maximum protection blocking schemes and plenty of quick games to counteract a devastating Jaguars defense. They will try to feed the football to wide receiver <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/DeAndre-Hopkins/" type="external">DeAndre Hopkins</a>.</p>
<p>MATCHUPS TO WATCH:</p>
<p>–Texans WR DeAndre Hopkins vs. Jaguars CBs <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/AJ-Bouye/" type="external">A.J. Bouye</a> and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jalen-Ramsey/" type="external">Jalen Ramsey</a>. Hopkins leads the NFL with 11 touchdown catches, tying his franchise record set in 2015. Bouye and Ramsey are fast, aggressive and not shy about trash-talking. They relish this kind of matchup. Last week, Ramsey was matched up with Seattle receiver <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Doug-Baldwin/" type="external">Doug Baldwin</a> for much of the game. The one play that Ramsey wasn’t on Baldwin, the Seattle receiver grabbed a 43-yard reception for a touchdown. When Ramsey was on him, he had two catches in five throws for 35 yards. Hopkins is easily the Texans’ No. 1 offensive threat.</p>
<p>–Jaguars RB Leonard Fournette vs. Texans OLB Jadeveon Clowney. Fournette is the Jaguars’ leading rusher and a threat as a receiver (10 catches in the last three games). He’s averaging 103.3 yards per game running and receiving. That puts pressure on Clowney, who will be glued to Fournette for either runs or passes. Clowney leads the team with 20 tackles for loss (second most in the NFL) and has nine sacks.</p>
<p>FRIDAY INJURY REPORT</p>
<p>HOUSTON TEXANS</p>
<p>–Out: LB <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jelani-Jenkins/" type="external">Jelani Jenkins</a> (concussion), T Kendall Lamm (concussion), WR <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Braxton-Miller/" type="external">Braxton Miller</a> (concussion), QB <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tom-Savage/" type="external">Tom Savage</a> (concussion)</p>
<p>–Questionable: LB Jadeveon Clowney (knee, illness), WR DeAndre Hopkins (toe), TE MyCole Pruitt (calf)</p>
<p>JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS</p>
<p>–Out: WR <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Allen-Hurns/" type="external">Allen Hurns</a> (ankle), WR Larry Pinkard (concussion)</p>
<p>–Questionable: RB Leonard Fournette (quadriceps)</p>
<p>PLAYER SPOTLIGHT: Jaguars WR Dede Westbrook. It’s hard to imagine how good Westbrook’s numbers might have been this year had he played the entire season. Since he came off injured reserve in Week 11 against Cincinnati, Westbrook has been the Jaguars’ most efficient receiver. He has caught a team-high 20 passes for 235 yards in the last four games, better figures than either Marqise Lee (18-209) or Keelan Cole (11-209), who have played in every game this year. He has become Bortles’ No. 1 target, as his 33 targets lead both Lee (27) and Cole (19) in the last four games.</p>
<p>FAST FACTS: Texans RB <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Lamar-Miller/" type="external">Lamar Miller</a> has surpassed 80 scrimmage yards in four of the past five games against Jacksonville. … WR DeAndre Hopkins is the only player in franchise history with 10 TD catches in multiple seasons. In the past two games at Jacksonville, he had 196 receiving yards and two TDs. … CB Kareem Jackson had a 42-yard INT-TD in the last road meeting. … Jaguars QB Blake Bortles has 1,613 passing yards, seven touchdowns and two interceptions in the last six games vs. the division. … Rookie RB Leonard Fournette had 124 scrimmage yards (100 rushing) and a TD in his first game against with Texans. He needs 77 rushing yards to become the second rookie in franchise history with 1,000 ( <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Fred_Taylor/" type="external">Fred Taylor</a>, 1,223 in 1998). … Jaguars WR Marqise Lee has TD catches in three of the past four games at home. … Jaguars CB A.J. Bouye had two interceptions last week and is tied for the NFL lead with a career-high six. … Jaguars CB Jalen Ramsey aims for the third game in a row with an interception. … Jaguars DE <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Calais-Campbell/" type="external">Calais Campbell</a> leads the AFC with a career-high and franchise-record 12.5 sacks. He had a career-high four sacks in the last game vs. Houston.</p>
<p>PREDICTION: Jacksonville can clinch its first playoff berth since 2007 with a victory. The two-time defending AFC South champs won’t make it easy, but the Jaguars will keep their eye on the prize.</p>
<p>OUR PICK: Jaguars, 28-16.</p>
<p>–Ellen Port</p> | false | 1 | houston texans 49 jacksonville jaguars 94 game snapshot kickoff sunday 1 pm et everbank field tv fox chris myers daryl johnston laura okmin field reporter series history 32nd regularseason meeting texans lead series 1912 houston last six meetings past three years jaguars ended streak 297 win season opener sept 10 jacksonville dating dec 5 2013 posted 2720 win jacksonville jaguars games year beating texans twice 12day span end another fivegame texans winning streak keys game houston struggled stop pass ranking 26th league jaguars qb blake bortles hot hand last two games posting passer ratings 1198 1237 isnt likely jaguars pull back bortles completed 71 percent 577 yards four touchdowns interceptions last two weeks addition bortles sacked last two games hell benefit offensive line intact second straight week rookie receivers keelan cole dede westbrook two top receivers playing like veterans instead firstyear players texans lost two best pass rushers jj watt whitney mercilus season bortles time find open receivers post big numbers jaguars running game also looked sharp last week vs seattle offensive line returning original look first four weeks first time since week 4 leonard fournette also appeared healthy 101yard effort although practice wednesday quadriceps injury offensively texans plan use maximum protection blocking schemes plenty quick games counteract devastating jaguars defense try feed football wide receiver deandre hopkins matchups watch texans wr deandre hopkins vs jaguars cbs aj bouye jalen ramsey hopkins leads nfl 11 touchdown catches tying franchise record set 2015 bouye ramsey fast aggressive shy trashtalking relish kind matchup last week ramsey matched seattle receiver doug baldwin much game one play ramsey wasnt baldwin seattle receiver grabbed 43yard reception touchdown ramsey two catches five throws 35 yards hopkins easily texans 1 offensive threat jaguars rb leonard fournette vs texans olb jadeveon clowney fournette jaguars leading rusher threat receiver 10 catches last three games hes averaging 1033 yards per game running receiving puts pressure clowney glued fournette either runs passes clowney leads team 20 tackles loss second nfl nine sacks friday injury report houston texans lb jelani jenkins concussion kendall lamm concussion wr braxton miller concussion qb tom savage concussion questionable lb jadeveon clowney knee illness wr deandre hopkins toe te mycole pruitt calf jacksonville jaguars wr allen hurns ankle wr larry pinkard concussion questionable rb leonard fournette quadriceps player spotlight jaguars wr dede westbrook hard imagine good westbrooks numbers might year played entire season since came injured reserve week 11 cincinnati westbrook jaguars efficient receiver caught teamhigh 20 passes 235 yards last four games better figures either marqise lee 18209 keelan cole 11209 played every game year become bortles 1 target 33 targets lead lee 27 cole 19 last four games fast facts texans rb lamar miller surpassed 80 scrimmage yards four past five games jacksonville wr deandre hopkins player franchise history 10 td catches multiple seasons past two games jacksonville 196 receiving yards two tds cb kareem jackson 42yard inttd last road meeting jaguars qb blake bortles 1613 passing yards seven touchdowns two interceptions last six games vs division rookie rb leonard fournette 124 scrimmage yards 100 rushing td first game texans needs 77 rushing yards become second rookie franchise history 1000 fred taylor 1223 1998 jaguars wr marqise lee td catches three past four games home jaguars cb aj bouye two interceptions last week tied nfl lead careerhigh six jaguars cb jalen ramsey aims third game row interception jaguars de calais campbell leads afc careerhigh franchiserecord 125 sacks careerhigh four sacks last game vs houston prediction jacksonville clinch first playoff berth since 2007 victory twotime defending afc south champs wont make easy jaguars keep eye prize pick jaguars 2816 ellen port | 605 |
<p>Some advertisers in 2017 might have been better off not advertising at all.</p>
<p>Last year’s election has transformed harmless promotional stunts into Big Statements on the nature of society, Washington policies and, of course, the nation’s seemingly ubiquitous president. As the nation cleaved in two over matters involving race and culture, individual pieces of entertainment became cause for conflict – and with them, the commercials that bring thousands and millions of dollars in financial support.</p>
<p>“Yes, this is a particularly tricky time to be an advertiser,” says Brian Sheehan, a professor of advertising at Syracuse University’s SI Newhouse School of Communications.&#160; In a year when the coffee-maker Keurig sparked the ire of both the left and the right by acknowledging it had pulled ads from Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” advertisers recognize any public move becomes ripe for backlash on social-media and elsewhere. Poking that potential fury “is a silly mistake,” says Sheehan, because marketers should focus on reasons that prod consumers to purchase their products, not on trying to tell customers how to feel or act. “Leave the politics to the politicians,” he adds.</p>
<p>Many blue-chip advertisers found themselves in similar situations. <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/bill-oreilly-factor-mercedes-advertising-fox-news-1202021989/" type="external">Advertisers chose to flee the final weeks of Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News program</a> in the wake of revelations about his behavior. But they also sat out a broadcast of a new Sunday-evening newsmagazine on NBC when the show featured <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/megyn-kelly-alex-jones-tv-advertising-1202469965/" type="external">a Megyn Kelly interview with online provocateur Alex Jones.</a></p>
<p><a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/megyn-kelly-jp-morgan-advertising-julius-caesar-bill-maher-bill-oreilly-1202463696/" type="external">Even Shakespeare came under the microscope:</a> Delta Air Lines and Bank of America said they were pulling some funding of the Public Theater’s schedule after reports surfaced that a version of “Julius Caesar” featured a lead character who looked a lot like President Donald Trump.</p>
<p>The polarized atmosphere t <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/super-bowl-commercials-donald-trump-advertising-1201963791/" type="external">transformed usually harmless Super Bowl commercials into political screeds</a> and a <a href="http://variety.com/t/pepsi/" type="external">Pepsi</a> ad into a total disaster.</p>
<p>And it arrived just as advertisers have more technology at their disposal to tailor commercials for specific customer niches, rather than the world at large. Thanks to digital-production techniques, it’s easier than ever to get an ad on the air. And thanks to reams of consumer data culled from web-browser maneuvers, set-top box interactions and shopping patterns, it’s simple for an advertiser to devise a campaign aimed directly at a soda-drinker, new car buyer or first-time mother. In 2017, there’s no excuse for an advertiser not to know their target audience – intimately.</p>
<p>The charged public discourse is just Madison Avenue’s latest headache. Despite the lower barriers to entry, marketers have grappled a host of thorny issues, as the rise of an array of digital-media outlets makes finding those swaths of consumers that much more complex.</p>
<p>Advertisers who once threw out a few TV commercials and some newspaper ads now find themselves having to spread a wider net, hoping to entice consumers watching on-demand videos and hanging out in social-media forums. One day, given half a chance, <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/netflix-amazon-advertising-streaming-product-placement-1202593159/" type="external">they may even fully infiltrate Netflix and Amazon</a>. They can’t always be sure the content their commercials support won’t have a plea to join a terrorist group or a Nazi shout-out. And they have yet to find a single methodology for measuring audiences upon which all can agree.</p>
<p>With all that in mind, it’s hard to understand when the best minds on Madison Avenue make rookie mistakes, like offending a good chunk of their consumer base with tone-deaf ads that play upon cultural and racial themes.</p>
<p>In this particular year, one person’s list of the best ads of the year could be another person’s worst. How do our picks rank in your estimation?&#160; Our faves and flops are below:</p>
<p>BEST</p>
<p>Do-It-Yourself Commercials</p>
<p>[embedded content]</p>
<p>WHAT: One of the most striking ad campaigns of 2017 didn’t aim for mass consumer acceptance, but rather hoped to make an impression on just one particular persona.</p>
<p><a href="http://variety.com/t/john-oliver/" type="external">John Oliver</a> this year <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/john-oliver-donald-trump-cable-news-tv-ads-1201986428/" type="external">began running fake ads</a> starring a cowboy who complains to the screen about different political situations. The commercials originally ran solely on Washington, D.C. area cable systems between 8:30 a.m. and 9 a.m. during Fox News Channel’s “Fox &amp; Friends,” <a href="http://variety.com/t/cnn/" type="external">CNN</a>’s “New Day” and MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” The intended audience? President Trump himself.</p>
<p>WHY: You don’t need a storied ad agency like JWT or CPB to get the word out any longer. You can, more or less, do it yourself (with the help of a production crew and someone who has finesse buying commercial time, to be sure). These ads may not be everyone’s favorite. But they do show that attention-grabbing ad ideas can come from a variety of places. Has Mr. Oliver considered opening an ad agency?</p>
<p>Pressing Forward</p>
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<p>WHAT: The New York Times and <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/cable-news-ratings-msnbc-fox-news-cnn-1202637968/" type="external">CNN</a> were among the media outlets launching clever ad campaigns to defend themselves from accusations of being “fake news.” The Times took to the Oscars to debut a TV commercial that talked about truth: “The truth is our nation is more divided than ever,” “The truth is alternative facts are lies” and “The truth is we need a full investigation of Russian ties” were among some of the copy lines. More recently, CNN mounted <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/cnn-advertising-fake-news-facts-first-1202596220/" type="external">a promo campaign that talked about “facts first”</a> as an apple showed up on the screen. ““This is an apple,” says a narrator. “Some people might try to tell you that it’s a banana.”</p>
<p>WHY: Media properties are much better at bringing in the advertising than they are running it themselves. The most creative NYT execution in recent years was likely spurred at getting someone to pick up the phone and take out a subscription. Meanwhile, CNN is best known for telling viewers “This is CNN” in the dulcet tones of James Earl Jones. At a time when the media is under constant attack, however, it’s good to tell people about a valuable service being provided and the distinction it can lend.</p>
<p>Pre-Game Pop</p>
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<p>WHAT: <a href="http://variety.com/t/coca-cola/" type="external">Coca-Cola</a> got a big bang for fewer bucks by running an ad during the pre-game show for Super Bowl LI that featured children singing “America the Beautiful” in different languages, as well as what is believed to be the first appearance of a same-sex couple in the gridiron championship. In the current atmosphere, the ad struck a chord and set the tone for the rest of the game’s advertising roster.</p>
<p>WHY: You don’t need to spend lots of money to make an impression during the Super Bowl. All you truly need is a good idea. This commercial first ran in the 2014 Super Bowl and generated both positive reaction and negative sentiment. But it never lost its power to spark response.</p>
<p>Quiet Mac</p>
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<p>WHAT: McDonald’s ran a series of ads featuring actress Mindy Kaling, who never mentioned its name during the spots. Kaling wears a yellow dress against a red backdrop and tells people to use Google to search for “that place where Coke tastes so good” (and shows how to get a deal on the purchase of the soda at that unmentioned locale).</p>
<p>WHY: The fast-food giant has realized what so many others know: Today’s younger consumers hate old-school commercials. They dislike feeling that they have been taken in by an ad. Having the hip “Mindy Project” actress talk up one of the nation’s best-known burger emporiums without subjecting viewers to shots of Ronald McDonald or Big Macs is revolutionary for the company. She focused on a single element – <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/american-idol-abc-tv-advertising-rita-ferro-1202483866/" type="external">Coca-Cola</a> – and how to get it. By the way, McDonald’s has also been running ads for its coffee “McCafe” concept, with little nod to its trademark Golden Arches.</p>
<p>Go With The Tide</p>
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<p>WHAT: In an ad that might be almost too clever for its own good, viewers of Super Bowl LI caught Fox Sports commentator Terry Bradshaw on screen with a big stain on his shirt. Bradshaw runs amok, heading on to the field of play and even out to actor Jeffrey Tambor’s house in an effort to have his shirt cleaned with the help of <a href="http://variety.com/t/procter-gamble/" type="external">Procter &amp; Gamble</a>’s Tide.</p>
<p>WHY: Viewers no doubt thought they were watching the actual Fox broadcast (for at least a few seconds), but P&amp;G’s clever maneuver meant moving them from on-screen action to outlandish commercial without interruption. The ad nods to a clever 2015 pre-game Super Bowl spot from General Motors’ Chevrolet that made viewers think NBC had lost its feed to the big game.</p>
<p>E-Trade’s Great Divide</p>
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<p>WHAT: In a series of ads that captures the growing divide in this nation between haves and have-nots, online-investing outlet E-Trade depicts hard-working 99-percenters struggling to realize they’ll never have what the wealthiest 1% do – all with a little humor to offset the simmering resentment.</p>
<p>WHY: Ads often mirror society. We all may be angrier than any of us ever realized – and it took an E-Trade ad to figure it out.</p>
<p>Samsung’s Love Story</p>
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<p>WHAT: Two tech-savvy kids get their groove on with the help of a Samsung Galaxy Note8</p>
<p>WHY: The best commercials tell compelling stories and create distinct worlds. After seeing this courtship kick off via text message, it’s hard not to root for this romantic duo – and want to see them again.</p>
<p>WORST</p>
<p><a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/saturday-night-live-pepsi-kendall-jenner-ad-1202027174/" type="external">Pepsi</a>’s Big Fizzle</p>
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<p>WHAT: <a href="http://variety.com/t/kendall-jenner/" type="external">Kendall Jenner</a> is in the midst of a photo shoot when a large parade of demonstrators pass by, carrying signs that call for “Love” and urge people to “Join the Conversation.” Jenner takes up with the protest and seeks to spur peace by handing a can of Pepsi to a police officer on hand to keep things from getting too wild.</p>
<p>WHY: Pepsi’s protest sparked one of its own, never a good thing when you’re trying to sell soda. Activists felt the ad appropriated images from various “Black Lives Matter” events and believed the scene of Jenner striking a chord with the cop went beyond the pale. Pepsi, which crafted the campaign internally rather than using an ad agency, pulled the commercial and apologized to the public and to the celebrity.</p>
<p>Six-Second Ads</p>
<p>WHAT: Shorter-than-short TV commercials have seemingly become all the rage, with Fox and AMC offering advertisers the opportunity to run these little video cues in strategically opportune moments, such as before the start of “The Walking Dead” or during top-rated Sunday-afternoon football. It’s a bid to compete with digital venues like YouTube, which sometimes show extra-short spots.</p>
<p>WHY: Funny thing about six-second ads: TV has been showing them for years, albeit under a different name. TV networks have long sold “billboards” to top clients, a quick seconds-long on-screen graphic that tells viewers what they are watching is “brought to you by” a particular advertiser. If TV networks can revamp the format and get more money for it, there’s certainly no harm in trying, but portraying the idea as something revolutionary is a little much.</p>
<p>Privacy Alert!</p>
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<p>WHAT: Burger King ran a TV ad designed to trigger Google Home devices to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/12/business/burger-king-tv-ad-google-home.html?_r=0" type="external">start talking about the ingredients in a Whopper burger.</a> Google Home was also found to offer a 17-second promotion <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-tests-waters-of-voice-ads-on-speaker-1489710193" type="external">for the live-action Disney film, “Beauty and the Beast”</a> when users asked the device for information about their daily schedule. ““By the way, Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast opens today,” the machine was heard to say.</p>
<p>WHY: These devices become personal assistants of a sort and take up residence in living rooms and kitchens. While many consumers expect to see ads when they turn on TV or watch a video online, they usually rest comfortable knowing their inner residence is immune from the stuff. Google, in an attempt to gain wider support for its device in a competitive market filled with Alexas and Echos, may have violated the sanctity of the home.</p>
<p>Rewrites In The Cradle</p>
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<p>WHAT: TD Ameritrade tweaked many of the lyrics to Harry Chapin’s 1974 ten-tissue bawlfest “Cat’s in the Cradle,” changing it from a song about a neglectful father to one about a dad who tried to be there for his son – all launched around Father’s Day. In this song, rather than get taken away by career concerns, the father tells viewers “I moved my meeting, saw him walk that day.”</p>
<p>WHY: TD Ameritrade’s goal is noble, but you can’t change an icon. Chapin’s song struck a chord because it depicted a selfish father who could not be swayed to take a greater interest in his children – an attitude that carried with it punishment later in life. Better, perhaps, to show the interested dad without the maudlin tune?</p>
<p>We Get It, T-Mobile!</p>
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<p>WHAT: T-Mobile ran a series of ads telling viewers they could access Netflix as part of their subscription – and then told them again. And again! And again…complete with the signature audio cues from each.</p>
<p>WHY: Some people found the ad beyond annoying. “The t-mobile commercial with alternating netflix and t-mobile sounds puts me into an anxiety inducing personal hell,” said Chrissy Teigen, the model and TV host, via Twitter. The spot nods to another fingers-on-chalk commercial that used repetition to get its point across. <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB116674284301357175" type="external">In 2006, TV viewers were deluged with ads from Head On</a>, a topical analgesic meant to stop headaches. But the commercials induced them instead, with a narrator saying over and over again: “Head On! Apply directly to the forehead.”</p>
<p>Doesn’t Anyone Do Consumer Research Anymore?</p>
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<p>WHAT: Unilever’s Dove ran an ad destined to prompt unnecessary outrage. In a Facebook ad, an African-American woman takes off her brown shirt – and in doing so, becomes a Caucasian woman in a white shirt.</p>
<p>WHY: Outcry on social media came quickly. In today’s testy times, running an ad that might give rise to the notion that one race is better than another would seem like something to avoid. Dove said in a statement at the time that “we missed the mark in thoughtfully representing women of color and we deeply regret the offense that it has caused.”</p> | false | 1 | advertisers 2017 might better advertising last years election transformed harmless promotional stunts big statements nature society washington policies course nations seemingly ubiquitous president nation cleaved two matters involving race culture individual pieces entertainment became cause conflict commercials bring thousands millions dollars financial support yes particularly tricky time advertiser says brian sheehan professor advertising syracuse universitys si newhouse school communications160 year coffeemaker keurig sparked ire left right acknowledging pulled ads fox news channels hannity advertisers recognize public move becomes ripe backlash socialmedia elsewhere poking potential fury silly mistake says sheehan marketers focus reasons prod consumers purchase products trying tell customers feel act leave politics politicians adds many bluechip advertisers found similar situations advertisers chose flee final weeks bill oreillys fox news program wake revelations behavior also sat broadcast new sundayevening newsmagazine nbc show featured megyn kelly interview online provocateur alex jones even shakespeare came microscope delta air lines bank america said pulling funding public theaters schedule reports surfaced version julius caesar featured lead character looked lot like president donald trump polarized atmosphere transformed usually harmless super bowl commercials political screeds pepsi ad total disaster arrived advertisers technology disposal tailor commercials specific customer niches rather world large thanks digitalproduction techniques easier ever get ad air thanks reams consumer data culled webbrowser maneuvers settop box interactions shopping patterns simple advertiser devise campaign aimed directly sodadrinker new car buyer firsttime mother 2017 theres excuse advertiser know target audience intimately charged public discourse madison avenues latest headache despite lower barriers entry marketers grappled host thorny issues rise array digitalmedia outlets makes finding swaths consumers much complex advertisers threw tv commercials newspaper ads find spread wider net hoping entice consumers watching ondemand videos hanging socialmedia forums one day given half chance may even fully infiltrate netflix amazon cant always sure content commercials support wont plea join terrorist group nazi shoutout yet find single methodology measuring audiences upon agree mind hard understand best minds madison avenue make rookie mistakes like offending good chunk consumer base tonedeaf ads play upon cultural racial themes particular year one persons list best ads year could another persons worst picks rank estimation160 faves flops best doityourself commercials embedded content one striking ad campaigns 2017 didnt aim mass consumer acceptance rather hoped make impression one particular persona john oliver year began running fake ads starring cowboy complains screen different political situations commercials originally ran solely washington dc area cable systems 830 9 fox news channels fox amp friends cnns new day msnbcs morning joe intended audience president trump dont need storied ad agency like jwt cpb get word longer less help production crew someone finesse buying commercial time sure ads may everyones favorite show attentiongrabbing ad ideas come variety places mr oliver considered opening ad agency pressing forward embedded contentembedded content new york times cnn among media outlets launching clever ad campaigns defend accusations fake news times took oscars debut tv commercial talked truth truth nation divided ever truth alternative facts lies truth need full investigation russian ties among copy lines recently cnn mounted promo campaign talked facts first apple showed screen apple says narrator people might try tell banana media properties much better bringing advertising running creative nyt execution recent years likely spurred getting someone pick phone take subscription meanwhile cnn best known telling viewers cnn dulcet tones james earl jones time media constant attack however good tell people valuable service provided distinction lend pregame pop embedded content cocacola got big bang fewer bucks running ad pregame show super bowl li featured children singing america beautiful different languages well believed first appearance samesex couple gridiron championship current atmosphere ad struck chord set tone rest games advertising roster dont need spend lots money make impression super bowl truly need good idea commercial first ran 2014 super bowl generated positive reaction negative sentiment never lost power spark response quiet mac embedded content mcdonalds ran series ads featuring actress mindy kaling never mentioned name spots kaling wears yellow dress red backdrop tells people use google search place coke tastes good shows get deal purchase soda unmentioned locale fastfood giant realized many others know todays younger consumers hate oldschool commercials dislike feeling taken ad hip mindy project actress talk one nations bestknown burger emporiums without subjecting viewers shots ronald mcdonald big macs revolutionary company focused single element cocacola get way mcdonalds also running ads coffee mccafe concept little nod trademark golden arches go tide embedded content ad might almost clever good viewers super bowl li caught fox sports commentator terry bradshaw screen big stain shirt bradshaw runs amok heading field play even actor jeffrey tambors house effort shirt cleaned help procter amp gambles tide viewers doubt thought watching actual fox broadcast least seconds pampgs clever maneuver meant moving onscreen action outlandish commercial without interruption ad nods clever 2015 pregame super bowl spot general motors chevrolet made viewers think nbc lost feed big game etrades great divide embedded content series ads captures growing divide nation haves havenots onlineinvesting outlet etrade depicts hardworking 99percenters struggling realize theyll never wealthiest 1 little humor offset simmering resentment ads often mirror society may angrier us ever realized took etrade ad figure samsungs love story embedded content two techsavvy kids get groove help samsung galaxy note8 best commercials tell compelling stories create distinct worlds seeing courtship kick via text message hard root romantic duo want see worst pepsis big fizzle embedded content kendall jenner midst photo shoot large parade demonstrators pass carrying signs call love urge people join conversation jenner takes protest seeks spur peace handing pepsi police officer hand keep things getting wild pepsis protest sparked one never good thing youre trying sell soda activists felt ad appropriated images various black lives matter events believed scene jenner striking chord cop went beyond pale pepsi crafted campaign internally rather using ad agency pulled commercial apologized public celebrity sixsecond ads shorterthanshort tv commercials seemingly become rage fox amc offering advertisers opportunity run little video cues strategically opportune moments start walking dead toprated sundayafternoon football bid compete digital venues like youtube sometimes show extrashort spots funny thing sixsecond ads tv showing years albeit different name tv networks long sold billboards top clients quick secondslong onscreen graphic tells viewers watching brought particular advertiser tv networks revamp format get money theres certainly harm trying portraying idea something revolutionary little much privacy alert embedded content burger king ran tv ad designed trigger google home devices start talking ingredients whopper burger google home also found offer 17second promotion liveaction disney film beauty beast users asked device information daily schedule way disneys liveaction beauty beast opens today machine heard say devices become personal assistants sort take residence living rooms kitchens many consumers expect see ads turn tv watch video online usually rest comfortable knowing inner residence immune stuff google attempt gain wider support device competitive market filled alexas echos may violated sanctity home rewrites cradle embedded content td ameritrade tweaked many lyrics harry chapins 1974 tentissue bawlfest cats cradle changing song neglectful father one dad tried son launched around fathers day song rather get taken away career concerns father tells viewers moved meeting saw walk day td ameritrades goal noble cant change icon chapins song struck chord depicted selfish father could swayed take greater interest children attitude carried punishment later life better perhaps show interested dad without maudlin tune get tmobile embedded content tmobile ran series ads telling viewers could access netflix part subscription told againcomplete signature audio cues people found ad beyond annoying tmobile commercial alternating netflix tmobile sounds puts anxiety inducing personal hell said chrissy teigen model tv host via twitter spot nods another fingersonchalk commercial used repetition get point across 2006 tv viewers deluged ads head topical analgesic meant stop headaches commercials induced instead narrator saying head apply directly forehead doesnt anyone consumer research anymore embedded content unilevers dove ran ad destined prompt unnecessary outrage facebook ad africanamerican woman takes brown shirt becomes caucasian woman white shirt outcry social media came quickly todays testy times running ad might give rise notion one race better another would seem like something avoid dove said statement time missed mark thoughtfully representing women color deeply regret offense caused | 1,348 |
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<p>The International Criminal Court has formally agreed that warrants should be issued for the arrest of Col. Muammar Qaddafi, as well as his son, Seif al-Islam, who has been acting as Prime Minister along with Libya’s intelligence chief, Abdullah Senussi. These three Libyan leaders are charged with crimes against humanity involving the murder, injuring, and imprisoning of Libyan civilians between February 10-18, 2011, the first days of the uprising, and prior to NATO’s military involvement.</p>
<p>The ICC judge, speaking on behalf of a three-judge panel, authorized the issuance of the arrest warrants on the basis that the evidence presented by the prosecutor constituted ‘reasonable grounds’ to support the charges contained in the outstanding indictments against these three individuals. Judge Sanji Monogeng of Botswana clarified the ruling by explaining that issuing an arrest warrant was meant to convey the conclusion that sufficient evidence of criminality existed to proceed with the prosecution, but it is not intended to imply guilt, which must be determined by the outcome of a trial.</p>
<p>The ICC assessment is likely to withstand scrutiny so far as the substance of the accusations directed at the Qaddafi leadership are concerned. Qaddafi clearly responded to the popular challenges directed by the Libyan against his regime with extreme violence against civilians, reinforced by genocidal rhetoric, which certainly seems to involve crimes against humanity. But I am led to question why such an effort to arrest and indict was pushed so hard at this time. The timing of the indictment, and now the arrest warrants, arouses strong suspicions, and not just of bad judgment! It is relevant to recall that in the course of NATO’s Kosovo War in 1999 against Serbia, the Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, was indicted by another European-based international tribunal—the special ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia. Are we now to expect that whenever NATO has recourse to war, the political leader heading its opposition will be charged with international crimes while the fighting ensues? How convenient! Lawfare in the service of warfare!</p>
<p>Rather than a matter of convenience, the motivation seems more sinister. Criticism is deflected from NATO’s own lawlessness. In both of these instances, NATO itself has resorted to war unlawfully, engaging in what was designated at Nuremberg as a ‘crime against peace,’ and held by that tribunal to be the greatest of war crimes embracing within itself both crimes against humanity and gross violations of the laws of war (war crimes). In the Kosovo War, NATO acted without a mandate from the UN, thereby violating the UN Charter’s core principle prohibiting non-defensive uses of force unless authorized by the Security Council. In Libya there was such an initial authorization to protect civilians by establishing a no-fly zone (Security Council Resolution 1973, 17 May 2011), but the NATO mission as executed almost immediately grossly exceeded the original mandate, and did little to hide its un-mandated goal of regime change in Tripoli by way of ending Qaddafi’s role as ruler and thereby achieving victory for opposition forces in a civil war.</p>
<p>It is certainly worthy of comment that in both of these wars initiated by NATO, the leader of a country attacked was targeted for criminal prosecution before hostilities has ended. Even the Allies in World War II waited until after the end of combat before trying to impose their version of ‘victors’ justice’ on surviving defeated German and Japanese leaders.</p>
<p>A closely related pattern projection of criminal accountability occurred in Iraq.&#160; The American led aggressive war waged against Iraq in 2003 was quickly followed by a carefully planned and orchestrated criminal prosecution, stage-managed behind the scenes by the US occupation commanders, followed by the execution of Saddam Hussein (and his close associates).&#160; The Iraqi trial was politically circumscribed so as to exclude any evidence bearing on the close and discrediting strategic relationship maintained between the United States and Iraq during the period of Saddam Hussein’s most serious instances of criminality (genocidal operations against Kurdish villages), as well as by disallowing any inquiry into American criminality associated with the attack on Iraq and subsequent allegations of criminal wrongdoing in response to Iraqi resistance to military occupation.&#160; This American potential criminality was never discussed, much less investigated in a responsible manner.</p>
<p>What converts these separate instances into a pattern is the Eurocentric (or West-centric) selectivity evident in most recent efforts to enforce international criminal law. It should be noted that this selectivity is made more objectionable by the impunity accorded to European, American, and Israeli leaders. Double standards so pervasively evident in this behavior undermine the authority of law, especially in relation to a subject-matter as vital as war and peace. Unless equals are treated equally most of the time, what is called ‘law’ is more accurately treated as ‘geopolitics.’</p>
<p>The geopolitical nature of this approval of arrest warrants just issued by the ICC is unintentionally confirmed when it is acknowledged by NATO officials that it will not be possible to arrest Qaddafi unless in the unlikely event that he is captured by the Rebels. Governmental representatives in Washington admitting this have declared that the warrants will nevertheless be useful in forthcoming UN debates about Libyan policy, presumably to push aside any objections based on the failure by NATO to limit military operations to the no-fly zone initially authorized by the Security Council. It should be remembered that the initial authorization in SC Resolution 1973 was itself weakened by five abstentions, including China and Russia, and, further, by South Africa, which voted with the majority while expressing strong objections to the subsequent undertaking.&#160; One wonders whether China and Russia would not have used their veto had they anticipated how far beyond what was insisted on limited humanitarian purposes by the proponents of the use of force the actual operation would become. In effect, to overcome any impression of unlawfulness on NATO’s part, it is useful to demonize the adversary, and an opportune way to reach this goal is to put forward premature accusations of severe criminality.</p>
<p>Of course, as has been pointed out more than once, there was an embedded hypocrisy in the central argument put forward by the states seeking a UN green light to intervene in Libya, which was based on the ‘responsibility to protect’ norm that supposedly confers a duty on the international community to protect civilian populations that are being subjected to severely abusive behavior. Two obvious contradictions were present. Why not Syria in the current regional setting? And even more starkly, why not Gaza back in 2008-09 when it was being mercilessly attacked by Israel? The answers to such questions are ‘blowin’ in the wind.’</p>
<p>There are further more technical reasons in the present setting to challenge the timing of the arrest warrants. They seem legally and politically dubious. Legally dubious because the most serious criminality associated with the behavior of the Qaddafi regime during the conflict occurred after the ICC cutoff date of 18 February (e.g. the siege of Misrata). Why other than ulterior motivations was there this rush to prosecute? Politically dubious because there is now a new obstacle to diplomacy in a situation where the alternative seems likely to be a prolonged civil war. Negotiating space for an accommodation is definitely reduced by this implication of Qaddafi’s criminality that creates incentives for the Tripoli leadership to fight on as long as possible.</p>
<p>Perhaps, cynics would argue that law always reflects power, and of course they are correct to a certain extent. Progress in human affairs arises from a struggle against such pretensions. And the locus and nature of power is changing in the world: the West is losing its capacity to shape history and high technology warfare, upon which the West depends to enforce its will on the non-West, is losing its capacity to produce political victories (e.g. anti-colonial wars, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan). This politicized use of the ICC in the course of the Libyan War offers an opportunity for those dedicated to global justice, especially in the Arab world, to insist that international law should no longer serve as a plaything for those who intervene with hard power in their region from the comfort zone of NATO headquarters.</p> | false | 1 | international criminal court formally agreed warrants issued arrest col muammar qaddafi well son seif alislam acting prime minister along libyas intelligence chief abdullah senussi three libyan leaders charged crimes humanity involving murder injuring imprisoning libyan civilians february 1018 2011 first days uprising prior natos military involvement icc judge speaking behalf threejudge panel authorized issuance arrest warrants basis evidence presented prosecutor constituted reasonable grounds support charges contained outstanding indictments three individuals judge sanji monogeng botswana clarified ruling explaining issuing arrest warrant meant convey conclusion sufficient evidence criminality existed proceed prosecution intended imply guilt must determined outcome trial icc assessment likely withstand scrutiny far substance accusations directed qaddafi leadership concerned qaddafi clearly responded popular challenges directed libyan regime extreme violence civilians reinforced genocidal rhetoric certainly seems involve crimes humanity led question effort arrest indict pushed hard time timing indictment arrest warrants arouses strong suspicions bad judgment relevant recall course natos kosovo war 1999 serbia serbian president slobodan milosevic indicted another europeanbased international tribunalthe special ad hoc international criminal tribunal former yugoslavia expect whenever nato recourse war political leader heading opposition charged international crimes fighting ensues convenient lawfare service warfare rather matter convenience motivation seems sinister criticism deflected natos lawlessness instances nato resorted war unlawfully engaging designated nuremberg crime peace held tribunal greatest war crimes embracing within crimes humanity gross violations laws war war crimes kosovo war nato acted without mandate un thereby violating un charters core principle prohibiting nondefensive uses force unless authorized security council libya initial authorization protect civilians establishing nofly zone security council resolution 1973 17 may 2011 nato mission executed almost immediately grossly exceeded original mandate little hide unmandated goal regime change tripoli way ending qaddafis role ruler thereby achieving victory opposition forces civil war certainly worthy comment wars initiated nato leader country attacked targeted criminal prosecution hostilities ended even allies world war ii waited end combat trying impose version victors justice surviving defeated german japanese leaders closely related pattern projection criminal accountability occurred iraq160 american led aggressive war waged iraq 2003 quickly followed carefully planned orchestrated criminal prosecution stagemanaged behind scenes us occupation commanders followed execution saddam hussein close associates160 iraqi trial politically circumscribed exclude evidence bearing close discrediting strategic relationship maintained united states iraq period saddam husseins serious instances criminality genocidal operations kurdish villages well disallowing inquiry american criminality associated attack iraq subsequent allegations criminal wrongdoing response iraqi resistance military occupation160 american potential criminality never discussed much less investigated responsible manner converts separate instances pattern eurocentric westcentric selectivity evident recent efforts enforce international criminal law noted selectivity made objectionable impunity accorded european american israeli leaders double standards pervasively evident behavior undermine authority law especially relation subjectmatter vital war peace unless equals treated equally time called law accurately treated geopolitics geopolitical nature approval arrest warrants issued icc unintentionally confirmed acknowledged nato officials possible arrest qaddafi unless unlikely event captured rebels governmental representatives washington admitting declared warrants nevertheless useful forthcoming un debates libyan policy presumably push aside objections based failure nato limit military operations nofly zone initially authorized security council remembered initial authorization sc resolution 1973 weakened five abstentions including china russia south africa voted majority expressing strong objections subsequent undertaking160 one wonders whether china russia would used veto anticipated far beyond insisted limited humanitarian purposes proponents use force actual operation would become effect overcome impression unlawfulness natos part useful demonize adversary opportune way reach goal put forward premature accusations severe criminality course pointed embedded hypocrisy central argument put forward states seeking un green light intervene libya based responsibility protect norm supposedly confers duty international community protect civilian populations subjected severely abusive behavior two obvious contradictions present syria current regional setting even starkly gaza back 200809 mercilessly attacked israel answers questions blowin wind technical reasons present setting challenge timing arrest warrants seem legally politically dubious legally dubious serious criminality associated behavior qaddafi regime conflict occurred icc cutoff date 18 february eg siege misrata ulterior motivations rush prosecute politically dubious new obstacle diplomacy situation alternative seems likely prolonged civil war negotiating space accommodation definitely reduced implication qaddafis criminality creates incentives tripoli leadership fight long possible perhaps cynics would argue law always reflects power course correct certain extent progress human affairs arises struggle pretensions locus nature power changing world west losing capacity shape history high technology warfare upon west depends enforce nonwest losing capacity produce political victories eg anticolonial wars vietnam iraq afghanistan politicized use icc course libyan war offers opportunity dedicated global justice especially arab world insist international law longer serve plaything intervene hard power region comfort zone nato headquarters | 750 |
<p>Diana DeGette is a sixth-term Democratic congresswoman from Colorado's first district, and the Democrats' chief deputy whip in the House. Ever since her arrival in Congress, replacing the retiring Pat Schroeder in 1997, DeGette has focused her attention on abortion, reproductive issues, and — most prominently — the stem-cell debate. She is one of the chief sponsors of a bill to use tax dollars to encourage the ongoing destruction of human embryos for research. The measure, which would overturn President Bush's stem-cell-funding policy, had the distinction of being the first bill vetoed by Bush and the only bill he has vetoed twice (in 2006, and in 2007).</p>
<p>In her new book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Science-Stem-Cells-Diana-DeGette/dp/1599214318/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1218660702&amp;sr=1-1" type="external">Sex, Science and Stem Cells,</a> DeGette seeks to relate the harrowing drama of her defense of abortion rights and advocacy of stem-cell research, and especially to describe, as she sees it, the great Republican assault on science in America.</p>
<p>As biography, the book is an interesting and at times even moving read. DeGette's wonderfully American family story and her unusual rise through Colorado politics make for a good yarn, and her recollections of her daughter's first diagnosis of juvenile diabetes offer both a loving picture of her family and an insight into the intense tenacity of her stem-cell advocacy. But these personal stories are quickly dispensed with in the book's first few chapters, and with them go all of its strengths and its charms. When she turns to substance, DeGette unleashes a dizzying mix of rank propaganda, factual inaccuracies, scientific distortions, personal venom, and embarrassing confusion. More importantly, she reveals an attitude that must leave us worried about the ability of the Democratic majority in Congress to govern on issues that touch upon science.</p>
<p>For anyone familiar with the subjects DeGette takes up, her gross and repeated factual misstatements must surely be the most peculiar feature of this most peculiar book. In areas in which she has been deeply involved for years, DeGette seems unaware of basic facts. She provides an almost comically erroneous description of the so-called “Dickey-Wicker Amendment,” which governs federal funding of embryo research. She wrongly asserts that research on stem cells from aborted fetuses is not funded by federal dollars. She believes federal funds had supported embryo research before 2001 — when in fact President Bush's policy provided funding for the first time, under ethical constraints. She speaks of “the 110 million Americans suffering from diseases who stood to gain from potential applications” of stem-cell science — asserting, it seems, that every third American is dying of a terrible illness. She imagines, too, that “there's a general public consensus about the ethics of embryonic-stem-cell research in this country.”</p>
<p>DeGette seems entirely unaware that she has voted to provide funds to encourage the practice of embryo adoption for the last six years — a program sponsored by Senator Arlen Specter, her close ally in the stem-cell fight. And she asserts, in one of the book's numerous instances of shameless, audacious, arm-waving boasting, that when President Bush vetoed her funding bill for the second time, in 2007, he was almost ashamed to do it, and “there was no veto ceremony, no East Room spectacle, no press conference.” Actually, <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/06/20070620-8.html" type="external">there was</a> precisely an East Room “spectacle,” and no shame to be found.</p>
<p>But DeGette's most egregious factual errors are on matters of science, not policy and politics. In some cases, she spouts ludicrous talking points as scientific facts, arguing for instance, that the word “abortifacient” was made up by pro-lifers and is not a <a href="http://www.medilexicon.com/medicaldictionary.php?t=141" type="external">medical term</a>. But on questions of stem cells and human cloning, she is either systematically deceptive or appallingly ignorant.</p>
<p>“What most people don't know,” she writes, “is that there are generally two types of cloning under discussion among bioethicists, lobbyists, activists, and legislators, as mentioned earlier: reproductive cloning and so-called therapeutic cloning, also known as somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), which involves the replication of cells for research purposes only.” In fact, at no point does any kind of human cloning involve the mere “replication of cells.” Cloning always involves the creation of a new human embryo that is genetically identical to another human being. The difference between the two types of cloning she describes has to do not with the procedure involved, but with what is done with the embryo produced by cloning: it is either transferred to a woman to develop to birth (reproductive cloning), or it is destroyed for research (so-called therapeutic cloning or SCNT). But DeGette repeatedly masks this fact with erroneous descriptions of cloning. “With SCNT,” she writes, “cells are taken from the body, and the nuclei are replaced. The cells are thus capable of being made into stem cells, which can in turn be programmed to become any type of cell in the body.” Again, no. Cells are not “turned into stem cells.” An embryo is created by cloning and then destroyed, and stem cells are removed from its inner mass.</p>
<p>After repeated examples of this kind of error, the reader is left wondering if DeGette is trying to fool us or is herself simply ignorant of these basic facts. Her related forays into ethical reasoning tend rather to support the latter view. “Reproductive cloning is a whole other issue,” she writes after incorrectly describing therapeutic cloning.</p>
<p>This is the process of replicating a human being for no scientific or therapeutic purpose whatsoever. It's replication for the sake of replication — and the dangerous implications of this type of research are immediately and everywhere apparent. It promotes the troubling view that human beings can be designed or manufactured to demonstrate certain characteristics; it blurs the line between nature and science; it ignores the need for genetic diversity in the general population; it opens a dangerous door on the buying and selling of human life; it's unsafe, unproven, unnecessary.</p>
<p>Of course each of these arguments applies also to therapeutic cloning, and in most cases even more emphatically. If she is troubled by these kinds of concerns, the career she describes in the book becomes very difficult to understand.</p>
<p>But what DeGette is most troubled by, it seems, is the right and its invidious influence. The book drips with disgust at social conservatives and with exasperation at the very fact of having to contend with such people and views. DeGette describes herself “logging these long, ridiculous hours on Capitol Hill, getting into long, ridiculous debates on practical, common sense initiatives that were somehow regarded in this conservative political environment as subversive.” She attributes differing views on questions of reproduction and abortion to pure squeamishness about sex, adding “and then on top of that squeamishness we have the many tentacles of the Catholic Church, trying to influence a dialogue that's already difficult to begin with.”</p>
<p>Indeed, she saves her harshest venom for religious conservatives. “In my fifteen years in elected office,” she writes,</p>
<p>I have seen the power of the Christian Coalition and its members. While not representative of the views of the majority (or even a large minority) of A mericans, this group wields disproportionate influence over our politicians. Why? Because it is a single-issue group that has enormous power to control campaign donations and the votes of its members. If voters who belong to this group are told to denounce a politician because he or she opposes the wishes of this group, they will. No questions asked — and this right here is one of our fundamental problems.</p>
<p>Yes, she said “the Christian Coalition.” In this army of the ignorant and easily led she even finds some of her congressional colleagues, and collegial courtesy does not restrain her from naming them. “Whenever I listened to a guy like Tom Coburn,” she writes of the physician-turned-senator from Oklahoma, “my skin would start to crawl and I'd get to thinking, Oh my God, what if I had a guy like that as my doctor?” After another colleague draws a distinction between miscarriage and abortion, DeGette tells us, “I simply couldn't get past the fact that a member of Congress would make the odious claim that if a woman miscarried it was no fault of her own, but if she had an abortion there was fault to be assigned.”</p>
<p>This complete inability to comprehend the arguments of her opponents characterizes DeGette's depictions of all the political struggles she describes in the book. Nowhere does she actually discuss what the other side might be arguing, or indeed what her own ethical premises might be. Indeed, she revels in her ignorance of the opposing arguments. “Because the right wing's objections were at least consistent, I never gave them much thought,” she tells us. That much is certainly clear from the book.</p>
<p>At no point does DeGette seem to believe that there are any genuine ethical questions at issue in the debates over stem-cell research, abortion, and other reproductive issues. “Over time, I realized that the politicization of science by the Republicans and the religious right was at its most insidious over any issue relating to human reproduction,” she writes. “This brought me to the inevitable conclusion that too many of our elected officials are simply incapable of thinking rationally about sex. I could think of no other explanation.” None? In the stem-cell debate, in particular, DeGette simply dismisses the possibility that any serious ethical question exists. At no point does she offer any arguments about the moral or even biological standing of the human embryo. She sees embryos in fertility clinics as merely valuable raw materials, and sees no need to explain her view. Speaking of patients and those who care for them she writes, oddly: “together we're counting on those embryos to see us through and take some of that weight off our shoulders and set our world right once again.” In a lengthy discussion of the Bush stem-cell policy, she never suggests there might be some reasons for the president's approach. She can only say that “his objection is in essence a religious one.”</p>
<p>And here we find the deepest and most troubling difficulty revealed by this troubling book. DeGette takes any argument about science that is not itself a purely scientific argument to be essentially illegitimate. Reviewing some aims laid out in an administration document about abstinence education, for instance, she writes, “While many of the goals stated in the guidelines are admirable, they are not science-based.” But of course the goals of policy need not be science-based, even if some of the means toward achieving them might be. DeGette, however, can see no way to permit other kinds of views — philosophical, ethical, moral, traditional, or religious — to influence any policy issue in which science plays a role.</p>
<p>All these other kinds of views, she argues, are merely personal, and only science is universal and public. The attitude of the right “confuses a personal system of beliefs with a responsible approach to science,” she warns. Of the Bush stem-cell-funding decision she notes, “Clearly, this was not a scientific decision. It was a political decision, make no mistake.” But of course, the president is a political leader, not a scientist, and must consider the larger public good as he understands it in making policy, including science policy.</p>
<p>The worldview that emerges from DeGette's book would deny our democratic institutions any real say over science policy. The advancement of science is the only goal they are allowed to pursue, and they must clear away every obstacle to doing so. Science, as DeGette describes it, is the great organizing principle of modern life, and government ought not to interfere. “The scientific method is necessary to preserve order in our world, and at the same time pursue sound public policy,” she writes in one characteristically bizarre passage. Especially because the science she generally has in mind is the pursuit of medicine and health, its aims are taken to be higher than any “personal” or ideological concerns about ethics, and so to merit preeminence and protection.</p>
<p>This attitude, which we should not be surprised to find at the highest levels of the Democratic party in Congress, is among the most serious dangers to American self-government in our time. It runs the risk of blinding the left to its responsibilities to public ends no less important than the pursuit of public health, and at the same time of causing the right to overreact in a defensive lurch that could damage American science policy and the scientific enterprise itself. It speaks of a profound loss of perspective all too evident in the science debates of recent years. Science, and especially biomedical science, carries immense promise and potential; but it sometimes also raises some serious ethical challenges and dilemmas, and a democratic society must be able to call upon more than science alone to address them.</p>
<p>To understand the proper relation of science and politics is no easy task, but it is an increasingly unavoidable one, which will grow all the more urgent in the coming years, as biotechnology presents us with some daunting prospects. To make the most of new advances, we must be capable also of resisting abuses. DeGette's book is a warning about the inability of our leaders to meet these challenges. Beyond the book's careless reckless rhetoric, beyond the ignorant derision, beyond the smug and pompous arrogance, is a deep and genuine cause for concern.</p>
<p>— Yuval Levin is a fellow at the <a href="" type="internal">Ethics and Public Policy Center</a> and senior editor of <a href="http://www.thenewatlantis.com/" type="external">The New Atlantis</a>. His new book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1594032092/ref=nosim/the-new-atlantis-20" type="external">Imagining the Future: Science and American Democracy</a>, will be published next month.</p> | false | 1 | diana degette sixthterm democratic congresswoman colorados first district democrats chief deputy whip house ever since arrival congress replacing retiring pat schroeder 1997 degette focused attention abortion reproductive issues prominently stemcell debate one chief sponsors bill use tax dollars encourage ongoing destruction human embryos research measure would overturn president bushs stemcellfunding policy distinction first bill vetoed bush bill vetoed twice 2006 2007 new book sex science stem cells degette seeks relate harrowing drama defense abortion rights advocacy stemcell research especially describe sees great republican assault science america biography book interesting times even moving read degettes wonderfully american family story unusual rise colorado politics make good yarn recollections daughters first diagnosis juvenile diabetes offer loving picture family insight intense tenacity stemcell advocacy personal stories quickly dispensed books first chapters go strengths charms turns substance degette unleashes dizzying mix rank propaganda factual inaccuracies scientific distortions personal venom embarrassing confusion importantly reveals attitude must leave us worried ability democratic majority congress govern issues touch upon science anyone familiar subjects degette takes gross repeated factual misstatements must surely peculiar feature peculiar book areas deeply involved years degette seems unaware basic facts provides almost comically erroneous description socalled dickeywicker amendment governs federal funding embryo research wrongly asserts research stem cells aborted fetuses funded federal dollars believes federal funds supported embryo research 2001 fact president bushs policy provided funding first time ethical constraints speaks 110 million americans suffering diseases stood gain potential applications stemcell science asserting seems every third american dying terrible illness imagines theres general public consensus ethics embryonicstemcell research country degette seems entirely unaware voted provide funds encourage practice embryo adoption last six years program sponsored senator arlen specter close ally stemcell fight asserts one books numerous instances shameless audacious armwaving boasting president bush vetoed funding bill second time 2007 almost ashamed veto ceremony east room spectacle press conference actually precisely east room spectacle shame found degettes egregious factual errors matters science policy politics cases spouts ludicrous talking points scientific facts arguing instance word abortifacient made prolifers medical term questions stem cells human cloning either systematically deceptive appallingly ignorant people dont know writes generally two types cloning discussion among bioethicists lobbyists activists legislators mentioned earlier reproductive cloning socalled therapeutic cloning also known somatic cell nuclear transfer scnt involves replication cells research purposes fact point kind human cloning involve mere replication cells cloning always involves creation new human embryo genetically identical another human difference two types cloning describes procedure involved done embryo produced cloning either transferred woman develop birth reproductive cloning destroyed research socalled therapeutic cloning scnt degette repeatedly masks fact erroneous descriptions cloning scnt writes cells taken body nuclei replaced cells thus capable made stem cells turn programmed become type cell body cells turned stem cells embryo created cloning destroyed stem cells removed inner mass repeated examples kind error reader left wondering degette trying fool us simply ignorant basic facts related forays ethical reasoning tend rather support latter view reproductive cloning whole issue writes incorrectly describing therapeutic cloning process replicating human scientific therapeutic purpose whatsoever replication sake replication dangerous implications type research immediately everywhere apparent promotes troubling view human beings designed manufactured demonstrate certain characteristics blurs line nature science ignores need genetic diversity general population opens dangerous door buying selling human life unsafe unproven unnecessary course arguments applies also therapeutic cloning cases even emphatically troubled kinds concerns career describes book becomes difficult understand degette troubled seems right invidious influence book drips disgust social conservatives exasperation fact contend people views degette describes logging long ridiculous hours capitol hill getting long ridiculous debates practical common sense initiatives somehow regarded conservative political environment subversive attributes differing views questions reproduction abortion pure squeamishness sex adding top squeamishness many tentacles catholic church trying influence dialogue thats already difficult begin indeed saves harshest venom religious conservatives fifteen years elected office writes seen power christian coalition members representative views majority even large minority mericans group wields disproportionate influence politicians singleissue group enormous power control campaign donations votes members voters belong group told denounce politician opposes wishes group questions asked right one fundamental problems yes said christian coalition army ignorant easily led even finds congressional colleagues collegial courtesy restrain naming whenever listened guy like tom coburn writes physicianturnedsenator oklahoma skin would start crawl id get thinking oh god guy like doctor another colleague draws distinction miscarriage abortion degette tells us simply couldnt get past fact member congress would make odious claim woman miscarried fault abortion fault assigned complete inability comprehend arguments opponents characterizes degettes depictions political struggles describes book nowhere actually discuss side might arguing indeed ethical premises might indeed revels ignorance opposing arguments right wings objections least consistent never gave much thought tells us much certainly clear book point degette seem believe genuine ethical questions issue debates stemcell research abortion reproductive issues time realized politicization science republicans religious right insidious issue relating human reproduction writes brought inevitable conclusion many elected officials simply incapable thinking rationally sex could think explanation none stemcell debate particular degette simply dismisses possibility serious ethical question exists point offer arguments moral even biological standing human embryo sees embryos fertility clinics merely valuable raw materials sees need explain view speaking patients care writes oddly together counting embryos see us take weight shoulders set world right lengthy discussion bush stemcell policy never suggests might reasons presidents approach say objection essence religious one find deepest troubling difficulty revealed troubling book degette takes argument science purely scientific argument essentially illegitimate reviewing aims laid administration document abstinence education instance writes many goals stated guidelines admirable sciencebased course goals policy need sciencebased even means toward achieving might degette however see way permit kinds views philosophical ethical moral traditional religious influence policy issue science plays role kinds views argues merely personal science universal public attitude right confuses personal system beliefs responsible approach science warns bush stemcellfunding decision notes clearly scientific decision political decision make mistake course president political leader scientist must consider larger public good understands making policy including science policy worldview emerges degettes book would deny democratic institutions real say science policy advancement science goal allowed pursue must clear away every obstacle science degette describes great organizing principle modern life government ought interfere scientific method necessary preserve order world time pursue sound public policy writes one characteristically bizarre passage especially science generally mind pursuit medicine health aims taken higher personal ideological concerns ethics merit preeminence protection attitude surprised find highest levels democratic party congress among serious dangers american selfgovernment time runs risk blinding left responsibilities public ends less important pursuit public health time causing right overreact defensive lurch could damage american science policy scientific enterprise speaks profound loss perspective evident science debates recent years science especially biomedical science carries immense promise potential sometimes also raises serious ethical challenges dilemmas democratic society must able call upon science alone address understand proper relation science politics easy task increasingly unavoidable one grow urgent coming years biotechnology presents us daunting prospects make new advances must capable also resisting abuses degettes book warning inability leaders meet challenges beyond books careless reckless rhetoric beyond ignorant derision beyond smug pompous arrogance deep genuine cause concern yuval levin fellow ethics public policy center senior editor new atlantis new book imagining future science american democracy published next month | 1,195 |
<p />
<p>We are tirelessly dedicated to the Obama Administration’s campaign to stop the fighting between oppressors and oppressed and convince them to accept their present status instead of disturbing the peace and making frightening noises on the streets. This goes not only for our own Ferguson, Mo., but by odd coincidence, in Gaza as well. Funny, but it’s like both events are taking place in the West Bank.</p>
<p>We’re about to investigate an aspect of these wars. That’s the pros and cons of the decision made by the Ferguson Police Dept. to don the garb, the weapons, and other accouterments of warfare given them by the Pentagon in a program strongly backed by President Obama. The purpose, in effect if not stated, is to militarize the police in order to keep the homeland safe from terrorists.</p>
<p>But first we must provide some context for both battlefields, beginning with Ferguson.</p>
<p>It’s true that a young man was killed in Ferguson after he engaged in shoplifting, and then disobeyed a hardworking peace officer’s request to enter an official vehicle for a chat. The officer, a patriotic U.S. military veteran with a clean record during his eight years of service in the police force, had no choice but to fire warning shots to get the suspect to stop. The escaping man — a black perpetrator, it turns out — responded by changing course, and turning to face the officer with his arms spread menacingly in the air, he walked directly into the warning shots and was accidently killed. Those things happen.</p>
<p>The police department was very upset about it, although comforted when they remembered from the Good Book, “The wages of sin is death.” The department’s Protestant minister, the inerrant Pastor Knowsall, ruled that if the Bible said it, it’s true. And the force’s Roman Catholic adviser, Father Whiteman, ruled that robbing a convenience store is a major sin. Whiteman, considered a virtual saint in more peaceful and, frankly, attractive neighborhoods in the St. Louis area, has never sinned of course, but he learned all about it at his church’s summer camp for boys, which he visited frequently as a young priest and still manages to show up from time to time for what he calls “special occasions.”</p>
<p>Then, all of a sudden, raucous mobs took over the streets of this peaceful community, threatening everyone in sight, including peace officers seeking to keep the rioters calm. There was a case of looting and some people cursed the police, and someone threw a “Molotov Cocktail,” a terror weapon named after a Communist. This continued for days. Needless to say, most of the mobs were made up of people with dark skins, just like those rioters down South in the 1960s. What do those people want?</p>
<p>We do not welcome these mobs in fair Ferguson! I’m sure this majority black town’s three African American officers join their 50 white brothers in arms in feeling this way. There should be no more looting, and demonstrators must refrain from discourtesy toward our heroic boys blue and camo as they try to restore peace and tranquility in our best of all possible democracies.</p>
<p>Eyeless in Gaza</p>
<p>A different, but relatively similar terrorist outbreak has been bedeviling the State of Israel, started by Palestinian terrorists from Gaza, a part of Greater Israel. We say, along with the president of the United States, “Hamas! Stop firing those rockets against innocent Israelis! Monster! Aren’t you sated yet? Your bloodbath has already killed three civilians.”</p>
<p>There will be retribution. According to the “Law of An Eye for an Eye,” as amended by the Knesset in 1949, this means 666 terrorist eyes for one innocent Israeli civilian eye. Scores will be settled!</p>
<p>Here is how it all started: &#160;Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu (may his tribe increase) awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, and saw, within the moonlight in his room, the glare of terrorist Hamas rockets threatening the Jewish State. Terror rockets!</p>
<p>With deep reluctance and against his own passionately held peaceful and humanitarian principles, Bibi had no choice but to save his people by deploying the Most Moral Army in the World to defend the very land God Himself personally transferred to the prime minister’s direct ancestors — His gift of “land to the landless.”</p>
<p>When, God forbid, Bibi passes to his generous eternal reward, the heavenly real estate deed to all the former Palestinian lands will be posted in an elaborate shrine next to the public display of a magnificent glass enclosed coffin containing the embalmed remains the fallen Bibi. After 60 days of being viewed by a weeping nation, this modest man will be buried. In his honor, when the time comes, the Israeli government plans to imprint Bibi’s favorite selfie and a copy of the deed on all Israel’s flags. We thank President Obama for agreeing to rename the storied War Room in the White House basement, Bibi’s Hideaway.</p>
<p>So far the Most Moral Army has harvested some 2,000 pairs of eyes, and counting.</p>
<p>Now back to Ferguson.</p>
<p>The Pentagon’s program of militarizing domestic police forces is controversial. We will tell you what we think of the Pros and Cons below after you decide without any hints from us.</p>
<p>By the way, President Obama has recently entered the fray by declaring that the domestic police shouldn’t behave like soldiers, but of course his Pentagon distribution scheme serves the national interest so the program will remain in place. (We gave him a peek at the Pros and Cons beforehand to help him think it all out.) We will reveal our view just after this listing…</p>
<p>What we will do now is present both sides, as usual, so that you, the reader, make up your own mind. Here is the list, courtesy of The Onion:</p>
<p>PROS:</p>
<p>CONS</p>
<p>What do you think?&#160; Get back to us later. We’re still working on our opinion. Bibi hasn’t called yet.</p>
<p>Action proposal</p>
<p>Visit your top local political and corporate decision makers. Tell them you support their call to restore calm and healing between oppressed and oppressor, and that you agree there should be no monkeying around with our existing social and income structure, housing patterns and free markets because it is part of God’s plan.</p>
<p>And remember, as we part, when you go out at night, and there is not much light, and you happen to be white, and there is a shadow in sight, man up and do right. Above all, go armed and stand your ground. You never know who is lurking in the bushes, waiting to rob your cigars.</p>
<p>(The Onion created the pro and con points, but not the article. And when we wrote “Netanyahu awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, and saw…” we were using words from the famous poem Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase). One or two readers may be offended by some of our comments, but keep in mind our only intention is to identify the real killers and their accomplices. — J.A.S.)</p> | false | 1 | tirelessly dedicated obama administrations campaign stop fighting oppressors oppressed convince accept present status instead disturbing peace making frightening noises streets goes ferguson mo odd coincidence gaza well funny like events taking place west bank investigate aspect wars thats pros cons decision made ferguson police dept garb weapons accouterments warfare given pentagon program strongly backed president obama purpose effect stated militarize police order keep homeland safe terrorists first must provide context battlefields beginning ferguson true young man killed ferguson engaged shoplifting disobeyed hardworking peace officers request enter official vehicle chat officer patriotic us military veteran clean record eight years service police force choice fire warning shots get suspect stop escaping man black perpetrator turns responded changing course turning face officer arms spread menacingly air walked directly warning shots accidently killed things happen police department upset although comforted remembered good book wages sin death departments protestant minister inerrant pastor knowsall ruled bible said true forces roman catholic adviser father whiteman ruled robbing convenience store major sin whiteman considered virtual saint peaceful frankly attractive neighborhoods st louis area never sinned course learned churchs summer camp boys visited frequently young priest still manages show time time calls special occasions sudden raucous mobs took streets peaceful community threatening everyone sight including peace officers seeking keep rioters calm case looting people cursed police someone threw molotov cocktail terror weapon named communist continued days needless say mobs made people dark skins like rioters south 1960s people want welcome mobs fair ferguson im sure majority black towns three african american officers join 50 white brothers arms feeling way looting demonstrators must refrain discourtesy toward heroic boys blue camo try restore peace tranquility best possible democracies eyeless gaza different relatively similar terrorist outbreak bedeviling state israel started palestinian terrorists gaza part greater israel say along president united states hamas stop firing rockets innocent israelis monster arent sated yet bloodbath already killed three civilians retribution according law eye eye amended knesset 1949 means 666 terrorist eyes one innocent israeli civilian eye scores settled started 160prime minister bibi netanyahu may tribe increase awoke one night deep dream peace saw within moonlight room glare terrorist hamas rockets threatening jewish state terror rockets deep reluctance passionately held peaceful humanitarian principles bibi choice save people deploying moral army world defend land god personally transferred prime ministers direct ancestors gift land landless god forbid bibi passes generous eternal reward heavenly real estate deed former palestinian lands posted elaborate shrine next public display magnificent glass enclosed coffin containing embalmed remains fallen bibi 60 days viewed weeping nation modest man buried honor time comes israeli government plans imprint bibis favorite selfie copy deed israels flags thank president obama agreeing rename storied war room white house basement bibis hideaway far moral army harvested 2000 pairs eyes counting back ferguson pentagons program militarizing domestic police forces controversial tell think pros cons decide without hints us way president obama recently entered fray declaring domestic police shouldnt behave like soldiers course pentagon distribution scheme serves national interest program remain place gave peek pros cons beforehand help think reveal view listing present sides usual reader make mind list courtesy onion pros cons think160 get back us later still working opinion bibi hasnt called yet action proposal visit top local political corporate decision makers tell support call restore calm healing oppressed oppressor agree monkeying around existing social income structure housing patterns free markets part gods plan remember part go night much light happen white shadow sight man right go armed stand ground never know lurking bushes waiting rob cigars onion created pro con points article wrote netanyahu awoke one night deep dream peace saw using words famous poem abou ben adhem may tribe increase one two readers may offended comments keep mind intention identify real killers accomplices jas | 625 |
<p>WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is unveiling a $1.15 trillion budget, a far-reaching overhaul of federal government spending that slashes a dozen departments to finance a significant increase in the military and make a down payment on a U.S.-Mexico border wall.</p>
<p>Thursday’s scheduled budget release will upend Washington with cuts to long-promised campaign targets like foreign aid and the Environmental Protection Agency as well as strong congressional favorites such as medical research, help for homeless veterans and community development grants.</p>
<p>“A budget that puts America first must make the safety of our people its number one priority — because without safety, there can be no prosperity,” Trump said in a message accompanying his proposed budget that was titled “America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again.”</p>
<p>The $54 billion boost for the military is the largest since President Ronald Reagan’s Pentagon buildup in the 1980s, promising immediate money for troop readiness, the fight against Islamic State militants and procurement of new ships, fighter jets and other weapons. The 10 percent Pentagon boost is financed by $54 billion in cuts to foreign aid and domestic agencies that had been protected by former President Barack Obama.</p>
<p>The budget goes after the frequent targets of the party’s staunchest conservatives, eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts, legal aid for the poor, low-income heating assistance and the AmeriCorps national service program established by former President Bill Clinton.</p>
<p>Such programs were the focus of lengthy battles dating to the GOP takeover of Congress in 1995 and have survived prior attempts to eliminate them. Lawmakers will have the final say on Trump’s proposal in the arduous budget process.</p>
<p>The budget is set for official release Thursday morning, but The Associated Press and other news outlets obtained the document in advance.</p>
<p>Law enforcement agencies like the FBI would be spared, while the border wall would receive an immediate $1.5 billion infusion in the ongoing fiscal year, with another $2.6 billion planned for the 2018 budget year starting Oct. 1.</p>
<p>Trump repeatedly claimed during the campaign that Mexico would pay for the wall when, in fact, U.S. taxpayers will foot the bill.</p>
<p>Twelve of the government’s 15 Cabinet agencies would absorb cuts under the president’s proposal. The biggest losers are Agriculture, Labor, State and the Cabinet-level EPA. Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs are the winners.</p>
<p>More than 3,000 EPA workers would lose their jobs and programs such as Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which would tighten regulations on emissions from power plants seen as contributing to global warming, would be eliminated. Popular EPA grants for state and local drinking and wastewater projects would be preserved, however.</p>
<p>Trump’s proposal only covers roughly one-fourth of the approximately $4 trillion federal budget, the discretionary portion that Congress passes each year. It doesn’t address taxes, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, or make predictions about deficits and the economy. Those big-picture details are due in mid-May, and are sure to show large — probably permanent — budget deficits. Trump has vowed not to cut Social Security and Medicare and is dead set against raising taxes.</p>
<p>“The president’s going to keep his promises” to leave Social Security and Medicare alone, said White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney.</p>
<p>Trump’s proposal is sure to land with a thud on Capitol Hill, and not just with opposition Democrats outraged over cuts to pet programs such as renewable energy, climate change research and rehabilitation of housing projects.</p>
<p>Republicans like Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio are irate over planned elimination of a program to restore the Great Lakes. Top Republicans like Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker of Tennessee are opposed to drastic cuts to foreign aid. And even GOP defense hawks like Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry of Texas aren’t satisfied with the $54 billion increase for the military.</p>
<p>Before the two sides go to war over Trump’s 2018 plan, they need to clean up more than $1.1 trillion in unfinished agency budgets for the current year. A temporary catchall spending bill expires April 28; negotiations have barely started and could get hung up over Trump’s request for the wall and additional border patrol and immigration enforcement agents, just for starters.</p>
<p>Some of the most politically sensitive domestic programs would be spared, including food aid for pregnant women and their children, housing vouchers for the poor, aid for special education and school districts for the poor, and federal aid to historically black colleges and universities.</p>
<p>But the National Institutes of Health would absorb a $5.8 billion cut despite Trump’s talk in a recent address to Congress of finding “cures to the illnesses that have always plagued us.” Subsidies for airlines serving rural airports in Trump strongholds would be eliminated. Also zeroed out would be funding for subsidies of Amtrak’s money-losing long-distance routes, and a $500 million per-year “TIGER Grant” program for highway projects created by Obama.</p>
<p>In a blow to endangered GOP Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada, Trump’s budget seeks $120 million to revive the mothballed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, which is hugely unpopular in his state and was largely killed by the efforts of Democratic former Sen. Harry Reid. Heller is up for re-election next year in a state that backed Democrat Hillary Clinton.</p> | false | 1 | washington president donald trump unveiling 115 trillion budget farreaching overhaul federal government spending slashes dozen departments finance significant increase military make payment usmexico border wall thursdays scheduled budget release upend washington cuts longpromised campaign targets like foreign aid environmental protection agency well strong congressional favorites medical research help homeless veterans community development grants budget puts america first must make safety people number one priority without safety prosperity trump said message accompanying proposed budget titled america first budget blueprint make america great 54 billion boost military largest since president ronald reagans pentagon buildup 1980s promising immediate money troop readiness fight islamic state militants procurement new ships fighter jets weapons 10 percent pentagon boost financed 54 billion cuts foreign aid domestic agencies protected former president barack obama budget goes frequent targets partys staunchest conservatives eliminating national endowment arts legal aid poor lowincome heating assistance americorps national service program established former president bill clinton programs focus lengthy battles dating gop takeover congress 1995 survived prior attempts eliminate lawmakers final say trumps proposal arduous budget process budget set official release thursday morning associated press news outlets obtained document advance law enforcement agencies like fbi would spared border wall would receive immediate 15 billion infusion ongoing fiscal year another 26 billion planned 2018 budget year starting oct 1 trump repeatedly claimed campaign mexico would pay wall fact us taxpayers foot bill twelve governments 15 cabinet agencies would absorb cuts presidents proposal biggest losers agriculture labor state cabinetlevel epa defense homeland security veterans affairs winners 3000 epa workers would lose jobs programs obamas clean power plan would tighten regulations emissions power plants seen contributing global warming would eliminated popular epa grants state local drinking wastewater projects would preserved however trumps proposal covers roughly onefourth approximately 4 trillion federal budget discretionary portion congress passes year doesnt address taxes social security medicare medicaid make predictions deficits economy bigpicture details due midmay sure show large probably permanent budget deficits trump vowed cut social security medicare dead set raising taxes presidents going keep promises leave social security medicare alone said white house budget director mick mulvaney trumps proposal sure land thud capitol hill opposition democrats outraged cuts pet programs renewable energy climate change research rehabilitation housing projects republicans like sen rob portman ohio irate planned elimination program restore great lakes top republicans like majority leader mitch mcconnell kentucky senate foreign relations committee chairman bob corker tennessee opposed drastic cuts foreign aid even gop defense hawks like armed services committee chairman mac thornberry texas arent satisfied 54 billion increase military two sides go war trumps 2018 plan need clean 11 trillion unfinished agency budgets current year temporary catchall spending bill expires april 28 negotiations barely started could get hung trumps request wall additional border patrol immigration enforcement agents starters politically sensitive domestic programs would spared including food aid pregnant women children housing vouchers poor aid special education school districts poor federal aid historically black colleges universities national institutes health would absorb 58 billion cut despite trumps talk recent address congress finding cures illnesses always plagued us subsidies airlines serving rural airports trump strongholds would eliminated also zeroed would funding subsidies amtraks moneylosing longdistance routes 500 million peryear tiger grant program highway projects created obama blow endangered gop sen dean heller nevada trumps budget seeks 120 million revive mothballed yucca mountain nuclear waste repository hugely unpopular state largely killed efforts democratic former sen harry reid heller reelection next year state backed democrat hillary clinton | 572 |
<p />
<p>DAMASCUS —&#160; At UNWRA offices around the Levant this Winter Solstice, &#160;the day which astronomically marks the reversal of the gradual lengthening of nights and shortening of days, ‘winters midterm’, &#160;is not being celebrated as it has been since ancient times when festivals, gatherings, rituals &#160;feasting, singing, dancing, &#160;and bonfires were the norm. The winter solstice historically has been vitally&#160;important because communities were not certain of living through the winter, and had to prepare during the previous nine months for dramatic rises in&#160;starvation, communicable diseases, and infant deaths due to hypothermia were particularly common during the first months of the winter, which became known as “the famine months” in the northern hemisphere.</p>
<p>Preparing for a tough next few months is what the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is doing these days, in the face of daunting odds. UNWRA was founded in 1949 and for more than 60 years has&#160; been plagued by &#160;harassments, intimidation, and countless conspiracies to close it down waged by the international Zionist lobby increasingly trying to ‘put it out of its misery’ as Prime Minister Netanyahu recently demanded from the US Congress.</p>
<p>Many of UNWRA’s 30,000 employees—including those at the Beirut regional UNWRA HQ opposite Shatila Camp, as well as at the UNWRA HQ in Damascus on Mezzah boulevard where this observer is a regular visitor—talk these days about the grim link between the Syrian crisis and the conditions of over half a million Palestine refugees in UNWRA’s 57 camps, who have been living in exile for six decades.&#160; Other major concerns for UNWRA are the nearly one million Syrian refugees fleeing the civil war, as well as the more than one million refugees in Gaza suffering from climatic conditions exacerbated by the brutal Zionist occupation of Palestine.</p>
<p>The UNRWA Syria Regional Crisis Response Plan for 2014, published this week sets out the Agency’s hoped for projects to strengthen the resilience of Palestine refugees, and to help them weather the current dangers of the frigid temperatures and lack of heat and sanitation. This winters solstice, the outlook for Palestine refugees from Syria is &#160;increasingly bleak in Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt, as communities, livelihoods, assets, and support networks painstakingly built over decades are being destroyed.</p>
<p>Proportionally, displacement among Palestinians is much higher than that of Syrians and the threats to safe refuge in Syria combined with severely restricted options for flight has confronted Palestine refugees with unprecedented challenges. UNRWA emergency assistance is normally delivered as part of its well-established programs in health, education, community development, microfinance, relief, youth training, and employment. Delivered by Palestinians staff, this support provides a critical source of community and family resilience and continuity in the face of growing hardship. Of the 540,000 Palestine refugees registered with UNRWA in Syria, about 270,000 are displaced in the country, and an estimated 85,000 have fled. Fifty-one thousand have reached Lebanon, 11,000 have identified themselves in Jordan, 5,000 are in Egypt, and smaller numbers have reached Gaza, Turkey, and farther afield. Those who have reached Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt face risky legal limbo compounded with living conditions so difficult that many decide to return to the dangers inside Syria.</p>
<p>UNRWA officials discuss in detail why the UN Agency requires US$ 417.4 million immediately to respond adequately to the urgent humanitarian needs of Palestine refugees inside Syria, US$ 90.4 million in Lebanon, and US$ 14.6 million in Jordan. US$ 2.4 million is required for emergency response outside of the purview of its field offices, including even token cash assistance for Palestinian families from Syria in Gaza. Financial support to UNRWA has not kept pace with an increased demand for services caused by growing numbers of registered refugees, expanding need, and deepening poverty. As a result, the Agency’s General Fund (GF), supporting UNRWA’s core activities and 97 per cent reliant on voluntary contributions, has begun each year with a large projected deficit. Currently the deficit stands at US$ 36 million.</p>
<p>Winter storm Alexa, the fiercest storm to hit Gaza and the West Bank in over 100 years, is still wreaking havoc and bringing misery to thousands. As of December 19, 40,000 people in Gaza have been driven from their homes due to extreme storm flooding. The flooding has been exacerbated by the fuel crisis that has left people without power for up to 21 hours a day and forced raw sewage to flow through the streets. People’s lives and health are at grave risk. Gaza’s Hamas government said 4,306 in all had been evacuated to schools and other centers used as makeshift shelters in the past four days. Gaza’s 1.8 million people, trying to survive in one of the most densely populated tracts on earth, &#160;has also been enduring around 12-hour blackouts daily since the lone power plant was switched off last month due to a fuel shortage. The territory lacks much basic civil infrastructure and lives under an Egyptian-Israeli blockade which curbs imports of fuel, building supplies and basic goods. UNWRA staff reports that the situation is worsening due to severe Israeli restrictions on the camps. Refugees cannot reconnect power lines that have been cut due to the heavy snow and have little access to basic necessities such as running water. The crises are deepening this winter in virtually all of the vulnerable refugee camps. The residents face severe power shortages and some on the West Bank also face systematic attacks by the Israeli army.</p>
<p>Other problems weighing heavily on UNWRA &#160;include strikes and threats of strikes by UNWRA employees protesting claimed low wages as well as &#160;expressed &#160;dismay at the UNRWA’s widely weak humanitarian role in Gaza, which is racked by crises and disasters, most notably, the ongoing blockade and the recent displacement of many citizens as a result of floods. The workers’ union at the UN agency for Palestinian refugees in Gaza continued protests this week calling for salary increases. One Hamas official accused UNRWA officials of receiving exorbitant salaries without being up to the tasks it was assigned to do, stressing that this presidency must fulfill its commitments or resign. UNWRA officials who this observer spoke with denied this but declined any information about any UNWRA salaries.</p>
<p>UNRWA, like many aid agencies working in Syria, continues to loose staff as their 10th staffer, teacher Suzan Ghazazweh, a popular and accomplished teacher at Abbasyyeh School, Muzeirib, was killed by shrapnel in her home in the afternoon of December 2 when a shell struck her residence in Shamal Al Khatt Quarter in Dera’a.</p>
<p>Enter Professor Alan Derschowitz!</p>
<p>Adding to UNWRA’s myriad problems is the fact that Professor Alan Dershowitz for some reason chose this Winter Solstice to retire after 46 years on the job at the Harvard Law School. Alan departed Harvard’s hallowed halls in order to devote more time to his current central cause and arguably his most challenging case, “saving Israel from itself &#160;and from UNWRA!” as he told a Harvard Crimson stringer on background recently.</p>
<p>The past few years, Professor Dershowitz would start off the beginning of semester classes apparently wanting to make a strong impression on his new student’s and to get their attention by &#160;offering them his essential view of the law. During the first or second class meeting he reportedly often made references to some of the 13 out of 15 major cases he “won” for the likes of Mike Tyson, Patty Hearst, Jim Bakker, Claus von Bulow, and O. J. Simpson, to name a few.</p>
<p>He would explain to his classes: “All my big cases I won on a legal technicality! Those cases were lost causes. Otherwise, why would these clients come to me? The first thing to remember as you continue your legal studies is to forget what the law says or even what the facts of a case are! American appellate courts will decide the facts and the law of a case based on what the best advocate says they are. &#160;That’s why I win!” &#160;To one public international law class, Professor Derschowitz reportedly sneered, “And you can forget about claims of human rights based on international law and universal standards of morality. You’ll never win s— with that malarkey.”</p>
<p>As he begins preparation for his “legitimization case” on behalf of the last remaining 19th century colonial enterprise, the Zionist theft and continuing illegal occupation of Palestine, Alan, associates claim, will come out swinging against UNRWA.&#160;&#160;During his teaching career, Alan has been a loyal supporter and some claim a main instigator of AIPAC. &#160;He has joined the &#160;Zionist Lobby’s more than two decades of attacks on, and trying to cut off the funding of, UNWRA.&#160; But until now, he has not been ‘lead attorney of record’.</p>
<p>One source who meets with Professor Derschowitz from time to time in Washington, claims that Alan insists that UNWRA is another one of Israel’s growing number of existential threats “because UNWRA keeps the Palestinian refugee issue alive and allows human rights types to keep the issue of wrongful dispossession of their homes and land before the global community and with no end in sight.”</p>
<p>While making regular trips to Israel, Alan doesn’t come around Lebanon or Syria much, and frankly this observer has only met the fellow a couple of times. He claims to have a photographic memory, and maybe that is why he doesn’t seem to cotton much to this observer. He might remember and even hold a grudge of some kind from our first meeting more than a quarter century ago, when Alan came to see me in my Congressional House Judiciary office in the Rayburn building. &#160;I am not sure who referred him, but only an hour earlier, my boss, Congressman John Conyers, Chairman of Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, called to give me a last minute assignment. It was simple enough and I had done it before.&#160; Congressman Conyers wanted me to escort a visiting Chief Justice, this time from Egypt’s highest court, to meet across the lawn from Rayburn at the Supreme Court with our CJ, Warren Burger—an easy enough assignment because Burger was always pleasant with a southern style aura of gentility about him. Fifteen minutes before Egypt’s CJ was due to join me, an intense, smallish, fast talking guy shows up and says he is from the Harvard Law School and must join “the Egyptian” during his meeting with Burger. Frankly it did not matter much to me one way of the other, but I did call my supervisor, Hayden Gregory, for advice and he said basically, “Not a chance! No way!” Only later did I learn Alan had rubbed Hayden the wrong way over proposed “Federal determinate sentencing guidelines” an issue before our committee at the time.</p>
<p>Long story short, Alan would not take no for an answer. &#160;When I made it clear he was not invited and could not join the meeting, he became angry and stormed off.</p>
<p>He may still remember, but it was not personal with me and this is by way of saying that UNWRA had better baton down its hatches because they have more problems coming their way than they realize or are ready for.</p> | false | 1 | damascus 160 unwra offices around levant winter solstice 160the day astronomically marks reversal gradual lengthening nights shortening days winters midterm 160is celebrated since ancient times festivals gatherings rituals 160feasting singing dancing 160and bonfires norm winter solstice historically vitally160important communities certain living winter prepare previous nine months dramatic rises in160starvation communicable diseases infant deaths due hypothermia particularly common first months winter became known famine months northern hemisphere preparing tough next months united nations relief works agency palestine refugees near east unrwa days face daunting odds unwra founded 1949 60 years has160 plagued 160harassments intimidation countless conspiracies close waged international zionist lobby increasingly trying put misery prime minister netanyahu recently demanded us congress many unwras 30000 employeesincluding beirut regional unwra hq opposite shatila camp well unwra hq damascus mezzah boulevard observer regular visitortalk days grim link syrian crisis conditions half million palestine refugees unwras 57 camps living exile six decades160 major concerns unwra nearly one million syrian refugees fleeing civil war well one million refugees gaza suffering climatic conditions exacerbated brutal zionist occupation palestine unrwa syria regional crisis response plan 2014 published week sets agencys hoped projects strengthen resilience palestine refugees help weather current dangers frigid temperatures lack heat sanitation winters solstice outlook palestine refugees syria 160increasingly bleak lebanon jordan egypt communities livelihoods assets support networks painstakingly built decades destroyed proportionally displacement among palestinians much higher syrians threats safe refuge syria combined severely restricted options flight confronted palestine refugees unprecedented challenges unrwa emergency assistance normally delivered part wellestablished programs health education community development microfinance relief youth training employment delivered palestinians staff support provides critical source community family resilience continuity face growing hardship 540000 palestine refugees registered unrwa syria 270000 displaced country estimated 85000 fled fiftyone thousand reached lebanon 11000 identified jordan 5000 egypt smaller numbers reached gaza turkey farther afield reached lebanon jordan egypt face risky legal limbo compounded living conditions difficult many decide return dangers inside syria unrwa officials discuss detail un agency requires us 4174 million immediately respond adequately urgent humanitarian needs palestine refugees inside syria us 904 million lebanon us 146 million jordan us 24 million required emergency response outside purview field offices including even token cash assistance palestinian families syria gaza financial support unrwa kept pace increased demand services caused growing numbers registered refugees expanding need deepening poverty result agencys general fund gf supporting unrwas core activities 97 per cent reliant voluntary contributions begun year large projected deficit currently deficit stands us 36 million winter storm alexa fiercest storm hit gaza west bank 100 years still wreaking havoc bringing misery thousands december 19 40000 people gaza driven homes due extreme storm flooding flooding exacerbated fuel crisis left people without power 21 hours day forced raw sewage flow streets peoples lives health grave risk gazas hamas government said 4306 evacuated schools centers used makeshift shelters past four days gazas 18 million people trying survive one densely populated tracts earth 160has also enduring around 12hour blackouts daily since lone power plant switched last month due fuel shortage territory lacks much basic civil infrastructure lives egyptianisraeli blockade curbs imports fuel building supplies basic goods unwra staff reports situation worsening due severe israeli restrictions camps refugees reconnect power lines cut due heavy snow little access basic necessities running water crises deepening winter virtually vulnerable refugee camps residents face severe power shortages west bank also face systematic attacks israeli army problems weighing heavily unwra 160include strikes threats strikes unwra employees protesting claimed low wages well 160expressed 160dismay unrwas widely weak humanitarian role gaza racked crises disasters notably ongoing blockade recent displacement many citizens result floods workers union un agency palestinian refugees gaza continued protests week calling salary increases one hamas official accused unrwa officials receiving exorbitant salaries without tasks assigned stressing presidency must fulfill commitments resign unwra officials observer spoke denied declined information unwra salaries unrwa like many aid agencies working syria continues loose staff 10th staffer teacher suzan ghazazweh popular accomplished teacher abbasyyeh school muzeirib killed shrapnel home afternoon december 2 shell struck residence shamal al khatt quarter deraa enter professor alan derschowitz adding unwras myriad problems fact professor alan dershowitz reason chose winter solstice retire 46 years job harvard law school alan departed harvards hallowed halls order devote time current central cause arguably challenging case saving israel 160and unwra told harvard crimson stringer background recently past years professor dershowitz would start beginning semester classes apparently wanting make strong impression new students get attention 160offering essential view law first second class meeting reportedly often made references 13 15 major cases likes mike tyson patty hearst jim bakker claus von bulow j simpson name would explain classes big cases legal technicality cases lost causes otherwise would clients come first thing remember continue legal studies forget law says even facts case american appellate courts decide facts law case based best advocate says 160thats win 160to one public international law class professor derschowitz reportedly sneered forget claims human rights based international law universal standards morality youll never win malarkey begins preparation legitimization case behalf last remaining 19th century colonial enterprise zionist theft continuing illegal occupation palestine alan associates claim come swinging unrwa160160during teaching career alan loyal supporter claim main instigator aipac 160he joined 160zionist lobbys two decades attacks trying cut funding unwra160 lead attorney record one source meets professor derschowitz time time washington claims alan insists unwra another one israels growing number existential threats unwra keeps palestinian refugee issue alive allows human rights types keep issue wrongful dispossession homes land global community end sight making regular trips israel alan doesnt come around lebanon syria much frankly observer met fellow couple times claims photographic memory maybe doesnt seem cotton much observer might remember even hold grudge kind first meeting quarter century ago alan came see congressional house judiciary office rayburn building 160i sure referred hour earlier boss congressman john conyers chairman subcommittee criminal justice called give last minute assignment simple enough done before160 congressman conyers wanted escort visiting chief justice time egypts highest court meet across lawn rayburn supreme court cj warren burgeran easy enough assignment burger always pleasant southern style aura gentility fifteen minutes egypts cj due join intense smallish fast talking guy shows says harvard law school must join egyptian meeting burger frankly matter much one way call supervisor hayden gregory advice said basically chance way later learn alan rubbed hayden wrong way proposed federal determinate sentencing guidelines issue committee time long story short alan would take answer 160when made clear invited could join meeting became angry stormed may still remember personal way saying unwra better baton hatches problems coming way realize ready | 1,089 |
<p>DOVER, Del. — <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kyle_Busch/" type="external">Kyle Busch</a> denied <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Chase-Elliott/" type="external">Chase Elliott</a> a first-career Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series win at Dover International Speedway on Sunday.</p>
<p>Busch passed Elliott on the final lap of the Apache Warrior 400 for his fourth win of the season and second in the three-race first round of the 2017 playoffs.</p>
<p>“It’s, no doubt, the moment that you live for,” Busch said. “It’s the moment that all these guys live for and what we do with this M&amp;M’s Caramel team, and this Toyota Camry was not the best there early on, but we made a lot of gains on it and got it where it was really good there at the end.</p>
<p>“And I was making the most out of it, there, and being able to run the top and get some speed going with some momentum around the top side, and I can’t say enough about Chase. I mean, he’s an awesome competitor and great kid, great friend. I raced with him in late models, and coming off of (turn) two, there, you know, he could have pulled up and checked up my momentum.</p>
<p>“I did kind of checkup, because I wasn’t quite sure, but then, he gave me enough room, and I put it back down and just kept my momentum up there, got along side of him and got ready for the entry to (turn) three.”</p>
<p>Elliott finished second, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jimmie_Johnson/" type="external">Jimmie Johnson</a> was third, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Martin_Truex/" type="external">Martin Truex</a> Jr. fourth, and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kyle-Larson/" type="external">Kyle Larson</a> rounded out the top five.</p>
<p>“I’m just so disappointed in myself,” Elliott said. “Golly, I couldn’t have had it any easier. It ran green from the stage break all the way to the end, and I gave it away. I appreciate my team and their efforts today. The pit stops were great and they kept us in the ballgame. I didn’t.”</p>
<p>Elliott led most of the 160 laps that made up the third stage of the race, taking the lead on the restart at the beginning of the final stage when previous leader, Larson, bobbled because of a power issue.</p>
<p>“It was a really good race,” Larson said. “I won that second stage and was the leader off pit road, and then my engine was kind of struggling firing up when I would cycle the engine and cool it down under yellows. It just didn’t re-fire that one time and had to restart fifth and fell back to sixth.</p>
<p>“Kind of hard to pass when I got back there. I couldn’t really move up the race track, because I would be in dirty air. We short-pitted, got to third, but fell back and finished fifth. I felt like, if I could have restarted the leader, I probably would have had a shot to win like the No. 24 (Elliott), but once I had restarted on the inside of the third row, I was kind of done unless I had a caution, which there wasn’t any left the rest of the race.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ryan_Newman/" type="external">Ryan Newman</a> managed to stay just in front of the leaders in the closing laps to finish on the lead lap, but still, he fell one point shy of displacing <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ricky_Stenhouse/" type="external">Ricky Stenhouse</a> Jr., who wasn’t on the lead lap, in one of the 12 advancing playoff positions.</p>
<p>Other drivers not advancing to round two are <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Austin-Dillon/" type="external">Austin Dillon</a>, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kasey_Kahne/" type="external">Kasey Kahne</a> and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kurt_Busch/" type="external">Kurt Busch</a>.</p>
<p>Newman missed advancing by two points, and his <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Richard_Childress_Racing/" type="external">Richard Childress Racing</a> teammate, Dillon, wound up four points shy of playoff advancement.</p>
<p>“The feeling is lucky, really,” Stenhouse said. “We caught the caution, there, right at the right time with a perfect amount of laps left in the stage to get stage points and that was the turning point of the day. Our Fastenal Ford was, definitely, not close to what we needed, especially the last two runs.</p>
<p>“We were close before the last two runs and made some adjustments, there, and really fell off. All in all, like I said, I feel lucky that we had all the mistakes at Chicago and really not a good car at Chicago, Loudon or Dover, but we still made it in. Really, it is hats off to the guys for fighting all day and it is nice that the round starts over.”</p>
<p>Larson and Truex Jr. combined to lead most of the first two stages that made up the first 240 laps of the 400-lap race. Larson won the second stage, but <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Brad_Keselowski/" type="external">Brad Keselowski</a> won stage one.</p>
<p>Keselowski was one of only five drivers who still hadn’t pitted when the yellow flag, followed by a red flag, waved for the first time on lap 87 for a Jeffrey Earnhardt wreck at the entrance of pit road that damaged a barrier of sand barrels.</p>
<p>After everyone but Keselowski, Kyle Busch, Stenhouse, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Danica_Patrick/" type="external">Danica Patrick</a> and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/David_Ragan/" type="external">David Ragan</a> already had pitted under green, those five drivers were the only ones on the lead lap when the yellow waved. Previous lead lap cars got back on the lead lap with a wave-around.</p>
<p>When the race restarted, Truex quickly got up to third and Larson sixth by the end of the first stage.</p>
<p>Busch got off pit road first to restart the second stage with the lead, but on lap 141, Larson got by him for the top spot and Truex took second.</p>
<p>NOTES: <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ryan-Blaney/" type="external">Ryan Blaney</a> dominated and won the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Dover International Speedway on Saturday. … Jimmie Johnson is the all-time winningest driver at Dover with 11 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series wins, including the most recent race at Dover in June. Kyle Busch has 11 wins across all three NASCAR national series at Dover, including two in the Cup Series. … Martin Truex Jr. won last year’s playoff race at Dover. … Austin Dillon, Ryan Newman, Kurt Busch and Kasey Kahne were the bottom four playoff drivers in the standings, heading into the Apache Warrior 400, the first elimination race of the 2017 playoffs, but Dillon was tied with Ricky Stenhouse Jr. for the 12th position, the last advancing position, in the standings. … Truex and Kyle Busch secured advancement to the second round of the playoffs with wins in the first two playoff races at Chicagoland Speedway and New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Kyle Larson and Brad Keselowski also were locked into the second round ahead of the Dover race by virtue of their position in the points standings … Third-place qualifier, Larson, was the only non-Toyota driver to start in the top six for Sunday’s race.</p> | false | 1 | dover del kyle busch denied chase elliott firstcareer monster energy nascar cup series win dover international speedway sunday busch passed elliott final lap apache warrior 400 fourth win season second threerace first round 2017 playoffs doubt moment live busch said moment guys live mampms caramel team toyota camry best early made lot gains got really good end making able run top get speed going momentum around top side cant say enough chase mean hes awesome competitor great kid great friend raced late models coming turn two know could pulled checked momentum kind checkup wasnt quite sure gave enough room put back kept momentum got along side got ready entry turn three elliott finished second jimmie johnson third martin truex jr fourth kyle larson rounded top five im disappointed elliott said golly couldnt easier ran green stage break way end gave away appreciate team efforts today pit stops great kept us ballgame didnt elliott led 160 laps made third stage race taking lead restart beginning final stage previous leader larson bobbled power issue really good race larson said second stage leader pit road engine kind struggling firing would cycle engine cool yellows didnt refire one time restart fifth fell back sixth kind hard pass got back couldnt really move race track would dirty air shortpitted got third fell back finished fifth felt like could restarted leader probably would shot win like 24 elliott restarted inside third row kind done unless caution wasnt left rest race ryan newman managed stay front leaders closing laps finish lead lap still fell one point shy displacing ricky stenhouse jr wasnt lead lap one 12 advancing playoff positions drivers advancing round two austin dillon kasey kahne kurt busch newman missed advancing two points richard childress racing teammate dillon wound four points shy playoff advancement feeling lucky really stenhouse said caught caution right right time perfect amount laps left stage get stage points turning point day fastenal ford definitely close needed especially last two runs close last two runs made adjustments really fell like said feel lucky mistakes chicago really good car chicago loudon dover still made really hats guys fighting day nice round starts larson truex jr combined lead first two stages made first 240 laps 400lap race larson second stage brad keselowski stage one keselowski one five drivers still hadnt pitted yellow flag followed red flag waved first time lap 87 jeffrey earnhardt wreck entrance pit road damaged barrier sand barrels everyone keselowski kyle busch stenhouse danica patrick david ragan already pitted green five drivers ones lead lap yellow waved previous lead lap cars got back lead lap wavearound race restarted truex quickly got third larson sixth end first stage busch got pit road first restart second stage lead lap 141 larson got top spot truex took second notes ryan blaney dominated nascar xfinity series race dover international speedway saturday jimmie johnson alltime winningest driver dover 11 monster energy nascar cup series wins including recent race dover june kyle busch 11 wins across three nascar national series dover including two cup series martin truex jr last years playoff race dover austin dillon ryan newman kurt busch kasey kahne bottom four playoff drivers standings heading apache warrior 400 first elimination race 2017 playoffs dillon tied ricky stenhouse jr 12th position last advancing position standings truex kyle busch secured advancement second round playoffs wins first two playoff races chicagoland speedway new hampshire motor speedway kyle larson brad keselowski also locked second round ahead dover race virtue position points standings thirdplace qualifier larson nontoyota driver start top six sundays race | 592 |
<p />
<p>In her extraordinarily bold and direct speech addressed to the Irish Parliament, Clare Daly (TD, Dublin North) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIMucHfUMyg" type="external">called</a> Obama a “war criminal” and “hypocrite of the century”. &#160;In describing the fawned reception of Obama in Ireland akin to pimping and prostituting of that nation, Ms. Daly hit the nail on the head.&#160; &#160;Sadly, America dwarfs Ireland and elsewhere in the undignified category of prostitution—the 29 standing ovations from Congress in May 2011 for war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu attests to this tragic fact.</p>
<p>While Daly was quite right in censuring Obama for his criminal policies, including aiding terrorists in Syria, it is worthwhile noting that Obama is merely a willing instrument; the &#160;faces and factors behind his handlers and the policies merit greater scrutiny and exposure.</p>
<p>Backing and arming the so-called Syrian opposition distracts from the threat posed by Israel and its expansionist agenda by internalizing the enemy in order to weak the State.&#160; &#160;&#160;As former Israeli Intelligence Chief, Amos Yaldin <a href="http://www.israelpolicyforum.org/interview/call-general-amos-yadlin-elections-iran-syria" type="external">told the audience</a> at the Israel Policy Forum in February 2013: &#160;”And this military [Syrian], which is a huge threat to Israel, is now also weakening and, in a way, disintegrating. &#160;We still have risk from Syria—a risk of being an AlQaeda country, a Somalia-type country—but from military point of view, each one of these are less dangerous than the Syrian regular army.”</p>
<p>Perpetuating adversaries to kill each other is a time-tested tactic—one which was used during the bloody eight year Iran-Iraq war; &#160;a war which according to Leon Wieseltier[1] was a&#160; “distraction” when Israeli boots were on the ground in Southern Lebanon.&#160;&#160; In that war, the United States was providing arms and intelligence to both sides.&#160; When asked what the logic was in aiding both sides in the bloody war, a former official replied: “You had to have been there”[2]. &#160;But why Syria?</p>
<p>The Need for Water</p>
<p>The primary goal of the early Zionist leadership was to control and secure the region’s waters.&#160;&#160; At the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, Chaim Weizmann declared that ‘it was of vital importance not only to secure all water resources feeding the country, but to control them at the sources”—and the development of these waters became the primary aim of the Yishuv as a whole.[3]&#160;&#160; This policy remained in place. As Israel’s third Prime Minister Levi Eshkol put it, water was “the blood flowing through the arteries of the nation”.</p>
<p>As previously stated ( <a href="" type="internal">here</a> and <a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-fuelling-of-unrest-in-syria-israels-territorial-ambitions/5333075" type="external">here</a>), the chaos we witness in Syria today has been in the making for years with the aid and backing of Israel-firsters in order to accommodate Israel’s agenda—expansion and control of regional water supplies while weakening its adversary/ies.</p>
<p>Israel faced one of its worst droughts in 1990-91.&#160; A second more serious drought in 1998, forced it to turn to water rich Turkey.&#160; Turkey and Israel engaged in serious negotiations starting in May 2000 to import 50 billion cubic meters of fresh water from Turkey using tanker ships, but using tankers was not cost effective for the transport of water.&#160; Alternate plans were suggested.</p>
<p>In September 2000,&#160; the same year that young Bashar-al Assad succeeded his father as President of Syria, a strategy paper entitled “The Geopolitics of Water” by the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS) opined that “Since extensive water planning proposals will necessitate the establishment of pipelines and energy grids stretching across borders, a political and military structure that can ensure the safety and security of the carriers will be the prerequisite to effective water sharing…. But an effective regional system would require political-military cooperation against Syria”.</p>
<p>How to achieve this?</p>
<p>Israeli-Firsters to the rescue</p>
<p>Media mogul Haim Saban became involved in politics in the mid 1990’s with a view to support Israel.&#160; Saban professes that his greatest concern is the “protection” of Israel.&#160;&#160; At a conference in Israel, Saban <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/05/10/100510fa_fact_bruck" type="external">described</a> his method of influencing American politics: “Make donations to political parties, establish think tanks, and control media outlets”. (Saban <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/05/opinion/the-truth-about-obama-and-israel.html?_r=0" type="external">penned an opinion piece</a> in The New York Times in support of President Obama in his 2012 re-election bid.)</p>
<p>It was no surprise, therefore, that in 2002, Saban pledged $13 million to start a research organization at the Brookings Institution called the Saban Center for Middle East Policy.&#160;&#160;Saban Center would play an important role in propping up Syrian opposition (as it did in fomenting unrest post-2009 Iran elections with their June 2009 publication titled: “Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy Towards Iran”[4]).</p>
<p>In 2006, Time Magazine <a href="http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1571751,00.html" type="external">revealed</a> that that the US had been agitating, funding, and supporting “opposition” in Syria.&#160; According to the Time, the U.S. was “supporting regular meetings of internal and diaspora Syrian activists” in Europe. The document bluntly expresses the hope that “these meetings will facilitate a more coherent strategy and plan of actions for all anti-Assad activists.”</p>
<p>It is worthwhile mentioning here that America’s support of the so-called “opposition”, which includes criminals, terrorists, and foreign fighters to effect regime change, underscores America’s stark hypocrisy.&#160;&#160; According to&#160; <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2385" type="external">18 USC § 2385 – Advocating overthrow of Government</a>, advocating the overthrow of the government, “organizing or help or attempt to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of the government of the United States or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence” bears serious consequences including fines and prison sentence of up to 20 years.</p>
<p>What is most revealing about the abovementioned Time Magazine piece of 2006 is that America’s efforts to aid the opposition and undermine Assad were run through a foundation operated by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammar_Abdulhamid" type="external">Amar Abdulhamid</a>, a Washington-based member of a Syrian umbrella opposition group known as the National Salvation Front (NSF).&#160; &#160;Abdulhamid was a visiting Fellow at the Saban Center (2004-2006) before moving on to the Neocon-run National Defense of Democracies.</p>
<p>When in &#160;2008, Israel-firster Dennis Ross met with the “opposition” to discuss <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&amp;q=cache:HtpPa1VcNKkJ:www.democracycouncil.org/pdf/MEDIA_ALERT3_DC.pdf+Anas+al-Abdah,+netanyahu&amp;hl=en&amp;gl=us&amp;pid=bl&amp;srcid=ADGEESiXy_yBmDf2o8-uEvmAciJNq44LQXcw-8qG1lpigjy6L04soVN7Jy4BqXPLIIl5xydwS1Y6rQXzlOGpYujUAk1bzIMRmWxxZh459j300ntGdEomTSd5TJtOHOVSWluAY0McXEaE&amp;sig=AHIEtbRJa8KJdfF7R8jNDtva-dIGjhX5Fw&amp;pli=1" type="external">“Syria in Transition”</a>, Saban’s fellow, Amar Abdullhamid, was present.&#160;&#160; In February 2009, Dennis Ross joined the Obama Administration team.&#160; In April 2009, the US funded, London-based Baraada TV <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-secretly-backed-syrian-opposition-groups-cables-released-by-wikileaks-show/2011/04/14/AF1p9hwD_story.html" type="external">started its anti-Assad propaganda</a> into Syria (The uprisings’ epicenter was Baraada, over water distribution).&#160; Baraada&#160; TV’s&#160; chief editor, Malik al-Abdeh, is a cofounder of the Syrian exile group Movement for Justice and Development headed by Anas al-Abdah, who was in attendance at the 2008 meeting with Dennis Ross.</p>
<p>It came as no surprise that John McCain—who was a member of the&#160; Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI) formed to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein and a cheerleader for the Libya intervention, the Egyptian opposition to Mubarak, for bombing Iran, and so on—visited Syrian “opposition” (via Turkey) in order to encourage more bloodshed.&#160; And expectedly, he was de-briefed—not at the White House, but at the Saban Center!</p>
<p>Soon after McCain’s presentation at the Saban Center, the White House disputed UN’s account and claimed that that Syria had crossed the ‘red line’ and used chemical weapons.</p>
<p>It is not the intention of this article to exclude the plethora of other individuals, think tanks, forums, and media pundits who have institutionalized Israel’s policies and promoted them as ‘America’s&#160; interests’; these are too numerous to mention here.&#160; &#160;However, a notable other Israel supporter must be named.</p>
<p>The Evangelical Factor</p>
<p>While various groups in Washington perpetuate and support Israel’s aggressive and expansionist policies—at a cost to America, non have the zeal and the zest of the Evangelicals who support Israel to death.&#160;&#160; According to the dispensational model, a time of turmoil lies ahead, but believers will be “raptured” away before it begins. This period of tribulation will culminate in the final battle at Armageddon, a valley northwest of Jerusalem.</p>
<p>The close association between American evangelicals and Israel has been a clear goal of Israeli politicians, especially those in the Likud party.&#160; &#160;&#160;According to Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum of AJC, “the evangelical community is the largest and fastest-growing bloc of pro-Jewish sentiment in this country”[5].&#160;&#160; Israel and Jewish organizations continue to &#160;rely on the support of Evangelicals to justify Israel’s occupation of Arab land even as&#160; Christian Zionists zest for evangelizing Jews remains a point of tension.</p>
<p />
<p /> | false | 1 | extraordinarily bold direct speech addressed irish parliament clare daly td dublin north called obama war criminal hypocrite century 160in describing fawned reception obama ireland akin pimping prostituting nation ms daly hit nail head160 160sadly america dwarfs ireland elsewhere undignified category prostitutionthe 29 standing ovations congress may 2011 war criminal benjamin netanyahu attests tragic fact daly quite right censuring obama criminal policies including aiding terrorists syria worthwhile noting obama merely willing instrument 160faces factors behind handlers policies merit greater scrutiny exposure backing arming socalled syrian opposition distracts threat posed israel expansionist agenda internalizing enemy order weak state160 160160as former israeli intelligence chief amos yaldin told audience israel policy forum february 2013 160and military syrian huge threat israel also weakening way disintegrating 160we still risk syriaa risk alqaeda country somaliatype countrybut military point view one less dangerous syrian regular army perpetuating adversaries kill timetested tacticone used bloody eight year iraniraq war 160a war according leon wieseltier1 a160 distraction israeli boots ground southern lebanon160160 war united states providing arms intelligence sides160 asked logic aiding sides bloody war former official replied there2 160but syria need water primary goal early zionist leadership control secure regions waters160160 paris peace conference 1919 chaim weizmann declared vital importance secure water resources feeding country control sourcesand development waters became primary aim yishuv whole3160160 policy remained place israels third prime minister levi eshkol put water blood flowing arteries nation previously stated chaos witness syria today making years aid backing israelfirsters order accommodate israels agendaexpansion control regional water supplies weakening adversaryies israel faced one worst droughts 199091160 second serious drought 1998 forced turn water rich turkey160 turkey israel engaged serious negotiations starting may 2000 import 50 billion cubic meters fresh water turkey using tanker ships using tankers cost effective transport water160 alternate plans suggested september 2000160 year young basharal assad succeeded father president syria strategy paper entitled geopolitics water institute advanced strategic political studies iasps opined since extensive water planning proposals necessitate establishment pipelines energy grids stretching across borders political military structure ensure safety security carriers prerequisite effective water sharing effective regional system would require politicalmilitary cooperation syria achieve israelifirsters rescue media mogul haim saban became involved politics mid 1990s view support israel160 saban professes greatest concern protection israel160160 conference israel saban described method influencing american politics make donations political parties establish think tanks control media outlets saban penned opinion piece new york times support president obama 2012 reelection bid surprise therefore 2002 saban pledged 13 million start research organization brookings institution called saban center middle east policy160160saban center would play important role propping syrian opposition fomenting unrest post2009 iran elections june 2009 publication titled path persia options new american strategy towards iran4 2006 time magazine revealed us agitating funding supporting opposition syria160 according time us supporting regular meetings internal diaspora syrian activists europe document bluntly expresses hope meetings facilitate coherent strategy plan actions antiassad activists worthwhile mentioning americas support socalled opposition includes criminals terrorists foreign fighters effect regime change underscores americas stark hypocrisy160160 according to160 18 usc 2385 advocating overthrow government advocating overthrow government organizing help attempt organize society group assembly persons teach advocate encourage overthrow destruction government united states government political subdivision therein force violence bears serious consequences including fines prison sentence 20 years revealing abovementioned time magazine piece 2006 americas efforts aid opposition undermine assad run foundation operated amar abdulhamid washingtonbased member syrian umbrella opposition group known national salvation front nsf160 160abdulhamid visiting fellow saban center 20042006 moving neoconrun national defense democracies 1602008 israelfirster dennis ross met opposition discuss syria transition sabans fellow amar abdullhamid present160160 february 2009 dennis ross joined obama administration team160 april 2009 us funded londonbased baraada tv started antiassad propaganda syria uprisings epicenter baraada water distribution160 baraada160 tvs160 chief editor malik alabdeh cofounder syrian exile group movement justice development headed anas alabdah attendance 2008 meeting dennis ross came surprise john mccainwho member the160 committee liberation iraq cli formed rid iraq saddam hussein cheerleader libya intervention egyptian opposition mubarak bombing iran onvisited syrian opposition via turkey order encourage bloodshed160 expectedly debriefednot white house saban center soon mccains presentation saban center white house disputed uns account claimed syria crossed red line used chemical weapons intention article exclude plethora individuals think tanks forums media pundits institutionalized israels policies promoted americas160 interests numerous mention here160 160however notable israel supporter must named evangelical factor various groups washington perpetuate support israels aggressive expansionist policiesat cost america non zeal zest evangelicals support israel death160160 according dispensational model time turmoil lies ahead believers raptured away begins period tribulation culminate final battle armageddon valley northwest jerusalem close association american evangelicals israel clear goal israeli politicians especially likud party160 160160according rabbi marc tanenbaum ajc evangelical community largest fastestgrowing bloc projewish sentiment country5160160 israel jewish organizations continue 160rely support evangelicals justify israels occupation arab land even as160 christian zionists zest evangelizing jews remains point tension | 800 |
<p />
<p>"The rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened" famously declared John F. Kennedy in his Civil Rights Announcement of 1963. Some 50 years later, such a remark coming from an American official would inspire derision. From Guantanamo Bay to the Snowden scandal, Washington can no longer fashion itself as a beacon of human rights, and has turned instead into a caricature, hypocritically professing high moral values without actually adhering to them. And yet Latin America can't escape from its shadow.</p>
<p>Imposing a normative hegemony has required sophisticated mechanisms, which provide the semblance of legitimacy on the surface, but expose insidious contradictions upon reading the fine print.</p>
<p>Ever since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, the US has claimed almost the entire western hemisphere as its own backyard while reserving the right to regulate its internal affairs. As international norms have evolved, this doctrine was distilled into the benign-sounding Organization of American States (OAS). The first intercontinental organization, it is <a href="https://www.oas.org/dil/treaties_A-41_Charter_of_the_Organization_of_American_States.htm" type="external">tasked</a> with strengthening regional cooperation, peace and human rights while "respecting the principle of nonintervention" (sic).</p>
<p>Headed by the US and based in Washington DC, the OAS has gradually <a href="https://www.oas.org/en/iachr/mandate/what.asp" type="external">evolved</a> into a supranational organization in its own right, complete with a Secretariat and a progressive human rights charter, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). Through the Declaration of San Jose and the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, the IACHR has established a comprehensive legal system, safeguarded by a Tribunal entrusted with judicial powers. The Court's job is to receive individual complaints for crimes not addressed by the member states and to seek compensation for victims. Lucky for Washington, the decisions are only binding to 23 out of the 35 OAS members.</p>
<p>The US, despite being a founding state of the Organization and hosting the IACHR headquarters in Washington DC, has refused to ratify the human rights charters, implicitly falling outside the reach of the Court. This legal vacuum has allowed Washington to assume a holier-than-thou approach on Latin American countries, enforcing its own human rights doctrine while avoiding prosecution for its abuses. Events such as the Bay of Pigs invasion, the war against Nicaragua or the funds funneled to terrorist groupings across the continent have had no legal consequences.</p>
<p>In 1998, the US took it a step further. Keeping true to its modus operandi, the US pushed for the creation, inside the IACHR, of a <a href="https://www.oas.org/en/iachr/expression/index.asp" type="external">Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression</a> (SRFE). On paper, it was supposed to complement the other seven rapporteurs and constitute the cornerstone of the OAS's human rights enforcing system. In reality, its goals were far less noble. Unlike the other rapporteurs, the SRFE is the only one who has sufficient funding to serve full time. Indeed, financed by the US, it <a href="https://www.oas.org/en/iachr/mandate/finances/IACHR%20expenses2011-2012.pdf" type="external">receives five times more resources</a> than the average rapporteur and is the only one outside the Commission's oversight.</p>
<p>While the past achievements of the IACHR are remarkable, proving its cardinal importance in sanctioning the crimes of South America's dictatorial regimes and denouncing acts of systematic torture and disappearances, after 1998 the organization's purpose was hijacked. Under American leadership, it has been geared away from safeguarding human rights and liberties towards acting more like America's voice in the region. Major abuses perpetrated by friendly regimes or directed against Washington's enemies have received virtually no attention from the IACHR. For example, the organization has supported the short-lived 2002 military coup in Venezuela yet <a href="http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10014" type="external">has never prosecuted</a> former CIA operative Luis Posada Carriles, suspected of plotting terrorist attacks in Cuba, Panama, and Venezuela.</p>
<p>The SRFE himself has <a href="http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/the-other-side-of-the-iachr-reform-debate" type="external">come under fire</a> for skewing the meaning of freedom of expression so as to reflect the interests the continent's large media outlets, groups that already receive US funding. Critics further maintain that it has shown its political bias by promoting dissenting voices against the governments of a few selected Latin American countries that have refused to bend to the US's agenda, like Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nicaragua.</p>
<p>Fortunately, efforts have been made to wean the region away from Washington's influence. Countries that have felt wronged by the way the IACHR has conducted its affairs have pushed for the <a href="http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/04/ecuador-seeks-to-reform-inter-american-rights-commission/" type="external">reform of the organization</a> so as to more truly reflect the will of its member states. Spearheaded by Ecuador's firebrand president, Rafael Correa, an initiative was put forth in 2012. In a nutshell, the system should be funded and staffed only by the parties that are members of the San Jose Declaration (i.e., not the US), the organization's headquarters should be moved to Argentina, and the Commission should adopt a code of conduct.</p>
<p>The central point of this reform though is changing the financing mechanism of the IACHR. If passed, the reform would guarantee equal resources and footing for all eight rapporteurs, putting an end to the Washington's influence in dictating a hierarchy of human rights. Even if freedom of expression is a fundamental human right, safeguarding it shouldn't come at the expense of other equally important rights. The package, initially rejected in 2013, will come under discussion again during the June OAS summit.</p>
<p>The US waived its right to act as a moral compass for Latin America the moment it refused to sign any legally binding document that would have exposed it to supranational oversight. Like Kennedy said, human rights are indeed interdependent and indivisible. But when they are used as rationalizations, meant simply to justify a country's foreign policy interests, they are taken hostage and divested of any meaning.</p> | false | 1 | rights every man diminished rights one man threatened famously declared john f kennedy civil rights announcement 1963 50 years later remark coming american official would inspire derision guantanamo bay snowden scandal washington longer fashion beacon human rights turned instead caricature hypocritically professing high moral values without actually adhering yet latin america cant escape shadow imposing normative hegemony required sophisticated mechanisms provide semblance legitimacy surface expose insidious contradictions upon reading fine print ever since monroe doctrine 1823 us claimed almost entire western hemisphere backyard reserving right regulate internal affairs international norms evolved doctrine distilled benignsounding organization american states oas first intercontinental organization tasked strengthening regional cooperation peace human rights respecting principle nonintervention sic headed us based washington dc oas gradually evolved supranational organization right complete secretariat progressive human rights charter interamerican commission human rights iachr declaration san jose american declaration rights duties man iachr established comprehensive legal system safeguarded tribunal entrusted judicial powers courts job receive individual complaints crimes addressed member states seek compensation victims lucky washington decisions binding 23 35 oas members us despite founding state organization hosting iachr headquarters washington dc refused ratify human rights charters implicitly falling outside reach court legal vacuum allowed washington assume holierthanthou approach latin american countries enforcing human rights doctrine avoiding prosecution abuses events bay pigs invasion war nicaragua funds funneled terrorist groupings across continent legal consequences 1998 us took step keeping true modus operandi us pushed creation inside iachr special rapporteur freedom expression srfe paper supposed complement seven rapporteurs constitute cornerstone oass human rights enforcing system reality goals far less noble unlike rapporteurs srfe one sufficient funding serve full time indeed financed us receives five times resources average rapporteur one outside commissions oversight past achievements iachr remarkable proving cardinal importance sanctioning crimes south americas dictatorial regimes denouncing acts systematic torture disappearances 1998 organizations purpose hijacked american leadership geared away safeguarding human rights liberties towards acting like americas voice region major abuses perpetrated friendly regimes directed washingtons enemies received virtually attention iachr example organization supported shortlived 2002 military coup venezuela yet never prosecuted former cia operative luis posada carriles suspected plotting terrorist attacks cuba panama venezuela srfe come fire skewing meaning freedom expression reflect interests continents large media outlets groups already receive us funding critics maintain shown political bias promoting dissenting voices governments selected latin american countries refused bend uss agenda like ecuador bolivia nicaragua fortunately efforts made wean region away washingtons influence countries felt wronged way iachr conducted affairs pushed reform organization truly reflect member states spearheaded ecuadors firebrand president rafael correa initiative put forth 2012 nutshell system funded staffed parties members san jose declaration ie us organizations headquarters moved argentina commission adopt code conduct central point reform though changing financing mechanism iachr passed reform would guarantee equal resources footing eight rapporteurs putting end washingtons influence dictating hierarchy human rights even freedom expression fundamental human right safeguarding shouldnt come expense equally important rights package initially rejected 2013 come discussion june oas summit us waived right act moral compass latin america moment refused sign legally binding document would exposed supranational oversight like kennedy said human rights indeed interdependent indivisible used rationalizations meant simply justify countrys foreign policy interests taken hostage divested meaning | 528 |
<p>Call them the Cardiac Kids.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Pittsburgh_Steelers/" type="external">Pittsburgh Steelers</a> won another game on a <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Chris-Boswell/" type="external">Chris Boswell</a> field goal in the final minute to defeat the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Baltimore-Ravens/" type="external">Baltimore Ravens</a> 39-38 on Sunday night in a wild game at Heinz Field.</p>
<p>The Steelers (11-2) won their eighth straight game and clinched the AFC North Division title. The Ravens fell to 7-6.</p>
<p>It was the fourth time in the last five games that a late Boswell field goal gave Pittsburgh a win. Unlike the other three, the Steelers left time on the clock, but a <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/TJ-Watt/" type="external">T.J. Watt</a> sack of Ravens quarterback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Joe_Flacco/" type="external">Joe Flacco</a> ended the game and wrapped up the division title.</p>
<p>“Gotta love Boz,” said Steelers quarterback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ben_Roethlisberger/" type="external">Ben Roethlisberger</a>. “I hate that we put it on his shoulders, but there’s nobody I’d rather have doing it than him.”</p>
<p>The Steelers rallied from a 39-28 deficit with 2:31 left on a record performance by Roethlisberger. He completed a career-high 44 passes on a career-high 66 attempts for 506 yards. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Antonio_Brown/" type="external">Antonio Brown</a> caught 11 passes for 213 yards.</p>
<p>Roethlisberger became the first quarterback with three career 500-yard games. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Drew_Brees/" type="external">Drew Brees</a> of New Orleans is the only other quarterback with two 500-yard games, a total that has been reached only 21 times in league history.</p>
<p>Guard Ramon Foster called it, “a sneaky 500.”</p>
<p>“Nobody knew. We were just rolling,” said Foster. “Everybody’s locked in. Nobody’s worried about anything and that’s what we found in each other. Nobody’s pointing fingers. Nobody’s mad. We had some issues, but everybody kept it tight and that’s how you get a sneaky 500, when nobody cares who gets the praise.”</p>
<p>“I had no idea,” said Roethlisberger. “Needed every one, though, didn’t we?”</p>
<p>They needed every one of their 545 yards of offense because the defense, playing without hospitalized linebacker <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ryan-Shazier/" type="external">Ryan Shazier</a>, allowed 413, with most of the damage coming in the third quarter.</p>
<p>Trailing 20-14 at halftime, the Ravens scored 17 unanswered points to open the second half. A 40-yard pass from Joe Flacco to <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Mike_Wallace/" type="external">Mike Wallace</a> set up a 47-yard <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Justin-Tucker/" type="external">Justin Tucker</a> field goal that cut the deficit to 20-17 with 10:06 left in the third quarter.</p>
<p>Baltimore finally took the lead with 5:20 left in that quarter on an easy seven-play, 60-yard drive through the toothless Steelers defense in 3:06. Alex Collins ripped off a 17-yard run past linebacker Arthur Moats to the Pittsburgh 1, from where Buck Allen, lined up as a fullback, bulled his way into the end zone for a touchdown and a 24-20 lead.</p>
<p>The assault continued with another Ravens touchdown in three plays. Fullback Patrick Ricard caught a 6-yard pass from Flacco for a score to complete an embarrassing defensive showing with 46 yards on two penalties and a 21-yard run by Collins. It put the Ravens ahead 31-20 with 2:43 left in the third quarter.</p>
<p>Boswell kicked his third field goal, a 24-yarder, to cut the lead to 31-23 with 12:16 left in the game.</p>
<p>Roethlisberger tossed a 1-yard touchdown pass to Roosevelt Nix with 9:15 left to play to put the Steelers into position to tie the game. But, after a pass interference penalty moved the conversion attempt to the 1, running back <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/LeVeon-Bell/" type="external">Le’Veon Bell</a> was stopped running wide and the Ravens held on to their two-point lead.</p>
<p>Baltimore answered with a 9-yard touchdown run by Allen, but the Steelers stormed back with an 11-yard touchdown run by Bell to cut the lead to 38-36 with 3:15 remaining.</p>
<p>Pittsburgh then took the 39-38 lead with a 46-yard Boswell field goal that proved to be the game-winner.</p>
<p>“Obviously, we’ve got some things that we need to work on,” said Steelers head coach <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Mike_Tomlin/" type="external">Mike Tomlin</a>. “But we’ll work on those things in our AFC North hats and t-shirts. For that, we are thankful.”</p>
<p>“You can never take the gas pedal off when you’re playing this team,” said Ravens safety <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Eric-Weddle/" type="external">Eric Weddle</a>. “We played outstanding in the third quarter. Going into the fourth, we made three or four stops in a row. Then they just get on these runs that we can’t dig ourselves out of. You can’t do that against any team, let alone one of the best quarterbacks ever to do it.”</p>
<p>An interception kick-started the Steelers’ opening touchdown drive. The Ravens took the opening kickoff and drove to the Pittsburgh 30, but on third-and-4, Flacco was intercepted by safety Sean Davis at the 6.</p>
<p>Davis returned it to the Pittsburgh 41 and Roethlisberger went to work. His eight-play drive was capped by a 20-yard touchdown pass to Bell, who beat safety Tony Jefferson in coverage and ran through linebacker <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/CJ-Mosley/" type="external">C.J. Mosley</a> and Weddle at the goal line to score.</p>
<p>The Steelers increased their lead to 14-0 on their second possession. A 28-yard Roethlisberger pass to Brown put the ball at the Baltimore 6, and a pass interference penalty on cornerback Maurice Canady moved the ball to the Baltimore 1. Bell scored his second touchdown by running over Jefferson.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Chris_Moore/" type="external">Chris Moore</a> put the Ravens on the board by hauling in a 30-yard touchdown pass from Flacco with 9:07 left in the half. It was Moore’s second career touchdown catch and it cut the Steelers’ lead to 14-7.</p>
<p>A 43-yard Roethlisberger pass to Brown set up a 52-yard field goal by Boswell that gave the Steelers a 17-7 lead with 4:14 left in the half.</p>
<p>The Ravens came right back behind Collins, who ripped through some shoddy Steelers tackling for a 37-yarder down the sideline before running 18 yards for a touchdown that cut the lead to 17-14 with 1:53 remaining.</p>
<p>A 43-yard field goal by Boswell with one second left in the half gave the Steelers a 20-14 lead at the break.</p>
<p>NOTES: Sean Spence, picked up Wednesday by the Steelers to replace the injured Ryan Shazier and Tyler Matakevich, started next to Vince Williams at inside linebacker. … Ravens first-round draft pick <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Marlon-Humphrey/" type="external">Marlon Humphrey</a> made his second career start, as a replacement for injured and suspended CB <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jimmy_Smith/" type="external">Jimmy Smith</a>. … Pittsburgh K Chris Boswell’s 52-yard field goal in the second quarter was 1 yard short of a Heinz Field record Boswell matched in the Steelers’ previous home game.</p> | false | 1 | call cardiac kids pittsburgh steelers another game chris boswell field goal final minute defeat baltimore ravens 3938 sunday night wild game heinz field steelers 112 eighth straight game clinched afc north division title ravens fell 76 fourth time last five games late boswell field goal gave pittsburgh win unlike three steelers left time clock tj watt sack ravens quarterback joe flacco ended game wrapped division title got ta love boz said steelers quarterback ben roethlisberger hate put shoulders theres nobody id rather steelers rallied 3928 deficit 231 left record performance roethlisberger completed careerhigh 44 passes careerhigh 66 attempts 506 yards antonio brown caught 11 passes 213 yards roethlisberger became first quarterback three career 500yard games drew brees new orleans quarterback two 500yard games total reached 21 times league history guard ramon foster called sneaky 500 nobody knew rolling said foster everybodys locked nobodys worried anything thats found nobodys pointing fingers nobodys mad issues everybody kept tight thats get sneaky 500 nobody cares gets praise idea said roethlisberger needed every one though didnt needed every one 545 yards offense defense playing without hospitalized linebacker ryan shazier allowed 413 damage coming third quarter trailing 2014 halftime ravens scored 17 unanswered points open second half 40yard pass joe flacco mike wallace set 47yard justin tucker field goal cut deficit 2017 1006 left third quarter baltimore finally took lead 520 left quarter easy sevenplay 60yard drive toothless steelers defense 306 alex collins ripped 17yard run past linebacker arthur moats pittsburgh 1 buck allen lined fullback bulled way end zone touchdown 2420 lead assault continued another ravens touchdown three plays fullback patrick ricard caught 6yard pass flacco score complete embarrassing defensive showing 46 yards two penalties 21yard run collins put ravens ahead 3120 243 left third quarter boswell kicked third field goal 24yarder cut lead 3123 1216 left game roethlisberger tossed 1yard touchdown pass roosevelt nix 915 left play put steelers position tie game pass interference penalty moved conversion attempt 1 running back leveon bell stopped running wide ravens held twopoint lead baltimore answered 9yard touchdown run allen steelers stormed back 11yard touchdown run bell cut lead 3836 315 remaining pittsburgh took 3938 lead 46yard boswell field goal proved gamewinner obviously weve got things need work said steelers head coach mike tomlin well work things afc north hats tshirts thankful never take gas pedal youre playing team said ravens safety eric weddle played outstanding third quarter going fourth made three four stops row get runs cant dig cant team let alone one best quarterbacks ever interception kickstarted steelers opening touchdown drive ravens took opening kickoff drove pittsburgh 30 thirdand4 flacco intercepted safety sean davis 6 davis returned pittsburgh 41 roethlisberger went work eightplay drive capped 20yard touchdown pass bell beat safety tony jefferson coverage ran linebacker cj mosley weddle goal line score steelers increased lead 140 second possession 28yard roethlisberger pass brown put ball baltimore 6 pass interference penalty cornerback maurice canady moved ball baltimore 1 bell scored second touchdown running jefferson chris moore put ravens board hauling 30yard touchdown pass flacco 907 left half moores second career touchdown catch cut steelers lead 147 43yard roethlisberger pass brown set 52yard field goal boswell gave steelers 177 lead 414 left half ravens came right back behind collins ripped shoddy steelers tackling 37yarder sideline running 18 yards touchdown cut lead 1714 153 remaining 43yard field goal boswell one second left half gave steelers 2014 lead break notes sean spence picked wednesday steelers replace injured ryan shazier tyler matakevich started next vince williams inside linebacker ravens firstround draft pick marlon humphrey made second career start replacement injured suspended cb jimmy smith pittsburgh k chris boswells 52yard field goal second quarter 1 yard short heinz field record boswell matched steelers previous home game | 624 |
<p>ARIZONA CARDINALS (4-5) AT HOUSTON TEXANS (3-6)</p>
<p>KICKOFF: Sunday, 1 p.m. ET, NRG Stadium. TV: FOX, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kenny-Albert/" type="external">Kenny Albert</a>, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ronde_Barber/" type="external">Ronde Barber</a>, Kristina Pink (field reporter).</p>
<p>SERIES HISTORY: Fourth regular-season meeting. Cardinals lead series, 2-1. The Texans lost 27-24 to the Cardinals in 2013.</p>
<p>KEYS TO THE GAME: The Cardinals will still try to establish the run first with <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Adrian_Peterson/" type="external">Adrian Peterson</a>, who in four games with his new team has been stuffed twice and also enjoyed two 100-yard games. He’ll be running behind a different look, as right tackle Jared Veldheer is switching back to the left side because of the season-ending knee injury to D.J. Humphries and backup John Wetzel is replacing Veldheer at right tackle.</p>
<p>When it comes to the passing game, the Cardinals’ wide receivers and tight ends need to do a much better job at catching balls. They had several drops in the Thursday night loss to Seattle, and that drew the wrath of coach <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Bruce-Arians/" type="external">Bruce Arians</a>.</p>
<p>Houston’s once-feared defense is exploitable as <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Romeo_Crennel/" type="external">Romeo Crennel</a>‘s unit is allowing 26.8 points per game, the second-most in the league. The Texans will try to bottle up Peterson and contain wide receiver <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Larry_Fitzgerald/" type="external">Larry Fitzgerald</a>.</p>
<p>The Texans will attempt to protect the football better on offense after quarterback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tom-Savage/" type="external">Tom Savage</a> committed four turnovers against the Rams. They’ll try to run the football more often and more effectively with <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Lamar-Miller/" type="external">Lamar Miller</a> and D’Onta Foreman to control possession.</p>
<p>The Cardinals will focus on containing Miller and then doing everything they can to harass and disrupt Savage.</p>
<p>MATCHUPS TO WATCH:</p>
<p>–Cardinals WR Larry Fitzgerald vs. Texans CB <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Johnathan-Joseph/" type="external">Johnathan Joseph</a>. A two-time Pro Bowl selection, Joseph has allowed long touchdown passes to speedy wide receivers each of the past two games. Fitzgerald isn’t that fast, but he has the hands, body control and route-running skills that could make this a favorable matchup for the Cardinals, regardless of whether <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Drew_Stanton/" type="external">Drew Stanton</a> or <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Blaine_Gabbert/" type="external">Blaine Gabbert</a> is throwing him the football.</p>
<p>–Texans RT Breno Giacomini vs. Cardinals OLB <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Chandler-Jones/" type="external">Chandler Jones</a>. Jones has been a sack master this season, ranking among NFL sack leaders with 10. He has had only one multi-sack game, and Giacomini is a tough, 10-year veteran. Tom Savage has been sacked 12 times, however, and if the Cardinals keep getting a decent push from their interior defensive linemen, it could open the door for Jones to wreak havoc.</p>
<p>PLAYER SPOTLIGHT: Cardinals QB Blaine Gabbert. Even if Drew Stanton is able to start, keep an eye on Gabbert, who could easily get into the game and take over if Stanton’s knee starts to give him problems. Gabbert hasn’t thrown a pass in a regular-season game since Dec. 4, when he was 4 of 10 for 35 yards during San Francisco’s 26-6 loss to the Bears. That was his sixth and final appearance in 2016 and he was on the losing end in each of his last five. He is 0-4 in four career appearances against the Texans. Gabbert has been getting some reps with the first-team offense the past two weeks, which will help him a ton should he play. He’s also far more mobile than Stanton and that could be a huge benefit when sidestepping or sprinting out of danger against Houston’s athletic and fast defensive front seven.</p>
<p>FAST FACTS: Cardinals QB Drew Stanton passed for 273 yards and a TD last week. He has won four of his past five starts. … RB Adrian Peterson has 99 career rushing TDs and needs one more to become the ninth player in NFL history with 100. He has 225 rushing yards (112.5 per game) and a TD in two career meetings against the Texans. In the past four games, he has 343 rushing yards (85.8 per game) and two TDs. … LB Chandler Jones is tied for third in the NFL with 10 sacks and leads the league with 15 tackles for loss. He has six sacks, two forced fumbles and a fumble recovery in the past two games against AFC foes. … Texans QB Tom Savage had a passing TD in Week 10. He aims for his third game in a row with a passing TD. … RB Lamar Miller has 577 scrimmage yards (96.2 per game) and three TDs in the past six games at home. He has three TDs in the past four games against NFC teams. … DE Jadeveon Clowney aims for his fourth game in a row with a sack. He has a sack in four of the past five games against NFC teams. He has 28 tackles for loss since 2016, the second most in the NFL. He is one of three players in the NFL (Everson Griffen and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/DeMarcus-Lawrence/" type="external">Demarcus Lawrence</a>) with 10 tackles for loss (12) and two forced fumbles (2) in 2017.</p>
<p>PREDICTION: Two beat-up teams with slim playoff hopes meet in Houston. The guess here is that the Cardinals can overcome their injuries a bit better than the Texans, who might have three-peated in the AFC South were it not for the freak ACL tear suffered by rookie QB <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Deshaun-Watson/" type="external">DeShaun Watson</a>.</p>
<p>OUR PICK: Cardinals, 16-13.</p>
<p>–Bucky Dent</p> | false | 1 | arizona cardinals 45 houston texans 36 kickoff sunday 1 pm et nrg stadium tv fox kenny albert ronde barber kristina pink field reporter series history fourth regularseason meeting cardinals lead series 21 texans lost 2724 cardinals 2013 keys game cardinals still try establish run first adrian peterson four games new team stuffed twice also enjoyed two 100yard games hell running behind different look right tackle jared veldheer switching back left side seasonending knee injury dj humphries backup john wetzel replacing veldheer right tackle comes passing game cardinals wide receivers tight ends need much better job catching balls several drops thursday night loss seattle drew wrath coach bruce arians houstons oncefeared defense exploitable romeo crennels unit allowing 268 points per game secondmost league texans try bottle peterson contain wide receiver larry fitzgerald texans attempt protect football better offense quarterback tom savage committed four turnovers rams theyll try run football often effectively lamar miller donta foreman control possession cardinals focus containing miller everything harass disrupt savage matchups watch cardinals wr larry fitzgerald vs texans cb johnathan joseph twotime pro bowl selection joseph allowed long touchdown passes speedy wide receivers past two games fitzgerald isnt fast hands body control routerunning skills could make favorable matchup cardinals regardless whether drew stanton blaine gabbert throwing football texans rt breno giacomini vs cardinals olb chandler jones jones sack master season ranking among nfl sack leaders 10 one multisack game giacomini tough 10year veteran tom savage sacked 12 times however cardinals keep getting decent push interior defensive linemen could open door jones wreak havoc player spotlight cardinals qb blaine gabbert even drew stanton able start keep eye gabbert could easily get game take stantons knee starts give problems gabbert hasnt thrown pass regularseason game since dec 4 4 10 35 yards san franciscos 266 loss bears sixth final appearance 2016 losing end last five 04 four career appearances texans gabbert getting reps firstteam offense past two weeks help ton play hes also far mobile stanton could huge benefit sidestepping sprinting danger houstons athletic fast defensive front seven fast facts cardinals qb drew stanton passed 273 yards td last week four past five starts rb adrian peterson 99 career rushing tds needs one become ninth player nfl history 100 225 rushing yards 1125 per game td two career meetings texans past four games 343 rushing yards 858 per game two tds lb chandler jones tied third nfl 10 sacks leads league 15 tackles loss six sacks two forced fumbles fumble recovery past two games afc foes texans qb tom savage passing td week 10 aims third game row passing td rb lamar miller 577 scrimmage yards 962 per game three tds past six games home three tds past four games nfc teams de jadeveon clowney aims fourth game row sack sack four past five games nfc teams 28 tackles loss since 2016 second nfl one three players nfl everson griffen demarcus lawrence 10 tackles loss 12 two forced fumbles 2 2017 prediction two beatup teams slim playoff hopes meet houston guess cardinals overcome injuries bit better texans might threepeated afc south freak acl tear suffered rookie qb deshaun watson pick cardinals 1613 bucky dent | 526 |
<p>WASHINGTON — Right up to the final days and into the eve of the 100 day milestone, President Donald Trump governed and sought to implement his agenda with a showman’s talent and an uncanny ability to defy expectations.</p>
<p>In the final week of his first 100 days, observers had many questions: Would there be a <a href="" type="internal">government shutdown</a> on the 100th day? There will not; Congress passed a spending bill on Day 99. Could House Republicans squeak through a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare before week’s end? No. House Speaker Paul Ryan admitted Thursday that he did not have the votes. What new ideas, tweets and pronouncements would the mercurial president offer up to an exhausted White House press corps?</p>
<p>Even his critics would agree on Trump’s biggest accomplishments: filling a Supreme Court seat, assuring world leaders he would use force when necessary in Syria and Afghanistan and wielding executive orders to cut regulations and fulfill campaign promises.</p>
<p>Getting <a href="" type="internal">Justice Neil Gorsuch on the U.S. Supreme Court</a> allowed Trump to keep a big campaign promise and solidified his standing with his base. The choice also helped Trump with Republicans who were tentative about the president’s conservative credentials and lack of government experience. It was a top priority for these Trump voters to keep the 5-4 balance in favor of Republican-appointed justices.</p>
<p>Without Gorsuch, former Republican California Gov. Pete Wilson said, “we might have lost the Constitution for 40 years.” If Hillary Clinton had won in November, he said, vacancies would have been filled by jurists who interpret the Constitution through the lens of liberal politics.</p>
<p>The close 54-45 Senate vote on Gorsuch, however, with only three Democrats voting to confirm a nominee who was widely recognized as capable, revealed how hard Trump has made it for Democrats to support him. Right after Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., voted for Gorsuch, the liberal Daily Kos announced a campaign to find a Democratic challenger to punish Donnelly for his “spineless” vote. Others targeted Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota.</p>
<p>Flexing military power</p>
<p>When <a href="" type="internal">Syria gassed its own people</a> in an attack that left at least 70 dead, including children, Trump <a href="" type="internal">authorized a Tomahawk missile attack</a> on a Syrian air base. The message to Syrian President Bashar Assad was clear: Trump has the will to enforce former President Barack Obama’s red line against the use of chemical weapons.</p>
<p>The April 6 strike was a game-changer. During the 2016 campaign, Trump had criticized what he called President George W. Bush’s interventionism and Obama’s failure to project military strength. James Carafano, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the Syrian strike showed that Trump would not let his preference for limiting America’s military footprint in the Middle East keep him from using air power.</p>
<p>The previous administration’s take was, “Oh, my God, a bad thing might happen if we drop a bomb,” said Carafano, who was also a member of the Trump transition team. With Trump as commander-in-chief, that’s over, he said.</p>
<p>The strike’s timing could not have worked better for Trump, who had invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to Mar-a-Lago for a long weekend. Over what Trump described as “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you’ve ever seen,” Trump told Xi about the strike as he sought Beijing’s help in checking North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.</p>
<p>The Syrian strike also poured cold water on the argument that Trump would be a tool for Assad’s protector, Russian President Vladimir Putin.</p>
<p>“Clearly a new sheriff is in town as relates to Putin,” Wilson noted.</p>
<p>When the United States <a href="" type="internal">dropped the mother of all bombs on an ISIS tunnel</a>in Afghanistan on April 13, Trump’s readiness to use one of the country’s largest non-nuclear devices to defeat America’s enemies also sent a message to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.</p>
<p>Charm offensive</p>
<p>While candidate Trump promised to be tough with American allies, as president he has rolled out the welcome mat for a series of world leaders starting with <a href="" type="internal">British Prime Minister Theresa May</a>. Since <a href="" type="internal">German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited the White House</a>, the two have talked frequently on the phone. And when NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg visited, Trump said that while he used to say NATO “was obsolete, it’s no longer obsolete.”</p>
<p>Critics predicted frosty relations between Muslim leaders and Trump after his botched rollout of a travel ban on individuals from Muslim-majority countries. Yet Trump had successful meetings with King Abdullah of Jordan and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who engineered the release of an American humanitarian worker and her husband at Trump’s request. Middle Eastern leaders “love this guy,” Carafano said. Their most frequent complaint, he added, is: “We just wish we had more people to talk to.”</p>
<p>That is a reference to Trump’s infamous staffing shortage. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has nearly 200 jobs to fill in his department — and seems in no hurry to do so.</p>
<p>Former Congresswoman and Obama State Department undersecretary Ellen Tauscher noted that during the campaign, Trump promised to hire the smartest people, but instead “he doesn’t have anybody.”</p>
<p>Leaner government</p>
<p>In his first months in office, Trump signed a series of executive orders likely to change the size and scope of the federal government. Susan Dudley, director of the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center, credits Trump for signing executive orders to reduce regulations, including an order that <a href="" type="internal">requires the government to remove two regulations for every new regulation it creates</a>.</p>
<p>“For the first time, there’s a restraint on the accumulation of regulations,” Dudley noted at a Heritage Foundation symposium on Trump’s first 100 days.</p>
<p>One order directed agencies to set up task forces to alleviate unnecessary regulatory burdens. “Agencies always have a staff looking for new areas to regulate,” Dudley noted. “This is the first time agencies will have someone to look to do less.”</p>
<p>Trump also used his executive power to <a href="" type="internal">approve the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines</a> and announce America’s <a href="" type="internal">withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership</a>.</p>
<p>As a candidate, Trump set out a 100-day agenda, most of which has not been fulfilled.</p>
<p>“As a political scientist, I never took that seriously,” said University of Nevada, Las Vegas political science professor John Tuman. “I don’t know that his supporters did” either.</p>
<p>Tuman sees the Trump record as a mixed bag, with most progress in nonlegislative areas. In his first effort to work with Congress, Trump <a href="" type="internal">failed to garner enough votes in the Republican-controlled House to pass his American Health Care Act</a>, which was meant to repeal and replace Obamacare. “It wasn’t too surprising,” Tuman noted.</p>
<p>“Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated,” Trump concluded.</p>
<p>House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi chalked up the health bill’s dramatic demise to a “rookie” mistake. “You don’t find a day and say we’re going to pass a bill,” she said.</p>
<p>Lahnee Chen, a former aide to President George W. Bush who is now a fellow at the Hoover Institution, is impressed that Trump still is fighting to pass a measure this year, and Chen thinks it is likely to happen. During the last frantic week, Speaker Ryan negotiated with the conservative rump House Freedom Caucus, but could not reach the 216 vote threshold.</p>
<p>The inability to pass a measure on which Republicans have campaigned furiously over the years does not bode well for Trump’s other big legislative initiatives: tax reform and infrastructure.</p>
<p>Can Trump deal with Democrats? “I think he will when there’s an issue where he decides he needs their help,” said Chen.</p>
<p>Trump also failed to deliver on his promise to <a href="" type="internal">begin building a wall on the border with Mexico</a> — and get Mexico to pay for it. But Trump can boast that illegal border crossings are down 61 percent, a claim judged “mostly true” by PolitiFact, to their lowest number in 17 years.</p>
<p>“He’s created the impression that he’s serious about protecting the border and ramping up enforcement,” observed Tuman.</p>
<p>Choppy beginning</p>
<p>Trump’s first weeks in office were filled with drama and resistance. In his <a href="" type="internal">inaugural</a> <a href="" type="internal">speech</a>, the new president took on the entire Washington establishment when he said, “For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has repeated the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost.”</p>
<p>In his first full week in office, Trump <a href="" type="internal">issued a travel ban</a>on individuals from seven Muslim-majority countries that was followed by protests at American airports and a judge’s decision to halt the order.</p>
<p>Trump later issued a more carefully drafted measure, but other judges swooped in to halt that as well.</p>
<p>A San Francisco federal judge also has overturned Trump’s move to withhold federal funding to targeted sanctuary cities, including Las Vegas.</p>
<p>As the 100-day milestone loomed, the White House worked furiously to project the appearance of progress. On Wednesday, the White House produced a one-page proposal on tax reform with promised middle-class and corporate tax cuts.</p>
<p>On Thursday, Trump tweeted that rather than work to terminate NAFTA, he was <a href="" type="internal">ready to renegotiate</a> the trade agreement. On Friday, Trump became the first sitting president since Ronald Reagan to address the National Rifle Association, as he walked through critics who ridiculed the notion that he could never win 270 electoral votes.</p>
<p>“We ended up with 306,” Trump quipped, “so they were right.”</p>
<p>Few things delight this president more than defying expectations.</p>
<p>Contact Debra J. Saunders at [email protected] or at 202-662-7391. Follow <a href="http://www.twitter.com/DebraJSaunders" type="external">@DebraJSaunders</a> on Twitter.</p>
<p>A previous version of this story included an incorrect vote tally for Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation.</p>
<p>The Trump bump</p>
<p>The stock market and economy have been on a roll since Donald Trump won the November election:</p>
<p>—In the first quarter, the Standard &amp; Poor’s 500 index rose 5.5 percent to more than 2,232 points.</p>
<p>—In January, the Dow Jones Industrial average broke 20,000 for the first time and this week the Nasdaq broke 6,000.</p>
<p>—In March, consumer confidence hit a 16-year high.</p>
<p /> | false | 1 | washington right final days eve 100 day milestone president donald trump governed sought implement agenda showmans talent uncanny ability defy expectations final week first 100 days observers many questions would government shutdown 100th day congress passed spending bill day 99 could house republicans squeak bill repeal replace obamacare weeks end house speaker paul ryan admitted thursday votes new ideas tweets pronouncements would mercurial president offer exhausted white house press corps even critics would agree trumps biggest accomplishments filling supreme court seat assuring world leaders would use force necessary syria afghanistan wielding executive orders cut regulations fulfill campaign promises getting justice neil gorsuch us supreme court allowed trump keep big campaign promise solidified standing base choice also helped trump republicans tentative presidents conservative credentials lack government experience top priority trump voters keep 54 balance favor republicanappointed justices without gorsuch former republican california gov pete wilson said might lost constitution 40 years hillary clinton november said vacancies would filled jurists interpret constitution lens liberal politics close 5445 senate vote gorsuch however three democrats voting confirm nominee widely recognized capable revealed hard trump made democrats support right sen joe donnelly dind voted gorsuch liberal daily kos announced campaign find democratic challenger punish donnelly spineless vote others targeted sen joe manchin west virginia heidi heitkamp north dakota flexing military power syria gassed people attack left least 70 dead including children trump authorized tomahawk missile attack syrian air base message syrian president bashar assad clear trump enforce former president barack obamas red line use chemical weapons april 6 strike gamechanger 2016 campaign trump criticized called president george w bushs interventionism obamas failure project military strength james carafano senior fellow conservative heritage foundation said syrian strike showed trump would let preference limiting americas military footprint middle east keep using air power previous administrations take oh god bad thing might happen drop bomb said carafano also member trump transition team trump commanderinchief thats said strikes timing could worked better trump invited chinese president xi jinping maralago long weekend trump described beautiful piece chocolate cake youve ever seen trump told xi strike sought beijings help checking north koreas nuclear ambitions syrian strike also poured cold water argument trump would tool assads protector russian president vladimir putin clearly new sheriff town relates putin wilson noted united states dropped mother bombs isis tunnelin afghanistan april 13 trumps readiness use one countrys largest nonnuclear devices defeat americas enemies also sent message north korean leader kim jongun charm offensive candidate trump promised tough american allies president rolled welcome mat series world leaders starting british prime minister theresa may since german chancellor angela merkel visited white house two talked frequently phone nato secretary general jens stoltenberg visited trump said used say nato obsolete longer obsolete critics predicted frosty relations muslim leaders trump botched rollout travel ban individuals muslimmajority countries yet trump successful meetings king abdullah jordan egyptian president abdelfattah elsissi engineered release american humanitarian worker husband trumps request middle eastern leaders love guy carafano said frequent complaint added wish people talk reference trumps infamous staffing shortage secretary state rex tillerson nearly 200 jobs fill department seems hurry former congresswoman obama state department undersecretary ellen tauscher noted campaign trump promised hire smartest people instead doesnt anybody leaner government first months office trump signed series executive orders likely change size scope federal government susan dudley director george washington university regulatory studies center credits trump signing executive orders reduce regulations including order requires government remove two regulations every new regulation creates first time theres restraint accumulation regulations dudley noted heritage foundation symposium trumps first 100 days one order directed agencies set task forces alleviate unnecessary regulatory burdens agencies always staff looking new areas regulate dudley noted first time agencies someone look less trump also used executive power approve keystone dakota access pipelines announce americas withdrawal transpacific partnership candidate trump set 100day agenda fulfilled political scientist never took seriously said university nevada las vegas political science professor john tuman dont know supporters either tuman sees trump record mixed bag progress nonlegislative areas first effort work congress trump failed garner enough votes republicancontrolled house pass american health care act meant repeal replace obamacare wasnt surprising tuman noted nobody knew health care could complicated trump concluded house minority leader nancy pelosi chalked health bills dramatic demise rookie mistake dont find day say going pass bill said lahnee chen former aide president george w bush fellow hoover institution impressed trump still fighting pass measure year chen thinks likely happen last frantic week speaker ryan negotiated conservative rump house freedom caucus could reach 216 vote threshold inability pass measure republicans campaigned furiously years bode well trumps big legislative initiatives tax reform infrastructure trump deal democrats think theres issue decides needs help said chen trump also failed deliver promise begin building wall border mexico get mexico pay trump boast illegal border crossings 61 percent claim judged mostly true politifact lowest number 17 years hes created impression hes serious protecting border ramping enforcement observed tuman choppy beginning trumps first weeks office filled drama resistance inaugural speech new president took entire washington establishment said long small group nations capital repeated rewards government people borne cost first full week office trump issued travel banon individuals seven muslimmajority countries followed protests american airports judges decision halt order trump later issued carefully drafted measure judges swooped halt well san francisco federal judge also overturned trumps move withhold federal funding targeted sanctuary cities including las vegas 100day milestone loomed white house worked furiously project appearance progress wednesday white house produced onepage proposal tax reform promised middleclass corporate tax cuts thursday trump tweeted rather work terminate nafta ready renegotiate trade agreement friday trump became first sitting president since ronald reagan address national rifle association walked critics ridiculed notion could never win 270 electoral votes ended 306 trump quipped right things delight president defying expectations contact debra j saunders dsaundersreviewjournalcom 2026627391 follow debrajsaunders twitter previous version story included incorrect vote tally neil gorsuchs confirmation trump bump stock market economy roll since donald trump november election first quarter standard amp poors 500 index rose 55 percent 2232 points january dow jones industrial average broke 20000 first time week nasdaq broke 6000 march consumer confidence hit 16year high | 1,026 |
<p>Newly disclosed emails show that Libya’s plan to create a gold-backed currency to compete with the euro and dollar was a motive for NATO’s intervention.</p>
<p>The New Year’s Eve release of over 3,000 new Hillary Clinton emails from the State Department has CNN <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/31/politics/clinton-email-release-state-department-behind/" type="external">abuzz</a> over gossipy text messages, the “who gets to ride with Hillary” selection process set up by her staff, and how a “cute” Hillary photo fared on Facebook.</p>
<p>But historians of the 2011 NATO war in Libya will be sure to notice a few of the truly explosive confirmations contained in the <a href="https://www.foia.state.gov/Search/Results.aspx?collection=Clinton_Email_December_Release" type="external">new emails</a>: admissions of rebel war crimes, special ops trainers inside Libya from nearly the start of protests, Al Qaeda embedded in the U.S. backed opposition, Western nations jockeying for access to Libyan oil, the nefarious origins of the absurd Viagra mass rape claim, and concern over Gaddafi’s gold and silver reserves threatening European currency.</p>
<p>A March 27, 2011, intelligence <a href="https://www.foia.state.gov/searchapp/DOCUMENTS/HRCEmail_DecWebClearedMeta/31-C1/DOC_0C05782401/C05782401.pdf" type="external">brief</a>&#160;[ <a href="" type="internal">archived here</a>] on Libya, sent by long time close adviser to the Clintons and Hillary’s unofficial intelligence gatherer, Sidney Blumenthal, contains clear evidence of war crimes on the&#160; part of NATO-backed rebels. Citing a rebel commander source “speaking in strict confidence” Blumenthal reports to Hillary [emphasis mine]:</p>
<p>Under attack from allied Air and Naval forces, the Libyan Army troops have begun to desert to the rebel side in increasing numbers. The rebels are making an effort to greet these troops as fellow Libyans, in an effort to encourage additional defections.</p>
<p>(Source Comment: Speaking in strict confidence, one rebel commander stated that his troops continue to summarily execute all foreign mercenaries captured in the fighting…).</p>
<p>While the illegality of extra-judicial killings is easy to recognize (groups engaged in such are conventionally termed “death squads”), the sinister reality behind the “foreign mercenaries” reference might not be as immediately evident to most.</p>
<p>While over the decades Gaddafi was known to make use of European and other international security and infrastructural contractors, there is no evidence to suggest that these were targeted by the Libyan rebels.</p>
<p>There is, however, ample <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16051349" type="external">documentation</a> by journalists, academics, and human rights groups demonstrating that black Libyan civilians and sub-Saharan contract workers, a population favored by Gaddafi in his pro-African Union policies, were targets of “racial cleansing” by rebels who saw black Libyans as tied closely with the regime.[1]</p>
<p>Black Libyans were commonly branded as “foreign mercenaries” by the rebel opposition for their perceived general loyalty to Gaddafi as a community and subjected to torture, executions, and their towns “liberated” by ethnic cleansing. This is demonstrated in the most well-documented example of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tawergha" type="external">Tawergha</a>, an entire town of 30,000 black and “dark-skinned” Libyans which vanished by August 2011 after its takeover by NATO-backed&#160;NTC Misratan brigades.</p>
<p>These attacks were well-known as late as 2012 and often filmed, as this <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/9124817/Libyan-rebels-force-black-Africans-to-eat-flags-in-cage.html" type="external">report</a> from The Telegraph confirms:</p>
<p>After Muammar Gaddafi was killed, hundreds of migrant workers from neighboring states were imprisoned by fighters allied to the new interim authorities. They accuse the black Africans of having been mercenaries for the late ruler. Thousands of sub-Saharan Africans have been rounded up since Gaddafi fell in August.</p>
<p>It appears that Clinton was getting personally briefed on the battlefield crimes of her beloved anti-Gaddafi fighters long before some of the worst of these genocidal crimes took place.</p>
<p>The same intelligence <a href="https://www.foia.state.gov/searchapp/DOCUMENTS/HRCEmail_DecWebClearedMeta/31-C1/DOC_0C05782401/C05782401.pdf" type="external">email</a> from Sydney Blumenthal also confirms what has become a well-known theme of Western supported insurgencies in the Middle East: the contradiction of special forces training militias that are simultaneously suspected of links to Al Qaeda.</p>
<p>Blumenthal relates that “an extremely sensitive source” confirmed that British, French, and Egyptian special operations units were training Libyan militants along the Egyptian-Libyan border, as well as in Benghazi suburbs.</p>
<p>While analysts have long speculated as to the “when and where” of Western ground troop presence in the Libyan War, this email serves as definitive proof that special forces were on the ground only within a month of the earliest protests which broke out in the middle to end of February 2011 in Benghazi.</p>
<p>By March 27 of what was commonly assumed a simple “popular uprising” external special operatives <a href="https://www.foia.state.gov/searchapp/DOCUMENTS/HRCEmail_DecWebClearedMeta/31-C1/DOC_0C05782401/C05782401.pdf" type="external">were already</a> “overseeing the transfer of weapons and supplies to the rebels” including “a seemingly endless supply of AK47 assault rifles and ammunition.”</p>
<p>Yet only a few paragraphs after this admission, caution is voiced about the very militias these Western special forces were training because of concern that, “radical/terrorist groups such as the Libyan Fighting Groups and Al Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) are infiltrating the NLC and its military command.”</p>
<p>Though the French-proposed U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 claimed the no-fly zone implemented over Libya was to protect civilians, an April 2011 <a href="https://www.foia.state.gov/searchapp/DOCUMENTS/HRCEmail_DecWebClearedMeta/31-C1/DOC_0C05779612/C05779612.pdf" type="external">email</a>&#160;[ <a href="" type="internal">archived here</a>] sent to Hillary with the subject line “France’s client and Qaddafi’s gold” tells of less noble ambitions.</p>
<p>The email identifies French President Nicholas Sarkozy as leading the attack on Libya with five specific purposes in mind: to obtain Libyan oil, ensure French influence in the region, increase Sarkozy’s reputation domestically, assert French military power, and to prevent Gaddafi’s influence in what is considered “Francophone Africa.”</p>
<p>Most astounding is the lengthy section delineating the huge threat that Gaddafi’s gold and silver reserves, estimated at “143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver,” posed to the French franc (CFA) circulating as a prime African currency. In place of the noble sounding “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine fed to the public, there is this “confidential” explanation of what was really driving the war [emphasis mine]:</p>
<p>This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French franc (CFA).</p>
<p>(Source Comment: According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to commit France to the attack on Libya.)</p>
<p>Though this internal email aims to summarize the motivating factors driving France’s (and by implication NATO’s) intervention in Libya, it is interesting to note that saving civilian lives is conspicuously absent from the briefing.</p>
<p>Instead, the great fear reported is that Libya might lead North Africa into a high degree of economic independence with a new pan-African currency.</p>
<p>French intelligence “discovered” a Libyan initiative to freely compete with European currency through a local alternative, and this had to be subverted through military aggression.</p>
<p>Early in the Libyan conflict Secretary of State Clinton formally accused Gaddafi and his army of using mass rape as a tool of war. Though numerous international organizations, like Amnesty International, quickly <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/amnesty-questions-claim-that-gaddafi-ordered-rape-as-weapon-of-war-2302037.html" type="external">debunked</a> these claims, the charges were uncritically echoed by Western politicians and major media.</p>
<p>It seemed no matter how bizarre the conspiracy theory, as long as it painted Gaddafi and his supporters as monsters, and so long as it served the cause of prolonged military action in Libya, it was deemed credible by network news.</p>
<p>Two foremost examples are referenced in the latest batch of emails: the sensational claim that Gaddafi issued Viagra to his troops for mass rape, and the claim that bodies were “staged” by the Libyan government at NATO bombing sites to give the appearance of the Western coalition bombing civilians.</p>
<p>In a late March 2011 <a href="https://foia.state.gov/searchapp/DOCUMENTS/HRCEmail_DecWebClearedMeta/31-C1/DOC_0C05782390/C05782390.pdf" type="external">email</a>&#160;[ <a href="https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/12674" type="external">WikiLeaks copy here</a>], Blumenthal confesses to Hillary that,</p>
<p>I communicated more than a week ago on this story—Qaddafi placing bodies to create PR stunts about supposed civilian casualties as a result of Allied bombing—though underlining it was a rumor. But now, as you know, Robert gates gives credence to it. (See story below.)</p>
<p>Sources now say, again rumor (that is, this information comes from the rebel side and is unconfirmed independently by Western intelligence), that Qaddafi has adopted a rape policy and has even distributed Viagra to troops. The incident at the Tripoli press conference involving a woman claiming to be raped is likely to be part of a much larger outrage. Will seek further confirmation.</p>
<p>Not only did Defense Secretary Robert Gates <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/26/robert-gates-libya-violence-gaddafi-bodies_n_841081.html" type="external">promote</a> his bizarre “staged bodies” theory on CBS News’ “Face The Nation,” but the even stranger Viagra rape <a href="https://antiwar.com/blog/2011/04/30/susan-rices-viagra-hoax-the-new-incubator-babies/" type="external">fiction</a> made international headlines as U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice made a formal charge against Libya in front of the UN Security Council.</p>
<p>What this new email confirms is that not only was the State Department aware of the spurious nature of what Blumenthal calls “rumors” originating solely with the rebels, but did nothing to stop false information from rising to top officials who then gave them “credence.”</p>
<p>It appears, furthermore, that the Viagra mass rape hoax likely <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2015/12/31/sid-blumenthal-floated-disputed-gaddafi-viagra-rape-rumor-in-confidential-memo-to-hillary/" type="external">originated</a> with Sidney Blumenthal himself.</p>
<p>[1] The most comprehensive and well-documented study of the plight of black Libyans is contained in <a href="http://www.barakabooks.com/catalogue/slouching-towards-sirte/" type="external">Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO’s War on Libya and Africa</a> (publ. 2012, Baraka Books) by <a href="https://zeroanthropology.net/max-forte/" type="external">Maximilian Forte</a>, Professor Anthropology and Sociology at Concordia University in Montréal, Québec.</p>
<p>This article was originally published at the&#160; <a href="http://levantreport.com/2016/01/04/new-hillary-emails-reveal-propaganda-executions-coveting-libyan-oil-and-gold/" type="external">Levant Report</a>&#160;and has been used here with permission.</p> | false | 1 | newly disclosed emails show libyas plan create goldbacked currency compete euro dollar motive natos intervention new years eve release 3000 new hillary clinton emails state department cnn abuzz gossipy text messages gets ride hillary selection process set staff cute hillary photo fared facebook historians 2011 nato war libya sure notice truly explosive confirmations contained new emails admissions rebel war crimes special ops trainers inside libya nearly start protests al qaeda embedded us backed opposition western nations jockeying access libyan oil nefarious origins absurd viagra mass rape claim concern gaddafis gold silver reserves threatening european currency march 27 2011 intelligence brief160 archived libya sent long time close adviser clintons hillarys unofficial intelligence gatherer sidney blumenthal contains clear evidence war crimes the160 part natobacked rebels citing rebel commander source speaking strict confidence blumenthal reports hillary emphasis mine attack allied air naval forces libyan army troops begun desert rebel side increasing numbers rebels making effort greet troops fellow libyans effort encourage additional defections source comment speaking strict confidence one rebel commander stated troops continue summarily execute foreign mercenaries captured fighting illegality extrajudicial killings easy recognize groups engaged conventionally termed death squads sinister reality behind foreign mercenaries reference might immediately evident decades gaddafi known make use european international security infrastructural contractors evidence suggest targeted libyan rebels however ample documentation journalists academics human rights groups demonstrating black libyan civilians subsaharan contract workers population favored gaddafi proafrican union policies targets racial cleansing rebels saw black libyans tied closely regime1 black libyans commonly branded foreign mercenaries rebel opposition perceived general loyalty gaddafi community subjected torture executions towns liberated ethnic cleansing demonstrated welldocumented example tawergha entire town 30000 black darkskinned libyans vanished august 2011 takeover natobacked160ntc misratan brigades attacks wellknown late 2012 often filmed report telegraph confirms muammar gaddafi killed hundreds migrant workers neighboring states imprisoned fighters allied new interim authorities accuse black africans mercenaries late ruler thousands subsaharan africans rounded since gaddafi fell august appears clinton getting personally briefed battlefield crimes beloved antigaddafi fighters long worst genocidal crimes took place intelligence email sydney blumenthal also confirms become wellknown theme western supported insurgencies middle east contradiction special forces training militias simultaneously suspected links al qaeda blumenthal relates extremely sensitive source confirmed british french egyptian special operations units training libyan militants along egyptianlibyan border well benghazi suburbs analysts long speculated western ground troop presence libyan war email serves definitive proof special forces ground within month earliest protests broke middle end february 2011 benghazi march 27 commonly assumed simple popular uprising external special operatives already overseeing transfer weapons supplies rebels including seemingly endless supply ak47 assault rifles ammunition yet paragraphs admission caution voiced militias western special forces training concern radicalterrorist groups libyan fighting groups al qaida islamic maghreb aqim infiltrating nlc military command though frenchproposed un security council resolution 1973 claimed nofly zone implemented libya protect civilians april 2011 email160 archived sent hillary subject line frances client qaddafis gold tells less noble ambitions email identifies french president nicholas sarkozy leading attack libya five specific purposes mind obtain libyan oil ensure french influence region increase sarkozys reputation domestically assert french military power prevent gaddafis influence considered francophone africa astounding lengthy section delineating huge threat gaddafis gold silver reserves estimated 143 tons gold similar amount silver posed french franc cfa circulating prime african currency place noble sounding responsibility protect r2p doctrine fed public confidential explanation really driving war emphasis mine gold accumulated prior current rebellion intended used establish panafrican currency based libyan golden dinar plan designed provide francophone african countries alternative french franc cfa source comment according knowledgeable individuals quantity gold silver valued 7 billion french intelligence officers discovered plan shortly current rebellion began one factors influenced president nicolas sarkozys decision commit france attack libya though internal email aims summarize motivating factors driving frances implication natos intervention libya interesting note saving civilian lives conspicuously absent briefing instead great fear reported libya might lead north africa high degree economic independence new panafrican currency french intelligence discovered libyan initiative freely compete european currency local alternative subverted military aggression early libyan conflict secretary state clinton formally accused gaddafi army using mass rape tool war though numerous international organizations like amnesty international quickly debunked claims charges uncritically echoed western politicians major media seemed matter bizarre conspiracy theory long painted gaddafi supporters monsters long served cause prolonged military action libya deemed credible network news two foremost examples referenced latest batch emails sensational claim gaddafi issued viagra troops mass rape claim bodies staged libyan government nato bombing sites give appearance western coalition bombing civilians late march 2011 email160 wikileaks copy blumenthal confesses hillary communicated week ago storyqaddafi placing bodies create pr stunts supposed civilian casualties result allied bombingthough underlining rumor know robert gates gives credence see story sources say rumor information comes rebel side unconfirmed independently western intelligence qaddafi adopted rape policy even distributed viagra troops incident tripoli press conference involving woman claiming raped likely part much larger outrage seek confirmation defense secretary robert gates promote bizarre staged bodies theory cbs news face nation even stranger viagra rape fiction made international headlines us ambassador un susan rice made formal charge libya front un security council new email confirms state department aware spurious nature blumenthal calls rumors originating solely rebels nothing stop false information rising top officials gave credence appears furthermore viagra mass rape hoax likely originated sidney blumenthal 1 comprehensive welldocumented study plight black libyans contained slouching towards sirte natos war libya africa publ 2012 baraka books maximilian forte professor anthropology sociology concordia university montréal québec article originally published the160 levant report160and used permission | 916 |
<p>By Ahmed Aboulenein</p>
<p>CAIRO (Reuters) – Sarah Hegazy has been jailed, beaten by inmates, and could face a life sentence in an Egyptian prison if found guilty of “promoting sexual deviancy” and other charges tied to her alleged crime: waving a rainbow flag at a concert.</p>
<p>The 28-year-old denies waving the flag but is one of 57 people arrested so far in Egypt’s widest anti-gay crackdown yet, a swift zero-tolerance response to a rare show of public support for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights in the conservative Muslim country.</p>
<p>The crackdown comes as Egypt, a key Western ally in the Middle East, is under fire for its human rights record and the United States has withheld some of its $1.3 billion in annual military aid.</p>
<p>Hegazy, the only woman rounded up in the three-week-old campaign, says police goaded her cellmates to abuse her during her first night in prison, where she is being detained for 15 days and interrogated by special prosecutors who usually focus on Islamist militants.</p>
<p>“This is the game they (police) always play, especially since she is a girl. They incite the other detainees and say ‘this girl wants men and women to be gay’ so they harass her. I saw scratches on her shoulder, she looked very disheveled and exhausted. She was beaten,” said Hegazy’s lawyer Hoda Nasralla.</p>
<p>A security official would not comment on Hegazy’s case but denied that police incite prisoners against each other or otherwise mistreat them.&#160;</p>
<p>Lawyers for other detainees said their clients faced similar treatment. Suspected gay male detainees are subject to forced anal exams to determine if they have had homosexual sex, a procedure human rights groups say amounts to torture.</p>
<p>At least five such examinations have taken place, Amnesty International says. Judicial sources do not deny the examinations take place but say they are legally carried out and are not a form of abuse.</p>
<p>Egyptian authorities do not deny going after gays and an investigation report provided to Reuters by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) openly refers to the police’s campaign on homosexuals.</p>
<p>Police, state-aligned media, and the religious establishment all see it as a public duty to combat the spread of homosexuality.</p>
<p>Ten men have already gone on trial during the recent sweep and received jail sentences from one to six years.</p>
<p>MEDIA BACKLASH</p>
<p>On Sept. 22, at a concert packed with 30,000 people headlined by Mashrou’ Leila, a Lebanese alternative rock band whose lead singer is openly gay, a small group of concert goers raised a rainbow flag and, within hours, the image went viral.</p>
<p>Almost immediately local media, dominated by state-aligned television personalities, began a campaign against homosexuals, saying they were receiving foreign funding, and hosting callers who compared their threat to Islamic State.</p>
<p>Egypt’s media regulator then banned homosexuals from appearing in the media unless they were “repenting”, calling homosexuality a “shame and a disease that should be kept under wraps, not promoted” in order to protect public morality.</p>
<p>Al-Azhar, Egypt’s 1,000-year-old center of Islamic learning, said it would stand against gays in the way it stands against Islamist extremists. One church organized an anti-gay conference.</p>
<p>Public Prosecutor Nabil Sadek ordered the State Security Prosecution, which normally investigates terrorism and other national security threats, to investigate the flag incident.</p>
<p>At least four people, including Hegazy and 21-year-old Ahmed Alaa, were arrested for allegedly raising the flag although one man has since been released.</p>
<p>The overwhelming majority of those arrested are not involved in the flag case, however, and have simply been arrested over their perceived sexual orientation in the following days.</p>
<p>Police have raided homes, parties, and used online dating apps to lure gay men – a common tactic in Egypt – to arrest most of them, their lawyers say.</p>
<p>At a Cairo courthouse defendants stood in a cage, holding up newspapers and books to hide their faces to shield themselves from the stigma of homosexuality in Egyptian society.</p>
<p>WORST CRACKDOWN YET</p>
<p>Although homosexuality is not specifically outlawed in Egypt, it is a conservative society and discrimination is rife. Gay men are frequently arrested and typically charged with debauchery, immorality or blasphemy.</p>
<p>The last comparable crackdown on homosexuals in Egypt was in 2001, when police raided a floating disco called the Queen Boat. Fifty-two men were tried in the case, which drew widespread criticism from human rights groups and Western governments.</p>
<p>But the current wave has already surpassed that incident both in numbers and in state action, with defendants facing much faster trials than usual, said Dalia Abd Elhameed, EIPR’s gender and women’s rights officer.</p>
<p>No Western government has publicly condemned or commented on this crackdown, but Egypt is facing criticism from the United States, a major ally, over its human rights record.</p>
<p>Washington denied Egypt $95.7 million in aid and delayed a further $195 million because it failed to make progress on human rights and democracy, U.S. sources told Reuters in August.</p>
<p>Egypt has taken a leading role at the United Nations in opposing gay rights. It was one of 13 countries to vote last week against a U.N. resolution condemning the death penalty for having gay sex.</p>
<p>It led a dozen states in boycotting a session in January with the first U.N. expert on anti-gay violence and discrimination. It sent a letter last year on behalf of Muslim countries to the secretary-general that led to the exclusion of 22 gay and transgender rights groups from the U.N. General Assembly’s High Level Meeting on Ending Aids.</p>
<p>Gay men and rights activists say the LGBT community has been facing an aggressive crackdown since 2013, when President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as military chief ousted Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Mursi.</p>
<p>EIPR has documented 232 cases between October 2013 and March 2017 where people were arrested for allegedly being gay or transgender, Abd Elhameed said. Many of these cases went to court where the average sentence was around three years in jail, although in some cases it went up to 12.</p>
<p>Sisi has been criticized by the Brotherhood as being anti-Islam, and rights groups say tough treatment of the LGBT community is a way to counter that while diverting attention from the country’s tough economic conditions.</p>
<p>COMMUNITY IN FEAR</p>
<p>The crackdown has Egypt’s already underground LGBT community living in fear. Five gay men who all requested anonymity said they were avoiding gay-friendly spaces and deleting online dating profiles for fear of arrest.</p>
<p>Some are considering leaving the country.</p>
<p>But the recent developments underscore an existing reality for gay Egyptians: they are in constant physical danger.</p>
<p>“I don’t feel comfortable just being myself. We’re not talking about gay rights here, no one is calling for marriage equality, we face the possibility of jail and humiliation for merely existing,” said one 25-year-old gay man.</p>
<p>A 31-year-old gay man recounted how he was tied up and beaten at his Cairo flat last year by two men who threatened to kill him after meeting through the gay dating app Grindr.</p>
<p>They posed as police officers at some point, playing on a common fear for gay Egyptians, before stealing items from his flat. The man says he later felt going to the police was almost as traumatic as the incident itself.</p>
<p>Police records show officers create false dating profiles and set up dates only to arrest the men who show up. Sometimes they tell the men to bring condoms then use them as evidence, Abd Elhameed said.</p>
<p>“There are people in the Interior Ministry who take our money as taxpayers to engage in sex chatting with people then arrest them. It is as ridiculous as this; the evidence sheets include nude photos and erotic chat transcripts.”</p> | false | 1 | ahmed aboulenein cairo reuters sarah hegazy jailed beaten inmates could face life sentence egyptian prison found guilty promoting sexual deviancy charges tied alleged crime waving rainbow flag concert 28yearold denies waving flag one 57 people arrested far egypts widest antigay crackdown yet swift zerotolerance response rare show public support lesbian gay bisexual transgender lgbt rights conservative muslim country crackdown comes egypt key western ally middle east fire human rights record united states withheld 13 billion annual military aid hegazy woman rounded threeweekold campaign says police goaded cellmates abuse first night prison detained 15 days interrogated special prosecutors usually focus islamist militants game police always play especially since girl incite detainees say girl wants men women gay harass saw scratches shoulder looked disheveled exhausted beaten said hegazys lawyer hoda nasralla security official would comment hegazys case denied police incite prisoners otherwise mistreat them160 lawyers detainees said clients faced similar treatment suspected gay male detainees subject forced anal exams determine homosexual sex procedure human rights groups say amounts torture least five examinations taken place amnesty international says judicial sources deny examinations take place say legally carried form abuse egyptian authorities deny going gays investigation report provided reuters egyptian initiative personal rights eipr openly refers polices campaign homosexuals police statealigned media religious establishment see public duty combat spread homosexuality ten men already gone trial recent sweep received jail sentences one six years media backlash sept 22 concert packed 30000 people headlined mashrou leila lebanese alternative rock band whose lead singer openly gay small group concert goers raised rainbow flag within hours image went viral almost immediately local media dominated statealigned television personalities began campaign homosexuals saying receiving foreign funding hosting callers compared threat islamic state egypts media regulator banned homosexuals appearing media unless repenting calling homosexuality shame disease kept wraps promoted order protect public morality alazhar egypts 1000yearold center islamic learning said would stand gays way stands islamist extremists one church organized antigay conference public prosecutor nabil sadek ordered state security prosecution normally investigates terrorism national security threats investigate flag incident least four people including hegazy 21yearold ahmed alaa arrested allegedly raising flag although one man since released overwhelming majority arrested involved flag case however simply arrested perceived sexual orientation following days police raided homes parties used online dating apps lure gay men common tactic egypt arrest lawyers say cairo courthouse defendants stood cage holding newspapers books hide faces shield stigma homosexuality egyptian society worst crackdown yet although homosexuality specifically outlawed egypt conservative society discrimination rife gay men frequently arrested typically charged debauchery immorality blasphemy last comparable crackdown homosexuals egypt 2001 police raided floating disco called queen boat fiftytwo men tried case drew widespread criticism human rights groups western governments current wave already surpassed incident numbers state action defendants facing much faster trials usual said dalia abd elhameed eiprs gender womens rights officer western government publicly condemned commented crackdown egypt facing criticism united states major ally human rights record washington denied egypt 957 million aid delayed 195 million failed make progress human rights democracy us sources told reuters august egypt taken leading role united nations opposing gay rights one 13 countries vote last week un resolution condemning death penalty gay sex led dozen states boycotting session january first un expert antigay violence discrimination sent letter last year behalf muslim countries secretarygeneral led exclusion 22 gay transgender rights groups un general assemblys high level meeting ending aids gay men rights activists say lgbt community facing aggressive crackdown since 2013 president abdel fattah alsisi military chief ousted muslim brotherhood president mohamed mursi eipr documented 232 cases october 2013 march 2017 people arrested allegedly gay transgender abd elhameed said many cases went court average sentence around three years jail although cases went 12 sisi criticized brotherhood antiislam rights groups say tough treatment lgbt community way counter diverting attention countrys tough economic conditions community fear crackdown egypts already underground lgbt community living fear five gay men requested anonymity said avoiding gayfriendly spaces deleting online dating profiles fear arrest considering leaving country recent developments underscore existing reality gay egyptians constant physical danger dont feel comfortable talking gay rights one calling marriage equality face possibility jail humiliation merely existing said one 25yearold gay man 31yearold gay man recounted tied beaten cairo flat last year two men threatened kill meeting gay dating app grindr posed police officers point playing common fear gay egyptians stealing items flat man says later felt going police almost traumatic incident police records show officers create false dating profiles set dates arrest men show sometimes tell men bring condoms use evidence abd elhameed said people interior ministry take money taxpayers engage sex chatting people arrest ridiculous evidence sheets include nude photos erotic chat transcripts | 778 |
<p />
<p>Normally, Automatic Language Growth (ALG) theory says you do 800 hours of listening, then you start speaking, and you do writing and reading last. The reality is, however, if you are not at the ALG school in Bangkok, it is nearly impossible to arrange these type of lessons for yourself. And it takes two years with strict ALG to learn a category three language, such as Chinese, Thai or Korean. Most people working in a foreign country can't invest two years into learning, particularly if they are on a one year or two year contract.</p>
<p>So, I modify ALG when I am doing my own learning and writing.</p>
<p>Next, the founders of ALG were concentrated on how to teach Thai to foreigners. In taking ALG out of Thailand and applying it to other countries, my personal feeling is that the game changes a bit because, unlike Thai, Korean is not tonal and the pronunciation is simple consonant vowel, consonant vowel. And second, the Thai writing system is extremely complex and you really shouldn't learn to read until you have a very functional knowledge of the language. But in the case of Korean, Hangul is one of the easiest and most perfect writing systems ever developed.</p>
<p>Most people can learn Hangul in about a week. After that, you can read literally anything in Korean. Normally, I tell people to read last, because when you read you have an internal monologue which will be imperfect if you haven't done sufficient listening first.</p>
<p>What I suggest, to speed up the process, but to also learn the language well, you should buy a university level Korean textbook, and hire a private tutor. Korean teachers will generally want to spend the first several lessons on the alphabet. Don't let them. Don't worry about the alphabet for a few weeks. It is probably better to hire a young university student who you can intimidate into teaching you the way you want to learn, as opposed to hiring an experienced teacher who only knows one way and will argue and fight with you.</p>
<p>Have your tutor read the dialogues in your book again and again. At home, listen to the audio CDs for the book. Do not start by having the teacher teach you the symbols or the characters of Hangul. Just follow along with your finger while the teacher reads. Do this for two or three weeks. You will begin to make guesses about what the different characters should sound like. You will begin to recognize words. You will slowly gain a rhythm for the language.</p>
<p>After several weeks, then you could spend a single lesson on the alphabet, to ensure that you know what each letter sounds like and how to recognize them. After that, you can read on your own.</p>
<p>At night, follow the written words on the page while you listen to the CDs. You can start writing at this point. It will help reinforce what you are hearing and learning. But remember, listening is still the key to learning a language and to avoid fossilizing mistakes. Never write an assignment and allow the teacher to take it home and mark it. You go over every assignment, verbally with your teacher, a number of times before you go home and write it. The next day, you should go over your homework verbally, with your teacher. Again, the teacher reads and corrects. You just listen and write. Think about your homework as a talking point, something to help you focus and contextualize your listening.</p>
<p>Don't speak yet.</p>
<p>What I did with the Korean language was I bought as many level-one textbooks as I could find. There are about three or maybe four series of Korean textbooks sold in Korea. So, I bought all of them. I chose one that I only did with my teacher. The others I did on my own. You can get level one textbooks for free; just ask other foreigners who gave up on learning Korean. They will often pass the books on to you. Just write in them and fill them with ink, writing and rewriting each exercise.</p>
<p>My teacher and I went on like this for about a month or six weeks. Everyday, she read for me. In the evenings, I listened to the listening for that book and the listening for the other books which I read on my own.</p>
<p>Eventually, when I started speaking, I only read out my answers from my main textbook while my teacher and I marked my homework.</p>
<p>With the Korean language, the listening/speaking is not difficult in the sense of getting the pronunciation right. Actually, Korean, like Mandarin, has only a couple of sounds that we don't have in English; but the listening is difficult because of the complex Korean grammar and registers of speech. So, when you first start "speaking" it should really be just reading grammatically correct and appropriate answers from your book. I did this for hours with my teacher. Occasionally, she would ask me something that wasn't in the book, but I would refuse to answer. You don't want to start "creating" speech until you are ready. Stick with canned speaking practice for several more weeks.</p>
<p>Finally, you can start speaking. Again, it would be best to wait till the end of 800 hours, but this is not a reality for most people living in the country. So, maybe you start speaking at the end of two months of lessons. My vocabulary was already 2,000 words when I began speaking. And even then, I kept my speaking limited to what was in the book and, eventually, variations of what was in the book. You should move your reading and listening away from the book and into the real world pretty early on. But your speaking needs to stay in the sterile book world or you will create mistakes that you will never, ever be able to shake.</p>
<p>With all of my languages, once my listening gets to an acceptable level, I encourage people in the real world to talk to me in Korean, but I answer in English. The longer you stay at that level and the more total listening you do, the better your Korean will be when you open up your mouth and start speaking.</p>
<p>If you jump right into speaking, as most teachers want you to do, you will most likely never approach fluency. You will make errors of grammar and appropriateness of speech. Depending upon how early you start speaking you may even make mistakes in pronunciation which is truly sad because Korean is so perfect and easy to pronounce.</p>
<p>The keys to language learning are: dedication, hard work, listening, and discipline to avoid giving in to the temptation to speak too early.</p> | false | 1 | normally automatic language growth alg theory says 800 hours listening start speaking writing reading last reality however alg school bangkok nearly impossible arrange type lessons takes two years strict alg learn category three language chinese thai korean people working foreign country cant invest two years learning particularly one year two year contract modify alg learning writing next founders alg concentrated teach thai foreigners taking alg thailand applying countries personal feeling game changes bit unlike thai korean tonal pronunciation simple consonant vowel consonant vowel second thai writing system extremely complex really shouldnt learn read functional knowledge language case korean hangul one easiest perfect writing systems ever developed people learn hangul week read literally anything korean normally tell people read last read internal monologue imperfect havent done sufficient listening first suggest speed process also learn language well buy university level korean textbook hire private tutor korean teachers generally want spend first several lessons alphabet dont let dont worry alphabet weeks probably better hire young university student intimidate teaching way want learn opposed hiring experienced teacher knows one way argue fight tutor read dialogues book home listen audio cds book start teacher teach symbols characters hangul follow along finger teacher reads two three weeks begin make guesses different characters sound like begin recognize words slowly gain rhythm language several weeks could spend single lesson alphabet ensure know letter sounds like recognize read night follow written words page listen cds start writing point help reinforce hearing learning remember listening still key learning language avoid fossilizing mistakes never write assignment allow teacher take home mark go every assignment verbally teacher number times go home write next day go homework verbally teacher teacher reads corrects listen write think homework talking point something help focus contextualize listening dont speak yet korean language bought many levelone textbooks could find three maybe four series korean textbooks sold korea bought chose one teacher others get level one textbooks free ask foreigners gave learning korean often pass books write fill ink writing rewriting exercise teacher went like month six weeks everyday read evenings listened listening book listening books read eventually started speaking read answers main textbook teacher marked homework korean language listeningspeaking difficult sense getting pronunciation right actually korean like mandarin couple sounds dont english listening difficult complex korean grammar registers speech first start speaking really reading grammatically correct appropriate answers book hours teacher occasionally would ask something wasnt book would refuse answer dont want start creating speech ready stick canned speaking practice several weeks finally start speaking would best wait till end 800 hours reality people living country maybe start speaking end two months lessons vocabulary already 2000 words began speaking even kept speaking limited book eventually variations book move reading listening away book real world pretty early speaking needs stay sterile book world create mistakes never ever able shake languages listening gets acceptable level encourage people real world talk korean answer english longer stay level total listening better korean open mouth start speaking jump right speaking teachers want likely never approach fluency make errors grammar appropriateness speech depending upon early start speaking may even make mistakes pronunciation truly sad korean perfect easy pronounce keys language learning dedication hard work listening discipline avoid giving temptation speak early | 537 |
<p>Cable pioneer <a href="http://variety.com/t/john-hendricks/" type="external">John Hendricks</a>, founder of Discovery Communications, made a fortune from pay TV.</p>
<p>Now he’s betting big on internet-delivered TV, a la Netflix and Hulu — investing nearly $100 million in his two-and-a-half-year-old subscription streaming-video venture, <a href="http://variety.com/t/curiositystream/" type="external">CuriosityStream</a>, which offers a bouquet of Discovery-like documentaries and nonfiction science, nature, history and technology programming.</p>
<p><a href="http://variety.com/2015/digital/news/john-hendricks-founder-of-discovery-channel-launches-internet-subscription-vod-service-1201405495/" type="external">CuriosityStream launched in March 2015</a>&#160;as a direct-to-consumer offering. But Hendricks, versed on the distribution power of cable TV, sees the big opportunity for CuriosityStream in getting bundled with other internet-video subscription providers.</p>
<p>Hendricks’ latest deal is with Dish Network’s <a href="http://variety.com/t/sling-tv/" type="external">Sling TV</a>, which on Thursday will begin offering CuriosityStream to subscribers, priced at $6 per month (the same as the standalone HD version of the subscription VOD service).&#160; “It’s on-demand access to content without commercials. That’s the unstoppable future,” he said.</p>
<p>While in industry jargon the model has been dubbed “over the top,” Hendricks doesn’t like that terminology. CuriosityStream’s strategy is “how do we go ‘back through the middle,’” said Hendricks, who stepped down as <a href="http://variety.com/2014/tv/news/cable-pioneer-john-hendricks-to-retire-from-discovery-communications-1201141009/" type="external">chairman of Discovery Communications</a> in 2014.</p>
<p>CuriosityStream now has 10 distribution agreements in place, which will put the SVOD service in front of more than 50 million subscribers, according to Hendricks. With the addition of <a href="http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/pay-tv-cord-cutting-hulu-skinny-bundle-1202419181/" type="external">Sling TV</a>, it’s gone live with five so far, including Comcast’s Xfinity X1, Amazon Channels, Ellation’s VRV, and Layer 3. (Hendricks declined to identify the five other partners.)</p>
<p>CuriosityStream offers more than 1,500 titles, including more than 600 original and exclusive documentaries. In 2018, Hendricks is shooting for the service to offer close to 2,600 titles, including 1,200 originals.</p>
<p>Current content on the service includes Emmy-winning documentary “Stephen Hawking’s Favorite Places” and&#160;David Attenborough’s “Light on Earth,” about bioluminescent animals (which cost $800,000 to produce, according to Hendricks). Original series include tech program “DIGITS,” “Deep Time History” and “Ancient Earth,” with new programs added each week.</p>
<p>Once CuriosityStream is widely distributed across those 10 partners (and potentially others), Hendricks plans to launch an aggressive advertising campaign. He estimates the company will begin spending $5 million to $10 million per month on marketing in 2018. CuriosityStream spent $1.25 million on TV spots over a three-month period in a test earlier this year (from February-April 2017) and that grew the number of unique visitors to its site fivefold, to 7.5 million unique visitors total. “With that response, we started looking in earnest at how to accelerate this,” Hendricks said.</p>
<p>For Sling TV’s part, the addition of CuriosityStream is aimed at helping it stand out from other “virtual” pay-TV services. Also Thursday, Sling TV&#160;launched add-on SVOD packages for the UP Faith &amp; Family and <a href="http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/lionsgate-pantaya-spanish-language-streaming-service-1202511945/" type="external">Pantaya, a joint venture between Lionsgate and Hemisphere Media Group</a> that features exclusive Spanish-language movies.</p>
<p>“What we believe is customers who are moving to an OTT model want a more customized, tailored offering,” said Ankit Bishnoi, Sling TV’s VP of content acquisition and strategy. “We’re not interested in just replicating the pay-TV model. It’s all about options, and the ability to add different kinds of genres.” Launched in January 2015, Sling TV had between 1.5 million and 1.7 million subscribers as of the third quarter of 2017, according to analyst estimates.</p>
<p>CuriosityStream currently has a bit over 50 employees; Hendricks said he launched the Discovery Channel with 23 employees in 1985. “I haven’t had this much fun since the early days of cable,” said Hendricks.</p>
<p>The company, Curiosity Project LLC, is based in Silver Spring, Md., literally across the street from Discovery’s HQ. Ex-Discovery execs now at CuriosityStream include chief programming officer Steve Burns and chief distribution officer Clint Stinchcomb; the company’s president and CEO is Elizabeth Hendricks North, <a href="http://variety.com/2013/film/news/alex-gibney-laura-poitras-geralyn-dreyfous-to-be-honored-at-ida-documentary-awards-1200668169/" type="external">John Hendricks</a>’ daughter.</p>
<p>CuriosityStream is available across multiple devices, including Apple TV, Roku, iOS, Android, Xbox One, Google Chromecast, Amazon Fire TV, and smart TVs from Sony, LG and Samsung. Each platform required about 3-4 months of development work, according to Hendricks, but he believes the investment in tech is essential: “Like Netflix, we want to control the strategic piece of technology that handles our interface,” he said.</p>
<p>As a standalone service, CuriosityStream is available in three packages:&#160;standard definition&#160;for $2.99 per month; standard HD for $5.99 per month; and 4K Ultra HD for $11.99 per month. Next year, Hendricks is looking at introducing a new annual subscription plan, potentially $19.99 per year, that would reduce churn and eliminate credit-card processing overhead.</p>
<p>To Hendricks, the fat multichannel bundle is headed to the dustbin of history — and Sling TV, Netflix, Hulu, CuriosityStream and other OTT services represent the next generation for television delivery.</p>
<p>“Consumers are constructing their own skinny bundles,” he said. “I gotta have movies, TV shows, the best of TV on demand — and then what CuriosityStream is fulfilling is factual entertainment.”</p> | false | 1 | cable pioneer john hendricks founder discovery communications made fortune pay tv hes betting big internetdelivered tv la netflix hulu investing nearly 100 million twoandahalfyearold subscription streamingvideo venture curiositystream offers bouquet discoverylike documentaries nonfiction science nature history technology programming curiositystream launched march 2015160as directtoconsumer offering hendricks versed distribution power cable tv sees big opportunity curiositystream getting bundled internetvideo subscription providers hendricks latest deal dish networks sling tv thursday begin offering curiositystream subscribers priced 6 per month standalone hd version subscription vod service160 ondemand access content without commercials thats unstoppable future said industry jargon model dubbed top hendricks doesnt like terminology curiositystreams strategy go back middle said hendricks stepped chairman discovery communications 2014 curiositystream 10 distribution agreements place put svod service front 50 million subscribers according hendricks addition sling tv gone live five far including comcasts xfinity x1 amazon channels ellations vrv layer 3 hendricks declined identify five partners curiositystream offers 1500 titles including 600 original exclusive documentaries 2018 hendricks shooting service offer close 2600 titles including 1200 originals current content service includes emmywinning documentary stephen hawkings favorite places and160david attenboroughs light earth bioluminescent animals cost 800000 produce according hendricks original series include tech program digits deep time history ancient earth new programs added week curiositystream widely distributed across 10 partners potentially others hendricks plans launch aggressive advertising campaign estimates company begin spending 5 million 10 million per month marketing 2018 curiositystream spent 125 million tv spots threemonth period test earlier year februaryapril 2017 grew number unique visitors site fivefold 75 million unique visitors total response started looking earnest accelerate hendricks said sling tvs part addition curiositystream aimed helping stand virtual paytv services also thursday sling tv160launched addon svod packages faith amp family pantaya joint venture lionsgate hemisphere media group features exclusive spanishlanguage movies believe customers moving ott model want customized tailored offering said ankit bishnoi sling tvs vp content acquisition strategy interested replicating paytv model options ability add different kinds genres launched january 2015 sling tv 15 million 17 million subscribers third quarter 2017 according analyst estimates curiositystream currently bit 50 employees hendricks said launched discovery channel 23 employees 1985 havent much fun since early days cable said hendricks company curiosity project llc based silver spring md literally across street discoverys hq exdiscovery execs curiositystream include chief programming officer steve burns chief distribution officer clint stinchcomb companys president ceo elizabeth hendricks north john hendricks daughter curiositystream available across multiple devices including apple tv roku ios android xbox one google chromecast amazon fire tv smart tvs sony lg samsung platform required 34 months development work according hendricks believes investment tech essential like netflix want control strategic piece technology handles interface said standalone service curiositystream available three packages160standard definition160for 299 per month standard hd 599 per month 4k ultra hd 1199 per month next year hendricks looking introducing new annual subscription plan potentially 1999 per year would reduce churn eliminate creditcard processing overhead hendricks fat multichannel bundle headed dustbin history sling tv netflix hulu curiositystream ott services represent next generation television delivery consumers constructing skinny bundles said got ta movies tv shows best tv demand curiositystream fulfilling factual entertainment | 516 |
<p>For the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People to be truly meaningful, it must be reclaimed by Palestinians.</p>
<p>The Palestine Solidarity Campaign has designated the week, November 25 to December 3, as the ‘biggest-ever campaign’ aimed at boycotting Israeli products and those of companies that contribute to the Israeli military occupation of Palestine.</p>
<p>In a recently issued press release, <a href="http://www.palestinechronicle.com/fighting-back-bds-activists-to-launch-biggest-ever-campaign/" type="external">the civil society-led group highlighted</a> “99 actions that will take place across the world to highlight what they described as ‘HP companies’ complicity in Israel’s violations of international law and human rights abuses.”</p>
<p>BDS activities are expected to be staged across at least 18 countries, spanning 6 continents.</p>
<p>The sharp increase in the boycott campaign activism is a direct result of Israeli pressure—joined by western governments—to thwart the boycott movement. Even financial institutions, such as the <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/bank-of-ireland-s-closure-of-palestine-solidarity-accounts-1.2855014" type="external">Bank of Ireland</a>, have joined in on these efforts, shutting solidarity groups’ accounts and simply trying to raise the price tag for those who dare to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people.</p>
<p>However, it seems that the harder Israel tries to impede BDS, the greater the attention and sympathy the BDS movement garners. In some way, Israel’s frantic reaction has helped BDS spread its influence and expand the parameters of debate on the conflict in Palestine. In such scenarios, it is most likely that civil societies, not government intimidation, will eventually prevail—as previous experiences, the anti-Apartheid South Africa movement notwithstanding, have shown.</p>
<p>It has also become clear that, while solidarity with Palestine has crossed many thresholds and overcome repeated obstacles in recent years, Palestinians themselves are reaching out to other marginalized groups, including <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20160711-whether-they-are-african-american-or-palestinian-all-lives-matter/" type="external">African Americans</a>, <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/steven-salaita/native-american-model-palestines-future" type="external">Native Americans</a> and the <a href="http://www.alternativenews.org/index.php/features-02/256-solidarity-without-borders-brazil-s-mst-in-palestine" type="external">Landless Movement in Brazil</a>. This reflects a growing maturity, as the latter are the natural allies of the Palestinian people.</p>
<p>The week of November 25, however, <a href="https://bdsmovement.net/boycott-hp/week-of-action" type="external">was not chosen randomly</a>, for November 29 is the ‘International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People’.</p>
<p>So what is the November 29 ‘Day of Solidarity’ all about? Interestingly, the <a href="http://www.un.org/en/events/palestinianday/" type="external">history behind that specific date</a> is quite an ominous one.</p>
<p>Palestine was partitioned, unjustly, on November 29, 1947. [Editor’s note: Resolution 181 recommended partition, but this was <a href="" type="internal">never implemented</a>.] There was no moral or legal basis for that partition, <a href="https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/7F0AF2BD897689B785256C330061D253" type="external">as communicated in UN resolution 181 (II)</a> into a ‘Jewish State’ and an ‘Arab State’. Jewish immigrants were granted 55 percent of the total size of historic Palestine and the ‘Arab State’, which never actualized, was accorded the rest. Jerusalem was to be given a special legal and political status, known in Latin as ‘corpus separatum’, and was to be governed through an international regime.</p>
<p>A few months after that unwarranted partition, <a href="http://imeu.org/article/65th-anniversary-of-the-adoption-of-plan-dalet" type="external">well-trained Zionist militias moved from several fronts</a> to ‘secure’ the borders of their promised state, only to take over half of what was designated for the future of the Palestinian state, leaving the indigenous Palestinian Arab population of that land with 22 percent of historic Palestine.</p>
<p>In June 1967, the Israeli army conquered whatever remained of Palestine. As a direct result of both military campaigns, <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/interactive/2015/05/ethnic-cleansing-palestine-150514130231067.html" type="external">millions of Palestinians became refugees</a>.</p>
<p>The International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People was designated to be a day of solidarity almost exactly 30 years after the partition plan took place. It was announced in successive resolutions, firstly in December 1977 (Res. 32/40 B) and, secondly, more substance to that resolution was added in December 1979 (Res. 34/65 D).</p>
<p>These resolutions crowned thirty years of unmitigated failure on the part of the international community to aid in the establishment of a Palestinian state, which was even unsuccessful in imposing any form of punishment on the 30-year-old ‘Jewish State’ for <a href="" type="internal">repeatedly violating international law</a> and every legal principle upon which it was established.</p>
<p>One cannot deny the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/11/07/map-the-countries-that-recognize-palestine-as-a-state/" type="external">role of the numerous friendly nations</a>, mostly from the South, that stood by Palestine’s side at every turn and, at times, faced the wrath of the US and Western governments for their unfaltering solidarity. However, <a href="http://www.juancole.com/2015/04/worlds-recognize-palestine.html" type="external">the nature and the timing</a> of these resolutions were seen as mere tokens, symbolic gestures at best, to show solidarity in words only and not action.</p>
<p>According to a <a href="http://www.un.org/en/events/palestinianday/background.shtml" type="external">UN document relevant to the day of solidarity</a>, the purpose of&#160;November 29 is to provide the “opportunity for the international community to focus its attention on the fact that the question of Palestine remained unresolved and that the Palestinian people are yet to attain their inalienable rights as defined by the General Assembly.”</p>
<p>Yet, little has been done in the last 39 years to implement any one of them, either partially or wholly. No practical mechanism has been set forth. No legal apparatus has been introduced to aid Palestinians in their efforts at achieving meaningful independence, or reprimand those who deny the Palestinian people their legal rights and political aspirations.</p>
<p>Any such recommendations for meaningful interference on behalf of occupied, oppressed Palestinians were thwarted, repeatedly: obstructed by United States’ vetoes at the UN, hindered in myriad ways by Israel and its western allies.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, since the original partition resolution passed in 1947, and to this today, the Palestinian cause has been feeding on symbolism—symbolic solidarity, symbolic victories and so on.</p>
<p>This is not meant to undermine the significance of that day. However, to live up to the meaning of its designated title, the day must be repossessed, taken away from guarded diplomats with carefully-worded language, and given back to the people. In fact, Palestinian solidarity is now a global phenomenon: this is the perfect opportunity to make November 29 a day of strategy and global action, led by civil societies across the world.</p>
<p>Civil society can use the day of solidarity as an opportunity to place pressure on their governments to move beyond symbolic gestures into meaningful action. This effort is most important in western societies, especially in the United States, that has served as a shield and benefactor for Israel for too many years.</p>
<p>The United Nations, and all relevant platforms within the world’s largest international institution, must be persuaded to produce a workable mechanism to bring an end to Israeli occupation and offer Palestinians a true political horizon.</p>
<p>Moreover, a day of solidarity that is based upon the political reality of nearly four decades ago and shaped by an understanding of the conflict from nearly seven decades ago, while admirable in principle, would have to be revised. A so-called ‘two-state solution’ is neither just, nor practical or feasible.</p>
<p>A new narrative must take hold, in which the ‘question of Palestine’ is not framed as if a ‘refugee problem’ or a ‘humanitarian crisis’ to be remedied with verbal solidarity and food aid, but as a pressing political crisis in which the injured party must be unconditionally supported.</p>
<p>Any solidarity that deviates from the current aspirations of Palestinians—as articulated by their fighting women and men, by their prisoners on hunger strikes, by their students fighting for the right to education, by these resilient, but often neglected voices—is not true solidarity.</p>
<p>For the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People to be truly meaningful, it must be reclaimed, by Palestinians and their friends all across the globe.</p> | false | 1 | international day solidarity palestinian people truly meaningful must reclaimed palestinians palestine solidarity campaign designated week november 25 december 3 biggestever campaign aimed boycotting israeli products companies contribute israeli military occupation palestine recently issued press release civil societyled group highlighted 99 actions take place across world highlight described hp companies complicity israels violations international law human rights abuses bds activities expected staged across least 18 countries spanning 6 continents sharp increase boycott campaign activism direct result israeli pressurejoined western governmentsto thwart boycott movement even financial institutions bank ireland joined efforts shutting solidarity groups accounts simply trying raise price tag dare stand solidarity palestinian people however seems harder israel tries impede bds greater attention sympathy bds movement garners way israels frantic reaction helped bds spread influence expand parameters debate conflict palestine scenarios likely civil societies government intimidation eventually prevailas previous experiences antiapartheid south africa movement notwithstanding shown also become clear solidarity palestine crossed many thresholds overcome repeated obstacles recent years palestinians reaching marginalized groups including african americans native americans landless movement brazil reflects growing maturity latter natural allies palestinian people week november 25 however chosen randomly november 29 international day solidarity palestinian people november 29 day solidarity interestingly history behind specific date quite ominous one palestine partitioned unjustly november 29 1947 editors note resolution 181 recommended partition never implemented moral legal basis partition communicated un resolution 181 ii jewish state arab state jewish immigrants granted 55 percent total size historic palestine arab state never actualized accorded rest jerusalem given special legal political status known latin corpus separatum governed international regime months unwarranted partition welltrained zionist militias moved several fronts secure borders promised state take half designated future palestinian state leaving indigenous palestinian arab population land 22 percent historic palestine june 1967 israeli army conquered whatever remained palestine direct result military campaigns millions palestinians became refugees international day solidarity palestinian people designated day solidarity almost exactly 30 years partition plan took place announced successive resolutions firstly december 1977 res 3240 b secondly substance resolution added december 1979 res 3465 resolutions crowned thirty years unmitigated failure part international community aid establishment palestinian state even unsuccessful imposing form punishment 30yearold jewish state repeatedly violating international law every legal principle upon established one deny role numerous friendly nations mostly south stood palestines side every turn times faced wrath us western governments unfaltering solidarity however nature timing resolutions seen mere tokens symbolic gestures best show solidarity words action according un document relevant day solidarity purpose of160november 29 provide opportunity international community focus attention fact question palestine remained unresolved palestinian people yet attain inalienable rights defined general assembly yet little done last 39 years implement one either partially wholly practical mechanism set forth legal apparatus introduced aid palestinians efforts achieving meaningful independence reprimand deny palestinian people legal rights political aspirations recommendations meaningful interference behalf occupied oppressed palestinians thwarted repeatedly obstructed united states vetoes un hindered myriad ways israel western allies unfortunately since original partition resolution passed 1947 today palestinian cause feeding symbolismsymbolic solidarity symbolic victories meant undermine significance day however live meaning designated title day must repossessed taken away guarded diplomats carefullyworded language given back people fact palestinian solidarity global phenomenon perfect opportunity make november 29 day strategy global action led civil societies across world civil society use day solidarity opportunity place pressure governments move beyond symbolic gestures meaningful action effort important western societies especially united states served shield benefactor israel many years united nations relevant platforms within worlds largest international institution must persuaded produce workable mechanism bring end israeli occupation offer palestinians true political horizon moreover day solidarity based upon political reality nearly four decades ago shaped understanding conflict nearly seven decades ago admirable principle would revised socalled twostate solution neither practical feasible new narrative must take hold question palestine framed refugee problem humanitarian crisis remedied verbal solidarity food aid pressing political crisis injured party must unconditionally supported solidarity deviates current aspirations palestiniansas articulated fighting women men prisoners hunger strikes students fighting right education resilient often neglected voicesis true solidarity international day solidarity palestinian people truly meaningful must reclaimed palestinians friends across globe | 676 |
<p>Migrants wait as the self-important leaders of Europe decide whether political expediency has a higher value than that of human life.</p>
<p>The issue of migrants from Africa attempting to make their way to Europe has been on the front pages of the continent’s various newspapers, and it’s no secret that, as summer brings warmer weather, the surge of migrants risking life and limb on the journey to a better life will again kick into high gear. This is a problem that Europe cannot ignore, even less now than in previous years. But are Europe and the Commission living up to their clear moral responsibilities to these migrants?</p>
<p>The scope of the problem is gargantuan. There are more than&#160; <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2016/05/31/new-long-term-support-for-displaced-populations-in-africa" type="external">eighteen million displaced persons and refugees</a>&#160;in Africa, the highest this number has been in history. Eight armed conflicts have begun or intensified since 2010, resulting in a seventeen percent spike in the number of refugees and displaced persons in Sub-Saharan Africa, per UNHCR. One significant source is Yemen, where Houthi Shia rebels overthrew the Yemeni government last spring. Saudi Arabia responded with an unrelenting rain of steel, and thirty-five thousand people fled the country as a result. Now most of those refugees are stuck in camps in&#160; <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/04/08/djiboutis-presidential-elections-the-crackdown-continues/" type="external">Djibouti</a>, where grinding poverty is the norm, human rights are a myth, and the only thing keeping the population from hanging government leaders from lampposts is the sensory-dulling effects of&#160; <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/longforms/2015/djibouti/inside-the-tiny-police-state-with-seven-armies.html" type="external">khat</a>.</p>
<p>Although the problem is massive, there has been some movement in the right direction to address it. In late May, the World Bank&#160; <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2016/05/31/horn-of-africa-world-bank-175-million-financing-supports-regional-initiative-on-communities-hosting-refugees" type="external">announced</a>&#160;that it has made available $175 million in loans to alleviate the burden of forced migrants to countries in the Horn of Africa. The organization boasted having earmarked $100 million for Ethiopia, $50 million for Uganda, $20 million for Djibouti, all at low or no interest (as if it is some sort of noble gesture to charge only a little interest on loans to help refugees!) as well as tendering a $5 million grant to the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD).</p>
<p>For its part, the EU has pitched a little in the hat as well. Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos&#160; <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/european-agenda-migration/proposal-implementation-package/docs/20160607/communication_external_aspects_eam_towards_new_migration_ompact_en.pdf" type="external">indicated</a>&#160;that aid to war-torn regions like Jordan, Libya, Ethiopia and Nigeria could reach $70 billion. However, some portion of the funds are to be used for border surveillance equipment, police training and other technical support to stop migrants heading north onto the continent—all <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-19/nigeria-s-5-5-billion-arms-scandal-tests-buhari-s-war-on-graft" type="external">traditional outlets</a>&#160;for money grubbing elites never afraid to syphon cash from the defense budget. How funding more of such measures is intended to help migrants is unclear.</p>
<p>Nigeria’s army and police force is accused by&#160; <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/06/nigeria-senior-members-of-military-must-be-investigated-for-war-crimes/" type="external">Amnesty International</a>&#160;of committing war crimes against its own people, including 8,000 victims “murdered, starved, suffocated and tortured to death”. Uganda’s military is a byword for&#160; <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3526275.stm" type="external">corruption</a>, while Ethiopia is among the worst offenders in the world for press freedom. Even pocket-seized Djibouti has a near-encyclopedic record of human rights abuses that will only grow after President Ismail Omar Guelleh signed a deal to&#160; <a href="http://www.internationalpolicydigest.org/2015/12/07/is-china-s-design-for-africa-indentured-capitalism/" type="external">host</a>&#160;a massive Chinese military base on its territory.</p>
<p>One wonders if the aid package is simply part of a wider effort by the EU to keep refugees off the continent. Just days ago the EC promised a “ <a href="http://www.politico.eu/article/eu-plans-africa-cash-for-cooperation-migration-deal-europe/" type="external">results oriented</a>” approach to the problem by paying off African governments if they’d just do a better job keeping their refugees at home. Clearly the result the EC desires is to keep the problem at arm’s length, essentially giving billions of euros to the same corrupt and abusive dictators that pushed people to vote with their feet and leave. Countries like Eritrea and Sudan are already under sanctions for significant and widespread human rights abuses, while&#160; <a href="http://www.ghananewsagency.org/africa/icc-keeps-an-eye-on-djibouti-100257" type="external">Djibouti</a>&#160;is being investigated by the International Criminal Court—what guarantee can the EC give that its money won’t go to fund even more of the same?</p>
<p>The answer is that Europe simply can’t guarantee its money will stop human rights crises. At best, it will simply force migrants to trade one hell for another. The dirty deal struck between the EC and Turkey is proof enough of that—although the Eastern Mediterranean is now basically off-limits to migrants, the arrangement has simply moved the trail west. Now migrants face a much higher risk of a watery grave in the&#160; <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/08/how-to-end-massacre-in-mediterranean-libya-europe-migration-crisis/" type="external">Central Mediterranean</a>, which is quite possibly a more dangerous trip than the one to the east. Thousands died attempting the trip last summer. Seven hundred souls&#160; <a href="https://next.ft.com/content/aeeba046-25a3-11e6-8ba3-cdd781d02d89" type="external">perished</a> there in the last week of May alone. Another eight hundred thousand are waiting to make the same trip in Libya, which has no central government to speak of after the United States and its cohorts overthrew Muammar al-Qaddafi in 2011. Proposing to bribe that country’s central “authority” into implementing stricter border controls borders on folly.</p>
<p>Erecting more barriers to migrants is a front-burner issue for the EC, likely because of the announced&#160; <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/kenya-to-close-refugee-camps-amid-security-and-economic-concerns/a-19240991" type="external">closure</a>&#160;of the&#160; <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/29/half-a-million-refugees-who-dont-exist-ben-rawlences-city-of-thorns/" type="external">Daadab and Kakuma refugee camps</a>&#160;in Kenya – a move that has been roundly condemned by human rights groups around the world. Closure of these camps will leave over half a million migrants looking for a new home, which certainly has just about every member of the EC shaking in his or her respective boots.</p>
<p>Europe must maintain the façade of concern however, lest its citizens become too restless about the migrant crisis. The&#160; <a href="https://www.worldhumanitariansummit.org/" type="external">World Humanitarian Summit</a>, held in Istanbul earlier this month, did much to keep the myth alive, or so Europe’s oligarchy hopes. Daniel Craig and Ashley Judd took a break from their difficult jobs of playing pretend and stopped in to receive adulation, but other than German Chancellor Angela Merkel, none of the other six G7 leaders&#160; <a href="http://www.un.org/sg/offthecuff/index.asp?cuff=1" type="external">bothered</a>&#160;to show. Diplomats drafted high-minded documents that meant nothing, but made all the participants happy with themselves. Ban Ki-moon declared the summit a step in the long, arduous road to change that must be navigated by his “ <a href="http://www.un.org/press/en/2016/sgsm17785.doc.htm" type="external">true humanitarian heroes</a>.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of our fellow humans wait. They wait after fleeing horrors in their own countries that would make Dante’s nightmares wilt. They wait, considering whether the very real possibility of death is worth facing if there is even the slimmest chance of washing ashore on the beaches of a land offering them the kind of hope and opportunity they didn’t dare dream of in their home countries. They wait, as the self-important leaders of Europe decide whether political expediency has a higher value than that of human life.</p> | false | 1 | migrants wait selfimportant leaders europe decide whether political expediency higher value human life issue migrants africa attempting make way europe front pages continents various newspapers secret summer brings warmer weather surge migrants risking life limb journey better life kick high gear problem europe ignore even less previous years europe commission living clear moral responsibilities migrants scope problem gargantuan than160 eighteen million displaced persons refugees160in africa highest number history eight armed conflicts begun intensified since 2010 resulting seventeen percent spike number refugees displaced persons subsaharan africa per unhcr one significant source yemen houthi shia rebels overthrew yemeni government last spring saudi arabia responded unrelenting rain steel thirtyfive thousand people fled country result refugees stuck camps in160 djibouti grinding poverty norm human rights myth thing keeping population hanging government leaders lampposts sensorydulling effects of160 khat although problem massive movement right direction address late may world bank160 announced160that made available 175 million loans alleviate burden forced migrants countries horn africa organization boasted earmarked 100 million ethiopia 50 million uganda 20 million djibouti low interest sort noble gesture charge little interest loans help refugees well tendering 5 million grant intergovernmental authority development igad part eu pitched little hat well migration commissioner dimitris avramopoulos160 indicated160that aid wartorn regions like jordan libya ethiopia nigeria could reach 70 billion however portion funds used border surveillance equipment police training technical support stop migrants heading north onto continentall traditional outlets160for money grubbing elites never afraid syphon cash defense budget funding measures intended help migrants unclear nigerias army police force accused by160 amnesty international160of committing war crimes people including 8000 victims murdered starved suffocated tortured death ugandas military byword for160 corruption ethiopia among worst offenders world press freedom even pocketseized djibouti nearencyclopedic record human rights abuses grow president ismail omar guelleh signed deal to160 host160a massive chinese military base territory one wonders aid package simply part wider effort eu keep refugees continent days ago ec promised results oriented approach problem paying african governments theyd better job keeping refugees home clearly result ec desires keep problem arms length essentially giving billions euros corrupt abusive dictators pushed people vote feet leave countries like eritrea sudan already sanctions significant widespread human rights abuses while160 djibouti160is investigated international criminal courtwhat guarantee ec give money wont go fund even answer europe simply cant guarantee money stop human rights crises best simply force migrants trade one hell another dirty deal struck ec turkey proof enough thatalthough eastern mediterranean basically offlimits migrants arrangement simply moved trail west migrants face much higher risk watery grave the160 central mediterranean quite possibly dangerous trip one east thousands died attempting trip last summer seven hundred souls160 perished last week may alone another eight hundred thousand waiting make trip libya central government speak united states cohorts overthrew muammar alqaddafi 2011 proposing bribe countrys central authority implementing stricter border controls borders folly erecting barriers migrants frontburner issue ec likely announced160 closure160of the160 daadab kakuma refugee camps160in kenya move roundly condemned human rights groups around world closure camps leave half million migrants looking new home certainly every member ec shaking respective boots europe must maintain façade concern however lest citizens become restless migrant crisis the160 world humanitarian summit held istanbul earlier month much keep myth alive europes oligarchy hopes daniel craig ashley judd took break difficult jobs playing pretend stopped receive adulation german chancellor angela merkel none six g7 leaders160 bothered160to show diplomats drafted highminded documents meant nothing made participants happy ban kimoon declared summit step long arduous road change must navigated true humanitarian heroes meanwhile hundreds thousands fellow humans wait wait fleeing horrors countries would make dantes nightmares wilt wait considering whether real possibility death worth facing even slimmest chance washing ashore beaches land offering kind hope opportunity didnt dare dream home countries wait selfimportant leaders europe decide whether political expediency higher value human life | 632 |
<p>The past few years have put the size and role of government at center stage of our national politics. But the raging debates about how much Washington is doing and spending have involved almost exclusively yes-or-no questions about the left’s vision of government. The right has been very clear about what government should not be doing, or should be doing much less of, but it has not had nearly enough to say about just what government&#160;should&#160;do.</p>
<p>It is not hard to see why. The Obama years have set a high-water mark for the size and reach of the federal government, including a post-World War II record for federal spending as a percentage of gross domestic product at 25.2% (for comparison, the post-war average has been 19.8%). The United States has amassed more than $6 trillion in debt since January 2009. Prior to Obama, no president had submitted a budget with a trillion-dollar deficit; he has submitted four of them. And even as the administration’s projections for the coming years promise smaller deficits, they also promise a larger and more expensive government than Americans have ever seen.</p>
<p>The president’s defenders maintain that the circumstances he inherited — an epic financial collapse that drained revenue from the Treasury and exploded the federal deficit — meant he had little choice but to spend our way out of trouble. They are surely right that Obama faced enormous economic challenges, many of which persist. But the president did not simply respond to an economic crisis: He leveraged that crisis to pursue longstanding goals consistent with his liberal ideology. Along the way, he extended the power of the federal government to an unprecedented degree, pushing through the largest stimulus package in history and, in a crowning act, a federal regulatory takeover of health insurance. And the president has always insisted that he would not be satisfied with half measures — that “the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little.”</p>
<p>What might be enough for him? Recall “The Life of Julia,” an interactive infographic released by the Obama campaign during the 2012 presidential race. It followed a fictional woman through every stage of her life from shortly after birth to just after retirement. Each cartoon image demonstrated, and celebrated, her utter dependence on government. Atomized, defenseless individuals sustained by the enfolding embrace of the state: Such, it would seem, is the Obama vision of Americans’ appropriate relation to their government.</p>
<p>The administration’s federal power grabs have hardly gone unopposed, of course. Channeling public alarm, particularly regarding the stimulus and health-care legislation, the Republican Party scored a historic victory in the 2010 mid-term elections. Since then, the Republican-controlled House has sought to restrain and re-limit government, including championing key reforms to Medicare. And Republican lawmakers have provided an effective counterweight to presidential overreach — significantly restraining spending since 2011 and preventing further leftward legislative leaps.</p>
<p>Republicans have argued that unrestrained spending, and particularly unreformed entitlements, will burden the nation with unmanageable levels of debt in the coming decades and starve the budget of funds for other essential purposes. They further contend that a large, meddlesome, intrusive state not only undermines the private economy but also crowds out civil society and enervates civic character.</p>
<p>They have therefore been fairly clear, and quite emphatic, about what they believe the government should not be doing. But if it is true, as they have argued, that the Democrats’ vision is a travesty of American government, then what is the proper and appropriate extent and purpose of that government?</p>
<p>Conservatives in recent years have not done enough to answer this question, and as a result have offered voters an oppositional view of government that, while perhaps stoking worry and resentment, is insufficient to build public trust in the prospect of a conservative government. And such a negative approach to the question of the role of government is not only electorally insufficient — it is unbecoming of conservatism and of the deep commitment that conservatives claim to the nation’s founding ideals.</p>
<p>THE ANTI-GOVERNMENT PARTY</p>
<p>Among some conservatives, the problem at times seems to run deeper than a failure to articulate a vision of government. Particularly among libertarians and some of those conservatives who identify with the Tea Party movement, government overreach has found its mirror image in fierce&#160;anti-government fervor.</p>
<p>That impulse is itself nothing new on the American right; what is different today is both its intensity and its widening appeal within conservative ranks. It involves a rhetorical zeal and indiscipline in which virtually every reference to government is negative, disparaging, and denigrating. It is justified by an apocalyptic narrative of American life: We are fast approaching a point of no return at which we stand to lose our basic liberties and our national character. “We have a couple of years to turn this country around,” according to Texas senator Ted Cruz, “or we go off the cliff to oblivion.” Obamacare, added 2012 GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, is evidence of a “police state.” In the struggle to conserve our liberty, it is now or never.</p>
<p>Perhaps not surprisingly, this prominent wing of the conservative coalition seems to regard conservatives who demur from its approach as themselves part of the problem, if not the main obstacle to its solution. Unwilling to see the extremity of the moment, and declining to support the all-out effort to confront it (for example, by shutting down the government in an effort to defund Obamacare), such conservatives and Republicans are accused of having objectively joined the other side.</p>
<p>This view is intensely felt — understandably, given the provocations of the last five years. It is, however, not only an incomplete understanding of the situation but a distortion of it, and an obstacle to achieving a properly conservative governing vision that will command the respect and win the support of a majority of the American people.</p>
<p>For conservatives who want to regain that support, and for Republicans who want a chance to govern, a crucial first step is to see the inadequacy of the oppositional and negative approach to the question of the government’s purpose and role. It is inadequate not simply because it fails to give Republicans enough to offer voters. It is inadequate because it does not amount to a conservative vision — on historical, philosophical, or practical grounds.</p>
<p>THE FOUNDERS AND THE STATE</p>
<p>At the heart of the oppositional view of government espoused by some libertarians and Tea Party leaders is a particular version of American history. Our national recovery, they insist, depends on returning to the governing philosophy of the American founders as it is embodied in the Constitution.</p>
<p>Many self-described leaders of the Tea Party movement seem to share the view expressed by Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe, authors of&#160; <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003UYUU44?tag=natioaffai-20" type="external">Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto</a>, that “[f]irst and foremost, the Tea Party movement is concerned with recovering constitutional principles in government.” Sarah Palin — former Alaska governor, 2008 GOP vice-presidential candidate, and Tea Party favorite — has said that to find the proper principles for America’s resurgence we should “go back to what our founders and our founding documents meant.” Utah senator Mike Lee, when running for office in 2010, summarized the attitude of many Tea Party candidates and activists when he said, “As your U.S. senator, I will not vote for a single bill that I can’t justify based on the text and the original understanding of the Constitution, no matter what the court says you can do.”</p>
<p>A recovery of constitutional ideals is, to be sure, a worthwhile endeavor — but it does not point quite where these leaders and activists often suggest. The federalist founders were indeed wary of the concentration of power in the federal government. At the same time, however, they did not — unlike some anti-federalist opponents of the Constitution — view government as an evil, or even as a necessary evil. Indeed, the most influential of the founders scorned such a view, referring to the “imbecility” of a weak central government (in the form of the Articles of Confederation) compared to a relatively strong central government (which is what the Constitution created). In their view, government, properly understood and properly framed, was essential to promoting what they referred to as the “public good.”</p>
<p>It was in order to approximate this public good that James Madison, the key figure in the drafting of the Constitution, believed in a limited national government with requisite and adaptable powers. Citing (in Federalist No. 10) the “permanent and aggregate interests of the community,” he had in mind the interests of the whole republic, now and in the future . A “good government,” he added in Federalist No. 62, “implies two things: first, fidelity to the object of government, which is the happiness of the people; secondly, a knowledge of the means by which that object can be best attained.” Madison’s system was intended to employ such means to achieve that end. The Constitution did not simply create limits on government, as some of today’s conservative rhetoric seems to imply; it created a strong if bounded central government. It is important to speak up when those boundaries are breached, but it is important, too, to remember the aims of that government.</p>
<p>Madison acknowledged the positive need for a national government. So did Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, James Wilson, George Washington, and the other strong constitutionalists. This government was not meant to be frozen in amber. It would have the ability to adapt as necessary to meet citizens’ needs as those needs were expressed through representative government.</p>
<p>Some made this case more explicitly than did Madison (who nevertheless went so far as to support the Virginia Plan, which would have granted the central government the right to veto all state legislation). Hamilton, for instance, envisioned a strong commercial republic whose growing needs would require the federal government to promote the general welfare not only through those powers that were expressly stipulated but also those that were implied. “In construing a constitution,” said Hamilton, “it is wise, as far as possible, to pursue a course, which will reconcile essential principles with convenient modifications.”</p>
<p>For the most part, Washington endorsed Hamilton’s more expansive view of a government that would need to act (as Hamilton put it) in a “vast variety of particulars, which are susceptible neither of specification nor of definition” in advance. Even Thomas Jefferson, who was more skeptical of a strong federal authority, eventually made his own “convenient modifications.” As president, Jefferson managed to conclude the Louisiana Purchase without amending the Constitution to permit so massive an exercise of federal power.</p>
<p>The founders, then, provided us with a strong governing system — strong precisely because it could adapt to changing circumstances. The government created in the late 18th century by the inhabitants of a coastal, agrarian republic was designed to accommodate the development of a more spacious and ambitious nation: an eventuality that many of the founders foresaw and embraced. “We should consider that we are providing a Constitution for future generations, and not merely for the peculiar circumstances of the moment,” said James Wilson, a major force in drafting the Constitution and perhaps the most expressly “conservative” among the framers. John Rutledge told his colleagues that “[a]s we are laying the foundation for a great empire, we ought to take a permanent view of the subject and not look at the present moment only.” “In framing a system which we wish to last for ages,” Madison told the Constitutional Convention, “we should not lose sight of the changes which ages will produce.” And Hamilton, in Federalist No. 34, wrote:</p>
<p>In pursuing this inquiry, we must bear in mind that we are not to confine our view to the present period, but to look forward to remote futurity. Constitutions of civil government are not to be framed upon a calculation of existing exigencies, but upon a combination of these with the probable exigencies of ages, according to the natural and tried course of human affairs. Nothing, therefore, can be more fallacious than to infer the extent of any power proper to be lodged in the national government from an estimate of its immediate necessities. There ought to be a CAPACITY to provide for future contingencies as they may happen; and as these are illimitable in their nature, so it is impossible safely to limit that capacity.</p>
<p>It was in this spirit that they were able to leave to future leaders the resolution of certain inconsistencies in the American system, the gravest and most poisonous of them being the issue of slavery.</p>
<p>This is hardly to say that the founders, magically transported to the age of Obama, would approve of the current size and scope of the federal government. Nor is it to say that the founders were unconcerned about concentration of power; to the contrary, they were deeply concerned about it, which is why they created a system of checks and balances and the separation of powers. It is to say, however, that they would have little toleration for politicians who are committed to abstract theories even when they are at odds with the given world and the welfare of the polity — who fail to differentiate between conserving the system by adapting it to changing circumstances and undermining the system by breaking with its fundamental aims and outlook.</p>
<p>The case against the aggrandizement of federal power must be made in the context of the case in favor of appropriate federal power — not in the service of a theory that leaves far too little room for genuine self-government.</p>
<p>THE LEGITIMATE OBJECT</p>
<p>In important respects, Abraham Lincoln continued the philosophical arc of the framers of the Constitution. No president revered the founders as much, spoke about them as often, or read them as closely as did Lincoln. His presidency “undertook no permanent reconstitution of the federal government on Leviathan-like proportions,” writes the scholar Allen Guelzo — but Lincoln insisted, as the founders did, that government adjust to shifting circumstances. And he believed, as they did, in a federal government strong enough to achieve large national purposes.</p>
<p>For Lincoln, those purposes included the transcontinental railroad, “land-grant” college legislation, the National Banking Act, tariffs, and the imposition of temporary federal personal income taxes to cover the cost of the Civil War. He also believed the federal government should play a key role in promoting ownership and entrepreneurship: the foundations of a free economy. Most famously, and in direct continuity with Washington and Hamilton, he believed the federal government should be powerful enough to protect itself from dissolution in the name of state sovereignty.</p>
<p>Lincoln’s governing philosophy, however, ran even deeper than that, extending beyond that of the founders in a direction that prefigured some of the policy developments of 20th-century America. In what is known as his “Fragments on Government,” he wrote:</p>
<p>The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do,&#160;at all, or can not,&#160;so well do, for themselves — in their separate, and individual capacities.</p>
<p>Among the things requiring the “combined action” of government in Lincoln’s view were “public roads and highways, public schools, charities, pauperism, orphanage, estates of the deceased, and the machinery of government itself.” Government, Lincoln went on to say, “is a combination of the people of a country to effect certain objects by joint effort”; he included in those objects of joint effort “providing for the helpless young and afflicted.” Nor did he shrink from the financial implications of so large a role. “The best framed and best administered governments,” he acknowledged, “are necessarily expensive.”</p>
<p>Lincoln therefore understood the role of government (though of course not necessarily the&#160;federal&#160;government) to be to help those who cannot individually do for themselves, to advance justice in an unjust world, and to lift up the weakest members of society. Lincoln would later say that “government is not charged with the duty of redressing or preventing all the wrongs in the world” but that it “rightfully may, and, subject to the constitution, ought to, redress and prevent, all wrongs which are wrongs to the nation itself.”</p>
<p>It speaks well of conservatives that they want to be thought of as the defenders of the Constitution. But at a minimum, “constitutional conservatives” should recognize what both the federalist founders and Lincoln actually envisioned for the republic they created and preserved. They were, on the whole, rigorous, empirical, modern thinkers, as well as sober and skeptical heirs of the Enlightenment, who believed they were fortunate to inhabit an age of progress. Far from being constrained by the prevailing physical, political, or economic arrangements of America in 1787, the founders fully expected America to spread across a continent, undergo economic and social change, and emerge as a global actor. And they purposely designed a constitutional system that could accommodate such ambitions.</p>
<p>Of course, this does not answer the question of how big the federal government should be, or what precisely it should and should not do. But it does warn against short-circuiting that discussion with overly simplistic and legalistic appeals to the Constitution as a purely limiting document. Our debates about what government ought to do must be debates about what we take our constitutional order to be and what we think are appropriate national goals. Such questions should be addressed through the political process established by the Constitution; we cannot expect them all to be settled in detail simply through direct interpretation of the Constitution’s text. These national questions require a governing vision. As political scientist James Ceaser of the University of Virginia has put it:</p>
<p>Many conservatives need to resist the temptation to “ideologize” the Constitution by imagining that their political theory is not just permitted under it, but dictated by it. It cannot be forgotten that the Constitution was instituted to replace the Articles of Confederation in order to allow for the exercise of broad powers in certain areas. How such powers are to be used is left to the winners of elections, who are entitled to promote their ideas of good government within the boundaries of the supreme law. If conservatives believe that some of these powers are being exercised in an undisciplined way, it is for a conservative party to make this case. The Constitution cannot do all the work that a party must do on its own. To think otherwise, and to hold that courts could enforce most conservative doctrines, amounts to legalistic thinking with a vengeance.</p>
<p>Many of the functions of the modern-day federal government, including Social Security and other social-service programs, were not envisioned by the framers, nor did the enumerated powers of the Congress specifically comprehend such programs. But neither do these federal roles violate a principle of our system or run counter to the prescient mindset of the founders. The federalist founders created and interpreted a constitutional system that allowed for the emergence of modern America, one in which the federal government would be strong enough to shape global events and to guarantee a minimal provision for the poor, ill, and elderly. Such federal roles may require examination and reform, but they are not inherently illegitimate.</p>
<p>It is a wonder of history, and one of the greatest contributions of America’s founders, that they designed a constitution that was, as the University of Pennsylvania’s John J. DiIulio, Jr., has put it, flexible enough to permit, and to encourage, the transition from a slave-holding, horse-and-carriage society dominated by a few million Anglo-Protestants to a high-tech, free society of more than 300 million demographically diverse citizens. They did it by embodying in the constitutional system a profound and sophisticated vision of government and of government’s relation to the life of the nation and the lives of its people.</p>
<p>LAW AND CHARACTER</p>
<p>The relationship between the government and the lives of its people is a particularly challenging problem in our time. The overreach of the Obama years has given form to the left’s powerful desire to manage and manipulate those realms of life that, in our country, have generally been left within the purview of the family, civil society, and local community. The natural response on the right has been to recoil from the very idea that government should play any role in the moral formation of citizens — which is, after all, what happens in that space between the individual and the state where these institutions operate.</p>
<p>Such complete neutrality is impossible, however, because political and governmental institutions are inherently and unavoidably a part of the larger fabric of society. To insist that federal policy express no preferences or priorities about the moral lives of the people is to consign us to a politics that undermines those moral lives, rather than one that gives them room to thrive. Public policy designed without regard to its moral implications is not neutral but destructive of society’s moral architecture.</p>
<p>One need not subscribe fully to Aristotle’s belief in the vital role of the state in the pursuit of virtue and excellence to acknowledge that many of our laws have a moral component. By definition, laws shape habits, values, and sensibilities — not every law, not all the time, but enough to play a decisive role in the formation of our national character and the individual characters of our citizens. Effective legislation often has a moral, or character-forming, component.</p>
<p>A concrete example from the recent past is the 1996 welfare-reform law, one of the most successful pieces of social legislation in generations. At the heart of the reform was a moral, not an economic, argument: The wrong sort of welfare had helped to create a culture of dependency, which enervated character, and which in turn harmed individuals, families, and society. The goal of welfare reform, with its work requirements and time limits, was not to save money (and it didn’t save much); it was to foster self-reliance and dignity. It was to replace the wrong sort of welfare with the right sort of welfare. And it worked. In short order, welfare rolls went down and work-participation rates went up. The state took upon itself the task of bettering people’s lives, registered a notable degree of success at this task, and bettered society as a result.</p>
<p>Over the years, our laws on civil rights, crime and incarceration, welfare, marriage, religious liberty, and much else have similarly helped to shape the dispositions and habits of the polity — often, if not always, for the better. In many cases, state action has become unavoidable. Some forms of liberty — say, the freedom to destroy oneself with hard drugs or to exploit other men and women in the sex trade — not only degrade human nature but damage and undermine families and communities and ultimately deprive the nation of a competent, self-governing citizenry. These are all public matters.</p>
<p>Is the state always wise or successful in influencing the values and habits of the nation? Hardly. The nation’s experiment with the prohibition of alcohol sales, for instance, proved the futility of trying to alter widespread and deeply rooted social practices, and instead generated seriously counterproductive outcomes. Where issues of marriage and abortion are concerned, American citizens remain deeply divided on the proper course, and the moral and social effects, of government policy.</p>
<p>What these examples illustrate, however, is not the illegitimacy of government action but the need for modest expectations and for getting policies right. Here, as in so many areas, the proper measure of action is prudence. If Prohibition was a disaster in one direction, so, in the other direction, would be the licensing of methamphetamines and heroin for sale at every convenience store.</p>
<p>Responsible, self-governing citizens do not grow wild like blackberries, which is why a conservative political philosophy cannot be reduced to untrammeled libertarianism. Citizens are cultivated by institutions: families, religious communities, neighborhoods, and nations. Parents and spouses, churches and synagogues, teachers and coaches, and the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts are among the foremost shapers of citizens in our republic. But government has a necessary (if limited) role in reinforcing the social norms and expectations that make the work of these civil institutions both possible and easier. That role can involve everything from enforcing civil-rights laws, to saving the elderly from indigence, to restricting the availability of addictive substances.</p>
<p>The implications of this approach are not only moral and cultural; they are also economic. Just as citizens must be prepared for the exercise of liberty, individuals must be given the skills and values — the social capital — that will allow them to succeed in a free economy. That is the essence of opportunity: a traditionally conservative, indeed a Lincolnian, goal.</p>
<p>But here we must be attentive to distinctions that are too often lost or muddled in today’s debates and that implicate liberals and conservatives alike. Conservatives believe not in equal results — a goal that leads to an excessive concentration of government power and to shared economic mediocrity — but in equality of opportunity. Government holds some responsibility for creating the ground for that equality of opportunity, which is not a natural condition. But government oversteps itself, creating corrosive resentments and economic havoc, when it tries to guarantee equality of results. Often, the damage extends to government’s intended beneficiaries.</p>
<p>If conservatives are rightly at odds with liberals on this point, however, many conservatives fail to see the extent to which equal opportunity itself, a central principle of our national self-understanding, is becoming harder to achieve. It is a well-documented fact that, in recent years, economic mobility has stalled for many poorer Americans, resulting in persistent intergenerational inequality. This phenomenon is more complex than an income gap. It involves wide disparities in parental time and investment, in religious and community involvement, and in academic accomplishment. These are traceable to a number of factors, including the collapse of working-class families, the flight of blue-collar jobs, and the decay of neighborhoods that once offered stronger networks of mentorship outside the home.</p>
<p>Dysfunctional institutions routinely betray children and young adults. Children raised in communities filled with chaos and disorder — where the schools are broken and the streets are violent and drug use is prevalent — face enormously difficult odds. The consequences for children who come from failing communities are all the more severe now that advances in technology have moved us toward an economy that favors skilled over unskilled labor. Tremendous effort and creative policy will be required to fix the institutions that can restore such communities and with them the level playing field of equal opportunity.</p>
<p>Most conservatives, if pressed on these matters, would concede the propriety of some government role in helping create the conditions necessary for individuals and institutions to succeed. For too many in the libertarian and Tea Party wings of the GOP, however, such concessions are at best made grudgingly. These conservatives, if left to their own devices, would say almost nothing about these matters. And so crucial realities — the fact of increasing inequality and decreasing social mobility — tend to be swept under the rug. For too many, government’s obligation to protect individual liberty comes first, second, and last, while concepts such as the common good, despite bearing their own conservative pedigree, are regarded as so much liberal claptrap.</p>
<p>Protecting individual liberty is indeed an indispensable role of government. But it is not the only role.</p>
<p>A POSITIVE GOVERNING VISION</p>
<p>In many ways, the populist and libertarian reactions to the Obama presidency are understandable, helpful, and quintessentially American. Millions of citizens are convinced, not without reason, that their government has aggrandized itself and pushed us ever closer to the regimented and failed model of European-style social democracy. Resistance to this trend has been a critical source of political energy, passion, and engagement over the last few years.</p>
<p>A truly conservative response to the advance of a liberal or progressive ideology, however, would not involve the adoption of an opposite and equally narrow ideology. Just as the breakdown of family structures does not prove the illegitimacy of family life but instead points to the urgency of its revitalization, the alternative to government overreach is not the dogmatic disparagement of government but the restoration of government to its proper and honored place in American life.</p>
<p>It is historically erroneous to regard America’s founders as proto-libertarians. Hamilton warned about “a zeal for liberty more ardent than enlightened,” while Madison cautioned that “liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as by the abuses of power.” Similarly mistaken are exaggerated claims of galloping tyranny and utopian visions of a wholesale dismantling of much of the modern state. None of this lays a foundation for an appealing public philosophy. American citizenship has evolved around the exercise of liberty in a complex, mutually dependent web of institutions. One of those institutions is and must be government — effective, respected, and limited.</p>
<p>The purpose of the state is to keep society safe and strong; to protect us from outsiders and from each other; to maximize freedom in a way that is consistent with security and order and that advances the common good; to provide society’s “mediating institutions” the space they need to thrive; to encourage equal opportunity for all citizens; and to make a decent provision for the poorest and most vulnerable. All of this is meant to allow people to flourish and to advance human happiness. As Madison said, “Justice is the end of government.”</p>
<p>The case for limited government is rooted in this understanding of government’s purpose. In most circumstances, limited government is preferable to intrusive government because the former advances the public good and serves the common interest. The Constitution places meaningful limits on government power for a reason — to prevent tyranny, yes, and to advance self-government, of course, but also to promote the general welfare and to form a more perfect union. Limited government deserves to be embraced because it is a means (a system of government) to an end (the happiness and flourishing of the people).</p>
<p>Government should, as a first resort, set the table for private action and private institutions — creating a context in which social and civic institutions can flourish. People are right to be generally skeptical of centralized government action because the world is too complicated to be run by technocrats and planners. Limited government is more often good government; and it is good government because it secures individual liberty, takes into account human nature and people’s self-interestedness, and allows people to pursue their potential and achieve great things that improve lives beyond their own.</p>
<p>Conservatism is heavily context dependent, however, so when private institutions are enervated or insufficient in scale — perhaps in part because of unwise government policies, though often for reasons that go beyond government — society has a duty to respond, including with public and not merely private actions. When communities are in crisis, to simply pull government away would allow those communities to decline or collapse, and pull down innocent lives in the process. And historical context should matter. The institutional arrangements appropriate to 18th-century Massachusetts are going to be very different than the institutional arrangements appropriate to inner-city Chicago in the 21st century.</p>
<p>The key to the art of governing is to figure out when government should pull back and when it should engage, and when it engages, precisely how it should do so. In other words: Does government have an appropriate role to play in a particular situation?</p>
<p>Health care provides an example. Advances in medical technology, health-care infrastructure, and national wealth have made health care a different type of social good than it was in the 18th and 19th centuries. It is a legitimate and appropriate public goal to ensure broad access to modern health care. But the first instinct of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act was centralization and heavy regulation, inviting a cascade of unintended consequences. The proper conservative reaction is not to imagine a government stripped of public obligations when it comes to the health of citizens. It is to propose an alternative health-care plan that doesn’t centralize all power in Washington and that keeps costs down, solves the problem of insuring those with pre-existing conditions, and reduces the number of uninsured.</p>
<p>The real problem in much of American government is not simply that it is too big but rather that it is antiquated, ineffective, and ill-equipped to handle the most basic functions appropriate for a great and modern country. America’s education system too often fails to adequately prepare workers for global competition. Our tax code, our physical infrastructure, and our immigration system are badly misaligned with obvious economic needs and desires. Our entitlement system threatens over time to consume the federal budget and undercut other indispensable purposes of government.</p>
<p>Each of these institutions needs to be improved and modernized. Conservatives should offer a menu of structural reforms that do not simply attack government but transform it on conservative terms. And they should connect these reforms to the larger purpose of “the happiness of the people,” thus bringing us back full circle to the founders.</p>
<p>Conservatives have accomplished this before. In the 1990s, a cadre of conservative political leaders achieved remarkable success against three seemingly intractable problems: welfare dependency, drug use, and violent crime. They did so not by simply scaling back government’s involvement but by implementing better public policies at the federal, state, and local levels. We have already mentioned the 1996 welfare reform, which grew out of ambitious reform efforts by several Republican governors. To take another example, the massive drop in crime from which Americans are still benefiting was attributable to such Republican-initiated policies as an increase in police presence per capita, improvements in policing techniques, the incarceration of dangerous criminals, and measures addressing urban disorder and vandalism.</p>
<p>A no less innovative and constructive spirit of governance can be found among some conservatives today, particularly at the state level. Governor Scott Walker, for instance, has sought to transform the relationship between the state and its employees in order to better serve Wisconsin’s citizens. Governor John Kasich has spurred job creation through innovative investment incentives and balanced Ohio’s budget without raising taxes. Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal has dramatically expanded school choice, arguing that it is a means to achieving more equal opportunity (and provoking a cynical attempt by the federal Department of Justice to undermine Jindal’s reform). Governor Chris Christie won an enormously impressive re-election victory in New Jersey based on his record of business tax cuts, reductions in spending, and reforms of the education system (especially those addressing teacher tenure) and the Garden State’s pension and benefit system. All of these rising Republican leaders, along with others in Washington and the states, partake of the same upbeat philosophy: If valued and valid public purposes are going unserved, or positively disserved, by government, the proper response is not to dismantle government but to repair and reform it in a conservative direction.</p>
<p>This approach is also integral to the recovery of Republican electoral prospects, on which the political influence of conservatism depends. While there is plenty of evidence that Americans are disillusioned with modern government, there is no evidence that Americans have turned against the&#160;aims&#160;of modern government.</p>
<p>The eminent political scientist James Q. Wilson summarized this political reality in a single sentence: “Telling people who want clean air, a safe environment, fewer drug dealers, a decent retirement, and protection against catastrophic medical bills that the government ought not to do these things is wishful or suicidal politics.” Seconding Wilson, Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, recently noted that the “government social safety net for the truly indigent is one of the greatest achievements of our society….We have to declare peace on the safety net.” Providing such services and securing that safety net does not mean accepting the technocratic mindset of the liberal welfare state. It means replacing that mindset with a conservative approach that puts government on the side of civil society and private enterprise in order to achieve a more just and thriving society.</p>
<p>Conservatives are more likely to be trusted to run the affairs of the nation if they show the public that they grasp the purposes of government, that they fully appreciate it is in desperate need of renovation, and that they know what needs to be done. The American people are deeply practical; they are interested in what works. And they want their government to work. Conservatives know how institutions can and should work in our free society, and they can apply that knowledge to government.</p>
<p>All this leads us to a final reason why conservatives should be engaged in the reform of government. The reputation of government is an important national asset — and an irreplaceable source of national pride. Government overreach by the left has degraded that asset. Today’s hemorrhaging of trust in public institutions, if left to run its course, will only further degrade it. Skepticism toward government is one thing; outright hostility is injurious to the health of American democracy itself. How can citizens be expected to love their country if they are encouraged to hold its government in utter contempt?</p>
<p>Thinking of government as a precious national institution in need of care and reform does not come naturally to many modern-day conservatives. Given the damage that our government is doing to our society, it is easy to understand their anger and frustration. But that is precisely why, especially now, conservatives must make the case that they will give Americans a government, and therefore a country, they can once again be proud of.</p>
<p>Michael Gerson, former policy advisor and chief of speechwriting for President George&#160;W. Bush, is a&#160;Washington Postcolumnist.&#160;Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, served in the last&#160;three Republican administrations.</p> | false | 1 | past years put size role government center stage national politics raging debates much washington spending involved almost exclusively yesorno questions lefts vision government right clear government much less nearly enough say government160should160do hard see obama years set highwater mark size reach federal government including postworld war ii record federal spending percentage gross domestic product 252 comparison postwar average 198 united states amassed 6 trillion debt since january 2009 prior obama president submitted budget trilliondollar deficit submitted four even administrations projections coming years promise smaller deficits also promise larger expensive government americans ever seen presidents defenders maintain circumstances inherited epic financial collapse drained revenue treasury exploded federal deficit meant little choice spend way trouble surely right obama faced enormous economic challenges many persist president simply respond economic crisis leveraged crisis pursue longstanding goals consistent liberal ideology along way extended power federal government unprecedented degree pushing largest stimulus package history crowning act federal regulatory takeover health insurance president always insisted would satisfied half measures danger much government matched perils little might enough recall life julia interactive infographic released obama campaign 2012 presidential race followed fictional woman every stage life shortly birth retirement cartoon image demonstrated celebrated utter dependence government atomized defenseless individuals sustained enfolding embrace state would seem obama vision americans appropriate relation government administrations federal power grabs hardly gone unopposed course channeling public alarm particularly regarding stimulus healthcare legislation republican party scored historic victory 2010 midterm elections since republicancontrolled house sought restrain relimit government including championing key reforms medicare republican lawmakers provided effective counterweight presidential overreach significantly restraining spending since 2011 preventing leftward legislative leaps republicans argued unrestrained spending particularly unreformed entitlements burden nation unmanageable levels debt coming decades starve budget funds essential purposes contend large meddlesome intrusive state undermines private economy also crowds civil society enervates civic character therefore fairly clear quite emphatic believe government true argued democrats vision travesty american government proper appropriate extent purpose government conservatives recent years done enough answer question result offered voters oppositional view government perhaps stoking worry resentment insufficient build public trust prospect conservative government negative approach question role government electorally insufficient unbecoming conservatism deep commitment conservatives claim nations founding ideals antigovernment party among conservatives problem times seems run deeper failure articulate vision government particularly among libertarians conservatives identify tea party movement government overreach found mirror image fierce160antigovernment fervor impulse nothing new american right different today intensity widening appeal within conservative ranks involves rhetorical zeal indiscipline virtually every reference government negative disparaging denigrating justified apocalyptic narrative american life fast approaching point return stand lose basic liberties national character couple years turn country around according texas senator ted cruz go cliff oblivion obamacare added 2012 gop presidential candidate michele bachmann evidence police state struggle conserve liberty never perhaps surprisingly prominent wing conservative coalition seems regard conservatives demur approach part problem main obstacle solution unwilling see extremity moment declining support allout effort confront example shutting government effort defund obamacare conservatives republicans accused objectively joined side view intensely felt understandably given provocations last five years however incomplete understanding situation distortion obstacle achieving properly conservative governing vision command respect win support majority american people conservatives want regain support republicans want chance govern crucial first step see inadequacy oppositional negative approach question governments purpose role inadequate simply fails give republicans enough offer voters inadequate amount conservative vision historical philosophical practical grounds founders state heart oppositional view government espoused libertarians tea party leaders particular version american history national recovery insist depends returning governing philosophy american founders embodied constitution many selfdescribed leaders tea party movement seem share view expressed dick armey matt kibbe authors of160 give us liberty tea party manifesto first foremost tea party movement concerned recovering constitutional principles government sarah palin former alaska governor 2008 gop vicepresidential candidate tea party favorite said find proper principles americas resurgence go back founders founding documents meant utah senator mike lee running office 2010 summarized attitude many tea party candidates activists said us senator vote single bill cant justify based text original understanding constitution matter court says recovery constitutional ideals sure worthwhile endeavor point quite leaders activists often suggest federalist founders indeed wary concentration power federal government time however unlike antifederalist opponents constitution view government evil even necessary evil indeed influential founders scorned view referring imbecility weak central government form articles confederation compared relatively strong central government constitution created view government properly understood properly framed essential promoting referred public good order approximate public good james madison key figure drafting constitution believed limited national government requisite adaptable powers citing federalist 10 permanent aggregate interests community mind interests whole republic future good government added federalist 62 implies two things first fidelity object government happiness people secondly knowledge means object best attained madisons system intended employ means achieve end constitution simply create limits government todays conservative rhetoric seems imply created strong bounded central government important speak boundaries breached important remember aims government madison acknowledged positive need national government alexander hamilton gouverneur morris james wilson george washington strong constitutionalists government meant frozen amber would ability adapt necessary meet citizens needs needs expressed representative government made case explicitly madison nevertheless went far support virginia plan would granted central government right veto state legislation hamilton instance envisioned strong commercial republic whose growing needs would require federal government promote general welfare powers expressly stipulated also implied construing constitution said hamilton wise far possible pursue course reconcile essential principles convenient modifications part washington endorsed hamiltons expansive view government would need act hamilton put vast variety particulars susceptible neither specification definition advance even thomas jefferson skeptical strong federal authority eventually made convenient modifications president jefferson managed conclude louisiana purchase without amending constitution permit massive exercise federal power founders provided us strong governing system strong precisely could adapt changing circumstances government created late 18th century inhabitants coastal agrarian republic designed accommodate development spacious ambitious nation eventuality many founders foresaw embraced consider providing constitution future generations merely peculiar circumstances moment said james wilson major force drafting constitution perhaps expressly conservative among framers john rutledge told colleagues laying foundation great empire ought take permanent view subject look present moment framing system wish last ages madison told constitutional convention lose sight changes ages produce hamilton federalist 34 wrote pursuing inquiry must bear mind confine view present period look forward remote futurity constitutions civil government framed upon calculation existing exigencies upon combination probable exigencies ages according natural tried course human affairs nothing therefore fallacious infer extent power proper lodged national government estimate immediate necessities ought capacity provide future contingencies may happen illimitable nature impossible safely limit capacity spirit able leave future leaders resolution certain inconsistencies american system gravest poisonous issue slavery hardly say founders magically transported age obama would approve current size scope federal government say founders unconcerned concentration power contrary deeply concerned created system checks balances separation powers say however would little toleration politicians committed abstract theories even odds given world welfare polity fail differentiate conserving system adapting changing circumstances undermining system breaking fundamental aims outlook case aggrandizement federal power must made context case favor appropriate federal power service theory leaves far little room genuine selfgovernment legitimate object important respects abraham lincoln continued philosophical arc framers constitution president revered founders much spoke often read closely lincoln presidency undertook permanent reconstitution federal government leviathanlike proportions writes scholar allen guelzo lincoln insisted founders government adjust shifting circumstances believed federal government strong enough achieve large national purposes lincoln purposes included transcontinental railroad landgrant college legislation national banking act tariffs imposition temporary federal personal income taxes cover cost civil war also believed federal government play key role promoting ownership entrepreneurship foundations free economy famously direct continuity washington hamilton believed federal government powerful enough protect dissolution name state sovereignty lincolns governing philosophy however ran even deeper extending beyond founders direction prefigured policy developments 20thcentury america known fragments government wrote legitimate object government community people whatever need done do160at not160so well separate individual capacities among things requiring combined action government lincolns view public roads highways public schools charities pauperism orphanage estates deceased machinery government government lincoln went say combination people country effect certain objects joint effort included objects joint effort providing helpless young afflicted shrink financial implications large role best framed best administered governments acknowledged necessarily expensive lincoln therefore understood role government though course necessarily the160federal160government help individually advance justice unjust world lift weakest members society lincoln would later say government charged duty redressing preventing wrongs world rightfully may subject constitution ought redress prevent wrongs wrongs nation speaks well conservatives want thought defenders constitution minimum constitutional conservatives recognize federalist founders lincoln actually envisioned republic created preserved whole rigorous empirical modern thinkers well sober skeptical heirs enlightenment believed fortunate inhabit age progress far constrained prevailing physical political economic arrangements america 1787 founders fully expected america spread across continent undergo economic social change emerge global actor purposely designed constitutional system could accommodate ambitions course answer question big federal government precisely warn shortcircuiting discussion overly simplistic legalistic appeals constitution purely limiting document debates government ought must debates take constitutional order think appropriate national goals questions addressed political process established constitution expect settled detail simply direct interpretation constitutions text national questions require governing vision political scientist james ceaser university virginia put many conservatives need resist temptation ideologize constitution imagining political theory permitted dictated forgotten constitution instituted replace articles confederation order allow exercise broad powers certain areas powers used left winners elections entitled promote ideas good government within boundaries supreme law conservatives believe powers exercised undisciplined way conservative party make case constitution work party must think otherwise hold courts could enforce conservative doctrines amounts legalistic thinking vengeance many functions modernday federal government including social security socialservice programs envisioned framers enumerated powers congress specifically comprehend programs neither federal roles violate principle system run counter prescient mindset founders federalist founders created interpreted constitutional system allowed emergence modern america one federal government would strong enough shape global events guarantee minimal provision poor ill elderly federal roles may require examination reform inherently illegitimate wonder history one greatest contributions americas founders designed constitution university pennsylvanias john j diiulio jr put flexible enough permit encourage transition slaveholding horseandcarriage society dominated million angloprotestants hightech free society 300 million demographically diverse citizens embodying constitutional system profound sophisticated vision government governments relation life nation lives people law character relationship government lives people particularly challenging problem time overreach obama years given form lefts powerful desire manage manipulate realms life country generally left within purview family civil society local community natural response right recoil idea government play role moral formation citizens happens space individual state institutions operate complete neutrality impossible however political governmental institutions inherently unavoidably part larger fabric society insist federal policy express preferences priorities moral lives people consign us politics undermines moral lives rather one gives room thrive public policy designed without regard moral implications neutral destructive societys moral architecture one need subscribe fully aristotles belief vital role state pursuit virtue excellence acknowledge many laws moral component definition laws shape habits values sensibilities every law time enough play decisive role formation national character individual characters citizens effective legislation often moral characterforming component concrete example recent past 1996 welfarereform law one successful pieces social legislation generations heart reform moral economic argument wrong sort welfare helped create culture dependency enervated character turn harmed individuals families society goal welfare reform work requirements time limits save money didnt save much foster selfreliance dignity replace wrong sort welfare right sort welfare worked short order welfare rolls went workparticipation rates went state took upon task bettering peoples lives registered notable degree success task bettered society result years laws civil rights crime incarceration welfare marriage religious liberty much else similarly helped shape dispositions habits polity often always better many cases state action become unavoidable forms liberty say freedom destroy oneself hard drugs exploit men women sex trade degrade human nature damage undermine families communities ultimately deprive nation competent selfgoverning citizenry public matters state always wise successful influencing values habits nation hardly nations experiment prohibition alcohol sales instance proved futility trying alter widespread deeply rooted social practices instead generated seriously counterproductive outcomes issues marriage abortion concerned american citizens remain deeply divided proper course moral social effects government policy examples illustrate however illegitimacy government action need modest expectations getting policies right many areas proper measure action prudence prohibition disaster one direction direction would licensing methamphetamines heroin sale every convenience store responsible selfgoverning citizens grow wild like blackberries conservative political philosophy reduced untrammeled libertarianism citizens cultivated institutions families religious communities neighborhoods nations parents spouses churches synagogues teachers coaches boy scouts girl scouts among foremost shapers citizens republic government necessary limited role reinforcing social norms expectations make work civil institutions possible easier role involve everything enforcing civilrights laws saving elderly indigence restricting availability addictive substances implications approach moral cultural also economic citizens must prepared exercise liberty individuals must given skills values social capital allow succeed free economy essence opportunity traditionally conservative indeed lincolnian goal must attentive distinctions often lost muddled todays debates implicate liberals conservatives alike conservatives believe equal results goal leads excessive concentration government power shared economic mediocrity equality opportunity government holds responsibility creating ground equality opportunity natural condition government oversteps creating corrosive resentments economic havoc tries guarantee equality results often damage extends governments intended beneficiaries conservatives rightly odds liberals point however many conservatives fail see extent equal opportunity central principle national selfunderstanding becoming harder achieve welldocumented fact recent years economic mobility stalled many poorer americans resulting persistent intergenerational inequality phenomenon complex income gap involves wide disparities parental time investment religious community involvement academic accomplishment traceable number factors including collapse workingclass families flight bluecollar jobs decay neighborhoods offered stronger networks mentorship outside home dysfunctional institutions routinely betray children young adults children raised communities filled chaos disorder schools broken streets violent drug use prevalent face enormously difficult odds consequences children come failing communities severe advances technology moved us toward economy favors skilled unskilled labor tremendous effort creative policy required fix institutions restore communities level playing field equal opportunity conservatives pressed matters would concede propriety government role helping create conditions necessary individuals institutions succeed many libertarian tea party wings gop however concessions best made grudgingly conservatives left devices would say almost nothing matters crucial realities fact increasing inequality decreasing social mobility tend swept rug many governments obligation protect individual liberty comes first second last concepts common good despite bearing conservative pedigree regarded much liberal claptrap protecting individual liberty indeed indispensable role government role positive governing vision many ways populist libertarian reactions obama presidency understandable helpful quintessentially american millions citizens convinced without reason government aggrandized pushed us ever closer regimented failed model europeanstyle social democracy resistance trend critical source political energy passion engagement last years truly conservative response advance liberal progressive ideology however would involve adoption opposite equally narrow ideology breakdown family structures prove illegitimacy family life instead points urgency revitalization alternative government overreach dogmatic disparagement government restoration government proper honored place american life historically erroneous regard americas founders protolibertarians hamilton warned zeal liberty ardent enlightened madison cautioned liberty may endangered abuses liberty well abuses power similarly mistaken exaggerated claims galloping tyranny utopian visions wholesale dismantling much modern state none lays foundation appealing public philosophy american citizenship evolved around exercise liberty complex mutually dependent web institutions one institutions must government effective respected limited purpose state keep society safe strong protect us outsiders maximize freedom way consistent security order advances common good provide societys mediating institutions space need thrive encourage equal opportunity citizens make decent provision poorest vulnerable meant allow people flourish advance human happiness madison said justice end government case limited government rooted understanding governments purpose circumstances limited government preferable intrusive government former advances public good serves common interest constitution places meaningful limits government power reason prevent tyranny yes advance selfgovernment course also promote general welfare form perfect union limited government deserves embraced means system government end happiness flourishing people government first resort set table private action private institutions creating context social civic institutions flourish people right generally skeptical centralized government action world complicated run technocrats planners limited government often good government good government secures individual liberty takes account human nature peoples selfinterestedness allows people pursue potential achieve great things improve lives beyond conservatism heavily context dependent however private institutions enervated insufficient scale perhaps part unwise government policies though often reasons go beyond government society duty respond including public merely private actions communities crisis simply pull government away would allow communities decline collapse pull innocent lives process historical context matter institutional arrangements appropriate 18thcentury massachusetts going different institutional arrangements appropriate innercity chicago 21st century key art governing figure government pull back engage engages precisely words government appropriate role play particular situation health care provides example advances medical technology healthcare infrastructure national wealth made health care different type social good 18th 19th centuries legitimate appropriate public goal ensure broad access modern health care first instinct president obamas affordable care act centralization heavy regulation inviting cascade unintended consequences proper conservative reaction imagine government stripped public obligations comes health citizens propose alternative healthcare plan doesnt centralize power washington keeps costs solves problem insuring preexisting conditions reduces number uninsured real problem much american government simply big rather antiquated ineffective illequipped handle basic functions appropriate great modern country americas education system often fails adequately prepare workers global competition tax code physical infrastructure immigration system badly misaligned obvious economic needs desires entitlement system threatens time consume federal budget undercut indispensable purposes government institutions needs improved modernized conservatives offer menu structural reforms simply attack government transform conservative terms connect reforms larger purpose happiness people thus bringing us back full circle founders conservatives accomplished 1990s cadre conservative political leaders achieved remarkable success three seemingly intractable problems welfare dependency drug use violent crime simply scaling back governments involvement implementing better public policies federal state local levels already mentioned 1996 welfare reform grew ambitious reform efforts several republican governors take another example massive drop crime americans still benefiting attributable republicaninitiated policies increase police presence per capita improvements policing techniques incarceration dangerous criminals measures addressing urban disorder vandalism less innovative constructive spirit governance found among conservatives today particularly state level governor scott walker instance sought transform relationship state employees order better serve wisconsins citizens governor john kasich spurred job creation innovative investment incentives balanced ohios budget without raising taxes louisiana governor bobby jindal dramatically expanded school choice arguing means achieving equal opportunity provoking cynical attempt federal department justice undermine jindals reform governor chris christie enormously impressive reelection victory new jersey based record business tax cuts reductions spending reforms education system especially addressing teacher tenure garden states pension benefit system rising republican leaders along others washington states partake upbeat philosophy valued valid public purposes going unserved positively disserved government proper response dismantle government repair reform conservative direction approach also integral recovery republican electoral prospects political influence conservatism depends plenty evidence americans disillusioned modern government evidence americans turned the160aims160of modern government eminent political scientist james q wilson summarized political reality single sentence telling people want clean air safe environment fewer drug dealers decent retirement protection catastrophic medical bills government ought things wishful suicidal politics seconding wilson arthur brooks president american enterprise institute recently noted government social safety net truly indigent one greatest achievements societywe declare peace safety net providing services securing safety net mean accepting technocratic mindset liberal welfare state means replacing mindset conservative approach puts government side civil society private enterprise order achieve thriving society conservatives likely trusted run affairs nation show public grasp purposes government fully appreciate desperate need renovation know needs done american people deeply practical interested works want government work conservatives know institutions work free society apply knowledge government leads us final reason conservatives engaged reform government reputation government important national asset irreplaceable source national pride government overreach left degraded asset todays hemorrhaging trust public institutions left run course degrade skepticism toward government one thing outright hostility injurious health american democracy citizens expected love country encouraged hold government utter contempt thinking government precious national institution need care reform come naturally many modernday conservatives given damage government society easy understand anger frustration precisely especially conservatives must make case give americans government therefore country proud michael gerson former policy advisor chief speechwriting president george160w bush a160washington postcolumnist160peter wehner senior fellow ethics public policy center served last160three republican administrations | 3,338 |
<p>Staff Report, NASCAR Wire Service</p>
<p>Distributed by The Sports Xchange</p>
<p>In the NASCAR Playoffs, there’s often more than one winner in a race.</p>
<p>That’s the case this weekend in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Round of 16 cutoff event — Sunday’s Apache Warrior 400 at Dover International Speedway (2 p.m. ET on NBCSN).</p>
<p>There will be races within the race as drivers fight for the final points spot to transfer to the Round of 12. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ricky_Stenhouse/" type="external">Ricky Stenhouse</a> Jr. currently holds the last points berth. He’s 12th on the Playoff Grid and has the same amount of points as <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Austin-Dillon/" type="external">Austin Dillon</a>. He holds the tiebreaker over Dillon right now because his Round of 16 high finish of 15th beats Dillon’s high finish of 16th. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ryan_Newman/" type="external">Ryan Newman</a> — currently 14th on the Playoff Grid — sits only one point behind Stenhouse and Dillon.</p>
<p>“We have fought back and are currently in the final transfer spot to move on,” Stenhouse said. “We need to make sure we have a mistake free weekend and execute on pit-road. I think if we can do that then we have a great shot at moving on to the next round.”</p>
<p>In his last four races at Dover, Stenhouse has placed 39th, 11th, 14th and eighth. In comparison Dillon has finished 13th, eighth, 33rd and 23rd, while Newman has posted showings of fourth, 17th, 16th and 19th.</p>
<p>“I’m really looking forward to Dover this weekend,” Stenhouse said. “We had a strong car there earlier this year but blew a right front tire, which ultimately ended our day.”</p>
<p>Byron hopes to produce another strong Dover finish</p>
<p>–William Byron entered the NASCAR Xfinity Series Playoffs leading in points after finishing second in the regular season standings and accumulating 17 playoff points via his series-best three victories and two stage wins.</p>
<p>He left the Playoff opener at Kentucky fifth on the Playoff Grid following an 18th-place showing. Still, Byron sits 25 points ahead of Brendan Gaughan for the final advancement spot to the Round of 8.</p>
<p>Byron will attempt to pad his points total in Saturday’s Use Your Melon, Drive Sober 200 at Dover International Speedway (2:45 p.m. ET on NBCSN), where he was the highest-finishing Xfinity regular (sixth) in its June race.</p>
<p>“I am ready to get to Dover,” Byron said. “We got the Dash 4 Cash win there last time and I can’t wait to see what we can do this time around. I know our team is ready to rebound from last week and have a solid weekend for the second playoff race.”</p>
<p>Briscoe goes for first win in Las Vegas</p>
<p>–If the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Playoffs were beginning its Round of 6 this weekend, Chase Briscoe wouldn’t advance.</p>
<p>Luckily for Briscoe, he has two races to change that — Saturday’s Las Vegas 350 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway (8 p.m. ET on FS1) and the fred’s 250 powered by Coca-Cola at Talladega Superspeedway on Oct. 14.</p>
<p>Following his 11th-place finish at New Hampshire last weekend, Briscoe sits a manageable three points behind Kaz Grala for the final transfer spot to the Round of 6.</p>
<p>“I feel like we are taking even better trucks this year than the team brought last year when they earned the 1-2 finish,” said Briscoe, who drives the No. 29 Ford for <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Brad_Keselowski/" type="external">Brad Keselowski</a> Racing. “It’s really important to go there and get the win to take away a lot of stress for Talladega.”</p>
<p>Saturday’s race will mark Bricoe’s first start at Las Vegas, but it will be his seventh start at a 1.5-mile race track this season. He has two second-place finishes at 1.5-mile courses this season — Texas and Chicagoland.</p>
<p>“Last week wasn’t how we wanted to kick off our playoffs, but all eight of us are so close in points that I have no doubt that we’ll be able to overcome it and get above the cut after Vegas,” Briscoe said. “We just can’t make any mistakes and we can’t struggle like we did last week.”</p>
<p>Race Weekend Guide</p>
<p>Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series</p>
<p>Race: Apache Warrior 400 Presented by Lucas Oil</p>
<p>Place: Dover International Speedway</p>
<p>Date and Time: Sunday at 2 p.m. ET</p>
<p>Tune-in: NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio</p>
<p>Distance: 400 miles (400 laps); Stage 1 (Ends on lap 120), Stage 2 (Ends on lap 240), Final Stage (Ends on lap 400)</p>
<p>What To Watch For: The four lowest winless drivers in points will be dropped from the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs after Sunday’s race at Dover. … <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jimmie_Johnson/" type="external">Jimmie Johnson</a> attempts to add to his series-best 11 Dover wins as he chases his eighth championship. … <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Martin_Truex/" type="external">Martin Truex</a> Jr. tries to defend his 2016 Playoff victory at the Monster Mile. … <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kurt_Busch/" type="external">Kurt Busch</a> and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kasey_Kahne/" type="external">Kasey Kahne</a>, 17 and 21 points below the cutoff line, respectively, for advancement to the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs Round of 16, can still advance on points, but likely need a win at Dover to advance in the postseason.</p>
<p>NASCAR Xfinity Series</p>
<p>Race: Use Your Melon. Drive Sober 200</p>
<p>Place: Dover International Speedway</p>
<p>Date and Time: Saturday at 2:45 p.m. ET</p>
<p>Tune-in: NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio</p>
<p>Distance: 200 miles (200 laps); Stage 1 (Ends on lap 60), Stage 2 (Ends on lap 120), Final Stage (Ends on lap 200)</p>
<p>What To Watch For: Saturday’s race marks the second event of the 2017 NASCAR Xfinity Series Playoffs. … NASCAR Next alumnus Cole Custer tries to follow-up his fifth-place finish at Kentucky with another strong showing at Dover. … The last two NASCAR Xfinity Series champions won at Dover on their way to the title — Chris Buescher (2015) and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Daniel-Suarez/" type="external">Daniel Suarez</a> (2016).</p>
<p>NASCAR Camping World Truck Series</p>
<p>Race: Las Vegas 350</p>
<p>Place: Las Vegas Motor Speedway</p>
<p>Date and Time: Saturday, at 8 p.m. ET</p>
<p>Tune-in: FS1, 7:30 p.m. ET</p>
<p>Radio: MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio</p>
<p>Distance: 219 miles (146 laps); Stage 1 (Ends on lap 35), Stage 2 (Ends on lap 70), Final Stage (Ends on lap 146)</p>
<p>What To Watch For: The NASCAR Camping World Truck Series heads to Las Vegas for the second race of its Playoffs after Christopher Bell won the postseason opener at New Hampshire. … Brad Keselowski Racing finished 1-2 in Sin City last season and looks to do the same this year with drivers Austin Cindric and Chase Briscoe. … John Hunter Nemechek attempts to rebound from a 20th-place finish at New Hampshire due to a rear gear failure. … There have been 18 different winners in 20 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series races at Las Vegas. … Eleven-time X-Games champion Travis Pastrana will make his first NASCAR start in two years for Niece Motorsports.</p> | false | 1 | staff report nascar wire service distributed sports xchange nascar playoffs theres often one winner race thats case weekend monster energy nascar cup series round 16 cutoff event sundays apache warrior 400 dover international speedway 2 pm et nbcsn races within race drivers fight final points spot transfer round 12 ricky stenhouse jr currently holds last points berth hes 12th playoff grid amount points austin dillon holds tiebreaker dillon right round 16 high finish 15th beats dillons high finish 16th ryan newman currently 14th playoff grid sits one point behind stenhouse dillon fought back currently final transfer spot move stenhouse said need make sure mistake free weekend execute pitroad think great shot moving next round last four races dover stenhouse placed 39th 11th 14th eighth comparison dillon finished 13th eighth 33rd 23rd newman posted showings fourth 17th 16th 19th im really looking forward dover weekend stenhouse said strong car earlier year blew right front tire ultimately ended day byron hopes produce another strong dover finish william byron entered nascar xfinity series playoffs leading points finishing second regular season standings accumulating 17 playoff points via seriesbest three victories two stage wins left playoff opener kentucky fifth playoff grid following 18thplace showing still byron sits 25 points ahead brendan gaughan final advancement spot round 8 byron attempt pad points total saturdays use melon drive sober 200 dover international speedway 245 pm et nbcsn highestfinishing xfinity regular sixth june race ready get dover byron said got dash 4 cash win last time cant wait see time around know team ready rebound last week solid weekend second playoff race briscoe goes first win las vegas nascar camping world truck series playoffs beginning round 6 weekend chase briscoe wouldnt advance luckily briscoe two races change saturdays las vegas 350 las vegas motor speedway 8 pm et fs1 freds 250 powered cocacola talladega superspeedway oct 14 following 11thplace finish new hampshire last weekend briscoe sits manageable three points behind kaz grala final transfer spot round 6 feel like taking even better trucks year team brought last year earned 12 finish said briscoe drives 29 ford brad keselowski racing really important go get win take away lot stress talladega saturdays race mark bricoes first start las vegas seventh start 15mile race track season two secondplace finishes 15mile courses season texas chicagoland last week wasnt wanted kick playoffs eight us close points doubt well able overcome get cut vegas briscoe said cant make mistakes cant struggle like last week race weekend guide monster energy nascar cup series race apache warrior 400 presented lucas oil place dover international speedway date time sunday 2 pm et tunein nbcsn mrn siriusxm nascar radio distance 400 miles 400 laps stage 1 ends lap 120 stage 2 ends lap 240 final stage ends lap 400 watch four lowest winless drivers points dropped monster energy nascar cup series playoffs sundays race dover jimmie johnson attempts add seriesbest 11 dover wins chases eighth championship martin truex jr tries defend 2016 playoff victory monster mile kurt busch kasey kahne 17 21 points cutoff line respectively advancement monster energy nascar cup series playoffs round 16 still advance points likely need win dover advance postseason nascar xfinity series race use melon drive sober 200 place dover international speedway date time saturday 245 pm et tunein nbcsn mrn siriusxm nascar radio distance 200 miles 200 laps stage 1 ends lap 60 stage 2 ends lap 120 final stage ends lap 200 watch saturdays race marks second event 2017 nascar xfinity series playoffs nascar next alumnus cole custer tries followup fifthplace finish kentucky another strong showing dover last two nascar xfinity series champions dover way title chris buescher 2015 daniel suarez 2016 nascar camping world truck series race las vegas 350 place las vegas motor speedway date time saturday 8 pm et tunein fs1 730 pm et radio mrn siriusxm nascar radio distance 219 miles 146 laps stage 1 ends lap 35 stage 2 ends lap 70 final stage ends lap 146 watch nascar camping world truck series heads las vegas second race playoffs christopher bell postseason opener new hampshire brad keselowski racing finished 12 sin city last season looks year drivers austin cindric chase briscoe john hunter nemechek attempts rebound 20thplace finish new hampshire due rear gear failure 18 different winners 20 nascar camping world truck series races las vegas eleventime xgames champion travis pastrana make first nascar start two years niece motorsports | 733 |
<p />
<p><a href="https://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&amp;bc1=000000&amp;IS2=1&amp;bg1=FFFFFF&amp;fc1=000000&amp;lc1=0000FF&amp;t=forepolijour-20&amp;o=1&amp;p=8&amp;l=as1&amp;m=amazon&amp;f=ifr&amp;md=10FE9736YVPPT7A0FBG2&amp;asins=1604944161" type="external">Letters from Palestine – Palestinians Speak Out about Their Lives, Their Country, and the power of Nonviolence</a>. Kenneth Ring and Ghassan Abdullah. Wheatmark, Tucson, AZ, USA. 2010.</p>
<p>Kenneth Ring’s writing on Palestine has already received just praise, as it is another in a series of recently published works that cry from the heart of Palestine.* And while I have read many other books on Palestine, “Letters from Palestine”, as with others that are set within a personal context, brings forth the undying hope and resilience of the Palestinian people in the face of severe hostility from Israel and a careless disregard from most of the western media and governments.</p>
<p>The injustices perpetrated by the Zionists of Israel, supported by the awkward and embarrassing sycophantic participation of the U.S. government (read also military and corporations), cannot endure forever. It is from these letters from Palestine that spring the message that the Palestinians will not grow old and die off so that there will be no one left to remember that there was a Palestine. There is life. There is hope. There is memory.</p>
<p>What really impressed me as I read was the general youthfulness of the writers, second and third generation refugees and residents who carried the memories forward. Not just memories of their own horrible experiences, but the memories of their parents, and their parents before them. Combined with that youthfulness is an eagerness for education, recognition that education is a means to escape the misery of the occupation, to better one’s own life, but also to contribute back to their people, their ancestors, and the land they lived and worked on over thousands of years, “Palestine lives in its children.”</p>
<p>Dear America</p>
<p>Most ‘Americans’, if one truly includes the Americas of the central and southern geographies, are well aware of the violent nature and ill intentions of governments backed by the government of the United States. They are also well aware of the manner in which the United States ignores international law in any area that gets in the way of its ideological desires. Further, they are aware of the covert, subversive, and torturous methods that they promulgate in order to achieve their ends.</p>
<p>The Americans that need to read these letters are those within the United States (and Canada). U.S. citizens in general are poorly educated on global matters, facing a highly biased and uncritical public media of all print and visual formats, and inculcated with the ‘American’ rhetorical ideals of militant patriotism – a supposedly natural superiority over all other nations of the world, and the fearful creation of the ‘other’ – formerly communists, now terrorists – that permits psychological immunity to the terror of killing masses of civilians in other countries.</p>
<p>These letters are addressed to the public of the United States:</p>
<p>…the intent of the book is to put “a human face” on the abstraction, “the Palestinian people,” so that an American audience can see them as individuals who have to confront, with courage, humour, and pluck, the often impossible and impossibly cruel conditions imposed on them by the Israeli governments, the settlers, border police, the [IOF], and other agencies of Israeli social control.</p>
<p>….it was already clear that it was principally the support of the United States that was making all of this possible. Americans, and especially many American Jews, were Israel’s best friend and its bank. [And, as mentioned recently in “ <a href="../../../../../2010/06/19/quicksand-americas-pursuit-of-power-in-the-middle-east/" type="external">Quicksand</a>,” the need for the Jewish voting block to succeed in domestic elections.]</p>
<p>Gaza</p>
<p>The letters from Gaza are strikingly heart-rending, as they remain filled with a seemingly irrepressible spirit in the face of stark outright breaches of humanitarian and international laws of all aspects. The descriptions are briefly graphic, describing but not dwelling on the horrors of mutilated corpses and smashed buildings and infrastructure.</p>
<p>They also raise the aspect of Egyptian complicity with the Israel siege of Gaza. Egypt, similarly as Israel, receives massive amounts of U.S. foreign aid, most of which goes to supporting the dictatorial government of Mubarak and his cronies. In return, Egypt keeps the Gaza border at Rafah closed and under strict surveillance, and as indicated by one writer, “We have a new Checkpoint Charlie today [from formerly communist East Berlin] and it is called the Rafah crossing.”</p>
<p>Gaza remains under siege today. Anything that one could think of as being wrong within a modern society exists within Gaza today because of the Israeli blockade and imprisonment of 1.5 million refugees and Gazans. What remains is the spirit of the people, courageous, humorous, bitter, raging but not hating, despondent, grieving, and, above all, resolute in survival against one of the most technologically advanced racist societies in the world today, supported by its toadying U.S. super-hero. “It is time for a world Intifada (uprising against injustice). It is time to do something concrete.”</p>
<p>Obama and Clinton speak with double-edged meaningless words, and their overriding necessity is of currying the Jewish/Israeli vote and money within the U.S.; hopefully they too will read this work. I doubt that it would change their thinking, but hopefully at least make them aware of what others are thinking…and that perhaps much of their own constituency may be informing themselves as well. Their lies and propaganda about humanitarian freedom and democracy are all contradicted by the reality of U.S. actions in invading and occupying other countries and in supporting many non-democratic and racist governments that support their own geopolitical goals.</p>
<p>In the meantime, Letters from Palestine is series of powerful personal encounters with the thoughts and emotions of the Palestinian people, the youth of Palestine, who will carry the memory and activism in support of their homeland forward.</p>
<p>* Two other excellent works of personal accounts (and there are others) are Ramzy Baroud’s <a href="https://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&amp;bc1=000000&amp;IS2=1&amp;bg1=FFFFFF&amp;fc1=000000&amp;lc1=0000FF&amp;t=forepolijour-20&amp;o=1&amp;p=8&amp;l=as1&amp;m=amazon&amp;f=ifr&amp;md=10FE9736YVPPT7A0FBG2&amp;asins=0745328814" type="external">My Father Was A Freedom Fighter</a> and Richard Wiles’ <a href="https://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&amp;bc1=000000&amp;IS2=1&amp;bg1=FFFFFF&amp;fc1=000000&amp;lc1=0000FF&amp;t=forepolijour-20&amp;o=1&amp;p=8&amp;l=as1&amp;m=amazon&amp;f=ifr&amp;md=10FE9736YVPPT7A0FBG2&amp;asins=1597974390" type="external">Behind the Wall</a>. Combined with the current work, this trilogy would help enlighten any individual who was interested in the personal context of the occupation and abrogation of international law in Palestine, as seen from perspective of the people of Palestine themselves.</p> | false | 1 | letters palestine palestinians speak lives country power nonviolence kenneth ring ghassan abdullah wheatmark tucson az usa 2010 kenneth rings writing palestine already received praise another series recently published works cry heart palestine read many books palestine letters palestine others set within personal context brings forth undying hope resilience palestinian people face severe hostility israel careless disregard western media governments injustices perpetrated zionists israel supported awkward embarrassing sycophantic participation us government read also military corporations endure forever letters palestine spring message palestinians grow old die one left remember palestine life hope memory really impressed read general youthfulness writers second third generation refugees residents carried memories forward memories horrible experiences memories parents parents combined youthfulness eagerness education recognition education means escape misery occupation better ones life also contribute back people ancestors land lived worked thousands years palestine lives children dear america americans one truly includes americas central southern geographies well aware violent nature ill intentions governments backed government united states also well aware manner united states ignores international law area gets way ideological desires aware covert subversive torturous methods promulgate order achieve ends americans need read letters within united states canada us citizens general poorly educated global matters facing highly biased uncritical public media print visual formats inculcated american rhetorical ideals militant patriotism supposedly natural superiority nations world fearful creation formerly communists terrorists permits psychological immunity terror killing masses civilians countries letters addressed public united states intent book put human face abstraction palestinian people american audience see individuals confront courage humour pluck often impossible impossibly cruel conditions imposed israeli governments settlers border police iof agencies israeli social control already clear principally support united states making possible americans especially many american jews israels best friend bank mentioned recently quicksand need jewish voting block succeed domestic elections gaza letters gaza strikingly heartrending remain filled seemingly irrepressible spirit face stark outright breaches humanitarian international laws aspects descriptions briefly graphic describing dwelling horrors mutilated corpses smashed buildings infrastructure also raise aspect egyptian complicity israel siege gaza egypt similarly israel receives massive amounts us foreign aid goes supporting dictatorial government mubarak cronies return egypt keeps gaza border rafah closed strict surveillance indicated one writer new checkpoint charlie today formerly communist east berlin called rafah crossing gaza remains siege today anything one could think wrong within modern society exists within gaza today israeli blockade imprisonment 15 million refugees gazans remains spirit people courageous humorous bitter raging hating despondent grieving resolute survival one technologically advanced racist societies world today supported toadying us superhero time world intifada uprising injustice time something concrete obama clinton speak doubleedged meaningless words overriding necessity currying jewishisraeli vote money within us hopefully read work doubt would change thinking hopefully least make aware others thinkingand perhaps much constituency may informing well lies propaganda humanitarian freedom democracy contradicted reality us actions invading occupying countries supporting many nondemocratic racist governments support geopolitical goals meantime letters palestine series powerful personal encounters thoughts emotions palestinian people youth palestine carry memory activism support homeland forward two excellent works personal accounts others ramzy barouds father freedom fighter richard wiles behind wall combined current work trilogy would help enlighten individual interested personal context occupation abrogation international law palestine seen perspective people palestine | 529 |
<p>WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Tuesday that the Trump administration was rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program, or DACA, authorized in 2012 by an executive order by former President Barack Obama.</p>
<p>Sessions said that acting Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke would conduct an “orderly wind-down” of the program, which has provided temporary legal status for as many as 800,000 “mostly adult illegal aliens.” Administration officials said that no current participants in the program, all of whom were brought to the U.S. as children, would be affected before March 5.</p>
<p>Sessions stated his belief that a lawsuit threatened by attorneys general from 10 states over the program was likely to prevail because the executive branch of the federal government under Obama “deliberately sought to achieve what the legislative branch specifically refused to authorize on multiple occasions.”</p>
<p>President Donald Trump had vacillated on his promise to end DACA on day one of his presidency — leading some DACA supporters to hope the policy would remain on the books. Trump tweeted later Tuesday that Congress had six months to legalize the program, and if lawmakers are unsuccessful, the president “will revisit this issue!”</p>
<p>Threat by state attorneys general</p>
<p>But DACA opponents were outraged at Trump’s failure to act. In June, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, leader of a group that successfully blocked an Obama administration 2014 order to expand the protection to DACA participants’ family members, warned Sessions that he and other attorneys general would sue if the administration did not rescind DACA by Sept. 5.</p>
<p>The gambit worked. In a written statement, Trump explained, “I do not favor punishing children, most of whom are now adults, for the actions of their parents. But we must also recognize that we are nation of opportunity because we are a nation of laws.”</p>
<p>Trump stated that it is not his job to write laws as he tossed the hot potato back to Congress, which has voted on but never passed various versions of the DREAM Act, which would establish a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children.</p>
<p>Earlier in the day, Trump had tweeted, “Congress, get ready to do your job – DACA!”</p>
<p>A Department of Justice press packet included testimony from George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, an Obama voter who agreed with many of the goals of the 2012 executive order creating DACA. But he found the order itself violated constitutional principles, testifying that Obama “has crossed the constitutional law between discretionary enforcement and defiance of federal law.”</p>
<p>Details of the ‘wind-down’</p>
<p>While Sessions did not get into specifics, the Trump statement explained how the wind-down will work. The government will not accept new applications, but applications in the pipeline will be processed, including renewals for DACA recipients “facing near-term expiration. This is a gradual process, not a sudden phase out. Permits will not begin to expire for another six months, and will remain active for up to 24 months. Thus, in effect, I am not going to just cut DACA off, but rather provide a window of opportunity for Congress to finally act.”</p>
<p>Nevada’s Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval expressed support for the state’s DACA participants in a statement Tuesday morning, saying, “They are Nevadans.”</p>
<p>“These are individuals who were brought here as children and this is the country they know and love because it’s their home,” he said. “While the state has taken many actions to embrace and ensure equal opportunities for DACA recipients, a solution requires congressional action.”</p>
<p>Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., called the move “a disastrous mistake” that will hurt the state’s economy.</p>
<p>“Since 2012, DACA has helped more than 13,000 DREAMers in the state go to school, build careers, and strengthen our community. Now they will be forced into the shadows,” she said, using a term commonly used to describe DACA participants.</p>
<p>Roy Beck, president of the anti-DACA organization NumbersUSA, applauded Trump for keeping his campaign promise.</p>
<p>“Trump has delivered a wonderful Labor Day present to unemployed American millennials by ordering the end of former President Obama’s unconstitutional issuing of work permits under the DACA amnesty.” Beck than called on Congress to enact smart reform.</p>
<p>Some Republican support</p>
<p>Prospects for a congressional replacement for DACA were unclear.</p>
<p>There is some appetite for legislation among Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who has partnered with Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to seek a “fair solution”</p>
<p>“I have always believed DACA was presidential overreach,” he said Tuesday in a statement. “However, I equally understand the plight of the DREAM Act kids who – for all practical purposes – know no country other than America.”</p>
<p>But prospects for relief for the young immigrants may be complicated by hard-core pro-enforcement lawmakers seeking a broader immigration package.</p>
<p>Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., issued a statement suggesting that Congress could “mitigate” the consequences of extending DACA “by stopping the chain migration that hurts the working class and by strengthening the enforcement of our immigration laws.” He said a bill he introduced that would limit the amount of low-skilled immigrants and strengthen enforcement “should be the starting point of our discussions.”</p>
<p>Asked if Trump would sign or veto a stand-alone continuation of DACA without any sops to the right, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders responded that Trump is looking for “responsible immigration reform. We can’t just have one tweet to the immigration system; we need really big fixes and big reform in this process. And we’ve laid out the principles that we feel are important in that.”</p>
<p>Obama weighs in</p>
<p>Obama released a statement on Facebook in which he lamented that Congress never gave him a DREAM Act bill. “And because it made no sense to expel talented, driven, patriotic young people from the only country they know solely because of the actions of their parents, my administration acted to lift the shadow of deportation … so that they could continue to contribute to our communities and our country.”</p>
<p>Again, Obama argued that his executive order was “based on the well-established principle of prosecutorial discretion.”</p>
<p>Paxton, the Texas attorney general, took issue with that claim. “The Obama-era program went far beyond the executive branch’s legitimate authority,” he wrote. “Had former President Obama’s unilateral order on DACA been left intact, it would have set a dangerous precedent by giving the executive branch sweeping authority to bypass Congress and change immigration laws.”</p>
<p>Contact Debra J. Saunders at [email protected] or at 202-662-7391. Follow <a href="http://www.twitter.com/@DebraJSaunders" type="external">@DebraJSaunders</a> on Twitter. Reuters contributed to this report.</p> | false | 1 | washington attorney general jeff sessions announced tuesday trump administration rescinding deferred action childhood arrival program daca authorized 2012 executive order former president barack obama sessions said acting secretary homeland security elaine duke would conduct orderly winddown program provided temporary legal status many 800000 mostly adult illegal aliens administration officials said current participants program brought us children would affected march 5 sessions stated belief lawsuit threatened attorneys general 10 states program likely prevail executive branch federal government obama deliberately sought achieve legislative branch specifically refused authorize multiple occasions president donald trump vacillated promise end daca day one presidency leading daca supporters hope policy would remain books trump tweeted later tuesday congress six months legalize program lawmakers unsuccessful president revisit issue threat state attorneys general daca opponents outraged trumps failure act june texas attorney general ken paxton leader group successfully blocked obama administration 2014 order expand protection daca participants family members warned sessions attorneys general would sue administration rescind daca sept 5 gambit worked written statement trump explained favor punishing children adults actions parents must also recognize nation opportunity nation laws trump stated job write laws tossed hot potato back congress voted never passed various versions dream act would establish path citizenship undocumented immigrants came united states children earlier day trump tweeted congress get ready job daca department justice press packet included testimony george washington university law professor jonathan turley obama voter agreed many goals 2012 executive order creating daca found order violated constitutional principles testifying obama crossed constitutional law discretionary enforcement defiance federal law details winddown sessions get specifics trump statement explained winddown work government accept new applications applications pipeline processed including renewals daca recipients facing nearterm expiration gradual process sudden phase permits begin expire another six months remain active 24 months thus effect going cut daca rather provide window opportunity congress finally act nevadas republican gov brian sandoval expressed support states daca participants statement tuesday morning saying nevadans individuals brought children country know love home said state taken many actions embrace ensure equal opportunities daca recipients solution requires congressional action rep dina titus dnev called move disastrous mistake hurt states economy since 2012 daca helped 13000 dreamers state go school build careers strengthen community forced shadows said using term commonly used describe daca participants roy beck president antidaca organization numbersusa applauded trump keeping campaign promise trump delivered wonderful labor day present unemployed american millennials ordering end former president obamas unconstitutional issuing work permits daca amnesty beck called congress enact smart reform republican support prospects congressional replacement daca unclear appetite legislation among republicans including sen lindsey graham rsc partnered sen dick durbin dill seek fair solution always believed daca presidential overreach said tuesday statement however equally understand plight dream act kids practical purposes know country america prospects relief young immigrants may complicated hardcore proenforcement lawmakers seeking broader immigration package sen tom cotton rark issued statement suggesting congress could mitigate consequences extending daca stopping chain migration hurts working class strengthening enforcement immigration laws said bill introduced would limit amount lowskilled immigrants strengthen enforcement starting point discussions asked trump would sign veto standalone continuation daca without sops right white house press secretary sarah sanders responded trump looking responsible immigration reform cant one tweet immigration system need really big fixes big reform process weve laid principles feel important obama weighs obama released statement facebook lamented congress never gave dream act bill made sense expel talented driven patriotic young people country know solely actions parents administration acted lift shadow deportation could continue contribute communities country obama argued executive order based wellestablished principle prosecutorial discretion paxton texas attorney general took issue claim obamaera program went far beyond executive branchs legitimate authority wrote former president obamas unilateral order daca left intact would set dangerous precedent giving executive branch sweeping authority bypass congress change immigration laws contact debra j saunders dsaundersreviewjournalcom 2026627391 follow debrajsaunders twitter reuters contributed report | 640 |
<p>WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump was expecting pointed questions at Monday’s press conference with President Sauli Niinistö of Finland about his pardon last week of former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio — and he came prepared to argue his case.</p>
<p>Fox News correspondent John Roberts did not disappoint. He asked the president what he was thinking <a href="" type="internal">when he pardoned</a> <a href="" type="internal">Arpaio</a>, sheriff of Maricopa County from 1993 until last year, on a Friday night as a Category 4 hurricane hurtled toward the Texas coast.</p>
<p>Trump replied, “A lot of people think it was the right thing to do.” He also said the timing was not an effort to bury the story. Given all the hurricane coverage, “I assumed the ratings would be far higher than they would be normally,” he said.</p>
<p>Then the president recited a short list of the most-criticized pardons or commutations issued by recent Democratic presidents. He started with Marc Rich, the well-connected commodities trader who fled the country to evade prosecution on charges of tax evasion and illegal trade with Iran during the hostage crisis.</p>
<p />
<p>Trump also mentioned Weather Underground bomber Susan Rosenberg and cocaine trafficker Carlos Vignali — whose sentences were commuted by President Bill Clinton during his last day in office. Then he cited military secrets leaker Chelsea Manning and Puerto Rican terrorist Oscar Lopez Rivera — whose sentences President Barack Obama commuted. Trump did not mention any pardons or commutations by Republican presidents.</p>
<p>Political scientist P.S. Ruckman Jr. said he couldn’t remember another president using a similar defense “instead of listing people who are seen as widely deserving of pardons.”</p>
<p>But then he recalled a 2001 opinion piece by Clinton in the New York Times in which the former president called the exercise of clemency “inherently controversial.” As examples, Clinton cited Richard Nixon’s commutation of the sentence of union boss Jimmy Hoffa, who was serving time for jury tampering, President Gerald Ford’s blanket pardon of Nixon, President Jimmy Carter’s pardon of Vietnam war draft dodgers, and President George H.W. Bush’s pardon of six Iran-contra defendants.</p>
<p>Trump’s pardon of Arpaio, convicted of misdemeanor contempt of court in July for failing to follow a federal court’s order to stop apprehending people suspected of being in the country illegally, differs from Clinton’s most controversial acts of clemency. Those occurred safely after national elections; this occurred in the president’s first year in office and ahead of next year’s midterm vote.</p>
<p>Trump said he believed his decision to pardon the former sheriff was justified by what he characterized as the political prosecution of Arpaio. He also cited Arpaio’s record of service to the country in law enforcement and the military.</p>
<p>The Clinton and Obama clemency cases Trump mentioned were controversial with both the left and right. Clinton’s decision to reward Rich’s decision to flee rather than have his day in court rankled many in both parties. Obama’s commutation of Lopez Rivera’s sentence was jarring because the former terrorist failed to express remorse.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Arpaio also has not expressed</a> <a href="" type="internal">remorse</a>. Nor has he been sentenced, exhausted his appeals or formally requested a pardon. The Constitution does not require those steps, but when presidents follow established procedures, it is harder to accuse them of playing favorites.</p>
<p>University of California at Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky took issue with Trump’s comparisons.</p>
<p>“What is different here is that Arpaio was held in criminal contempt of court,” Chemerinsky said by email. “It is troubling for me for a president to undercut the judicial enforcement power by pardoning someone who willfully violated a court order.”</p>
<p>But former federal prosecutor and Georgetown Law professor Bill Otis, a critic of what he sees overuse of the pardon, observed that the left frequently faults the U.S. justice system as “too punitive” and argues that “elderly people in particular are not a threat to the community because they’re very unlikely to reoffend.”</p>
<p>Having lost re-election, Arpaio has no occasion to reoffend, said Otis, adding, “I’ve never heard of them opposing clemency for an 85-year-old.”</p>
<p>Contact Debra J. Saunders at [email protected] or 202-662-7391. Follow <a href="http://www.twitter.com/@DebraJSaunders" type="external">@DebraJSaunders</a> on Twitter.</p>
<p>Other highlights</p>
<p>WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump declined Monday to tag Russia as a security threat, saying he would put “many countries” in that category instead.</p>
<p>“I consider many countries as a security threat, unfortunately, when you look at what’s going on in the world today,” Trump said after a Finnish broadcaster asked specifically about Russia and whether the president would consider it a threat to security.</p>
<p>The president commented during a White House news conference with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto after they met in the Oval Office.</p>
<p>Trump also said he and Niinisto had a “very good discussion” about the Arctic and black carbon, a major component of soot that’s damaging the Arctic ice.</p>
<p>The Associated Press</p>
<p />
<p>Fact check</p>
<p>During Monday’s press conference, Trump said that Arpaio “lost in a fairly close election. He would have won the election, but they just hammered him just before the election. I thought that was a very, very unfair thing to do.”</p>
<p>The election was not close. According to the New York Times, Arpaio captured 44.4 percent of the vote. Retired Phoenix police sergeant Paul Penzone won with 55.6 percent of the vote.</p>
<p>— Debra J. Saunders</p>
<p />
<p /> | false | 1 | washington president donald trump expecting pointed questions mondays press conference president sauli niinistö finland pardon last week former arizona sheriff joe arpaio came prepared argue case fox news correspondent john roberts disappoint asked president thinking pardoned arpaio sheriff maricopa county 1993 last year friday night category 4 hurricane hurtled toward texas coast trump replied lot people think right thing also said timing effort bury story given hurricane coverage assumed ratings would far higher would normally said president recited short list mostcriticized pardons commutations issued recent democratic presidents started marc rich wellconnected commodities trader fled country evade prosecution charges tax evasion illegal trade iran hostage crisis trump also mentioned weather underground bomber susan rosenberg cocaine trafficker carlos vignali whose sentences commuted president bill clinton last day office cited military secrets leaker chelsea manning puerto rican terrorist oscar lopez rivera whose sentences president barack obama commuted trump mention pardons commutations republican presidents political scientist ps ruckman jr said couldnt remember another president using similar defense instead listing people seen widely deserving pardons recalled 2001 opinion piece clinton new york times former president called exercise clemency inherently controversial examples clinton cited richard nixons commutation sentence union boss jimmy hoffa serving time jury tampering president gerald fords blanket pardon nixon president jimmy carters pardon vietnam war draft dodgers president george hw bushs pardon six irancontra defendants trumps pardon arpaio convicted misdemeanor contempt court july failing follow federal courts order stop apprehending people suspected country illegally differs clintons controversial acts clemency occurred safely national elections occurred presidents first year office ahead next years midterm vote trump said believed decision pardon former sheriff justified characterized political prosecution arpaio also cited arpaios record service country law enforcement military clinton obama clemency cases trump mentioned controversial left right clintons decision reward richs decision flee rather day court rankled many parties obamas commutation lopez riveras sentence jarring former terrorist failed express remorse arpaio also expressed remorse sentenced exhausted appeals formally requested pardon constitution require steps presidents follow established procedures harder accuse playing favorites university california berkeley law school dean erwin chemerinsky took issue trumps comparisons different arpaio held criminal contempt court chemerinsky said email troubling president undercut judicial enforcement power pardoning someone willfully violated court order former federal prosecutor georgetown law professor bill otis critic sees overuse pardon observed left frequently faults us justice system punitive argues elderly people particular threat community theyre unlikely reoffend lost reelection arpaio occasion reoffend said otis adding ive never heard opposing clemency 85yearold contact debra j saunders dsaundersreviewjournalcom 2026627391 follow debrajsaunders twitter highlights washington president donald trump declined monday tag russia security threat saying would put many countries category instead consider many countries security threat unfortunately look whats going world today trump said finnish broadcaster asked specifically russia whether president would consider threat security president commented white house news conference finnish president sauli niinisto met oval office trump also said niinisto good discussion arctic black carbon major component soot thats damaging arctic ice associated press fact check mondays press conference trump said arpaio lost fairly close election would election hammered election thought unfair thing election close according new york times arpaio captured 444 percent vote retired phoenix police sergeant paul penzone 556 percent vote debra j saunders | 534 |
<p>The collapse of Rudy Giuliani's presidential bid is surely one of the most striking developments of the 2008 campaign. Strategic mistake? I don't think so. Rudy lost because he dissed social conservatives. In fact, the reason Giuliani missed those early primaries is because he dissed social conservatives. Giuliani's attempt to take apart and reconstitute Ronald Reagan's winning political coalition was his original sin. And Rudy's primal transgression continues to shape the dynamics of 2008's Republican presidential race. With Reagan's erstwhile coalition now cast out of the garden of amity, only recognizing and understanding Rudy's fault will allow us to find our way back.</p>
<p>I'm not saying Giuliani's social liberalism doomed him to failure. On the contrary, I remember talking to a socially conservative state legislator from the midwest early in the campaign and finding, to my surprise, a genuine willingness to support Giuliani, while being fully aware of Rudy's social liberalism. There was a conventional wisdom among knowledgeable conservatives during the campaign's early stages that Giuliani's support would collapse when the Republican base discovered his social liberalism. Yet to everyone's amazement, Rudy kept rising in the polls. The broader public — including social conservatives — respected and admired the hero of 9/11, and wanted to back a winner in the general election. The problem is not that Giuliani's personal social liberalism was unacceptable. The problem was Rudy's failure to meet social conservatives halfway.</p>
<p>Without caring much about social issues one way or the other, plenty of Rudy's most enthusiastic backers supported him for his tough stand in the war on terror and his record of governing New York City. Yet a significant number of Rudy's key supporters backed him precisely because of his social liberalism. Their hope was that a national victory for Rudy, powered by socially liberal Republicans and moderates, would break the Reagan coalition and leave social conservatives out in the cold. Although he would never have spoken so baldly, Giuliani gave far too many indications of belonging to this group himself.</p>
<p>Rudy's initial campaign forays were marked by a series of awkward and ill-informed statements on the abortion issue. At a minimum, this betrayed a cavalier attitude toward a significant portion of the Reagan coalition. As time went on, however, it became clear that something more was at work. Rudy could have said that while his personal views on abortion were more liberal than many other Republicans, he nonetheless recognized some significant problems in the Supreme Court's abortion jurisprudence. A stance like that might have come close to winning Giuliani the nomination early on. Instead, in a bold and controversial move, Rudy pointedly refused to shift right on abortion. Despite his subsequent efforts to assure conservatives about Supreme Court nominations, and despite his very general condemnations of judicial activism, Rudy's fundamental unwillingness to more openly compromise with social conservatives on life issues split the party and doomed his campaign.</p>
<p>On the marriage issue, Rudy could also have done a good deal more, without in any way giving up his basic stance of accepting civil unions while opposing same-sex marriage. With a pro-same-sex-marriage court decision in Iowa so legally shaky that even some prominent gay-marriage activists hesitated to embrace it, Giuliani could have personally denounced the ruling as a prime example of judicial activism. Instead, Rudy refused to take up social issues in a way that showed his willingness to play even a modest leadership role. So, no matter who Giulinai put on his judicial selection committee, the overall message was: “I'll take your votes, but I don't like your issues, and I won't pay them attention.”</p>
<p>This is the context in which we have to understand what followed. The use of false or mistaken reports to stir up scandal over Giuliani's personal life might have been received very differently had Giuliani taken steps long before to reassure social conservatives. He ought to shown social conservatives by his actions that, despite his relative liberalism on these issues, they would have at least a respected place at the table in a Giuliani administration. Instead, the message of the campaign was that victory for Giuliani meant defeat for social conservatives. This is what powered the rise of Mike Huckabee, the next major candidate to attempt to reshape rather than lead the Reagan coalition (this time by shorting business and foreign policy conservatives).</p>
<p>So why did Rudy hold back from contesting the initial primaries? Chiefly because he himself had created the conditions for his own rejection in the early states. Had Giuliani moved to meet social conservatives halfway, Huckabee would likely have remained an also-ran and Rudy could have contested Iowa. Instead, Giuliani had to shun this socially conservative state, now catching fire for a rival whose campaign he himself had helped to jump-start.</p>
<p>With Huckabee's triumph weakening Giuliani further in New Hampshire, Rudy decided on strategic retreat to Florida as his best option. Perhaps in retrospect Giuliani could and should have made a bolder stand in New Hampshire. But Rudy's early decisions on how to handle social conservatives underpin his logic of retreat. South Carolina was another socially conservative state where Rudy was profoundly handicapped. Had Giuliani coopted at least a significant group of social conservatives back when he was seen as the party's savior, Huckabee would not have been able to take so many of South Carolina's evangelicals, and McCain would have had to fight a viable Rudy for South Carolina's hawks.</p>
<p>Did the success of the surge and the consequent decline of the war as an issue do Giuliani in? Not really. Rudy was always much more than the 9/11 candidate. Giuliani's executive experience and his famous turn-around of New York city gave him a huge edge over McCain in executive leadership, and easily made him a match for Romney in that category. The dynamic in which Giuliani alienated a surprisingly receptive social conservative base and helped give rise to the Huckabee phenomenon in reaction is what controlled the critical early phases of the race, and set the stage for all that followed. National-security matters remain a huge concern for Republicans. Had Rudy handled social conservatives differently from the start, he and not John McCain would now be benefiting from ongoing Republican hawkishness.</p>
<p>Probably Rudy himself, and certainly a significant number of his core supporters, saw the Giuliani campaign as a test of whether Republicans might be able to win without social conservatives. Well, the test is over and the results are in. A candidate who effectively cuts out any key element of the Reagan coalition — be it social conservatives, business conservatives, or national-security conservatives — is doomed to failure. It's fitting, therefore, that both Giuliani and Huckabee seem to be passing from the scene at the same time. Their campaigns are historically linked reverse mirror images. Like interdependent parts that fall useless if not united, these factions of the coalition only work when they work together.</p>
<p>Some folks believe that over time, say by 2012 or 2016, social conservatives will cease to be a necessary element of a winning Republican coalition. I have my doubts about that, but the point to keep in mind here is that this is 2008. At the moment, social conservatives clearly remain an indispensable component of any winning Republican coalition, and any attempt to cut them out is proven folly. Arguably, if Rudy had compromised with social conservatives and won, he could have done far more to effectively keep the coalition hospitable to people with a wide range of views on so cial issues. But by giving so little, Rudy was left with nothing.</p>
<p>I've said that Rudy's was the original sin, but what about John McCain, whose positions on a range of issues also threaten to push important segments of the Republican coalition out into the cold? The McCain problem is real, yet it doesn't quite rise to the level of ejecting one of the three key wings of the coalition. For all the controversies, McCain offers something important to social conservatives, economic conservatives, and national-security conservatives alike. The most serious barrier is immigration, where McCain's position puts him at odds with a major and deeply committed party constituency. This reflects a problem internal to the coalition itself — the split between business conservatives and critics of uncontrolled immigration. It's far from unprecedented, since we're already struggling with the issue under President Bush.</p>
<p>The key lesson of the Giuliani campaign is that the Republican coalition as it is (and not as some might wish it to be) must be attended to. The public — social conservatives very much included — is far less doctrinaire than the usual stereotypes hold. The base is willing to compromise with our leaders for the sake of unity and victory, but our leaders have to be willing to compromise with the coalition as well. Rudy's mistake was to take early poll support from social conservatives as a free pass. Those poll numbers were actually an invitation to a discerning leader to show some ability to compromise. Rudy missed the boat. Will John McCain get it, or will arrogance push him to repeat Rudy's mistakes? Mitt Romney clearly does get it, and it's time we gave him more credit than we have up to now for respecting the coalition he aspires to lead.</p>
<p>— Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the <a href="" type="internal">Ethics and Public Policy Center</a> and an NRO contributing editor.</p> | false | 1 | collapse rudy giulianis presidential bid surely one striking developments 2008 campaign strategic mistake dont think rudy lost dissed social conservatives fact reason giuliani missed early primaries dissed social conservatives giulianis attempt take apart reconstitute ronald reagans winning political coalition original sin rudys primal transgression continues shape dynamics 2008s republican presidential race reagans erstwhile coalition cast garden amity recognizing understanding rudys fault allow us find way back im saying giulianis social liberalism doomed failure contrary remember talking socially conservative state legislator midwest early campaign finding surprise genuine willingness support giuliani fully aware rudys social liberalism conventional wisdom among knowledgeable conservatives campaigns early stages giulianis support would collapse republican base discovered social liberalism yet everyones amazement rudy kept rising polls broader public including social conservatives respected admired hero 911 wanted back winner general election problem giulianis personal social liberalism unacceptable problem rudys failure meet social conservatives halfway without caring much social issues one way plenty rudys enthusiastic backers supported tough stand war terror record governing new york city yet significant number rudys key supporters backed precisely social liberalism hope national victory rudy powered socially liberal republicans moderates would break reagan coalition leave social conservatives cold although would never spoken baldly giuliani gave far many indications belonging group rudys initial campaign forays marked series awkward illinformed statements abortion issue minimum betrayed cavalier attitude toward significant portion reagan coalition time went however became clear something work rudy could said personal views abortion liberal many republicans nonetheless recognized significant problems supreme courts abortion jurisprudence stance like might come close winning giuliani nomination early instead bold controversial move rudy pointedly refused shift right abortion despite subsequent efforts assure conservatives supreme court nominations despite general condemnations judicial activism rudys fundamental unwillingness openly compromise social conservatives life issues split party doomed campaign marriage issue rudy could also done good deal without way giving basic stance accepting civil unions opposing samesex marriage prosamesexmarriage court decision iowa legally shaky even prominent gaymarriage activists hesitated embrace giuliani could personally denounced ruling prime example judicial activism instead rudy refused take social issues way showed willingness play even modest leadership role matter giulinai put judicial selection committee overall message ill take votes dont like issues wont pay attention context understand followed use false mistaken reports stir scandal giulianis personal life might received differently giuliani taken steps long reassure social conservatives ought shown social conservatives actions despite relative liberalism issues would least respected place table giuliani administration instead message campaign victory giuliani meant defeat social conservatives powered rise mike huckabee next major candidate attempt reshape rather lead reagan coalition time shorting business foreign policy conservatives rudy hold back contesting initial primaries chiefly created conditions rejection early states giuliani moved meet social conservatives halfway huckabee would likely remained alsoran rudy could contested iowa instead giuliani shun socially conservative state catching fire rival whose campaign helped jumpstart huckabees triumph weakening giuliani new hampshire rudy decided strategic retreat florida best option perhaps retrospect giuliani could made bolder stand new hampshire rudys early decisions handle social conservatives underpin logic retreat south carolina another socially conservative state rudy profoundly handicapped giuliani coopted least significant group social conservatives back seen partys savior huckabee would able take many south carolinas evangelicals mccain would fight viable rudy south carolinas hawks success surge consequent decline war issue giuliani really rudy always much 911 candidate giulianis executive experience famous turnaround new york city gave huge edge mccain executive leadership easily made match romney category dynamic giuliani alienated surprisingly receptive social conservative base helped give rise huckabee phenomenon reaction controlled critical early phases race set stage followed nationalsecurity matters remain huge concern republicans rudy handled social conservatives differently start john mccain would benefiting ongoing republican hawkishness probably rudy certainly significant number core supporters saw giuliani campaign test whether republicans might able win without social conservatives well test results candidate effectively cuts key element reagan coalition social conservatives business conservatives nationalsecurity conservatives doomed failure fitting therefore giuliani huckabee seem passing scene time campaigns historically linked reverse mirror images like interdependent parts fall useless united factions coalition work work together folks believe time say 2012 2016 social conservatives cease necessary element winning republican coalition doubts point keep mind 2008 moment social conservatives clearly remain indispensable component winning republican coalition attempt cut proven folly arguably rudy compromised social conservatives could done far effectively keep coalition hospitable people wide range views cial issues giving little rudy left nothing ive said rudys original sin john mccain whose positions range issues also threaten push important segments republican coalition cold mccain problem real yet doesnt quite rise level ejecting one three key wings coalition controversies mccain offers something important social conservatives economic conservatives nationalsecurity conservatives alike serious barrier immigration mccains position puts odds major deeply committed party constituency reflects problem internal coalition split business conservatives critics uncontrolled immigration far unprecedented since already struggling issue president bush key lesson giuliani campaign republican coalition might wish must attended public social conservatives much included far less doctrinaire usual stereotypes hold base willing compromise leaders sake unity victory leaders willing compromise coalition well rudys mistake take early poll support social conservatives free pass poll numbers actually invitation discerning leader show ability compromise rudy missed boat john mccain get arrogance push repeat rudys mistakes mitt romney clearly get time gave credit respecting coalition aspires lead stanley kurtz senior fellow ethics public policy center nro contributing editor | 889 |
<p>Some conservatives think that the elite media are finally turning on Barack Obama and his administration.</p>
<p>The argument goes like this: The trio of scandals that have burst forth in the last couple of weeks—the events before, during, and after the deadly attack on the diplomatic outpost in Benghazi; the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups; and especially the Department of Justice’s secret subpoenas of Associated Press phone records and targeting of Fox News reporter James Rosen as a potential co-conspirator in a leak investigation—will mark an inflection point. From here on out, journalists will apply far more scrutiny to President Obama. His free ride is over.</p>
<p>Don’t believe it.</p>
<p>In saying this, we don’t mean to suggest that journalists won’t ask tough questions or say critical things about the administration from time to time. But sooner or later they will—with a few impressive exceptions—revert to their ways. We are, after all, dealing with deeply ingrained habits and ideological commitments.</p>
<p>Take the&#160;New York Times. On May 17, in a story about how President Obama is trying to move beyond his current problems, the&#160;Times&#160;declared, “In the last few days, the administration appears to have stopped the bleeding. The release of internal e-mails on Benghazi largely confirmed the White House’s account.”</p>
<p>Except it did no such thing. The White House’s account was that neither it nor the State Department made any substantive changes to the talking points related to the Benghazi attacks. We have irrefutable evidence—actual documents—that they did. The White House’s account was that a YouTube video critical of Muhammad sparked a spontaneous assault on the American diplomatic outpost in Benghazi. Except this is a fabrication. The White House’s account was that the administration had no idea Islamic terrorists were responsible for the attack until many days later. Except we have emails that prove high-ranking State Department officials knew Ansar al Sharia was involved within 24 hours of the attacks. The White House has not come clean on any of these matters.</p>
<p>To demonstrate how deep and wide the Obama administration’s deceptions run, we know that statements made by White House press secretary Jay Carney back in November about the talking points were false. (Carney assured us at that time that the White House and the State Department made but a “single adjustment” to the talking points and that it was merely “stylistic.”) Undeterred, Carney insists he stands by his statement. In fact, an emboldened Carney is now dismissing questions about the various scandals as analogous to birtherism. Yet the&#160;New York Times, rather than challenging the White House, is acting as its stenographer.</p>
<p>Indeed, ever since the September 11, 2012, attacks on the diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, most members of the elite media have done everything in their power to make the story disappear—despite malfeasance before and during the lethal assault; despite the president and others repeatedly misleading the American people after the assault; and despite the demotion of a distinguished public servant, Gregory Hicks, for daring to challenge the Obama administration’s false account.</p>
<p>Journalists have been more critical of the administration in the IRS and Justice Department-press stories. But even there the criticisms of the president and his top advisers have been relatively restrained. And certainly the intensity of the coverage has been far less than if this were occurring under a Republican president.</p>
<p>Some of us recall the gleeful rush to judgment—the political bloodlust—that swept over the press during the investigation by Patrick Fitzgerald during the George W. Bush presidency of an incident in which there was no underlying crime and which pales in comparison to the gravity of the Benghazi scandal. (Not only did no one die in the Valerie Plame episode, but she and her husband became celebrities.)</p>
<p>So what explains the media’s abstemiousness when facing such glaring examples of dissembling, intimidation, and abuse of power? Three things. The first is journalistic enchantment with Barack Obama that began for some in 2004, for many others in 2008, and has never really gone away. When they look at the president and his top advisers, they see a reflection of their own background, education, and sympathies—and sometimes they see their former colleagues and even family members. The media therefore give the administration the presumption of good faith. If scandals did occur on Obama’s watch, it was simply because he wasn’t as engaged as he should have been.</p>
<p>A second reason is rooted in the attitude many journalists have toward Barack Obama’s political opponents. They judge Obama well because they view his critics with contempt, which is why journalists are working so hard to make these scandals about GOP partisanship and overreach. Why else would the&#160;New York Times&#160;use a headline that reads: “I.R.S. Focus on Conservatives Gives GOP an Issue to Seize On”?</p>
<p>A third explanation is that the vast majority of journalists are highly sympathetic to a large federal government, and they know where these scandals, if pursued vigorously, will lead—to a further deepening distrust of government. A new Fox News poll shows that more than two-thirds of voters feel the government is out of control and threatening their civil liberties. Journalists are aware that these scandals have the potential to deal a devastating blow to their progressive ideology, which is why they will downplay these stories as much as they can.</p>
<p>The press at its best, Walter Lippmann wrote, “is like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode and then another out of darkness into vision.” But today’s media, especially on the Benghazi scandal, have attempted to take something out of vision and return it to darkness. They want this story to vanish—though journalists owe allegiance to the truth.</p>
<p>Peter Wehner is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.</p> | false | 1 | conservatives think elite media finally turning barack obama administration argument goes like trio scandals burst forth last couple weeksthe events deadly attack diplomatic outpost benghazi irss targeting conservative groups especially department justices secret subpoenas associated press phone records targeting fox news reporter james rosen potential coconspirator leak investigationwill mark inflection point journalists apply far scrutiny president obama free ride dont believe saying dont mean suggest journalists wont ask tough questions say critical things administration time time sooner later willwith impressive exceptionsrevert ways dealing deeply ingrained habits ideological commitments take the160new york times may 17 story president obama trying move beyond current problems the160times160declared last days administration appears stopped bleeding release internal emails benghazi largely confirmed white houses account except thing white houses account neither state department made substantive changes talking points related benghazi attacks irrefutable evidenceactual documentsthat white houses account youtube video critical muhammad sparked spontaneous assault american diplomatic outpost benghazi except fabrication white houses account administration idea islamic terrorists responsible attack many days later except emails prove highranking state department officials knew ansar al sharia involved within 24 hours attacks white house come clean matters demonstrate deep wide obama administrations deceptions run know statements made white house press secretary jay carney back november talking points false carney assured us time white house state department made single adjustment talking points merely stylistic undeterred carney insists stands statement fact emboldened carney dismissing questions various scandals analogous birtherism yet the160new york times rather challenging white house acting stenographer indeed ever since september 11 2012 attacks diplomatic outpost benghazi members elite media done everything power make story disappeardespite malfeasance lethal assault despite president others repeatedly misleading american people assault despite demotion distinguished public servant gregory hicks daring challenge obama administrations false account journalists critical administration irs justice departmentpress stories even criticisms president top advisers relatively restrained certainly intensity coverage far less occurring republican president us recall gleeful rush judgmentthe political bloodlustthat swept press investigation patrick fitzgerald george w bush presidency incident underlying crime pales comparison gravity benghazi scandal one die valerie plame episode husband became celebrities explains medias abstemiousness facing glaring examples dissembling intimidation abuse power three things first journalistic enchantment barack obama began 2004 many others 2008 never really gone away look president top advisers see reflection background education sympathiesand sometimes see former colleagues even family members media therefore give administration presumption good faith scandals occur obamas watch simply wasnt engaged second reason rooted attitude many journalists toward barack obamas political opponents judge obama well view critics contempt journalists working hard make scandals gop partisanship overreach else would the160new york times160use headline reads irs focus conservatives gives gop issue seize third explanation vast majority journalists highly sympathetic large federal government know scandals pursued vigorously leadto deepening distrust government new fox news poll shows twothirds voters feel government control threatening civil liberties journalists aware scandals potential deal devastating blow progressive ideology downplay stories much press best walter lippmann wrote like beam searchlight moves restlessly bringing one episode another darkness vision todays media especially benghazi scandal attempted take something vision return darkness want story vanishthough journalists owe allegiance truth peter wehner senior fellow ethics public policy center | 523 |
<p />
<p>It seems that media consensus has been conclusively reached: Turkey has been forced into a Middle Eastern mess not of its own making; the ‘Zero Problems with Neighbors’ notion, once the foreign policy centerpiece of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), is all but a romantic notion of no use in realpolitik.</p>
<p>Turkey’s “policy’s goal – to build strong economic, political, and social ties with the country’s immediate neighbors while decreasing its dependency on the United States – seemed to be within sight,” wrote Sinan Ulgen nearly a year ago. “But the Arab Spring exposed the policy’s vulnerabilities, and Turkey must now seek a new guiding principle for regional engagement.”</p>
<p>This reading was not entirely unique and was repeated numerous times henceforth. It suggests an air of naiveness in Turkish foreign policy and overlooks the country’s barely selfless regional ambitions. It also imagines that Turkey was caught in a series of unfortunate events, forcing its hand to act in ways inconsistent with its genuine policies of yesteryears. This, however, is not entirely true.</p>
<p>The recent skirmishes of Oct 4 at the Syrian-Turkish border were reportedly invited by mortar shells fired from the Syrian side. Five people including 3 children were killed and the incident was Turkey’s ‘last straw.’ Turkey’s Anatolia news agency reported of an official Syrian apology through the United Nations soon after the shelling and the Syrian government promised an investigation. However, their seriousness remains doubtful. But the Turkish military was quick to retaliate, as the parliament voted to extend a one-year mandate to the military in order carry out cross-border military action. Irrespective of the violence at the Syrian border, the mandate was originally aimed at Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq and it had already been set for a pre-scheduled vote in mid-October.</p>
<p>The peculiarly evolving episode seems unreal. Not long ago, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had, to the displeasure of Israel and the US, reached out to both Syria and Iran. He referred to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as his ‘brother’, knowing of the full political implications of that term. When Turkey voted against Iran sanctions at the United Nations in June 2010, ‘it provoked a crisis,” a Wall Street Journal article read. Later, Turkey quarreled with NATO over the missile-defense initiative, a system that is clearly aimed at Iran and Syria. “Turkey is becoming the Alliance’s ‘opt-out’ member in operations in Muslim countries,” said the WSJ. These developments took place at the heels of the deadly Israeli military raid on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, which carried mostly Turkish peace activists as part of a larger effort – The Gaza Freedom Flotilla – aimed at breaking the siege on Gaza. Israel killed 9 Turkish civilians and wounded many more on the Mavi Marmara.</p>
<p>Erdogan and other Turkish officials rose to the status of superstars among Arabs at the time when ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was himself complicit in the Gaza siege. Understandably, the AKP became a political model and the subject of endless academic and television debates. Turkey was the brand to beat even culturally and economically.</p>
<p>Internally, Erdogan and his party were credited for overseeing massive economic growth, and successfully reining in and eventually integrating the once insubordinate, coup-prone military leadership into a democratic system managed by elected civilians. Externally, Erdogan and his Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu helped rebrand and partly break the isolation of several Arab leaders, including Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi. (Turkish leaders must have been fully aware of the grievances of Arab peoples as they signed economic deals worth billions of dollars with the very dictators they helped oust.) Although Ankara’s spat with Tel Aviv didn’t translate into tangible change in Israeli or US policies towards Palestinians, a level of gratification permeated: At last, a country strong enough as Turkey had the courage to stand up to Israel’s intransigent and calculated insults.</p>
<p>Then Tunisia overthrew its president and Turkey’s foreign policy cards were mix-up like never before. If the US, France and other Western powers were inconsistent and self-contradicting in their stances on uprisings, revolutions and civil wars that struck the Middle East and North Africa in the last 18 months, Turkey’s foreign policy was particularly muddled.</p>
<p>Initially, Turkey responded to what seemed like distant affairs with good sound bites concerning people’s rights, justice and democracy. In Libya, the stakes were higher as NATO was hell-bent on determining the outcomes of Arab revolts whenever space allowed. Turkey was the last NATO member to sign onto the Libya war. The delay proved costly as Arab media that cheered for war seemed to target Turkey’s prized reputation and credibility.</p>
<p>When Syrians rebelled, Turkey was prepared. Its policy was aimed at taking early initiative by imposing its own sanctions on Damascus. It went even further as it turned a blind eye while its once well-guarded border area became awash with smugglers, foreign fighters, weapons and more. Aside from hosting the Syrian National Council (SNC), it also provided a safe haven for the Free Syrian Army that operated from the Turkish borders at will. While much of that was justified as righteous Turkish action to deter injustice, it was one of the primary reasons which made a political solution unattainable. It turned what eventually became a bloody and brutal conflict into a regional struggle. It allowed for Syrian territories to be used in a proxy conflict involving various countries, ideologies and political camps. Since Turkey is a NATO member, it meant that NATO was involved in the Syrian conflict, although in a more understated way than its war on Libya.</p>
<p>The Kurdish dimension to Turkey’s role in Syria is of course enormous. Less reported is that Turkey is industriously working to control any Kurdish backlash in Syria’s northeast region, thus doubling Turkey’s border conflict, which has been mostly confined to northern Iraq. Writing in Turkish Today’s Zaman, Abdullah Bozkurt spoke of “a high-stakes game plan for Turkey to control the fast-paced developments in northern Syria using the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in neighboring Iraq as a proxy force without getting directly involved in Syria.” Moreover, Ankara has more discreetly worked to compel favorable policies by the SNC regarding the Kurdish question. Bozkurt further reports that “Ankara has silently pushed SNC to elect an independent Kurd, Abdulbaset Sieda, in June as a compromise leader … as a safeguard measure for Turkey to exert influence over some 1.5 million Kurds in Syria.”</p>
<p>Indeed, the so-called Arab Spring has partly confused and eventually helped realign Turkish foreign policy towards Arab countries, and even Iran. Turkey however was barely a passive player before or after the upheaval. The impression that Turkey has stood at the fence as competing agendas south of their border finally pushed Ankara to the brink, is both erroneous and misleading. Regardless of how Turkish politicians wish to formulate their involvement, there is no escaping that they have taken part in the war against Libya, and are now entangled, to some extent by choice, in the brutal mess in Syria.</p>
<p>The sad irony is that hours after Turkey’s retaliation to the Syrian fire, Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor told reporters in Paris that an attack on Turkey is an attack on NATO, an underhanded gesture of careful solidarity. He added, “If the Assad regime were to fall, it would be a vital strike on Iran.” Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman could barely hide his excitement, for what the US neoconservatives failed to achieve, is now being done by proxy. Lieberman, hardly a visionary, predicted a ‘Persian Spring’ on the way that, he urged, must be supported. For Israel and the US, now that Turkey is on board, the possibilities are endless.</p>
<p>Ankara must reconsider its role in the deepening calamity, and devise more sensible policies. War should not be on the agenda. Too many people have died that way.</p> | false | 1 | seems media consensus conclusively reached turkey forced middle eastern mess making zero problems neighbors notion foreign policy centerpiece justice development party akp romantic notion use realpolitik turkeys policys goal build strong economic political social ties countrys immediate neighbors decreasing dependency united states seemed within sight wrote sinan ulgen nearly year ago arab spring exposed policys vulnerabilities turkey must seek new guiding principle regional engagement reading entirely unique repeated numerous times henceforth suggests air naiveness turkish foreign policy overlooks countrys barely selfless regional ambitions also imagines turkey caught series unfortunate events forcing hand act ways inconsistent genuine policies yesteryears however entirely true recent skirmishes oct 4 syrianturkish border reportedly invited mortar shells fired syrian side five people including 3 children killed incident turkeys last straw turkeys anatolia news agency reported official syrian apology united nations soon shelling syrian government promised investigation however seriousness remains doubtful turkish military quick retaliate parliament voted extend oneyear mandate military order carry crossborder military action irrespective violence syrian border mandate originally aimed kurdish fighters northern iraq already set prescheduled vote midoctober peculiarly evolving episode seems unreal long ago turkish prime minister recep tayyip erdogan displeasure israel us reached syria iran referred syrian president bashar alassad brother knowing full political implications term turkey voted iran sanctions united nations june 2010 provoked crisis wall street journal article read later turkey quarreled nato missiledefense initiative system clearly aimed iran syria turkey becoming alliances optout member operations muslim countries said wsj developments took place heels deadly israeli military raid turkish ship mavi marmara carried mostly turkish peace activists part larger effort gaza freedom flotilla aimed breaking siege gaza israel killed 9 turkish civilians wounded many mavi marmara erdogan turkish officials rose status superstars among arabs time ousted egyptian president hosni mubarak complicit gaza siege understandably akp became political model subject endless academic television debates turkey brand beat even culturally economically internally erdogan party credited overseeing massive economic growth successfully reining eventually integrating insubordinate coupprone military leadership democratic system managed elected civilians externally erdogan foreign minister ahmet davutoglu helped rebrand partly break isolation several arab leaders including libyas muammar qaddafi turkish leaders must fully aware grievances arab peoples signed economic deals worth billions dollars dictators helped oust although ankaras spat tel aviv didnt translate tangible change israeli us policies towards palestinians level gratification permeated last country strong enough turkey courage stand israels intransigent calculated insults tunisia overthrew president turkeys foreign policy cards mixup like never us france western powers inconsistent selfcontradicting stances uprisings revolutions civil wars struck middle east north africa last 18 months turkeys foreign policy particularly muddled initially turkey responded seemed like distant affairs good sound bites concerning peoples rights justice democracy libya stakes higher nato hellbent determining outcomes arab revolts whenever space allowed turkey last nato member sign onto libya war delay proved costly arab media cheered war seemed target turkeys prized reputation credibility syrians rebelled turkey prepared policy aimed taking early initiative imposing sanctions damascus went even turned blind eye wellguarded border area became awash smugglers foreign fighters weapons aside hosting syrian national council snc also provided safe free syrian army operated turkish borders much justified righteous turkish action deter injustice one primary reasons made political solution unattainable turned eventually became bloody brutal conflict regional struggle allowed syrian territories used proxy conflict involving various countries ideologies political camps since turkey nato member meant nato involved syrian conflict although understated way war libya kurdish dimension turkeys role syria course enormous less reported turkey industriously working control kurdish backlash syrias northeast region thus doubling turkeys border conflict mostly confined northern iraq writing turkish todays zaman abdullah bozkurt spoke highstakes game plan turkey control fastpaced developments northern syria using kurdistan regional government krg neighboring iraq proxy force without getting directly involved syria moreover ankara discreetly worked compel favorable policies snc regarding kurdish question bozkurt reports ankara silently pushed snc elect independent kurd abdulbaset sieda june compromise leader safeguard measure turkey exert influence 15 million kurds syria indeed socalled arab spring partly confused eventually helped realign turkish foreign policy towards arab countries even iran turkey however barely passive player upheaval impression turkey stood fence competing agendas south border finally pushed ankara brink erroneous misleading regardless turkish politicians wish formulate involvement escaping taken part war libya entangled extent choice brutal mess syria sad irony hours turkeys retaliation syrian fire israels deputy prime minister dan meridor told reporters paris attack turkey attack nato underhanded gesture careful solidarity added assad regime fall would vital strike iran israeli foreign minister avigdor lieberman could barely hide excitement us neoconservatives failed achieve done proxy lieberman hardly visionary predicted persian spring way urged must supported israel us turkey board possibilities endless ankara must reconsider role deepening calamity devise sensible policies war agenda many people died way | 788 |
<p>Nevada governments are using the underfunded state pension system to boost the income of public employees.</p>
<p>The practice, which is legal but often based on decades-old or misused exemptions to the law, costs taxpayers at least $23 million a year in pension and salary, a Las Vegas Review-Journal investigation found.</p>
<p>An examination of pension data shows:</p>
<p>■ Over the past few years, hundreds of Clark County School District staff drew pensions and salaries based on an exemption that allows the extra payments for workers who fill jobs that are certified as “critical” and lack applicants. But after 143 of those authorizations expired, nearly half of the employees stayed in the jobs, despite losing the pension payments.</p>
<p />
<p>■ Some governments use the exemption to let workers collect pensions and salaries for political reasons or for positions they likely could fill without the financial incentive.</p>
<p>■ Two dozen elected officials collect salaries and pensions at the same time, including eight politicians who use the arrangement to make more than $250,000 a year.</p>
<p>■ There is little accountability or transparency in the system.</p>
<p>We don’t give them pensions so they can double dip. We give them pensions so they can retire.</p>
<p>Edward Zelinsky, professor at the Cardozo School of Law in New York</p>
<p>Edward Zelinsky, a professor who studies pensions at the Cardozo School of Law in New York, said the payments are a symptom of a system bloated with unnecessary expenses and perks.</p>
<p>“We don’t give them pensions so they can double dip,” he said. “We give them pensions so they can retire.”</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Elected officials who collect retirement on top of a salary</a> argue that they earned the pension payments and work hard for their current public salaries. They also say the additional pay does not cost the state more, because others would continue to be paid for those jobs if they left their elected positions to retire.</p>
<p>But the benefit creates an incentive for trained workers to retire and switch jobs as soon as they are eligible to leverage the extra pay.</p>
<p>The costs of double dipping also add to the strains on a trust fund that some experts say is headed for insolvency.</p>
<p />
<p>The current returns on the fund’s investments are too low to maintain retiree benefits, said former state Assemblyman Randy Kirner, who tried to pass a bill to reform the system when he was in the Nevada Legislature.</p>
<p>“We will need a half-billion-dollar bailout or a billion-dollar bailout, and someone will have to come up with that number,” Kirner said. “That’s going to be the taxpayers.”</p>
<p>The plan’s 32-year average annual return is 9.4 percent, but in the last decade that dropped to 6.3 percent, pension records show. The fund paid $300 million more to recipients than it collected in contributions in 2016. The pension currently has enough money to meet about 74.1 percent of its obligations, figures show.</p>
<p>Pension fund executive officer Tina Leiss said the fund’s ability to pay future retirees is not a problem and the $38.5 billion account is set up to ensure that retirees get paid.</p>
<p>“The idea of a taxpayer bailout is not supported by any facts,” she said.</p>
<p>The pension agency commissioned a 2013 study that showed the account would be fully funded in 30 years. The study also noted that Nevada’s unfunded liability is about average for other state systems.</p>
<p>We will need a half billion dollar bailout or a billion dollar bailout and someone will have to come up with that number. That’s going to be the taxpayers.</p>
<p>Randy Kirner, former state Assemblyman</p>
<p>Unusually broad law</p>
<p>Most Nevada public retirees must suspend their pensions if they work more than part-time hours, but state law allows any elected official and anyone whose position is certified as critical by a government agency to collect a full-time salary and pension benefits from the Public Employees Retirement System.</p>
<p>The Review-Journal surveyed state pension plans nationwide. Of the 44 states that responded, only six made special provisions for all elected officials to collect pensions and salaries.</p>
<p>For positions deemed critical and hard to fill, only 10 states have such exemptions, and more than half of those are limited to specific categories, such as teachers or prison staff. Nevada allows governments to certify any position as critical if officials document a shortage of qualified candidates for the job.</p>
<p>Most private employers have phased out pensions, requiring workers to fund their own retirements through 401(k) savings that are not usually accessible until age 59½. Social Security beneficiaries who return to work but are not yet 66 years old receive sharply reduced benefits: They lose $1 for every $2 earned over about $16,000 a year. But many of Nevada’s double dippers retire in their mid-50s and then collect as much as 90 percent of their former salaries, along with a new five- or six-figure salary.</p>
<p>To get positions certified, Nevada governments must document the turnover history of the job, the number of open positions compared to qualified candidates, the length of time the position has been vacant and the agency’s recruiting efforts.</p>
<p>However, no one at the state or pension agency can protest or overturn the decision, no matter the justification.</p>
<p>The pension agency also has sought to keep basic information about recipients secret, fighting two separate lawsuits from organizations trying to obtain basic information such as retirees’ names and the agencies where they had worked.</p>
<p>The libertarian Nevada Policy Research Institute won a ruling in January from District Judge James Wilson for more information. But pension officials appealed, spending more than $177,000 to fight the lawsuits, records show.</p>
<p>Robert Fellner, a director at the institute, said the fights are inappropriate.</p>
<p>“It’s indefensible that PERS has publicly opposed transparency,” he said.</p>
<p>Chris Nielsen, general counsel at the agency, defended its spending on court cases.</p>
<p>“We need further clarity, and with all due respect to Judge Wilson, the District Court isn’t the final say in all of this,” he said.</p>
<p />
<p>Big money for elected few</p>
<p>Many elected officials retired only after they were assured of having an elected position to collect a salary.</p>
<p>Michael P. Gibbons retired from his position as a District Court judge on Dec. 31, 2014, with a $160,000 state pension. Five days later, he took the oath for an appellate court job that pays more than $200,000 a year. Gibbons’ annual income now tops $360,000.</p>
<p>Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo retired from his position as assistant sheriff at the Metropolitan Police Department after voters elected him to the agency’s top job in 2014. He collects nearly $325,000 a year in salary and pension, records show.</p>
<p>And Clark County Family Court Judge Robert Teuton retired from the district attorney’s office in 2008 after the governor appointed him to the bench. Teuton’s combined income is now more than $373,000 a year.</p>
<p>Public retirees often take jobs in other states or in the private sector to collect a pension and a new salary, but it is improper to use public funds for both payments, Zelinsky said.</p>
<p>“It’s deeply troubling, whether or not they’re elected officials, that you’re taking two salaries and that those are financed by the same taxpayers,” he said.</p>
<p />
<p>Officials point out that state law allows the payments.</p>
<p>“I had a very good career serving the residents of Clark County for 27.5 years, and I am being appropriately compensated after retiring from that job,” Lombardo said.</p>
<p>Teuton, the Family Court judge, would only issue a statement. “As a young attorney, I began serving our community as a Deputy District Attorney, prosecuting criminals and serving to protect the public,” he wrote. “I chose to forego the potential of a higher salary in private practice.”</p>
<p>Judge Gibbons said he earned his pension and salary by serving the public as a prosecutor and judge for decades. “I could have retired and just gone into private practice and made tremendously more,” he said.</p>
<p>Gibbons said a quirk in pension calculations would have reduced his survivor benefits if he didn’t retire, so he planned to leave office. Then Gov. Brian Sandoval appointed him to the newly formed appellate court. Gibbons also noted that his take-home pay is far less than $360,000 after taxes.</p>
<p>The “amount of federal income tax we have paid beginning in 2015, has dramatically increased,” he wrote in an email. “My net income from employment earnings, and retirement benefits (which are fully taxed as ordinary income), is much different than the gross income numbers that are commonly reported.”</p>
<p>Recruiting aid or pricey perk?</p>
<p>The <a href="" type="internal">Clark County School District relies on the use of pension funds as a job incentive</a> more than any other agency in Nevada.</p>
<p>Of nearly 1,200 positions certified as critical in the state since 2001, more than half were at the school district, pension data show.</p>
<p>School officials and other local and state government leaders say they could not fill some teaching, police and even school bus driver openings without the retirement pay.</p>
<p>But when exemptions for 143 Clark County school positions expired after the 2009-10 school year, about 60 teachers, counselors and other staff chose to stay in the jobs without being able to collect pensions, raising questions about whether the perk was necessary.</p>
<p>“The Legislature created critical labor shortages for very valid reasons, but arguably it might be overused,” said Cheryl Blomstrom, interim president of the Nevada Taxpayers Association.</p>
<p>School district spokeswoman Melinda Malone said the district does not know why some teachers continued to work after the certifications for their positions expired.</p>
<p>“Just because some teachers chose to stay doesn’t mean they would have returned to teaching without the (labor shortage) incentive in the first place,” she wrote in an email statement.</p>
<p>The costs are significant.</p>
<p>Between 2001 and 2014, the pension agency paid $97 million in benefits to people who were working full-time for government agencies, Segal Consulting studies conducted for the pension agency show.</p>
<p>“We believe it is appropriate to assume that these retirees would not have retired had the (labor shortage) provision not been in place,” the study authors wrote.</p>
<p />
<p>Last year, the pension system paid at least $7 million in benefits to retirees who are in critical labor positions, and governments paid them an additional $9 million in salaries, a Review-Journal analysis found. Those figures are not complete, because pension officials do not release information that could be used to verify the agency from which recipients retired. About two dozen school district retirees contacted by the Review-Journal did not return calls or declined comment.</p>
<p>Officials point out that there are savings in labor shortage positions because the school district doesn’t have to pay retirement contributions for returning teachers.</p>
<p>Pension chief Leiss said her agency’s board opposed the labor shortage exemption. “Ultimately it is the Legislature’s purview to adopt what it thinks are the appropriate benefit provisions,” she said.</p>
<p>Clark County schools lobbied in favor of a law that made the temporary program permanent in 2015. Michael Gentry, the district’s chief recruitment officer, said it does not like using the critical exemption but often has no choice.</p>
<p>“We have done a good job reducing vacancies,” he said. “But as a stopgap measure the (exemption) makes phenomenal sense.”</p>
<p>Critical or political?</p>
<p>In 2012, Elko County Sheriff Jim Pitts had to replace his undersheriff, Rick Keema, after he failed to obtain police certification.</p>
<p>Instead of filling the position with a current staff member or recruiting outside candidates, Pitts asked the county board to certify the position as critical and hired Clair Morris, who had retired from the department in 2005. The position paid $92,700 in 2013, and the salary went up to $102,994 in 2015, records show. Morris also collected about $70,000 a year in pension benefits.</p>
<p>When Morris left last year, Pitts filled the job with another retiree, Ron Supp, who is paid about $90,000 a year and collects more than $92,000 in pension benefits for serving as undersheriff of the 66-officer department.</p>
<p>Pitts said he could not find qualified internal candidates who wanted the position, and he believed it would be unfair to appoint and bring a new hire to Elko with the risk of losing the job if Pitts did not win re-election.</p>
<p>“I have a couple of people in the department (who) don’t have the years in the (pension) system to take the chance of not having a job if I’m not re-elected,” he said.</p>
<p>Blomstrom, of the taxpayers association, said Pitts’ justification for adding pension pay to the salary is not what lawmakers intended.</p>
<p>“If that is indeed what happened, that is tough to defend,” she said.</p>
<p>Pitts said he will drop the practice in the future.</p>
<p>Fellner, of the NPRI, said lawmakers should prohibit double dipping.</p>
<p>“The Legislature should do what they expressly stated the purpose of (the pension system) was to do: Provide a reasonable base income for those who are no longer able to work,” he said.</p>
<p>Contact Arthur Kane at [email protected]. Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/ArthurMKane" type="external">@ArthurMKane</a> on Twitter.</p> | false | 1 | nevada governments using underfunded state pension system boost income public employees practice legal often based decadesold misused exemptions law costs taxpayers least 23 million year pension salary las vegas reviewjournal investigation found examination pension data shows past years hundreds clark county school district staff drew pensions salaries based exemption allows extra payments workers fill jobs certified critical lack applicants 143 authorizations expired nearly half employees stayed jobs despite losing pension payments governments use exemption let workers collect pensions salaries political reasons positions likely could fill without financial incentive two dozen elected officials collect salaries pensions time including eight politicians use arrangement make 250000 year little accountability transparency system dont give pensions double dip give pensions retire edward zelinsky professor cardozo school law new york edward zelinsky professor studies pensions cardozo school law new york said payments symptom system bloated unnecessary expenses perks dont give pensions double dip said give pensions retire elected officials collect retirement top salary argue earned pension payments work hard current public salaries also say additional pay cost state others would continue paid jobs left elected positions retire benefit creates incentive trained workers retire switch jobs soon eligible leverage extra pay costs double dipping also add strains trust fund experts say headed insolvency current returns funds investments low maintain retiree benefits said former state assemblyman randy kirner tried pass bill reform system nevada legislature need halfbilliondollar bailout billiondollar bailout someone come number kirner said thats going taxpayers plans 32year average annual return 94 percent last decade dropped 63 percent pension records show fund paid 300 million recipients collected contributions 2016 pension currently enough money meet 741 percent obligations figures show pension fund executive officer tina leiss said funds ability pay future retirees problem 385 billion account set ensure retirees get paid idea taxpayer bailout supported facts said pension agency commissioned 2013 study showed account would fully funded 30 years study also noted nevadas unfunded liability average state systems need half billion dollar bailout billion dollar bailout someone come number thats going taxpayers randy kirner former state assemblyman unusually broad law nevada public retirees must suspend pensions work parttime hours state law allows elected official anyone whose position certified critical government agency collect fulltime salary pension benefits public employees retirement system reviewjournal surveyed state pension plans nationwide 44 states responded six made special provisions elected officials collect pensions salaries positions deemed critical hard fill 10 states exemptions half limited specific categories teachers prison staff nevada allows governments certify position critical officials document shortage qualified candidates job private employers phased pensions requiring workers fund retirements 401k savings usually accessible age 59½ social security beneficiaries return work yet 66 years old receive sharply reduced benefits lose 1 every 2 earned 16000 year many nevadas double dippers retire mid50s collect much 90 percent former salaries along new five sixfigure salary get positions certified nevada governments must document turnover history job number open positions compared qualified candidates length time position vacant agencys recruiting efforts however one state pension agency protest overturn decision matter justification pension agency also sought keep basic information recipients secret fighting two separate lawsuits organizations trying obtain basic information retirees names agencies worked libertarian nevada policy research institute ruling january district judge james wilson information pension officials appealed spending 177000 fight lawsuits records show robert fellner director institute said fights inappropriate indefensible pers publicly opposed transparency said chris nielsen general counsel agency defended spending court cases need clarity due respect judge wilson district court isnt final say said big money elected many elected officials retired assured elected position collect salary michael p gibbons retired position district court judge dec 31 2014 160000 state pension five days later took oath appellate court job pays 200000 year gibbons annual income tops 360000 clark county sheriff joseph lombardo retired position assistant sheriff metropolitan police department voters elected agencys top job 2014 collects nearly 325000 year salary pension records show clark county family court judge robert teuton retired district attorneys office 2008 governor appointed bench teutons combined income 373000 year public retirees often take jobs states private sector collect pension new salary improper use public funds payments zelinsky said deeply troubling whether theyre elected officials youre taking two salaries financed taxpayers said officials point state law allows payments good career serving residents clark county 275 years appropriately compensated retiring job lombardo said teuton family court judge would issue statement young attorney began serving community deputy district attorney prosecuting criminals serving protect public wrote chose forego potential higher salary private practice judge gibbons said earned pension salary serving public prosecutor judge decades could retired gone private practice made tremendously said gibbons said quirk pension calculations would reduced survivor benefits didnt retire planned leave office gov brian sandoval appointed newly formed appellate court gibbons also noted takehome pay far less 360000 taxes amount federal income tax paid beginning 2015 dramatically increased wrote email net income employment earnings retirement benefits fully taxed ordinary income much different gross income numbers commonly reported recruiting aid pricey perk clark county school district relies use pension funds job incentive agency nevada nearly 1200 positions certified critical state since 2001 half school district pension data show school officials local state government leaders say could fill teaching police even school bus driver openings without retirement pay exemptions 143 clark county school positions expired 200910 school year 60 teachers counselors staff chose stay jobs without able collect pensions raising questions whether perk necessary legislature created critical labor shortages valid reasons arguably might overused said cheryl blomstrom interim president nevada taxpayers association school district spokeswoman melinda malone said district know teachers continued work certifications positions expired teachers chose stay doesnt mean would returned teaching without labor shortage incentive first place wrote email statement costs significant 2001 2014 pension agency paid 97 million benefits people working fulltime government agencies segal consulting studies conducted pension agency show believe appropriate assume retirees would retired labor shortage provision place study authors wrote last year pension system paid least 7 million benefits retirees critical labor positions governments paid additional 9 million salaries reviewjournal analysis found figures complete pension officials release information could used verify agency recipients retired two dozen school district retirees contacted reviewjournal return calls declined comment officials point savings labor shortage positions school district doesnt pay retirement contributions returning teachers pension chief leiss said agencys board opposed labor shortage exemption ultimately legislatures purview adopt thinks appropriate benefit provisions said clark county schools lobbied favor law made temporary program permanent 2015 michael gentry districts chief recruitment officer said like using critical exemption often choice done good job reducing vacancies said stopgap measure exemption makes phenomenal sense critical political 2012 elko county sheriff jim pitts replace undersheriff rick keema failed obtain police certification instead filling position current staff member recruiting outside candidates pitts asked county board certify position critical hired clair morris retired department 2005 position paid 92700 2013 salary went 102994 2015 records show morris also collected 70000 year pension benefits morris left last year pitts filled job another retiree ron supp paid 90000 year collects 92000 pension benefits serving undersheriff 66officer department pitts said could find qualified internal candidates wanted position believed would unfair appoint bring new hire elko risk losing job pitts win reelection couple people department dont years pension system take chance job im reelected said blomstrom taxpayers association said pitts justification adding pension pay salary lawmakers intended indeed happened tough defend said pitts said drop practice future fellner npri said lawmakers prohibit double dipping legislature expressly stated purpose pension system provide reasonable base income longer able work said contact arthur kane akanereviewjournalcom follow arthurmkane twitter | 1,261 |
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Before the House International Relations Committee of the United States House of Representatives Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights, and International Operations</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Tuesday, November 15, 2005</p>
<p>Mr. Chairman and distinguished Members of the Subcommittee, let me begin by thanking you for the opportunity to testify today at this important hearing. I plan to summarize the Commission’s testimony in my oral remarks, but would like to request that my full written statement be included in the record.</p>
<p>The State Department’s Annual Report on International Religious Freedom and the work of our Commission demonstrate that religious freedom concerns cut across the full swath of critical issues in American foreign policy. From constitutional developments in Iraq, to the propagation and export of religious extremist ideology by Saudi Arabia, to the persistence of religious freedom abuses in China, to the repressive nature of the governments in potentially destabilizing countries such as Iran, Uzbekistan, and North Korea, to the promotion of democracy and the fight against extremism in the Middle East, protecting the right to freedom of religion or belief is indispensable to advancing American interests. As President Bush recently said, “when the United States promotes religious freedom, it is promoting the spread of democracy.” It is also promoting universal values as enshrined in international human rights norms.</p>
<p>With the passage of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (IRFA), Congress declared that it was the policy of the United States to stand for liberty and stand with the persecuted to promote respect for religious freedom by all governments and peoples. The release of the Annual Report provides an opportunity to address some of the important challenges we face in doing so.</p>
<p>Along with the Commission’s comments on the Annual Report, my testimony will address the Secretary of State’s most recent designations of “countries of particular concern” (CPCs) and the U.S. government’s response to last year’s first-time designation of Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam as CPCs. In addition, my testimony presents a special focus on two countries on which the Commission has been particularly active in the past year. First, I will address Iraq’s new constitution, and offer specific recommendations for strengthening protections for religious freedom and other human rights during the next phase of political transition. The Commission continues to believe that the constitution and its implementation will be crucial to Iraq’s overall success as a stable and democratic state. Second, my testimony will report in brief on the Commission’s recent two-week trip to China, where we were able to visit not only Beijing but also Tibet and Xinjiang, among other areas.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Iraq’s New Constitution: Freedom of Religion on Hold</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Let me begin with Iraq. As Iraqis prepare for another round of elections in their historic transition from tyranny to democracy, the Commission’s focus on the institutional dimension of the right to religious freedom and on securing the individual right to freedom of religion or belief for every Iraqi is more critical than ever. However, fundamental questions remain about the final content of the constitution, and how the provisions on religious freedom and other fundamental rights will be implemented through enabling legislation. Ultimately, it will be the Iraqi Supreme Court’s interpretation of this legislation that will determine whether human rights principles will be applicable within the various regions of a federal Iraq, and also whether these rights will be subject to limitations in the event they are deemed to contradict the basic principles of Islam.</p>
<p>Iraq’s new constitution, approved by 79 percent of voters in last month’s referendum, incorporates positive provisions related to human rights protections, including constructive language on religious freedom. However, several of the articles are written in vague or ambiguous terms, resulting in a constitution that sets out two potentially disparate visions for Iraq. The first vision proclaims a country that respects fundamental freedoms and democratic principles; the second lays the foundation for a country in which Islamic law could be used to trump these freedoms. For example, Islam is a basic source of legislation, and no law can contradict Islam’s established principles. The constitution allows for the appointment to Iraq’s highest court of experts in Islamic jurisprudence who need not have any training in civil law or other relevant subjects. Such limited training places Iraq’s Supreme Court requirements alongside those of Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, and could run the risk of tipping the scales towards the second of the two visions previously described.</p>
<p>Another problem is that nothing in the constitution explicitly provides that civil law, as opposed to religious law, will be applied in cases involving personal status issues. This means that women appearing in religious courts could be subject to discriminatory treatment in matters of marriage, divorce, and inheritance. The constitutional position on personal status also leaves open the questions of whether religious courts would be forced on unwilling parties and which court would rule on disputes between parties of different religions or beliefs. Personal status matters should generally fall under the jurisdiction of civil courts, and the free and informed consent of both parties should be required to refer a matter to religious courts, whose rulings should be subject to final review by the civil courts.</p>
<p>These and other concerns are detailed in a legal analysis prepared by the Commission and released to the public in early October. Based on its findings, the Commission concludes that the enabling phase of constitutional reconstruction is vital and that the U.S. government must ensure that the fundamental right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief is strengthened by Iraq’s future government across all of its work. It should be pointed out that this is not a fanciful luxury; rather religious freedom is, as President Bush himself said, a foundation for other fundamental human rights and a touchstone of any democratic society.</p>
<p>The need to continue to press for these human rights protections in the constitution is reinforced by an ongoing stream of violence and extremism driven by religious intolerance. During the past year, thousands of ChaldoAssyrians and other members of Iraq’s indigenous non-Muslim religious minorities have fled the country out of fear of persecution; there have been numerous reports of violence, including murder, directed against women and others, in an extrajudicial effort to impose an extremist version of Islamic law that violates international human rights standards; and places of worship and religious clerics alike have been the target of insurgent attacks. These attacks have had a detrimental impact on the ability of all religious groups in Iraq, including Shia and Sunni Muslims, to worship freely.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Commission Recommendations on Iraq</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>The Commission has developed several recommendations for the next critical phases of Iraq’s political transition: the upcoming election campaign and the new government’s implementation and possible amendment of the constitution.</p>
<p>First, the Commission has recommended that a high-level human rights official, reporting directly to the Ambassador, be stationed within Embassy Baghdad to advance human rights, including religious freedom, as a key U.S. policy objective. Designating a high-level official demonstrates support for Iraqi efforts to make human rights a high-priority issue. Recently we learned that the Commerce, Justice, State Conference Report includes report language supporting this recommendation. The Commission hopes that the Department of State will implement this recommendation in a timely manner.</p>
<p>Second, the United States should encourage a robust discussion during the upcoming election campaign of how candidates would seek to implement the permanent constitution’s provisions on the role of Islam and at the same time implement the protections for human rights. The Iraqi people deserve to know just how their representatives would address these issues. Related to this, U.S. contractors should conduct opinion polls designed to elicit how Iraqis understand the meaning and implementation of Islamic law, and the bearing such religious principles should have on their individual rights.</p>
<p>Third, given its experiences over the past 18 months, the Commission believes that a greater effort should be made by U.S. contractors and other organizations operating with U.S. government funding to cultivate and promote elements of Iraqi civil and political society that advocate in favor of democracy and human rights. As it stands, a number of dominant Iraqi political parties reportedly receive funding and support from other countries, including Iran, which do not share our interests in promoting human rights. Congress and agencies providing assistance should seek additional ways to encourage the emergence of new political voices in Iraq committed to individual rights and equality for all Iraqis.</p>
<p>Fourth, the Commission recommends that Congress urge the Administration to advocate the strengthening of constitutional human rights provisions during the four month period following the election when Iraqis are expected to consider amendments to the existing text.</p>
<p>Fifth, following elections, the new legislature will also begin to consider how to implement the no less than 50 provisions in Iraq’s constitution that require enabling legislation. This represents a window of opportunity for the United States and the international community to communicate forcefully our desire to see that Iraq’s legal framework in the post-Saddam era incorporates and upholds clear human rights guarantees for every Iraqi. The U.S. Agency for International Development should be granted specific authority to undertake rule of law programs focused on those pieces of enabling legislation that are related to human rights issues.</p>
<p>Finally, the Commission urges Congress and the Administration to press the UN and our international allies to engage directly with Iraqi political leaders concerning the strengthening of protections for human rights. Among other actions, Iraqi leaders should be encouraged to invite a field visit from the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, and to invite international human rights experts to consult on potential amendments to the constitution and on the drafting of any enabling legislation that may have an impact on human rights.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>The Commission’s Visit to China</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>In August 2005, the Commission traveled to China to engage senior officials responsible for the management of religious affairs and the protection of human rights in China, and meet with representatives of China’s government approved religious communities.</p>
<p>Mr. Chairman, it is the Commission’s assessment that the scope of political openness, public activism, and civil and individual freedoms is narrowing in China. China is in the midst of a crackdown on public opinion and public dissent that has included religious leaders and their communities. Moreover, the Communist Party’s recent campaigns to “halt foreign influence,” stamp out “evil cults,” and strike hard against “ethnic separatism and religious extremism” have caused an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty among China’s religious communities and occasioned some of the country’s most brutal human rights abuses.</p>
<p>Mr. Chairman, all of China’s religious communities live in the long shadow of the Communist Party. Various government agencies maintain final authority over leadership, financial, and doctrinal positions of the five government-sanctioned religious bodies: Buddhist, Daoist, Protestant, Catholic, and Muslim. Religious groups must submit to government monitoring of their activities and the approval of many common religious activities. Religious groups must also accept restrictions on what doctrines and traditions can be conveyed and taught. There are numerous credible reports, for example, of Christian leaders having to refrain from teachings involving the second coming of Jesus, divine healing, the practice of fasting, the virgin birth, and religious perspectives on contraceptives, divorce, and abortion because these doctrines or practices are considered to be either “superstitious” or contrary to the Chinese Communist Party’s social policies.</p>
<p>Over the last decade, the Party has made some accommodation for the spiritual aspirations of its people and openly praises the contributions of government approved religious organizations to Chinese society. The Commission was able to observe a distinct “zone of toleration” where members of religious organizations that accept government control are given some latitude to practice their faith traditions.</p>
<p>China has introduced new Regulations on Religious Affairs that were heralded as “a significant step forward in the protection of Chinese citizens’ religious freedom.” The regulations do include several provisions that are, on their face, potentially important advances, including the outlining of conditions under which religious organizations can provide social services in local communities, protect their property, sue abusive government officials, accept donations from overseas religious groups, and receive prompt responses from government agencies on registration applications.</p>
<p>However, it is the Commission’s position that the new Regulations do not adequately protect the rights and security of religious believers and are not fully consistent with international norms on freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief. In fact, the Regulations extend Party officials control over all religious activity and groups. Moreover, the Regulations threaten criminal punishments and civil fines for “unregistered” religious activities.</p>
<p>Because “unregistered” religious activity is “illegal” under Chinese law, members of such groups are actively targeted for harassment, detention, and arrest. Since March, there have been three large-scale raids on unregistered Protestant churches targeting leadership training, university Bible studies, and missionary activity. In addition, there are reports that two underground Catholic priests were arrested just last month in the city of Wenzhou in eastern China.</p>
<p>The Chinese government reserves for itself the right to distinguish between “normal” religious activity and activities deemed to be “heretical” or “cultic.” Any religious or other group determined to be a “cult” is subject to brutal suppression, as is evidenced by the harsh crackdown on the Falun Gong and other spiritual movements. In recent years, some unregistered Protestant and Catholic groups have been officially designated as “cults.”</p>
<p>Tibetan Buddhists and Uighur Muslims face serious and ongoing restrictions on the free practice of their religion. There are many similarities between the way the Chinese government controls Uighur Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists. The Chinese government fears secessionist activities and recent calls for greater autonomy in Tibet and Xinjiang. Crackdowns on religious activities in these regions are often harsher than in other parts of China. “Patriotic education” continues to occur in Tibet and Xinjiang. Muslim imams and Tibetan monks and nuns are required to be vetted for their political loyalty, all religious publications are controlled, there are severe restrictions on religious celebrations and religious education of minors, and there are tight restrictions on the number of religious venues and religious leaders. In Xinjiang, even government officials are subject to “patriotic education.” The Commission was told that religious affairs officials must complete political education to avoid “paralyzed thinking” and to “distinguish between normal and illegal religious activities.”</p>
<p>It is our conclusion, Mr. Chairman, that conditions for freedom of religion or belief in China remain poor overall and have deteriorated in the last year. Current Chinese law and practice continue to contravene both international human rights norms and the rights enshrined in the Chinese constitution.</p>
<p>Given the continuing critical human rights problems in China, the Commission concludes that these concerns must be raised at the highest levels and that U.S. officials should provide a consistent, candid, and coordinated message about human rights, including religious freedom, in their interactions with Chinese officials. The U.S. government should therefore continue to pursue broad-ranging policy options and discussions to ensure that progress on human rights and the rule of law remain core components of the bilateral relationship with China. The United States should also continue to help foster political, economic, and legal reforms in China. To this end, the Commission has recommendations for U.S. policy to strengthen the protection of human rights, in particular the freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief, in China. With your permission, Mr. Chairman, we would like to add those recommendations to the record.</p>
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<p>The 2005 Designations of Countries of Particular Concern and the Countries Omitted from the CPC List</p>
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<p>The public identification by the U.S. government of the world’s most severe violators of religious freedom is a hallmark of the IRFA legislation. One of the purposes of the Annual Report is to make available the factual information necessary for the Department to carry out this task, that is, to determine which countries will be designated as “countries of particular concern,” or CPCs, for engaging in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of freedom of religion or belief.</p>
<p>The Commission welcomes the continued designation by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice of Burma, China, Iran, North Korea, and Sudan as CPCs. We also welcome the fact that Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam were once again named, as there have been no developments in the past year in any of those countries to warrant their removal from the CPC list. At the same time, the information in this year’s Annual Report makes clear that three other countries merit CPC status in addition to those that have been previously named by the Secretary of State. The Commission finds that the governments of Pakistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan persist in engaging in or tolerating particularly severe violations of religious freedom, and regrets that they were, once again, not designated as CPCs this year.</p>
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<p>Pakistan</p>
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<p>The government of Pakistan continues to provide an inadequate response to vigilante violence frequently perpetrated by Sunni Muslim militants against Shi’as, Ahmadis, Hindus, and Christians. Discriminatory legislation effectively bans many of the activities of the Ahmadi community. Blasphemy allegations, routinely false, result in the lengthy detention, imprisonment of, and sometimes violence against Ahmadis, Christians, and Hindus, as well as Muslims, some of whom have been sentenced to death. Belated efforts to curb extremism through reform of Pakistan’s thousands of Islamic religious schools appear to have had little effect thus far, and many of these schools continue to provide ideological training and motivation to those who take part in violence targeting religious minorities in Pakistan and abroad. After the terrorist attacks in London last July, President Musharraf renewed his call to fight extremism in madrassas; however, his record on this issue has unfortunately not been encouraging.</p>
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<p>Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan: Particularly Severe Violators Given a Pass</p>
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<p>The omission of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan from the CPC list is particularly troubling and a discredit to Congress’s intent in passing IRFA. Turkmenistan, among the most repressive states in the world today, allows virtually no independent religious activity. The government of Uzbekistan places strict restrictions on religious practice and continues to crack down harshly on individuals and groups that operate outside of government-controlled religious organizations. The Ambassador at Large and the State Department have for years attempted to engage the governments of these two countries in an effort to seek improvements. However, the response has been extremely limited. In the face of the severe religious freedom violations perpetrated by the Turkmen and Uzbek governments, the continued failure to name them as CPCs undermines the spirit and letter of IRFA.</p>
<p>Since 2001, the Commission has recommended that Turkmenistan be designated a CPC. In addition to the severe government restrictions that effectively leave most, if not all, religious activity under strict—and often arbitrary—state control, Turkmen President Niyazov’s ever-escalating personality cult has become a quasi-religion to which the Turkmen population is forced to adhere. His self-published work of “spiritual thoughts,” called Ruhnama, is required reading in all schools. In addition, copies of Ruhnama must be given equal prominence to the Koran and the Bible in mosques and churches. In the past year, in a move likely aimed at avoiding a possible CPC designation, President Niyazov passed several decrees that permitted the registration of five very small religious communities. Despite this alleged easing of registration criteria, religious groups continue to require permission from the state before holding worship services of any kind, making it unclear what—if any—practical benefits registration actually provides. Moreover, religious groups that do not meet the often arbitrary registration rules still face possible criminal penalties due to their unregistered status, and even newly registered religious groups have been raided by police.</p>
<p>Even the rights of members of the two largest religious communities, the majority Sunni Muslims and the Russian Orthodox, are seriously circumscribed. Last year, seven mosques were destroyed in the country and President Niyazov forbade the construction of any new ones. Turkmenistan’s former chief Mufti, Nazrullah ibn Ibadullah, was sentenced to 22 years in prison because he apparently refused to elevate the Ruhnama to the level of the Koran. This past June, President Niyazov undertook various moves against the country’s only Muslim theological faculty. And, according to recent reports, the Russian Orthodox Church has been refused re-registration as part of an effort by President Niyazov to pressure Russian Orthodox parishes in Turkmenistan to sever ties with the Tashkent-based Central Asian diocese and to subordinate themselves to the Moscow Patriarchate.</p>
<p>Turkmenistan is clearly a highly repressive state, where the Turkmen people suffer under the yoke of a personality cult that allows them few freedoms of any kind, including religious freedom. The Commission finds it extremely troubling that despite a few superficial legal changes regarding religious freedom, and little if any change to the situation on the ground, Turkmenistan continues to escape the CPC designation it so clearly deserves.</p>
<p>The Commission has also recommended that Uzbekistan, which the Commission visited last year, be designated a CPC. The Uzbek government continues to exercise a high degree of control over the practice of the Islamic religion and to crack down harshly on Muslim individuals, groups, and mosques that do not conform to state-prescribed practices or that the government claims are associated with extremist political programs. This has resulted in the imprisonment of thousands of persons in recent years, many of whom are denied the right to due process. There are credible reports that many of those arrested continue to be tortured or beaten in detention, despite official Uzbek promises to halt this practice. Moreover, Uzbekistan has a highly restrictive law on religion that severely limits the ability of religious communities to function, leaving over 100 religious groups currently denied registration.</p>
<p>The government of Uzbekistan does face threats to its security, including from members of Hizb ut-Tahrir and other political groups that claim a religious linkage, and the Commission’s recommendation of CPC status for Uzbekistan should not be construed as a defense of that or any similar organization. However, these threats do not excuse or justify the scope and harshness of the government’s ill treatment of religious believers nor the continued practice of torture, which reportedly remains widespread.</p>
<p>The shooting by Uzbek troops of hundreds of unarmed protestors in Andijon in May of this year provides the most brutal example to date of the Uzbek government’s response to real or perceived threats to its security. In Andijon’s aftermath, the Uzbek authorities have mounted a repressive campaign against journalists; human rights activists; Uzbek employees of western non-governmental organizations; and religious adherents, particularly Muslims. The Uzbek government has refused requests from the U.S. and other Western governments for an independent international investigation into the Andijon tragedy and is reportedly cracking down on any human rights or other activists who have attempted to report on the events. According to a number of human rights organizations, as many as 11 activists have been imprisoned and at least 15 have been forced to flee the country. In addition, hundreds of Andijon residents have been arrested on suspicious of involvement. Many other civil society activists have been forced to cease their investigative activities after being arrested on false charges, detained, beaten, threatened, or put under surveillance or under de facto house arrest.</p>
<p>The Commission would like to note the recent introduction by Chairman Smith of legislation highlighting the political and human rights challenges facing the five countries in Central Asia. This legislation reflects longstanding Commission recommendations that U.S. assistance to the governments of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan be linked more closely to the protection of religious freedom and that efforts continue to be made to support non-governmental actors seeking to promote democracy and human rights.</p>
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<p>The U.S. Response to Last Year’s Designation of Three New CPCs: Action on Saudi Arabia Should Come Soon</p>
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<p>Last year, the Department of State for the first time named Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam as CPCs. In order to ensure that the promotion of religious freedom be a consistently integral part of U.S. foreign policy, the U.S. government was required by IRFA to take active steps in response to that CPC designation. Though the response came well past the deadline of March 15, the Commission welcomed the State Department’s announcement on September 23 of decisions on these three serious religious freedom violators in fulfillment of statutory obligations under IRFA.</p>
<p>Until this past September, the only official action taken by our government with respect to countries that to date have been designated CPCs has been to invoke already existing sanctions, rather than to take additional measures pursuant to IRFA. Because neither Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, nor Vietnam were subject to pre-existing sanctions, their designation provided our government with an opportunity decisively and actively to engage in serious discussions with the governments of those countries against the backdrop of U.S. authority to take punitive steps. While Vietnam has taken some preliminary actions in response to U.S. engagement, this has unfortunately not been the case with Saudi Arabia and Eritrea.</p>
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<p>Vietnam and Eritrea</p>
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<p>On Vietnam, the State Department referred to last May’s conclusion of a binding agreement with the Vietnamese government to work towards improvements in religious freedom conditions in that country. The CPC designation of Vietnam has allowed the U.S. and the Vietnamese governments to talk seriously about religious freedom concerns, several of which are addressed in the binding agreement. However, it remains to be seen if the promises made in the agreement will be met with measurable and durable improvements in the situation in Vietnam. The Commission is concerned about reports that serious religious freedom violations persist in that country. The government of Vietnam continues to actively repress, and target as subversive, religious activity it cannot control or that which resists government oversight. Targeted in particular are leaders of the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV), ethnic minority Christians in the Central Highlands and northwest provinces, “house-church” Protestants, and followers of religious minority groups such as the Hoa Hao and Cao Dai. This repression has not abated in the last year.</p>
<p>In response to the religious freedom violations perpetrated by the government of Eritrea, the State Department announced the “denial of commercial export to Eritrea of any defense articles and services controlled under the Arms Control Export Act,” with some items excepted. The Commission welcomed the announcement of this action on Eritrea, the imposition of the first unique sanction to be taken under IRFA. Despite efforts by the U.S. government to engage the government of Eritrea, the already poor religious freedom situation there has deteriorated in the past year. To date, the government of Eritrea has not registered any of the religious groups, including various Christian groups as well as Baha’is, whose public religious activities were banned in 2002 pending registration. This year, the government’s religious crackdown has intensified with a series of arrests and detentions of members of unregistered religious groups. Those detained are typically held without charge or due process of law. The Commission believes that the imposition of export controls demonstrates the seriousness with which the United States views the violations being perpetrated by the Eritrean government.</p>
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<p>Delay on Response to Saudi Arabia</p>
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<p>Last year, the Commission applauded the long awaited September 2004 CPC designation of Saudi Arabia, a country where, as the State Department itself has noted, religious freedom does not exist. In September 2005, fully one year after that CPC designation and with no ascertainable human rights progress in Saudi Arabia over the intervening year, the Secretary of State authorized a 180-day waiver of action “in order to allow additional time for the continuation of discussions leading to progress on important religious freedom issues.”</p>
<p>Yet, the pattern of punishment and abuse by Saudi authorities of non-Muslim foreign residents for private religious practice has in fact increased since early 2005. There have been numerous reports of raids of private homes by the mutawaa or religious police; these reports describe detentions, beatings, and deportations of foreign workers engaged in private religious worship, the burning of religious literature, and the destruction of private non-Muslim places of worship.</p>
<p>During the past year, the Commission has made several statements urging the State Department to select and implement one or more of the concrete actions for CPCs set forth in IRFA. In the absence of real progress in Saudi Arabia over the past year, the Commission believes that the U.S. government should use the 180-day extension to engage the Saudi government directly to achieve demonstrable progress by the end of that period of time. The Commission has laid out in its reports several immediate steps that could be taken by the Saudi government.</p>
<p>If such progress is not forthcoming, the Commission has made recommendations for U.S. government action in accordance with IRFA. These remain appropriate and include:</p>
<p>The Commission notes that the State Department did not invoke a national interest waiver on Saudi Arabia. This may be a positive move, as it could allow for more options in the future to respond to religious freedom violations. The Commission hopes that genuine progress will be made in Saudi Arabia to justify the course of action taken by the State Department. We also encourage the State Department to consult with Congress and other parts of the U.S. government, including the Commission, during its discussions with the Saudis, and to make any agreement reached with the Saudi government public in the interest of the accountability that results from transparency. If, however, no progress on religious freedom is seen after the 180-day period has ended, the U.S. government must not hesitate in taking aggressive action as suggested above which meets the requirements of IRFA to demonstrate that it will not disregard the persistent and egregious religious freedom violations committed by the Saudi government.</p>
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<p>The Annual Report on International Religious Freedom</p>
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<p>Mr. Chairman, the Annual Report on International Religious Freedom continues to be a critical part of the process of promoting religious freedom throughout the world. As we have stated in the past, the Annual Report each year is proving to be an important achievement that consistently demonstrates the substantial efforts of the foreign-service officers in our embassies around the world, as well as the Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom and his staff at the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom. The 2005 Annual Report is no exception.</p>
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<p>Individual Country Reports</p>
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<p>As in the past, many of the individual country reports in the 2005 Annual Report are excellent—thorough and accurate. However, the Commission is concerned about a number of informational inaccuracies and troubling conclusions in several important reports.</p>
<p>Although we recognize the substantial achievements that have occurred in Afghanistan since the institution of the new government, the Commission continues to believe that the Afghanistan country report does not adequately address the problems faced by individual Muslims in that country, as a result in part of the insufficient religious freedom protection afforded to individual Muslims in the new constitution passed in January 2004. These constitutional pitfalls, including the repugnancy clause that states that “no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of Islam” and the fact that the Supreme Court is empowered to make this determination, have negatively influenced other legislation also, including legislation on press freedom. The report does mention that the vagueness in the wording of the clause prohibiting materials “offensive to Islam” in the press law could lead to potential abuse, but it does not give sufficient weight to the significance of this problem.</p>
<p>The most recent—and perhaps most alarming—example of the seriousness of the inadequate constitutional guarantees occurred too recently to be included in the 2005 Annual Report, but nonetheless deserves mention here. Just last month, a respected journalist and editor was convicted on charges of blasphemy and “insulting Islam.” His purported “crime” was to question the use of certain harsh punishments under traditional Islamic law, including amputation and public stoning. Particularly troubling is that certain authorities ignored Afghanistan’s own legislation stating that journalists cannot be arrested until the government’s Media Commission has examined the case. As it happened, the Media Commission found him not guilty of insulting Islam. Nevertheless, the journalist was found guilty and sentenced to two years in prison. Clearly, despite the many remarkable advances there, it remains clear that even today in Afghanistan, protections for human rights and democracy remain under threat from sources of religious extremism within the Afghan government.</p>
<p>The report on China was quite positive about the new National Regulations on Religious Affairs implemented in March 2005, saying that they have the “potential to improve respect for religious freedom, to enhance legal protection for religious groups, and to strengthen the process of governing religious affairs according to law.” The Commission believes that the Regulations do include several provisions that may be important advances, including several of the provisions that I noted earlier in my testimony.</p>
<p>However, contrary to the impression left by the report, the Regulations are not the “paradigm shift” promised by Chinese officials. In fact, given the vague and sometimes contradictory language of the Regulations, the Commission believes that they do not adequately protect the rights and security of religious adherents and are not fully consistent with international norms. For example, permission is now required for a number of commonplace religious activities, including holding meetings outside a place of worship, inviting a special speaker or teacher, printing religious material, or instituting a change in leadership. The Regulations also threaten criminal punishments and civil fines for “unregistered” religious activities. In fact, “unregistered groups” have reported increased harassment, arrests, and detentions since the Regulations were implemented. Since March of this year, there have been four large scale arrests of “house church” Protestant leaders, apprehending over 500 religious practitioners.</p>
<p>Second, the China report tends to focus the primary blame for religious freedom abuses on “local officials” in China. Although the Commission continues to recognize as a result of its recent visit that religious freedom conditions do vary from province to province, it is unmistakable that recent campaigns to “halt foreign influence,” “strike hard against religious extremism,” “stamp out evil cults,” “promote atheism,” and “eliminate the influence of the Dalai Lama” have all emanated directly from Beijing and are approved by top Communist Party leaders. Clearly, religious freedom abuses do not stem only—or even primarily—from local corruption or provincial officials misinterpreting the law.</p>
<p>The Commission welcomes the inclusion of a country report on Iraq in this year’s Annual Report. The report offers a thorough summary of religious freedom conditions in Iraq and highlights areas of particular concern. However, in addressing religious freedom violations, the report tends to classify all abuses as stemming from “terrorist organizations,” a generalized term that conflates the various groups in Iraq that seek to impose Islamic rule with terrorist groups that support the insurgency, and plays down the support the former may have in Iraq, particularly within the provincial and municipal government structures. For example, the report fails to mention the deteriorating situation in Basra, where local Islamic groups—not connected to the insurgency—are imposing a strict version of Islamic law that has resulted in human rights violations as severe as extra-judicial killings. The report makes no mention of the implications of these developments for religious freedom in Basra, its surrounding areas, and Iraq more generally. In addition, though the report notes that Law No. 105 of 1970 prohibits the Baha’i faith, it fails to make clear if any efforts have been made on the part of the U.S. government to encourage the Iraqi government to repeal this discriminatory law. The report also does not mention other difficulties faced by the the Baha’i community, including the fact that the Baha’i faith cannot currently be listed as a religion on Iraqi national identity cards. Finally, the report omits mention of religiously motivated attacks targeting the Roma and Sufi Muslim communities in Iraq.</p>
<p>The Russia report provides a wealth of information on the complex status of religious freedom in that country, including more attention to a wider range of religious groups. Yet, the report should draw more attention to the increasingly troubling situation faced by the country’s largest religious minority: Muslims. Thus, while it gives admirably detailed coverage of the recent legal travails of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Church of Scientology, no mention is made of a secret Supreme Court decision which outlawed 15 Muslim organizations for alleged ties to terrorism. This secret decision reportedly has led to the prosecution of several hundred Muslim individuals and groups in various parts of Russia, based on reportedly unsubstantiated accusations. In addition, Muslims increasingly face instances of workplace and other discrimination and widespread media attacks.</p>
<p>The report on Saudi Arabia is more comprehensive than in previous years, highlighting the problems of the Shia population and non-Muslim guest workers. However, as in past years, the report continues to omit any mention of the Saudi export of a highly intolerant and hate-filled ideology, despite the fact that this issue was mentioned publicly by the Ambassador at Large for Religious Freedom and other U.S. officials on several occasions during the past year. The subject was also mentioned at the press conference releasing this year’s Annual Report.</p>
<p>One of the most troubling country reports in the 2005 Annual Report is the report on Turkmenistan, which makes the startling claim that “the status of Government respect for religious freedom improved during the period covered by this report.” Even more disturbing is that Turkmenistan is listed in the Executive Summary as one of the countries which has seen “significant improvements in the promotion of religious freedom.” This conclusion seems to contradict the State Department’s most recent Human Rights Report on Turkmenistan, which clearly states that “the Government’s human rights record remained extremely poor, and the Government continued to commit serious abuses.” The claim of this year’s religious freedom report is regarded as erroneous not only by the Commission but by most human rights organizations and other observers of Turkmenistan. Indeed, a number of U.S. and international human rights organizations have submitted a statement to this hearing expressing their strong objection to the report’s assessment of the situation in Turkmenistan and providing details of other inaccuracies in the Turkmenistan report.</p>
<p>The conclusion of the Annual Report is based largely on the Turkmen government’s recent registration of nine extremely small religious communities, even though their registration has not ended police harassment and tight government control of them and other groups. The report appears to allow these insignificant improvements—on paper—for these small groups to overshadow the worsening situation for the country’s majority religious group, the Muslims. The report also does not mention the growing problems for the Russian Orthodox Church. Even more troubling, however, is that the report does not devote sufficient attention to President Niyazov’s quasi-religious, all-pervasive personality cult, which was discussed earlier in my testimony. The report also fails to mention the Turkmen government’s refusal to respond to repeated requests by the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief for an invitation to Turkmenistan. Moreover, at the event marking the report’s release, the Ambassador at Large claimed that all religious prisoners in Turkmenistan had been released; yet the report notes that the former Grand Mufti remains incarcerated for his refusal to elevate Niyazov’s book of “spiritual thoughts” to equal prominence with the Koran.</p>
<p>This year’s Annual Report claims that the status of religious freedom has also improved in Vietnam over the course of the past year. It is true that after Vietnam was designated as a CPC last year, the Vietnamese government released some prominent religious prisoners and issued new ordinances regarding religion. It also made promises to improve conditions for its ethnic and religious minorities—promises that have not yet been translated into concrete changes.</p>
<p>The Commission does not believe that religious freedom conditions in Vietnam have improved during the past year. In fact, since the public announcement of a May 2005 binding agreement on religious freedom concerns between the United States and Vietnam, reports about restrictions and other abuses continue to surface, particularly against the country’s religious and ethnic minorities. In congressional testimony last June, the Commission described evidence of forced renunciations of faith occurring in the northwest provinces and central highlands. Although the State Department states that “a few” such renunciations occurred in the last year, the Commission submitted 21 police summons to the International Relations Committee from only one community in Vietnam. What is more, the Commission has reliable information on the arrests and detention of Hoa Hao and Protestant religious leaders and continued harassment of the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV), all since May of this year. Finally, the report also states that “almost all” the churches and meeting points closed in the Central Highland since 2001 have been reopened. Yet, 432 churches and meeting points reportedly remain closed in that region.</p>
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<p>Religious Persecution and the U.S. Refugee Program</p>
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<p>Section 601 of IRFA specifically directs that the Annual Report on International Religious Freedom serve as a resource for refugee and asylum adjudicators. In that sense, the Annual Report plays an important role not merely in documenting religious freedom violations, but in facilitating refuge for those who are fleeing religious persecution.</p>
<p>Appendix E of the report, the Overview of Refugee Policy, continues to improve, with more comprehensive coverage of religious persecution and the Refugee Program than in past years. Once again, however, the 2005 report contains little acknowledgment of the serious problem of intra-religious persecution, but instead focuses almost exclusively on the persecution of religious minorities by a majority religious community. Moreover, this section contains no mention of significant refugee-source countries such as Afghanistan, Eritrea, or Iraq, where serious religious freedom problems persist. Indeed, the Secretary of State has designated Eritrea a CPC, and problems in Iraq—particularly with regard to the security of religious minority communities—are severe.</p>
<p>The Overview of Refugee Policy section does cite Saudi Arabia, a CPC, as well as Pakistan, which the Commission has recommended be designated a CPC, for their mistreatment of religious minorities. The Overview fails, however, to indicate how the U.S. Refugee Program has been responsive to this mistreatment.</p>
<p>In its Report to Congress on Refugee Admissions for FY2006, the Department of State provides a more complete description of the way in which it is facilitating access to the Refugee Program, at least for those asylum seekers who have fled CPCs. The Report to Congress is required to include such information under Section 304 of the North Korea Human Rights Act of 2004. Such information should be in the Annual Report on International Religious Freedom as well, even if not required by law.</p>
<p>The Commission does remain concerned that other refugee and asylum provisions of IRFA have been unevenly implemented. For example, Appendix D of the Report, “Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the International Religious Freedom Act,” accurately describes the measures taken by the Asylum and Refugee Corps to train its refugee and asylum adjudicators in international religious freedom, as required by sections 602 and 603 of IRFA. Yet, this section makes no mention of the training—if any—on international religious freedom undertaken by DHS Border Patrol agents and inspectors exercising Expedited Removal authority, even though such training is also required under IRFA. Nor does the report mention the efforts by the Department of Justice to ensure that immigration judges comply with IRFA training requirements.</p>
<p>The importance of such training has been underscored by recent positions advanced by the Department of Justice and initially adopted by the Federal Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Li v Gonzales. Li involved a Chinese Christian who claimed persecution—including arrest, detention, beatings, loss of employment, and forced labor—for organizing an unregistered church. An immigration judge granted the asylum seeker protection from removal, finding his claim to be credible and consistent with country conditions in China. The Department of Justice Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), on a motion from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), reversed the decision and ordered that Mr. Li be removed to China. When Mr. Li appealed the decision to the Fifth Circuit, the Department of Justice continued to argue that Mr. Li should be removed because he had been subject to prosecution for violating China’s religious registration laws—not persecution for his religious beliefs. The Fifth Circuit agreed with the Department of Justice.</p>
<p>The Commission wrote the Department of Justice to make it clear that U.S. foreign policy has long maintained that China’s control over registered churches—and its prosecution of individuals like Mr. Li for engaging in “unauthorized” religious activity—are clear violations of international law with regard to freedom of religion or belief. The Departments of Justice and Homeland Security were receptive to the Commission’s concerns, and the Fifth Circuit subsequently vacated its original decision. Although immigration judges are already required by IRFA to have training on religious freedom, other relevant entities are not: the BIA, the trial attorneys who work for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in DHS, as well as those who work for the Office of Immigration Litigation (OIL) in the Department of Justice. The BIA and OIL have recently invited the Commission to participate in training its attorneys. We urge ICE to do the same. All of these entities should make religious freedom a regular component of their training curricula, whether mandated by IRFA or not. We also urge that the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, and State coordinate better their efforts to ensure that legal positions on asylum which are advanced in court by these agencies do not set legal precedents which could undermine longstanding positions of the United States on international human rights.</p>
<p>Finally, section 602(b) of IRFA requires that all consular officers be trained in refugee law and policy. Although consular officers do not adjudicate refugee applications, they are authorized to refer refugee applicants to the Department of Homeland Security for adjudication, since the vast majority of asylum seekers are not permitted to apply to the Refugee Program without a referral from a U.S. embassy or the UNHCR. Appendix C of the Report, “Training at the Foreign Service Institute Related to the International Religious Freedom Act,” states that consular training “includes a lecture on Immigrant Visa (sic) that incorporates discussion of refugee and asylum issues as they pertain to consular officers. The subject is covered in further detail in the Self-Instruction Guide (SIG) on immigrant visa processing.” Based on inquiries made by the Commission, however, it appears that the only training received by consular officers relevant to the Refugee Program is on the processing of immediate relative petitions filed by refugees and asylees. Such training does not even begin to comply with the broad requirements of section 602(b). <a href="http://www.uscirf.gov/events/cong_testimony/2005/november/11152005_annualIRFrpt.html#_ftn1" type="external">[1]</a> Consequently, the Commission is concerned that consular officers remain unaware of their ability to facilitate access to the resettlement program for asylum seekers in need of protection. Once again, the Commission urges the Department of State to comply with this training requirement, which could save the lives of bona fide refugees, particularly those who may have access to a U.S. consulate but not UNHCR.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Conclusion</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to share with you the Commission’s views and recommendations. We look forward to continuing to work closely with the Congress to advance respect for the freedom of religion in U.S. policy. In that regard, I would like to highlight one upcoming Commission activity. This afternoon, in the presence of yourself and other Members of Congress, the Commission will release a report on conditions for freedom of religion or belief in North Korea, relating the first-hand experiences of dozens of former North Koreans. This report was authored by human rights expert David Hawk and describes severe violations of human rights, including the extent to which the regime attempts to control the very thoughts and beliefs of the North Korean people.</p>
<p>Thank you again for holding this important hearing and inviting the Commission to testify. I am happy to answer any questions that you may have regarding my oral or written statements.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.uscirf.gov/events/cong_testimony/2005/november/11152005_annualIRFrpt.html#_ftnref1" type="external">[1]</a> Section 602(b) of IRFA holds that “(t)he Secretary of State shall provide sessions on refugee law and adjudications and on religious persecution to each individual seeking a commission as a United States consular officer….”</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | false | 1 | 160 house international relations committee united states house representatives subcommittee africa global human rights international operations 160 tuesday november 15 2005 mr chairman distinguished members subcommittee let begin thanking opportunity testify today important hearing plan summarize commissions testimony oral remarks would like request full written statement included record state departments annual report international religious freedom work commission demonstrate religious freedom concerns cut across full swath critical issues american foreign policy constitutional developments iraq propagation export religious extremist ideology saudi arabia persistence religious freedom abuses china repressive nature governments potentially destabilizing countries iran uzbekistan north korea promotion democracy fight extremism middle east protecting right freedom religion belief indispensable advancing american interests president bush recently said united states promotes religious freedom promoting spread democracy also promoting universal values enshrined international human rights norms passage international religious freedom act 1998 irfa congress declared policy united states stand liberty stand persecuted promote respect religious freedom governments peoples release annual report provides opportunity address important challenges face along commissions comments annual report testimony address secretary states recent designations countries particular concern cpcs us governments response last years firsttime designation eritrea saudi arabia vietnam cpcs addition testimony presents special focus two countries commission particularly active past year first address iraqs new constitution offer specific recommendations strengthening protections religious freedom human rights next phase political transition commission continues believe constitution implementation crucial iraqs overall success stable democratic state second testimony report brief commissions recent twoweek trip china able visit beijing also tibet xinjiang among areas 160 iraqs new constitution freedom religion hold 160 let begin iraq iraqis prepare another round elections historic transition tyranny democracy commissions focus institutional dimension right religious freedom securing individual right freedom religion belief every iraqi critical ever however fundamental questions remain final content constitution provisions religious freedom fundamental rights implemented enabling legislation ultimately iraqi supreme courts interpretation legislation determine whether human rights principles applicable within various regions federal iraq also whether rights subject limitations event deemed contradict basic principles islam iraqs new constitution approved 79 percent voters last months referendum incorporates positive provisions related human rights protections including constructive language religious freedom however several articles written vague ambiguous terms resulting constitution sets two potentially disparate visions iraq first vision proclaims country respects fundamental freedoms democratic principles second lays foundation country islamic law could used trump freedoms example islam basic source legislation law contradict islams established principles constitution allows appointment iraqs highest court experts islamic jurisprudence need training civil law relevant subjects limited training places iraqs supreme court requirements alongside afghanistan saudi arabia iran could run risk tipping scales towards second two visions previously described another problem nothing constitution explicitly provides civil law opposed religious law applied cases involving personal status issues means women appearing religious courts could subject discriminatory treatment matters marriage divorce inheritance constitutional position personal status also leaves open questions whether religious courts would forced unwilling parties court would rule disputes parties different religions beliefs personal status matters generally fall jurisdiction civil courts free informed consent parties required refer matter religious courts whose rulings subject final review civil courts concerns detailed legal analysis prepared commission released public early october based findings commission concludes enabling phase constitutional reconstruction vital us government must ensure fundamental right freedom thought conscience religion belief strengthened iraqs future government across work pointed fanciful luxury rather religious freedom president bush said foundation fundamental human rights touchstone democratic society need continue press human rights protections constitution reinforced ongoing stream violence extremism driven religious intolerance past year thousands chaldoassyrians members iraqs indigenous nonmuslim religious minorities fled country fear persecution numerous reports violence including murder directed women others extrajudicial effort impose extremist version islamic law violates international human rights standards places worship religious clerics alike target insurgent attacks attacks detrimental impact ability religious groups iraq including shia sunni muslims worship freely 160 commission recommendations iraq 160 commission developed several recommendations next critical phases iraqs political transition upcoming election campaign new governments implementation possible amendment constitution first commission recommended highlevel human rights official reporting directly ambassador stationed within embassy baghdad advance human rights including religious freedom key us policy objective designating highlevel official demonstrates support iraqi efforts make human rights highpriority issue recently learned commerce justice state conference report includes report language supporting recommendation commission hopes department state implement recommendation timely manner second united states encourage robust discussion upcoming election campaign candidates would seek implement permanent constitutions provisions role islam time implement protections human rights iraqi people deserve know representatives would address issues related us contractors conduct opinion polls designed elicit iraqis understand meaning implementation islamic law bearing religious principles individual rights third given experiences past 18 months commission believes greater effort made us contractors organizations operating us government funding cultivate promote elements iraqi civil political society advocate favor democracy human rights stands number dominant iraqi political parties reportedly receive funding support countries including iran share interests promoting human rights congress agencies providing assistance seek additional ways encourage emergence new political voices iraq committed individual rights equality iraqis fourth commission recommends congress urge administration advocate strengthening constitutional human rights provisions four month period following election iraqis expected consider amendments existing text fifth following elections new legislature also begin consider implement less 50 provisions iraqs constitution require enabling legislation represents window opportunity united states international community communicate forcefully desire see iraqs legal framework postsaddam era incorporates upholds clear human rights guarantees every iraqi us agency international development granted specific authority undertake rule law programs focused pieces enabling legislation related human rights issues finally commission urges congress administration press un international allies engage directly iraqi political leaders concerning strengthening protections human rights among actions iraqi leaders encouraged invite field visit un special rapporteur freedom religion belief invite international human rights experts consult potential amendments constitution drafting enabling legislation may impact human rights 160 commissions visit china 160 august 2005 commission traveled china engage senior officials responsible management religious affairs protection human rights china meet representatives chinas government approved religious communities mr chairman commissions assessment scope political openness public activism civil individual freedoms narrowing china china midst crackdown public opinion public dissent included religious leaders communities moreover communist partys recent campaigns halt foreign influence stamp evil cults strike hard ethnic separatism religious extremism caused atmosphere fear uncertainty among chinas religious communities occasioned countrys brutal human rights abuses mr chairman chinas religious communities live long shadow communist party various government agencies maintain final authority leadership financial doctrinal positions five governmentsanctioned religious bodies buddhist daoist protestant catholic muslim religious groups must submit government monitoring activities approval many common religious activities religious groups must also accept restrictions doctrines traditions conveyed taught numerous credible reports example christian leaders refrain teachings involving second coming jesus divine healing practice fasting virgin birth religious perspectives contraceptives divorce abortion doctrines practices considered either superstitious contrary chinese communist partys social policies last decade party made accommodation spiritual aspirations people openly praises contributions government approved religious organizations chinese society commission able observe distinct zone toleration members religious organizations accept government control given latitude practice faith traditions china introduced new regulations religious affairs heralded significant step forward protection chinese citizens religious freedom regulations include several provisions face potentially important advances including outlining conditions religious organizations provide social services local communities protect property sue abusive government officials accept donations overseas religious groups receive prompt responses government agencies registration applications however commissions position new regulations adequately protect rights security religious believers fully consistent international norms freedom thought conscience religion belief fact regulations extend party officials control religious activity groups moreover regulations threaten criminal punishments civil fines unregistered religious activities unregistered religious activity illegal chinese law members groups actively targeted harassment detention arrest since march three largescale raids unregistered protestant churches targeting leadership training university bible studies missionary activity addition reports two underground catholic priests arrested last month city wenzhou eastern china chinese government reserves right distinguish normal religious activity activities deemed heretical cultic religious group determined cult subject brutal suppression evidenced harsh crackdown falun gong spiritual movements recent years unregistered protestant catholic groups officially designated cults tibetan buddhists uighur muslims face serious ongoing restrictions free practice religion many similarities way chinese government controls uighur muslims tibetan buddhists chinese government fears secessionist activities recent calls greater autonomy tibet xinjiang crackdowns religious activities regions often harsher parts china patriotic education continues occur tibet xinjiang muslim imams tibetan monks nuns required vetted political loyalty religious publications controlled severe restrictions religious celebrations religious education minors tight restrictions number religious venues religious leaders xinjiang even government officials subject patriotic education commission told religious affairs officials must complete political education avoid paralyzed thinking distinguish normal illegal religious activities conclusion mr chairman conditions freedom religion belief china remain poor overall deteriorated last year current chinese law practice continue contravene international human rights norms rights enshrined chinese constitution given continuing critical human rights problems china commission concludes concerns must raised highest levels us officials provide consistent candid coordinated message human rights including religious freedom interactions chinese officials us government therefore continue pursue broadranging policy options discussions ensure progress human rights rule law remain core components bilateral relationship china united states also continue help foster political economic legal reforms china end commission recommendations us policy strengthen protection human rights particular freedom thought conscience religion belief china permission mr chairman would like add recommendations record 160 2005 designations countries particular concern countries omitted cpc list 160 public identification us government worlds severe violators religious freedom hallmark irfa legislation one purposes annual report make available factual information necessary department carry task determine countries designated countries particular concern cpcs engaging systematic ongoing egregious violations freedom religion belief commission welcomes continued designation secretary state condoleezza rice burma china iran north korea sudan cpcs also welcome fact eritrea saudi arabia vietnam named developments past year countries warrant removal cpc list time information years annual report makes clear three countries merit cpc status addition previously named secretary state commission finds governments pakistan turkmenistan uzbekistan persist engaging tolerating particularly severe violations religious freedom regrets designated cpcs year 160 pakistan 160 government pakistan continues provide inadequate response vigilante violence frequently perpetrated sunni muslim militants shias ahmadis hindus christians discriminatory legislation effectively bans many activities ahmadi community blasphemy allegations routinely false result lengthy detention imprisonment sometimes violence ahmadis christians hindus well muslims sentenced death belated efforts curb extremism reform pakistans thousands islamic religious schools appear little effect thus far many schools continue provide ideological training motivation take part violence targeting religious minorities pakistan abroad terrorist attacks london last july president musharraf renewed call fight extremism madrassas however record issue unfortunately encouraging 160 turkmenistan uzbekistan particularly severe violators given pass 160 omission turkmenistan uzbekistan cpc list particularly troubling discredit congresss intent passing irfa turkmenistan among repressive states world today allows virtually independent religious activity government uzbekistan places strict restrictions religious practice continues crack harshly individuals groups operate outside governmentcontrolled religious organizations ambassador large state department years attempted engage governments two countries effort seek improvements however response extremely limited face severe religious freedom violations perpetrated turkmen uzbek governments continued failure name cpcs undermines spirit letter irfa since 2001 commission recommended turkmenistan designated cpc addition severe government restrictions effectively leave religious activity strictand often arbitrarystate control turkmen president niyazovs everescalating personality cult become quasireligion turkmen population forced adhere selfpublished work spiritual thoughts called ruhnama required reading schools addition copies ruhnama must given equal prominence koran bible mosques churches past year move likely aimed avoiding possible cpc designation president niyazov passed several decrees permitted registration five small religious communities despite alleged easing registration criteria religious groups continue require permission state holding worship services kind making unclear whatif anypractical benefits registration actually provides moreover religious groups meet often arbitrary registration rules still face possible criminal penalties due unregistered status even newly registered religious groups raided police even rights members two largest religious communities majority sunni muslims russian orthodox seriously circumscribed last year seven mosques destroyed country president niyazov forbade construction new ones turkmenistans former chief mufti nazrullah ibn ibadullah sentenced 22 years prison apparently refused elevate ruhnama level koran past june president niyazov undertook various moves countrys muslim theological faculty according recent reports russian orthodox church refused reregistration part effort president niyazov pressure russian orthodox parishes turkmenistan sever ties tashkentbased central asian diocese subordinate moscow patriarchate turkmenistan clearly highly repressive state turkmen people suffer yoke personality cult allows freedoms kind including religious freedom commission finds extremely troubling despite superficial legal changes regarding religious freedom little change situation ground turkmenistan continues escape cpc designation clearly deserves commission also recommended uzbekistan commission visited last year designated cpc uzbek government continues exercise high degree control practice islamic religion crack harshly muslim individuals groups mosques conform stateprescribed practices government claims associated extremist political programs resulted imprisonment thousands persons recent years many denied right due process credible reports many arrested continue tortured beaten detention despite official uzbek promises halt practice moreover uzbekistan highly restrictive law religion severely limits ability religious communities function leaving 100 religious groups currently denied registration government uzbekistan face threats security including members hizb uttahrir political groups claim religious linkage commissions recommendation cpc status uzbekistan construed defense similar organization however threats excuse justify scope harshness governments ill treatment religious believers continued practice torture reportedly remains widespread shooting uzbek troops hundreds unarmed protestors andijon may year provides brutal example date uzbek governments response real perceived threats security andijons aftermath uzbek authorities mounted repressive campaign journalists human rights activists uzbek employees western nongovernmental organizations religious adherents particularly muslims uzbek government refused requests us western governments independent international investigation andijon tragedy reportedly cracking human rights activists attempted report events according number human rights organizations many 11 activists imprisoned least 15 forced flee country addition hundreds andijon residents arrested suspicious involvement many civil society activists forced cease investigative activities arrested false charges detained beaten threatened put surveillance de facto house arrest commission would like note recent introduction chairman smith legislation highlighting political human rights challenges facing five countries central asia legislation reflects longstanding commission recommendations us assistance governments turkmenistan uzbekistan linked closely protection religious freedom efforts continue made support nongovernmental actors seeking promote democracy human rights 160 us response last years designation three new cpcs action saudi arabia come soon 160 last year department state first time named eritrea saudi arabia vietnam cpcs order ensure promotion religious freedom consistently integral part us foreign policy us government required irfa take active steps response cpc designation though response came well past deadline march 15 commission welcomed state departments announcement september 23 decisions three serious religious freedom violators fulfillment statutory obligations irfa past september official action taken government respect countries date designated cpcs invoke already existing sanctions rather take additional measures pursuant irfa neither eritrea saudi arabia vietnam subject preexisting sanctions designation provided government opportunity decisively actively engage serious discussions governments countries backdrop us authority take punitive steps vietnam taken preliminary actions response us engagement unfortunately case saudi arabia eritrea 160 vietnam eritrea 160 vietnam state department referred last mays conclusion binding agreement vietnamese government work towards improvements religious freedom conditions country cpc designation vietnam allowed us vietnamese governments talk seriously religious freedom concerns several addressed binding agreement however remains seen promises made agreement met measurable durable improvements situation vietnam commission concerned reports serious religious freedom violations persist country government vietnam continues actively repress target subversive religious activity control resists government oversight targeted particular leaders unified buddhist church vietnam ubcv ethnic minority christians central highlands northwest provinces housechurch protestants followers religious minority groups hoa hao cao dai repression abated last year response religious freedom violations perpetrated government eritrea state department announced denial commercial export eritrea defense articles services controlled arms control export act items excepted commission welcomed announcement action eritrea imposition first unique sanction taken irfa despite efforts us government engage government eritrea already poor religious freedom situation deteriorated past year date government eritrea registered religious groups including various christian groups well bahais whose public religious activities banned 2002 pending registration year governments religious crackdown intensified series arrests detentions members unregistered religious groups detained typically held without charge due process law commission believes imposition export controls demonstrates seriousness united states views violations perpetrated eritrean government 160 delay response saudi arabia 160 last year commission applauded long awaited september 2004 cpc designation saudi arabia country state department noted religious freedom exist september 2005 fully one year cpc designation ascertainable human rights progress saudi arabia intervening year secretary state authorized 180day waiver action order allow additional time continuation discussions leading progress important religious freedom issues yet pattern punishment abuse saudi authorities nonmuslim foreign residents private religious practice fact increased since early 2005 numerous reports raids private homes mutawaa religious police reports describe detentions beatings deportations foreign workers engaged private religious worship burning religious literature destruction private nonmuslim places worship past year commission made several statements urging state department select implement one concrete actions cpcs set forth irfa absence real progress saudi arabia past year commission believes us government use 180day extension engage saudi government directly achieve demonstrable progress end period time commission laid reports several immediate steps could taken saudi government progress forthcoming commission made recommendations us government action accordance irfa remain appropriate include commission notes state department invoke national interest waiver saudi arabia may positive move could allow options future respond religious freedom violations commission hopes genuine progress made saudi arabia justify course action taken state department also encourage state department consult congress parts us government including commission discussions saudis make agreement reached saudi government public interest accountability results transparency however progress religious freedom seen 180day period ended us government must hesitate taking aggressive action suggested meets requirements irfa demonstrate disregard persistent egregious religious freedom violations committed saudi government 160 annual report international religious freedom 160 mr chairman annual report international religious freedom continues critical part process promoting religious freedom throughout world stated past annual report year proving important achievement consistently demonstrates substantial efforts foreignservice officers embassies around world well ambassador large international religious freedom staff state departments office international religious freedom 2005 annual report exception 160 individual country reports 160 past many individual country reports 2005 annual report excellentthorough accurate however commission concerned number informational inaccuracies troubling conclusions several important reports although recognize substantial achievements occurred afghanistan since institution new government commission continues believe afghanistan country report adequately address problems faced individual muslims country result part insufficient religious freedom protection afforded individual muslims new constitution passed january 2004 constitutional pitfalls including repugnancy clause states law contrary beliefs provisions islam fact supreme court empowered make determination negatively influenced legislation also including legislation press freedom report mention vagueness wording clause prohibiting materials offensive islam press law could lead potential abuse give sufficient weight significance problem recentand perhaps alarmingexample seriousness inadequate constitutional guarantees occurred recently included 2005 annual report nonetheless deserves mention last month respected journalist editor convicted charges blasphemy insulting islam purported crime question use certain harsh punishments traditional islamic law including amputation public stoning particularly troubling certain authorities ignored afghanistans legislation stating journalists arrested governments media commission examined case happened media commission found guilty insulting islam nevertheless journalist found guilty sentenced two years prison clearly despite many remarkable advances remains clear even today afghanistan protections human rights democracy remain threat sources religious extremism within afghan government report china quite positive new national regulations religious affairs implemented march 2005 saying potential improve respect religious freedom enhance legal protection religious groups strengthen process governing religious affairs according law commission believes regulations include several provisions may important advances including several provisions noted earlier testimony however contrary impression left report regulations paradigm shift promised chinese officials fact given vague sometimes contradictory language regulations commission believes adequately protect rights security religious adherents fully consistent international norms example permission required number commonplace religious activities including holding meetings outside place worship inviting special speaker teacher printing religious material instituting change leadership regulations also threaten criminal punishments civil fines unregistered religious activities fact unregistered groups reported increased harassment arrests detentions since regulations implemented since march year four large scale arrests house church protestant leaders apprehending 500 religious practitioners second china report tends focus primary blame religious freedom abuses local officials china although commission continues recognize result recent visit religious freedom conditions vary province province unmistakable recent campaigns halt foreign influence strike hard religious extremism stamp evil cults promote atheism eliminate influence dalai lama emanated directly beijing approved top communist party leaders clearly religious freedom abuses stem onlyor even primarilyfrom local corruption provincial officials misinterpreting law commission welcomes inclusion country report iraq years annual report report offers thorough summary religious freedom conditions iraq highlights areas particular concern however addressing religious freedom violations report tends classify abuses stemming terrorist organizations generalized term conflates various groups iraq seek impose islamic rule terrorist groups support insurgency plays support former may iraq particularly within provincial municipal government structures example report fails mention deteriorating situation basra local islamic groupsnot connected insurgencyare imposing strict version islamic law resulted human rights violations severe extrajudicial killings report makes mention implications developments religious freedom basra surrounding areas iraq generally addition though report notes law 105 1970 prohibits bahai faith fails make clear efforts made part us government encourage iraqi government repeal discriminatory law report also mention difficulties faced bahai community including fact bahai faith currently listed religion iraqi national identity cards finally report omits mention religiously motivated attacks targeting roma sufi muslim communities iraq russia report provides wealth information complex status religious freedom country including attention wider range religious groups yet report draw attention increasingly troubling situation faced countrys largest religious minority muslims thus gives admirably detailed coverage recent legal travails jehovahs witnesses church scientology mention made secret supreme court decision outlawed 15 muslim organizations alleged ties terrorism secret decision reportedly led prosecution several hundred muslim individuals groups various parts russia based reportedly unsubstantiated accusations addition muslims increasingly face instances workplace discrimination widespread media attacks report saudi arabia comprehensive previous years highlighting problems shia population nonmuslim guest workers however past years report continues omit mention saudi export highly intolerant hatefilled ideology despite fact issue mentioned publicly ambassador large religious freedom us officials several occasions past year subject also mentioned press conference releasing years annual report one troubling country reports 2005 annual report report turkmenistan makes startling claim status government respect religious freedom improved period covered report even disturbing turkmenistan listed executive summary one countries seen significant improvements promotion religious freedom conclusion seems contradict state departments recent human rights report turkmenistan clearly states governments human rights record remained extremely poor government continued commit serious abuses claim years religious freedom report regarded erroneous commission human rights organizations observers turkmenistan indeed number us international human rights organizations submitted statement hearing expressing strong objection reports assessment situation turkmenistan providing details inaccuracies turkmenistan report conclusion annual report based largely turkmen governments recent registration nine extremely small religious communities even though registration ended police harassment tight government control groups report appears allow insignificant improvementson paperfor small groups overshadow worsening situation countrys majority religious group muslims report also mention growing problems russian orthodox church even troubling however report devote sufficient attention president niyazovs quasireligious allpervasive personality cult discussed earlier testimony report also fails mention turkmen governments refusal respond repeated requests un special rapporteur freedom religion belief invitation turkmenistan moreover event marking reports release ambassador large claimed religious prisoners turkmenistan released yet report notes former grand mufti remains incarcerated refusal elevate niyazovs book spiritual thoughts equal prominence koran years annual report claims status religious freedom also improved vietnam course past year true vietnam designated cpc last year vietnamese government released prominent religious prisoners issued new ordinances regarding religion also made promises improve conditions ethnic religious minoritiespromises yet translated concrete changes commission believe religious freedom conditions vietnam improved past year fact since public announcement may 2005 binding agreement religious freedom concerns united states vietnam reports restrictions abuses continue surface particularly countrys religious ethnic minorities congressional testimony last june commission described evidence forced renunciations faith occurring northwest provinces central highlands although state department states renunciations occurred last year commission submitted 21 police summons international relations committee one community vietnam commission reliable information arrests detention hoa hao protestant religious leaders continued harassment unified buddhist church vietnam ubcv since may year finally report also states almost churches meeting points closed central highland since 2001 reopened yet 432 churches meeting points reportedly remain closed region 160 religious persecution us refugee program 160 section 601 irfa specifically directs annual report international religious freedom serve resource refugee asylum adjudicators sense annual report plays important role merely documenting religious freedom violations facilitating refuge fleeing religious persecution appendix e report overview refugee policy continues improve comprehensive coverage religious persecution refugee program past years however 2005 report contains little acknowledgment serious problem intrareligious persecution instead focuses almost exclusively persecution religious minorities majority religious community moreover section contains mention significant refugeesource countries afghanistan eritrea iraq serious religious freedom problems persist indeed secretary state designated eritrea cpc problems iraqparticularly regard security religious minority communitiesare severe overview refugee policy section cite saudi arabia cpc well pakistan commission recommended designated cpc mistreatment religious minorities overview fails however indicate us refugee program responsive mistreatment report congress refugee admissions fy2006 department state provides complete description way facilitating access refugee program least asylum seekers fled cpcs report congress required include information section 304 north korea human rights act 2004 information annual report international religious freedom well even required law commission remain concerned refugee asylum provisions irfa unevenly implemented example appendix report department homeland security dhs international religious freedom act accurately describes measures taken asylum refugee corps train refugee asylum adjudicators international religious freedom required sections 602 603 irfa yet section makes mention trainingif anyon international religious freedom undertaken dhs border patrol agents inspectors exercising expedited removal authority even though training also required irfa report mention efforts department justice ensure immigration judges comply irfa training requirements importance training underscored recent positions advanced department justice initially adopted federal court appeals fifth circuit li v gonzales li involved chinese christian claimed persecutionincluding arrest detention beatings loss employment forced laborfor organizing unregistered church immigration judge granted asylum seeker protection removal finding claim credible consistent country conditions china department justice board immigration appeals bia motion immigration naturalization service ins reversed decision ordered mr li removed china mr li appealed decision fifth circuit department justice continued argue mr li removed subject prosecution violating chinas religious registration lawsnot persecution religious beliefs fifth circuit agreed department justice commission wrote department justice make clear us foreign policy long maintained chinas control registered churchesand prosecution individuals like mr li engaging unauthorized religious activityare clear violations international law regard freedom religion belief departments justice homeland security receptive commissions concerns fifth circuit subsequently vacated original decision although immigration judges already required irfa training religious freedom relevant entities bia trial attorneys work immigration customs enforcement ice dhs well work office immigration litigation oil department justice bia oil recently invited commission participate training attorneys urge ice entities make religious freedom regular component training curricula whether mandated irfa also urge departments homeland security justice state coordinate better efforts ensure legal positions asylum advanced court agencies set legal precedents could undermine longstanding positions united states international human rights finally section 602b irfa requires consular officers trained refugee law policy although consular officers adjudicate refugee applications authorized refer refugee applicants department homeland security adjudication since vast majority asylum seekers permitted apply refugee program without referral us embassy unhcr appendix c report training foreign service institute related international religious freedom act states consular training includes lecture immigrant visa sic incorporates discussion refugee asylum issues pertain consular officers subject covered detail selfinstruction guide sig immigrant visa processing based inquiries made commission however appears training received consular officers relevant refugee program processing immediate relative petitions filed refugees asylees training even begin comply broad requirements section 602b 1 consequently commission concerned consular officers remain unaware ability facilitate access resettlement program asylum seekers need protection commission urges department state comply training requirement could save lives bona fide refugees particularly may access us consulate unhcr 160 conclusion 160 mr chairman thank opportunity share commissions views recommendations look forward continuing work closely congress advance respect freedom religion us policy regard would like highlight one upcoming commission activity afternoon presence members congress commission release report conditions freedom religion belief north korea relating firsthand experiences dozens former north koreans report authored human rights expert david hawk describes severe violations human rights including extent regime attempts control thoughts beliefs north korean people thank holding important hearing inviting commission testify happy answer questions may regarding oral written statements 1 section 602b irfa holds secretary state shall provide sessions refugee law adjudications religious persecution individual seeking commission united states consular officer 160 | 4,730 |
<p>An Interview for the Valdai International Discussion Club</p>
<p>The Russian March has long since become the main event of Russia’s National Unity Day celebrations. Andreas Umland, renowned political scientist and Valdai club expert, shares his views about the place of the Russian March on the socio-political stage and the specific features of nationalism in Russia.</p>
<p>What do you think about the phenomenon of the Russian March (Russkiy marsh), held annually for nine years already? Is it a significant event in the social and political life of the country, or is it just more like a meeting of outcasts?</p>
<p>While the organization of the Russian March is indeed dominated by the most extreme parts of the Russian nationalist spectrum, the March has turned (especially this year) into a significant political phenomenon. The ethno-centrist ideas of the Russian Marchers are becoming more and more mainstream. Even the government seems to be taking on some of the Marchers’ views, rather than questioning them. In this way, social outcasts become political actors.</p>
<p>Is it possible for nationalists to become a source of real political power in a multinational and multi-religious Russia?</p>
<p>Paradoxically, this looks more and more probable. The hate speech that is spread, on an almost daily level, via the Russian mass media – not least of all through state-controlled television – has led to the strange phenomenon wherein many Russians now regard certain parts of Russia in the Northern Caucasus as not really belonging to Russia, while parts of certain foreign countries, such as Ukraine, are seen as belonging to Russia. This is a dangerous phenomenon for everybody involved – Caucasian Russian citizens that are not accepted as such, Ukrainian citizens whose state’s sovereignty is under question, and those ethnic Russian citizens who play with fire without fully understanding the risks involved, for their own country and people. A further spread of such attitudes can easily lead to a spiral of escalation within, or on the borders of, Russia, which may then be difficult to get under control. We have seen what happened to Yugoslavia, once it entered an ethno-centrist and irredentist discourse.</p>
<p>Is the current growth of nationalist sentiment a sign of coming change? Will the authorities listen to protests of “the Right”? And what concrete steps can the authorities take to ameliorate the situation?</p>
<p>I am afraid that things, in the future, might get worse or, perhaps, even much worse, if no principled changes are made. I am not yet seeing an adequate reaction from the authorities to the spread of ethno-centrist sentiments bordering on racism. To be sure, President Putin recently censored Vladimir Zhirinovsky when the latter made some scandalous statements on the Northern Caucasus. Also the prosecutor’s office and police are more effective today in dealing with violent neo-Nazi skinheads than they used to be some five years ago. However, the public discourse is becoming more and more infected with ethnocentrism, irredentism and conspiracy theory. The variety of texts that are being spread range from high-brow theories a la Lev Gumilyov, publicized via educational institutions, to primitive racism from various ultra-nationalist fringe groups that are getting more and more exposure in the mainstream mass media. As long as these tendencies continue, political control, police surveillance and legal persecution of extremely right-wing tendencies will merely address the symptoms and not core of the problem.</p>
<p>Is it possible for the Russian authorities to return more peaceful semantic content to the Day of National Unity? What moves would make this possible?</p>
<p>It would be necessary to radically re-conceptualize the national history and international position of the Russian nation, and then implement this re-defined concept on a mass scale through the media, educational institutions and political campaigning. But I do not see the political will to do that among the power holders, who prefer playing with fire to get some short-term political gains. Only when the entire public concept of Russia changes and the Russian nation begins to be seen as culturally multi-ethnic, traditionally tolerant, open to immigration, and territorially saturated, can the Day of National Unity have different content.</p>
<p>How serious in your opinion is the problem of ethnic tensions in Russia compared to Western countries?</p>
<p>There are significant ethnic tensions in the West, too. Yet a difference is that these tensions are seen, by the Western political and intellectual elite, as problems in themselves. In contrast, in Russia, there is a tendency to blame the various internal and foreign migrants for the tensions. The Russian official public likes discussing various deficiencies of the migrants rather than productive ways of fully integrating them into Russian society. As mentioned, that approach by itself is tantamount to playing with fire.</p>
<p>Is the Russian nationalist movement similar to ones in other countries? What are its key differences?</p>
<p>There are many similarities, but also some differences. A principal difference is that the acceptance of certain nationalist slogans in mainstream society has reached a considerable degree in Russia. Another difference is that the considerable irredentism of the Russian extreme right seems to be shared by large parts of the political and intellectual establishment. This joint discourse of the power holders and ultra-nationalists is characterized by a large dose of escapism. That means that a large part of the Russian public wants to escape from the current sad reality of Russia’s internal order and international relations, by dreaming up a fantasy world in which Russia is a global political center that reassembles “her” lands and will be reborn as an empire (although one should mention that the word “empire” itself is rejected by many de facto imperialists). While such megalomania can also be found among many non-Russian right-wing extremists, in Russia, these unrealistic dreams unite certain segments of the extreme and moderate right, social outcasts and mainstream politicians.</p>
<p>For the second year in a row, Alexei Navalny has refused to participate in the Russian March. Will this affect his political rating?</p>
<p>I would rather say that Navalny’s relative disengagement from close collusion with radical nationalism can increase his support, as it removes an irritant for many of his liberal supporters. An even more explicit distancing of Navalny from, and his apology for, voicing ethno-centrist ideas (that are, as mentioned, destructive for Russia anyway), would remove a major point of disagreement within Russia’s democratic movement. The various Russian democratic forces have to unite within one umbrella organization, and with one leader. Otherwise, they will never have a chance to gain political power. Currently, Navalny is the most obvious leader for the democrats. Yet, he has to make sure that he can carry the entire liberal spectrum of society with him, rather than fishing for support among the nationalist fans of Putin, Zyuganov or Zhirinovsky.</p>
<p>First published in Moscow on the website of the <a href="http://valdaiclub.com/politics/64520.html" type="external">Valdai International Discussion Club</a>. It has been republished here with permission from the interviewee.</p> | false | 1 | interview valdai international discussion club russian march long since become main event russias national unity day celebrations andreas umland renowned political scientist valdai club expert shares views place russian march sociopolitical stage specific features nationalism russia think phenomenon russian march russkiy marsh held annually nine years already significant event social political life country like meeting outcasts organization russian march indeed dominated extreme parts russian nationalist spectrum march turned especially year significant political phenomenon ethnocentrist ideas russian marchers becoming mainstream even government seems taking marchers views rather questioning way social outcasts become political actors possible nationalists become source real political power multinational multireligious russia paradoxically looks probable hate speech spread almost daily level via russian mass media least statecontrolled television led strange phenomenon wherein many russians regard certain parts russia northern caucasus really belonging russia parts certain foreign countries ukraine seen belonging russia dangerous phenomenon everybody involved caucasian russian citizens accepted ukrainian citizens whose states sovereignty question ethnic russian citizens play fire without fully understanding risks involved country people spread attitudes easily lead spiral escalation within borders russia may difficult get control seen happened yugoslavia entered ethnocentrist irredentist discourse current growth nationalist sentiment sign coming change authorities listen protests right concrete steps authorities take ameliorate situation afraid things future might get worse perhaps even much worse principled changes made yet seeing adequate reaction authorities spread ethnocentrist sentiments bordering racism sure president putin recently censored vladimir zhirinovsky latter made scandalous statements northern caucasus also prosecutors office police effective today dealing violent neonazi skinheads used five years ago however public discourse becoming infected ethnocentrism irredentism conspiracy theory variety texts spread range highbrow theories la lev gumilyov publicized via educational institutions primitive racism various ultranationalist fringe groups getting exposure mainstream mass media long tendencies continue political control police surveillance legal persecution extremely rightwing tendencies merely address symptoms core problem possible russian authorities return peaceful semantic content day national unity moves would make possible would necessary radically reconceptualize national history international position russian nation implement redefined concept mass scale media educational institutions political campaigning see political among power holders prefer playing fire get shortterm political gains entire public concept russia changes russian nation begins seen culturally multiethnic traditionally tolerant open immigration territorially saturated day national unity different content serious opinion problem ethnic tensions russia compared western countries significant ethnic tensions west yet difference tensions seen western political intellectual elite problems contrast russia tendency blame various internal foreign migrants tensions russian official public likes discussing various deficiencies migrants rather productive ways fully integrating russian society mentioned approach tantamount playing fire russian nationalist movement similar ones countries key differences many similarities also differences principal difference acceptance certain nationalist slogans mainstream society reached considerable degree russia another difference considerable irredentism russian extreme right seems shared large parts political intellectual establishment joint discourse power holders ultranationalists characterized large dose escapism means large part russian public wants escape current sad reality russias internal order international relations dreaming fantasy world russia global political center reassembles lands reborn empire although one mention word empire rejected many de facto imperialists megalomania also found among many nonrussian rightwing extremists russia unrealistic dreams unite certain segments extreme moderate right social outcasts mainstream politicians second year row alexei navalny refused participate russian march affect political rating would rather say navalnys relative disengagement close collusion radical nationalism increase support removes irritant many liberal supporters even explicit distancing navalny apology voicing ethnocentrist ideas mentioned destructive russia anyway would remove major point disagreement within russias democratic movement various russian democratic forces unite within one umbrella organization one leader otherwise never chance gain political power currently navalny obvious leader democrats yet make sure carry entire liberal spectrum society rather fishing support among nationalist fans putin zyuganov zhirinovsky first published moscow website valdai international discussion club republished permission interviewee | 628 |
<p />
<p>Editors representing many Asian newspapers stood in a perfect line. They were nervous and giddy at the prospect of meeting Li Changchun, China's powerful member of the Communist Party's Politburo Standing Committee. Personally, the Great Hall of the People and the fortitude of Chinese society mesmerized me. Despite its challenges and repeated accusations of corruption and power struggles, China appeared composed while an unwavering forward movement was propelling it. As for the country's foreign policy, it is governed by a cautious slowly churning agenda, which is unambiguously clear in its long-term objectives.</p>
<p>On that day, nearly two years ago, we knew that Li was awaiting our arrival, for a solitary old jacket, which bore his name with a sticker fastened on the hanger, hung in a closet in the hallway leading to the room where the meeting took place. Li Changchun spoke frustratingly slow as if he were a Hollywood stereotype of a Chinese emperor. Self-assertive and unperturbed by our presence and the many probing questions, Li's perception of history was much more far-reaching than one expected from the chief of propaganda. There was not much to quote in terms of sound bites, buzzwords or catch phrases. Li clearly saw his country's foreign policy in light of US global military adventures, geopolitical advances and setbacks. No other country seemed to matter. It was a competition and China was determined to win.</p>
<p>A few months later, upheaval struck the Middle East. Its manifestations - revolutions, civil wars, regional mayhem and conflicts of all sorts - reverberated beyond the Middle East. Shrinking and rising empires alike took notice. Fault lines were quickly determined and exploited and players changed positions or jockeyed for advanced ones, as a new Great Game in the resource and strategic rich region was about to begin. The so-called "Arab Spring" was rapidly becoming a game-changer in a region that seemed resistant to transformations of any kind. China was wary of its existing investment in the region - literarily, as was in the case of Libya, and figuratively, in its long-term relations with Arab and Muslim countries. So they moved with predictable caution: Wobbled at times, as in Libya, appearing firmer in Syria, and almost entirely aloof in Bahrain.</p>
<p>For China however, the space for future political movement is boundless. Unlike the United States, a "new" or stagnant Middle East will not change the fact that China is barely associated with an atrocious history of military onslaughts or economic exploitation, with which western powers are undeniably associated. The speed of the political transition underway in the Middle East may require Li Changchun to speak a bit faster, a tad louder and with greater clarity, but it will hardly demand a complete shift in China's policies. It is the interests and rank of the US as the dominant foreign power in the region that will consequently suffer irreparable damage.</p>
<p>When discussed through the prism of sheer political analysis, history can be narrow, selective, broken-down and problematically short. But based on a methodical historical investigation, reality is much less confusing, and the future is far less unpredictable. The seemingly unbridled conflict in the Middle East is no exception.</p>
<p>In his review of Fredrik Logevall's recently published book: "Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam," Gordon Goldstein wrote, "Over the centuries, strategic overextension by great powers acting on the periphery of their national interests has hobbled ancient empires and modern states" (Washington Post, September 28). Goldstein was referring to US conduct in Southeast Asia, where the US adopted as its own, the disastrous legacy of French colonialism in Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos). Both powers were squarely and humiliatingly defeated.</p>
<p>Empires don't crumble overnight, however. A fall of an empire can be as agonizingly long as its rise. Signs of that collapse are oftentimes subtle and might not be followed by a big boom of any sort, but can be unambiguous and definite.</p>
<p>Since the Second World War, US foreign policy has been largely predicated on military adventures, by severely punishing enemies and controlling "friends". Diplomacy was often the icing on the cake of war, wars that seemed to follow similar patterns such as targeting powerless, economically browbeaten and isolated countries. It was a successful brand while it lasted. It allowed the generals to speak of the invincibility of their military might, the politicians to boast of their global responsibilities and the media to tirelessly promote American values. Few seemed to care much for the millions of innocent people who bore the brunt of that supposed quest for democratization of the Third World - the American equivalent of France's Mission Civilisatrice or "civilizing mission" of the "barbarian" others.</p>
<p>Few US foreign policy disasters can be compared to that of the Middle East. Similar to its Southeast Asia inheritance from the French, the US "inherited" the Middle East from fading British and French empires. (For example, such recurring media questions as "who lost Egypt?" is indicative of that perception.) Unlike European imperial powers, US early contacts with the region were marred with violence, whether through its support of local dictatorships, financing and arming Israel at the expense of Palestinians and other Arab nations, or finally by getting involved - some say, entangled - in lethal wars. The memory of Iraq's destruction will never fade away from the annals of Arab history. It is a major dark spot close to that of US support for Israel. In fact, as it stands, the chapter of US-Arab relations is tainted beyond any comprehension.</p>
<p>The US does not lack bright historians and sharp analysts capable of helping devise an alternative foreign policy. But the problem of "great" empires is that their ability to maneuver is oftentimes restricted by their sheer size and the habitual nature of their conduct. They can only move forward and when that is no longer possible, they must retreat, ushering in their demise. US foreign policy is almost stuck when it is required to be most agile. While the Middle East is finally breaking away from a once impenetrable cocoon, and China - and Russia, among others - is attempting to negotiate a new political stance, the US is frozen. It took part in the bombing of Libya because it knows of no other alternative to achieving quick goals without summoning violence. In Syria, it refuses to be a positive conduit for a peaceful transition because it is paralyzed by its military failure in Iraq and fearful over the fate of Israel, should Syria lose its political centrality.</p>
<p>Even if the US opts to stave off a catastrophic decline in the region, it is shackled by the invasive tentacles of Israel, the pro-Israel lobby and their massive and permeating network, which crosses over competing media, political parties and ideological agendas. The US is now destined to live by the rules - and redlines - determined by Israel, whose national interests are barely concerned with the rise or demise of America. Israel only wants to ensure its supremacy in the "new" Middle East. With the rise of post-revolutionary Egypt, Israel's challenges are growing. It fears that a nuclear Iran would deprive it from its only unique edge - its nuclear technology and massive nuclear arsenal. If Iran obtains nuclear technology, Israel might have to negotiate in good faith as an equal partner to its neighbors, a circumstance that Israel abhors. Between the Israeli hammer and the anvil of the imminent decline of all empires, the US, which has held the Middle East hostage to its foreign policy for nearly six decades, is now hostage to the limitations of that very foreign policy. The irony is an escapable.</p>
<p>Listening to the monotonous voice of Li Changchun, it was clear that China was in no great hurry. Nor are the other powers now eyeing with great anticipation, the endgame of the Middle East upheaval.</p>
<p>Listening to US President Barack Obama's lecture to the UN's General Assembly on September 25, as he spoke of democracy, values and the predictable and self-negating language, it seems that there is no intention in changing course or maneuvering or retreating or simply going away altogether. The empire is entangled in its own self-defeating legacy. This is to the satisfaction of its many contenders, China notwithstanding.</p> | false | 1 | editors representing many asian newspapers stood perfect line nervous giddy prospect meeting li changchun chinas powerful member communist partys politburo standing committee personally great hall people fortitude chinese society mesmerized despite challenges repeated accusations corruption power struggles china appeared composed unwavering forward movement propelling countrys foreign policy governed cautious slowly churning agenda unambiguously clear longterm objectives day nearly two years ago knew li awaiting arrival solitary old jacket bore name sticker fastened hanger hung closet hallway leading room meeting took place li changchun spoke frustratingly slow hollywood stereotype chinese emperor selfassertive unperturbed presence many probing questions lis perception history much farreaching one expected chief propaganda much quote terms sound bites buzzwords catch phrases li clearly saw countrys foreign policy light us global military adventures geopolitical advances setbacks country seemed matter competition china determined win months later upheaval struck middle east manifestations revolutions civil wars regional mayhem conflicts sorts reverberated beyond middle east shrinking rising empires alike took notice fault lines quickly determined exploited players changed positions jockeyed advanced ones new great game resource strategic rich region begin socalled arab spring rapidly becoming gamechanger region seemed resistant transformations kind china wary existing investment region literarily case libya figuratively longterm relations arab muslim countries moved predictable caution wobbled times libya appearing firmer syria almost entirely aloof bahrain china however space future political movement boundless unlike united states new stagnant middle east change fact china barely associated atrocious history military onslaughts economic exploitation western powers undeniably associated speed political transition underway middle east may require li changchun speak bit faster tad louder greater clarity hardly demand complete shift chinas policies interests rank us dominant foreign power region consequently suffer irreparable damage discussed prism sheer political analysis history narrow selective brokendown problematically short based methodical historical investigation reality much less confusing future far less unpredictable seemingly unbridled conflict middle east exception review fredrik logevalls recently published book embers war fall empire making americas vietnam gordon goldstein wrote centuries strategic overextension great powers acting periphery national interests hobbled ancient empires modern states washington post september 28 goldstein referring us conduct southeast asia us adopted disastrous legacy french colonialism indochina vietnam cambodia laos powers squarely humiliatingly defeated empires dont crumble overnight however fall empire agonizingly long rise signs collapse oftentimes subtle might followed big boom sort unambiguous definite since second world war us foreign policy largely predicated military adventures severely punishing enemies controlling friends diplomacy often icing cake war wars seemed follow similar patterns targeting powerless economically browbeaten isolated countries successful brand lasted allowed generals speak invincibility military might politicians boast global responsibilities media tirelessly promote american values seemed care much millions innocent people bore brunt supposed quest democratization third world american equivalent frances mission civilisatrice civilizing mission barbarian others us foreign policy disasters compared middle east similar southeast asia inheritance french us inherited middle east fading british french empires example recurring media questions lost egypt indicative perception unlike european imperial powers us early contacts region marred violence whether support local dictatorships financing arming israel expense palestinians arab nations finally getting involved say entangled lethal wars memory iraqs destruction never fade away annals arab history major dark spot close us support israel fact stands chapter usarab relations tainted beyond comprehension us lack bright historians sharp analysts capable helping devise alternative foreign policy problem great empires ability maneuver oftentimes restricted sheer size habitual nature conduct move forward longer possible must retreat ushering demise us foreign policy almost stuck required agile middle east finally breaking away impenetrable cocoon china russia among others attempting negotiate new political stance us frozen took part bombing libya knows alternative achieving quick goals without summoning violence syria refuses positive conduit peaceful transition paralyzed military failure iraq fearful fate israel syria lose political centrality even us opts stave catastrophic decline region shackled invasive tentacles israel proisrael lobby massive permeating network crosses competing media political parties ideological agendas us destined live rules redlines determined israel whose national interests barely concerned rise demise america israel wants ensure supremacy new middle east rise postrevolutionary egypt israels challenges growing fears nuclear iran would deprive unique edge nuclear technology massive nuclear arsenal iran obtains nuclear technology israel might negotiate good faith equal partner neighbors circumstance israel abhors israeli hammer anvil imminent decline empires us held middle east hostage foreign policy nearly six decades hostage limitations foreign policy irony escapable listening monotonous voice li changchun clear china great hurry powers eyeing great anticipation endgame middle east upheaval listening us president barack obamas lecture uns general assembly september 25 spoke democracy values predictable selfnegating language seems intention changing course maneuvering retreating simply going away altogether empire entangled selfdefeating legacy satisfaction many contenders china notwithstanding | 773 |
<p>Shashi Ramchandani, who manages a team of engineers at Google, has never been shy about being a conservative working in Silicon Valley. He showed coworkers emails he exchanged with Ivanka Trump after he mailed her photos he took at the Republican convention, and on election night, he texted colleagues snapshots from the floor of Trump’s victory party in New York City. “They saw me first as a Googler, then as a conservative,” Ramchandani said.</p>
<p>In his 14 years at the company, he said he hasn’t felt like he had to keep his mouth shut—until last month when Google fired an engineer&#160;who penned a memo saying biological differences partly explain why more men work in tech than women.</p>
<p>Politics often don’t mix easily at work, but it’s particularly fraught in tech, where free thinking is prized yet the workforce is predominantly liberal. Now, as President Trump stirs up the culture wars at the same time as Silicon Valley faces a backlash for being so white and so male, conservatives in tech have their guards up like never before.</p>
<p>Ramchandani,&#160;whose parents came to the U.S. from India,&#160;wasn’t a fan of the memo. He particularly objected to its assumption that Google’s hiring favors women and minorities, which ran counter to his experience as a hiring manager. While he understood why Google fired the engineer, he was also “extremely disappointed” by the whole situation. Ramchandani felt, for the first time, that he had to reconcile his love of Google with his conservative support for free speech and distaste for bureaucracy.</p>
<p>Tech has seen ousters for unpopular political or cultural views before, like when the chief technology officer at Business Insider was forced out&#160;in 2013 over old racist and homophobic tweets, and the next year when the CEO of Mozilla stepped down after facing criticism for a $1,000 donation he’d made to a group that opposed gay marriage. But those were executives. The Google memo, which exposed a rank-and-file engineer exposed in a public way, hit closer to home for many conservatives, who said the current environment is more hostile than ever before. “Before it was, ‘I don’t agree with you,’ but now it has evolved into this new thing that is much more aggressive, ‘don’t even say something that is counter to what I believe,’” says Aaron Ginn, co-founder of Lincoln Network, which looks to connect conservative techies with government and political work.</p>
<p>Some fear losing their jobs while others worry they’ll be ostracized by colleagues. (That’s in a sector where 76 percent of technical jobs are held by men, and blacks and Latinos make up only 5 percent of the workforce.) Adding to the stress is Silicon Valley’s penchant for open floor plans, which make it hard to tune out an officemate on a rant, and the way companies encourage workers to socialize and bring their whole selves to their job. Several tech workers said they don’t post about politics on Facebook, where they’re friends with many coworkers. “My wife is very paranoid about me sharing my opinion, even on private WhatsApp groups with my friends,” said a former Amazon engineer who now works at Oracle. Most employees who spoke asked not to be identified because they worried about their job security.</p>
<p>An engineer at Microsoft Corp. first realized just how in the minority his political views were back in 2004, when George W. Bush was up for re-election. At lunch one day, his coworkers one by one slammed the Republican candidate. The engineer, just a few years out of college, recalls saying, “I’m probably going to vote for him.” He wasn’t prepared for the response. “They said, ‘You stupid person. How can you think about that?’” Things got so heated, he said, his manager sent a memo to his 100-person team, that said, in essence, “Hey, cool it. We have engineering tasks we have to focus on.”</p>
<p>As contentious as 2004 may have been, it’s nothing compared to the polarizing election and presidency of Trump. The Microsoft engineer said now it’s even harder to have a productive political conversation, as colleagues lump him with a president whom he said doesn’t represent his conservative values, threatening the ability to do his job well. “Thirty years ago, there was somebody in their garage doing something amazing,” he said. “Now these projects have thousands of people on them. People have to work with you and like you. If you get labeled as a bad person because you voted the wrong way and start getting ostracized, it will impede on your job because most people can’t flip modes. They can’t have a heated political debate with you and then flip modes and have a heated technical debate with you.”</p>
<p>Google’s office felt like a funeral the day after Trump was elected, according to an employee who describes himself as libertarian. “A lot of people didn’t come,” he said. “The people who did were very quiet, almost like their aunt died.”&#160;</p>
<p>This Google employee believes the now infamous memo was relatively well-reasoned and that Silicon Valley’s diversity initiatives ignore data that conflict with their ideology. He’s regularly reminded of what he refers to as the company’s “social justice agenda,” like when he gets corporate email touting a donation to a non-profit that supports minorities, or hears an executive talk about hoping to have half of his leadership team be female,which he believes shows the company prioritizes some groups over others. He worries that the company is under pressure to reach 50-50 gender equity too fast, and it will impede the promotion opportunities for men. “Just do the math,” he says.</p>
<p>The Oracle engineer said the bro culture in tech is real and knows of female colleagues who face sexism, but with women making up fewer than a fifth&#160;of computer science graduates, the goal of reaching anything close to a 50-50 split feels “misguided” in the near term. “Some people are better than others, and when I work with a woman who is below average, I always have a thought that maybe she is a diversity hire, and I don’t think that’s healthy,” he said. He bristles slightly when he hears about female colleagues being heavily recruited by top firms.</p>
<p>Some confide in colleagues they consider friends. One liberal Google product manager said a conservative teammate who used to work at Goldman Sachs told him the environment now reminds him of his time in banking during the Occupy Wall Street protests, when he tried to lay low.</p>
<p>Ramchandani, who said he’s fiscally conservative but socially liberal, said the pressure on conservatives is “less of a Google thing than a Silicon Valley thing.” In the suburban Bay Area at large, he said, “I had more trouble coming out as a conservative than I did with my race or orientation or any other minority status.” He believes Google should recognize his fellow conservatives more but is nervous that conservatives are becoming more polarized themselves in recent weeks. He said on internal Google employee email groups for conservatives, he noticed “a few loud voices” stoking an “us versus them” mentality, for example contemplating legal action against the company. “I found that distasteful because it’s biting the hand that feeds you,” he said. “We are here to do a job not expound political values.”</p>
<p>The Oracle engineer, like some others, have opted to lay low during this tense time. “Work is work, and not everything needs to be about politics,” he said. While he sees liberal colleagues who sit nearby don’t seemingly need to filter their comments, he’s decided it’s not worth engaging, adding “I don’t want to be known as that guy who wants to argue with everybody.”</p> | false | 1 | shashi ramchandani manages team engineers google never shy conservative working silicon valley showed coworkers emails exchanged ivanka trump mailed photos took republican convention election night texted colleagues snapshots floor trumps victory party new york city saw first googler conservative ramchandani said 14 years company said hasnt felt like keep mouth shutuntil last month google fired engineer160who penned memo saying biological differences partly explain men work tech women politics often dont mix easily work particularly fraught tech free thinking prized yet workforce predominantly liberal president trump stirs culture wars time silicon valley faces backlash white male conservatives tech guards like never ramchandani160whose parents came us india160wasnt fan memo particularly objected assumption googles hiring favors women minorities ran counter experience hiring manager understood google fired engineer also extremely disappointed whole situation ramchandani felt first time reconcile love google conservative support free speech distaste bureaucracy tech seen ousters unpopular political cultural views like chief technology officer business insider forced out160in 2013 old racist homophobic tweets next year ceo mozilla stepped facing criticism 1000 donation hed made group opposed gay marriage executives google memo exposed rankandfile engineer exposed public way hit closer home many conservatives said current environment hostile ever dont agree evolved new thing much aggressive dont even say something counter believe says aaron ginn cofounder lincoln network looks connect conservative techies government political work fear losing jobs others worry theyll ostracized colleagues thats sector 76 percent technical jobs held men blacks latinos make 5 percent workforce adding stress silicon valleys penchant open floor plans make hard tune officemate rant way companies encourage workers socialize bring whole selves job several tech workers said dont post politics facebook theyre friends many coworkers wife paranoid sharing opinion even private whatsapp groups friends said former amazon engineer works oracle employees spoke asked identified worried job security engineer microsoft corp first realized minority political views back 2004 george w bush reelection lunch one day coworkers one one slammed republican candidate engineer years college recalls saying im probably going vote wasnt prepared response said stupid person think things got heated said manager sent memo 100person team said essence hey cool engineering tasks focus contentious 2004 may nothing compared polarizing election presidency trump microsoft engineer said even harder productive political conversation colleagues lump president said doesnt represent conservative values threatening ability job well thirty years ago somebody garage something amazing said projects thousands people people work like get labeled bad person voted wrong way start getting ostracized impede job people cant flip modes cant heated political debate flip modes heated technical debate googles office felt like funeral day trump elected according employee describes libertarian lot people didnt come said people quiet almost like aunt died160 google employee believes infamous memo relatively wellreasoned silicon valleys diversity initiatives ignore data conflict ideology hes regularly reminded refers companys social justice agenda like gets corporate email touting donation nonprofit supports minorities hears executive talk hoping half leadership team femalewhich believes shows company prioritizes groups others worries company pressure reach 5050 gender equity fast impede promotion opportunities men math says oracle engineer said bro culture tech real knows female colleagues face sexism women making fewer fifth160of computer science graduates goal reaching anything close 5050 split feels misguided near term people better others work woman average always thought maybe diversity hire dont think thats healthy said bristles slightly hears female colleagues heavily recruited top firms confide colleagues consider friends one liberal google product manager said conservative teammate used work goldman sachs told environment reminds time banking occupy wall street protests tried lay low ramchandani said hes fiscally conservative socially liberal said pressure conservatives less google thing silicon valley thing suburban bay area large said trouble coming conservative race orientation minority status believes google recognize fellow conservatives nervous conservatives becoming polarized recent weeks said internal google employee email groups conservatives noticed loud voices stoking us versus mentality example contemplating legal action company found distasteful biting hand feeds said job expound political values oracle engineer like others opted lay low tense time work work everything needs politics said sees liberal colleagues sit nearby dont seemingly need filter comments hes decided worth engaging adding dont want known guy wants argue everybody | 693 |
<p><a href="" type="internal">The Faith Angle Forum</a>&#160;is a semi-annual conference which brings together a select group of 20 nationally respected journalists with 3-5 distinguished scholars on areas of religion, politics &amp; public life.</p>
<p>“With Ben Franklin’s Blessings: A Primer on Faith-Based Initiatives”</p>
<p>Key West, Florida</p>
<p>Speaker:</p>
<p>Dr. John DiIulio, Frederic Fox Leadership Professor of Politics, Religion and Civil Society, University of Pennsylvania</p>
<p>Respondent:</p>
<p>William Raspberry, Columnist, The Washington Post</p>
<p>Moderator:</p>
<p>Michael Cromartie, Vice President, Ethics &amp; Public Policy Center; Senior Adviser, Pew Forum on Religion &amp; Public Life</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>MICHAEL CROMARTIE: The eminent church historian Martin Marty said recently that there’s no news in the news today that’s not religion news, that’s not rooted in some sort of religious conflict in the world, whether it’s radical Islam or something about the Catholic Church or evangelicals and politics. So one of the reasons we’re running these seminars is to give you all, who are very, very busy, an opportunity to take a couple of days to reflect with some of the best thinkers in the country about this very important subject of religion in American civic life as it applies to domestic issues as well as foreign policy.</p>
<p>We have an advisory group of journalists, and twice a year we meet and we ask them, “What are the topics that are of the most concern that you want further elaboration and discussion on?” And the topics we came up with for this time together are the ones that we agreed were urgent: the role of religion and democracy in Islam, in the Middle East — that we’ll talk about tomorrow morning with Reuel Marc Gerecht. The growth of the mega-churches in America was a subject that everyone said they’d like to know more about, and we’re very grateful that Rick Warren, despite a very busy schedule, is able to be with us. Rick, we thank you for coming.</p>
<p>And then the subject of the ongoing debate about the faith-based initiatives. There’s not a better person in the country to address this issue than Professor John DiIulio. John is not only a political scientist who’s taught many years at Princeton and is now at Penn, but he also served, as you all know, in the White House as the first director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.</p>
<p>Many of you came because you knew John was going to be here, so we’re very grateful that John, with not only his academic expertise but also his practical experience in this work, has agreed to be our first presenter.</p>
<p>John, thanks for coming. It’s great to have you.</p>
<p>Dr. John DiIulio and Michael Cromartie</p>
<p>DR. JOHN DiIULIO: Thank you so much. It’s a real treat to be here with you. It’s also a special privilege to open this session with Rick Warren. I’d actually read&#160;The Purpose Driven Life&#160;with a colleague, a friend, a young friend — or at least young to me — who went through the 40 days and at the end of those 40 days, the very next week, he was diagnosed with what they thought was a fatal brain tumor. And thank God he’s in full remission and recovered and fine now, but that book was, as he would tell you, very important in how he handled and coped with it. So it’s a special privilege and treat to be here with you as well on this, the opening day.</p>
<p>Now, of course I’m a social scientist, which means that had I written&#160;The Purpose Driven Life, it would have had a different title. The title I would have given the book would have been&#160;The Conditions, if Any, Under Which Given Types of Organic Religious Influences Have a Predictable and Desirable, Statistically Significant, Independent Effect on Various Behavioral and Emotional Consequences for Persons Who Self-Select Into the Treatment, Other Things Being Equal.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>That’ll sell.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>I am the only person to ever have co-authored a book with Bill Bennett that sold no copies —</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>— so I am fatal to such enterprises. That is in part because I am a social scientist, and you know that social science is the elaborate demonstration of the obvious by methods obscure and jargon du jour. And I am going to try, in my remarks over the next 30, 35 minutes or so, to limit the amount of social science I inflict on you. It is my constitutional right to bore you — I am an academic — and I have been teaching at colleges and universities for a long time now; next year will be my 25th year at three different schools. So I like to confess that, having spent 25 years at these places, I have learned the true definition of an Ivy League professor, which is someone who can speak for five minutes or two hours on any subject with no essential change in content.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>So here is the thesis, and it begins with Ben Franklin. Ben Franklin founded the University of Pennsylvania. He also did other things related to electricity and so forth, but we don’t think that’s that important; we think Penn was Ben’s best idea. Now, the truth is he founded the University of Pennsylvania as something called the Academy of Philadelphia in 1749, which then begat something called the University of the State of Pennsylvania, which then begat the University of Pennsylvania. And we are proud in saying that we were the first nonsectarian Ivy League university. Godless Cornell sometimes demands that title, but we say we are the one because of Franklin.</p>
<p>Franklin was a very interesting character with respect to religion. He was a religious believer. He was a believing Christian. I think that Walter Isaacson’s biography of Franklin is the best single-volume biography on the subject — if anyone else has written one, I’m sorry — and he talks about Franklin as an apostle of tolerance, a person who’s views on religion were driven in the end by pragmatism. Franklin contributed to each and every religious organization in Philadelphia. He gave money and support to synagogues, churches, it didn’t matter. And about a month before Franklin died, he wrote a letter to the president of Yale, Ezra Stiles, in which — and I will quote him here — he reiterated his belief in one God and said, “The most acceptable service we render to Him is doing good to His other children.” Franklin opposed religious oaths and tests in both the Pennsylvania and the U.S. Constitution, but he was a believer — faith-friendly, pluralistic, pragmatic.</p>
<p>Now, please do not make a mistake in thinking Franklin was some kind of a holy roller. He most certainly was not. He was among the least religiously active of the founders, along with Madison and Jefferson and a few others. And he also had other mottos in addition to the one at the top of the page there — “To pour forth benefits for the common good,” the motto he gave to the Library Company of Philadelphia in 1731. He also was famous for the motto, “Beer is proof that God exists and wants us to be happy.”</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>He was a practical and civic-minded man, more often found in Philly taverns on Saturdays than Philly churches on Sundays. But he was faith-friendly yet pragmatic and pluralistic. And that’s the point. So I want to begin there with Franklin, and I want to come back to old Ben in due course.</p>
<p>I’m going to over-argue for pedagogical purposes, if you’ll forgive the term in this context. I want to look at public opinion, at court doctrine, at public administration — I know one of the most scintillating subjects that we’ll be touching upon in due course — at partisan politics or bipartisan politics, and at the empirical research on the subject. Each and every one of these domains points to almost exactly the same civic-minded perspective on the role of religion and public affairs. Each and every one of these different domains, if you will, points to exactly the same faith-friendly yet pluralistic and pragmatic perspective on how religion ought to engage and be engaged in the public square. And I want to suggest — reflecting back to old Ben — that is almost precisely what Franklin had in mind.</p>
<p>Now, you may ask, if there is such a great consensus, if it is such a broad and deep consensus, and if it transcends all these different areas, then what’s all the noise? Why all the conflict? I think Franklin would have some inklings or hunches about that, and I think the two places that he would have us look are number one, inadequate general knowledge or understanding, both purposeful and unintentional on the one side; and two, what might be called in the language of the late 18th century, “the intrigues of political factions” — orthodox secularists on the one side, orthodox sectarians on the other, people who are not a part, who do not share this faith-friendly yet pragmatic and pluralistic consensus on the subject.</p>
<p>I think Franklin would have us look there. I think he can justly be proven basically right in this little case study, and I also think that he would not leave it or have us leave it there; he would want us to look for practical ways to build on this consensus and to pour forth benefits for the common good. That is, practical ways to have public-private, religious-secular partnerships that lift up and support community-serving volunteers, whether religious or secular, who are interested in serving people in need. He would sort of require of us, demand of us, that we look past all the controversy, get back to the consensus and figure out practical ways of doing that. So that’s kind of the structure of what I want to suggest to you.</p>
<p>Now, let’s begin. I’m going to rifle through these things in the way that only a professor with 30 minutes or so can do, and then, trusting that through Mr. Raspberry’s comments and remarks and then the various questions during the Q&amp;A we’ll have a chance, if you want to, to come back, elaborate, fill in, clarify and so forth.</p>
<p>Everybody in this room knows that religion is a major determinant in presidential voting behavior. Everybody has heard that; everybody’s been inundated and some of you have helped to produce statistics on that, and it is certainly the case. Even a person who is far and away one of the most skeptical of all the political scientists on the subject — my old friend and mentor from Harvard, now many years at Stanford, Mo Fiorina, who wrote this book,&#160;Culture War?: The Myth of a Polarized America, which came out in 2005 — even Mo realizes and suggests that these data on the importance of religiosity, churched versus unchurched, in presidential voting are real. And I’ll come back to that in a second.</p>
<p>If you flip now to the first page of this&#160; <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/files/2005/05/052305a-diiulio-handout.pdf" type="external">high-tech, high-production value handout</a>&#160;that I gave you and just eyeball some of those data, you see basically a snapshot of what we know about religion in America. Most people are religious. Most people believe that there is a God. They consider religion important in their lives. They pray daily. They think religion can help to solve many or most of today’s social problems. They even believe that the civic state of the union depends critically on the religious state of the union, a survey that George Gallup did a year or so ago. Likewise about three-quarters favor funding for so-called faith-based organizations, with most agreeing that religiously motivated social service providers tend to be more caring and compassionate than other service providers, and some suspect they are more cost-effective to boot.</p>
<p>But now look at the bottom half, if you will, of those, and also at the very bottom of that page. This overwhelmingly faith-friendly majority is nonetheless pluralistic and pragmatic when it comes to religion. The same surveys that are cited there, and many, many others as well, find, just for example, about four-fifths agreeing that one can be a good American without either Judeo-Christian or other religious faith. About three-quarters are opposed — opposed — to government support for faith-based programs that require beneficiaries to take part in religious practices or only hire people of the same faith. And likewise, the majority — certainly general public majorities and majorities of at least three of the four groups that are disaggregated there — believe that deeply religious elected leaders should compromise with elected officials whose views are different on various hot-button issues.</p>
<p>Ten years ago when I started soaking and poking around in this thing people doubted that there were any religious people in America — I mean, it was really funny — within the academic community, not just the journalistic community. Now we all get it but I think to some extent we don’t realize just how interesting, complex and nuanced public opinion, mass opinion, on religion in this country is.</p>
<p>Why is that the case? Why do we in effect miss this consensus when we talk about it? I want to suggest to you very quickly there are two or three reasons. The first are anecdotal reasons, or reasons having to do with inferences based on anecdotes. My friend Ray Wolfinger out at Berkeley is famous for the phrase — which I have stolen from him and used many times myself — that the plural of anecdote is not data. Now, I happened to buy Mr. Warren’s book. I was visiting Harvard University — we have a joint project going with them on religion and public affairs — and I actually bought my copy of&#160;The Purpose Driven Life&#160;in Cambridge, Mass. I sincerely doubt that’s where most of the 22 million copies have been sold.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>I suspect that it is as likely that that is the case as that, you know, Howard Stern’s&#160;Private Parts, when it was a best-seller, was selling like hotcakes on Baylor University’s campus or in Waco, Texas.</p>
<p>The fact of the matter is that it’s a big country. It’s a diverse country. It’s very, very hazardous, very treacherous to generalize or make inferences based on, you know, what’s on the best-seller list, or who’s buying, or even the fact that there are significant demographic breakdowns and cleavages, if you will, in who purchases&#160;The Purpose Driven Life.</p>
<p>Let me give you another quick anecdotal example. I’ve heard many journalists say things like, “You know, I write my column, or I do my commentary on television, and no matter what I say — you know, I can ask a Democrat exactly the same three questions in exactly the same way with exactly the same tone as I ask a Republican — and I will still get a thousand letters or contacts or emails on each site saying, you liberal, left-wing, no good, or you right-wing, crazy so and so. You see, it’s a divided, polarized country.” No. It’s a country with 300 million people. You didn’t get 300 million letters, 150 million on each side; you got a thousand letters — if you got that many — on each side. It’s a very faulty inference. Yes, the elite discourse, and people who are highly motivated and who are attentive to politics, have become more polarized, including those who run for elected office and people on Capitol Hill, who go otherwise by the name Republican and Democrat. But it is quite a leap of faith, if you will, and of logic, from those kinds of anecdotes to asserting that the country is polarized, it’s a red-blue nation, etc.</p>
<p>I know that I’m running afoul of what many of you have argued here. I was with Michael Barone last night, and when a Barone confronts a DiIulio, the DiIulios always lose. That’s a historical fact from the old country. And I know it’s going to happen, but for the point of pedagogy and provocation, just flip to the next page of that high-tech document you have there.</p>
<p>Each of those two figures is correct. Each of those two figures is correct, but they look very different. The first figure looks like the proper inference is, “Oh, my goodness; the center cannot hold. People are farther apart than ever.” The second figure, which is plotting exactly the same data, looks like pretty small differences; not a whole lot’s changed. Now, I’m not saying that the bottom figure is better than the top figure — they’re both technically correct. But it matters a lot how you scale things, and then the story you tell. The visual display of quantitative data is one of the subtexts, really, of all of this talk, not just with respect to religion and public affairs, but more generally with respect to the state of the nation, the state of our politics and so on.</p>
<p>But let me pump my brakes there and return to sort of the main text if you will, or the main point. Again, I am not suggesting that the presidential electoral divide isn’t real. In fact, let me now give you very quickly some data specific to 2004. There is no doubt that religion mattered a tremendous amount in the presidential election of 2004 and has mattered in every election a lot since at least 1992. It is the best single predictor. Run the regressions, set them up any way you like, and you will find that religion — high frequency of attending church versus low or no — explains a lot.</p>
<p>In 2004, nearly two-thirds of the people who said they attended church more than weekly voted for Bush. Of the voters who said they never attended church, two-thirds voted for Kerry and a third voted for Bush. But here’s the rub: these two electoral extremes together made up one third of the electorate. The former made up about one-sixth of the electorate and the latter made up about one-seventh of the electorate. So together, the churched versus unchurched electoral extremes were about a third of the electorate. James Q. Wilson, with whom I co-authored an American government textbook, has made the following observation: “Religion makes a difference, but very religious and very irreligious voters are only a minority of the electorate, period.” And I think that’s correct.</p>
<p>Let’s talk now very quickly about moral values. We’ve heard a lot of talk about moral values. Some of you engaged in a fair amount of talk about moral values, and moral values matter. They’ve mattered more — a lot more, it appears — in elections, say, post-1988, to the extent that data allow us to know, than they did pre-1988. But the electoral politics of moral values and related symbolic issues is more complicated and changeful, I think, than we often lead ourselves to believe. Take again the 2004 election. The fraction of all voters who said that moral values were “most important” to them was lower in 2004 than it was in ’96 and 2000. I mean, it was just lower — same question, same surveys. Iraq and the war on terrorism were the two big issues. Does that mean moral values weren’t important? No, they were important. It doesn’t mean they’re not getting more important; they had been getting more important. It just means in that particular election, under those particular conditions, given the two particular choices people had at the time they made those choices, it didn’t come in number one and it was lower — it was less significant than it had been in the previous two presidential elections.</p>
<p>What about regular churchgoers? Well, this is interesting. Self-identified white evangelical or born-again Christian voters — and here they changed the question, which is always something we don’t like them to do — but they changed the question, so these are real guesstimate estimates, but an estimated 14 to 17 percent of the electorate in the 2000 national elections were self-identified white evangelical born-again Christians.</p>
<p>In 2004, this same group — again, with the question change and putting asterisks around this — comprised about 23 percent of the electorate. So depending on what numbers you use, it’s a six-to-nine-point increase over 2000, which would then represent a 64-to-35-percent increase respectively in that group’s share or fraction of the total turnout. In 2004 they favored Bush over Kerry by a 57-point margin — about 78 percent Bush to 21 percent Kerry, versus, of course, 51 to 48 and change in the electorate at large. That’s a big deal; that’s important. But it doesn’t mean the country is completely polarized along red state-blue state lines. A fraction of the electorate that’s pre-disposed — for a variety of reasons, by the way, not just religious beliefs but also there are underlying demographic and socioeconomic and regional things going on here — overwhelmingly favored Bush.</p>
<p>What about other differences on religion? Well, compare the two groups that, in terms of religious values, on many questions, seem to have the most in common: black Protestants and white evangelical Protestants. There are actually some Pew data, which I won’t inflict on you right now — and other data suggest this — that in 2004 and despite a slight increase in 2000 in the Republican share of the overall African American presidential vote, no two major religious groups produced a wider split than black Protestants and white evangelicals. Bush got 17 percent of black Protestants versus 78 percent of the white evangelicals.</p>
<p>Now, again, none of this is to say that churched versus unchurched isn’t important; it is. And that’s not to say that it doesn’t show up in the regressions as a variable that’s important; it does. It is merely to say that you have to be very careful with respect to logic about what inferences you draw. The three rules of statistical analysis my statistics professor told me are disaggregate, disaggregate and disaggregate, and the more you disaggregate I think the more interesting and complicated the picture becomes. The same thing, by the way, is true if you start looking at particular moral issues that supposedly fueled the partisan divide in 2004. School prayer — &#160;I don’t think we even know one thing about how that mattered. Abortion was actually less contentious than people generally believe in determining how people voted.</p>
<p>So, again, if you want to read a kind of kindred account, Mo Fiorina I think basically gets the data and data analysis of this right. And I do not have any interest in promoting his book. Mo, I think, has it right.</p>
<p>Let me now switch gears to court doctrine. I will now pick up speed, if you can believe that. Let me go to court doctrine. There is no wall of separation of church and state mentioned in the Constitution, the First Amendment to the Constitution, or in any other amendment to the Constitution. The wall of separation metaphor was penned by Thomas Jefferson in a letter that he wrote to a bunch of concerned Danbury Baptists on January 1, 1802, who were worried that they were a religious minority that was going to be persecuted in that federal stronghold called Connecticut. Jefferson, in the course of this letter, uses that phrase. When he refers to their legislature he’s referring to Congress, as in “Congress shall make no law….”</p>
<p>James Madison, who, next to Franklin is my favorite — while I was at Princeton, Madison was my favorite guy; then I went to Penn and Ben Franklin’s my favorite guy — Madison was a New Light Scot Presbyterian. If you read&#160;The Federalist Papers&#160;and you go read the Westminster Confession, you will see just how much he imbibed from his New Light Scot Presbyterian tutors. When he talks about ambition counteracting ambition and the depravity of mankind, he didn’t pick that up from Ben Franklin, I’ll tell you; he got that at Princeton. You read&#160;Federalist Paper 51&#160;and Madison is worried throughout about factions, right? How do you, in a complex, large, diversified, commercial republic, how do you avoid these groups adverse to the rights of other citizens and to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community? The answer is multiply them: one religion, tyranny; two religions, civil war; many religions, civil peace. So the multiplicity of sects — that’s S-E-C-T-S, folks — is his answer in that regard.</p>
<p>And if you look at what’s happened in the country over the past couple hundred years, we have over 70 different religious denominations that claim at least 65,000 adherents. We’ve got a multiplicity there. But Madison, as they went through the deliberations and debate on the First Amendment, furnished alternate language. There are over 30 different versions of the First Amendment’s religion clauses that were considered and rejected. The one they accepted was the most obtuse. I mean, there were 10 that would have saved us a lot of agony and grief. “No establishment” meant no establishment, as in “Don’t tax me to hire Anglicans,” and “respect the rights” meant “We’re not going to have an established religion, a favored religion, a tax-supported religion, but we are going to single out religion for special protections and special restrictions.”</p>
<p>Why did they decide that? — and it was them; it wasn’t Warren Burger or Rehnquist or the Supreme Court; it was their decision, fair or foul, to single out religion for special treatment — they didn’t say they wanted anything else. Did they know what we would call ideology? Well, they didn’t have the word but they knew a little ideology — they knew a few guys from France, the French Revolution, all that. Did they understand philosophies and the power of ideas other than religious ideas to move people for good or ill? Yeah. Did they think there were tremendous social goods as well as social bads, civil goods as well as civil bads, that could come out of other belief systems? Absolutely. But they singled out religion, knowingly and purposely, because they believed it uniquely had power to do good and to do bad, to create strife, to create harmony and so on. And so they used the First Amendment as a way of laying down a marker of how the national government was going to respond.</p>
<p>Now, long story short is that if you go through the Supreme Court cases up to the 1947 case of&#160;Everson v. Board of Education&#160;— which is the case where, in effect, Justice Black declared for the first time a no-aid separation principle — you get sort of an aberration even for its time, and even in that case the court decides to subsidize buses for Catholic school children attending Catholic school. But it’s even in the&#160;Everson&#160;case, which declares, famously, the principle of no-aid separation. The court decides that, oh, by the way, you can in fact subsidize these buses. Now, how did the bus drive around the wall? Well, that’s an interesting story. The dissenters were shocked that Black was able to permit the subsidy, having held as he did; but within five years the court was backpedaling from this no-aid separation or wall of separation notion. By the time you get to 1971 — and this is the critical thing — you have the articulation of neutrality doctrine, in the case of&#160;Lemon v. Kurtzman.</p>
<p>Essentially the neutrality doctrine — and it’s supported by virtually all the cases between&#160;Everson&#160;and&#160;Lemon&#160;and since — says that a relationship between government and religious activities or institutions is permissible and constitutional if it meets three tests: one, it has a secular or civic purpose; two, its primary effect neither advances nor inhibits religion; and, three, it does not foster an excessive government entanglement with religion. Okay?</p>
<p>Jump to 2002. In 2002, in&#160;Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, religious conservatives say, “The Supreme Court finally gets it. The Supreme Court supports a Cleveland school program for vouchers. The Supreme Court finally is catching up to the reality — blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Then in 2004,&#160;Locke v. Davey, the Supreme Court in an “anti-religion decision” has decided that a young man in the state of Washington may not attend the school of his choice — though he’s otherwise qualified — with a state scholarship because that naughty state of Washington believes that people should not be able to use public funds to study devotional theology and become clergypersons.</p>
<p>People react to these two decisions as if the first one is a pro-religion decision and the second one is an anti-religion decision. They are not. They are both neutrality decisions. And you may like the former more than the latter or the latter more than the former, or, as I do, think they were both well-decided cases. You have there, in the last piece of that high-tech handout, just the summary of the&#160;Locke&#160;case where Justice Rehnquist talks about the play in the joints between the First Amendment’s Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses. I’d just submit to you that the First Amendment jurisprudence in&#160;Locke&#160;is right. Now, I don’t say that just in front of a group of distinguished journalists here in Key West; I actually made this argument face to face with Justice Scalia at a conference at Princeton in October where I spoke — I wouldn’t say opposite him, but I spoke after him — and he had very good counter-arguments, which I’ll be happy to share with you. He had many, many good arguments — he was a dissenter in the case of&#160;Locke. But that duly noted, I think that the jurisprudence here is faith-friendly, pluralistic and pragmatic, just like, alas, the public opinion is.</p>
<p>Dr. John DiIulio</p>
<p>Okay, let me bring this to a speedy end and just hop through the remaining points.</p>
<p>With respect to the bipartisan politics on the subject, let me just give you a quote from one of the more interesting faith-friendly politicians — this is from 2001; I’ll let you guess who this is — this nationally prominent politician said, “The Founders had faith in reason, faith in God, from which the ability to reason is a great gift. Government works in partnership with religious institutions to promote public purposes: feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless. Faith inspires these good works, to be sure, but tax dollars are properly used to channel the energies of the faithful in a direction that helps our society as a whole.”</p>
<p>Then the same politician said this past January 2005, “But I ask you, who is more likely to go out onto a street to save some poor at-risk child than someone from the community, someone who believes in the divinity of every person, who sees God at work in the lives of even the most hopeless and left-behind of our children. And that’s why we do not need to have a false division or debate about the role of faith-based institutions; we need to just do it and provide the support that is needed on an ongoing basis.” Thank you, Senator Clinton. Those two statements were made by Senator Clinton, and they mirror statements that have been made by President Bush: “Government cannot be replaced by charities but it should welcome them as partners, not resent them as rivals, whether Methodists, Mormons or good people of no faith at all.”</p>
<p>I know these Pew Forum sessions are not cumulative, but if you go back and look at the transcript of what Mike Gerson — my good pal who I saw only last week — told this group last December, you will see Mike saying much the same thing about the essentially pluralistic, pragmatic yet obviously faith-friendly take — suppositions behind the so-called faith-based and community initiatives.</p>
<p>So why the conflict? Why the trouble? Because these neutrality plans were challenged on both sides by people who did not share these neutrality principles, most especially in the House bill. And here I will recommend to you, by way of closing my remarks, a book that I did not bring with me because a student of mine took it and hasn’t yet returned it. But it’s by Amy Black, and it’s called&#160;Of Little Faith: The Politics of George W. Bush’s Faith-Based Initiative.</p>
<p>Professor Black is a professor of political science — what else? — at Wheaton College. She co-authored the book with several of her colleagues there. It was published in 2004 by Georgetown University Press. I do not escape criticism in this book, nor should I. It is something of an out-of-body experience reading about yourself this way, but then with a body like mine, that is welcome.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>But I would recommend that account to you because what she does is she talks about how essentially there were three groups. There were what she calls religious pragmatists, led in part by yours truly. There were what she calls religious purists. And then she doesn’t give them a label but then there were the people that wanted to turn the clock back not only on First Amendment jurisprudence but also on the so-called charitable choice laws that Senator Clinton’s husband, Bill Clinton, had signed, essentially in the realm of public administration, bringing neutrality principles to our government-by-proxy government-contracting system, which is essentially what those charitable choice laws attempted to do, albeit not with great success.</p>
<p>The empirical research on this subject tells you three things. Okay, I’ll just finish with those and then turn it over to Mr. Raspberry.</p>
<p>The first thing it tells you is that the civic comparative advantage of faith-based organizations is volunteer mobilization. Faith-based programs come in many shapes and sizes and varieties, from faith-permeated to faith-segmented to faith-integrated. There is a lot of variety. There’s a number of books and articles that have tried to sort of do a taxonomy. So the vast majority of these programs that serve the vast majority of people in need are programs that do segment their more intrinsically or expressly religious components from others. Especially those that operate in urban areas do that. And really the only solid empirical evidence we have is that they seem to be really good, and arguably cost effective at volunteer mobilization.</p>
<p>The second thing is what we don’t know. We don’t know anything of a definitive nature about the unique capacities, if any, of faith-based organizations that operate according to sort of a spiritual transformation modality, whether they’re especially effective in helping drug addicts or prisoner recidivism and so forth. We don’t know. And a lot of assertions to the contrary — “I think that they do have this unique power” — are motivated not by purposeful misreading of the data but by innocent misreading of the data, which has to do with, you know, where you begin the evaluation – when someone enters a program or when someone completes a program. I can tell you more about those things if you’re at all interested.</p>
<p>And the third thing we know — and where I think Ben Franklin would want us to conclude — is that there are things, for all the fog of debate in Washington in particular and for all the elite discourse that runs hot and cold on this, there are things out there that are working. One of them, most especially, is one that the Pew Trusts, under the incredible direction of Luis Lugo, was able to seed, some years ago, just as an example: a partnership between Big Brothers, Big Sisters of America and networks of community-serving churches that have mobilized volunteers to begin to address one of our most acute unmet civic and social needs, namely, trying to put loving, caring adult mentors into the lives of children who have a mom or a dad incarcerated. You’ve got over 2 million kids who fit that description on any given day.</p>
<p>President Bush, true to his word, allocated $450 million for mentoring; $150 million for mentoring children of prisoners. Big Brothers, Big Sisters has been the single biggest winner of those grants. The program has expanded dramatically. And it really would point to a volunteer mobilization strategy, if you will, very much consistent with what the president announced in this 2002 State of the Union address and put under the direction of my old pal, now out of the White House, the first director of the USA Freedom Corps, John Bridgeland.</p>
<p>But let me turn my motor off, Michael, and leave it there.</p>
<p>MR. CROMARTIE: Thank you, John. Thank you very much. We always like to have one of your journalist colleagues respond to our speakers to get the conversation going, to lay out some questions and raise some issues. Bill Raspberry was our first choice for a respondent, and we’re very grateful that he is able to be with us. He’s been with&#160;The Washington Post&#160;for over 40 years. All of you know him both by his reputation and also personally. And we’re glad that Bill has agreed to come. Thank you so much.</p>
<p>WILLIAM RASPBERRY: Thanks, Mike. I do wish John had left me something to say. Let me just nibble around the edges of your remarks. I wish I could be more reassured by the notion that a sliver of a sixth on one end and a seventh on the other end constitutes such a minority that they don’t matter very much. My experience — and it’s sort of a pragmatic, empirical experience of a journalist, not of a social science scholar — is that the people in the middle, that big majority, don’t do an awful lot of thinking most of the time.</p>
<p>William Raspberry</p>
<p>Let me put it this way. I’ll put it as kindly as I can that this great middle of people tend to believe both sides of every argument. They espouse one and suppress the other depending on what company it puts them in. What that means is that they can be led by these slivers that you talk about, and they are being led into a kind of polarization that I think is quite real. Although the people themselves resist with the other side of their minds the very idea of polarization, I think we’re being polarized while we sit here watching ourselves being dragged into a sort of polarization. I find myself being dragged that way and I think hard about these things and I believe the polarizing trend is very dangerous for America. But people can be led.</p>
<p>We used to have — and I’m not talking about historically so much as my lifetime — a sort of different understanding of the role that religion played in civic life. One of the understandings was that public religion and private religion look a good deal alike, but they’re slightly different things. So you had the phenomenon of anybody from the religious community in any town could give the high school graduation invocation. You didn’t care whether he was Baptist or Episcopal or Jewish — whatever — because all of them knew that one can invoke the Creator and certain strong religious-sounding principles, but avoid doctrinal specificity and not offend anybody. There was a sort of public religion that people generally subscribed to. It worked to smooth the joints between the various religious groups.</p>
<p>But people can easily be led to believe that if you are afraid to invoke the sacred name of Jesus Christ in your prayers, you are somehow shortchanging your religion and you’re being unfaithful somehow. So we can be pushed into making sharper lines than we had grown accustomed to making. And there are people in that sixth and that seventh sliver who find it in their interest in push us to sharpen these divisions.</p>
<p>I followed some of the constitutional pieces, and I too am fascinated by the development of the separation principles. But I think most people who think about these things and who worry about these things don’t worry about them so much out of fear that they may not be constitutional, but they invoke the constitution because they fear that they may do great damage. We reach for the constitution not as a first principle, but as a defense mechanism. And there are people who do worry about whether some of the faith-based initiatives might get us going in a direction that we’ll wish later on we hadn’t gone.</p>
<p>I don’t suppose I know anyone who believes that religious people should not be involved in social work. You made a good deal of the point that good people do these things, have done these things for a very long time. They will continue to do them, volunteers and otherwise. I don’t think that’s an issue. What is an issue, I think, is — not to put too fine a point on it — getting it paid for. Who will pay? I didn’t hear any objection, for instance, when the first George Bush launched his Points of Light program. He celebrated people of all sorts — many of them involved religiously — who were doing good things in their communities, brought them up to the White House, celebrated them in various ways and encouraged that kind of volunteerism. I don’t recall any objection to it. We’ve all had our sort of public and semi-public saints over the years. Martin Luther King was very much motivated by his religious beliefs and he inspired in us — in the rest of us — a return to faith on the assumption that if we returned to our faith, we would agree with him on the dignity of man and creating a fair system and so on and so on.</p>
<p>So we’ve not resisted that so much, but we do get a little nervous when two things happen — when people insist that our view of things is wrong, and when they insist on it on the authority of their religion, which they insist ought to be the test of things. And we start muttering words like “theocracy” — it scares us a little bit, and I think with good reason. We’ve seen the theocratic principles in operation in other parts of the world and we don’t like them very much. The other place where we get a little nervous is when these religious organizations that we are a little suspicious of start laying claim to public money — our money. I wish you’d talked some about that, John.</p>
<p>It seems to me that when we first started talking about faith-based initiatives and whatever formulations we were using early on back as long ago as when Bush was governor of Texas, what we were really talking about was getting the government out of the way of people who were doing effective work through their religious organizations. There were organizations that were involved in drug rehabilitation, all kinds of life-rescuing missions, who were in effect told they couldn’t do that anymore because they didn’t have a state license to do it. The state licenses required a sort of certification of credential, but not a certification of any record of success in doing what they were doing. And there were people — often uneducated people — who were rescuing victims of drug abuse and other kinds of social disorders.</p>
<p>I know you say the jury is out on this idea of spiritual transformation, but it does seem to me clear that there are things you can certify and teach. If you want to turn out really good Volkswagen mechanics, you can have a course of study approved by either Volkswagen or the U.S. government Department of Labor and you can break the thing down into its components and you can teach Volkswagen repair. There are lots of things you can teach and if you’re in the business of teaching, you perhaps ought to certify those who do the teaching to satisfy yourselves that they know what they’re doing. It’s a different matter, though, if what you seek to do is to transform individuals. And many of the problems that are most difficult to get at in our society today have to do with changing attitudes.</p>
<p>You don’t reduce teen pregnancy, for example, by improving instruction in human productive biology. People know where babies come from and they know how to avoid getting them. Teaching pharmacology courses doesn’t help you an awful lot if you want to break addiction to crack cocaine. There are people who do these things and some of the most successful ones are those who go to changing the person from the inside. Religious organizations may be better equipped than most organizations to do that kind of thing, and for sure we don’t want the government mucking around with our insides.</p>
<p>So the question was originally about certification, can we allow people who have been doing these things to go on doing them without having the government mess it up? But very quickly, after you came to the White House Office, the conversation — I’m not suggesting you changed the conversation —</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: Oh, go ahead. It’s early.</p>
<p>MR. RASPBERRY: But during that period, I’m saying the conversation changed to how the government should deliver money to those organizations that were doing their faith-based things. And it got really tricky. And I think that’s where the debate really still is – not whether the government should have a permissive role and just get out of the way, but whether the government should fund religious-based social programs. It’s probably a bad idea to do so.</p>
<p>I remember a couple of cases where the government’s attempt to do it sort of messed things up. The Salvation Army in Michigan is doing a pretty good job — an outstanding job of some social services programs. And the state said, “Hey, you guys are so good, we’re going to contract with you to do the work our government agencies have been doing. But, of course, you’ll have to take all this God stuff out of there. You’ll have to strip the religious part out.” And the Salvation Army wound up being just another poorly funded social services agency and no more effective than the ones they replaced. The Salvation Army, like so many of these organizations, had been successful because they got at people from the inside. I think there’s still a place for faith-based and other kinds of organizations who want to help people by transforming them rather than simply teaching them or giving them a pattern.</p>
<p>The difficulty for me is at the intersection of these things with government funding, and whether there is, at the end of the day, any practical way of keeping what the faith-based groups do — often very well — and providing public funding for them at the same time. Maybe it can’t be done except through some back channel ways like tax-advantage contributions to them.</p>
<p>There are probably some more things we ought to get into, but I’ll stop for now.</p>
<p>MR. CROMARTIE: Thanks, Bill. I’m going to let the rest of you join the discussion, and I’ll keep a running list of people who want to get in. Before I call on any of you, though, I’m going to give John two or three minutes just to respond to these things quickly.</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: Well, you know, I think I accept the letter and spirit of Mr. Raspberry’s comments. I think the way I would phrase it, though, is to ask, what would Franklin do? And I think the case you cite is exactly the right case. You go to May of ’99; Gore gives a speech at a Salvation Army drug rehab center in Atlanta, Ga., and speaks with really unusual passion — although any passion was unusual for the vice president. He gives a speech very similar to the speech Bush gives in July of ’99. One’s got armies of compassion, one’s got paramedics of civil society —</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>— but they’re essentially the same. It’s about volunteerism, it’s about public and private support, it’s about doing more effectively with smaller, grassroots religious and other values-based groups, as Gore put it, what we’ve always done with Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services and so on.</p>
<p>And this occurs against the backdrop of a provision of the welfare reform bill of ’96, sponsored primarily by Sen. Ashcroft, signed onto by President Clinton, and then gets three more versions of this — these charitable choice laws that essentially look at HHS and say, “Hey, you’ve got 65,000 employees. You have over 300 different grant programs, you make over 60,000 grants a year. A lot of the groups that are getting the grants are religious organizations or religiously anchored organizations. It just turns out that the smaller groups traditionally have not been a part of that government-by-proxy system. Let’s change the system so that the system is fairer to those groups and also invites them into the process with no favoritism, in a perfectly pluralistic and pragmatic spirit, between the double-yellow lines of existing constitutional law.”</p>
<p>Dr. John DiIulio</p>
<p>By the time you get to 2001, however — and I think Amy Black in that book I mentioned, I think she gets this essentially correct — you have a proposed bill that essentially challenges neutrality principles in two main ways. It says, we have to go beyond charitable choice so that organizations that in effect proselytize with public funds ought to be considered, and we also ought to expand existing protections for religious organizations to hire people with some regard to their religious affiliations in ways that would make it possible for groups that receive public funds to hire only co-religionists, if they so chose — and not only co-religionists, but people who follow their particular beliefs and tenets, as the phrase was.</p>
<p>Now, that posed a problem. And there are legitimate provisions that can be made for those problems. It just is a lot different talking about religious hiring rights than talking about how do we work together to mobilize public/private religious/secular partnerships to serve the children of prisoners in north central Philly or south central L.A. or downtown Detroit. So I agree with you; the debate did in fact take that turn.</p>
<p>MR. CROMARTIE: Thank you. I’ll let E.J. start with the first discussion question.</p>
<p>E.J. DIONNE, The Washington Post: It’s wonderful to hear you, as always, John. I want to underscore something you said – take slight issue with the Mo Fiorina thesis — to throw something at you and then ask a question. To underscore one of your points, if you look at the same exit polling data, Bush gained one point among weekly church-attenders over 2000; he gained one point among more-than-weekly church attenders; but he gained three points among people who attended church monthly or less, and four points among the never-attending church people, which is to say that the change in this election was not caused by religion. Or to paraphrase a great Luis Lugo-ism, 9/11 mattered more than John 3:16.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>I think that this was much more about terror and other issues than religion, so that you could over-read the role of religion in this last election.</p>
<p>The slight dissent is if you look at the excellent, well-produced handout on page three and look at those two charts, it seems to me that there are a couple of things about those charts. On one hand, you can say that the first chart may overstate the matter, but I think it’s almost certainly true that the second chart understates the matter and that the reality exists somewhere between those two charts.</p>
<p>Also, note the two spikes in average differences in Republican and Democratic attitudes. What struck me is that in ’94 there was a huge gap between political and policy attitudes and social and personal attitudes. So ’94 was very much about politics whereas in the ’03 numbers — and I presume ’04 might be even more dramatic — the two actually moved in tandem, which suggests that there is some kind of rift.</p>
<p>And where I take issue with Fiorina is that while I think he is right in some sense about the culture war, something has changed in the political war, so that you probably now have 35 to 40 percent on each end in terms of very passionate feelings, or relatively passionate feelings about political parties and in particular President Bush. So in a sense in partisan terms, the middle has actually shrunk considerably. You can keep those two ideas in your head at the same time without being a flip-flopper.</p>
<p>The question I wanted to ask is on the faith-based thing. John knows I have been sympathetic to everything he has written over the years on this, but it seems to me the problem comes as soon as you get specific. In other words, once you move from the general proposition that these organizations have done fantastic work and that government has a history of supporting faith-based efforts on specific issues, things get trickier. For example, hiring practices, what to do about displaced money — does the poverty money just allow churches to move other money to proselytizing? — and the whole question of a religiously rooted methodology that Bill Raspberry raised. You know, if the way you get someone off of drugs is to get them to embrace Jesus Christ as a personal savior, you clearly get to a point where government funding of that methodology is extremely problematic even for people who are sympathetic to faith-based efforts.</p>
<p>And so I guess the question is, especially based on your experience, to what extent is the haggling over faith-based stuff the result of people getting stuck in the one-sixth versus one-seventh — polarizing the argument on purpose — and to what extent is it a problem that these things simply get really hard — that the more you actually want to do this, the more you’re going to confront extremely difficult questions, which will be bothersome on either side to people in that broad middle you described?</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: Well, E.J., thank you. No question that it’s the latter. Life is lived in the particular; God is in the details, and the devil too.</p>
<p>On your point about Fiorina — I agree, again, on those two figures, that it’s not that the one is right and the other wrong, but they show you how dramatically different the visual display of the same quantitative data in a simple figure like that can be, you know — you pick a figure, and as you pick a display, you pick an idea. So the ’94 election was about angry white males, but of course they disappeared in ’96 because they got married to soccer moms —</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>— and then in ’98 we couldn’t think of anything to say so it was a “maintaining election.” Then in 2000 it’s red, blue. I mean, you know, none of them —</p>
<p>MR. DIONNE: And 2004 was contented white males.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: Oh, those are NASCAR dads who were married to security moms who were the next wave. But I mean, you pick your poison, you pick your data, you pick your interpretation of the data and you run from there, and if everybody runs to the same interpretation, it becomes somewhat limiting.</p>
<p>Let me just give you also, on the point — and I’m not here to shill for Mo Fiorina; I haven’t talked to him in many years but I do like his book — let me just very quickly quote what he says. Here is his point in a nutshell: “So long as one party moves away from the center, electoral punishment results and even ideologically motivated party activists eventually get the message, as the Democratic activists in the 1980s who got tired of losing did. But if both parties move away from the center and locate at a more or less equal distance from the mainstream, then electoral punishment need not result. Voters will be less enthusiastic about their choices — they will be aligned and not participate, and we have seen some of that. But given a choice between two extremes, they can only elect an extremist.”</p>
<p>And then the more academic version of it is this: “The correlates of the vote have not changed but this is not because voters have polarized on the moral dimension, nor that they have increased the weight they attach to that dimension or decreased the weight they attach to economic dimensions. Rather, unmeasured changes in the positions of the candidates make it appear that voters have changed.” And this is a point that challenges virtually the last 40 years of social science and political science on the subject. Most national election studies dating back to&#160;The American Voter&#160;and Donald E. Stokes in 1960 are now suddenly in jeopardy, if you take his points seriously. And I think you need to.</p>
<p>With respect to your second and substantive point, I think that the answer is on the one hand pretty simple and on the other very complicated. The simple answer is that if we’re looking at the vast majority of organizations that are religiously motivated, religiously anchored, that are that subset of the nonprofit sector, and we look at them and what they actually do — for example, in Philadelphia, 40 percent of all groups that supply welfare-to-work services are religious organizations — the majority of those organizations are faith-segmented. That is, they are religious in character; they may hum hymns while they hammer nails or say “God bless you” when nobody sneezes, but they have 501(c)(3)s and so forth.</p>
<p>Stephen Monsma from Pepperdine University, in a book called&#160;Putting Faith in Partnerships, goes through these data on Philly and four other cities. Under 7 percent of those faith-based organizations providing that particular service even prefer to hire only co-religionists. So an issue like hiring rights, that is something you should debate in academic seminars and constitutional law seminars, at conferences like this perhaps. But on the planet Earth, in practical terms, if you’re talking about those groups, it may be a moot point.</p>
<p>When you get to the organization that is the whomsoever-shall-we-serve ministry that is for, you know, drug addicts — “You have a hole in your soul; it can only be filled by a belief in Jesus Christ; if you come to Jesus you will be cured” — those organizations — and I am a big fan of many of them and have been on the boards of some such organizations — they have obviously every right to say we ought to be a part of this government-by-proxy system too. I believed it when I was in office and said so in a speech in March 2001 at the National Association of Evangelicals, and I’ll say it again. If you want to go down that path — and I stress&#160;if&#160;— the way to go down that path is to talk about vouchers, is to talk about indirect disbursement arrangements, voucher certificates.</p>
<p>However, going down the voucher path does not automatically resolve all of the constitutional questions, and anybody who thinks that it does needs to read&#160;Zelman. That opinion was on neutrality principles based on true private choice. Some people think, “Vouchers — no more constitutional problems.” Not so, although the threshold is definitely different and lower. And I also think that the indirect-disbursement-arrangement approach makes it much more possible for government to, in effect, take that person coming out of jail detox and say, “Here are 25 organizations on the approved list: here they are; here is your voucher and go.” But then again, if we want to do performance measurement — not to get too far afield into public administration; I know it’s early in the going here, still too early for public administration.</p>
<p>You can read my Brookings books. I have a whole series of Brookings books on public administration. They are the kind of books which, once you put them down, you cannot pick them up.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>They are these “everything you ever wanted to know about Medicaid administration” kind of books.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>But, you know, the reality is that if you’re going to do performance measurement — let’s say I get my voucher and I go to a whomsoever-shall-we-serve ministry, and the government is saying, “Well, you can be a participating voucher-receiver but we’re going to keep information on performance.” Does that organization have to keep information on all recipients, voucher holding and non-voucher holding, and if it does, by what administrative protocols? And if it does, haven’t we recreated the grant-making regime that vouchers were supposed to avoid? So it’s a problem.</p>
<p>MR. CROMARTIE: Okay, I have got a long list. Wendy Kaminer, you get to jump in.</p>
<p>Wendy Kaminer</p>
<p>WENDY KAMINER, The Atlantic Monthly: Thanks. I wanted to pick up on a couple of the questions that E.J. raised about the practical implications of some of these programs. But first I have a couple of comments about rhetoric. You started off saying, John, that there is no mention of a wall between church and state in the Constitution, and I have to say, I hear people say that all the time, and it is so irrelevant. You won’t find any mention of sex discrimination in the Constitution either, but in fact, one of the arguments that we have used against the ERA was that we don’t need an ERA because the 14th Amendment covers sex discrimination, even though, by the way, the 14th Amendment doesn’t mention sex discrimination.</p>
<p>So, you know, that really is irrelevant. You get the concept from Roger Williams; it goes down to Thomas Jefferson; it gets interpreted over the course of 20 years of constitutional litigation when you think about when the cases actually happened. But, you know, if you could take some friendly advice, just drop that because it’s an irrelevancy.</p>
<p>Another point about rhetoric: as you may know, I find the term “faith-based initiative” somewhat euphemistic, to say the least, and this goes back to the kind of questions that E.J. is raising because, you know, we are not a country of one faith. You give us this vision of pluralism, which I think the great majority of people, both secular and religious, would share, and what the term “faith-based initiative” implies is that we’re somehow just giving money to this one American faith that everybody likes, or at least we’re giving it to a faith that you like. We’re giving it to the friendly church down the street, and it may not be your church but you know them and you know all of the good work that they do. We’re not giving it to the Scientologists, we’re not giving it to the Nation of Islam, we’re not giving it to David Koresh, we’re not giving it to all of these groups that are in the minority, these groups that we don’t consider part of this “faith-based” family. It is as if the pro-choice movement had completely won the language over rhetoric and we didn’t even talk about pro-life concerns; we only talked about where you fit in the pro-choice movement.</p>
<p>So I think we kind of need to keep that mind. There is a reason, for example, why the ACLU talks about “government-funded religion” instead of a “faith-based initiative.” I usually talk about sectarian social service programs, not to be pejorative, but to remind people that, as John Dewey says, there is not one religion; there are a lot of religions, and we shouldn’t talk about religion in the singular; we should only talk about it in the plural.</p>
<p>You suggested too that part of the controversy over these initiatives is public ignorance. And I think that that is right, and I think that one of the problems is, as you say, that we are all quite ignorant about who is getting the money, what is the basis for giving out the money, what is the efficacy of these faith-based programs. And as we all said, we don’t really know that; I mean, we don’t really have empirical data about the efficacy of a religious approach to drug treatment. It would be good to have that. So there is a lot of money being handed out on the basis of a lot of assumptions, and some even might say biases, about the superiority of particular religious approaches.</p>
<p>And then of course there is the overwhelming problem of accountability, of how do you audit religious programs without fostering the kind of excessive entanglement of government in religion that both secular people and religious people don’t want? We have talked a little bit about the controversy over hiring in religious organizations, which may not be something we need to talk about in the real world. But it’s something that is talked about, as you know, very heatedly in Congress — but of course I’m not suggesting that is the real world.</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: I said planet Earth. It is the real world but not the planet Earth.</p>
<p>MS. KAMINER: Yeah, right. That is a huge problem. Now, when the Supreme Court — I don’t remember exactly when — said that religious organizations not receiving federal funds could discriminate on the basis of religious belief — it was a case involving the Mormon church —&#160;Corporation of Presiding Bishop v. Amos, I believe — one of the reasons that they gave was that they didn’t want the government having to decide whether the job in question is essential to the practice of the religion. That case involved a janitor who was working in a for-profit health club run by the Mormon church. Now, that was, I think, pretty obviously not a job that had much to do with doctrine, but the court said, “We don’t even want courts asking the question; we don’t even want those questions asked.”</p>
<p>So then you get to questions about a sectarian organization that is getting federal money only being able to hire people who share its religious beliefs — you know, talk about government entanglement — and then you have what people talk about as publicly funded discrimination.</p>
<p>But the question that I’m going to leave you with — and this is not just a rhetorical question, but a genuine one — when, if ever, are we going to have some real data on what these programs are doing, on who is getting the money, on how effective they are, on how they compare to organizations that aren’t approaching drug addicts and people with other problems with the help of Jesus Christ?</p>
<p>And before I stop, let me just mention two cases that are out there right now that really demonstrate the problem. There’s a case in Pennsylvania — I can’t remember the name of it — but it’s a program that offers vocational training in prisons and it is entirely funded by federal, state and local funds, and it is entirely permeated with religion. It is an evangelical Christian group. It is the only vocational training program available to prisoners. In order to become part of it, they have to pray or in some way claim that they accept Jesus as their savior. It only hires people who share their religious beliefs. There are a whole host of problems with this. There are a couple of abstinence-only programs that are federally funded that are being sued because they are really quite sectarian, because they are selling Jesus Christ along with the idea of abstinence. We don’t know how many programs like that there are out there, and I think a lot of people would agree that those programs are a problem.</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: Well, thank you, and let me just start at the back end with that. One of your points had to do with the public administration — how do you monitor, how do you account? One thing I really objected to when I was in office, and I object to equally today — and it sort of gets my goat only because people in public administration don’t have much else going for them other than knowing these sorts of fun facts – but there is not a single program since the end of World War II in domestic policy — Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, interstate highway, you pick it – where the federal government has directly administered the program that it funds. This government-by-proxy system — working through state and local governments, for-profit firms, and nonprofits – is the way Washington works and has been so since the end of World War II. Those funds have gone in the non-profit sector to large, national, non-profits for decades, both religious and secular. Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services and Jewish Federations have gotten billions of dollars in public funding.</p>
<p>Now, here’s what I object to. Suddenly when these small faith-based or religious organizations — call them what you will — when Minister Jones who runs a housing rehab program steps up, suddenly, we need to have a more rigorous public administration system. And what I say is, it’s a generic public administration problem.</p>
<p>MS. KAMINER: No, John, you’re misunderstanding my point. My point was that it comes up when it’s religious organizations getting the money because we don’t want the government looking into —</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: No, no, I take it. I’m not directing that to you per se, I’m just using that to get this on the table because when a non-profit organization dresses in religious drag, the problems of government-by-proxy monitoring don’t suddenly come into being. The University of Pennsylvania gets a grant. It goes to a particular school. That school gets it for particular purposes. Those purposes are specified by the specific terms of the specific grant, the administrative protocols, the accountability protocols, the fiscal protocols. The University of Pennsylvania is responsible for seeing to it that the terms of that grant are met. So if the money sloshes over from that department or program and ends up funding the summer salary of a guy in the medical school, when it’s a program in folklore and myth, the University of Pennsylvania should be called on it.</p>
<p>There are in place existing entities called federal departments — HHS, for example — that do little else but contract-monitor. Along come the faith-based organizations, the smaller ones, call them what you will — the whole point of charitable choice was simply to say, “When those guys apply, don’t put them in the out pile simply because you read their name to be religious in character. If it says St. David’s rather than Joe’s Bar &amp; Grill, don’t put them on the out pile on that basis.” And going back to your first point, I don’t mean to suggest that there is no wall of separation. But in survey after survey, educated people and people who are attentive to public affairs — either pluralities or majorities — say, “Oh yeah, the wall of separation is actually black-lettered in the Constitution.” That’s neither here nor there for this point.</p>
<p>Charitable choice is exactly what addressed this. Clinton/Gore, Secretary Cuomo at HUD wrote rules and regulations. They exist. They are in place. The problem is they weren’t being followed by the federal government – there was no technical assistance and capacity-building effort. And so, I think the key thing to remember here is that I’m not talking about anything other than a nonprofit organization of whatever shape, kind, character, creed or lack of creed having every right to participate fully in the government-by-proxy contracting and grant-making system. It needs to be judged precisely according to all the same rules, regulations and protocols as any other non-profit organization, and to get or not get the grant and to be monitored accordingly.</p>
<p>With respect to the empirical data, this is another slight pet peeve of mine. We have forty years of government-by-proxy. We have these national, large organizations — again, religious mega-charities among them. How many independent evaluations of efficacy do we have on the secular non-profit organizations that have received money year in and year out? Answer — I can count them on my fingers and toes and being from planet Earth, I only have ten toes — you can see my fingers; I’m not going to show you my toes. Even the Government Performance and Results Act of ’93 says, “Keep data, do performance audits.” They don’t even do the internal performance audits.</p>
<p>MS. KAMINER: But most programs don’t raise constitutional questions.</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: Some of them do raise constitutional questions, actually. And many of them have been found — when they have been monitored even kind of causally under the normal sort of government process — you know, ding-dong, may I see your books, please? — they don’t show up. They’re taking money and they’re not providing the service. So I’m not saying that we shouldn’t improve that. In fact, all those boring Brookings books were about how to fix that. I’m saying let’s fix it and then let’s apply it equally to everybody.</p>
<p>(Audio break, tape change)</p>
<p>What I meant to suggest is not that we don’t have it; what I meant to suggest was, to the extent that that literature — which has got over 500 refereed academic journal articles in at this point — tells me anything of civic significance, it’s that their primary civic comparative advantage is volunteer mobilization. With respect to the question that is the kind of sexy one in the spiritual sense, that small fraction of all so-called faith-based organizations that are mainly dedicated to spiritual transformation — which are not the majority of that sector, which are certainly not the majority of the religion sector — on those the jury is out. We just don’t know, and we have conflicting studies to this point.</p>
<p>It’s very hard in the end to do experimental research; you can’t randomly assign people to believe in God and not believe in God. And then we have these variable problems, like with the election data; it’s okay, but if my operation has a variable like religiosity, church-not church — the late, great Dave Larson, who was a pioneer in faith-based research and spirituality and health — over 40 programs at Harvard, Penn, other medical schools — he used to have a joke, which I’m sure Dave stole from somebody else, but he used to say, “You know, we do these studies with church-not church. If you think that sitting in a church makes you religious, you must think sitting in your garage makes you a car.” It’s a very crude variable measurement. So the social science of the subject is kind of in its infancy too.</p>
<p>MR. CROMARTIE: I’ve got a long list of folks. Wendy, I know we could continue this over the next day. That’s why we have long receptions, so we can continue these conversations.</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: I’m too long-winded. You can say it. Go ahead.</p>
<p>JILL LAWRENCE, USA Today: Actually, Wendy’s question touched on mine and it may have been covered, but maybe I’ll give John a chance to expand a little further. I was thinking about the suspicion that Bill Raspberry was talking about, and this was also touched on in the Santorum profile in the&#160;New York Times&#160;yesterday, this presumption that faith-based programs and services are better than government services. And I think that leads to suspicions among some that what you’re really talking about is an excuse for government to abdicate its responsibility. Some of the most aggressive proponents of these programs cite a lot of examples of these wonderful programs that work, but you never hear about the local police force or a federally funded drug program that’s doing a great job. So maybe you could talk about that.</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: I was going to get a T-shirt at one point when I was in the White House because I got it from both sides, I felt like a dead armadillo in the middle of this road. But I was going to get a fluorescent yellow T-shirt that said, “I love psychiatric social workers,” and wear it, because this cannot be conceived as substitute rather than supplement. Let me go back to some existing data just quickly from a subset earlier — those Steve Monsma data I mentioned earlier about welfare-to-work in four cities, Philadelphia in particular.</p>
<p>So you look at the Monsma data. A typical welfare-to-work organization that is run out of some kind of religious organization — again, most of them faith-segmented, not integrated or permeated or saturated. In those organizations they serve, on average, 200 clients a year on annual budgets of $90,000 a year, which comes entirely, in virtually all cases, from private sources and donors. Look at the secular nonprofits and the ones that receive public funding, okay? They serve populations on average of 400 a year with budgets of $900,000 a year. So they’re serving double the clients but for 10 times the money.</p>
<p>Now, what does that tell you? It should tell you nothing definitive. What is the character of the clients? To the extent that we know, it looks like actually the faith-based groups are getting the clients who have more checkered job histories, more difficult chronic substance abuse and other problems and so on. I wouldn’t take that to the bank of prime time social science, but there’s a prima facie case at least for saying, “Hey, these groups, it’s not like they’re doing a bad job; they’re not doing any worse than anyone else.” President Bush said — and you can go on the White House Web site and look for yourselves — but I catalogued several dozen statements that he made in 2001 and continues to make, I think as Mike Gerson said when he was here with you all, to the effect of “Government cannot be replaced by charities. It should welcome them as partners, not resent them as rivals.” Over and over and over and over again it’s about partnerships, it’s about leveraging these organizations to supplement existing social service delivery in places where there are unmet civic and social needs, and where, in fact, in many cases stained glass windows are the only organizations — literally; I’m not just being rhetorical here — literally more pervasive in the neighborhood than neon flashing beer signs. I’ll just plug Benjamin Franklin on that point.</p>
<p>I mean, that’s the reality, but there are people who seize upon this and say it’s about substituting; it’s about not merely weeding out government regulations that may be unfair but it’s about kind of handing over social service. The entire religion sector in America — I’m not talking about social service; I’m talking about every dollar that goes into the collection plate; if they gave everything, so they didn’t keep the heat on in the church and the choir didn’t have any robes and everything else — the religion sector couldn’t fund half of the government social service delivery budget per year. There’s no way this is a substitute. It’s a creative supplement that can improve, I think, at the margin, cost-effectiveness if it’s done right.</p>
<p>Franklin Foer</p>
<p>FRANKLIN FOER, The New Republic: I think one way in which you could maybe hopefully disaggregate is if you could just talk about your experience at the Office, and when the neutrality clause came into play, and when government put its foot down and said, “What you guys are doing steps out of bounds and goes too far.”</p>
<p>And secondly, I think that you were the Ron Suskind administration confessee. How the hell does he do that, and what about me, man?</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>I’ve got years —</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: I have an evil twin brother, and that’s it. And he runs around. I saw him. He was out by the pool this morning.</p>
<p>MR. FOER: Well, perhaps you talked about the political atmosphere in this White House and the attitude toward social science that pervades this White House. From your experience in the Office, how much does it matter having a social scientist there? How much does the politics come into play in terms of enforcing the neutrality clause? It seems like it would be very hard for government to step in and say, “You guys are stepping over the bounds in proselytizing,” or whatever, and it seems like a lot of the enforcement of the neutrality clause happens on the margins in these very subtle areas that would be highly susceptible to —</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: Manipulation?</p>
<p>MR. FOER: — to politics, yeah.</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: Well, I think the simple timeline on this — very simple and very brief — might start with charitable choice ’96 to 2000 under Clinton-Gore. It’s one of the few points of agreement during the 2000 campaign: you get Steve Goldsmith for Bush and Elaine Kamark for Gore — basically the respective point persons on faith-based and community initiatives for each of them. Again, there are different emphases, but they are very kindred. I mean, what they say and do throughout the 2000 campaign are similar. The president comes to office, he makes an announcement and the announcement has two parts. The day the office was announced, if you go back and run the tapes you’ll see there were two personnel announcements. The first and most important one was Steve Goldsmith going to the Corporation for National Service, eventually on the way to becoming chairman of the corporation, and the second was fat boy from Philly coming in for six months to do a study of the federal grant-making process.</p>
<p>And the idea was — go back and read the&#160;New York Times&#160;or the paper of your choice — it was explicitly stated as a neutrality plan. It says that here’s what we’re going to do; we’re going to build on charitable choice and so forth and so on, and we’re not going to get involved in these other issues that are contentious. The president was absolutely consistent in delivering that message, and I think remains consistent in delivering that message.</p>
<p>The problem occurred — and I think this Amy Black book tells the tale about as well as it can be told based on the kinds of interviews that she did, primary and archival digging — when H.R. 7, the Community Solutions Act, was introduced. It had three provisions that more than trifled with neutrality principles. Charitable choice has black-letter language that says, “No funds shall be used for religious instruction, sectarian worship” and so on. It’s black-letter language. And there was language in H.R. 7 that was read — may have been intended, I don’t know — to dampen or strip away that explicit language from the extant charitable choice laws.</p>
<p>Secondly, there were the beliefs and tenets provisions, which went to the religious hiring rights issue, and then at the back end in the 11th hour there was a mega cover-all-things voucher provision that said, well, if we can’t get beliefs and tenets, at least we can sort of get vouchers. There’s no way you can ignore a House bill, right? And there’s no way that the debate was not going to be conditioned by that bill, even though literally the week after that bill was voted on — it was all Republicans, and I think 15 Democrats voted for it in the House, obviously dead on arrival in the Senate — but the very next week, as Amy Black recounts well in her book, Sen. Lieberman and Sen. Santorum came into the White House and Sen. Santorum immediately went out to the journalistic — whatever they call them there; you guys know, the polls, the sticks, whatever — and he said, to paraphrase and summarize, “We’re going back to religious hiring rights; we’re going to kind of look at that; it’s not going to be in the new bill and so forth and so on” — basically a charitable choice sort of bill. And they actually worked on it with the White House all summer. Then came 9/11.</p>
<p>In February of 2002 there was a Lieberman-Santorum bill, which pretty much was kind of a neutrality plan revisited. A lot of things obviously had changed. By that time, there were Democrats who absolutely would hear none of it because they had principled reasons to be against it, and Democrats who were for it but they didn’t want to give the president a victory on the issue. By that point it was too late for that bill, and since then, as I think Richard Nathan, who has worked with the Pew Trusts at the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy — you can go on his website at SUNY Albany — has said, the administration essentially has attempted to do some of what it hopes to do through executive orders, and that’s pretty much where it stands.</p>
<p>Michael Barone</p>
<p>MICHAEL BARONE, U.S. News &amp; World Report:&#160;Look, John DiIulio made the observation that in empirical evidence, the advantage of religious-based organizations is volunteer mobilization. Bill Raspberry talked about Martin Luther King and a lot of volunteer mobilization that was done by religious-based thought that motivated the civil rights movement. I just want to make the observation that we had something of this in the 2004 presidential election that perhaps undercuts one of the points that John quoted Morris Fiorina as saying. You know, the Bush campaign got 1,400,000 volunteers. I have not seen definitive figures on the Democratic side, but there were surely 300,000, 500,000, maybe many more people volunteering for various of the Democratic campaigns or the anti-Bush organizations and so forth.</p>
<p>This sort of politics of the extreme, which Fiorina says is going to repel people, it drew people in — less bowling alone, more bowling in leagues. And it also turned people out to vote. I mean, we had this extraordinary rise — total turnout up 16 percent. Kerry’s popular vote over Al Gore’s, up 16 percent; George W. Bush ’04 over George W. Bush ’00, up 23 percent.</p>
<p>I think it leaves many of us, including me, somewhat uncomfortable that strong feelings do seem to have the power to mobilize a lot of people in various ways, whether it’s at the level of volunteer organizations or in partisan politics. And yet that sort of middle course that many of our civic-minded columnists urge as the best course doesn’t seem to bring out the enthusiasm either of charitable volunteers or of voters on election day.</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: First of all, I’m never going to disagree with you on any matter having to do with electoral data — you who have forgotten more than I ever knew or anyone’s ever known about the subject. You know, I was born at night but not last night —</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>— so I defer.</p>
<p>But I don’t care if they each have 3 million volunteers. I don’t think all those volunteers — certainly the people I knew who worked for Bush and for Kerry, you know — I don’t think they were, to get to the anecdotal, necessarily motivated to do that because of what might have been each candidate’s most extreme position. That is, there is a package of things the president represented, a package of things that Sen. Kerry represented, and a lot of people responded that way.</p>
<p>It was interesting that Kerry got 49, I believe — and you’ll correct me, I know, if I’m wrong — of the independent vote. Kerry actually got one extra point of the independent vote, which was interesting because usually he who gets the independent vote wins. It didn’t happen to Gerald Ford against Carter, but otherwise it generally happens.</p>
<p>And there is no question that there is a power of strong belief to mobilize people — no question about that. I wouldn’t doubt that for a moment. I guess the real question is whether, if you look, for example — you know, as a textbook author you have to go and update these data every so often — look at the Democratic delegates versus the Democratic voters, and then some studies that are able to do very targeted, elite interviewing. If you look at Democratic officials and officeholders and so forth, you go from slightly left of center to pretty far left of center, to very far left of center, and the same thing is true — moving to the right — among Republicans. Mo’s argument — I think he’s right — is that to an extent that is not duly appreciated, especially by elites, culture wars generally, the divide over religion and so forth, is an elite phenomenon. Now, it’s not to say it doesn’t affect mass politics and opinion, it’s not to say that there aren’t people who identify, it’s not to say that it won’t become more true in the years ahead or isn’t more true than it was 15, 20 years ago, but there are other magnets for civic engagement and political participation.</p>
<p>I’ll stop there. Jane Eisner has written a book specifically with respect to the youth cohort, called&#160;Taking Back the Vote&#160;— I am plugging that book, Beacon Press last year — which talks about what’s happened with youth voting over the past several decades.</p>
<p>Rebecca Haggerty</p>
<p>REBECCA HAGGERTY, “Dateline NBC”:&#160;I just wanted to go back to the data that you talked about on the increase in evangelical voters. I just had a couple more specific follow-ups about that. One is where you’re drawing those numbers from. And also, you said that the question changed from 2000 to 2004 and I was interested in how specifically it changed. And then I see two numbers for the percentage among white evangelicals that went to Bush. I heard 57 percent and I also heard 79 percent. I want to just clarify —</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: Fifty-seven-point gap.</p>
<p>MS. HAGGERTY: Fifty-seven-point gap. Oh, okay. And I’m curious about whether the increase in turnout was commensurate with other groups that increased their turnout this year.</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: All data that you hear about that are self-identified — Catholics with three kids who live in Peoria or whatever — it’s all exit poll data.</p>
<p>MS. HAGGERTY: There are a lot of different numbers out there, a lot of different exit polls. When you say they’re all from —</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: Well, Michael Barone is a better respondent here, but I’m looking at the stuff that’s been kind of laundered and vetted through the national election studies at the University of Michigan, that you can get on their website.</p>
<p>MS. HAGGERTY: Okay.</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: All that stuff is self-identified — it’s people who self-identify. So if I chose to be mischievous and identify myself — gosh, it’s hard to know how to identify myself that would be more mischievous than what I am, but, you know, if I choose to misidentify myself — there are all kinds of issues and problems that follow. I think people are looking, or scrutinizing exit polls now — Michael can, again, jump in — more than in the past. What changed was the self-identifier between 2000 and 2004, okay? So you change a question even a little bit — a lot of people would say, “Oh, it’s just a little word change” — but you have to pay a lot of attention to a little word change. It can make a big difference. So they change the self-identifier, which makes it impossible to measure. You’re comparing, you know, an apple to an orange or a Macintosh to a Red Delicious. You really don’t know. It’s probably not an apple to an orange but it’s certainly two different kinds of apples.</p>
<p>There’s no question that if even the lower-bound estimate is correct, the white evangelical born-again Christian turnout increased more than any other self-identified religious group.</p>
<p>MS. HAGGERTY: Do you recall how the question changed?</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: Michael may recall precisely.</p>
<p>MR. BARONE: I would have to look that up. I think also you should regard the percentages of the electorate that are reported for each group in the exit poll as having a significant error margin. I mean, you recall in Florida in 2000 we were told that blacks were 16 percent of the turnout and had been 10 percent of the turnout four years before. People who have looked at precinct data tend to doubt that. So those numbers have an error margin on them.</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: Just to be clear, there are some people who — I don’t think Michael shares this, and I would not, although my opinions count for a lot less — who believe those data are so questionable that it’s better to do without them. I mean, better to not generalize from them at all — they’re so impressionistic and they’re so spotty that we would do better to do without them.</p>
<p>There is a definite way of doing it right; it’s just a whole lot more complicated and expensive than the way it’s done now, just like with polling generally. You need a certain sample size to get a certain confidence range, and there’s still a lot of polls, especially during the presidential horse race, that get reported in major national magazines and other places that really are inadequate samples.</p>
<p>MR. CROMARTIE: Quick point here, E.J.?</p>
<p>MR. DIONNE: In the last election it appears the turnout went up among all groups, so that part of the problem here is trying to figure out, was there a differential increase in turnout, as best we can tell, an increasing part labeled clearly white evangelical? Is there a differential increase in turnout among certain kinds of voters? What’s your best sense of that?</p>
<p>MR. BARONE: My best estimate is that — you know, Karl Rove was quoted many times as saying before the election — what was it, 3 million? — 4 million evangelicals that they expected to turn out in 2000 didn’t turn out, and was that the DWI revelation first publicized on Fox News —</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>— or Fox station in Maine. The story was broken by a Fox station in Maine.</p>
<p>I think the answer is that those 4 million did turn out, but probably it’s about the same proportion increase as the electorate generally — I mean, 16 percent. If you go back over 108 years, there are only four presidential elections where you have a turnout increase in the quadrennium of comparable magnitude. It is unusual to have that. And those were — let’s see — 1896, 1936, 1952 and 1992.</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: Don’t mess with him.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>MR. BARONE: Well, that’s if you exclude 1916 and 1932 because women got the vote and obviously the electorate was vastly expanded.</p>
<p>MR. CROMARTIE: John Parker is up next.</p>
<p>JOHN PARKER, The Economist: I want to ask a couple of questions around the theme of religious polarization. Mr. DiIulio mentioned a couple of points. There’s a group of people who don’t buy into this sort of broad public faith. Can you just talk a bit more about who you think these people are and what their characteristics are. What is it they, as it were, don’t believe? That’s question one.</p>
<p>The other question is, do you think there has been more willingness to legislate for kind of private behavior, or to want to legislate for private behavior, and if so, what’s the source of this kind of demand to legislate? I’m thinking of the Schiavo case, the Federal Marriage Amendment, that kind of thing — you can make quite a long list of cases where there either are laws or there are demands for laws to regulate what in the past would have been seen as a purely private matter.</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: Thank you. First of all, I don’t know all the various public opinion survey data. I look at as much of it as I can bear every so often in the context of revising a chapter of a textbook, and I look at it with respect to my own research interests and so forth. Michael Barone, again, might want to kick the ball. He may be able to give a much keener answer than I could. But I would just say this: when you look at group comparisons, it’s not very interesting to notice, for example, that — just by way of analogy — people who live in middle- or upper-middle-income households where they have all of life’s advantages, etc., seem to do better over time than otherwise comparable people of the same age, whatnot, that are low-income, don’t have those life advantages and so on. Uninteresting.</p>
<p>What’s interesting is the intra-group variance. What’s interesting is the fact that within the group of people who don’t have a lot of life advantages — or the former group if you prefer, but I’ll stick with the latter — that some people nonetheless seem to be resilient, to find ways of improving their life prospects, beating the odds and so forth. It’s the intra-group variance that’s interesting.</p>
<p>With respect to this question, what I think is clear is that there is a lot of intra-group variance. So take the two tails, if you will, of this distribution. Take the two tails that add up to a third or a quarter or close to half, depending on who’s doing the counting. The thing that catches my eye is the amount of intra-group variance. Let me give you just one very quick example before I get pinched by Mike Cromartie here for talking too long. The example I would give you is with respect to white evangelicals. White evangelical Christians have probably as profound a generation gap in terms of their views with respect to a whole range of social issues as any group you could name. I don’t want to put that in concrete, but at least it’s striking to me the sort of inter-generational differences within the white evangelical community.</p>
<p>Now, what continuum would you want to use — you know, liberal or conservative or something like that? If you want to use that sort of continuum then you would say, well, the younger evangelicals are somewhat less tradition-minded, somewhat less prone to sort of take the conservative position, or the most conservative position on given issues than, say, their parents or grandparents or great-grandparents.</p>
<p>The problem with this sort of thing is that there aren’t a lot of good data that let you really parse intra-group differences of this kind. Most survey researchers sort of categorically relate that politics and compromise table that I gave you in my high-tech handout. You know, it breaks down Catholics, evangelicals, Jews and non-religious people. It doesn’t tell you anything about the incredible differences within the Catholic community — incredible differences that in the case of Catholics do seem to have some socioeconomic component.</p>
<p>So the long-winded academic answer — at least the only one I can give — and again, maybe Michael Barone knows better — is there’s a lot of intra-group variance within the two tails, or would appear to be. With respect to whether there’s more legislating for private morality and so forth, I don’t know. Let’s take just the national government and what Congress is doing — you wait till the end of the session and you look at everything they’ve done, right, and you compare it to the previous session or previous sessions. And obviously the Schiavo case was cataclysmic — I don’t know, “world historic”; people paid a lot of attention to it, are still writing about it. Tons of ink were spilled. I do not see any greater pattern of legislating on moral issues in those data. But then again, I’ve doubted for years and still am not persuaded that when you have divided party government you have less legislating generally. So I’m one of those people who, if I can’t see it in those data on the total sort of output of the institution called Congress — and I don’t see statistically significant differences in patterns when you categorize different kinds of legislation — I’ll say it’s not there, or at least I don’t see it.</p>
<p>ELSA WALSH, The New Yorker:&#160;I just want to make one quick comment and then ask a brief question. I have come to the point where I’m very skeptical of almost all polling data, given that most people in fact don’t respond to polling questions. I think in the last election I remember asking somebody from one of the networks who was doing a poll what percentage of people wouldn’t respond at all to questions, and he sort of hemmed and hawed, and finally I said, “Was it more than three-quarters?” and he said, “Yes.” And so for me, that was the end of my belief in people answering polling questions in a way that represented anybody’s real feelings.</p>
<p>But my question that I wanted to ask you, which puts me in that sort of great, big ignorant middle that Bill Raspberry talks about, is just a very basic one. What are the restrictions on proselytizing for people who participate in the faith-based programs that get government money?</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: With respect to your comment, I think you’re right, and I think all of the evidence suggests you’re right. You know, people don’t want to be bothered by telemarketers, and there’s all kinds of that. In fact,&#160;National Journal&#160;did a story on this a couple of years back. There has been a kind of low-level harrumph within public opinion survey people who do this from an academic standpoint. There is no question. And frankly, I thought that in 2004, this being the case, that you were going to at least see, in everything that’s reported, who’s ahead, even, Kerry or Bush, and why are they ahead, and what are people saying? You were going to see sufficient sample sizes in all or almost all polls, but you didn’t.</p>
<p>I’m seeing very respectable, well-meaning publications continue to use polling data, which, in addition to all the other problems that are associated with doing polling well and finding the stratum and the substratum and going, you know, every fifth block and whatnot, are still using sample sizes that are too small, even if everything else was fine.</p>
<p>With respect to the proselytizing, plain and simple, you may not use public funds to proselytize. You may not use public funds to support an inherently religious activity. When I was in office — I’ll say this on the record; I don’t know if it’s a matter of public record, but I guess it is now — I tried to hire Julie Segal, who was the legislative counsel for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. I tried to hire her to work in the White House Office. Now, why would the director of the new faith-based and community initiatives office — apart from the fact that he’s goofy — why would he try to hire somebody from Americans United for Separation of Church and State? Answer: I knew that if it got by Julie, it would certainly get by anybody else. And that’s where you want to start. Keep the bolts as tight as possible. You can then debate.</p>
<p>And when I talked to Julie and talked to other people, friends who take a much more kind of no-aid separation point of view than I do, their concern then was, well, that’s easy to say but then how in practice do you prevent the guy who’s humming hymns while hammering nails from proselytizing? And the answer is, that is, alas, determined entirely within the four corners of the specific grant or contract. In other words, if the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, with money from the federal government, declares it has an interest in providing drug treatment, and it specifies the terms and conditions thereof, and it puts out an RFP, a Request for Proposal, and 17 groups apply, one of which is located in a church basement, etc., okay, the way to proceed, and I think the way in fact that government generally has, in good faith, tried to proceed — though not always with best effects and best success — is to hold those organizations, regardless of whether they’re religious, not religious, highly motivated by their religion, to exactly the same performance standards, administrative protocols and fiscal accountability standards as any other group.</p>
<p>MS. WALSH: So what if you have a drug treatment program that essentially relies on people finding Jesus to get them off drugs?</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: That type of program would prima facie not be able to receive grants, because first of all — to my knowledge there is no federal RFP that has ever been issued that said, “Bring people to Jesus.”</p>
<p>By the way, let me just say, too, that my first week on the job in Washington I said, rather famously — those of you who are a little bit older will remember the great Allen Sherman hymn of “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah.”</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>He also did a version of “Guys and Dolls” where he had the song “Sue Me, Sue Me, Go Ahead and Sue Me; What Can you Do Me?” And that’s what I would say to people: if you have this concern, sue.</p>
<p>MS. KAMINER: I’m confused. You’re not allowed to get money for it, but there are programs that do get it.</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: No, it’s not that you’re not allowed to get money, it’s that there is a black-letter prohibition in all federal law, including charitable choice: you cannot proselytize with public funds. Now, you’re one of the 17 groups that applies to get the funds from the state of Pennsylvania, which are in part from the federal government, so it’s operating under the cover of federal law for these purposes, to provide these specific services under these specific terms and conditions. It’s just like saying that the money also wasn’t to proclaim, you know, your favorite ethical cultural society credo. You’re supposed to be delivering services under a set of terms and conditions.</p>
<p>MS. WALSH: Together, is this what you’re talking — you’re blending the money together.</p>
<p>MR. RASPBERRY: You can’t buy a sports car with a Pell Grant either.</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: That’s exactly —</p>
<p>MR. RASPBERRY: But you free up the money that otherwise would have been to pay tuition and buy a sports car.</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: Well, that’s exactly right, and the relevant question to ask with respect to all grantees is, are you following the terms and conditions with respect to performance, with respect to fiscal accountability? If you’re getting more than $300,000, you have to have a fellow named a CPA who has to give you an audit for every federal grant.</p>
<p>There are a bunch of generic garden-variety requirements, but most — see, the programs are out there. Nobody says, “Ding-dong, hello, federal government; I’m doing this stuff in my neighborhood and I happen to be religious, and I have a Christ-centered mission statement. I know that may pose a problem; can you give me money?” There are these existing programs. Go onto the websites. I think they’ve actually done a good job of this, Health and Human Services in particular, and the charitable choice do’s and don’ts, yes’s and no’s, very explicit — they answer that question in one word: no.</p>
<p>MS. WALSH: Can you give me an example of a religious-based drug treatment program, what they can use the money for and what they can’t use it for? Can they —</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: I’ll give you an example of, say, the Salvation Army’s Adult Rehabilitation Centers, or ARCs. They’re all over the country. The Salvation Army’s ARCs are sort of a hybrid program. There are components of the program where people can, if they choose to, start the day with prayer. If they choose not to start the day with prayer, they can go over to the computers a little bit earlier, okay? There is a program in Philadelphia that was much talked about in 2001, 2002 at Cookman Methodist Church. This pastor, Donna Jones — I know that many in the room know her. It was a welfare-to-work program. You read the mission statement; it’s a Christ-centered mission statement: “We’re motivated by our faith to serve our brothers and sisters in need,” etc., etc. Look at what she does. She has a program — I think at one point — I’m not sure of this, but a majority of the people in the program were non-Christian and many of them Muslim women from the neighborhood.</p>
<p>So no discrimination against beneficiaries, no conditions for entering the building, receiving the services, participating in the program or any present or eventual profession of faith, complete right to opt out of any portion of the program that you find offensive for any reason having to do with religion, and a right under Charitable Choice that government must guarantee that a secular program option be available to you. So you can reject the whole program and walk around the corner. And it has to be reasonable and accessible; it can’t be, like, “Yeah, you can go to another program but you’ve got to go over the bridge to Camden to get it.” No, it’s got to be reasonable and accessible.</p>
<p>So existing law and existing public administration protocols comprehend all of these issues. Now, again, God and the devil are in the details. If we know anything about the last three years, we know it’s not easy to administer public grants in a way that yields performance. That’s why you can drive through Philadelphia, which has gotten literally hundreds of millions of dollars over the past 30 years since the ’68 Fair Housing Act, and see every fifth house in many neighborhoods abandoned, okay? The government-by-proxy system is fouled and flawed in all sorts of ways. That’s not an excuse for not doing it right with respect to this little substratum of nonprofits, but it is a call to make sure that we improve the system and apply the same standards to everybody who’s involved.</p>
<p>BYRON YORK, National Review: I want to ask a question about this chart you have on page two about people who believe that their elected officials should compromise. You pointed to these majorities in the general public that believe they should compromise, but it looks to me like that number would have been a lot higher were it not for evangelicals who, in most of these cases, don’t want their elected officials to compromise on some of these things. So as a practical matter, if you were in a White House where the president — let’s just imagine he thought that he owed his election to the evangelicals —</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: This is a hypothetical question?</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>MR. YORK: It’s a hypothetical question.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>So if that were the case, as a practical matter, the faith-based proposals that are coming out of that White House, what do you think they’d be like?</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: Well, I think they would be very much like what was initially proposed and very much like in February 2002 what was proposed. And barring that I think they’d be very much like what’s happened since, frankly.</p>
<p>You know, this president — as I’ve said repeatedly, and I think Mike Gerson said it in this forum as well — has been absolutely consistent in saying, you know, “Methodist, Muslim, Mormon, or good people of no faith at all.” Evangelical Christians are citizens, too, you know? We need to put it that way. They have as much right to say “don’t compromise” as my social-justice, liberal Catholic friends say “compromise,” and my conservative Catholic friends say “never compromise.” Those data ought not to trouble anyone.</p>
<p>Now, you’re asking the practical political question, which obviously goes beyond my pay grade. When charitable choice was adopted in ’96, the chief sponsor, as I said, was Senator Ashcroft, not widely known to be, you know, disfavored by people of faith. It was a great achievement, and it was a bipartisan achievement. And there was some foot-dragging on the part of Democrats who weren’t really sure, but by the time Clinton-Gore got a hold of it and began to implement it at HUD and so forth, they were in the very early stages, in ’99, 2000, of really implementing these charitable choice laws. Everybody kind of got it, from President Clinton and Vice President Gore to Governor Bush, now to Senator Clinton and President Bush.</p>
<p>The problem is if someone chooses to say, “Well, charitable choice is weak tea, brewed to suit the tastes of anti-religious liberal Democrats” — if you think that, then all bets are off. If you think, on the other hand, that this is reasonable, it’s consistent with our constitutional principles, it’s where most people are on this issue, it frankly is where most members of Congress are — no problem whatsoever. They may have political problems on both the Democratic side and the Republican side, standing up for this not-very-scintillating to their respective extremes-in-constituencies position. But that’s where they are, rhetorically and at least from ’96 to 2000, on the record in terms of their voting.</p>
<p>MR. YORK: Are you saying that if Hillary Rodham Clinton were elected president in 2008 and decided to keep the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, it would be doing just the same thing as it was doing under Bush?</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: I would tell you that the person who’s been in the Oval Office with President Bush in the last year or so is Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, talking about the issue. And I’m not saying it would do exactly the same thing, but I think that there is much more common ground on this issue, even at the elite, ultra, you know, mega-battle of the Titans level than we often let ourselves believe. I mean, take the statements that President Bush has made, lay them alongside the ones that Senator Clinton has made, and then look at all such people in the middle — Senator Santorum, Senator Lieberman. They’re saying almost exactly the same thing, okay?</p>
<p>And, yeah, when it comes to religious hiring rights, there’s going to be a big difference in tone and emphasis. And when it comes to how far to push a particular notion of beliefs and tenets, there’s going to be a big difference of emphasis. But in terms of whether we ought to put government more on the side of communities serving religious charities, particularly those that serve our needy neighbors, Senator Santorum is all over it. That profile in the&#160;New York Times&#160;captured it exactly right. He’s been all over that issue virtually his whole career. Now, I don’t know how people feel about that, but that is simply a fact, and he has been a consistent supporter of charitable choice laws from the very beginning.</p>
<p>Sarah Wildman</p>
<p>SARAH WILDMAN, The American Prospect: I started thinking about what Elsa brought up, which is proselytizing, because what I don’t understand is there’s not a separate tax structure if you are receiving government funds. And I think that’s complicated when you can have a proselytizing arm and an arm that receives funds, but that it’s not separated. You know, should you be a 501(c)(3) and what does that mean? That’s one piece.</p>
<p>And the other is addressing legislation which is the kind of politics of victimization that’s come into this, which was sponsored by Santorum and Kerry, actually, the Workplace Religious Freedom Act, and the questions about both hiring but also what’s permissible in the workplace and how that leads into this question as well: what’s permissible in terms of hiring practices as opposed to what you’re allowed to say, what you’re allowed to post —</p>
<p>(audio break)</p>
<p>— and what that means about who receives services and who doesn’t?</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: Well, again, you know, the 501(c)(3) business is much talked about. All I would say is I think that most organizations that want to go down this path should get themselves a 501(c)(3). It’s just easier. It’s the proper way to go. That said, I don’t think government ought to require organizations to get a separate 501(c)(3) if they may not pass the test but if they feel they are otherwise capable of meeting the relevant program-specific rules and regulations.</p>
<p>Also, 501(c)(3) covers a multitude of sins, if you will. I mean, there are churches that are, as churches, 501(c)(3) organizations, right? So we kind of forget sometimes a 501(c)(3) doesn’t mean you’re somehow in the public realm and must follow all public rules with all public resources. It doesn’t quite mean that in practice.</p>
<p>Charitable choice gives, really, five principles that are supposed to handle most of the sort of practical issues. I’ll just state them. The first one is no funds for proselytizing, sectarian worship, or religions instruction. That’s black letter. Don’t treat religiously motivated volunteers as second-class citizens, which basically means you don’t keep them out because they’re religious, too religious, the wrong religion, whatnot. Third, respectfully serve all clients or beneficiaries without regard to religion. That’s easy for the vast majority of these groups because, again, on the planet Earth, people who are changing bedpans or mentoring or doing homeless shelters, they basically, by and large, take all comers, and many times they operate in places most of the rest of society has walked away from or abandoned.</p>
<p>The studies by my colleague at Penn, Ram Cnaan, and studies by Professor Nisha Botchwey at University of Virginia, and other studies — all point to the same conclusion, which is that the primary beneficiaries of faith-based social service organizations in urban areas are young people who live in the neighborhoods who are not themselves members of the church or a religious group that serves them. In other words, it is what Bob Putnam likes to call “bridging social capital,” or spiritual capital in this case.</p>
<p>They’re reaching beyond their own doors and the youth in their own congregations to reach out to neighborhood youth who are not themselves churched or a member of that church or have an aunt or a parent in that church. That’s what the data consistently show. So in practical terms respecting clients without regard to religion is what they do, and this is without receiving any government money. They’re not getting government money and then changing the way they operate; this is how in fact these volunteer-driven organizations operate. Then the fourth rule is about following all existing civil rights laws governing employment, and when there are differences or disagreements about what that is, it’s time to go to court.</p>
<p>And then fifth — this was explicit in charitable choice as well – let religious nonprofits use their properties and display their symbols. In other words, as a condition of receiving the grant, the ’96 charitable choice law says explicitly, you don’t need to remove the Star of David or the cross with a crucifix or the crescent or whatever; you can use your religious property, you can park the lumber, you know, in the churchyard. You don’t have to go to a Ramada and buy space to hold your meeting and so forth. And some people find that to be skating over the line, but charitable choice established this in ’96; each of the other charitable choice laws reinforce this, and that’s where the law stands.</p>
<p>MS. WILDMAN: I think I’m just still not convinced about the anxiety that Elsa brought up and Bill Raspberry brought up earlier, which is how — I mean, why is it not advancing —</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: Look, there’s no way to allay all anxieties on this subject, but there’s a very basic question. And again, I don’t mean to put it in coarse terms, but in West Philadelphia you’ve got a choice. If the Cnaan data are correct — and we’ve got it on over 1,200 congregations based on four-hour site visits and 20-page questionnaires — these groups are providing the lion’s share of over 200 discreet types of social services to their own needy neighbors. They’re doing it, you know, out of shoeboxes, okay?</p>
<p>They are willing, the vast majority of them, to work within the terms of a government-sponsored public -private partnership. Where it’s been studied where they’ve done so, as in Steve Monsma’s aforementioned study, and they’ve surveyed people in the faith community who have been involved, guess what? Forty percent of them complained about government paperwork — welcome to the world, right? — but under 2 percent say they felt that the partnership with government required them to — and I forgot the exact terms — gut, disembowel, destroy their religious character, or being. And then when you look at who they are serving, they continue to serve the people they were serving without regard to religion.</p>
<p>Now, is it possible that you’re going to have a leaky-bucket effect, you know — of course we never have that in government, right? Government never diverts funds or things go to other places. Is it possible that one in 15, one in 50, one in 75 are going to skate across the line and not only say “God bless you” when no one has sneezed but say, “You really ought to get you to church, or you really ought to believe in Jesus”? Is it possible? Of course it’s possible. Will it happen? Of course it will happen. If we apply that standard — a sort of strict following of all rules and regulations governing any given grant — we will shut down the federal government tomorrow. Everything will come to a grinding halt. The leaky bucket effects attend government contracting in all other areas — I mean, all you have to do is just look at non-compliance with the Government Performance and Results Act; it’s staring you in the face.</p>
<p>I’m not saying they should get a free ride. I’m saying that unless we want to single out this particular substratum of the nonprofit sector for special scrutiny and treatment well beyond what is constitutionally required because we just want to be absolutely sure, I think that the laws that are in place now and the administrative regimes that are in place now, although far from perfect, give us a really good running start to what we need to do, especially if we involve organizations like the Corporation for National Service and AmeriCorps volunteers, which have traditionally worked with some of the larger religious nonprofits, being involved with providing technical assistance and capacity building help. I think it’s workable. But I cannot, and I would not, pretend — and I did not pretend when I was in office, which is probably why I’m an impolitic guy — to allay everybody’s fears. There’s no way to do that. There is no way to do it.</p>
<p>Jane Eisner</p>
<p>JANE EISNER, Philadelphia Inquirer: John, a couple months ago your dear friend David Kuo posted a very strong column on Beliefnet lamenting where the faith-based initiative had come in the Bush administration, specifically saying that a lot of the programs were not being funded or the funds were just being shifted from one thing to another. So I was wondering what your assessment is of where the initiative is now and what, if anything, might change in the next couple of years.</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: Mike Gerson’s ears must be burning this morning; he’s like a saint; his first miracle has been performed.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>Mike Gerson is a good two-word way to begin that. I think Mike being in charge of the president’s compassion agenda is more important than, I think, even the&#160;National Journal&#160;cover story might suggest, and that was a heck of a cover story. But Mike being there and being in charge of that means that a person of real intellect and real drive — and I know he sort of had some health problems and all, but Mike is just a force of nature on these issues, and he was kind of present at the creation, not to be blasphemous about it, with respect to these issues.</p>
<p>And as I mentioned earlier, I think that the volunteer service mobilization effort that was begun in 2002 has repaid dividends to a degree that hasn’t been fully appreciated — and I know there are a lot of problems and nothing’s perfect, but there really has been some tremendous progress. I mean, in the end AmeriCorps went from 50,000 to 75,000. In the end you’ve had an increase in Senior Corps. In the end, you’ve had an increase in funding for federal entities that support volunteer service both at home and abroad. You have the creation of an entity that is now — I don’t know what factor, but it’s several times larger than the Peace Corps. Volunteers for Prosperity I think it’s called. So even though you haven’t had maybe a full-court press on volunteer mobilization, there are some very good things happening there.</p>
<p>The White House has issued, a couple of times, reports or statements summarizing the state of play with respect to federal grant-making — I guess to quickly answer that piece of your question. The number that’s used is that $2 billion went out the door in the last year for which there are reasonable data available. But if you look at the report the White House put out, it’s very careful and explicit in explaining what that $2 billion figure is and is not. It’s $2 billion in competitive non-formula grants across seven agencies that are going to organizations to fund faith-based community-serving organizations, up from $1.17 billion in the previous year across five agencies. But alas, the overarching reality of federal government-by-proxy administration is that state and local governments are the main proxy players — i.e., the vast sums of money that go in grants and contracts get administered through state and local governments.</p>
<p>Now, this is a discussion for a separate day about block grants. I have always defined block grants as money the federal government doesn’t have, which it spends for purposes it won’t specify with results that it cannot measure. I don’t particularly like block grants, and it didn’t start with Republicans; Lyndon Johnson did the first major block grant program, so we’ve had them a long time.</p>
<p>Because the great majority of funds — I mean, the hundreds of billions, depending on who’s doing the counting, that’s available in the non-formula competitive grants — is out there, we have no idea whether the fraction of those funds going to qualified faith-based groups has changed much or little, or in which direction. We know that in any two-year period since charitable choice first went on the books in ’96, you have states like Michigan, in one of those two-year periods — I think it was ’98 to 2000 but I’m not sure; I can’t remember exactly — that have like a 10-fold increase in the number of state contracts that went to community-serving organizations that had some religious affiliation.</p>
<p>So it’s 2 billion over a denominator of 14 to 17 billion in competitive non-formula grants over another denominator of several hundreds of billions in all grants. But we don’t keep any data that anybody who doesn’t want to spend their entire life tracking it can easily access on intergovernmental finance administration. In other words, the money goes to Harrisburg or it goes to Sacramento; where does it go from there? Just try bird-dogging that. Oh, you can do it, and there are some great journalists who do that, some of them in this room, but it’s very difficult.</p>
<p>So it’s kind of difficult to know what’s happening. But I look at Philadelphia and I look at the aforementioned Pastor Donna Jones, and I look at the denominator. If 40 percent of all — just to take that one example again — if 40 percent of all welfare-to-work organizations out there are in some way religious, and they are presently getting virtually no public support for what they do, the question I would ask is, how many such organizations now that would be qualified in a given catchment area, say, in the 12 square blocks surrounding Pastor Jones’s church, how many of them are now engaged in some way or another in a public-private partnership, and how does that compare to 1996 and so on? What are the time series data? There aren’t any!</p>
<p>I suspect the answer to that is that the increase has been negligible. It’s not just about how much money is going out the door, because that’s a moving average; that could be affected by lots of things. We would like to know what fraction of those organizations that are qualified, and would like to try to compete, and could use a little technical assistance to do so — what fraction of them are engaged in the process? And I think the increase there has been very small, and my hope is that we’ll get some greater progress on that by whatever means over the next couple of years.</p>
<p>DAVID BROOKS, The New York Times: Can I ask you for an unprofessional, wild judgment? I keep reading about the sharp decline in teen pregnancies and teen violence, all this sort of stuff. The CDC has teen pregnancy down by a third, or something quite dramatic. The quick version of my question is why is that happening? Does it have to do with these organizations, these faith-based groups or other local groups, or is it broader societal trends?</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: You know, I don’t know, but I can tell you that — and not to be a broken record on this — it’s a lot different in Baltimore than it is in Milwaukee. That is, with respect to any of the things you just named, the inter-city differences are rather striking. There is no question of what the national slope of the line looks like. My answer, I guess, is the variables that I look to are ones that ought to do with both government programs — some of which people say ostensibly failed, but I don’t think Medicaid pediacare failed — on the one side, as well as a genuine increase in sort of the density of civil society action, if you will — people wrapping themselves around the lives of otherwise at-risk children and youth over the past five to 10 years in ways that have been happening all along but we weren’t very good at, A, measuring, or, B, tracking.</p>
<p>Some of the social policies have had a very important and positive impact, including even income-maintenance ones. I mean, the earned-income tax credit, you don’t hear much about that anymore, right? — or maybe you never heard much about it — but really the biggest single anti-poverty program that Clinton-Gore did was the EITC. That made a lot of difference for a lot of people. There are still places where a lot of EITC-eligible people don’t get their EITC, but what do you think the impact is of increasing somebody’s income by 40 percent overnight? What do you think the impact of that is? What do you think the neighborhood effects are and dynamics are of just that one policy?</p>
<p>See, a lot of good things happened from the government side and the civil society side over the last 10 to 15 years. We kind of saw the effects before we had any theory of the causes, or causality if you will.</p>
<p>MR. BROOKS: John, you mentioned the faith-based groups have their advantage in volunteer mobilization, and groups like Rick Warren’s are trying to get a lot of volunteers to mobilize both here and abroad. How good are the volunteers? Do we want volunteers or do we want professionals?</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: You can’t get there with just professionals. I mean, that was part of the consensus. Most of the organizations that are thought of as professional organizations actually rely extensively on volunteers. You know, Big Brothers, Big Sisters of America is a marquee institution that has been around 100-plus years now. It’s got professional staff. It’s quality case-managed. I mean, it’s a professional social-service delivery organization, secular nonprofit, with 500-plus federated entities. It also couldn’t do anything without massive mobilization of volunteers, and it mobilizes volunteers both retail and wholesale from corporations, colleges, retirement communities, churches and so forth.</p>
<p>For the vast majority of entities that are about social service delivery, I think the one more or less safe generalization one can make is that volunteers who stay at their particular task or organizational affiliation for a year or more do great work. The problem is with the 90-day wonders — it’s the in-and-outers, it’s the short-term programs — and Jane will tell you more than I know about it, about this whole service learning business. I mean, service learning would appear to be something of a hollow shell. I don’t want to put words in Jane’s mouth on this, but I think there is some evidence to suggest that we’re not getting a whole lot of bang for the interest, as it were, in that particular part of volunteer mobilization. But, Jane, maybe you want to add or subtract from that.</p>
<p>MS. EISNER: Well, I think it’s starting to become clear now because there are so many schools, cities, districts, the state of Maryland, requiring a certain amount of community service hours for a student to be able to graduate and there is not a really good sense that these things are very effective. And now there’s starting to be a debate in the service learning community about whether or not hours — time on task — is really the way to judge it or whether it ought not to be outcomes.</p>
<p>And there is also some data that goes back many years that says in some cases volunteers can actually do more harm than good, particularly when working with vulnerable populations like the elderly. Judy Rodin did a study many, many years ago, long before she became president of Penn, in which she looked at college students who were volunteering in a nursing home and went very regularly to visit the residents. And then their semester was over and they left. And they actually found that the health declined more rapidly in those residents who had been seen and then were dropped than the residents who hadn’t been seen at all.</p>
<p>So you’ve got to be really careful, especially when you’re working with vulnerable populations, about how you do this stuff.</p>
<p>MR. DIONNE: Is there any evidence that service learning promotes volunteering later on? In other words, is there any learned experience in the process, even if it doesn’t solve a problem effectively, that it actually creates a habit of service which recapitulates itself later?</p>
<p>MS. EISNER: I think that’s the hope. I’m not aware that there has been any long-term studies on it. Lew Friedland out at University of Wisconsin did a study in his area and found that a lot of the students who were doing community service said that they — it’s not that they didn’t like what they were doing or didn’t think it was worthwhile, but they were also doing it to pad their résumés. Now, this is not just true of kids who were going to Penn; this was true of kids who wanted to go to a vocational school but felt that it made them look good or — and in fact it might — I mean, I don’t think we should minimize that in that there might be some real usefulness in saying that they showed up every day and did what they were supposed to do.</p>
<p>MR. BROOKS: You know Steve Trachtenberg’s line, the George Washington University president, of his students’ community service: “I don’t know where these kids find lepers, but they find them and they read to them.”</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: Our friend Ira Harkavy, our head of Service Initiatives at Penn, says there was a kid who said, “Man, that service learning course where I did the homeless shelter was so great, I hope when my kid comes to Penn he can have the same experience.” You know, basically the one thing that you can say that has distinguished faith-based, religiously anchored — put it how you will — local, congregation-based volunteer mobilization is the rapidity with which organizations that had been trying for years to mobilize volunteers for a particular and particularly difficult kind of service delivery, the success they had in mobilizing those volunteers with religious organizations, and Big Brothers, Big Sisters here too is an example.</p>
<p>Big Brothers and Big Sisters, you know — you have to have one adult in your life basically who calls up, right? So you’ve got to have at least that one person who is together enough. Well, let’s say you’re the child of an incarcerated person, that maybe mom is home but mom’s not quite together enough or doesn’t think to call? Who are the most severely at-risk kids? It’s the kids who don’t even have that one adult. Well, how do you get them and then how do you get them a mentor, because they’re going to be a particularly difficult-to-relate-to population, in all probability.</p>
<p>So they tried to mobilize the volunteers, but it was sort of hit or miss. But the fastest mobilization of volunteers in the history of Big Brothers, Big Sisters was when they started working with and through churches. Not only that, but they did what a lot of the research evidence suggested you couldn’t do, which is they mobilized volunteers, including males, from the community to serve as mentors, and they’ve now done it at scale, and they’re on the way to doing it at an even much bigger scale.</p>
<p>So not only volunteer mobilization and character and quality when you have the year-plus commitment, but also in working with particularly distressed populations, or difficult-to-serve populations, the churches seem to have some comparative advantage. This is not proven, but that’s what the preliminary evidence would suggest.</p>
<p>JUAN WILLIAMS, NPR: John, do you ever feel that you’re being used by political professionals whose goal is simply to funnel money into religious groups that are their political base, to expand those groups so that they can benefit politically? And what was your experience with the far right in terms of their reception of these programs? This comes to mind as just last week, you know, standing behind Bill Frist there were these black ministers who were recipients of faith-based money, who were being used as props.</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: Well, the only person I can really speak for is myself. I think what I’ve said about this has changed in 10 years only with respect to how the data have changed and how I’ve interpreted the data. In other words, if there had been a change in the data, or more evidence, whatever, I have changed accordingly. And with respect to, say, people who challenge sort of this Franklinian to-pour-forth-benefits-for-the-common-good-is-divine perspective on each side – you know, you get used by each side, especially when you’re in public office, right?</p>
<p>I make a statement like the one I made here earlier in the first part of the session – I made that when I was in office all the time. You get asked, “Well, are these programs more effective?” And I would say, “No, we don’t know if they’re more effective; we don’t have any experimental or quasi-experimental research.” And then you get some direct-mail organization putting out, “Director of Faith-Based Office says these programs don’t work. Then what the hell are they doing?” That’s what you get. Or you come out with a statement on the other side that says, “There’s some evidence to suggest that these organizations have a real comparative advantage of volunteer mobilization.” And the next thing you know, there’s this statement, “Director of Faith Office says proven fact, these things work.” I mean, that’s the nature of the beast to some extent, and I kind of accept that.</p>
<p>I think the two important things to remember — and I’ve tried to remember the last couple of years; I’ve just turned to my own little haunts in Philadelphia and work with the charitable groups there, and associated with them, that do these kinds of good works — one, Washington isn’t that important in the end to what happens. These organizations, whether they’re high-octane religiously motivated or just faith motivated and work with social service delivery, have been out there, continue to be out there, will continue to be out there, making bricks without straw in some cases but they’re out there, and they are people of all faiths, diverse faiths, and of no faith. And they were here yesterday, they’re here today, and they’re going to be here tomorrow. And in the end, all the sound and fury signifying nothing that sometimes comes out of national politics is not going to matter in a major way, I don’t believe, to how they succeed.</p>
<p>Number two, however, is that the path they walk, especially in urban America, is a very difficult path, and this is where I think the national government should come in.</p>
<p>MR. WILLIAMS: I love being answered, I’m interested in the answer, but that’s not the question. The question was about you getting used by people who have a political agenda.</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: I don’t feel like I’ve been used. I feel like people take things — and I’ve had this on other issues throughout my career — people hear what they want to hear. People use what they want to use.</p>
<p>MR. WILLIAMS: The debate about this theory — back and forth, whether it’s effective, who gets the money, the basis on which decisions are made about which religious organizations, the Scientologists’ camp or the black Muslims’ camp — we can have all these debates. But I think for most people who are looking at this, they say, “Hey, wait, this is a political strategy that’s quite effective. And John DiIulio can go around and have all these fancy debates, but as long as we can get the money to the right people we can expand the base of support for the Republican Party.”</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: Let me try to answer the question this way, the best way I know how, which is to say if you look at the grant-making that is comprehended by the $2 billion figure I cited earlier, and you go to a particular piece of the grant-making, like, say, the Compassion Capital Fund, and you look at that, I think there are many ways you can interpret it. But the way I look at it is, I’m not sure exactly how the University of Hawaii fits in this grand plan, if there is one. In other words, I try to proceed inductively — look at it from the back end. Forget the theory of it. If you were coming from “planet nowhere” and looking at these data about how things have gone, would you naturally conclude that there is some pattern or plan here, whether it’s to get money to small grassroots groups, or get money to people who have a particular political point of view? I look at those grants, and I say it’s a scatterplot.</p>
<p>Anyone can take a single grant or action and say, “Oh, look at this group who knows this guy,” and that’s what sometimes happens. I’m not saying that I know the reality of that; all I’m saying is it doesn’t appear to me to be a clear-cut pattern one way or the other. And regardless of that, we’re talking here about people who live in places that have had 50-plus years of public and private disinvestments and really have only one major social institution left in many of these communities that is a hook on which you can hang support, and that to me is the issue.</p>
<p>MR. WILLIAMS: Frank asked you about political influence while you were in office. You didn’t answer that one. Were there people who were coming —</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: See, I learned something there. I mean, you’ve got to give me credit for learning something over these last —</p>
<p>MR. WILLIAMS: Were there people who were coming to you and saying, “Listen, we’d like money to go to X group?”</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: No one ever came to me and said any such thing. Of course, I’m also the fellow who gave a speech in March 2001 at the National Association of Evangelicals explaining why you can’t proselytize with public funds. So no one ever came to me in any way, shape, manner or form; I never felt any pressure, direct or indirect, for me to modify anything I said, thought or did. That said, however, that too is irrelevant because in the end the social issue that has, for me, nothing to do per se with faith, except insofar as I happen to be a born-again Catholic – which I can explain over lunch —</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>— before we say grace, then over lunch.</p>
<p>MR. DIONNE: You are saying grace.</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: I am saying grace.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>I’m giving one of those invocations that anyone used to be able to give.</p>
<p>What’s at stake here is the future of the federal government’s role in delivering vital social services to people in need. That’s what we’re really talking about. You’ve got a system that, under both Republicans and Democrats, has been ill-funded, ill-administered, and little scrutinized except when somebody had a bee in their bonnet for some reason to scrutinize it. If we do not figure out a way to improve and increase the services and improve the quality of services – maybe we can just keep on going along the way we have the past 10, 15, 20 years. But I tell you, the world does not look like — David is absolutely right about these data, these national trends. It doesn’t look that way, however, in every part of north central Philly. You know what I’m saying? And if there’s something about faith-based and community initiatives from the federal government that can do something positive, let’s follow Ben Franklin and figure out what that practical approach is.</p>
<p>MR. WILLIAMS: What was the response from the Jerry Falwells of the world to your —</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: I was the only person — I don’t know if I was the only person; this does not make one virtuous — but I was, on the same day, publicly criticized by both Reverend Falwell and the ACLU. And they both might have been right, I guess.</p>
<p>MR. CROMARTIE: What was the issue?</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: The issue was the speech I had given at the National Association of Evangelicals, which got a standing ovation, by the way — which was not reported, by the way.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>MR. DIONNE: But you don’t bear any grudges.</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: I don’t bear any grudges — I let it all go. I did&#160;The Purpose-Driven Life&#160;too in that regard and I’ve learned to let things go.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: In any case — you get the point. I mean, the bottom line here is this is a discussion about social policy and poverty and people in need, especially children. And if the national trends are good, that is great; but it doesn’t mean that there aren’t literally millions and millions of kids who aren’t making it, who can’t read.</p>
<p>MR. WILLIAMS: Listen to this: as I understood it, Falwell initially was resistant on the idea that he didn’t want government interference in the business of his church.</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: Well, that was Reverend Robertson. But to be perfectly fair — and I think it’s important to be perfectly fair — Reverend Falwell is a very interesting man in this regard because he had a kind of a theological worldview that said charitable activity is the role of the individual and not the government. And then over time he kind of had to square the circle theologically. You know, it’s easy for Catholics, as it were — you know, “faith without works is dead”; we start there and we’re in the faith-based-social-service delivery; we have got kind of a theology that supports Pope John Paul II and Ben Franklin as one on this.</p>
<p>And so there were those issues. With Reverend Robertson I think initially it was more about his thought that what this should be about is identifying criteria by which you would decide which kinds of groups would get in and which kinds of groups wouldn’t and I think he was making an honest effort to think this through.</p>
<p>MS. KAMINER: He complained specifically that the money was going to go to the wrong religions and so he was opposed to that and then he withdrew his opposition when he got a half-a-million-dollar grant.</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: I don’t know about that, but the criticism that Reverend Robertson made at the time in 2001 was, “What this should be about is, you know, to find the criteria.” And the response that I made then and will make now — and the position he subsequently adopted — was, “Oh, okay, charitable choice is precisely about — it doesn’t matter whether you are religious — or what religion you are. Are you an organization that is qualified under public law on the terms of a specific grant following those protocols to compete to administer these particular services to benefit these particular people? If the answer is yes, you should be considered; if the answer is no under those terms, you should not be.” So scientologists, no problem; sociologists, big problem — big problem — no funding for sociologists.</p>
<p>MR. WILLIAMS: Wait, wait, Robertson then goes from opposing it to getting a grant. Is that what I understand?</p>
<p>MS. KAMINER: Yes.</p>
<p>DR. DiIULIO: To my knowledge — and you know, I haven’t thought about this in nearly four years — to my knowledge, he never opposed charitable choice; he advocated a particular way of going about this initiative, which involved specifying criteria for the qualifications groups ought to have, which is a reasonable thing for somebody to do whether you went to Yale Law School or not; it’s a reasonable thing to think of.</p>
<p>I think what happened was when he understood more on the charitable-choice side of things, he saw that that’s not really what this is about and he rescinded that criticism — at least I was not subsequently criticized — and that is really what is important in the end, isn’t it?</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>MR. CROMARTIE: Thank you, John.</p>
<p>(End of Session)</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | false | 1 | faith angle forum160is semiannual conference brings together select group 20 nationally respected journalists 35 distinguished scholars areas religion politics amp public life ben franklins blessings primer faithbased initiatives key west florida speaker dr john diiulio frederic fox leadership professor politics religion civil society university pennsylvania respondent william raspberry columnist washington post moderator michael cromartie vice president ethics amp public policy center senior adviser pew forum religion amp public life 160 michael cromartie eminent church historian martin marty said recently theres news news today thats religion news thats rooted sort religious conflict world whether radical islam something catholic church evangelicals politics one reasons running seminars give busy opportunity take couple days reflect best thinkers country important subject religion american civic life applies domestic issues well foreign policy advisory group journalists twice year meet ask topics concern want elaboration discussion topics came time together ones agreed urgent role religion democracy islam middle east well talk tomorrow morning reuel marc gerecht growth megachurches america subject everyone said theyd like know grateful rick warren despite busy schedule able us rick thank coming subject ongoing debate faithbased initiatives theres better person country address issue professor john diiulio john political scientist whos taught many years princeton penn also served know white house first director office faithbased community initiatives many came knew john going grateful john academic expertise also practical experience work agreed first presenter john thanks coming great dr john diiulio michael cromartie dr john diiulio thank much real treat also special privilege open session rick warren id actually read160the purpose driven life160with colleague friend young friend least young went 40 days end 40 days next week diagnosed thought fatal brain tumor thank god hes full remission recovered fine book would tell important handled coped special privilege treat well opening day course im social scientist means written160the purpose driven life would different title title would given book would been160the conditions given types organic religious influences predictable desirable statistically significant independent effect various behavioral emotional consequences persons selfselect treatment things equal laughter thatll sell laughter person ever coauthored book bill bennett sold copies laughter fatal enterprises part social scientist know social science elaborate demonstration obvious methods obscure jargon du jour going try remarks next 30 35 minutes limit amount social science inflict constitutional right bore academic teaching colleges universities long time next year 25th year three different schools like confess spent 25 years places learned true definition ivy league professor someone speak five minutes two hours subject essential change content laughter thesis begins ben franklin ben franklin founded university pennsylvania also things related electricity forth dont think thats important think penn bens best idea truth founded university pennsylvania something called academy philadelphia 1749 begat something called university state pennsylvania begat university pennsylvania proud saying first nonsectarian ivy league university godless cornell sometimes demands title say one franklin franklin interesting character respect religion religious believer believing christian think walter isaacsons biography franklin best singlevolume biography subject anyone else written one im sorry talks franklin apostle tolerance person whos views religion driven end pragmatism franklin contributed every religious organization philadelphia gave money support synagogues churches didnt matter month franklin died wrote letter president yale ezra stiles quote reiterated belief one god said acceptable service render good children franklin opposed religious oaths tests pennsylvania us constitution believer faithfriendly pluralistic pragmatic please make mistake thinking franklin kind holy roller certainly among least religiously active founders along madison jefferson others also mottos addition one top page pour forth benefits common good motto gave library company philadelphia 1731 also famous motto beer proof god exists wants us happy laughter practical civicminded man often found philly taverns saturdays philly churches sundays faithfriendly yet pragmatic pluralistic thats point want begin franklin want come back old ben due course im going overargue pedagogical purposes youll forgive term context want look public opinion court doctrine public administration know one scintillating subjects well touching upon due course partisan politics bipartisan politics empirical research subject every one domains points almost exactly civicminded perspective role religion public affairs every one different domains points exactly faithfriendly yet pluralistic pragmatic perspective religion ought engage engaged public square want suggest reflecting back old ben almost precisely franklin mind may ask great consensus broad deep consensus transcends different areas whats noise conflict think franklin would inklings hunches think two places would us look number one inadequate general knowledge understanding purposeful unintentional one side two might called language late 18th century intrigues political factions orthodox secularists one side orthodox sectarians people part share faithfriendly yet pragmatic pluralistic consensus subject think franklin would us look think justly proven basically right little case study also think would leave us leave would want us look practical ways build consensus pour forth benefits common good practical ways publicprivate religioussecular partnerships lift support communityserving volunteers whether religious secular interested serving people need would sort require us demand us look past controversy get back consensus figure practical ways thats kind structure want suggest lets begin im going rifle things way professor 30 minutes trusting mr raspberrys comments remarks various questions qampa well chance want come back elaborate fill clarify forth everybody room knows religion major determinant presidential voting behavior everybody heard everybodys inundated helped produce statistics certainly case even person far away one skeptical political scientists subject old friend mentor harvard many years stanford mo fiorina wrote book160culture war myth polarized america came 2005 even mo realizes suggests data importance religiosity churched versus unchurched presidential voting real ill come back second flip first page this160 hightech highproduction value handout160that gave eyeball data see basically snapshot know religion america people religious people believe god consider religion important lives pray daily think religion help solve many todays social problems even believe civic state union depends critically religious state union survey george gallup year ago likewise threequarters favor funding socalled faithbased organizations agreeing religiously motivated social service providers tend caring compassionate service providers suspect costeffective boot look bottom half also bottom page overwhelmingly faithfriendly majority nonetheless pluralistic pragmatic comes religion surveys cited many many others well find example fourfifths agreeing one good american without either judeochristian religious faith threequarters opposed opposed government support faithbased programs require beneficiaries take part religious practices hire people faith likewise majority certainly general public majorities majorities least three four groups disaggregated believe deeply religious elected leaders compromise elected officials whose views different various hotbutton issues ten years ago started soaking poking around thing people doubted religious people america mean really funny within academic community journalistic community get think extent dont realize interesting complex nuanced public opinion mass opinion religion country case effect miss consensus talk want suggest quickly two three reasons first anecdotal reasons reasons inferences based anecdotes friend ray wolfinger berkeley famous phrase stolen used many times plural anecdote data happened buy mr warrens book visiting harvard university joint project going religion public affairs actually bought copy of160the purpose driven life160in cambridge mass sincerely doubt thats 22 million copies sold laughter suspect likely case know howard sterns160private parts bestseller selling like hotcakes baylor universitys campus waco texas fact matter big country diverse country hazardous treacherous generalize make inferences based know whats bestseller list whos buying even fact significant demographic breakdowns cleavages purchases160the purpose driven life let give another quick anecdotal example ive heard many journalists say things like know write column commentary television matter say know ask democrat exactly three questions exactly way exactly tone ask republican still get thousand letters contacts emails site saying liberal leftwing good rightwing crazy see divided polarized country country 300 million people didnt get 300 million letters 150 million side got thousand letters got many side faulty inference yes elite discourse people highly motivated attentive politics become polarized including run elected office people capitol hill go otherwise name republican democrat quite leap faith logic kinds anecdotes asserting country polarized redblue nation etc know im running afoul many argued michael barone last night barone confronts diiulio diiulios always lose thats historical fact old country know going happen point pedagogy provocation flip next page hightech document two figures correct two figures correct look different first figure looks like proper inference oh goodness center hold people farther apart ever second figure plotting exactly data looks like pretty small differences whole lots changed im saying bottom figure better top figure theyre technically correct matters lot scale things story tell visual display quantitative data one subtexts really talk respect religion public affairs generally respect state nation state politics let pump brakes return sort main text main point suggesting presidential electoral divide isnt real fact let give quickly data specific 2004 doubt religion mattered tremendous amount presidential election 2004 mattered every election lot since least 1992 best single predictor run regressions set way like find religion high frequency attending church versus low explains lot 2004 nearly twothirds people said attended church weekly voted bush voters said never attended church twothirds voted kerry third voted bush heres rub two electoral extremes together made one third electorate former made onesixth electorate latter made oneseventh electorate together churched versus unchurched electoral extremes third electorate james q wilson coauthored american government textbook made following observation religion makes difference religious irreligious voters minority electorate period think thats correct lets talk quickly moral values weve heard lot talk moral values engaged fair amount talk moral values moral values matter theyve mattered lot appears elections say post1988 extent data allow us know pre1988 electoral politics moral values related symbolic issues complicated changeful think often lead believe take 2004 election fraction voters said moral values important lower 2004 96 2000 mean lower question surveys iraq war terrorism two big issues mean moral values werent important important doesnt mean theyre getting important getting important means particular election particular conditions given two particular choices people time made choices didnt come number one lower less significant previous two presidential elections regular churchgoers well interesting selfidentified white evangelical bornagain christian voters changed question always something dont like changed question real guesstimate estimates estimated 14 17 percent electorate 2000 national elections selfidentified white evangelical bornagain christians 2004 group question change putting asterisks around comprised 23 percent electorate depending numbers use sixtoninepoint increase 2000 would represent 64to35percent increase respectively groups share fraction total turnout 2004 favored bush kerry 57point margin 78 percent bush 21 percent kerry versus course 51 48 change electorate large thats big deal thats important doesnt mean country completely polarized along red stateblue state lines fraction electorate thats predisposed variety reasons way religious beliefs also underlying demographic socioeconomic regional things going overwhelmingly favored bush differences religion well compare two groups terms religious values many questions seem common black protestants white evangelical protestants actually pew data wont inflict right data suggest 2004 despite slight increase 2000 republican share overall african american presidential vote two major religious groups produced wider split black protestants white evangelicals bush got 17 percent black protestants versus 78 percent white evangelicals none say churched versus unchurched isnt important thats say doesnt show regressions variable thats important merely say careful respect logic inferences draw three rules statistical analysis statistics professor told disaggregate disaggregate disaggregate disaggregate think interesting complicated picture becomes thing way true start looking particular moral issues supposedly fueled partisan divide 2004 school prayer 160i dont think even know one thing mattered abortion actually less contentious people generally believe determining people voted want read kind kindred account mo fiorina think basically gets data data analysis right interest promoting book mo think right let switch gears court doctrine pick speed believe let go court doctrine wall separation church state mentioned constitution first amendment constitution amendment constitution wall separation metaphor penned thomas jefferson letter wrote bunch concerned danbury baptists january 1 1802 worried religious minority going persecuted federal stronghold called connecticut jefferson course letter uses phrase refers legislature hes referring congress congress shall make law james madison next franklin favorite princeton madison favorite guy went penn ben franklins favorite guy madison new light scot presbyterian read160the federalist papers160and go read westminster confession see much imbibed new light scot presbyterian tutors talks ambition counteracting ambition depravity mankind didnt pick ben franklin ill tell got princeton read160federalist paper 51160and madison worried throughout factions right complex large diversified commercial republic avoid groups adverse rights citizens permanent aggregate interests community answer multiply one religion tyranny two religions civil war many religions civil peace multiplicity sects thats sects folks answer regard look whats happened country past couple hundred years 70 different religious denominations claim least 65000 adherents weve got multiplicity madison went deliberations debate first amendment furnished alternate language 30 different versions first amendments religion clauses considered rejected one accepted obtuse mean 10 would saved us lot agony grief establishment meant establishment dont tax hire anglicans respect rights meant going established religion favored religion taxsupported religion going single religion special protections special restrictions decide wasnt warren burger rehnquist supreme court decision fair foul single religion special treatment didnt say wanted anything else know would call ideology well didnt word knew little ideology knew guys france french revolution understand philosophies power ideas religious ideas move people good ill yeah think tremendous social goods well social bads civil goods well civil bads could come belief systems absolutely singled religion knowingly purposely believed uniquely power good bad create strife create harmony used first amendment way laying marker national government going respond long story short go supreme court cases 1947 case of160everson v board education160 case effect justice black declared first time noaid separation principle get sort aberration even time even case court decides subsidize buses catholic school children attending catholic school even the160everson160case declares famously principle noaid separation court decides oh way fact subsidize buses bus drive around wall well thats interesting story dissenters shocked black able permit subsidy held within five years court backpedaling noaid separation wall separation notion time get 1971 critical thing articulation neutrality doctrine case of160lemon v kurtzman essentially neutrality doctrine supported virtually cases between160everson160and160lemon160and since says relationship government religious activities institutions permissible constitutional meets three tests one secular civic purpose two primary effect neither advances inhibits religion three foster excessive government entanglement religion okay jump 2002 2002 in160zelman v simmonsharris religious conservatives say supreme court finally gets supreme court supports cleveland school program vouchers supreme court finally catching reality blah blah blah blah blah 2004160locke v davey supreme court antireligion decision decided young man state washington may attend school choice though hes otherwise qualified state scholarship naughty state washington believes people able use public funds study devotional theology become clergypersons people react two decisions first one proreligion decision second one antireligion decision neutrality decisions may like former latter latter former think welldecided cases last piece hightech handout summary the160locke160case justice rehnquist talks play joints first amendments establishment free exercise clauses id submit first amendment jurisprudence in160locke160is right dont say front group distinguished journalists key west actually made argument face face justice scalia conference princeton october spoke wouldnt say opposite spoke good counterarguments ill happy share many many good arguments dissenter case of160locke duly noted think jurisprudence faithfriendly pluralistic pragmatic like alas public opinion dr john diiulio okay let bring speedy end hop remaining points respect bipartisan politics subject let give quote one interesting faithfriendly politicians 2001 ill let guess nationally prominent politician said founders faith reason faith god ability reason great gift government works partnership religious institutions promote public purposes feeding hungry sheltering homeless faith inspires good works sure tax dollars properly used channel energies faithful direction helps society whole politician said past january 2005 ask likely go onto street save poor atrisk child someone community someone believes divinity every person sees god work lives even hopeless leftbehind children thats need false division debate role faithbased institutions need provide support needed ongoing basis thank senator clinton two statements made senator clinton mirror statements made president bush government replaced charities welcome partners resent rivals whether methodists mormons good people faith know pew forum sessions cumulative go back look transcript mike gerson good pal saw last week told group last december see mike saying much thing essentially pluralistic pragmatic yet obviously faithfriendly take suppositions behind socalled faithbased community initiatives conflict trouble neutrality plans challenged sides people share neutrality principles especially house bill recommend way closing remarks book bring student mine took hasnt yet returned amy black called160of little faith politics george w bushs faithbased initiative professor black professor political science else wheaton college coauthored book several colleagues published 2004 georgetown university press escape criticism book something outofbody experience reading way body like mine welcome laughter would recommend account talks essentially three groups calls religious pragmatists led part truly calls religious purists doesnt give label people wanted turn clock back first amendment jurisprudence also socalled charitable choice laws senator clintons husband bill clinton signed essentially realm public administration bringing neutrality principles governmentbyproxy governmentcontracting system essentially charitable choice laws attempted albeit great success empirical research subject tells three things okay ill finish turn mr raspberry first thing tells civic comparative advantage faithbased organizations volunteer mobilization faithbased programs come many shapes sizes varieties faithpermeated faithsegmented faithintegrated lot variety theres number books articles tried sort taxonomy vast majority programs serve vast majority people need programs segment intrinsically expressly religious components others especially operate urban areas really solid empirical evidence seem really good arguably cost effective volunteer mobilization second thing dont know dont know anything definitive nature unique capacities faithbased organizations operate according sort spiritual transformation modality whether theyre especially effective helping drug addicts prisoner recidivism forth dont know lot assertions contrary think unique power motivated purposeful misreading data innocent misreading data know begin evaluation someone enters program someone completes program tell things youre interested third thing know think ben franklin would want us conclude things fog debate washington particular elite discourse runs hot cold things working one especially one pew trusts incredible direction luis lugo able seed years ago example partnership big brothers big sisters america networks communityserving churches mobilized volunteers begin address one acute unmet civic social needs namely trying put loving caring adult mentors lives children mom dad incarcerated youve got 2 million kids fit description given day president bush true word allocated 450 million mentoring 150 million mentoring children prisoners big brothers big sisters single biggest winner grants program expanded dramatically really would point volunteer mobilization strategy much consistent president announced 2002 state union address put direction old pal white house first director usa freedom corps john bridgeland let turn motor michael leave mr cromartie thank john thank much always like one journalist colleagues respond speakers get conversation going lay questions raise issues bill raspberry first choice respondent grateful able us hes with160the washington post160for 40 years know reputation also personally glad bill agreed come thank much william raspberry thanks mike wish john left something say let nibble around edges remarks wish could reassured notion sliver sixth one end seventh end constitutes minority dont matter much experience sort pragmatic empirical experience journalist social science scholar people middle big majority dont awful lot thinking time william raspberry let put way ill put kindly great middle people tend believe sides every argument espouse one suppress depending company puts means led slivers talk led kind polarization think quite real although people resist side minds idea polarization think polarized sit watching dragged sort polarization find dragged way think hard things believe polarizing trend dangerous america people led used im talking historically much lifetime sort different understanding role religion played civic life one understandings public religion private religion look good deal alike theyre slightly different things phenomenon anybody religious community town could give high school graduation invocation didnt care whether baptist episcopal jewish whatever knew one invoke creator certain strong religioussounding principles avoid doctrinal specificity offend anybody sort public religion people generally subscribed worked smooth joints various religious groups people easily led believe afraid invoke sacred name jesus christ prayers somehow shortchanging religion youre unfaithful somehow pushed making sharper lines grown accustomed making people sixth seventh sliver find interest push us sharpen divisions followed constitutional pieces fascinated development separation principles think people think things worry things dont worry much fear may constitutional invoke constitution fear may great damage reach constitution first principle defense mechanism people worry whether faithbased initiatives might get us going direction well wish later hadnt gone dont suppose know anyone believes religious people involved social work made good deal point good people things done things long time continue volunteers otherwise dont think thats issue issue think put fine point getting paid pay didnt hear objection instance first george bush launched points light program celebrated people sorts many involved religiously good things communities brought white house celebrated various ways encouraged kind volunteerism dont recall objection weve sort public semipublic saints years martin luther king much motivated religious beliefs inspired us rest us return faith assumption returned faith would agree dignity man creating fair system weve resisted much get little nervous two things happen people insist view things wrong insist authority religion insist ought test things start muttering words like theocracy scares us little bit think good reason weve seen theocratic principles operation parts world dont like much place get little nervous religious organizations little suspicious start laying claim public money money wish youd talked john seems first started talking faithbased initiatives whatever formulations using early back long ago bush governor texas really talking getting government way people effective work religious organizations organizations involved drug rehabilitation kinds liferescuing missions effect told couldnt anymore didnt state license state licenses required sort certification credential certification record success people often uneducated people rescuing victims drug abuse kinds social disorders know say jury idea spiritual transformation seem clear things certify teach want turn really good volkswagen mechanics course study approved either volkswagen us government department labor break thing components teach volkswagen repair lots things teach youre business teaching perhaps ought certify teaching satisfy know theyre different matter though seek transform individuals many problems difficult get society today changing attitudes dont reduce teen pregnancy example improving instruction human productive biology people know babies come know avoid getting teaching pharmacology courses doesnt help awful lot want break addiction crack cocaine people things successful ones go changing person inside religious organizations may better equipped organizations kind thing sure dont want government mucking around insides question originally certification allow people things go without government mess quickly came white house office conversation im suggesting changed conversation laughter dr diiulio oh go ahead early mr raspberry period im saying conversation changed government deliver money organizations faithbased things got really tricky think thats debate really still whether government permissive role get way whether government fund religiousbased social programs probably bad idea remember couple cases governments attempt sort messed things salvation army michigan pretty good job outstanding job social services programs state said hey guys good going contract work government agencies course youll take god stuff youll strip religious part salvation army wound another poorly funded social services agency effective ones replaced salvation army like many organizations successful got people inside think theres still place faithbased kinds organizations want help people transforming rather simply teaching giving pattern difficulty intersection things government funding whether end day practical way keeping faithbased groups often well providing public funding time maybe cant done except back channel ways like taxadvantage contributions probably things ought get ill stop mr cromartie thanks bill im going let rest join discussion ill keep running list people want get call though im going give john two three minutes respond things quickly dr diiulio well know think accept letter spirit mr raspberrys comments think way would phrase though ask would franklin think case cite exactly right case go may 99 gore gives speech salvation army drug rehab center atlanta ga speaks really unusual passion although passion unusual vice president gives speech similar speech bush gives july 99 ones got armies compassion ones got paramedics civil society laughter theyre essentially volunteerism public private support effectively smaller grassroots religious valuesbased groups gore put weve always done catholic charities lutheran social services occurs backdrop provision welfare reform bill 96 sponsored primarily sen ashcroft signed onto president clinton gets three versions charitable choice laws essentially look hhs say hey youve got 65000 employees 300 different grant programs make 60000 grants year lot groups getting grants religious organizations religiously anchored organizations turns smaller groups traditionally part governmentbyproxy system lets change system system fairer groups also invites process favoritism perfectly pluralistic pragmatic spirit doubleyellow lines existing constitutional law dr john diiulio time get 2001 however think amy black book mentioned think gets essentially correct proposed bill essentially challenges neutrality principles two main ways says go beyond charitable choice organizations effect proselytize public funds ought considered also ought expand existing protections religious organizations hire people regard religious affiliations ways would make possible groups receive public funds hire coreligionists chose coreligionists people follow particular beliefs tenets phrase posed problem legitimate provisions made problems lot different talking religious hiring rights talking work together mobilize publicprivate religioussecular partnerships serve children prisoners north central philly south central la downtown detroit agree debate fact take turn mr cromartie thank ill let ej start first discussion question ej dionne washington post wonderful hear always john want underscore something said take slight issue mo fiorina thesis throw something ask question underscore one points look exit polling data bush gained one point among weekly churchattenders 2000 gained one point among morethanweekly church attenders gained three points among people attended church monthly less four points among neverattending church people say change election caused religion paraphrase great luis lugoism 911 mattered john 316 laughter think much terror issues religion could overread role religion last election slight dissent look excellent wellproduced handout page three look two charts seems couple things charts one hand say first chart may overstate matter think almost certainly true second chart understates matter reality exists somewhere two charts also note two spikes average differences republican democratic attitudes struck 94 huge gap political policy attitudes social personal attitudes 94 much politics whereas 03 numbers presume 04 might even dramatic two actually moved tandem suggests kind rift take issue fiorina think right sense culture war something changed political war probably 35 40 percent end terms passionate feelings relatively passionate feelings political parties particular president bush sense partisan terms middle actually shrunk considerably keep two ideas head time without flipflopper question wanted ask faithbased thing john knows sympathetic everything written years seems problem comes soon get specific words move general proposition organizations done fantastic work government history supporting faithbased efforts specific issues things get trickier example hiring practices displaced money poverty money allow churches move money proselytizing whole question religiously rooted methodology bill raspberry raised know way get someone drugs get embrace jesus christ personal savior clearly get point government funding methodology extremely problematic even people sympathetic faithbased efforts guess question especially based experience extent haggling faithbased stuff result people getting stuck onesixth versus oneseventh polarizing argument purpose extent problem things simply get really hard actually want youre going confront extremely difficult questions bothersome either side people broad middle described dr diiulio well ej thank question latter life lived particular god details devil point fiorina agree two figures one right wrong show dramatically different visual display quantitative data simple figure like know pick figure pick display pick idea 94 election angry white males course disappeared 96 got married soccer moms laughter 98 couldnt think anything say maintaining election 2000 red blue mean know none mr dionne 2004 contented white males laughter dr diiulio oh nascar dads married security moms next wave mean pick poison pick data pick interpretation data run everybody runs interpretation becomes somewhat limiting let give also point im shill mo fiorina havent talked many years like book let quickly quote says point nutshell long one party moves away center electoral punishment results even ideologically motivated party activists eventually get message democratic activists 1980s got tired losing parties move away center locate less equal distance mainstream electoral punishment need result voters less enthusiastic choices aligned participate seen given choice two extremes elect extremist academic version correlates vote changed voters polarized moral dimension increased weight attach dimension decreased weight attach economic dimensions rather unmeasured changes positions candidates make appear voters changed point challenges virtually last 40 years social science political science subject national election studies dating back to160the american voter160and donald e stokes 1960 suddenly jeopardy take points seriously think need respect second substantive point think answer one hand pretty simple complicated simple answer looking vast majority organizations religiously motivated religiously anchored subset nonprofit sector look actually example philadelphia 40 percent groups supply welfaretowork services religious organizations majority organizations faithsegmented religious character may hum hymns hammer nails say god bless nobody sneezes 501c3s forth stephen monsma pepperdine university book called160putting faith partnerships goes data philly four cities 7 percent faithbased organizations providing particular service even prefer hire coreligionists issue like hiring rights something debate academic seminars constitutional law seminars conferences like perhaps planet earth practical terms youre talking groups may moot point get organization whomsoevershallweserve ministry know drug addicts hole soul filled belief jesus christ come jesus cured organizations big fan many boards organizations obviously every right say ought part governmentbyproxy system believed office said speech march 2001 national association evangelicals ill say want go path stress160if160 way go path talk vouchers talk indirect disbursement arrangements voucher certificates however going voucher path automatically resolve constitutional questions anybody thinks needs read160zelman opinion neutrality principles based true private choice people think vouchers constitutional problems although threshold definitely different lower also think indirectdisbursementarrangement approach makes much possible government effect take person coming jail detox say 25 organizations approved list voucher go want performance measurement get far afield public administration know early going still early public administration read brookings books whole series brookings books public administration kind books put pick laughter everything ever wanted know medicaid administration kind books laughter know reality youre going performance measurement lets say get voucher go whomsoevershallweserve ministry government saying well participating voucherreceiver going keep information performance organization keep information recipients voucher holding nonvoucher holding administrative protocols havent recreated grantmaking regime vouchers supposed avoid problem mr cromartie okay got long list wendy kaminer get jump wendy kaminer wendy kaminer atlantic monthly thanks wanted pick couple questions ej raised practical implications programs first couple comments rhetoric started saying john mention wall church state constitution say hear people say time irrelevant wont find mention sex discrimination constitution either fact one arguments used era dont need era 14th amendment covers sex discrimination even though way 14th amendment doesnt mention sex discrimination know really irrelevant get concept roger williams goes thomas jefferson gets interpreted course 20 years constitutional litigation think cases actually happened know could take friendly advice drop irrelevancy another point rhetoric may know find term faithbased initiative somewhat euphemistic say least goes back kind questions ej raising know country one faith give us vision pluralism think great majority people secular religious would share term faithbased initiative implies somehow giving money one american faith everybody likes least giving faith like giving friendly church street may church know know good work giving scientologists giving nation islam giving david koresh giving groups minority groups dont consider part faithbased family prochoice movement completely language rhetoric didnt even talk prolife concerns talked fit prochoice movement think kind need keep mind reason example aclu talks governmentfunded religion instead faithbased initiative usually talk sectarian social service programs pejorative remind people john dewey says one religion lot religions shouldnt talk religion singular talk plural suggested part controversy initiatives public ignorance think right think one problems say quite ignorant getting money basis giving money efficacy faithbased programs said dont really know mean dont really empirical data efficacy religious approach drug treatment would good lot money handed basis lot assumptions even might say biases superiority particular religious approaches course overwhelming problem accountability audit religious programs without fostering kind excessive entanglement government religion secular people religious people dont want talked little bit controversy hiring religious organizations may something need talk real world something talked know heatedly congress course im suggesting real world dr diiulio said planet earth real world planet earth ms kaminer yeah right huge problem supreme court dont remember exactly said religious organizations receiving federal funds could discriminate basis religious belief case involving mormon church 160corporation presiding bishop v amos believe one reasons gave didnt want government decide whether job question essential practice religion case involved janitor working forprofit health club run mormon church think pretty obviously job much doctrine court said dont even want courts asking question dont even want questions asked get questions sectarian organization getting federal money able hire people share religious beliefs know talk government entanglement people talk publicly funded discrimination question im going leave rhetorical question genuine one ever going real data programs getting money effective compare organizations arent approaching drug addicts people problems help jesus christ stop let mention two cases right really demonstrate problem theres case pennsylvania cant remember name program offers vocational training prisons entirely funded federal state local funds entirely permeated religion evangelical christian group vocational training program available prisoners order become part pray way claim accept jesus savior hires people share religious beliefs whole host problems couple abstinenceonly programs federally funded sued really quite sectarian selling jesus christ along idea abstinence dont know many programs like think lot people would agree programs problem dr diiulio well thank let start back end one points public administration monitor account one thing really objected office object equally today sort gets goat people public administration dont much else going knowing sorts fun facts single program since end world war ii domestic policy medicaid medicare social security interstate highway pick federal government directly administered program funds governmentbyproxy system working state local governments forprofit firms nonprofits way washington works since end world war ii funds gone nonprofit sector large national nonprofits decades religious secular catholic charities lutheran social services jewish federations gotten billions dollars public funding heres object suddenly small faithbased religious organizations call minister jones runs housing rehab program steps suddenly need rigorous public administration system say generic public administration problem ms kaminer john youre misunderstanding point point comes religious organizations getting money dont want government looking dr diiulio take im directing per se im using get table nonprofit organization dresses religious drag problems governmentbyproxy monitoring dont suddenly come university pennsylvania gets grant goes particular school school gets particular purposes purposes specified specific terms specific grant administrative protocols accountability protocols fiscal protocols university pennsylvania responsible seeing terms grant met money sloshes department program ends funding summer salary guy medical school program folklore myth university pennsylvania called place existing entities called federal departments hhs example little else contractmonitor along come faithbased organizations smaller ones call whole point charitable choice simply say guys apply dont put pile simply read name religious character says st davids rather joes bar amp grill dont put pile basis going back first point dont mean suggest wall separation survey survey educated people people attentive public affairs either pluralities majorities say oh yeah wall separation actually blacklettered constitution thats neither point charitable choice exactly addressed clintongore secretary cuomo hud wrote rules regulations exist place problem werent followed federal government technical assistance capacitybuilding effort think key thing remember im talking anything nonprofit organization whatever shape kind character creed lack creed every right participate fully governmentbyproxy contracting grantmaking system needs judged precisely according rules regulations protocols nonprofit organization get get grant monitored accordingly respect empirical data another slight pet peeve mine forty years governmentbyproxy national large organizations religious megacharities among many independent evaluations efficacy secular nonprofit organizations received money year year answer count fingers toes planet earth ten toes see fingers im going show toes even government performance results act 93 says keep data performance audits dont even internal performance audits ms kaminer programs dont raise constitutional questions dr diiulio raise constitutional questions actually many found monitored even kind causally normal sort government process know dingdong may see books please dont show theyre taking money theyre providing service im saying shouldnt improve fact boring brookings books fix im saying lets fix lets apply equally everybody audio break tape change meant suggest dont meant suggest extent literature got 500 refereed academic journal articles point tells anything civic significance primary civic comparative advantage volunteer mobilization respect question kind sexy one spiritual sense small fraction socalled faithbased organizations mainly dedicated spiritual transformation majority sector certainly majority religion sector jury dont know conflicting studies point hard end experimental research cant randomly assign people believe god believe god variable problems like election data okay operation variable like religiosity churchnot church late great dave larson pioneer faithbased research spirituality health 40 programs harvard penn medical schools used joke im sure dave stole somebody else used say know studies churchnot church think sitting church makes religious must think sitting garage makes car crude variable measurement social science subject kind infancy mr cromartie ive got long list folks wendy know could continue next day thats long receptions continue conversations dr diiulio im longwinded say go ahead jill lawrence usa today actually wendys question touched mine may covered maybe ill give john chance expand little thinking suspicion bill raspberry talking also touched santorum profile the160new york times160yesterday presumption faithbased programs services better government services think leads suspicions among youre really talking excuse government abdicate responsibility aggressive proponents programs cite lot examples wonderful programs work never hear local police force federally funded drug program thats great job maybe could talk dr diiulio going get tshirt one point white house got sides felt like dead armadillo middle road going get fluorescent yellow tshirt said love psychiatric social workers wear conceived substitute rather supplement let go back existing data quickly subset earlier steve monsma data mentioned earlier welfaretowork four cities philadelphia particular look monsma data typical welfaretowork organization run kind religious organization faithsegmented integrated permeated saturated organizations serve average 200 clients year annual budgets 90000 year comes entirely virtually cases private sources donors look secular nonprofits ones receive public funding okay serve populations average 400 year budgets 900000 year theyre serving double clients 10 times money tell tell nothing definitive character clients extent know looks like actually faithbased groups getting clients checkered job histories difficult chronic substance abuse problems wouldnt take bank prime time social science theres prima facie case least saying hey groups like theyre bad job theyre worse anyone else president bush said go white house web site look catalogued several dozen statements made 2001 continues make think mike gerson said effect government replaced charities welcome partners resent rivals partnerships leveraging organizations supplement existing social service delivery places unmet civic social needs fact many cases stained glass windows organizations literally im rhetorical literally pervasive neighborhood neon flashing beer signs ill plug benjamin franklin point mean thats reality people seize upon say substituting merely weeding government regulations may unfair kind handing social service entire religion sector america im talking social service im talking every dollar goes collection plate gave everything didnt keep heat church choir didnt robes everything else religion sector couldnt fund half government social service delivery budget per year theres way substitute creative supplement improve think margin costeffectiveness done right franklin foer franklin foer new republic think one way could maybe hopefully disaggregate could talk experience office neutrality clause came play government put foot said guys steps bounds goes far secondly think ron suskind administration confessee hell man laughter ive got years dr diiulio evil twin brother thats runs around saw pool morning mr foer well perhaps talked political atmosphere white house attitude toward social science pervades white house experience office much matter social scientist much politics come play terms enforcing neutrality clause seems like would hard government step say guys stepping bounds proselytizing whatever seems like lot enforcement neutrality clause happens margins subtle areas would highly susceptible dr diiulio manipulation mr foer politics yeah dr diiulio well think simple timeline simple brief might start charitable choice 96 2000 clintongore one points agreement 2000 campaign get steve goldsmith bush elaine kamark gore basically respective point persons faithbased community initiatives different emphases kindred mean say throughout 2000 campaign similar president comes office makes announcement announcement two parts day office announced go back run tapes youll see two personnel announcements first important one steve goldsmith going corporation national service eventually way becoming chairman corporation second fat boy philly coming six months study federal grantmaking process idea go back read the160new york times160or paper choice explicitly stated neutrality plan says heres going going build charitable choice forth going get involved issues contentious president absolutely consistent delivering message think remains consistent delivering message problem occurred think amy black book tells tale well told based kinds interviews primary archival digging hr 7 community solutions act introduced three provisions trifled neutrality principles charitable choice blackletter language says funds shall used religious instruction sectarian worship blackletter language language hr 7 read may intended dont know dampen strip away explicit language extant charitable choice laws secondly beliefs tenets provisions went religious hiring rights issue back end 11th hour mega coverallthings voucher provision said well cant get beliefs tenets least sort get vouchers theres way ignore house bill right theres way debate going conditioned bill even though literally week bill voted republicans think 15 democrats voted house obviously dead arrival senate next week amy black recounts well book sen lieberman sen santorum came white house sen santorum immediately went journalistic whatever call guys know polls sticks whatever said paraphrase summarize going back religious hiring rights going kind look going new bill forth basically charitable choice sort bill actually worked white house summer came 911 february 2002 liebermansantorum bill pretty much kind neutrality plan revisited lot things obviously changed time democrats absolutely would hear none principled reasons democrats didnt want give president victory issue point late bill since think richard nathan worked pew trusts roundtable religion social welfare policy go website suny albany said administration essentially attempted hopes executive orders thats pretty much stands michael barone michael barone us news amp world report160look john diiulio made observation empirical evidence advantage religiousbased organizations volunteer mobilization bill raspberry talked martin luther king lot volunteer mobilization done religiousbased thought motivated civil rights movement want make observation something 2004 presidential election perhaps undercuts one points john quoted morris fiorina saying know bush campaign got 1400000 volunteers seen definitive figures democratic side surely 300000 500000 maybe many people volunteering various democratic campaigns antibush organizations forth sort politics extreme fiorina says going repel people drew people less bowling alone bowling leagues also turned people vote mean extraordinary rise total turnout 16 percent kerrys popular vote al gores 16 percent george w bush 04 george w bush 00 23 percent think leaves many us including somewhat uncomfortable strong feelings seem power mobilize lot people various ways whether level volunteer organizations partisan politics yet sort middle course many civicminded columnists urge best course doesnt seem bring enthusiasm either charitable volunteers voters election day dr diiulio first im never going disagree matter electoral data forgotten ever knew anyones ever known subject know born night last night laughter defer dont care 3 million volunteers dont think volunteers certainly people knew worked bush kerry know dont think get anecdotal necessarily motivated might candidates extreme position package things president represented package things sen kerry represented lot people responded way interesting kerry got 49 believe youll correct know im wrong independent vote kerry actually got one extra point independent vote interesting usually gets independent vote wins didnt happen gerald ford carter otherwise generally happens question power strong belief mobilize people question wouldnt doubt moment guess real question whether look example know textbook author go update data every often look democratic delegates versus democratic voters studies able targeted elite interviewing look democratic officials officeholders forth go slightly left center pretty far left center far left center thing true moving right among republicans mos argument think hes right extent duly appreciated especially elites culture wars generally divide religion forth elite phenomenon say doesnt affect mass politics opinion say arent people identify say wont become true years ahead isnt true 15 20 years ago magnets civic engagement political participation ill stop jane eisner written book specifically respect youth cohort called160taking back vote160 plugging book beacon press last year talks whats happened youth voting past several decades rebecca haggerty rebecca haggerty dateline nbc160i wanted go back data talked increase evangelical voters couple specific followups one youre drawing numbers also said question changed 2000 2004 interested specifically changed see two numbers percentage among white evangelicals went bush heard 57 percent also heard 79 percent want clarify dr diiulio fiftysevenpoint gap ms haggerty fiftysevenpoint gap oh okay im curious whether increase turnout commensurate groups increased turnout year dr diiulio data hear selfidentified catholics three kids live peoria whatever exit poll data ms haggerty lot different numbers lot different exit polls say theyre dr diiulio well michael barone better respondent im looking stuff thats kind laundered vetted national election studies university michigan get website ms haggerty okay dr diiulio stuff selfidentified people selfidentify chose mischievous identify gosh hard know identify would mischievous know choose misidentify kinds issues problems follow think people looking scrutinizing exit polls michael jump past changed selfidentifier 2000 2004 okay change question even little bit lot people would say oh little word change pay lot attention little word change make big difference change selfidentifier makes impossible measure youre comparing know apple orange macintosh red delicious really dont know probably apple orange certainly two different kinds apples theres question even lowerbound estimate correct white evangelical bornagain christian turnout increased selfidentified religious group ms haggerty recall question changed dr diiulio michael may recall precisely mr barone would look think also regard percentages electorate reported group exit poll significant error margin mean recall florida 2000 told blacks 16 percent turnout 10 percent turnout four years people looked precinct data tend doubt numbers error margin dr diiulio clear people dont think michael shares would although opinions count lot less believe data questionable better without mean better generalize theyre impressionistic theyre spotty would better without definite way right whole lot complicated expensive way done like polling generally need certain sample size get certain confidence range theres still lot polls especially presidential horse race get reported major national magazines places really inadequate samples mr cromartie quick point ej mr dionne last election appears turnout went among groups part problem trying figure differential increase turnout best tell increasing part labeled clearly white evangelical differential increase turnout among certain kinds voters whats best sense mr barone best estimate know karl rove quoted many times saying election 3 million 4 million evangelicals expected turn 2000 didnt turn dwi revelation first publicized fox news laughter fox station maine story broken fox station maine think answer 4 million turn probably proportion increase electorate generally mean 16 percent go back 108 years four presidential elections turnout increase quadrennium comparable magnitude unusual lets see 1896 1936 1952 1992 dr diiulio dont mess laughter mr barone well thats exclude 1916 1932 women got vote obviously electorate vastly expanded mr cromartie john parker next john parker economist want ask couple questions around theme religious polarization mr diiulio mentioned couple points theres group people dont buy sort broad public faith talk bit think people characteristics dont believe thats question one question think willingness legislate kind private behavior want legislate private behavior whats source kind demand legislate im thinking schiavo case federal marriage amendment kind thing make quite long list cases either laws demands laws regulate past would seen purely private matter dr diiulio thank first dont know various public opinion survey data look much bear every often context revising chapter textbook look respect research interests forth michael barone might want kick ball may able give much keener answer could would say look group comparisons interesting notice example way analogy people live middle uppermiddleincome households lifes advantages etc seem better time otherwise comparable people age whatnot lowincome dont life advantages uninteresting whats interesting intragroup variance whats interesting fact within group people dont lot life advantages former group prefer ill stick latter people nonetheless seem resilient find ways improving life prospects beating odds forth intragroup variance thats interesting respect question think clear lot intragroup variance take two tails distribution take two tails add third quarter close half depending whos counting thing catches eye amount intragroup variance let give one quick example get pinched mike cromartie talking long example would give respect white evangelicals white evangelical christians probably profound generation gap terms views respect whole range social issues group could name dont want put concrete least striking sort intergenerational differences within white evangelical community continuum would want use know liberal conservative something like want use sort continuum would say well younger evangelicals somewhat less traditionminded somewhat less prone sort take conservative position conservative position given issues say parents grandparents greatgrandparents problem sort thing arent lot good data let really parse intragroup differences kind survey researchers sort categorically relate politics compromise table gave hightech handout know breaks catholics evangelicals jews nonreligious people doesnt tell anything incredible differences within catholic community incredible differences case catholics seem socioeconomic component longwinded academic answer least one give maybe michael barone knows better theres lot intragroup variance within two tails would appear respect whether theres legislating private morality forth dont know lets take national government congress wait till end session look everything theyve done right compare previous session previous sessions obviously schiavo case cataclysmic dont know world historic people paid lot attention still writing tons ink spilled see greater pattern legislating moral issues data ive doubted years still persuaded divided party government less legislating generally im one people cant see data total sort output institution called congress dont see statistically significant differences patterns categorize different kinds legislation ill say least dont see elsa walsh new yorker160i want make one quick comment ask brief question come point im skeptical almost polling data given people fact dont respond polling questions think last election remember asking somebody one networks poll percentage people wouldnt respond questions sort hemmed hawed finally said threequarters said yes end belief people answering polling questions way represented anybodys real feelings question wanted ask puts sort great big ignorant middle bill raspberry talks basic one restrictions proselytizing people participate faithbased programs get government money dr diiulio respect comment think youre right think evidence suggests youre right know people dont want bothered telemarketers theres kinds fact160national journal160did story couple years back kind lowlevel harrumph within public opinion survey people academic standpoint question frankly thought 2004 case going least see everything thats reported whos ahead even kerry bush ahead people saying going see sufficient sample sizes almost polls didnt im seeing respectable wellmeaning publications continue use polling data addition problems associated polling well finding stratum substratum going know every fifth block whatnot still using sample sizes small even everything else fine respect proselytizing plain simple may use public funds proselytize may use public funds support inherently religious activity office ill say record dont know matter public record guess tried hire julie segal legislative counsel americans united separation church state tried hire work white house office would director new faithbased community initiatives office apart fact hes goofy would try hire somebody americans united separation church state answer knew got julie would certainly get anybody else thats want start keep bolts tight possible debate talked julie talked people friends take much kind noaid separation point view concern well thats easy say practice prevent guy whos humming hymns hammering nails proselytizing answer alas determined entirely within four corners specific grant contract words commonwealth pennsylvania money federal government declares interest providing drug treatment specifies terms conditions thereof puts rfp request proposal 17 groups apply one located church basement etc okay way proceed think way fact government generally good faith tried proceed though always best effects best success hold organizations regardless whether theyre religious religious highly motivated religion exactly performance standards administrative protocols fiscal accountability standards group ms walsh drug treatment program essentially relies people finding jesus get drugs dr diiulio type program would prima facie able receive grants first knowledge federal rfp ever issued said bring people jesus way let say first week job washington said rather famously little bit older remember great allen sherman hymn hello muddah hello faddah laughter also version guys dolls song sue sue go ahead sue thats would say people concern sue ms kaminer im confused youre allowed get money programs get dr diiulio youre allowed get money blackletter prohibition federal law including charitable choice proselytize public funds youre one 17 groups applies get funds state pennsylvania part federal government operating cover federal law purposes provide specific services specific terms conditions like saying money also wasnt proclaim know favorite ethical cultural society credo youre supposed delivering services set terms conditions ms walsh together youre talking youre blending money together mr raspberry cant buy sports car pell grant either dr diiulio thats exactly mr raspberry free money otherwise would pay tuition buy sports car dr diiulio well thats exactly right relevant question ask respect grantees following terms conditions respect performance respect fiscal accountability youre getting 300000 fellow named cpa give audit every federal grant bunch generic gardenvariety requirements see programs nobody says dingdong hello federal government im stuff neighborhood happen religious christcentered mission statement know may pose problem give money existing programs go onto websites think theyve actually done good job health human services particular charitable choice dos donts yess nos explicit answer question one word ms walsh give example religiousbased drug treatment program use money cant use dr diiulio ill give example say salvation armys adult rehabilitation centers arcs theyre country salvation armys arcs sort hybrid program components program people choose start day prayer choose start day prayer go computers little bit earlier okay program philadelphia much talked 2001 2002 cookman methodist church pastor donna jones know many room know welfaretowork program read mission statement christcentered mission statement motivated faith serve brothers sisters need etc etc look program think one point im sure majority people program nonchristian many muslim women neighborhood discrimination beneficiaries conditions entering building receiving services participating program present eventual profession faith complete right opt portion program find offensive reason religion right charitable choice government must guarantee secular program option available reject whole program walk around corner reasonable accessible cant like yeah go another program youve got go bridge camden get got reasonable accessible existing law existing public administration protocols comprehend issues god devil details know anything last three years know easy administer public grants way yields performance thats drive philadelphia gotten literally hundreds millions dollars past 30 years since 68 fair housing act see every fifth house many neighborhoods abandoned okay governmentbyproxy system fouled flawed sorts ways thats excuse right respect little substratum nonprofits call make sure improve system apply standards everybody whos involved byron york national review want ask question chart page two people believe elected officials compromise pointed majorities general public believe compromise looks like number would lot higher evangelicals cases dont want elected officials compromise things practical matter white house president lets imagine thought owed election evangelicals dr diiulio hypothetical question laughter mr york hypothetical question laughter case practical matter faithbased proposals coming white house think theyd like dr diiulio well think would much like initially proposed much like february 2002 proposed barring think theyd much like whats happened since frankly know president ive said repeatedly think mike gerson said forum well absolutely consistent saying know methodist muslim mormon good people faith evangelical christians citizens know need put way much right say dont compromise socialjustice liberal catholic friends say compromise conservative catholic friends say never compromise data ought trouble anyone youre asking practical political question obviously goes beyond pay grade charitable choice adopted 96 chief sponsor said senator ashcroft widely known know disfavored people faith great achievement bipartisan achievement footdragging part democrats werent really sure time clintongore got hold began implement hud forth early stages 99 2000 really implementing charitable choice laws everybody kind got president clinton vice president gore governor bush senator clinton president bush problem someone chooses say well charitable choice weak tea brewed suit tastes antireligious liberal democrats think bets think hand reasonable consistent constitutional principles people issue frankly members congress problem whatsoever may political problems democratic side republican side standing notveryscintillating respective extremesinconstituencies position thats rhetorically least 96 2000 record terms voting mr york saying hillary rodham clinton elected president 2008 decided keep office faithbased initiatives would thing bush dr diiulio would tell person whos oval office president bush last year senator hillary rodham clinton talking issue im saying would exactly thing think much common ground issue even elite ultra know megabattle titans level often let believe mean take statements president bush made lay alongside ones senator clinton made look people middle senator santorum senator lieberman theyre saying almost exactly thing okay yeah comes religious hiring rights theres going big difference tone emphasis comes far push particular notion beliefs tenets theres going big difference emphasis terms whether ought put government side communities serving religious charities particularly serve needy neighbors senator santorum profile the160new york times160captured exactly right hes issue virtually whole career dont know people feel simply fact consistent supporter charitable choice laws beginning sarah wildman sarah wildman american prospect started thinking elsa brought proselytizing dont understand theres separate tax structure receiving government funds think thats complicated proselytizing arm arm receives funds separated know 501c3 mean thats one piece addressing legislation kind politics victimization thats come sponsored santorum kerry actually workplace religious freedom act questions hiring also whats permissible workplace leads question well whats permissible terms hiring practices opposed youre allowed say youre allowed post audio break means receives services doesnt dr diiulio well know 501c3 business much talked would say think organizations want go path get 501c3 easier proper way go said dont think government ought require organizations get separate 501c3 may pass test feel otherwise capable meeting relevant programspecific rules regulations also 501c3 covers multitude sins mean churches churches 501c3 organizations right kind forget sometimes 501c3 doesnt mean youre somehow public realm must follow public rules public resources doesnt quite mean practice charitable choice gives really five principles supposed handle sort practical issues ill state first one funds proselytizing sectarian worship religions instruction thats black letter dont treat religiously motivated volunteers secondclass citizens basically means dont keep theyre religious religious wrong religion whatnot third respectfully serve clients beneficiaries without regard religion thats easy vast majority groups planet earth people changing bedpans mentoring homeless shelters basically large take comers many times operate places rest society walked away abandoned studies colleague penn ram cnaan studies professor nisha botchwey university virginia studies point conclusion primary beneficiaries faithbased social service organizations urban areas young people live neighborhoods members church religious group serves words bob putnam likes call bridging social capital spiritual capital case theyre reaching beyond doors youth congregations reach neighborhood youth churched member church aunt parent church thats data consistently show practical terms respecting clients without regard religion without receiving government money theyre getting government money changing way operate fact volunteerdriven organizations operate fourth rule following existing civil rights laws governing employment differences disagreements time go court fifth explicit charitable choice well let religious nonprofits use properties display symbols words condition receiving grant 96 charitable choice law says explicitly dont need remove star david cross crucifix crescent whatever use religious property park lumber know churchyard dont go ramada buy space hold meeting forth people find skating line charitable choice established 96 charitable choice laws reinforce thats law stands ms wildman think im still convinced anxiety elsa brought bill raspberry brought earlier mean advancing dr diiulio look theres way allay anxieties subject theres basic question dont mean put coarse terms west philadelphia youve got choice cnaan data correct weve got 1200 congregations based fourhour site visits 20page questionnaires groups providing lions share 200 discreet types social services needy neighbors theyre know shoeboxes okay willing vast majority work within terms governmentsponsored public private partnership studied theyve done steve monsmas aforementioned study theyve surveyed people faith community involved guess forty percent complained government paperwork welcome world right 2 percent say felt partnership government required forgot exact terms gut disembowel destroy religious character look serving continue serve people serving without regard religion possible youre going leakybucket effect know course never government right government never diverts funds things go places possible one 15 one 50 one 75 going skate across line say god bless one sneezed say really ought get church really ought believe jesus possible course possible happen course happen apply standard sort strict following rules regulations governing given grant shut federal government tomorrow everything come grinding halt leaky bucket effects attend government contracting areas mean look noncompliance government performance results act staring face im saying get free ride im saying unless want single particular substratum nonprofit sector special scrutiny treatment well beyond constitutionally required want absolutely sure think laws place administrative regimes place although far perfect give us really good running start need especially involve organizations like corporation national service americorps volunteers traditionally worked larger religious nonprofits involved providing technical assistance capacity building help think workable would pretend pretend office probably im impolitic guy allay everybodys fears theres way way jane eisner jane eisner philadelphia inquirer john couple months ago dear friend david kuo posted strong column beliefnet lamenting faithbased initiative come bush administration specifically saying lot programs funded funds shifted one thing another wondering assessment initiative anything might change next couple years dr diiulio mike gersons ears must burning morning hes like saint first miracle performed laughter mike gerson good twoword way begin think mike charge presidents compassion agenda important think even the160national journal160cover story might suggest heck cover story mike charge means person real intellect real drive know sort health problems mike force nature issues kind present creation blasphemous respect issues mentioned earlier think volunteer service mobilization effort begun 2002 repaid dividends degree hasnt fully appreciated know lot problems nothings perfect really tremendous progress mean end americorps went 50000 75000 end youve increase senior corps end youve increase funding federal entities support volunteer service home abroad creation entity dont know factor several times larger peace corps volunteers prosperity think called even though havent maybe fullcourt press volunteer mobilization good things happening white house issued couple times reports statements summarizing state play respect federal grantmaking guess quickly answer piece question number thats used 2 billion went door last year reasonable data available look report white house put careful explicit explaining 2 billion figure 2 billion competitive nonformula grants across seven agencies going organizations fund faithbased communityserving organizations 117 billion previous year across five agencies alas overarching reality federal governmentbyproxy administration state local governments main proxy players ie vast sums money go grants contracts get administered state local governments discussion separate day block grants always defined block grants money federal government doesnt spends purposes wont specify results measure dont particularly like block grants didnt start republicans lyndon johnson first major block grant program weve long time great majority funds mean hundreds billions depending whos counting thats available nonformula competitive grants idea whether fraction funds going qualified faithbased groups changed much little direction know twoyear period since charitable choice first went books 96 states like michigan one twoyear periods think 98 2000 im sure cant remember exactly like 10fold increase number state contracts went communityserving organizations religious affiliation 2 billion denominator 14 17 billion competitive nonformula grants another denominator several hundreds billions grants dont keep data anybody doesnt want spend entire life tracking easily access intergovernmental finance administration words money goes harrisburg goes sacramento go try birddogging oh great journalists room difficult kind difficult know whats happening look philadelphia look aforementioned pastor donna jones look denominator 40 percent take one example 40 percent welfaretowork organizations way religious presently getting virtually public support question would ask many organizations would qualified given catchment area say 12 square blocks surrounding pastor joness church many engaged way another publicprivate partnership compare 1996 time series data arent suspect answer increase negligible much money going door thats moving average could affected lots things would like know fraction organizations qualified would like try compete could use little technical assistance fraction engaged process think increase small hope well get greater progress whatever means next couple years david brooks new york times ask unprofessional wild judgment keep reading sharp decline teen pregnancies teen violence sort stuff cdc teen pregnancy third something quite dramatic quick version question happening organizations faithbased groups local groups broader societal trends dr diiulio know dont know tell broken record lot different baltimore milwaukee respect things named intercity differences rather striking question national slope line looks like answer guess variables look ones ought government programs people say ostensibly failed dont think medicaid pediacare failed one side well genuine increase sort density civil society action people wrapping around lives otherwise atrisk children youth past five 10 years ways happening along werent good measuring b tracking social policies important positive impact including even incomemaintenance ones mean earnedincome tax credit dont hear much anymore right maybe never heard much really biggest single antipoverty program clintongore eitc made lot difference lot people still places lot eitceligible people dont get eitc think impact increasing somebodys income 40 percent overnight think impact think neighborhood effects dynamics one policy see lot good things happened government side civil society side last 10 15 years kind saw effects theory causes causality mr brooks john mentioned faithbased groups advantage volunteer mobilization groups like rick warrens trying get lot volunteers mobilize abroad good volunteers want volunteers want professionals dr diiulio cant get professionals mean part consensus organizations thought professional organizations actually rely extensively volunteers know big brothers big sisters america marquee institution around 100plus years got professional staff quality casemanaged mean professional socialservice delivery organization secular nonprofit 500plus federated entities also couldnt anything without massive mobilization volunteers mobilizes volunteers retail wholesale corporations colleges retirement communities churches forth vast majority entities social service delivery think one less safe generalization one make volunteers stay particular task organizational affiliation year great work problem 90day wonders inandouters shortterm programs jane tell know whole service learning business mean service learning would appear something hollow shell dont want put words janes mouth think evidence suggest getting whole lot bang interest particular part volunteer mobilization jane maybe want add subtract ms eisner well think starting become clear many schools cities districts state maryland requiring certain amount community service hours student able graduate really good sense things effective theres starting debate service learning community whether hours time task really way judge whether ought outcomes also data goes back many years says cases volunteers actually harm good particularly working vulnerable populations like elderly judy rodin study many many years ago long became president penn looked college students volunteering nursing home went regularly visit residents semester left actually found health declined rapidly residents seen dropped residents hadnt seen youve got really careful especially youre working vulnerable populations stuff mr dionne evidence service learning promotes volunteering later words learned experience process even doesnt solve problem effectively actually creates habit service recapitulates later ms eisner think thats hope im aware longterm studies lew friedland university wisconsin study area found lot students community service said didnt like didnt think worthwhile also pad résumés true kids going penn true kids wanted go vocational school felt made look good fact might mean dont think minimize might real usefulness saying showed every day supposed mr brooks know steve trachtenbergs line george washington university president students community service dont know kids find lepers find read laughter dr diiulio friend ira harkavy head service initiatives penn says kid said man service learning course homeless shelter great hope kid comes penn experience know basically one thing say distinguished faithbased religiously anchored put local congregationbased volunteer mobilization rapidity organizations trying years mobilize volunteers particular particularly difficult kind service delivery success mobilizing volunteers religious organizations big brothers big sisters example big brothers big sisters know one adult life basically calls right youve got least one person together enough well lets say youre child incarcerated person maybe mom home moms quite together enough doesnt think call severely atrisk kids kids dont even one adult well get get mentor theyre going particularly difficulttorelateto population probability tried mobilize volunteers sort hit miss fastest mobilization volunteers history big brothers big sisters started working churches lot research evidence suggested couldnt mobilized volunteers including males community serve mentors theyve done scale theyre way even much bigger scale volunteer mobilization character quality yearplus commitment also working particularly distressed populations difficulttoserve populations churches seem comparative advantage proven thats preliminary evidence would suggest juan williams npr john ever feel youre used political professionals whose goal simply funnel money religious groups political base expand groups benefit politically experience far right terms reception programs comes mind last week know standing behind bill frist black ministers recipients faithbased money used props dr diiulio well person really speak think ive said changed 10 years respect data changed ive interpreted data words change data evidence whatever changed accordingly respect say people challenge sort franklinian topourforthbenefitsforthecommongoodisdivine perspective side know get used side especially youre public office right make statement like one made earlier first part session made office time get asked well programs effective would say dont know theyre effective dont experimental quasiexperimental research get directmail organization putting director faithbased office says programs dont work hell thats get come statement side says theres evidence suggest organizations real comparative advantage volunteer mobilization next thing know theres statement director faith office says proven fact things work mean thats nature beast extent kind accept think two important things remember ive tried remember last couple years ive turned little haunts philadelphia work charitable groups associated kinds good works one washington isnt important end happens organizations whether theyre highoctane religiously motivated faith motivated work social service delivery continue continue making bricks without straw cases theyre people faiths diverse faiths faith yesterday theyre today theyre going tomorrow end sound fury signifying nothing sometimes comes national politics going matter major way dont believe succeed number two however path walk especially urban america difficult path think national government come mr williams love answered im interested answer thats question question getting used people political agenda dr diiulio dont feel like ive used feel like people take things ive issues throughout career people hear want hear people use want use mr williams debate theory back forth whether effective gets money basis decisions made religious organizations scientologists camp black muslims camp debates think people looking say hey wait political strategy thats quite effective john diiulio go around fancy debates long get money right people expand base support republican party dr diiulio let try answer question way best way know say look grantmaking comprehended 2 billion figure cited earlier go particular piece grantmaking like say compassion capital fund look think many ways interpret way look im sure exactly university hawaii fits grand plan one words try proceed inductively look back end forget theory coming planet nowhere looking data things gone would naturally conclude pattern plan whether get money small grassroots groups get money people particular political point view look grants say scatterplot anyone take single grant action say oh look group knows guy thats sometimes happens im saying know reality im saying doesnt appear clearcut pattern one way regardless talking people live places 50plus years public private disinvestments really one major social institution left many communities hook hang support issue mr williams frank asked political influence office didnt answer one people coming dr diiulio see learned something mean youve got give credit learning something last mr williams people coming saying listen wed like money go x group dr diiulio one ever came said thing course im also fellow gave speech march 2001 national association evangelicals explaining cant proselytize public funds one ever came way shape manner form never felt pressure direct indirect modify anything said thought said however irrelevant end social issue nothing per se faith except insofar happen bornagain catholic explain lunch laughter say grace lunch mr dionne saying grace dr diiulio saying grace laughter im giving one invocations anyone used able give whats stake future federal governments role delivering vital social services people need thats really talking youve got system republicans democrats illfunded illadministered little scrutinized except somebody bee bonnet reason scrutinize figure way improve increase services improve quality services maybe keep going along way past 10 15 20 years tell world look like david absolutely right data national trends doesnt look way however every part north central philly know im saying theres something faithbased community initiatives federal government something positive lets follow ben franklin figure practical approach mr williams response jerry falwells world dr diiulio person dont know person make one virtuous day publicly criticized reverend falwell aclu might right guess mr cromartie issue dr diiulio issue speech given national association evangelicals got standing ovation way reported way laughter mr dionne dont bear grudges dr diiulio dont bear grudges let go did160the purposedriven life160too regard ive learned let things go laughter dr diiulio case get point mean bottom line discussion social policy poverty people need especially children national trends good great doesnt mean arent literally millions millions kids arent making cant read mr williams listen understood falwell initially resistant idea didnt want government interference business church dr diiulio well reverend robertson perfectly fair think important perfectly fair reverend falwell interesting man regard kind theological worldview said charitable activity role individual government time kind square circle theologically know easy catholics know faith without works dead start faithbasedsocialservice delivery got kind theology supports pope john paul ii ben franklin one issues reverend robertson think initially thought identifying criteria would decide kinds groups would get kinds groups wouldnt think making honest effort think ms kaminer complained specifically money going go wrong religions opposed withdrew opposition got halfamilliondollar grant dr diiulio dont know criticism reverend robertson made time 2001 know find criteria response made make position subsequently adopted oh okay charitable choice precisely doesnt matter whether religious religion organization qualified public law terms specific grant following protocols compete administer particular services benefit particular people answer yes considered answer terms scientologists problem sociologists big problem big problem funding sociologists mr williams wait wait robertson goes opposing getting grant understand ms kaminer yes dr diiulio knowledge know havent thought nearly four years knowledge never opposed charitable choice advocated particular way going initiative involved specifying criteria qualifications groups ought reasonable thing somebody whether went yale law school reasonable thing think think happened understood charitablechoice side things saw thats really rescinded criticism least subsequently criticized really important end isnt laughter mr cromartie thank john end session 160 | 12,358 |
<p>KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Linebacker <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Derrick_Johnson/" type="external">Derrick Johnson</a>, with his 13 years in the NFL for the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kansas-City-Chiefs/" type="external">Kansas City Chiefs</a>, needs more time to process his team’s stunning collapse against the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tennessee-Titans/" type="external">Tennessee Titans</a> after watching an 18-point halftime lead vanish into thin air.</p>
<p>“It hurts just as much the next day,” Johnson said. “I’ve had better ones, I’ll tell you that. Another case of not taking advantage of our opportunities. What a sad way to go out.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately for Johnson and the Chiefs, being victims of epic comebacks is nothing new. Only four times have teams surrendered a halftime deficit of at least 18 points during a postseason game in the Super Bowl era.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Atlanta-Falcons/" type="external">Atlanta Falcons</a> led the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/New_England_Patriots/" type="external">New England Patriots</a> by 18 points at halftime in the Super Bowl last February. The Houston Oilers held a 25-point lead over the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Buffalo-Bills/" type="external">Buffalo Bills</a> in a wild-card game in 1993.</p>
<p>The 2013 Chiefs led the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Indianapolis-Colts/" type="external">Indianapolis Colts</a> by 21 points before falling 45-44. Even worse, they led 38-10 early in the third quarter. Head coach <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Andy_Reid/" type="external">Andy Reid</a> is the first coach in league history to lose two postseason games after leading by at least 17 points.</p>
<p>Yet Reid sees no similarities among his team’s titanic collapses.</p>
<p>“I’d tell you no right now,” Reid said. “No, they’re all different. I’ve had a chance to look at that, I thought through that too. They’ve all been different.”</p>
<p>Just as Reid did during the team’s midseason slump where the Chiefs lost six of seven games, the head coach fell on his sword.</p>
<p>“I’ve got to make sure my team finishes games when given that opportunity and we didn’t do that,” Reid said.</p>
<p>As for how the team recovers from such a monumental setback, Reid told his team to take time away before focusing on the 2018 season.</p>
<p>“You’ve got to step back, you’ve got to evaluate, you’ve got to go through that process,” Reid said. “Look at what’s real and what’s not. You don’t want to do it when you’re emotional or still tied into what happened obviously (Saturday) night. And you’ve got to fight that. With a question like that, you’ve got to fight that.”</p>
<p>Right guard Laurent Duvernay-Tardif said seeing a season that begin with such hope finish in a blink of an eye is tough to swallow.</p>
<p>“Everything you worked for is done and then you just got to take a week, take a deep breath and then focus on trying to get better as a team and as an individual,” Duvernay-Tardif said.</p>
<p>“That was the message from Coach Reid and I’m right along with him. I think we did some great things, but we’ve also got to improve on certain things, and that’s what we’re going to do this offseason.”</p>
<p>Despite yet another disappointing conclusion, however, Johnson believes Reid and the Chiefs will overcome the adversity.</p>
<p>“It’s always about taking advantage of opportunities,” Johnson said. “It just sucks that you have to think about it again, have to go through it again because when you have the players and the coaching staff in house know — I’ve been in this league for a while — we can win with this team. We can.”</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>Chiefs players and coaches were fuming following questionable calls during Saturday’s wild-card game, particularly a ruling that allowed Tennessee to kick a pivotal field goal.</p>
<p>On third-and-4 from the Kansas City 22-yard line just before the 2-minute warning, Titans quarterback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Marcus-Mariota/" type="external">Marcus Mariota</a> faded to pass. Linebacker Derrick Johnson, on a delayed blitz, dropped Mariota for a 9-yard loss and forced a fumble recovered by linebacker <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Justin-Houston/" type="external">Justin Houston</a>.</p>
<p>Referee Jeff Triplette, however, ruled Mariota’s forward progress was stopped and waved off the fumble. Kicker <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ryan_Succop/" type="external">Ryan Succop</a> kicked a 39-yard field goal on the next play in Tennessee’s 22-21 victory.</p>
<p>“That was a bad call,” Johnson said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”</p>
<p>Mariota went to the ground immediately upon the hit from Johnson, and the ball come loose quickly after Johnson’s hit.</p>
<p>“Usually when they call forward progress it’s a struggle tackle, boom, then you go back,” Johnson said. “But that was a smack right down to the ground, balls out.”</p>
<p>Head coach Andy Reid said the team must focus on elements within its control such as coaching and execution.</p>
<p>“I never want to leave it up to the officials to determine the game,” Reid said. “I don’t want to do that. I go back and look at things that we can control. I can’t control those guys.”</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Chicago_Bears/" type="external">Chicago Bears</a> announced Chiefs offensive coordinator Matt Nagy as the team’s new head coach, sparking the beginning of a coaching carousel in Kansas City that could see other turnover.</p>
<p>Special teams coordinator Dave Toub remains a candidate as head coach for the Indianapolis Colts, where former Chiefs front-office executive <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Chris-Ballard/" type="external">Chris Ballard</a> is general manager.</p>
<p>Indications are assistant head coach <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Brad_Childress/" type="external">Brad Childress</a> might retire.</p>
<p>Reid declined to say if he planned any changes to his staff.</p>
<p>“I don’t know, everything’s too fresh right now,” Reid said.</p>
<p>Turnover among Reid’s staff remains remarkably low in Kansas City.</p>
<p>Nagy’s departure leaves 10 coaches from the original 17 that made up Reid’s first Chiefs’ staff in 2013. That includes Toub and Childress as well as defensive coordinator Bob Sutton and running backs coach Eric Bieniemy, who appears to be a top internal candidate to succeed Nagy.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>The beginning of the offseason means vacation time for most members of the Chiefs, but right guard Laurent Duvernay-Tardif plans to hit the books to study for his final examination in the process of becoming a medical doctor back home in Canada.</p>
<p>Duvernay-Tardif will head to Canada soon to start studying. He started medical school in 2010 at McGill University in Montreal.</p>
<p>“Basically, the only thing I’ve got left in terms of my medical career in order to get my M.D. is to pass the board exam, which is a national board exam that happens around May,” Tardif said. “That gives me around three months, three and a half months to study for that exam.”</p>
<p>The 2017 season proved the most challenging yet of the offensive lineman’s young career. Duvernay-Tardif suffered an MCL sprain that served as the first football injury he endured.</p>
<p>“It’s definitely a challenge to go back on the field and be the same player right when you get back,” he said. “I feel like there’s a little bit of rust to knock off and trusting your knee, trusting your injury. I think I was able to do that and towards the end of the season I was back at full strength.”</p>
<p>His injury was one of several along the team’s offensive line this season. But Duvernay-Tardif doesn’t believe the lineup changes impacted the team’s play along the line.</p>
<p>NOTES: DL <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Chris-Jones/" type="external">Chris Jones</a> suffered a knee injury on the opening play of the second half of the team’s wild-card game against Tennessee. Jones suffered a torn MCL, an injury that expects to limit his offseason workouts. Jones started training camp this season on the physically unable to perform list after undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery in July following a workout injury. … TE Travis Kelce left Saturday’s game late in the first half with a concussion after taking a helmet-to-helmet hit from Titans S Johnathan Cyprien. Head coach Andy Reid said Kelce appeared recovering well after the game, and he expected Kelce could have played in the divisional round of the playoffs had the Chiefs advanced. … WR Demarcus Robinson entered the league’s concussion protocol after a collision late in Saturday’s game.</p>
<p>REPORT CARD VS. TITANS</p>
<p>—PASSING OFFENSE: B – Quarterback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Alex_Smith/" type="external">Alex Smith</a> did enough to win most games, but not this one. Smith delivered an efficient 23-of-33 passing effort for 264 yards and two touchdowns, mostly in an impressive first half. But when the Chiefs need just one play in the second half to sustain a drive or get into field-goal range at the end of the game, Smith and his receivers couldn’t get the job done. The blame for the loss lies elsewhere, but Smith and his teammates had a chance to overcome the deficiencies of others.</p>
<p>—RUSHING OFFENSE: C-minus – This unit might deserve an incomplete, with Kareem Hunt getting just 11 carries for 42 yards, including just five touches in the second half. Much of that lack of performance in the second half stemmed from the Chiefs failing to sustain any momentum on offense. Again, the offense needed just one play sustaining a drive or picking up a big gain from Hunt out of the backfield and never found it in the second half</p>
<p>—PASS DEFENSE: C-plus – Holding quarterback Marcus Mariota to 19-of-31 passing for 205 yards and two touchdowns and an interception could win most games. But a huge part of playing pass defense against the Titans means containing Mariota in the pocket, and the Chiefs failed to do that. Mariota scrambled eight times for 46 yards as the pass rush failed to keep him in the pocket and allowed lanes of escape. Surrendering a touchdown pass from Mariota to himself was bad luck, but letting Mariota escape the pocket and find himself in that position falls on the pass defense.</p>
<p>—RUSH DEFENSE: D-minus – No team should win a playoff game when yielding 156 rushing yards to the opponent’s backfield, and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Derrick-Henry/" type="external">Derrick Henry</a> did that damage all by himself in just 23 carries. Certainly, injuries played a role. The Chiefs held Henry in check in the first half with 42 yards on 10 carries. But the absence of defensive lineman Chris Jones in the second half proved to be Kansas City’s breaking point with Rakeem Nunez-Roches out for the game and Jarvis Jenkins dinged up as well. The Titans adjusted in the second half, but Kansas City could not make the changes they needed in response.</p>
<p>—SPECIAL TEAMS: C-minus – The Chief’s punt team created a turnover, but little else went right for the special-teams group. Kicker Harrison Butker missed a 48-yard field goal that might have made the difference. Kansas City’s special teams prides itself on making big plays, but the team went the entire season without a game-breaking play. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tyreek-Hill/" type="external">Tyreek Hill</a> opened the game as the kickoff returner and netted just 17 yards before the club brought in <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Charcandrick-West/" type="external">Charcandrick West</a>. Hill as a kickoff returner might have been what the Chiefs needed to turn the game their way.</p>
<p>—COACHING: D-plus – The Chiefs clearly entered the game with a winning plan, jumping out to a 21-3 halftime lead. But whereas the Titans made every adjustment needed to mount a comeback, Reid’s squad did absolutely nothing to sustain their momentum. Second-half letdowns serve as a recurring theme for this team, so perhaps it’s fitting that failing to make a single play to sustain an offensive drive or get the Titans off the field on defense at any time in the second half serves as a final tribute to the most inconsistent season of Reid’s first five years in Kansas City.</p> | false | 1 | kansas city mo linebacker derrick johnson 13 years nfl kansas city chiefs needs time process teams stunning collapse tennessee titans watching 18point halftime lead vanish thin air hurts much next day johnson said ive better ones ill tell another case taking advantage opportunities sad way go unfortunately johnson chiefs victims epic comebacks nothing new four times teams surrendered halftime deficit least 18 points postseason game super bowl era atlanta falcons led new england patriots 18 points halftime super bowl last february houston oilers held 25point lead buffalo bills wildcard game 1993 2013 chiefs led indianapolis colts 21 points falling 4544 even worse led 3810 early third quarter head coach andy reid first coach league history lose two postseason games leading least 17 points yet reid sees similarities among teams titanic collapses id tell right reid said theyre different ive chance look thought theyve different reid teams midseason slump chiefs lost six seven games head coach fell sword ive got make sure team finishes games given opportunity didnt reid said team recovers monumental setback reid told team take time away focusing 2018 season youve got step back youve got evaluate youve got go process reid said look whats real whats dont want youre emotional still tied happened obviously saturday night youve got fight question like youve got fight right guard laurent duvernaytardif said seeing season begin hope finish blink eye tough swallow everything worked done got take week take deep breath focus trying get better team individual duvernaytardif said message coach reid im right along think great things weve also got improve certain things thats going offseason despite yet another disappointing conclusion however johnson believes reid chiefs overcome adversity always taking advantage opportunities johnson said sucks think go players coaching staff house know ive league win team chiefs players coaches fuming following questionable calls saturdays wildcard game particularly ruling allowed tennessee kick pivotal field goal thirdand4 kansas city 22yard line 2minute warning titans quarterback marcus mariota faded pass linebacker derrick johnson delayed blitz dropped mariota 9yard loss forced fumble recovered linebacker justin houston referee jeff triplette however ruled mariotas forward progress stopped waved fumble kicker ryan succop kicked 39yard field goal next play tennessees 2221 victory bad call johnson said ive never seen anything like mariota went ground immediately upon hit johnson ball come loose quickly johnsons hit usually call forward progress struggle tackle boom go back johnson said smack right ground balls head coach andy reid said team must focus elements within control coaching execution never want leave officials determine game reid said dont want go back look things control cant control guys chicago bears announced chiefs offensive coordinator matt nagy teams new head coach sparking beginning coaching carousel kansas city could see turnover special teams coordinator dave toub remains candidate head coach indianapolis colts former chiefs frontoffice executive chris ballard general manager indications assistant head coach brad childress might retire reid declined say planned changes staff dont know everythings fresh right reid said turnover among reids staff remains remarkably low kansas city nagys departure leaves 10 coaches original 17 made reids first chiefs staff 2013 includes toub childress well defensive coordinator bob sutton running backs coach eric bieniemy appears top internal candidate succeed nagy beginning offseason means vacation time members chiefs right guard laurent duvernaytardif plans hit books study final examination process becoming medical doctor back home canada duvernaytardif head canada soon start studying started medical school 2010 mcgill university montreal basically thing ive got left terms medical career order get md pass board exam national board exam happens around may tardif said gives around three months three half months study exam 2017 season proved challenging yet offensive linemans young career duvernaytardif suffered mcl sprain served first football injury endured definitely challenge go back field player right get back said feel like theres little bit rust knock trusting knee trusting injury think able towards end season back full strength injury one several along teams offensive line season duvernaytardif doesnt believe lineup changes impacted teams play along line notes dl chris jones suffered knee injury opening play second half teams wildcard game tennessee jones suffered torn mcl injury expects limit offseason workouts jones started training camp season physically unable perform list undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery july following workout injury te travis kelce left saturdays game late first half concussion taking helmettohelmet hit titans johnathan cyprien head coach andy reid said kelce appeared recovering well game expected kelce could played divisional round playoffs chiefs advanced wr demarcus robinson entered leagues concussion protocol collision late saturdays game report card vs titans passing offense b quarterback alex smith enough win games one smith delivered efficient 23of33 passing effort 264 yards two touchdowns mostly impressive first half chiefs need one play second half sustain drive get fieldgoal range end game smith receivers couldnt get job done blame loss lies elsewhere smith teammates chance overcome deficiencies others rushing offense cminus unit might deserve incomplete kareem hunt getting 11 carries 42 yards including five touches second half much lack performance second half stemmed chiefs failing sustain momentum offense offense needed one play sustaining drive picking big gain hunt backfield never found second half pass defense cplus holding quarterback marcus mariota 19of31 passing 205 yards two touchdowns interception could win games huge part playing pass defense titans means containing mariota pocket chiefs failed mariota scrambled eight times 46 yards pass rush failed keep pocket allowed lanes escape surrendering touchdown pass mariota bad luck letting mariota escape pocket find position falls pass defense rush defense dminus team win playoff game yielding 156 rushing yards opponents backfield derrick henry damage 23 carries certainly injuries played role chiefs held henry check first half 42 yards 10 carries absence defensive lineman chris jones second half proved kansas citys breaking point rakeem nunezroches game jarvis jenkins dinged well titans adjusted second half kansas city could make changes needed response special teams cminus chiefs punt team created turnover little else went right specialteams group kicker harrison butker missed 48yard field goal might made difference kansas citys special teams prides making big plays team went entire season without gamebreaking play tyreek hill opened game kickoff returner netted 17 yards club brought charcandrick west hill kickoff returner might chiefs needed turn game way coaching dplus chiefs clearly entered game winning plan jumping 213 halftime lead whereas titans made every adjustment needed mount comeback reids squad absolutely nothing sustain momentum secondhalf letdowns serve recurring theme team perhaps fitting failing make single play sustain offensive drive get titans field defense time second half serves final tribute inconsistent season reids first five years kansas city | 1,097 |
<p>Football Saturdays in Madison <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/OnWisconsin?src=hash" type="external">#OnWisconsin</a> || <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Badgers?src=hash" type="external">#Badgers</a> <a href="https://t.co/gLXs1uCWAl" type="external">pic.twitter.com/gLXs1uCWAl</a></p>
<p>— Wisconsin Football (@BadgerFootball) <a href="https://twitter.com/BadgerFootball/status/906618425400840192" type="external">September 9, 2017</a></p>
<p>MADISON, Wis. — Freshman running back Jonathan Taylor rushed for three touchdowns to pace No. 9 Wisconsin to a 31-14 victory over Florida Atlantic on Saturday in front of an announced crowd of 77,542 at Camp Randall Stadium.</p>
<p>Taylor, in his first career start for the Badgers, had 26 carries for 223 yards and one fumble. He replaced sophomore Bradrick Shaw, who suffered a right leg injury last week against Utah State.</p>
<p>Badgers sophomore quarterback Alex Hornibrook completed 16 of 28 passes for 201 yards with one touchdown and one interception.</p>
<p>The Badgers (2-0) got on the scoreboard first on the second play of the second series as Taylor broke free from an Owls defender and slipped between two others for a 64-yard touchdown at the 10:00 mark of the first quarter.</p>
<p>It didn’t take long for Taylor to find the end zone again. Freshman wide receiver <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Danny_Davis/" type="external">Danny Davis</a> was the catalyst on the drive with a 35-yard pass from Hornibrook that put Wisconsin on the Owls’ 41-yard line. Two plays later, Taylor broke three tackles for a 29-yard TD run that gave Wisconsin a 14-0 lead with 6:40 to go in the first quarter.</p>
<p>Taylor surpassed his 87-yard, one-touchdown performance in Wisconsin’s 51-19 win over Utah — in the first half. He had 17 carries for 148 yards and two scores in the first half against Florida Atlantic.</p>
<p>The Owls (0-2) had a trio of three-and-out series to start, but it only took 31 seconds for them to score on their fourth and cut the Badgers lead to 14-7. After a short run, Florida Atlantic sophomore quarterback Daniel Parr connected with junior wide receiver DeAndre McNeal on a 63-yard TD pass with 3:09 to go in the first.</p>
<p>Hornibrook, who completed seven straight passes during a stretch between the first and second quarters, had a decent effort in the first half for the Badgers. He tossed a 12-yard TD pass to senior tight end Troy Fumagalli to extend Wisconsin’s lead to 21-7 with 9:05 remaining in the second half.</p>
<p>The Owls’ effort to trim Wisconsin’s advantage in the second half fell short as a field-goal attempt was botched due to a bad snap.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Hornibrook’s second-quarter miscue occurred when he failed to see a defender. Hornibrook’s pass was picked off by Owls sophomore defensive end Leighton McCarthy, who had a 15-yard interception return.</p>
<p>Florida Atlantic capitalized on the turnover and pulled closer at 21-14 on a 5-play, 27-yard scoring drive that was capped by a 1-yard TD by sophomore running back Devin Singletary with 4:29 left in the half.</p>
<p>Sophomore wide receiver Quintez Cephus provided an assist to stretch Wisconsin’s margin on its final first-half scoring drive. On third-and-7, Cephus fought through contact to catch a 34-yard touchdown pass to get the Badgers to the 18-yard line. Junior kicker Rafael Gaglianone drilled a 20-yard field goal with two seconds left in the half to lift Wisconsin to a 24-14 lead.</p>
<p>The Owls couldn’t take advantage of a third-quarter turnover by Taylor, who fumbled on the 36-yard line. Florida Atlantic junior cornerback Shelton Lewis forced the fumble and senior defensive back Raekwon Williams recovered the ball.</p>
<p>Parr completed 9 of 19 passes for 142 yards and one TD in the setback for Florida Atlantic. McNeal led the Owls in receiving with three catches for 103 yards, while Singletary paced the offense on the ground with 17 carries for 68 yards and 1 score.</p>
<p>Wisconsin’s defense held the Owls to 248 overall yards, including 106 rushing yards. Penalties also hampered Florida Atlantic, which racked up eight for 73 yards.</p>
<p>Gaglianone missed a 37-yard field goal attempt for Wisconsin with 6:15 left, as the kick sailed wide to the left.</p>
<p>Junior running back Chris James also provided a boost to the Badgers’ run game, contributing 16 carries for 101 yards.</p>
<p>NOTES: Wisconsin senior DE Chikwe Obasih suffered a knee injury in practice this week and didn’t play on Saturday. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that the fifth-year senior sustained the injury on Wednesday. Obasih had started 31 consecutive games. … With <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Hurricane-Irma/" type="external">Hurricane Irma</a> scheduled to bear down on Florida on Saturday and Sunday, Florida Atlantic officials secured a larger charter plane so family members of the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/John_Walker/" type="external">football</a> staff could travel to Madison, Wis. Badgers athletic director <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Barry_Alvarez/" type="external">Barry Alvarez</a> said that athletic department officials would help ensure the Owls team’s safety by helping pay for extra hotel nights and opening up university facilities to Florida Atlantic. The team won’t leave until the storm has abated. … Leading up to the game against Florida Atlantic, Badgers quarterbacks had gone seven straight games without throwing an interception. That stretch started on Nov. 5, 2016.</p> | false | 1 | football saturdays madison onwisconsin badgers pictwittercomglxs1ucwal wisconsin football badgerfootball september 9 2017 madison wis freshman running back jonathan taylor rushed three touchdowns pace 9 wisconsin 3114 victory florida atlantic saturday front announced crowd 77542 camp randall stadium taylor first career start badgers 26 carries 223 yards one fumble replaced sophomore bradrick shaw suffered right leg injury last week utah state badgers sophomore quarterback alex hornibrook completed 16 28 passes 201 yards one touchdown one interception badgers 20 got scoreboard first second play second series taylor broke free owls defender slipped two others 64yard touchdown 1000 mark first quarter didnt take long taylor find end zone freshman wide receiver danny davis catalyst drive 35yard pass hornibrook put wisconsin owls 41yard line two plays later taylor broke three tackles 29yard td run gave wisconsin 140 lead 640 go first quarter taylor surpassed 87yard onetouchdown performance wisconsins 5119 win utah first half 17 carries 148 yards two scores first half florida atlantic owls 02 trio threeandout series start took 31 seconds score fourth cut badgers lead 147 short run florida atlantic sophomore quarterback daniel parr connected junior wide receiver deandre mcneal 63yard td pass 309 go first hornibrook completed seven straight passes stretch first second quarters decent effort first half badgers tossed 12yard td pass senior tight end troy fumagalli extend wisconsins lead 217 905 remaining second half owls effort trim wisconsins advantage second half fell short fieldgoal attempt botched due bad snap meanwhile hornibrooks secondquarter miscue occurred failed see defender hornibrooks pass picked owls sophomore defensive end leighton mccarthy 15yard interception return florida atlantic capitalized turnover pulled closer 2114 5play 27yard scoring drive capped 1yard td sophomore running back devin singletary 429 left half sophomore wide receiver quintez cephus provided assist stretch wisconsins margin final firsthalf scoring drive thirdand7 cephus fought contact catch 34yard touchdown pass get badgers 18yard line junior kicker rafael gaglianone drilled 20yard field goal two seconds left half lift wisconsin 2414 lead owls couldnt take advantage thirdquarter turnover taylor fumbled 36yard line florida atlantic junior cornerback shelton lewis forced fumble senior defensive back raekwon williams recovered ball parr completed 9 19 passes 142 yards one td setback florida atlantic mcneal led owls receiving three catches 103 yards singletary paced offense ground 17 carries 68 yards 1 score wisconsins defense held owls 248 overall yards including 106 rushing yards penalties also hampered florida atlantic racked eight 73 yards gaglianone missed 37yard field goal attempt wisconsin 615 left kick sailed wide left junior running back chris james also provided boost badgers run game contributing 16 carries 101 yards notes wisconsin senior de chikwe obasih suffered knee injury practice week didnt play saturday milwaukee journal sentinel reported fifthyear senior sustained injury wednesday obasih started 31 consecutive games hurricane irma scheduled bear florida saturday sunday florida atlantic officials secured larger charter plane family members football staff could travel madison wis badgers athletic director barry alvarez said athletic department officials would help ensure owls teams safety helping pay extra hotel nights opening university facilities florida atlantic team wont leave storm abated leading game florida atlantic badgers quarterbacks gone seven straight games without throwing interception stretch started nov 5 2016 | 526 |
<p>The desperate U.S.-UK relationship</p>
<p>“We can neither endure our vices nor face the remedies needed to cure them.” — Titus Livy</p>
<p>Over the past months, media commentary on the massive and aggressively intrusive electronic collection effort being mounted by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and its British counterpart, GCHQ, has focused on the constitutional issues raised by the two governments’ wanton violation of the personal privacy rights of hundreds of millions of their citizens. And this surely is an important aspect of the problem, although the Obama administration clearly has no use for the U.S. Constitution in any venue, preferring to simply enforce the laws it likes and let the rest molder, while simultaneously shredding the 4th Amendment and attacking the 1st and the 2nd Amendments. That Eric Holder and Barack Obama have not been impeached, moreover, suggests that the impeachment provisions of the Constitution are a dead letter; that they apply only to individuals named Nixon; or that they do not apply to Black Americans supported by such towering giants of fatuousness as Oprah, Chris Matthews, Fareed Zakaria, Piers Morgan, and Hillary Clinton and her motley band of Viragos.</p>
<p>But there is an equally important dimension of the NSA-GCHQ issue that has been discussed not at all either by the media or by the politicians in all U.S. and UK parties that abet the lies of President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron. Leaving aside the illegality of the collection for a moment, let us focus on the most basic motivation for the on-going, vacuum-like collection operation; namely, the utter desperation engendered in Obama and Cameron by their being aware that much of the Muslim world is now either at war or supporting war against the West, and that the Islamist enemy is beyond their ability to control or contain, let alone destroy.</p>
<p>Obama and Cameron have followed the lie-strewn path toward the West’s destruction first blazed by Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Tony Blair. Obama and Cameron greatly exaggerate the supposedly disastrous impact of Bin Laden’s death on al-Qaeda and the Islamist movement, while, like their predecessors, maintaining that fountain of falsehood that spews forth nonsense about the motivation of the mujahedin being their hatred for liberty, Budweiser, freedom, and Iowa primaries. As this deceit flows, the Islamists and their war on the West have become much more popular in the Muslim world, as witnessed by their astounding geographical expansion and manpower growth since 2001, as well as by their easy defeat of the U.S. and British militaries in Iraq and Afghanistan.</p>
<p>Obama and Cameron also know that their unquenchable thirst to intervene in the Muslim world has yielded lethal results for their own people. Foregoing an adult-like silence, they, like mindless adolescents, cheered on the “freedom-loving democrats” in Tahrir Square, promoting and deepening the chaos that led to the Islamists’ stripping Egypt’s arsenals of modern weaponry and freeing thousands of veteran and talented mujahedin who were incarcerated in Mubarak’s prisons. Those men and weapons are now in active service from Algeria to Afghanistan to Nigeria to Syria.</p>
<p>The Western World’s self-proclaimed leaders next joined with France’s Nicholas Sarkozy to intervene in Libya to bring freedom to the tens of millions of Libyan democrats, only to find that there were no democrats and that they had again augmented the Islamist movement’s weapons inventory and manpower, while leaving Libya on the edge of becoming an Islamic state.</p>
<p>Ever blind to the costs of unwarranted intervention in the Muslim world, Obama and Cameron backed the feckless French invasion of Mali—which will further spread the Islamists’ war in Africa—and then acquiesced, with silent joy, as the Egyptian military overthrew the Islamist Morsi government after its victory in a free and fair election, thereby forever ending any possibility that the West can convince the Islamic world that it will allow Muslim self-determination. The West-approved Egyptian military coup revalidated al-Qaeda’s leader al-Zawahiri’s 2005 advice that self-determination for Muslims and the reinvigoration of their faith can only come out of an AK-47’s muzzle.</p>
<p>Most recently, Obama and Cameron have shown Muslims that, for the West, Israel always has carte blanche to steal Palestinian land, as Netanyahu rapidly expands settlement building. And they have again demonstrated their willingness to condemn Americans and Britons to endless war by deciding to arm the Islamist insurgency that will eventually rule Syria because Islamist leaders there were smart enough to push forward a few Syrians who chirped some nifty phrases about the glories of democracy. As always, U.S. presidents and British prime ministers are the Islamists only indispensable allies.</p>
<p>The foregoing can only be called a world of trouble, one in which the Islamists’ war on America and its allies is gaining strength and geographical reach, and is brimming with confidence in Allah’s beneficence after He allowed the mujahedin to easily defeat the U.S. superpower in Afghanistan and Iraq. To confront this growing religious war, Obama and Cameron have decided not to use their militaries effectively—too much bloodshed for such effete, worldly wise sophisticates—but to rely on the basically defensive capabilities of their intelligence communities, such as electronic intercepts and the drone and Special Forces attacks they facilitate. Sadly, these tools are no more than irksome if lethal pinpricks to the growing Islamist movement, and do nothing to slow, let alone halt its growth.</p>
<p>For America, the UK, and their NATO allies, a day of reckoning is meandering toward them; its approach is slow and steady because of the extraordinary patience bred in Islamists and Muslims generally by both the tenets of their faith and reliable Anglo-American military fecklessness. Obama, Bush, Clinton, Cameron, and Blair have eased the Islamists’ way by refusing to kill enough of the mujahedin and—as important—of their civilian supporters to convince them that their game of religious war is not worth the candle. And, in any event, once NATO leaves Afghanistan, is not at all clear where Western military power can in the near term be brought to bear to deliver the requisite slaughter. (NB: Over the longer term, this will not be a question. The U.S. and British militaries eventually will be deployed to destroy the mujahedin operating inside the United States and the UK as a consequence of the non-enforcement of existing immigration and border-control laws, laws which, in America, Obama is now trying eliminate altogether.)</p>
<p>Thus, in the name of championing such Islamist-favoring concepts as human rights, interventionist foreign policies, politically correct speech, the war-prolonging proportionality of Just War theory; and the absurd goal of zero civilian casualties, Obama and Cameron know they are losing the war the Islamists are waging against their countries, and in their desperation they have few weapons to use save the above-cited ones, weapons that now and again kill a few mujahedin, and others—especially the universal electronic surveillance of citizens—that will inconvenience the Islamists but gradually destroy the civil liberties of Americans and Britons.</p>
<p>In their palpable desperation, Obama and Cameron will expand the use of those weapons and, by doing so, they will protect the growing power and durability of our Islamist enemies, while undermining the constitutional structure, the rule of law, and the civil liberties which, since England’s Glorious Revolution (1688-89), Anglo-Americans have built and defended against the despotic drift of their rulers with argument, protest, and—if at last needed—violence.</p>
<p>As they head further down the road of losing wars and wrecking Anglo-American liberties, Messrs Obama and Cameron and their supporters all parties would do well to read the words of the great 17th century English republican Algernon Sydney, a man who was revered on both sides of the Atlantic, who greatly influenced America’s founders, and who was executed by the British Crown for what it described a sedition. “There must therefore be a right,” Sydney wrote, “of proceeding judicially or extra-judicially against all persons who transgress the laws; or else those laws, and the societies that should subsist by them, cannot stand; and the ends for which governments are constituted, together with the governments themselves, must be overthrown. … If he [a political leader] be justly accounted an enemy of all, who injures all; he above all must be the publick enemy of a nation, who by usurping power over them, does the greatest and most publick injury that a people can suffer. For which reason, by an established law among the virtuous nations, every man might kill a tyrant; and no names are recorded in history with more honour, than of those who did it.”[1]</p>
<p>Note</p>
<p>[1] Thomas G. West (ed), Algernon Sydney. Discourses Concerning Government. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1996, pp. 221, 227.</p> | false | 1 | desperate usuk relationship neither endure vices face remedies needed cure titus livy past months media commentary massive aggressively intrusive electronic collection effort mounted us national security agency nsa british counterpart gchq focused constitutional issues raised two governments wanton violation personal privacy rights hundreds millions citizens surely important aspect problem although obama administration clearly use us constitution venue preferring simply enforce laws likes let rest molder simultaneously shredding 4th amendment attacking 1st 2nd amendments eric holder barack obama impeached moreover suggests impeachment provisions constitution dead letter apply individuals named nixon apply black americans supported towering giants fatuousness oprah chris matthews fareed zakaria piers morgan hillary clinton motley band viragos equally important dimension nsagchq issue discussed either media politicians us uk parties abet lies president obama prime minister cameron leaving aside illegality collection moment let us focus basic motivation ongoing vacuumlike collection operation namely utter desperation engendered obama cameron aware much muslim world either war supporting war west islamist enemy beyond ability control contain let alone destroy obama cameron followed liestrewn path toward wests destruction first blazed bill clinton george w bush tony blair obama cameron greatly exaggerate supposedly disastrous impact bin ladens death alqaeda islamist movement like predecessors maintaining fountain falsehood spews forth nonsense motivation mujahedin hatred liberty budweiser freedom iowa primaries deceit flows islamists war west become much popular muslim world witnessed astounding geographical expansion manpower growth since 2001 well easy defeat us british militaries iraq afghanistan obama cameron also know unquenchable thirst intervene muslim world yielded lethal results people foregoing adultlike silence like mindless adolescents cheered freedomloving democrats tahrir square promoting deepening chaos led islamists stripping egypts arsenals modern weaponry freeing thousands veteran talented mujahedin incarcerated mubaraks prisons men weapons active service algeria afghanistan nigeria syria western worlds selfproclaimed leaders next joined frances nicholas sarkozy intervene libya bring freedom tens millions libyan democrats find democrats augmented islamist movements weapons inventory manpower leaving libya edge becoming islamic state ever blind costs unwarranted intervention muslim world obama cameron backed feckless french invasion maliwhich spread islamists war africaand acquiesced silent joy egyptian military overthrew islamist morsi government victory free fair election thereby forever ending possibility west convince islamic world allow muslim selfdetermination westapproved egyptian military coup revalidated alqaedas leader alzawahiris 2005 advice selfdetermination muslims reinvigoration faith come ak47s muzzle recently obama cameron shown muslims west israel always carte blanche steal palestinian land netanyahu rapidly expands settlement building demonstrated willingness condemn americans britons endless war deciding arm islamist insurgency eventually rule syria islamist leaders smart enough push forward syrians chirped nifty phrases glories democracy always us presidents british prime ministers islamists indispensable allies foregoing called world trouble one islamists war america allies gaining strength geographical reach brimming confidence allahs beneficence allowed mujahedin easily defeat us superpower afghanistan iraq confront growing religious war obama cameron decided use militaries effectivelytoo much bloodshed effete worldly wise sophisticatesbut rely basically defensive capabilities intelligence communities electronic intercepts drone special forces attacks facilitate sadly tools irksome lethal pinpricks growing islamist movement nothing slow let alone halt growth america uk nato allies day reckoning meandering toward approach slow steady extraordinary patience bred islamists muslims generally tenets faith reliable angloamerican military fecklessness obama bush clinton cameron blair eased islamists way refusing kill enough mujahedin andas importantof civilian supporters convince game religious war worth candle event nato leaves afghanistan clear western military power near term brought bear deliver requisite slaughter nb longer term question us british militaries eventually deployed destroy mujahedin operating inside united states uk consequence nonenforcement existing immigration bordercontrol laws laws america obama trying eliminate altogether thus name championing islamistfavoring concepts human rights interventionist foreign policies politically correct speech warprolonging proportionality war theory absurd goal zero civilian casualties obama cameron know losing war islamists waging countries desperation weapons use save abovecited ones weapons kill mujahedin othersespecially universal electronic surveillance citizensthat inconvenience islamists gradually destroy civil liberties americans britons palpable desperation obama cameron expand use weapons protect growing power durability islamist enemies undermining constitutional structure rule law civil liberties since englands glorious revolution 168889 angloamericans built defended despotic drift rulers argument protest andif last neededviolence head road losing wars wrecking angloamerican liberties messrs obama cameron supporters parties would well read words great 17th century english republican algernon sydney man revered sides atlantic greatly influenced americas founders executed british crown described sedition must therefore right sydney wrote proceeding judicially extrajudicially persons transgress laws else laws societies subsist stand ends governments constituted together governments must overthrown political leader justly accounted enemy injures must publick enemy nation usurping power greatest publick injury people suffer reason established law among virtuous nations every man might kill tyrant names recorded history honour it1 note 1 thomas g west ed algernon sydney discourses concerning government indianapolis liberty fund 1996 pp 221 227 | 784 |
<p>BALTIMORE — Three days after the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Chicago-Cubs/" type="external">Chicago Cubs</a> paid a steep price to their crosstown rival for another front-line starting pitcher, Jose Quintana showed why it may have been worth it.</p>
<p>Quintana made a sensational debut for the Cubs on Sunday, striking out 12 over seven scoreless innings in an 8-0 victory over the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Baltimore-Orioles/" type="external">Baltimore Orioles</a>.</p>
<p>“I felt a little nervous in the first inning,” said Quintana, who was acquired Thursday in a blockbuster trade that sent four minor-league prospects to the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Chicago-White-Sox/" type="external">Chicago White Sox</a>. “But, after a couple of throws, I threw everything out and could focus on my game.”</p>
<p>With Quintana and the big bats leading the way, the Cubs opened the second half of the season with a three-game sweep of the Baltimore Orioles. They scored 27 runs and hit 10 home runs in the series.</p>
<p>The Cubs climbed back over .500 at 46-45 and pulled within 4 1/2 games of the first-place <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Milwaukee-Brewers/" type="external">Milwaukee Brewers</a>, who lost at home to the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Philadelphia-Phillies/" type="external">Philadelphia Phillies</a> 5-2.</p>
<p>“The most impressive part has been the energy,” Cubs manager <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Joe_Maddon/" type="external">Joe Maddon</a> said. “I really believe if we play with that kind of internal fire and energy, we are going to win a lot of games in the second half. That’s the difference for me. It’s just how we feel about ourselves.”</p>
<p>Quintana, the first left-hander and just the third pitcher overall to make starts for the Cubs and White Sox in the same season, provided a huge boost right from his first pitch Sunday.</p>
<p>He struck out Adams Jones to start his day and worked three perfect innings with five strikeouts before allowing a hit.</p>
<p>Jones got him for a ground-rule double to start the fourth inning for the Orioles’ first hit, but he was stranded on third after Quintana got <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Manny-Machado/" type="external">Manny Machado</a> to ground out meekly to first base and then struck out Jonathan Schoop and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Mark_Trumbo/" type="external">Mark Trumbo</a>.</p>
<p>After struggling in six previous starts against the Orioles, including one on May 7 with the White Sox, Quintana only surrendered three hits.</p>
<p>“Listen, he was obviously really good,” Maddon said. “I really liked his routine on the mound. Did you notice the big breath? Then, the delivery begins after that. Tremendous focus per pitch. That’s what I took away from it.”</p>
<p>The Cubs earned their first interleague sweep on the road since August of 2016 and just their second road sweep over an American League East opponent with a big assist from their newly acquired pitcher.</p>
<p>Catcher <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Willson-Contreras/" type="external">Willson Contreras</a>, batting cleanup, recorded the first four-hit game of his career, while <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Anthony-Rizzo/" type="external">Anthony Rizzo</a> and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kris-Bryant/" type="external">Kris Bryant</a> each homered for the defending World Series champions, who jumped all over maligned Orioles starter <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ubaldo_Jimenez/" type="external">Ubaldo Jimenez</a>.</p>
<p>The Cubs opened the second inning with three straight doubles to grab the early lead.</p>
<p>A two-out single to center by leadoff man <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ben_Zobrist/" type="external">Ben Zobrist</a> in the second made it 4-0 and marked the 10th two-out run the Cubs scored over the last two games.</p>
<p>Bryant extended the lead to 6-0 in the fourth by ripping a 1-0 pitch from Jimenez into the left-field stands for his 19th home run of the season. Later, with no outs in the ninth inning, Rizzo belted his 22nd homer into the center-field seats off of reliever <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Darren_O_Day/" type="external">Darren O’Day</a>.</p>
<p>“It’s a good team,” Orioles manager <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Buck-Showalter/" type="external">Buck Showalter</a> said. “They are not going to let you get away with those mistakes.”</p>
<p>Quintana matched the Cubs’ record for the most strikeouts in a debut. It marked the third time this season that the left-hander has struck out 10 or more batters and the 10th time of his career. His career high for strikeouts in a game is 13.</p>
<p>He came into the game with a 1-4 record against the Orioles and a 4.29 ERA. In his last start against them on May 7, he allowed four runs on nine hits over five innings in a losing effort. But he showed Sunday why he could be such a valuable addition for the Cubs during the second half of the season.</p>
<p>“That’s why you have to give up four players for a guy like him,” Showalter said. “We knew he’d be having a lot of adrenaline flowing for him today, new teammates, trying to make a mark and prove himself a little bit.”</p>
<p>Jimenez, on the other hand, was not nearly as good. He lasted just 3 2/3 innings, allowing six earned runs on 11 hits. He hasn’t made it out of the fourth inning in six of his 14 starts this season. He hasn’t gotten past the fifth inning in 10 of those starts.</p>
<p>“I was able to get ahead but couldn’t put it away,” Jimenez said. “They were having too good of an approach, taking the ball to the opposite field. And by the time we figured it out, it was too late. They already scored three, four runs.”</p>
<p>The Orioles fell to a season-worst seven games below .500 at 42-49. They are 3-9 in July and 1-7 in their last eight games at Camden Yards.</p>
<p>NOTES: After losing six consecutive road series, the Cubs are now unbeaten in four of their last five. … Cubs C Willson Contreras has now hit safely in 10 of his last 11 games. … Orioles RHP Ubaldo Jimenez suffered his first home loss of the season in seven starts. He fell to 8-4 in 15 interleague starts and 15-11 in 33 starts overall against the opposing league. … The Orioles were swept at home for just the second time this season. They lost three in a row at home to the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Minnesota-Twins/" type="external">Minnesota Twins</a> on May 22-24.</p> | false | 1 | baltimore three days chicago cubs paid steep price crosstown rival another frontline starting pitcher jose quintana showed may worth quintana made sensational debut cubs sunday striking 12 seven scoreless innings 80 victory baltimore orioles felt little nervous first inning said quintana acquired thursday blockbuster trade sent four minorleague prospects chicago white sox couple throws threw everything could focus game quintana big bats leading way cubs opened second half season threegame sweep baltimore orioles scored 27 runs hit 10 home runs series cubs climbed back 500 4645 pulled within 4 12 games firstplace milwaukee brewers lost home philadelphia phillies 52 impressive part energy cubs manager joe maddon said really believe play kind internal fire energy going win lot games second half thats difference feel quintana first lefthander third pitcher overall make starts cubs white sox season provided huge boost right first pitch sunday struck adams jones start day worked three perfect innings five strikeouts allowing hit jones got groundrule double start fourth inning orioles first hit stranded third quintana got manny machado ground meekly first base struck jonathan schoop mark trumbo struggling six previous starts orioles including one may 7 white sox quintana surrendered three hits listen obviously really good maddon said really liked routine mound notice big breath delivery begins tremendous focus per pitch thats took away cubs earned first interleague sweep road since august 2016 second road sweep american league east opponent big assist newly acquired pitcher catcher willson contreras batting cleanup recorded first fourhit game career anthony rizzo kris bryant homered defending world series champions jumped maligned orioles starter ubaldo jimenez cubs opened second inning three straight doubles grab early lead twoout single center leadoff man ben zobrist second made 40 marked 10th twoout run cubs scored last two games bryant extended lead 60 fourth ripping 10 pitch jimenez leftfield stands 19th home run season later outs ninth inning rizzo belted 22nd homer centerfield seats reliever darren oday good team orioles manager buck showalter said going let get away mistakes quintana matched cubs record strikeouts debut marked third time season lefthander struck 10 batters 10th time career career high strikeouts game 13 came game 14 record orioles 429 era last start may 7 allowed four runs nine hits five innings losing effort showed sunday could valuable addition cubs second half season thats give four players guy like showalter said knew hed lot adrenaline flowing today new teammates trying make mark prove little bit jimenez hand nearly good lasted 3 23 innings allowing six earned runs 11 hits hasnt made fourth inning six 14 starts season hasnt gotten past fifth inning 10 starts able get ahead couldnt put away jimenez said good approach taking ball opposite field time figured late already scored three four runs orioles fell seasonworst seven games 500 4249 39 july 17 last eight games camden yards notes losing six consecutive road series cubs unbeaten four last five cubs c willson contreras hit safely 10 last 11 games orioles rhp ubaldo jimenez suffered first home loss season seven starts fell 84 15 interleague starts 1511 33 starts overall opposing league orioles swept home second time season lost three row home minnesota twins may 2224 | 528 |
<p>IT IS INCREASINGLY CLEAR that John Kerry and the Democrats plan to make embryonic stem cell research a campaign issue. In a speech in Denver last week, Sen. Kerry attacked the Bush administration for letting “ideology and fear stand in the way” of medical progress. In a June 12 radio address, he called stem cells the “crucial next steps in humanity’s uphill climb.” He appealed to the memory and suffering of Ronald Reagan; he rattled off a long list of diseases that stem cells “have the power” to cure; he said “if we pursue the limitless potential of our science, and trust that we can use it wisely, we will save millions of lives and earn the gratitude of future generations.” In a speech late last year, Kerry declared that “nothing illustrates this administration’s anti-science attitude better than George Bush’s cynical decision to limit research on embryonic stem cells.”</p>
<p>The one-dimensional zeal of Kerry’s stem cell campaign is striking. He offers no serious discussion of the ethical dilemmas involved in destroying nascent human life–just assertions that the ethical issues will be “resolved.” He shows little respect for citizens who believe destroying human embryos is wrong–just demands that their tax dollars be used to support it. He says that we should “push the boundaries of medical exploration”–but says nothing about what ethical boundaries, if any, should be inviolable. For example: Should we use public funds to produce cloned embryos for research and destruction? Should we develop embryos–cloned or uncloned–to the fetal stage as a source of spare parts? Should we implant human embryos in animal wombs? Is there anything a civilized people should refuse to do–even if it might advance medicine in the future? On these ethical questions, Kerry is utterly silent. Or rather, he says, “I have full faith that our scientists will go forward with a moral compass”–but says nothing about what compass they’ll use.</p>
<p>President Bush’s policy on the federal funding of experiments using embryonic stem cells, announced in the summer of 2001, is both more moderate and more responsible than Kerry’s call for science without limits. The Bush policy aims to promote medical progress by publicly funding research on a limited number of already-existing embryonic stem cell lines. But it also aims to respect the dignity of early human life by not using federal funds to promote embryo destruction. And it aims to respect the pluralism of the country by not forcing those who oppose embryo research to pay for it. The Bush policy satisfies no one completely: Pro-lifers lament the fact that embryo destruction proceeds apace in the private sector; scientists lament that only some embryonic stem cell research is eligible for public funding. But as an example of statesmanship on a morally contentious issue, the Bush policy is not only defensible but wise.</p>
<p>By contrast, Sen. Kerry is demagogic. He repeatedly overstates the imminent promise of stem cell therapies. He asserts, for example, that “stem cells have the power to slow the loss of a grandmother’s memory.” But leading scientists say that embryonic stem cells will likely do no such thing; they are not a promising means of curing Alzheimer’s. He promises that “millions” of sick patients will be cured, even though embryonic stem cell research is still so young that there have been no clinical trials. But for Kerry, stem cells have become a political religion, with scientists as the persecuted saviors. In a nation that spends more than $28 billion per year on federally funded biomedical research, this is ridiculous.</p>
<p>At the same time, Kerry seems to believe that scientific progress is beyond public debate; that its “limitless potential” should never be stopped; that only scientists should be allowed to decide where science will take us. But science requires self-government–not only by experts, but by citizens. The nation must decide which areas of science most deserve funding. It must debate the risks and benefits of useful but potentially dangerous technologies. And it must debate the consequences of ethically problematic research–especially when the progress of science does not necessarily mean the progress of civilization. Embryo research advocates want to save life; no one doubts their compassionate intentions. But compassion divorced from ethical reasoning becomes unhinged.</p>
<p>In fact, in the stem cell debate, the self-declared “party of science” is not usually the party of reason. They appeal to the suffering of loved ones (or celebrities) to make the argument for destroying human embryos. Such suffering is real and often horrible. But suffering is not an argument, and the case for embryo research must rest on some notion of what embryos are, what standing they should be accorded, and the moral consequences of using them as means for our own benefit.</p>
<p>But on these hard questions, the leading advocates of federal funding for embryo research are largely silent. Sen. Kerry and his allies feel little need to make concrete moral arguments because they are on the side of “progress.” To them, all ethical boundaries (and even all ethical deliberation) are the product of “ideology” and “fear.” In Sen. Kerry’s mind, progress seems to mean conquering all personal limits. Optimism is apparently the belief that I can–or I should–live forever. As Sen. Kerry put it in his radio address, a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s “can’t mean the end. . . . You won’t let it. So in our own way, we become researchers and scientists. We become advocates and friends, and we reach for a cure that cannot–that must not–be too far away.” The trouble is that our desire to conquer disease can make us justify unjustifiable things–like using nascent lives as tools to help others. And our faith in “humanity’s uphill climb” can leave us blind or indifferent to the ethical consequences of our present behavior.</p>
<p>Ronald Reagan–“an eternal optimist,” as Kerry described him when invoking his memory to advance the stem cell cause–had a very different faith in the future. When diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease after a long and heroic life, Reagan had the dignity to say goodbye to the nation he loved. He accepted that his own best days were behind him, but he believed in the future because he believed in those who would follow. “I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life,” he wrote. “I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead.” In other words, Reagan was an optimist, not a narcissist. And while he sympathized with the patients and families suffering with degenerative diseases, he would have found it indecent (or evil) to use the seeds of the next generation as tools for saving his own life. Progress, he knew, means not living forever, but passing down a more decent society to one’s children.</p>
<p>The nation is obviously divided about whether destroying human embryos in search of cures is progress, regress, or both at once. And perhaps it is not easy to see the humanity of human embryos when faced with the agonizing suffering of those we know so well and love so dearly. But only a zealot would ignore the moral hazards of pursuing a national project of embryo destruction, and only a zealot would demand that all citizens pay for research that many citizens find unconscionable. In the embryonic stem cell debate, Bush is the moderate; Kerry is the zealot.</p>
<p>Eric Cohen is editor of the New Atlantis and a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.</p> | false | 1 | increasingly clear john kerry democrats plan make embryonic stem cell research campaign issue speech denver last week sen kerry attacked bush administration letting ideology fear stand way medical progress june 12 radio address called stem cells crucial next steps humanitys uphill climb appealed memory suffering ronald reagan rattled long list diseases stem cells power cure said pursue limitless potential science trust use wisely save millions lives earn gratitude future generations speech late last year kerry declared nothing illustrates administrations antiscience attitude better george bushs cynical decision limit research embryonic stem cells onedimensional zeal kerrys stem cell campaign striking offers serious discussion ethical dilemmas involved destroying nascent human lifejust assertions ethical issues resolved shows little respect citizens believe destroying human embryos wrongjust demands tax dollars used support says push boundaries medical explorationbut says nothing ethical boundaries inviolable example use public funds produce cloned embryos research destruction develop embryoscloned unclonedto fetal stage source spare parts implant human embryos animal wombs anything civilized people refuse doeven might advance medicine future ethical questions kerry utterly silent rather says full faith scientists go forward moral compassbut says nothing compass theyll use president bushs policy federal funding experiments using embryonic stem cells announced summer 2001 moderate responsible kerrys call science without limits bush policy aims promote medical progress publicly funding research limited number alreadyexisting embryonic stem cell lines also aims respect dignity early human life using federal funds promote embryo destruction aims respect pluralism country forcing oppose embryo research pay bush policy satisfies one completely prolifers lament fact embryo destruction proceeds apace private sector scientists lament embryonic stem cell research eligible public funding example statesmanship morally contentious issue bush policy defensible wise contrast sen kerry demagogic repeatedly overstates imminent promise stem cell therapies asserts example stem cells power slow loss grandmothers memory leading scientists say embryonic stem cells likely thing promising means curing alzheimers promises millions sick patients cured even though embryonic stem cell research still young clinical trials kerry stem cells become political religion scientists persecuted saviors nation spends 28 billion per year federally funded biomedical research ridiculous time kerry seems believe scientific progress beyond public debate limitless potential never stopped scientists allowed decide science take us science requires selfgovernmentnot experts citizens nation must decide areas science deserve funding must debate risks benefits useful potentially dangerous technologies must debate consequences ethically problematic researchespecially progress science necessarily mean progress civilization embryo research advocates want save life one doubts compassionate intentions compassion divorced ethical reasoning becomes unhinged fact stem cell debate selfdeclared party science usually party reason appeal suffering loved ones celebrities make argument destroying human embryos suffering real often horrible suffering argument case embryo research must rest notion embryos standing accorded moral consequences using means benefit hard questions leading advocates federal funding embryo research largely silent sen kerry allies feel little need make concrete moral arguments side progress ethical boundaries even ethical deliberation product ideology fear sen kerrys mind progress seems mean conquering personal limits optimism apparently belief canor shouldlive forever sen kerry put radio address diagnosis alzheimers cant mean end wont let way become researchers scientists become advocates friends reach cure cannotthat must notbe far away trouble desire conquer disease make us justify unjustifiable thingslike using nascent lives tools help others faith humanitys uphill climb leave us blind indifferent ethical consequences present behavior ronald reaganan eternal optimist kerry described invoking memory advance stem cell causehad different faith future diagnosed alzheimers disease long heroic life reagan dignity say goodbye nation loved accepted best days behind believed future believed would follow begin journey lead sunset life wrote know america always bright dawn ahead words reagan optimist narcissist sympathized patients families suffering degenerative diseases would found indecent evil use seeds next generation tools saving life progress knew means living forever passing decent society ones children nation obviously divided whether destroying human embryos search cures progress regress perhaps easy see humanity human embryos faced agonizing suffering know well love dearly zealot would ignore moral hazards pursuing national project embryo destruction zealot would demand citizens pay research many citizens find unconscionable embryonic stem cell debate bush moderate kerry zealot eric cohen editor new atlantis resident scholar ethics public policy center | 690 |
<p>By Ayesha Rascoe and Chris Kahn</p>
<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) – As President Donald Trump bowed his head in the Oval Office earlier this month, Texas Southern Baptist Pastor Robert Jeffress and other U.S. religious leaders laid their hands on Trump’s back and prayed for Hurricane Harvey’s victims.</p>
<p>With TV cameras and reporters watching, the scene was a powerful reminder of one of Trump’s most reliable and improbable political assets – his close ties with conservative Christians.</p>
<p>A new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows, however, that Trump’s popularity among white evangelicals has weakened, suggesting his grassroots support may not be as unconditional as religious leaders’ public displays of allegiance would suggest.</p>
<p>That may pose a problem for Trump and his allies as the 2018 midterm congressional election season nears. Trump’s strong links to conservative Christians played a key part in his stunning victory in the 2016 presidential election.</p>
<p>Though disenchanted evangelicals were unlikely to switch their votes to Democrats, they could stay home next year when U.S. voters elect senators and representatives.</p>
<p>“When your base is starting to even slowly move away from you, that should be a sign of concern,” said Justin Vaughn, director of the Center for Idaho History and Politics at Boise State University in Idaho, a state Trump won handily last year.</p>
<p>In a country that is more religious than most other western democracies and where a president’s spiritual life is closely examined, the twice-divorced New York billionaire socialite, who has attended church just twice since his Jan. 20 inauguration, is an unlikely torchbearer for conservative Christians.</p>
<p>He has labored to build and preserve this unlikely alliance, embracing social issues, such as commitment to anti-abortion and religious liberty policies, and picking staunch conservative Neil Gorsuch, for the Supreme Court.</p>
<p>Trump also mentions God far more often in public remarks than his two predecessors, a Reuters review showed.(Graphic: http://tmsnrt.rs/2y3HxbV)</p>
<p>WEAKENING BASE</p>
<p>But data from the nationwide online Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted from Jan. 22 to Aug. 25 suggest Trump has been unable to prevent his evangelical support from sliding in line with his overall ratings. The majority of those polled last month who described themselves as both “white” and a “born-again or evangelical Christian” said they approved of Trump, but considerably fewer than when he took office almost eight months ago.</p>
<p>The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the poll.</p>
<p>During a four-week period in August, 62 percent of white evangelicals said they approved of Trump, while 33 percent disapproved of the president and 5 percent said they had “mixed feelings.”</p>
<p>That is a drop from the first four weeks of Trump’s presidency, from late January to mid February, when 73 percent of white evangelicals said they approved of his performance while 23 percent disapproved and 5 percent had mixed feelings.</p>
<p>The poll was divided into eight four-week periods, with each including about 2,000 people and a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of about 2 percentage points.</p>
<p>The declines are broadly in line with those recorded among all adult Americans.</p>
<p>In interviews, 10 of the surveyed conservative Christians said they were not concerned about Trump’s religion. Rather, they questioned whether he was doing enough to help average Americans and the frequent chaos in the White House.</p>
<p>“We can’t go a week without someone leaving his administration. There is no stability in our government,” said Robert Waldram, a 52-year-old Baptist churchgoer from Williamsburg, Virginia, in a telephone interview.</p>
<p>He said he voted for Trump as a better option than Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. But Waldram said he was tired of Trump’s “childlike tantrums on Twitter.”</p>
<p>MENTIONING GOD</p>
<p>In his first 200 days in office, Trump mentioned God about 100 times in public remarks, excluding the standard “God bless America” that presidents routinely end speeches with, something his ardent supporters welcome as readiness to eschew political correctness.</p>
<p>By this point in their presidencies, Democrat Barack Obama had mentioned God 43 times, while Republican George W. Bush had referred to God in 60 instances.</p>
<p>Jeffress, one of the first prominent evangelical pastors to back Trump for president, said his God talk was apolitical.</p>
<p>“I understand that cynical people would say this is just for political expediency, but … I believe this comes out of some deep beliefs that he has personally,” Jeffress said.</p>
<p>Trump, who describes himself as Presbyterian, was not known to be an avid churchgoer before becoming president and critics have said his blunders on basic biblical knowledge, harsh attacks on political adversaries, and his demeaning comments about women clash with Christian principles.</p>
<p>“He, himself, doesn’t have the most sterling track record in terms of either church attendance or professed or displayed knowledge of scripture,” Gary Scott Smith, a historian and author of “Religion in the Oval Office: The Religious Lives of American Presidents,” said of Trump.</p>
<p>The pastors involved with Trump’s evangelical advisory board describe him, though, as very inquisitive about faith and more thoughtful on religion than he might appear in public and conservative pastors have continued to support him through various firestorms.</p>
<p>Evangelicals have had “unprecedented” White House access in this administration, said Richard Land, a board member and president of the Southern Evangelical Seminary, a Christian college.</p>
<p>After Trump’s response to violence between white nationalists and left-wing protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, led to two of his business advisory councils disbanding, there were questions about the evangelical board’s future.</p>
<p>Brooklyn, New York, megachurch pastor A.R. Bernard resigned, but others remained, saying it was their job to provide advice and counsel to Trump, even when they disagree with him, and to press the president on Christian issues.</p>
<p>Johnnie Moore, a board member and former official at Liberty University, a religious school, said: “We have a deep personal relationship with him … He has prioritized issues that are important to us and we appreciate that.”</p> | false | 1 | ayesha rascoe chris kahn washington reuters president donald trump bowed head oval office earlier month texas southern baptist pastor robert jeffress us religious leaders laid hands trumps back prayed hurricane harveys victims tv cameras reporters watching scene powerful reminder one trumps reliable improbable political assets close ties conservative christians new reutersipsos poll shows however trumps popularity among white evangelicals weakened suggesting grassroots support may unconditional religious leaders public displays allegiance would suggest may pose problem trump allies 2018 midterm congressional election season nears trumps strong links conservative christians played key part stunning victory 2016 presidential election though disenchanted evangelicals unlikely switch votes democrats could stay home next year us voters elect senators representatives base starting even slowly move away sign concern said justin vaughn director center idaho history politics boise state university idaho state trump handily last year country religious western democracies presidents spiritual life closely examined twicedivorced new york billionaire socialite attended church twice since jan 20 inauguration unlikely torchbearer conservative christians labored build preserve unlikely alliance embracing social issues commitment antiabortion religious liberty policies picking staunch conservative neil gorsuch supreme court trump also mentions god far often public remarks two predecessors reuters review showedgraphic httptmsnrtrs2y3hxbv weakening base data nationwide online reutersipsos poll conducted jan 22 aug 25 suggest trump unable prevent evangelical support sliding line overall ratings majority polled last month described white bornagain evangelical christian said approved trump considerably fewer took office almost eight months ago white house respond requests comment poll fourweek period august 62 percent white evangelicals said approved trump 33 percent disapproved president 5 percent said mixed feelings drop first four weeks trumps presidency late january mid february 73 percent white evangelicals said approved performance 23 percent disapproved 5 percent mixed feelings poll divided eight fourweek periods including 2000 people credibility interval measure accuracy 2 percentage points declines broadly line recorded among adult americans interviews 10 surveyed conservative christians said concerned trumps religion rather questioned whether enough help average americans frequent chaos white house cant go week without someone leaving administration stability government said robert waldram 52yearold baptist churchgoer williamsburg virginia telephone interview said voted trump better option democratic presidential nominee hillary clinton waldram said tired trumps childlike tantrums twitter mentioning god first 200 days office trump mentioned god 100 times public remarks excluding standard god bless america presidents routinely end speeches something ardent supporters welcome readiness eschew political correctness point presidencies democrat barack obama mentioned god 43 times republican george w bush referred god 60 instances jeffress one first prominent evangelical pastors back trump president said god talk apolitical understand cynical people would say political expediency believe comes deep beliefs personally jeffress said trump describes presbyterian known avid churchgoer becoming president critics said blunders basic biblical knowledge harsh attacks political adversaries demeaning comments women clash christian principles doesnt sterling track record terms either church attendance professed displayed knowledge scripture gary scott smith historian author religion oval office religious lives american presidents said trump pastors involved trumps evangelical advisory board describe though inquisitive faith thoughtful religion might appear public conservative pastors continued support various firestorms evangelicals unprecedented white house access administration said richard land board member president southern evangelical seminary christian college trumps response violence white nationalists leftwing protesters charlottesville virginia led two business advisory councils disbanding questions evangelical boards future brooklyn new york megachurch pastor ar bernard resigned others remained saying job provide advice counsel trump even disagree press president christian issues johnnie moore board member former official liberty university religious school said deep personal relationship prioritized issues important us appreciate | 588 |
<p>MINNEAPOLIS — For the first quarter Monday night, the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Minnesota-Vikings/" type="external">Minnesota Vikings</a> and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/New-Orleans-Saints/" type="external">New Orleans Saints</a> traded long field-goal drives, seeming to feel out the opponent and a new season.</p>
<p>After another Saints field goal in the second quarter, Minnesota quarterback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Sam_Bradford/" type="external">Sam Bradford</a> connected with receiver <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Adam-Thielen/" type="external">Adam Thielen</a> for 35 yards. The next play, Bradford went to Jarius Wright for 21 yards. An 18-yard pass to a wide-open <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Stefon-Diggs/" type="external">Stefon Diggs</a> capped the three-play, 74-yard drive with a touchdown.</p>
<p>The Vikings found their offense, the defense tightened against the league’s No. 1 offense from last season, and Minnesota was on its way to a convincing 29-19 win against the New Orleans Saints.</p>
<p>Bradford threw for 346 yards and three touchdowns, and the Vikings spoiled <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Adrian_Peterson/" type="external">Adrian Peterson</a>‘s return.</p>
<p>“I (thought) those couple plays just got us going,” Bradford said. “I think once that happened, it really just opened the door a little bit and kind of opened things up for us.”</p>
<p>Bradford completed 27 of 32 passes with no turnovers. Diggs had two touchdown receptions in the first half to go with 93 yards receiving in the game, and Thielen finished with nine receptions for 157 yards.</p>
<p>Tight end <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kyle-Rudolph/" type="external">Kyle Rudolph</a> added a touchdown reception in the second half for Minnesota (1-0).</p>
<p>“I feel like everybody was feeding off each other’s energy,” Diggs said. “Everybody was playing as a team, as a unit. The line was doing a great job, Sam was slinging it around. You guys finally get to see what I’ve been seeing.”</p>
<p>With Peterson on the opposite sideline in his New Orleans debut, Vikings rookie running back <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Dalvin-Cook/" type="external">Dalvin Cook</a> ran 22 times for 127 yards.</p>
<p>Peterson got the first two carries of the game and picked up a first down, but he was silent afterward as the Saints’ offense — which led the NFL with an average of 426 yards per game last year — had little room to run and few open receivers.</p>
<p>New Orleans quarterback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Drew_Brees/" type="external">Drew Brees</a> was 27 of 37 for 291 yards and one touchdown.</p>
<p>Peterson, who is Minnesota’s all-time rushing leader with 11,747 yards, finished with six carries for 18 yards in a timeshare with <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Mark_Ingram/" type="external">Mark Ingram</a> and rookie Alvin Kamara.</p>
<p>“It felt pretty good,” Peterson said of his first two carries. “I didn’t really know what to expect coming in. We talked about running the ball a little more, but for whatever reason got away from it. That’s how the game played out. …</p>
<p>“Their defense came out and played well. It is what it is.”</p>
<p>The Saints (0-1) kicked field goals on their first four trips to the red zone before Brees connected with tight end <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Coby-Fleener/" type="external">Coby Fleener</a> for an 8-yard touchdown with 1:56 left in the game. New Orleans finished with 344 yards of offense — just 113 yards through the first 45 minutes of the game — and was 4 of 11 on third downs.</p>
<p>“Obviously we settled for too many field goals offensively, and then all of the sudden, got into catch-up mode,” Saints coach <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Sean_Payton/" type="external">Sean Payton</a> said. “I thought early on, defensively, we did some good things and then there was a series that breaks it open in the second quarter. I felt like when we got into the second half, we were having trouble stopping much of anything.”</p>
<p>Bradford got comfortable behind his much-maligned offensive line, and the Vikings took to the air against the New Orleans defense.</p>
<p>Minnesota started four new players along the line. New tackles Riley Reiff and Mike Remmers signed as free agents, center <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Pat-Elflein/" type="external">Pat Elflein</a> was selected in the third round of the draft, and Nick Easton took over at left guard after the release of <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Alex-Boone/" type="external">Alex Boone</a> last week.</p>
<p>The group — with Boone still with the No. 1 offensive line — struggled in the preseason but came together in the opener with little time to work together in practices.</p>
<p>Bradford was sacked just once, and the Vikings averaged 4.3 yards per carry with Cook breaking two long runs in the second half.</p>
<p>“Those guys up front, they did a great job all week just making sure that they were prepared,” Bradford said. “I think it showed with the way they played tonight. They played fast. They played confident. We were getting out of the huddle. I thought the tempo was great tonight. We were getting to the line early, and I think we put pressure on them.”</p>
<p>NOTES: New Orleans RT Zach Strief left the game in the second quarter with a leg injury and didn’t return. … Longtime Vikings WR <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Randy_Moss/" type="external">Randy Moss</a> was inducted into the team’s Ring of Honor during halftime. Moss is second to former teammate <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Cris_Carter/" type="external">Cris Carter</a> in receptions (587), receiving yards (9,316) and receiving touchdowns (92) from his eight seasons in Minnesota. … WR Stefon Diggs’ two first-half touchdowns were the first for a Minnesota player in one half of the season opener since Moss accomplished the feat in 2004. … With second-round RB Dalvin Cook and third-round C Pat Elflein starting, it marked the first time two rookies started on offense for the Vikings since 1963.</p> | false | 1 | minneapolis first quarter monday night minnesota vikings new orleans saints traded long fieldgoal drives seeming feel opponent new season another saints field goal second quarter minnesota quarterback sam bradford connected receiver adam thielen 35 yards next play bradford went jarius wright 21 yards 18yard pass wideopen stefon diggs capped threeplay 74yard drive touchdown vikings found offense defense tightened leagues 1 offense last season minnesota way convincing 2919 win new orleans saints bradford threw 346 yards three touchdowns vikings spoiled adrian petersons return thought couple plays got us going bradford said think happened really opened door little bit kind opened things us bradford completed 27 32 passes turnovers diggs two touchdown receptions first half go 93 yards receiving game thielen finished nine receptions 157 yards tight end kyle rudolph added touchdown reception second half minnesota 10 feel like everybody feeding others energy diggs said everybody playing team unit line great job sam slinging around guys finally get see ive seeing peterson opposite sideline new orleans debut vikings rookie running back dalvin cook ran 22 times 127 yards peterson got first two carries game picked first silent afterward saints offense led nfl average 426 yards per game last year little room run open receivers new orleans quarterback drew brees 27 37 291 yards one touchdown peterson minnesotas alltime rushing leader 11747 yards finished six carries 18 yards timeshare mark ingram rookie alvin kamara felt pretty good peterson said first two carries didnt really know expect coming talked running ball little whatever reason got away thats game played defense came played well saints 01 kicked field goals first four trips red zone brees connected tight end coby fleener 8yard touchdown 156 left game new orleans finished 344 yards offense 113 yards first 45 minutes game 4 11 third downs obviously settled many field goals offensively sudden got catchup mode saints coach sean payton said thought early defensively good things series breaks open second quarter felt like got second half trouble stopping much anything bradford got comfortable behind muchmaligned offensive line vikings took air new orleans defense minnesota started four new players along line new tackles riley reiff mike remmers signed free agents center pat elflein selected third round draft nick easton took left guard release alex boone last week group boone still 1 offensive line struggled preseason came together opener little time work together practices bradford sacked vikings averaged 43 yards per carry cook breaking two long runs second half guys front great job week making sure prepared bradford said think showed way played tonight played fast played confident getting huddle thought tempo great tonight getting line early think put pressure notes new orleans rt zach strief left game second quarter leg injury didnt return longtime vikings wr randy moss inducted teams ring honor halftime moss second former teammate cris carter receptions 587 receiving yards 9316 receiving touchdowns 92 eight seasons minnesota wr stefon diggs two firsthalf touchdowns first minnesota player one half season opener since moss accomplished feat 2004 secondround rb dalvin cook thirdround c pat elflein starting marked first time two rookies started offense vikings since 1963 | 516 |
<p>Buffeted by threats from Amazon drones to deliveries by golf cart, the beleaguered U.S. Postal Service is counting on a different strategy to stay competitive: more freedom to raise prices on mailing letters.</p>
<p>After a 10-year review, the Postal Regulatory Commission appears likely to move to grant the Postal Service power to increase stamp costs beyond the rate of inflation, marking the biggest change in its pricing system in nearly a half-century. A decision is expected next month.</p>
<p>The commission, which oversees postal rates, might limit how high stamp prices could go. But the price of a first-class stamp, now 49 cents, could jump, though it’s not known how much.</p>
<p>The plan has received praise from financial analysts but raised the ire of the mail-order industry, which could pay millions more for sending items like prescription drugs and magazines and be forced to pass the costs onto consumers.</p>
<p>The Postal Service is trying to stay financially afloat as it seeks to invest billions in new delivery trucks to get packages more nimbly to American homes.</p>
<p>An independent agency of government, the Postal Service has lost money for 10 consecutive years. While online shopping has led to years of double-digit growth in its package-delivery business, it hasn’t offset declines in lucrative first-class mail. Overall mail volume, which makes up more than two-thirds of postal revenue, dropped 27 percent over the last decade as people rely more on email and online bill payments.</p>
<p>Congress’ failure to address its underlying financial woes, such as onerous requirements to pre-fund retiree health benefits, has left the commission more likely to embrace the Postal Service’s request for complete freedom to set prices. The Postal Service has already ruled out closing post offices and ending Saturday delivery to reduce costs.</p>
<p>“We are calling for action from Congress, but we’ll do what we have to, based on the reality of what is,” Robert Taub, the Republican chairman of the regulatory commission, said in a telephone interview.</p>
<p>He declined to comment on the upcoming decision, but noted the Postal Service doesn’t make enough money to cover its mandated expenses and invest for the future. Taub stressed a need to fix the balance sheet at the 242-year-old Postal Service, which generates $71 billion in annual revenue.</p>
<p>The decision comes as internet sales continue to flourish, led by Amazon, spurring consumer demand for ever-faster and cheaper delivery. Forty percent of the e-commerce giant’s packages are delivered by the Postal Service, compared to 20 to 25 percent by United Parcel Service and 15 to 20 percent for FedEx, thanks to lower package delivery rates it can offer by tapping into a network that already delivers to every U.S. household six days a week.</p>
<p>Still, growing competition is challenging postal dominance in the “last mile” portion of delivery, the final and usually most expensive stretch of a package’s journey from a retailer’s warehouse to a customer’s door. In a bid to control more of its deliveries, Amazon has been testing the use of drones and launched Amazon Flex, a network of contract drivers similar to courier services offered by Uber. UPS has been trying deliveries via golf carts.</p>
<p>The post office also takes hits for perceived bad service, including Reddit threads devoted to consumer complaints about lackluster home delivery attempts. One thread on Amazon’s site has 1,000 posts under the title, “Amazon, Quit shipping via USPS and btw, you suck.”</p>
<p>“Price increases are long overdue,” said David G. Ross, a shipping analyst at Stifel Financial Corp., noting that first-class stamp prices in countries like Germany cost the equivalent of 80 cents or more. He said the Postal Service needs “to make the investment and deliver the packages so that Amazon doesn’t have to do it themselves.”</p>
<p>Shipping rival UPS takes a different view, branding loosened stamp rates as anticompetitive, by having stamps essentially subsidize package deliveries.</p>
<p>If the post office could freely raise stamp prices, UPS wrote the commission in March, mailers would “end up paying for investments and expenses they do not benefit from, while the Postal Service leverages those investments to undercut efficient private-sector rivals in competitive markets.”</p>
<p>The periodicals industry argues the Postal Service needs more pricing oversight, since it holds a monopoly in delivering letter-sized mail.</p>
<p>A big driver of the Postal Service’s losses has been a requirement under a 2006 law that it prefund 75 years’ worth of retiree health benefits. Neither the government nor private companies are required to do that.</p>
<p>The Postal Service, which reached its debt limit of $15 billion and runs perilously low in cash every October, has avoided bankruptcy by defaulting on billions of dollars in the health prepayments. It also has postponed much-needed upgrades to information technology systems.</p>
<p>Still, the Postal Service hopes to replace its vehicles, many 30 years old and wearing down. A purchase order worth up to $6 billion would cover up to 140,000 trucks. The tall right-hand drive vehicles would seek to accommodate slim letters and oversized packages alike, more akin to fuel-efficient UPS trucks.</p>
<p>Postmaster General Megan Brennan hasn’t made final commitments, citing in part financial uncertainties.</p>
<p>Bipartisan legislation passed by a House oversight committee would ease much of the Postal Service’s problems caused by the 2006 health benefits law, requiring retirees to enroll in Medicare. But it faces uncertain prospects.</p>
<p>Ravi Shanker, an equity analyst at Morgan Stanley, said even if regulators lift the cap on stamp prices, legislation is still needed to address health payments.</p>
<p>“Given the size of the balance sheet hole, the Postal Service would have to raise prices astronomically to fix it,” he said.</p>
<p>Ross, the shipping analyst, said the Postal Service would have to show restraint in raising rates or risk losing price-sensitive customers.</p>
<p>He said lawmakers “may feel if you don’t give the Postal Service limits, they can just raise prices to $3 a stamp and people will go nuts.”</p>
<p>But overly high rates, Ross said, would only “accelerate the demise of first-class mail.”</p> | false | 1 | buffeted threats amazon drones deliveries golf cart beleaguered us postal service counting different strategy stay competitive freedom raise prices mailing letters 10year review postal regulatory commission appears likely move grant postal service power increase stamp costs beyond rate inflation marking biggest change pricing system nearly halfcentury decision expected next month commission oversees postal rates might limit high stamp prices could go price firstclass stamp 49 cents could jump though known much plan received praise financial analysts raised ire mailorder industry could pay millions sending items like prescription drugs magazines forced pass costs onto consumers postal service trying stay financially afloat seeks invest billions new delivery trucks get packages nimbly american homes independent agency government postal service lost money 10 consecutive years online shopping led years doubledigit growth packagedelivery business hasnt offset declines lucrative firstclass mail overall mail volume makes twothirds postal revenue dropped 27 percent last decade people rely email online bill payments congress failure address underlying financial woes onerous requirements prefund retiree health benefits left commission likely embrace postal services request complete freedom set prices postal service already ruled closing post offices ending saturday delivery reduce costs calling action congress well based reality robert taub republican chairman regulatory commission said telephone interview declined comment upcoming decision noted postal service doesnt make enough money cover mandated expenses invest future taub stressed need fix balance sheet 242yearold postal service generates 71 billion annual revenue decision comes internet sales continue flourish led amazon spurring consumer demand everfaster cheaper delivery forty percent ecommerce giants packages delivered postal service compared 20 25 percent united parcel service 15 20 percent fedex thanks lower package delivery rates offer tapping network already delivers every us household six days week still growing competition challenging postal dominance last mile portion delivery final usually expensive stretch packages journey retailers warehouse customers door bid control deliveries amazon testing use drones launched amazon flex network contract drivers similar courier services offered uber ups trying deliveries via golf carts post office also takes hits perceived bad service including reddit threads devoted consumer complaints lackluster home delivery attempts one thread amazons site 1000 posts title amazon quit shipping via usps btw suck price increases long overdue said david g ross shipping analyst stifel financial corp noting firstclass stamp prices countries like germany cost equivalent 80 cents said postal service needs make investment deliver packages amazon doesnt shipping rival ups takes different view branding loosened stamp rates anticompetitive stamps essentially subsidize package deliveries post office could freely raise stamp prices ups wrote commission march mailers would end paying investments expenses benefit postal service leverages investments undercut efficient privatesector rivals competitive markets periodicals industry argues postal service needs pricing oversight since holds monopoly delivering lettersized mail big driver postal services losses requirement 2006 law prefund 75 years worth retiree health benefits neither government private companies required postal service reached debt limit 15 billion runs perilously low cash every october avoided bankruptcy defaulting billions dollars health prepayments also postponed muchneeded upgrades information technology systems still postal service hopes replace vehicles many 30 years old wearing purchase order worth 6 billion would cover 140000 trucks tall righthand drive vehicles would seek accommodate slim letters oversized packages alike akin fuelefficient ups trucks postmaster general megan brennan hasnt made final commitments citing part financial uncertainties bipartisan legislation passed house oversight committee would ease much postal services problems caused 2006 health benefits law requiring retirees enroll medicare faces uncertain prospects ravi shanker equity analyst morgan stanley said even regulators lift cap stamp prices legislation still needed address health payments given size balance sheet hole postal service would raise prices astronomically fix said ross shipping analyst said postal service would show restraint raising rates risk losing pricesensitive customers said lawmakers may feel dont give postal service limits raise prices 3 stamp people go nuts overly high rates ross said would accelerate demise firstclass mail | 642 |
<p>Panic-stricken people trying to escape the fenced-off festival grounds in Las Vegas as a hail of bullets rained down from an unknown direction, and hotels locking out frantic survivors out of safety concerns, were some of the scenes described by eyewitnesses to RT.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/usa/405321-las-vegas-shooting-panic/" type="external">Follow RT’s LIVE UPDATES</a></p>
<p>Abdi, an eyewitness to the massacre, told RT he might have cheated death when he abandoned his security position in front of the stage and went to chat with friends before the gunman opened fire at the area where he was.&#160;</p>
<p>“I walked away from my post which I’m glad that I did and where I was supposed to be standing was in front of the main stage where majority of the staff was happening,” the young man working security at the event said.</p>
<p>It was not immediately clear to the people in the audience that an attack was under way. It was only half-way through the shooting that they realized they were in imminent danger Abdi said. He further noted that the first round of shots appeared to be synchronized with the song being performed on stage.</p>
<p>“When he [the performer] started singing, the gun started going off and as soon as he stopped the music cut out and the first round of gunshots cut out.”</p>
<p>Only after a second round of gunshots rang out did revelers realize that what they had listened to was gunshots, and not “the music messing up,” he said. As soon as he understood this, he “dropped everything and just ran.”</p>
<p>In a search of a safe space, he crammed along with several other fleeing concertgoers at someone’s house as they were unsure of the shooter’s position.</p>
<p>[embedded content]</p>
<p>“There was a whole bunch of people already in there and they had all the lights turned off and they were telling everyone&#160; to be quiet, because he was still nearby and we didn’t know if the shooter is around or not,” he said. Abdi said he remained in the hideout for some 20 minutes before coming out.</p>
<p>What he saw in the streets was a grim picture of “ambulances, a lot of people carried by shoulders , a lot of people crying.”</p>
<p>Abdi suggested that the perpetrator chose his target carefully to achieve maximum impact.</p>
<p>“The main stage where the main crowd was&#160; that was the place that was targeted and that was for sure the most populated and dense place at the festival.”&#160;</p>
<p>[embedded content]</p>
<p>Those who survived the slaughter have been deeply traumatized by the tragedy, he said.</p>
<p>“Everyone who was there at the festival is affected, that’s for sure.”</p>
<p>An eyewitness who was working at a hotel near the scene of shooting that unfolded at a Las Vegas music festival on Monday, told RT his heart was breaking as he watched people desperately trying to flee the carnage while the hotel was placed on lockdown.</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/usa/405469-vegas-shooter-father-fbi-most-wanted/" type="external" /></p>
<p>Brett Kenyon, who works as a waiter at the nearby Cosmopolitan Hotel, was serving customers at one of the tables when he got to know about the massacre unravelling at the site, minutes walk from the hotel.</p>
<p>As the news spread, confusion and panic ensued, with the management deciding to put the hotel on lockdown, effectively closing doors to everyone who rushed to the place for safety.</p>
<p>“There were people running up and down the strip. Because the hotel did go on lockdown, people were not able to go into the hotel, so if you were caught out in the street, you were basically stuck out there,” Brett said.</p>
<p>“My heart was breaking for the people because they just did not know where to go, because the hotel’s rules are that you are cannot allow people in or out for our safety.”</p>
<p>He spoke of “tons of SWAT teams and police” flocking to the scene.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/usa/405444-stephen-paddock-vegas-shooter/" type="external">READ MORE: Who was Stephen Paddock? Las Vegas shooter ‘not an avid gun guy’</a></p>
<p>Although none of Kenyon’s relatives or friends were hurt in the attack, one of his friends was at the scene and was lucky to escape unharmed.</p>
<p>“My friend was in the VIP area above and he was able to take cover below and then they climbed the fence and then him and about other ten people pulled down the fence so they were able to run to the side,” Kenyon said.</p>
<p>[embedded content]</p>
<p>He is familiar with the venue and pointed out that it must have been very challenging for the large crowds of concert-goes that attended the Route 91 Harvest festival that Sunday night to flee the scene because of to the venue’s specifics.</p>
<p>“I was just at that exact venue last weekend for a music festival and I know that getting in and around of that area [is hard], there is really just one entrance, it is all gated,” he said.</p>
<p>Kenyon is originally from the Sandy Hook area. He was at a funeral of one of the victims of the elementary school shooting on December 14, 2012 that claimed 28 lives, including 20 children, and argued that it’s time for one of the most permissive gun laws in the US that are in place in Nevada to be reviewed.</p>
<p>“One of my friends who is pro-gun himself believes there should be stricter laws. You can go to gun shops here and buy guns without any ID. You can buy ammunition,” he said. “It’s just insane for me to think that we don’t have no stricter laws,” he added.</p>
<p>“The world is changing and we need to consider also changing these laws because how many more mass shootings do we need till we realize that these laws are outdated and we need to change something.”</p>
<p>At least 59 people died and 527 others were injured in the deadliest mass shooting in recent US history. The shooter, identified as Stephen Paddock, went on a shooting spree from a booked room at the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel. It is understood that the shooter killed himself thereafter.</p>
<p>The 64-year-old, a retiree with no criminal record, was found dead along with a handgun and 16 rifles, two of which were modified to be fully automatic, according to AP. Eighteen more firearms were later found at the shooter’s house.</p>
<p>A state of emergency was declared in Clark County, Nevada, following the shooting.</p>
<p>Police have yet to determine a motive for the attack, while US security agencies denied the claim by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS,ISIL) that Paddock was a fresh convert to Islam and carried out the attack on their behalf.</p>
<p>Paddock’s brother has described him as a peaceful man that moved to Las Vegas to spend more time on gambling. It has also emerged that the father of the shooter, Benjamin Hoskins Paddock, was a bank robber and once was on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list after a prison break.</p> | false | 1 | panicstricken people trying escape fencedoff festival grounds las vegas hail bullets rained unknown direction hotels locking frantic survivors safety concerns scenes described eyewitnesses rt follow rts live updates abdi eyewitness massacre told rt might cheated death abandoned security position front stage went chat friends gunman opened fire area was160 walked away post im glad supposed standing front main stage majority staff happening young man working security event said immediately clear people audience attack way halfway shooting realized imminent danger abdi said noted first round shots appeared synchronized song performed stage performer started singing gun started going soon stopped music cut first round gunshots cut second round gunshots rang revelers realize listened gunshots music messing said soon understood dropped everything ran search safe space crammed along several fleeing concertgoers someones house unsure shooters position embedded content whole bunch people already lights turned telling everyone160 quiet still nearby didnt know shooter around said abdi said remained hideout 20 minutes coming saw streets grim picture ambulances lot people carried shoulders lot people crying abdi suggested perpetrator chose target carefully achieve maximum impact main stage main crowd was160 place targeted sure populated dense place festival160 embedded content survived slaughter deeply traumatized tragedy said everyone festival affected thats sure eyewitness working hotel near scene shooting unfolded las vegas music festival monday told rt heart breaking watched people desperately trying flee carnage hotel placed lockdown read brett kenyon works waiter nearby cosmopolitan hotel serving customers one tables got know massacre unravelling site minutes walk hotel news spread confusion panic ensued management deciding put hotel lockdown effectively closing doors everyone rushed place safety people running strip hotel go lockdown people able go hotel caught street basically stuck brett said heart breaking people know go hotels rules allow people safety spoke tons swat teams police flocking scene read stephen paddock las vegas shooter avid gun guy although none kenyons relatives friends hurt attack one friends scene lucky escape unharmed friend vip area able take cover climbed fence ten people pulled fence able run side kenyon said embedded content familiar venue pointed must challenging large crowds concertgoes attended route 91 harvest festival sunday night flee scene venues specifics exact venue last weekend music festival know getting around area hard really one entrance gated said kenyon originally sandy hook area funeral one victims elementary school shooting december 14 2012 claimed 28 lives including 20 children argued time one permissive gun laws us place nevada reviewed one friends progun believes stricter laws go gun shops buy guns without id buy ammunition said insane think dont stricter laws added world changing need consider also changing laws many mass shootings need till realize laws outdated need change something least 59 people died 527 others injured deadliest mass shooting recent us history shooter identified stephen paddock went shooting spree booked room 32nd floor mandalay bay hotel understood shooter killed thereafter 64yearold retiree criminal record found dead along handgun 16 rifles two modified fully automatic according ap eighteen firearms later found shooters house state emergency declared clark county nevada following shooting police yet determine motive attack us security agencies denied claim islamic state formerly isisisil paddock fresh convert islam carried attack behalf paddocks brother described peaceful man moved las vegas spend time gambling also emerged father shooter benjamin hoskins paddock bank robber fbis 10 wanted list prison break | 553 |
<p><a href="http://variety.com/tag/jackie-chan/" type="external">Jackie Chan</a> has broken a lot of bones over the years —&#160;his own, and those of his unfortunate onscreen rivals —&#160;but for the life of me, I can’t remember ever seeing Chan cry. But cry he does in “The Foreigner,” an old-fashioned one-man vendetta thriller very much in the vein of its director <a href="http://variety.com/tag/martin-campbell/" type="external">Martin Campbell</a>’s gnarly 1985 miniseries “Edge of Darkness,” in which the opening stretch allows the action-comedy stunt master a chance to flex an entirely different muscle: his tear ducts.</p>
<p>Chan plays Quan Ngoc Minh, an immigrant restaurant owner who demands justice after his daughter is killed in an IRA-linked terrorist attack. Yes, you read that right: The villains in this U.K.-set movie are Northern Irish radicals who call themselves the “New IRA” — which is just one of the curiosities you get when taking a pulpy 1992 suspense novel published five years before the IRA ceasefire and attempting to set it a quarter-century later.</p>
<p>That book would be Stephen Leather’s “The Chinaman,” whose title has wisely been changed (although not that wisely, because who really wants to see a movie generically called “The Foreigner”?). And while the title, time and a few small details may have been altered or updated, the result is nothing if not dated, even if its premise clearly echoes the edginess of living in Europe today. For starters, practically everyone in “The Foreigner” still refers to Chan’s character as “the Chinaman,” which is the kind of description that one associates more with episodes of “Deadwood” than modern-day Belfast or London (the epithet is by no means equivalent to the more specific labels of “Frenchman” or “Englishman,” in that it has traditionally been used as a blanket term for Asians of all nationalities).</p>
<p>But —&#160;and this is a key distinction —&#160;the movie is keenly aware of the West’s long tradition of white-on-Asian racism, and “The Foreigner” flips the script on the tradition of Hollywood studio movies in which a white hero kicks foreign butt in some exotic country. Ask yourself what is the U.K. equivalent of someone upsetting an innocent vendor’s fruit cart during a footchase through a crowded bazaar? Could it be Chan blowing up the lavatory of a shady bureaucrat? Or perhaps punching holes in the walls, windows and roof of a cozy Irish bed-and-breakfast? The message here is unmistakably not to underestimate or ignore Asian immigrants, who just might be elite human weapons, trained by the U.S. government (and even if they’re not, deserve to be treated with the same respect as other citizens).</p>
<p>Financed mostly with Chinese money, but directed by two-time James Bond helmer Campbell (who reunites here with “GoldenEye” star <a href="http://variety.com/tag/pierce-brosnan/" type="external">Pierce Brosnan</a>), “The Foreigner” offers Chan a unique chance to emote before shifting into more conventional vigilante territory. In the opening scene, Quan picks up his teenage daughter from her London school and drives her to a local dress shop, where a bomb kills 19. The authorities —&#160;including Brosnan’s ex-IRA deputy minister, Liam Hennessy —&#160;are astonishingly slow to react, but Quan persists. He shows up and waits humbly at the London police station, where he attempts to bribe the (non-white) lead investigator (Ray Fearon) for the names of those responsible. When that fails, he starts to track Hennessy, whom he (correctly) assumes will lead him directly to the culprits.</p>
<p>Through all of this, Chan looks sadder than we’ve ever seen him, his eyes droopy and wet with tears. He shuffles as he walks, half-paralyzed with grief (or perhaps it’s just the decades of punishment he’s given his joints), and one wonders whether the character he’s playing could so much as block a punch, much less take on a room full of terrorists. “The Foreigner” appears to be a different kind of role for Chan —&#160;one of those grieving-parent types who puts the pressure on a law-enforcement hero to do his job —&#160;and while that may be true to a degree, it ultimately offers the same opportunities for elaborate displays of martial-arts dexterity that we’ve come to expect from Chan in the past (along with a rather elaborate and entirely unnecessary backstory about how he acquired these skills and why he’s so angry).</p>
<p>When asking nicely gets him nowhere, Quan travels to Belfast to confront Hennessy directly, planting a series of bombs —&#160;in his office, his bodyguards’ car, his country safe house —&#160;to get Hennessy’s attention. But Hennessy is distracted. He’s busy trying to arrange his own deal (for the pardons of scores of old IRA buddies), and juggling complicated personal relationships with not just the movement’s former leaders (any of whom could be responsible) but also his wife (Orla Brady) and mistress (Charlie Murphy), either or both of whom could also be involved. Plus, he has that thick Irish accent to master. All of which makes it easy for the “old man” to go on “running circles around the lot of us.”</p>
<p>But why, in a world with so many real human threats, does “The Foreigner” resurrect the “Troubles” between Northern Ireland and the crown? If anything, this feels giving the West a taste of its own medicine, since entertainment and elections alike have long drummed up fear and hysteria around anyone of off-white skin color, when the statistics show that mass killings are just as — if not altogether more — likely to be perpetrated by white people. In the movie, multiple Asian teens are killed in an all-too-plausible (albeit dated) act of political terrorism dreamed up and carried out by a faction of the IRA. It’s an effective reminder that however scared white Londoners are of foreigners, the foreigners living among them have even more reason to be afraid, living in a country where they could wind up as collateral damage in senseless white-on-white violence. And because this time around Asians are the ones telling the story, it falls to a superstar “Chinaman” to set things right.</p>
<p>Film Review: Jackie Chan in ‘The Foreigner’</p>
<p>Reviewed at Arclight Hollywood, Los Angeles, Oct. 5, 2017. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 114 MIN.</p>
<p>Production: A STX Films release, presented with Sparkle Roll Media Corp. of a Fyzz Facility, Arthur Sarkissian, the Entertainer Production Co. Ltd. production. Producers: Jackie Chan, Wayne Marc Godfrey, Arthur Sarkissian, Qi Jianhong, Claire Kupchak, Scott Lumpkin, Jamie Marshall, Cathy Shulman. Executive producers: Joe Tam, Sunny Sun, David Marconi, Philip Button, Felice Bee, Donald Tang, Robert Simonds, Adam Fogelson, Oren Aviv. Director: Martin Campbell. Screenplay: David Marconi, based on the novel “The Chinaman” by Stephen Leather. Camera (color, widescreen): David Tattersall. Editor: Angela M. Catanzaro. Music: Clint Mansell.</p>
<p>With: Jackie Chan, Pierce Brosnan, Ray Fearon, Orla Brady, Tao Liu, Charlie Murphy, Katherine Davies, David Pearse, Rufus Jones, Nial McNamee.</p> | false | 1 | jackie chan broken lot bones years 160his unfortunate onscreen rivals 160but life cant remember ever seeing chan cry cry foreigner oldfashioned oneman vendetta thriller much vein director martin campbells gnarly 1985 miniseries edge darkness opening stretch allows actioncomedy stunt master chance flex entirely different muscle tear ducts chan plays quan ngoc minh immigrant restaurant owner demands justice daughter killed iralinked terrorist attack yes read right villains ukset movie northern irish radicals call new ira one curiosities get taking pulpy 1992 suspense novel published five years ira ceasefire attempting set quartercentury later book would stephen leathers chinaman whose title wisely changed although wisely really wants see movie generically called foreigner title time small details may altered updated result nothing dated even premise clearly echoes edginess living europe today starters practically everyone foreigner still refers chans character chinaman kind description one associates episodes deadwood modernday belfast london epithet means equivalent specific labels frenchman englishman traditionally used blanket term asians nationalities 160and key distinction 160the movie keenly aware wests long tradition whiteonasian racism foreigner flips script tradition hollywood studio movies white hero kicks foreign butt exotic country ask uk equivalent someone upsetting innocent vendors fruit cart footchase crowded bazaar could chan blowing lavatory shady bureaucrat perhaps punching holes walls windows roof cozy irish bedandbreakfast message unmistakably underestimate ignore asian immigrants might elite human weapons trained us government even theyre deserve treated respect citizens financed mostly chinese money directed twotime james bond helmer campbell reunites goldeneye star pierce brosnan foreigner offers chan unique chance emote shifting conventional vigilante territory opening scene quan picks teenage daughter london school drives local dress shop bomb kills 19 authorities 160including brosnans exira deputy minister liam hennessy 160are astonishingly slow react quan persists shows waits humbly london police station attempts bribe nonwhite lead investigator ray fearon names responsible fails starts track hennessy correctly assumes lead directly culprits chan looks sadder weve ever seen eyes droopy wet tears shuffles walks halfparalyzed grief perhaps decades punishment hes given joints one wonders whether character hes playing could much block punch much less take room full terrorists foreigner appears different kind role chan 160one grievingparent types puts pressure lawenforcement hero job 160and may true degree ultimately offers opportunities elaborate displays martialarts dexterity weve come expect chan past along rather elaborate entirely unnecessary backstory acquired skills hes angry asking nicely gets nowhere quan travels belfast confront hennessy directly planting series bombs 160in office bodyguards car country safe house 160to get hennessys attention hennessy distracted hes busy trying arrange deal pardons scores old ira buddies juggling complicated personal relationships movements former leaders could responsible also wife orla brady mistress charlie murphy either could also involved plus thick irish accent master makes easy old man go running circles around lot us world many real human threats foreigner resurrect troubles northern ireland crown anything feels giving west taste medicine since entertainment elections alike long drummed fear hysteria around anyone offwhite skin color statistics show mass killings altogether likely perpetrated white people movie multiple asian teens killed alltooplausible albeit dated act political terrorism dreamed carried faction ira effective reminder however scared white londoners foreigners foreigners living among even reason afraid living country could wind collateral damage senseless whiteonwhite violence time around asians ones telling story falls superstar chinaman set things right film review jackie chan foreigner reviewed arclight hollywood los angeles oct 5 2017 mpaa rating r running time 114 min production stx films release presented sparkle roll media corp fyzz facility arthur sarkissian entertainer production co ltd production producers jackie chan wayne marc godfrey arthur sarkissian qi jianhong claire kupchak scott lumpkin jamie marshall cathy shulman executive producers joe tam sunny sun david marconi philip button felice bee donald tang robert simonds adam fogelson oren aviv director martin campbell screenplay david marconi based novel chinaman stephen leather camera color widescreen david tattersall editor angela catanzaro music clint mansell jackie chan pierce brosnan ray fearon orla brady tao liu charlie murphy katherine davies david pearse rufus jones nial mcnamee | 661 |
<p />
<p>Early in the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings, it seemed that winning was understood by the massed demonstrators to mean getting rid of the hated leader, of Ben Ali in the Tunisian case, and Mubarak in the Egyptian. But as the process deepened, it make clear that more was being demanded and expected, and that this had to do with restoring the material and spiritual dignity of life in all its aspects.</p>
<p>Without any assurance as to what "winning" means in the setting of the extraordinary revolutionary uprisings that are continuing to rock the established order throughout the Arab world, it is likely to mean different things in the various countries currently in turmoil. But at the very least, winning has so far meant challenging, by determined and incredibly brave nonviolence, the oppressive established order. This victory over long reigns of fear-induced pacification is itself a great transformative moment in 21st century history, no matter what happens in the months ahead.</p>
<p>As Chandra Muzaffar, the widely respected Malaysian scholar, compellingly argues, the replacement of the old order by electoral democracy, while impressive as an accomplishment given the dictatorial rule of the past in these countries, will not be nearly enough to vindicate the sacrifices of the protestors. It is significantly better than those worst case scenarios that insist that the future will bring dismal varieties of "Mubarakism without Mubarak," which would change the faces and names of the rulers but leave the oppressive and exploitative regimes essentially intact. This would definitely be a pyrrhic victory, given the hopes and demands that motivated the courageous political challenges embodied in withstanding without weapons the clubs, rubber bullets, live ammunition, and overall brutality, as well as the uncertainty as to what the soldiers in the streets would do when the order to open fire at the demonstrators came from the beleaguered old guard.</p>
<p>What is needed beyond constitutional democracy is the substantive realization of good and equitable governance: this includes, above all, people-oriented economic policies, an end to corruption, and the protection of human rights, including especially economic and social rights.&#160; Such an indispensable agenda recognizes that the primary motivation of many of the demonstrators was related to their totally alienating entrapment in a jobless future, combined with the daily struggle to obtain the bare necessities of a tolerable life.</p>
<p>There is present here both questions of domestic political will and governmental capability to redirect the productive resources and distributive policies of the society. How much political space is available to alter the impositions of neoliberal globalization that was responsible for reinforcing, if not inducing, the grossly inequitable and corrupting impact of the world economy on the structuring of domestic privilege and deprivation? Not far in the background is an extended global recession that may be deepened in coming months due to alarming increases in commodity prices, especially food. According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, the world Food Price Index reached a record high in December 2010, a level exceeded by another 3% rise in January of this year. Lester Brown, a leading expert on world food and environment, wrote a few days ago that "[t]he world is now one poor harvest away from chaos in world grain markets." [International Herald Tribune, Feb 23, 2011]</p>
<p>With political turmoil threatening world energy supplies, oil prices are also surging, allegedly further endangering the uneven and fragile economic recovery in the United States and Europe. Global warming adds a further troubling feature to this deteriorating situation, with droughts, floods, fires, and storms, making it difficult to maintain crop yields, much less increase food production to meet increasing demands of the world's growing population.</p>
<p>These impinging realities will greatly complicate the already formidable difficulties facing new leaders throughout the Arab world seeking with a sense of urgency to create job opportunities and affordable supplies of food for their citizenries. This challenge is intensified by the widely shared high expectations of improved living circumstances. If the autocratic prior regime was held responsible for mass impoverishment of the many and the scandalously excessive enrichment of the few, is it not reasonable to suppose that the more democratic successor governments should establish without much delay greatly improved living conditions? And further, how could it be claimed that the heroic uprising was worthwhile if the quality of life of ordinary citizens, previously struggling to avert the torments of impoverishment, does not start improving dramatically almost immediately? An understandably impatient public may not give their new leaders the time that need, given these conditions, to make adjustments that will begin to satisfy these long denied hopes and needs. Perhaps, the public will be patient if there are clear signs that the leaders are trying their hardest, and even if actual progress is slow, there is some evidence that the material conditions of the populace are, at least, on an ascending slope.</p>
<p>Even if the public is patient beyond reason, and understands better than can be prudently expected the difficulties of achieving economic justice during a period of transition to a new framework of governance, there may be still little or no capacity to fulfill public expectations due to the impact of these worsening global conditions.&#160; It is quite possible that if the worst food/energy scenarios unfold, famines and food riots could occur, casting dark shadows of despair across memories of these historic victories that made the initial phases of each national uprising such a glowing testament to the human spirit, which seemed miraculously undaunted by decades of oppression and abuse.</p>
<p>It needs also to be kept in mind that often the slogans of the demonstrators highlighted a thirst for freedom and rights. Even though there is little experience of democratic practice throughout the region, there will likely be a serious attempt by new governing institutions to distinguish their practices from those of their hated forebears, and allow for the exercise of all forms of oppositional activity, including freedom of expression, assembly, and party formation. Unlike the problems associated with creating jobs and providing for material needs, the establishment of the atmosphere of a free society is within the physical capacities of a new leadership if the political will exists to assume the unfamiliar risks associated with democratic practices. We must wait and see how each new leadership handles these normative challenges of transition. It remains to be seen as to whether the difficulties of transition are intensified by counterrevolutionary efforts to maintain or restore the old deforming structures and privileges. These efforts are likely to be aided and abetted by a range of covert collaborative undertakings joining external actors with those internal forces threatened by impending political change.</p>
<p>And if this overview was not discouraging enough, there is one further consideration. As soon as the unifying force of getting rid of the old leadership is eroded, if not altogether lost, fissures within the oppositions are certain to emerge. There will be fundamental differences as between radical and liberal approaches to transition, and especially whether to respect the property rights and social hierarchies associated with the old regime, or to seek directly to correct the injustices and irregularities of the past. Some critics of the Mandela approach to reconciliation and transition in South Africa believe that his acceptance of the social and economic dimensions of the repudiated apartheid structure have resulted in a widely felt sense of revolutionary disappointment, if not betrayal, in South Africa.</p>
<p>There will also be tactical and strategic differences about how to deal with the world economy, especially with respect to creating stability and attractive conditions for foreign investment. It is here that tensions emerge as between safeguarding labor rights and making investors feel that their operations will remain profitable in the new political environment.</p>
<p>This recitation of difficulties is not meant to detract attention from or in any way to diminish the glorious achievements of the revolutionary uprisings, but to point to the unfinished business that must be addressed if revolutionary aspirations are going to be able to avoid disillusionment. So often revolutionary gains are blunted or even lost shortly after the old oppressors have been dragged from the stage of history. If ever there exists the need for vigilance it at these times when the old order is dying and the new order is struggling to be born. As Gramsci warned long ago this period of inbetweeness is vulnerable to a wide range of predatory tendencies. It is a time when unscrupulous elements can repress anew even while waving a revolutionary banner and shouting slogans about defending the revolution against its enemies. And a difficulty here is that the enemies may well be real as well as darkly imagined. How many revolutions in the past have been lost due to the machinations of their supposed guardians?</p>
<p>Let us fervently hope that the mysteries of the digital age will somehow summon the creative energy to manage the transition to sustainable and substantive democracy as brilliantly as it earlier staged the revolutionary uprisings.</p> | false | 1 | early tunisian egyptian uprisings seemed winning understood massed demonstrators mean getting rid hated leader ben ali tunisian case mubarak egyptian process deepened make clear demanded expected restoring material spiritual dignity life aspects without assurance winning means setting extraordinary revolutionary uprisings continuing rock established order throughout arab world likely mean different things various countries currently turmoil least winning far meant challenging determined incredibly brave nonviolence oppressive established order victory long reigns fearinduced pacification great transformative moment 21st century history matter happens months ahead chandra muzaffar widely respected malaysian scholar compellingly argues replacement old order electoral democracy impressive accomplishment given dictatorial rule past countries nearly enough vindicate sacrifices protestors significantly better worst case scenarios insist future bring dismal varieties mubarakism without mubarak would change faces names rulers leave oppressive exploitative regimes essentially intact would definitely pyrrhic victory given hopes demands motivated courageous political challenges embodied withstanding without weapons clubs rubber bullets live ammunition overall brutality well uncertainty soldiers streets would order open fire demonstrators came beleaguered old guard needed beyond constitutional democracy substantive realization good equitable governance includes peopleoriented economic policies end corruption protection human rights including especially economic social rights160 indispensable agenda recognizes primary motivation many demonstrators related totally alienating entrapment jobless future combined daily struggle obtain bare necessities tolerable life present questions domestic political governmental capability redirect productive resources distributive policies society much political space available alter impositions neoliberal globalization responsible reinforcing inducing grossly inequitable corrupting impact world economy structuring domestic privilege deprivation far background extended global recession may deepened coming months due alarming increases commodity prices especially food according un food agricultural organization world food price index reached record high december 2010 level exceeded another 3 rise january year lester brown leading expert world food environment wrote days ago world one poor harvest away chaos world grain markets international herald tribune feb 23 2011 political turmoil threatening world energy supplies oil prices also surging allegedly endangering uneven fragile economic recovery united states europe global warming adds troubling feature deteriorating situation droughts floods fires storms making difficult maintain crop yields much less increase food production meet increasing demands worlds growing population impinging realities greatly complicate already formidable difficulties facing new leaders throughout arab world seeking sense urgency create job opportunities affordable supplies food citizenries challenge intensified widely shared high expectations improved living circumstances autocratic prior regime held responsible mass impoverishment many scandalously excessive enrichment reasonable suppose democratic successor governments establish without much delay greatly improved living conditions could claimed heroic uprising worthwhile quality life ordinary citizens previously struggling avert torments impoverishment start improving dramatically almost immediately understandably impatient public may give new leaders time need given conditions make adjustments begin satisfy long denied hopes needs perhaps public patient clear signs leaders trying hardest even actual progress slow evidence material conditions populace least ascending slope even public patient beyond reason understands better prudently expected difficulties achieving economic justice period transition new framework governance may still little capacity fulfill public expectations due impact worsening global conditions160 quite possible worst foodenergy scenarios unfold famines food riots could occur casting dark shadows despair across memories historic victories made initial phases national uprising glowing testament human spirit seemed miraculously undaunted decades oppression abuse needs also kept mind often slogans demonstrators highlighted thirst freedom rights even though little experience democratic practice throughout region likely serious attempt new governing institutions distinguish practices hated forebears allow exercise forms oppositional activity including freedom expression assembly party formation unlike problems associated creating jobs providing material needs establishment atmosphere free society within physical capacities new leadership political exists assume unfamiliar risks associated democratic practices must wait see new leadership handles normative challenges transition remains seen whether difficulties transition intensified counterrevolutionary efforts maintain restore old deforming structures privileges efforts likely aided abetted range covert collaborative undertakings joining external actors internal forces threatened impending political change overview discouraging enough one consideration soon unifying force getting rid old leadership eroded altogether lost fissures within oppositions certain emerge fundamental differences radical liberal approaches transition especially whether respect property rights social hierarchies associated old regime seek directly correct injustices irregularities past critics mandela approach reconciliation transition south africa believe acceptance social economic dimensions repudiated apartheid structure resulted widely felt sense revolutionary disappointment betrayal south africa also tactical strategic differences deal world economy especially respect creating stability attractive conditions foreign investment tensions emerge safeguarding labor rights making investors feel operations remain profitable new political environment recitation difficulties meant detract attention way diminish glorious achievements revolutionary uprisings point unfinished business must addressed revolutionary aspirations going able avoid disillusionment often revolutionary gains blunted even lost shortly old oppressors dragged stage history ever exists need vigilance times old order dying new order struggling born gramsci warned long ago period inbetweeness vulnerable wide range predatory tendencies time unscrupulous elements repress anew even waving revolutionary banner shouting slogans defending revolution enemies difficulty enemies may well real well darkly imagined many revolutions past lost due machinations supposed guardians let us fervently hope mysteries digital age somehow summon creative energy manage transition sustainable substantive democracy brilliantly earlier staged revolutionary uprisings | 836 |
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<p>At the precise moment US President Barack Obama’s Air Force One touched down at Ben Gurion Airport on March 20, persisting illusions quickly began to shatter. And as he walked on the red carpet, showered with accolades and warm embraces of top Israeli government and military officials, a new/old reality began to sink in: Obama was no different than his predecessors. He never had been.</p>
<p>On the day of Obama’s arrival, Israeli rights group B’Tselem released a disturbing video. It was of Israeli soldiers carrying out a ‘mass arrest’ of nearly 30 Palestinian children on their way to school in the Palestinian city of al-Khalil (Hebron). The children pleaded and cried to no avail. Their terrified shrieks echoed throughout the Palestinian neighborhood as they tried to summon the help of passersby. “‘Amo’ – Uncle,” one begged, “for God sake don’t let them take me.” Nonetheless, several military vehicles were filled with crying children and their school bags. But what made the release of the video truly apt is the fact that it was released on the day president Obama was meeting Israeli children at a welcoming ceremony at the home of Israeli President Shimon Peres.</p>
<p>“Their dreams are much the same as children everywhere,” he said, referring to Israeli children, of course. “In another sense though their lives reflect the difficult reality that Israelis face every single day. They want to be safe, they want to be free from rockets that hit their homes or their schools.”</p>
<p>Many Palestinians immediately pointed out the moral discrepancies in most of Obama’s statements throughout his stay in Israel. Still, his visit was ‘historic’, declared numerous headlines in the US and Israeli media.</p>
<p>However, aside from the fact that it was his first trip to Israel as a president, it was barely momentous. His unconditional support for Israel has been tedious and redundant, predictable even. Those who have followed his unswerving pro-Israel legacy – including his visit to Israel as a presidential candidate in 2008, his talks before the Israeli lobby group AIPAC and many other examples – could barely discern a shift, except perhaps, in the total disinterest in political sensibility and balance.</p>
<p>He truly delivered in Israel. This was to the total satisfaction of the Israeli Prime Minister and his pro-settler government, which was assembled shortly before Obama’s arrival. Obama spoke as if he were entirely oblivious to the political shift to the extreme right underway in Israel. Indeed, the new Israeli government is more right-wing than ever before. The extremist Jewish Home party has three important ministries, including Jerusalem and Housing, and the ultra-nationalists of Yisraeli Beiteinu have been awarded the tourism ministry. It means that the next few years will be a settlement construction bonanza, ‘ethnic cleaning’, and greater Apartheid.</p>
<p>“It’s good to be back in The Land (Israel),” Obama said in Hebrew, at the Tel Aviv airport. “The United States is proud to stand with you as your strongest ally and your greatest friend.”</p>
<p>It is believed that for four years, Obama has failed to live up to the nearly impossible expectations of Israel. Israel requires a president with good oratory skills—for example, to emphasize the ‘eternal’ bond between his country and Israel, as Obama did—who is able to sign big checks and ask few questions. Obama has of course done that and more. Aside from the $3.1 billion in financial support, he has rerouted hundreds of millions of US funds to bankroll Israel’s air defense system, the Iron Dome, whose efficiency is questionable at best.</p>
<p>Obama’s past transgressions, as far as Israel is concerned, is that he dared ask the right-wing government of Netanyahu to temporarily freeze settlement construction to restart the stalled – if not dead – peace process. Of course, there is the widely reported matter of Obama’s lack of fondness of Netanyahu, his antics and renowned arrogance. But that matters little, since Israel’s illegal settlements continued to thrive during Obama’s first term in office.</p>
<p>Expectedly, Netanyahu was gloating. He has managed to assemble a government that will cater mostly to extremist Jewish settlers in the West Bank and also masterfully managed to humble the US president, or at least quash his ambitions that the US is capable of operating independently in the Middle East, without Israeli consent or interests in mind.</p>
<p>Now that Jewish colonies are flourishing—with occupied East Jerusalem area E1 being another major exploit—Netanyahu is once more aspiring for a war against Iran, one that would not be possible without US funding, support, and likely direct involvement. “Thank you for standing by Israel at this time of historic change in the Middle East,” Netanyahu said while standing near the mostly US-funded Iron Dome. “Thank you for unequivocally affirming Israel’s sovereign right to defend itself, by itself against any threat.”</p>
<p>Obama did in fact spare a few, although, spurious thoughts for Palestinians. “Put yourself in their shoes—look at the world through their eyes,” he said to an Israeli audience. “It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of her own, and lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements of her parents every single day.”</p>
<p>One would even applaud the seeming moral fortitude if it were not for the pesky matter that the US had voted against a Palestinian state at the United Nations last November and tried to intimidate those who voted in favor. And of course, much of the horror that Palestinian ‘eyes’ have seen throughout the years was funded and defended by US money and action. If Obama is trying to resurrect the myth that the US is a well-intentioned bystander or an ‘honest broker’ in some distant conflict, then he has utterly failed. His country is fully embroiled in the conflict, and directly so. Many Palestinian children would still be alive today if the US government had conditioned its massive support of Israel by ending the occupation and ceasing the brutality against Palestinians.</p>
<p>In a joint press conference in Ramallah, alongside Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Obama even demanded Palestinians drop their condition (proposed by Obama himself) of a settlement freeze in order to return to the so-called peace talks. “That’s not to say settlements aren’t important, that’s to say if we resolve the (main) problems, then settlements will be resolved,” he said. “If to begin the conversation we have to get everything right from the outset … then we’re never going to get to the broader issue,” Obama added. The broader issue, according to the US president is “how do you structure a state of Palestine,” which again, Obama voted against last year, and passionately so.</p>
<p>Aside from resounding rhetoric about peace, Obama is finally towing the Israeli line exactly as Netanyahu and the lobby would expect of him, or of any other US president. He has little to offer Palestinians, or Arab nations, but much to expect from them. Arab states must seek normalized relations with Israel, and Palestinians must “recognize that Israel will be a Jewish state, and that Israelis have the right to insist upon their security,” he lectured in Jerusalem on the second day of his trip, reported CNN online. The obvious danger here lies in the fact that Israel oftentimes conflates ‘security’ and its ‘right to defend itself’ by mass arresting children on their way to school in Hebron, or by inflicting or supporting wars against other nations—Lebanon, Iraq and now Iran.</p>
<p>Obama will eventually get back to his Oval Office desk, ready to resume work as usual. This will include the signing of many papers concerning additional funds, loans, military technology transfers and much more for Israel. Palestinians meanwhile will carry on with their long fight for freedom, without his noted oratory skills.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the families of the 30 children kidnapped by the Israeli army in Hebron will have many days ahead of them in Israeli military court. But that, of course, is a different matter, of no concern to Obama and his many quotable peace antics.</p> | false | 1 | precise moment us president barack obamas air force one touched ben gurion airport march 20 persisting illusions quickly began shatter walked red carpet showered accolades warm embraces top israeli government military officials newold reality began sink obama different predecessors never day obamas arrival israeli rights group btselem released disturbing video israeli soldiers carrying mass arrest nearly 30 palestinian children way school palestinian city alkhalil hebron children pleaded cried avail terrified shrieks echoed throughout palestinian neighborhood tried summon help passersby amo uncle one begged god sake dont let take nonetheless several military vehicles filled crying children school bags made release video truly apt fact released day president obama meeting israeli children welcoming ceremony home israeli president shimon peres dreams much children everywhere said referring israeli children course another sense though lives reflect difficult reality israelis face every single day want safe want free rockets hit homes schools many palestinians immediately pointed moral discrepancies obamas statements throughout stay israel still visit historic declared numerous headlines us israeli media however aside fact first trip israel president barely momentous unconditional support israel tedious redundant predictable even followed unswerving proisrael legacy including visit israel presidential candidate 2008 talks israeli lobby group aipac many examples could barely discern shift except perhaps total disinterest political sensibility balance truly delivered israel total satisfaction israeli prime minister prosettler government assembled shortly obamas arrival obama spoke entirely oblivious political shift extreme right underway israel indeed new israeli government rightwing ever extremist jewish home party three important ministries including jerusalem housing ultranationalists yisraeli beiteinu awarded tourism ministry means next years settlement construction bonanza ethnic cleaning greater apartheid good back land israel obama said hebrew tel aviv airport united states proud stand strongest ally greatest friend believed four years obama failed live nearly impossible expectations israel israel requires president good oratory skillsfor example emphasize eternal bond country israel obama didwho able sign big checks ask questions obama course done aside 31 billion financial support rerouted hundreds millions us funds bankroll israels air defense system iron dome whose efficiency questionable best obamas past transgressions far israel concerned dared ask rightwing government netanyahu temporarily freeze settlement construction restart stalled dead peace process course widely reported matter obamas lack fondness netanyahu antics renowned arrogance matters little since israels illegal settlements continued thrive obamas first term office expectedly netanyahu gloating managed assemble government cater mostly extremist jewish settlers west bank also masterfully managed humble us president least quash ambitions us capable operating independently middle east without israeli consent interests mind jewish colonies flourishingwith occupied east jerusalem area e1 another major exploitnetanyahu aspiring war iran one would possible without us funding support likely direct involvement thank standing israel time historic change middle east netanyahu said standing near mostly usfunded iron dome thank unequivocally affirming israels sovereign right defend threat obama fact spare although spurious thoughts palestinians put shoeslook world eyes said israeli audience fair palestinian child grow state lives presence foreign army controls movements parents every single day one would even applaud seeming moral fortitude pesky matter us voted palestinian state united nations last november tried intimidate voted favor course much horror palestinian eyes seen throughout years funded defended us money action obama trying resurrect myth us wellintentioned bystander honest broker distant conflict utterly failed country fully embroiled conflict directly many palestinian children would still alive today us government conditioned massive support israel ending occupation ceasing brutality palestinians joint press conference ramallah alongside palestinian authority president mahmoud abbas obama even demanded palestinians drop condition proposed obama settlement freeze order return socalled peace talks thats say settlements arent important thats say resolve main problems settlements resolved said begin conversation get everything right outset never going get broader issue obama added broader issue according us president structure state palestine obama voted last year passionately aside resounding rhetoric peace obama finally towing israeli line exactly netanyahu lobby would expect us president little offer palestinians arab nations much expect arab states must seek normalized relations israel palestinians must recognize israel jewish state israelis right insist upon security lectured jerusalem second day trip reported cnn online obvious danger lies fact israel oftentimes conflates security right defend mass arresting children way school hebron inflicting supporting wars nationslebanon iraq iran obama eventually get back oval office desk ready resume work usual include signing many papers concerning additional funds loans military technology transfers much israel palestinians meanwhile carry long fight freedom without noted oratory skills meanwhile families 30 children kidnapped israeli army hebron many days ahead israeli military court course different matter concern obama many quotable peace antics | 753 |
<p>This summer EPPC Resident Scholar James Bowman is presenting on behalf of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the Hudson Institute in Washington a series of five films on the general theme of Heaven. The films are being shown at the Hudson Institute, 1015 15th Street N.W., Suite 600, and you can go to the <a href="" type="internal">EPPC</a> or <a href="http://hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=hudson_upcoming_events&amp;id=862" type="external">Hudson</a> websites for details or to register to attend. The series opened on Tuesday, June 28th with a screening of Heaven Can Wait (1943) by Ernst Lubitsch, starring Don Ameche, Gene Tierney and Charles Coburn. Before showing the film, Mr. Bowman spoke for a few minutes about the series in general and this movie as follows.</p>
<p>Welcome to the first of this year's movie series, co-sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the Hudson Institute in the person of Bill Schambra, whom we thank for the use of these splendid facilities.</p>
<p>This year's series on Heaven begins in Hell. Or at least in Hell's antechamber as imagined by Ernst Lubitsch's Heaven Can Wait of 1943. There, the recently deceased but still elegantly turned-out gay-‘90s roué Henry Van Cleve, played by Don Ameche, is asking the splendidly Mephistophelean figure of Laird Cregar, known only as His Excellency, to be admitted. The word “roué” originally meant someone who had been broken upon the wheel, an instrument of torture, and no one is entirely sure how it came to signify an aged womanizer like Henry. But when we first meet him, he is most remarkable for his humility. He has something of the air of one who has indeed been broken, spiritually anyway, upon a wheel. “If you meet our requirements, we'll be only too glad to accommodate you,” says His Excellency. “Would you be kind enough to mention, for instance, some outstanding crime you've committed?”</p>
<p>“Crime?” says Henry. “Well, I'm afraid I can''t think of any. But I can safely say that my whole life was one continuous misdemeanor.” However continuous his misdemeanors they are not, as I think we are meant to realize immediately, going to be enough to qualify Henry for the infernal pit—even though a touch of vanity about her youthful-looking legs is apparently enough to damn forever the boring Mrs Edna Craig (Florence Bates). Or that and the fact that she is boring. For we sense at once that we are in the midst of something like that aristocratic milieu in which, as Edmund Burke said of pre-revolutionary France, vice lost half its evil by losing all its grossness. It makes perfect sense in such a world to think that the only unforgivable sin is a failure of charm and good manners—and taking oneself too seriously.</p>
<p>Ernst Lubitsch, the director of the film and the originator of the famed “Lubitsch touch,” was already a legend in Hollywood at the time Heaven Can Wait was made in 1943, as he remains today, and he collaborated in this film with the screenwriter Samson Raphaelson, who wrote several other movies for Lubitsch's direction including The Shop Around the Corner, which we saw in the second summer film series on love and romance, and Trouble in Paradise. Both of these movies are, like Heaven Can Wait, American adaptations of gently humorous plays of Hungarian provenance which show the traces of their origins in the pre-1914 Habsburg empire with its hierarchical assumptions, aristocratic manners and tolerant, gently humorous approach to human frailty: it's the world of Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hoffmannsthal's Der Rosenkavalier.</p>
<p>Not that Lubitsch was born to such manners himself. The son of a Jewish tailor in Berlin who was a refugee from Russian pogroms, he started in show business while still a teenager, before the First World War—in which he avoided having to serve in the German army on account of his father's Russian nationality. It was probably under the influence of his mentor, the Austrian Max Reinhardt, that he acquired something of the pre-war Viennese spirit together with the post-war nostalgia for a lost world that he himself could only just have experienced as an adult before it was all swept away by the European conflagration—about which, by the way, there is no more mention in Heaven Can Wait than there is of any other historic event. Obviously Henry Van Cleve's New York would not have been affected by the war to the same extent that the European capitals were, but its apparent isolation here from events usually considered of world-historical importance is remarkable in a film so closely bound up and in so many ways with cultural history.</p>
<p>That's one of the things that I like about this movie, the sense it gives us of the passage of time. It was based on a play called “Birthday” and it is Henry's birthday, October 25th, 1872, which helps us keep track of the movie's carefully calculated chronology. We know, for instance, that Henry's 26th birthday is also the day he elopes with Martha, played by Gene Tierney, his cousin's fiancée, and his 36th is approaching ten years later when he goes to find her at her parents' house in Kansas after she has left him. Knowing the year is also important. He gets his first real and unforgettable lesson in sexual manners at the age of 15 in 1887 from his French tutor, Mademoiselle (Signe Hasso), who is one of nature's progressives, someone who believes that she and her enlightened views are “on the right side of history” (to employ a phrase that has been much used in recent years), this merely because she is fortunate enough to be alive, as are we all, at history's ultimate point.</p>
<p>Of course, Mademoiselle anticipates what was later to be known as the sexual revolution which, at the time the film was made in 1943, meant the sexual revolution of the 1920s. This was in some ways a full-dress rehearsal for the one that we associate with the 1960s and 1970s, but it partly grew out of an even earlier liberalizing period that gave the Gay ‘90s their name. At a time when many of those a little lower in the social hierarchy than the Van Cleves were disposed to think of sin in almost exclusively sexual terms, their social superiors were already learning to think of sexual misbehavior as hardly any sin at all. This was all part of that new and modern way of looking at things that Mademoiselle associates with the year 1887. The outmoded ways of the past, on the other hand, are associated with Henry's father Randolph, played by Louis Calhern, whose naïveté is constantly driven back upon his only moral certainty, which is the need to “Keep a stiff upper lip”—a bit of mockery rather remarkable when you consider that the film came out in wartime.</p>
<p>The other way in which the progressive impulse is flattered in the film is in its portrait of the marriage of the Strables, Henry's unhappy in-laws played by the great Eugene Pallette (whom you may remember from last year's My Man Godfrey, in which he played a similar part) and Marjorie Main. To them Henry's advanced ideas are all part of that New York sophistication of which they are suspicious from the beginning, and their own apparently loveless marriage seems to be intended as an awful warning of what can happen when marriage excludes the kind of romance that Henry stands for in his courtship of Martha—and, alas, elsewhere. Yet the Strables' behavior toward their wayward daughter when she runs away from Henry suggests more of love and forgiveness than they are prepared to admit to. Maybe there is some of the same behind the unremitting conflict of their marriage.</p>
<p>The downgrading of (at least) male philandering from felony to the “misdemeanor” that Henry calls it could not be quite unconnected with the downgrading, at about the same time and among the same class of people, of hell from a place of terror to something to be joked about, as it is in Heaven Can Wait. That is the position we still find ourselves in today, more or less. I like the formulation of a newspaper columnist on my home-town paper some years ago, definitively disproving (in his own view at least) the existence of hell by writing that “If God were even as nice a guy as I am, he would never send anyone to hell.” Since God as this guy imagined him was the ultimate nice guy, there could be no hell. Q.E.D. Lubitsch is perhaps also casting God in his own image when instead he offers us the mocking verdict of the witty and the urbane: Hell is reserved for the pompous, the self-important the self-righteous, but not those with the manners, the charm, the savoir faire of Henry Van Cleve.</p>
<p>Yet part of that charm lies in the fact that Henry has no very inflated idea of himself, no aristocratic pride or arrogance to offend our sense of even a hypothetical judgment's proprieties. Henry arrives in the afterlife as the very personification of Jesus's words in Luke xiv.10: “But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room; that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go up higher: then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee.” Can such a man be considered a candidate for the eternal lake of fire? The idea is preposterous. The word “worship” in that King James translation, by the way, is an old word for honor, which was as much associated with class as Henry's perfect manners when he greets the Devil according to protocol as “Your Excellency.” What more could be required for Henry to ascend to heaven via the very up-to-date electric elevator and avoid the trap-door to the everlasting bonfire to which the unlamented Mrs Craig so rapidly descends?</p>
<p>As it happens, something else is required, and that is the redemption offered by his love for Martha who has predeceased him and whose eternal absence in heaven is the greatest of the terrors that the prospect of his own residence in hell has to offer. Martha, unlike us, knows the worst about Henry and loves him anyway. “Oh, Henry,” she says to him, “I know your every move. I know your outraged indignation. I know the poor weeping little boy. I know the misunderstood, strong, silent man, the worn-out lion who is too proud to explain what happened in the jungle last night.” All these adopted personas are his transparent way of concealing from her—well, what, exactly? For clearly, Lubitsch's and Raphaelson's purposes can only be accomplished if they remain reticent about what misdemeanors, exactly, their hero is guilty of. It wouldn't do at all for us to be more censorious about his behavior than his wife is, which would be the danger in letting us know what she, presumably, knows.</p>
<p>Even his youthful indiscretion with Mademoiselle is seen only in terms of their having taken a drop of champagne together, and Henry's subsequent hangover allows us to suppose, if we want to, that no more than that had happened on their memorable night out. Likewise, Martha's return to her parents' house in Kansas is precipitated by Henry's having bought another bracelet—at a 20th of the cost of the one he has bought her for their anniversary—for someone with whom, so far as we know, he has only taken tea at the Plaza. Even his approach to the exotic dancer Peggy Nash, played by Helene Reynolds, at the age of 50 in 1922, though it is introduced to us as if it were to be a campaign of seduction (“I happened to hear things about Peggy Nash that made me anxious to meet her,” he tells us in voiceover) turns out to be no more than a kind of experiment, and a humiliating one for him, to test the survival into middle age of his own youthful charms as a prelude to offering her money to detach her from his son, Jack (Tod Andrews).</p>
<p>Peggy mocks him as “the great cavalier of the Gay ‘90s” and “a kind of retired Casanova” and associates the courtliness of his addresses to her with “all the quaintness of bygone days.” The passage of time which 25, or 35 years before had been associated with new and exciting possibilities is now and henceforth to be associated with decline and decay and mortality. Lubitsch must have had some sense of being on the turn himself. This was the last movie he was to make in which he was fully in charge and at the height of his powers, and he was making it at 50, the same age Henry is in the deflating scene with Peggy Nash. He suffered a serious heart attack soon after completing the film and was to die after another one only four years later—immediately following an afternoon dalliance with a woman much younger than himself, by the way. Twice divorced, Lubitsch had always been unlucky in love, yet here, like Dante in the Paradiso, he associates his hero's eternal redemption with the love of an idealized human female.</p>
<p>In this he was like others of the film-makers whose work we will see in the weeks to come as this series continues. Movies, I always think, are more earth-bound than the other arts—if they are an art—because by blowing up the particularities of this material world along with its human inhabitants to several times their actual size, they overwhelm us with a reality from which there is no easy escape except in out-and-out fantasy. The recent computer-assisted vogue for such fantasy—that is, fake reality—may make us forget this, but the bias of the medium towards realism can actually be an advantage in dealing with a subject like the afterlife. It's always a good thing in dealing with the hypothetical, as even Dante would have recognized, to be able to make it look as much as possible like its real if metaphorical counterparts—such as the magnificent, gleaming but efficiently-run office presided over by His Excellency in the antechamber of hell.</p>
<p>For here, as in next week's film, Between Two Worlds, we do not get a glimpse of heaven directly. That is left to our imaginations once we have seen—and this is what both films are really about—how we may imagine people are allowed to approach heaven. In both, too, our heroes may look forward to a purgatory-like and merely provisional residence among the outbuildings of the celestial mansions before being admitted to full membership, as it were, among those whom we learn to see as their moral models. One of my favorite Lubitsch sayings is this: “I sometimes make pictures which are not up to my standard, but then it can only be said of a mediocrity that all his work is up to his standard.” The wit and the charm and the sense of class superiority there are joined with the same kind of paradoxical humility, of tolerance and hopeful leniency towards error, that we see in Henry Van Cleve in Heaven Can Wait. That movie, however, is very much up to the Lubitsch standard and, I think you'll find, unforgettable.</p> | false | 1 | summer eppc resident scholar james bowman presenting behalf ethics public policy center hudson institute washington series five films general theme heaven films shown hudson institute 1015 15th street nw suite 600 go eppc hudson websites details register attend series opened tuesday june 28th screening heaven wait 1943 ernst lubitsch starring ameche gene tierney charles coburn showing film mr bowman spoke minutes series general movie follows welcome first years movie series cosponsored ethics public policy center hudson institute person bill schambra thank use splendid facilities years series heaven begins hell least hells antechamber imagined ernst lubitschs heaven wait 1943 recently deceased still elegantly turnedout gay90s roué henry van cleve played ameche asking splendidly mephistophelean figure laird cregar known excellency admitted word roué originally meant someone broken upon wheel instrument torture one entirely sure came signify aged womanizer like henry first meet remarkable humility something air one indeed broken spiritually anyway upon wheel meet requirements well glad accommodate says excellency would kind enough mention instance outstanding crime youve committed crime says henry well im afraid cant think safely say whole life one continuous misdemeanor however continuous misdemeanors think meant realize immediately going enough qualify henry infernal piteven though touch vanity youthfullooking legs apparently enough damn forever boring mrs edna craig florence bates fact boring sense midst something like aristocratic milieu edmund burke said prerevolutionary france vice lost half evil losing grossness makes perfect sense world think unforgivable sin failure charm good mannersand taking oneself seriously ernst lubitsch director film originator famed lubitsch touch already legend hollywood time heaven wait made 1943 remains today collaborated film screenwriter samson raphaelson wrote several movies lubitschs direction including shop around corner saw second summer film series love romance trouble paradise movies like heaven wait american adaptations gently humorous plays hungarian provenance show traces origins pre1914 habsburg empire hierarchical assumptions aristocratic manners tolerant gently humorous approach human frailty world richard strauss hugo von hoffmannsthals der rosenkavalier lubitsch born manners son jewish tailor berlin refugee russian pogroms started show business still teenager first world warin avoided serve german army account fathers russian nationality probably influence mentor austrian max reinhardt acquired something prewar viennese spirit together postwar nostalgia lost world could experienced adult swept away european conflagrationabout way mention heaven wait historic event obviously henry van cleves new york would affected war extent european capitals apparent isolation events usually considered worldhistorical importance remarkable film closely bound many ways cultural history thats one things like movie sense gives us passage time based play called birthday henrys birthday october 25th 1872 helps us keep track movies carefully calculated chronology know instance henrys 26th birthday also day elopes martha played gene tierney cousins fiancée 36th approaching ten years later goes find parents house kansas left knowing year also important gets first real unforgettable lesson sexual manners age 15 1887 french tutor mademoiselle signe hasso one natures progressives someone believes enlightened views right side history employ phrase much used recent years merely fortunate enough alive historys ultimate point course mademoiselle anticipates later known sexual revolution time film made 1943 meant sexual revolution 1920s ways fulldress rehearsal one associate 1960s 1970s partly grew even earlier liberalizing period gave gay 90s name time many little lower social hierarchy van cleves disposed think sin almost exclusively sexual terms social superiors already learning think sexual misbehavior hardly sin part new modern way looking things mademoiselle associates year 1887 outmoded ways past hand associated henrys father randolph played louis calhern whose naïveté constantly driven back upon moral certainty need keep stiff upper lipa bit mockery rather remarkable consider film came wartime way progressive impulse flattered film portrait marriage strables henrys unhappy inlaws played great eugene pallette may remember last years man godfrey played similar part marjorie main henrys advanced ideas part new york sophistication suspicious beginning apparently loveless marriage seems intended awful warning happen marriage excludes kind romance henry stands courtship marthaand alas elsewhere yet strables behavior toward wayward daughter runs away henry suggests love forgiveness prepared admit maybe behind unremitting conflict marriage downgrading least male philandering felony misdemeanor henry calls could quite unconnected downgrading time among class people hell place terror something joked heaven wait position still find today less like formulation newspaper columnist hometown paper years ago definitively disproving view least existence hell writing god even nice guy would never send anyone hell since god guy imagined ultimate nice guy could hell qed lubitsch perhaps also casting god image instead offers us mocking verdict witty urbane hell reserved pompous selfimportant selfrighteous manners charm savoir faire henry van cleve yet part charm lies fact henry inflated idea aristocratic pride arrogance offend sense even hypothetical judgments proprieties henry arrives afterlife personification jesuss words luke xiv10 thou art bidden go sit lowest room bade thee cometh may say unto thee friend go higher shalt thou worship presence sit meat thee man considered candidate eternal lake fire idea preposterous word worship king james translation way old word honor much associated class henrys perfect manners greets devil according protocol excellency could required henry ascend heaven via uptodate electric elevator avoid trapdoor everlasting bonfire unlamented mrs craig rapidly descends happens something else required redemption offered love martha predeceased whose eternal absence heaven greatest terrors prospect residence hell offer martha unlike us knows worst henry loves anyway oh henry says know every move know outraged indignation know poor weeping little boy know misunderstood strong silent man wornout lion proud explain happened jungle last night adopted personas transparent way concealing herwell exactly clearly lubitschs raphaelsons purposes accomplished remain reticent misdemeanors exactly hero guilty wouldnt us censorious behavior wife would danger letting us know presumably knows even youthful indiscretion mademoiselle seen terms taken drop champagne together henrys subsequent hangover allows us suppose want happened memorable night likewise marthas return parents house kansas precipitated henrys bought another braceletat 20th cost one bought anniversaryfor someone far know taken tea plaza even approach exotic dancer peggy nash played helene reynolds age 50 1922 though introduced us campaign seduction happened hear things peggy nash made anxious meet tells us voiceover turns kind experiment humiliating one test survival middle age youthful charms prelude offering money detach son jack tod andrews peggy mocks great cavalier gay 90s kind retired casanova associates courtliness addresses quaintness bygone days passage time 25 35 years associated new exciting possibilities henceforth associated decline decay mortality lubitsch must sense turn last movie make fully charge height powers making 50 age henry deflating scene peggy nash suffered serious heart attack soon completing film die another one four years laterimmediately following afternoon dalliance woman much younger way twice divorced lubitsch always unlucky love yet like dante paradiso associates heros eternal redemption love idealized human female like others filmmakers whose work see weeks come series continues movies always think earthbound artsif artbecause blowing particularities material world along human inhabitants several times actual size overwhelm us reality easy escape except outandout fantasy recent computerassisted vogue fantasythat fake realitymay make us forget bias medium towards realism actually advantage dealing subject like afterlife always good thing dealing hypothetical even dante would recognized able make look much possible like real metaphorical counterpartssuch magnificent gleaming efficientlyrun office presided excellency antechamber hell next weeks film two worlds get glimpse heaven directly left imaginations seenand films really abouthow may imagine people allowed approach heaven heroes may look forward purgatorylike merely provisional residence among outbuildings celestial mansions admitted full membership among learn see moral models one favorite lubitsch sayings sometimes make pictures standard said mediocrity work standard wit charm sense class superiority joined kind paradoxical humility tolerance hopeful leniency towards error see henry van cleve heaven wait movie however much lubitsch standard think youll find unforgettable | 1,268 |
<p>What state is Dubuque in? If you answered Chicago, you are correct. Chicago’s no state, you say? Don’t be so 18th century — so “constitutional.” Dubuque is in Chicago, which is now a kind of state. Or to put it differently, the Obama administration is in the process of replacing our entire system of government — made up of nested local, state, and national, levels — with a regional framework. In Obama’s new dispensation, suburbs, small towns, and modest-sized cities like Dubuque will be turned into subordinate satellites of regional mega-cities like Chicago, regardless of which state these local governments are formally a part of.</p>
<p>Welcome to the world of “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” (AFFH), President Obama’s transformative new regulation. How will AFFH work? The city of Dubuque gives us one of our best and most frightening previews yet. I hope the presidential candidates are watching, because Obama’s new AFFH regulation and the Dubuque fiasco ought to be an issue in this year’s Iowa caucuses. I also hope American citizens pay attention to the travesty in Dubuque, because it’s not too late to save your hometown from Dubuque’s fate. (I’ll tell you how to do this below.)</p>
<p>An account of Dubuque as a forerunner of a post-AFFH world comes to us courtesy of a stunning <a href="http://www.limitedgovernment.org/publications/pubs/studies/ps-15-6.pdf" type="external">report</a> by <a href="http://ppc.uiowa.edu/forkenbrock/speaker/deborah-d-thornton" type="external">Deborah Thornton</a>, a policy analyst for Iowa’s <a href="http://www.limitedgovernment.org/" type="external">Public Interest Institute</a>. The report tells the story of how Dubuque was pressured to cede large swathes of its governing authority to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which has forced the city to direct its limited low-income “Section 8” housing resources, not to its own needy citizens, but to voucher-holders from Chicago.</p>
<p>Unlike the more familiar forerunner of AFFH, <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/421533/obama-fires-affh-warning-shot-over-hillarys-house-stanley-kurtz" type="external">Westchester County</a>, Dubuque is not an upper-middle-class suburb but a small and economically struggling city. At $44,600, median income in Dubuque is well below the state median of $51,843. Like other nearby Mississippi river towns with aging populations, Dubuque is hard-pressed to provide good jobs and decent housing for the low-income people already there: poor families with children, retired elderly, and disabled adults. The city’s priority is to revive its economy by keeping its young people from moving away, and by attracting new residents who are willing and able to start businesses. Like any city, Dubuque’s first obligation is to see to the needs of the citizens who already live there, vote, and pay taxes. Or so it was in pre-AFFH America.</p>
<p>Our story begins about eight years ago. Just as Dubuque was reeling from the effects of the 2008 recession and dealing with an uptick in its own low-income housing needs, the city was hit with a wave of “Section 8” low-income housing voucher applicants from Chicago. A few years earlier, Chicago had systematically demolished its most drug- and crime-ridden high-rise public housing facilities, using grants from HUD. Yet through its own mismanagement, Chicago had failed to properly replace its now depleted low-income housing stock, leaving many Chicago residents looking to use their Section 8 vouchers elsewhere.</p>
<p>With many more Section 8 applicants than it could house, Dubuque instituted a low-income housing point system granting preference to Dubuque residents, county residents, state residents, and out-of-state residents, in that order. Although HUD’s rules ostensibly allow localities to craft their own housing priorities, Dubuque’s point system was deemed unacceptable by HUD. The feds undertook a review of Dubuque’s housing policy that effectively treated the city as part of greater Chicago.</p>
<p>This, of course, is ridiculous. Dubuque is 200 miles and a four-to-five hour drive away from Chicago, even without traffic. And of course the two cities are in different states. But by effectively treating Dubuque and Chicago as part of the same “region,” HUD was able to declare Dubuque’s low-income housing point system discriminatory. Since the vast majority of Section 8 applicants from Chicago were African-Americans, Dubuque’s preferences for citizens of its own city, county, and state were deemed racist. HUD insisted that Dubuque would have to admit housing applicants in conformity with the demographics of the larger (HUD-defined) region. Somehow Dubuque had become a satellite of Chicago.</p>
<p>Having previously accepted HUD funding through the Housing Choice Voucher (Section 8) program, as well as HUD’s Community Development Block Grant program, Dubuque was formally obligated to “affirmatively further fair housing” in whatever way HUD defined that obligation. Refusal to submit to HUD’s dictates would have led to the withdrawal of federal funding, a lawsuit for supposed discrimination, or both. The cowed elected officials of Dubuque accordingly signed a “voluntary” (in truth, forced) consent agreement that effectively ceded control of the city’s housing policy to HUD for at least five years.</p>
<p>Under HUD’s detailed oversight, Dubuque must now actively recruit Section 8 voucher holders from the Chicago area. In fact, as of January 2015, the percentage of African-American voucher users in Dubuque was larger than the percentage of African-Americans living in Chicago. The problem is that&#160;very few of these new public housing residents have ever lived or paid taxes in Dubuque, or even Iowa. The feds have essentially commandeered Dubuque to solve Chicago’s public housing shortage. HUD’s diktat also imposes a huge administrative burden on Dubuque, with monthly, quarterly, annual, and five-year plans to be filed and followed up on. (Yes, a “five-year plan.”) Having “voluntarily” consented to a federal takeover, Dubuque is now obligated to follow HUD’s every command for at least five years.</p>
<p>Thornton rightly notes that Dubuque is a template for the coming implementation of AFFH. The rule will make it easy for HUD to effectively annex other Iowa river-towns—like Clinton, Davenport, and Burlington—to greater Chicago, although those cities are no closer to Chicago than Dubuque. The same pattern will play out nationally under AFFH, Thornton warns.</p>
<p>In a post-AFFH world, every region of the United States will be compelled “to meet nationally determined standards for the management and makeup of every aspect” of local life, says Thornton. AFFH will also force local communities into regional consortia directed by what Thornton calls “unelected governing boards who do not represent the voters.” Those electorally unaccountable regional commissions, she continues, “will set targets for the desired percentage of ‘types’ of people to live in each area of the region.” Cities and businesses, “buried under mounds of paperwork,” will have no choice but to submit.</p>
<p>How can a housing rule control every aspect of local life? It’s far easier than you might imagine. AFFH redefines “fair housing” to include proximity to transportation, jobs, and schools. This will effectively extend the power that HUD now exercises over Dubuque’s housing policy to nearly every other aspect of local development and planning. Under AFFH, once a town takes HUD money, it effectively loses control not only over housing but schools, zoning, transportation, the environment, and business location. &#160;As Thornton concludes, “If you take their money, you play by their rules.”</p>
<p>Dubuque shows that, over time, Obama’s AFFH rule could spell the end of local government in America. Thornton rightly warns against the regional consortia provided for in AFFH.&#160; Once HUD pressures a municipality into such a regional governing entity, local control is lost. But the Dubuque case strikes me as an even scarier precedent than Thornton implies. A city may not even have to formally join a regional consortium to lose its capacity for self-government.</p>
<p>After all, HUD didn’t need to force Dubuque to formally join a regional consortium in order to turn it into a satellite of Chicago. All the feds had to do was classify Dubuque as part of greater Chicago, then judge the city’s housing demographics as out-of-balance with reference to the racial and ethnic make-up of the region as a whole. At that point, a trumped-up charge of racism and threats to withdraw funding or file a lawsuit “logically” followed. Without joining anything, Dubuque is for all practical purposes now part of Chicago, essentially because HUD has declared it so.</p>
<p>AFFH makes this trick particularly easy to pull off because the rule instructs all localities in receipt of federal grants to analyze their housing practices with reference to “regional data” provided by HUD.&#160; By forcing every town, small city, or suburb that takes HUD money to evaluate the “fairness” of its demographic mix with reference to the demographics of the nearest mega-city, HUD can effectively <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/421389/attention-americas-suburbs-you-have-just-been-annexed-stanley-kurtz" type="external">institute regional government in America by fiat</a>. If the ethnic mix of your town is substantially different than the ethnic mix of a city even 200 miles, a five-hour drive, and another state away, you will have to recruit that city’s dominant ethnicities to populate your low-income housing, so long as HUD declares you to be in that “region.” As Iowa is to Chicago, so may New Hampshire soon be to Boston. Are you listening presidential candidates?</p>
<p>In its <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/09/us/hud-issuing-new-rules-to-fight-segregation.html?_r=0" type="external">story</a> on the announcement of AFFH, The New York Times quoted Secretary Julian Castro downplaying HUD’s intended enforcement efforts. Castro portrays the cutoff of federal funds as a last resort that he barely intends to use, if at all. Dubuque makes a mockery of Castro’s claim, unless you credit the absurd pretense that the Dubuque’s compliance agreement was in fact voluntary, rather than the response of a financially-strapped town to threats of federal defunding and/or lawsuits—threats levied on the basis of a thoroughly contrived “regionalist” premise. When it comes to housing, Secretary Castro is now forcibly controlling virtually every move Dubuque makes.</p>
<p>Come to think of it, Dubuque may not be in the state of Chicago after all. What state is Dubuque really in? If you answered H.U.D., you are correct.</p>
<p>If you don’t want your hometown to become the next Dubuque, there’s something you can do to prevent it right now. Organize your neighbors and force your local government to stop taking HUD money. (For more on how to do this, go <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/429550/affh-refuse-hud-money" type="external">here</a>.)</p>
<p>— Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the <a href="" type="internal">Ethics and Public Policy Center</a>. He can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p> | false | 1 | state dubuque answered chicago correct chicagos state say dont 18th century constitutional dubuque chicago kind state put differently obama administration process replacing entire system government made nested local state national levels regional framework obamas new dispensation suburbs small towns modestsized cities like dubuque turned subordinate satellites regional megacities like chicago regardless state local governments formally part welcome world affirmatively furthering fair housing affh president obamas transformative new regulation affh work city dubuque gives us one best frightening previews yet hope presidential candidates watching obamas new affh regulation dubuque fiasco ought issue years iowa caucuses also hope american citizens pay attention travesty dubuque late save hometown dubuques fate ill tell account dubuque forerunner postaffh world comes us courtesy stunning report deborah thornton policy analyst iowas public interest institute report tells story dubuque pressured cede large swathes governing authority department housing urban development forced city direct limited lowincome section 8 housing resources needy citizens voucherholders chicago unlike familiar forerunner affh westchester county dubuque uppermiddleclass suburb small economically struggling city 44600 median income dubuque well state median 51843 like nearby mississippi river towns aging populations dubuque hardpressed provide good jobs decent housing lowincome people already poor families children retired elderly disabled adults citys priority revive economy keeping young people moving away attracting new residents willing able start businesses like city dubuques first obligation see needs citizens already live vote pay taxes preaffh america story begins eight years ago dubuque reeling effects 2008 recession dealing uptick lowincome housing needs city hit wave section 8 lowincome housing voucher applicants chicago years earlier chicago systematically demolished drug crimeridden highrise public housing facilities using grants hud yet mismanagement chicago failed properly replace depleted lowincome housing stock leaving many chicago residents looking use section 8 vouchers elsewhere many section 8 applicants could house dubuque instituted lowincome housing point system granting preference dubuque residents county residents state residents outofstate residents order although huds rules ostensibly allow localities craft housing priorities dubuques point system deemed unacceptable hud feds undertook review dubuques housing policy effectively treated city part greater chicago course ridiculous dubuque 200 miles fourtofive hour drive away chicago even without traffic course two cities different states effectively treating dubuque chicago part region hud able declare dubuques lowincome housing point system discriminatory since vast majority section 8 applicants chicago africanamericans dubuques preferences citizens city county state deemed racist hud insisted dubuque would admit housing applicants conformity demographics larger huddefined region somehow dubuque become satellite chicago previously accepted hud funding housing choice voucher section 8 program well huds community development block grant program dubuque formally obligated affirmatively fair housing whatever way hud defined obligation refusal submit huds dictates would led withdrawal federal funding lawsuit supposed discrimination cowed elected officials dubuque accordingly signed voluntary truth forced consent agreement effectively ceded control citys housing policy hud least five years huds detailed oversight dubuque must actively recruit section 8 voucher holders chicago area fact january 2015 percentage africanamerican voucher users dubuque larger percentage africanamericans living chicago problem that160very new public housing residents ever lived paid taxes dubuque even iowa feds essentially commandeered dubuque solve chicagos public housing shortage huds diktat also imposes huge administrative burden dubuque monthly quarterly annual fiveyear plans filed followed yes fiveyear plan voluntarily consented federal takeover dubuque obligated follow huds every command least five years thornton rightly notes dubuque template coming implementation affh rule make easy hud effectively annex iowa rivertownslike clinton davenport burlingtonto greater chicago although cities closer chicago dubuque pattern play nationally affh thornton warns postaffh world every region united states compelled meet nationally determined standards management makeup every aspect local life says thornton affh also force local communities regional consortia directed thornton calls unelected governing boards represent voters electorally unaccountable regional commissions continues set targets desired percentage types people live area region cities businesses buried mounds paperwork choice submit housing rule control every aspect local life far easier might imagine affh redefines fair housing include proximity transportation jobs schools effectively extend power hud exercises dubuques housing policy nearly every aspect local development planning affh town takes hud money effectively loses control housing schools zoning transportation environment business location 160as thornton concludes take money play rules dubuque shows time obamas affh rule could spell end local government america thornton rightly warns regional consortia provided affh160 hud pressures municipality regional governing entity local control lost dubuque case strikes even scarier precedent thornton implies city may even formally join regional consortium lose capacity selfgovernment hud didnt need force dubuque formally join regional consortium order turn satellite chicago feds classify dubuque part greater chicago judge citys housing demographics outofbalance reference racial ethnic makeup region whole point trumpedup charge racism threats withdraw funding file lawsuit logically followed without joining anything dubuque practical purposes part chicago essentially hud declared affh makes trick particularly easy pull rule instructs localities receipt federal grants analyze housing practices reference regional data provided hud160 forcing every town small city suburb takes hud money evaluate fairness demographic mix reference demographics nearest megacity hud effectively institute regional government america fiat ethnic mix town substantially different ethnic mix city even 200 miles fivehour drive another state away recruit citys dominant ethnicities populate lowincome housing long hud declares region iowa chicago may new hampshire soon boston listening presidential candidates story announcement affh new york times quoted secretary julian castro downplaying huds intended enforcement efforts castro portrays cutoff federal funds last resort barely intends use dubuque makes mockery castros claim unless credit absurd pretense dubuques compliance agreement fact voluntary rather response financiallystrapped town threats federal defunding andor lawsuitsthreats levied basis thoroughly contrived regionalist premise comes housing secretary castro forcibly controlling virtually every move dubuque makes come think dubuque may state chicago state dubuque really answered hud correct dont want hometown become next dubuque theres something prevent right organize neighbors force local government stop taking hud money go stanley kurtz senior fellow ethics public policy center reached commentskurtznationalreviewcom | 974 |
<p />
<p>As U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry hurried to his helicopter, ready to take off at the end of a visit to Iraq last year, it was becoming clearer that the Americans had lost control of a country they wished to mold to their liking. His departure on March 24, 2013 was the conclusion of a ‘surprise’ visit meant to mark the 10th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. Ten years prior, the US had stormed Baghdad, unleashing one of the 20th century’s longest and most brutal conflicts. Since then, Iraq has not ceased to bleed.</p>
<p>&lt;img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-17263" style="margin: 5px;" src="https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ramzy-baroud-300x200.jpg" alt="Ramzy Baroud" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ramzy-baroud-300x200.jpg 300w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ramzy-baroud-600x400.jpg 600w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ramzy-baroud-73x50.jpg 73w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ramzy-baroud-500x333.jpg 500w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ramzy-baroud-280x186.jpg 280w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ramzy-baroud-60x40.jpg 60w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ramzy-baroud-118x78.jpg 118w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ramzy-baroud-479x319.jpg 479w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ramzy-baroud.jpg 625w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /&gt; Kerry offered nothing of value on that visit, save the same predictable clichés of Iraq’s supposedly successful democracy, as a testament to some imagined triumph of American values. But it was telling that a decade of war was not even enough to assure an ordinary trip for the American diplomat. It was a ‘surprise’ because no amount of coordination between the US embassy, then consisting of 16,000 staff, and the Iraqi government, could guarantee Kerry’s safety.</p>
<p>Yet something sinister was brewing in Iraq. Mostly Muslim Sunni tribesmen were fed up with the political paradigm imposed by the Americans almost immediately upon their arrival, which divided the country based on sectarian lines. The Sunni areas, in the center and west of the country, paid a terrible price for the US invasion that empowered political elites purported to speak on behalf of the Shia. The latter, who were mostly predisposed by Iranian interests, began to slowly diversify their allegiance. Initially, they played the game per US rules and served as an iron fist against those who dared resist the occupation. But as years passed, the likes of current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki found in Iran a more stable ally: where sect, politics, and economic interests seamlessly align. Thus, Iraq was ruled over by a strange albeit undeclared troika in which the US and Iran had great political leverage where the Shia-dominated government cleverly attempted to find balance and survive.</p>
<p>Of course, a country with the size and history of Iraq doesn’t easily descend into sectarian madness on its own. But Shia and Sunni politicians and intellectuals who refused to adhere to the prevailing intolerant political archetype were long sidelined—killed, imprisoned, deported, and simply had no space in today’s Iraq—as national identity was banished by sect, tribe, religion and race.</p>
<p>Currently, the staff of the US embassy stands at 5,100, and American companies are abandoning their investments in the south of Iraq where the vast majority of the country’s oil exists. It is in the south that al-Maliki has the upper hand. He, of course, doesn’t speak on behalf of all Shia, and is extremely intolerant of dissidents. In 2008, he fought a brutal war to seize control of Basra from Shia militias who challenged his rule. Later, he struck the Mehdi Army of Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr in a Baghdad suburb. He won in both instances, but at a terrible toll. His Shia rivals would be glad to see him go.</p>
<p>Maliki’s most brutal battles however have been reserved for dissenting Sunnis. His government, as has become the habit of most Arab dictators, is claiming to have been fighting terrorism since day one, and is yet to abandon the slogans it propagates. While militant Sunni groups, some affiliated with al-Qaeda, have indeed taken advantage of the ensuing chaos to promote their own ideology, and solicit greater support for their cause, Iraq’s Sunnis have suffered humiliation of many folds throughout the years long before al-Qaeda was introduced to Iraq—courtesy of the US invasion.</p>
<p>Iraq’s Sunni tribes, despite every attempt at negotiating a dignified formulation to help millions of people escape the inferno of war, were dismissed and humiliated. The likes of former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was notorious for his targeting of Sunni tribes and mercilessness with any community that in any way supported or tolerated the resistance. Due to strong support by Shia militias, which served as the core of today’s Iraqi army, and Kurdish militias in the north, the resistance was isolated and brutalized.</p>
<p>That history is not only relevant, but it is not history to begin with. It is the agonizing reality. When the last US military column snaked out of Iraq into Kuwait in Dec. 2011, the US was leaving Iraq with the worst possible scenario: a sectarian central government that was beyond corrupt, plus many ruthless parties vying for power or revenge and sectarian polarization at its most extreme manifestation.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, Iraq is still very important to the Americans. It is perhaps a failed military experiment, but it is still rich of oil and natural gas. Moreover, Iraq is getting richer, the draft of the Iraqi budget for 2014 “anticipates average exports of 3.4m barrels/day (b/d), up 1m b/d from the previous year,” according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. “Radical shifts are certainly on the horizon,” reported Forbes on the future of the oil market. Something is driving speculation and that “something is Iraq.” (Jan 31) Iraq’s prospected oil production potential “dwarfs everything else”, reported Canada’s Globe &amp; Mail, citing Henry Groppe, a respected oil and gas analyst. “It’s the thing that everybody ought to be watching and following as closely as possible,” he said.</p>
<p>Drawing its conclusions for the 2012 Iraq Energy Outlook, the International Energy Agency reported that Iraq could be “reaching output in excess of 9 mb/d by 2020”, which “would equal the highest sustained growth in the history of the global oil industry.”</p>
<p>And many are indeed watching. Kerry and the US administration are hardly fond of Maliki, for the latter is too close to Tehran to be trusted. But he is Iraq’s strongest man commanding about 930,000 security personnel “spread across the army, police force and intelligence services,” according to the BBC, and that for the Americans must count for something.</p>
<p>However, Iraq’s riches cannot be easily obtained. Sure, the country’s strong parties are comforted by the fact that the army crackdown on Sunni tribes, al-Qaeda affiliated militias and other groups in al-Anbar and elsewhere is happening outside the country’s main oil field. But they shouldn’t discount just how quickly civil wars spiral out of control. The death toll in 2013 was alarmingly high, over 8,000, mostly civilians, according to the UN. It is the highest since 2008.</p>
<p>Iraq’s ‘bad years’ seem to be making a comeback. This time the US has little leverage over Iraq to control the events from afar. “This is a fight that belongs to the Iraqis,” Kerry said in recent comments during a visit to Jerusalem. Indeed, with little military and diplomatic presence, the US can do very little. In fact, they have done enough.&#160;</p> | false | 1 | us secretary state john kerry hurried helicopter ready take end visit iraq last year becoming clearer americans lost control country wished mold liking departure march 24 2013 conclusion surprise visit meant mark 10th anniversary us invasion iraq ten years prior us stormed baghdad unleashing one 20th centurys longest brutal conflicts since iraq ceased bleed ltimg classalignleft sizemedium wpimage17263 stylemargin 5px srchttpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201302ramzybaroud300x200jpg altramzy baroud width300 height200 srcsethttpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201302ramzybaroud300x200jpg 300w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201302ramzybaroud600x400jpg 600w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201302ramzybaroud73x50jpg 73w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201302ramzybaroud500x333jpg 500w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201302ramzybaroud280x186jpg 280w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201302ramzybaroud60x40jpg 60w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201302ramzybaroud118x78jpg 118w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201302ramzybaroud479x319jpg 479w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201302ramzybaroudjpg 625w sizesmaxwidth 300px 100vw 300px gt kerry offered nothing value visit save predictable clichés iraqs supposedly successful democracy testament imagined triumph american values telling decade war even enough assure ordinary trip american diplomat surprise amount coordination us embassy consisting 16000 staff iraqi government could guarantee kerrys safety yet something sinister brewing iraq mostly muslim sunni tribesmen fed political paradigm imposed americans almost immediately upon arrival divided country based sectarian lines sunni areas center west country paid terrible price us invasion empowered political elites purported speak behalf shia latter mostly predisposed iranian interests began slowly diversify allegiance initially played game per us rules served iron fist dared resist occupation years passed likes current prime minister nouri almaliki found iran stable ally sect politics economic interests seamlessly align thus iraq ruled strange albeit undeclared troika us iran great political leverage shiadominated government cleverly attempted find balance survive course country size history iraq doesnt easily descend sectarian madness shia sunni politicians intellectuals refused adhere prevailing intolerant political archetype long sidelinedkilled imprisoned deported simply space todays iraqas national identity banished sect tribe religion race currently staff us embassy stands 5100 american companies abandoning investments south iraq vast majority countrys oil exists south almaliki upper hand course doesnt speak behalf shia extremely intolerant dissidents 2008 fought brutal war seize control basra shia militias challenged rule later struck mehdi army shia cleric moqtada sadr baghdad suburb instances terrible toll shia rivals would glad see go malikis brutal battles however reserved dissenting sunnis government become habit arab dictators claiming fighting terrorism since day one yet abandon slogans propagates militant sunni groups affiliated alqaeda indeed taken advantage ensuing chaos promote ideology solicit greater support cause iraqs sunnis suffered humiliation many folds throughout years long alqaeda introduced iraqcourtesy us invasion iraqs sunni tribes despite every attempt negotiating dignified formulation help millions people escape inferno war dismissed humiliated likes former us secretary defense donald rumsfeld notorious targeting sunni tribes mercilessness community way supported tolerated resistance due strong support shia militias served core todays iraqi army kurdish militias north resistance isolated brutalized history relevant history begin agonizing reality last us military column snaked iraq kuwait dec 2011 us leaving iraq worst possible scenario sectarian central government beyond corrupt plus many ruthless parties vying power revenge sectarian polarization extreme manifestation nonetheless iraq still important americans perhaps failed military experiment still rich oil natural gas moreover iraq getting richer draft iraqi budget 2014 anticipates average exports 34m barrelsday bd 1m bd previous year according economist intelligence unit radical shifts certainly horizon reported forbes future oil market something driving speculation something iraq jan 31 iraqs prospected oil production potential dwarfs everything else reported canadas globe amp mail citing henry groppe respected oil gas analyst thing everybody ought watching following closely possible said drawing conclusions 2012 iraq energy outlook international energy agency reported iraq could reaching output excess 9 mbd 2020 would equal highest sustained growth history global oil industry many indeed watching kerry us administration hardly fond maliki latter close tehran trusted iraqs strongest man commanding 930000 security personnel spread across army police force intelligence services according bbc americans must count something however iraqs riches easily obtained sure countrys strong parties comforted fact army crackdown sunni tribes alqaeda affiliated militias groups alanbar elsewhere happening outside countrys main oil field shouldnt discount quickly civil wars spiral control death toll 2013 alarmingly high 8000 mostly civilians according un highest since 2008 iraqs bad years seem making comeback time us little leverage iraq control events afar fight belongs iraqis kerry said recent comments visit jerusalem indeed little military diplomatic presence us little fact done enough160 | 680 |
<p>JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS (2-2) AT PITTSBURGH STEELERS (3-1)</p>
<p>GAME SNAPSHOT</p>
<p>KICKOFF: Sunday, 1 p.m. ET, Heinz Field. TV: CBS, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kevin-Harlan/" type="external">Kevin Harlan</a>, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Rich-Gannon/" type="external">Rich Gannon</a>.</p>
<p>SERIES HISTORY: 23rd regular-season meeting. Series tied, 11-11. The Steelers have won the past three meetings and six of the 10 games in Pittsburgh, but the Jaguars have won three in a row at Heinz Field, including the only playoff game between the two teams. The Jaguars beat the Steelers 31-29 in a 2008 AFC wild-card game in <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Mike_Tomlin/" type="external">Mike Tomlin</a>‘s second season as coach.</p>
<p>KEYS TO THE GAME: The Jaguars will need to have their best effort of the year on the ground in order to beat the Steelers. Pittsburgh has played well in stopping opposing pass attacks (second-best mark in the league), an area where the Jaguars have struggled.</p>
<p>The Steelers have had a tougher time defending the run, allowing 113 yards a game, better than only nine other teams. Jacksonville has rushed for more than 150 yards in three of four games and its 148.8 yards per game are second-best in the league. This could be a game where <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Leonard-Fournette/" type="external">Leonard Fournette</a> gets 30-35 touches, possibly as many as 30 runs and half a dozen short throws out of the backfield. The Jaguars will throw just enough passes to keep the Steelers from loading the box with eight defenders.</p>
<p>The easiest way to beat the Jaguars is by forcing quarterback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Blake-Bortles/" type="external">Blake Bortles</a> to beat you. Bortles has thrown three interceptions in the first four games, with all three coming in their two losses. He has posted a quarterback rating above 87 once this season and has not thrown for more than 250 yards yet. But that means the Steelers have to stop Fournette.</p>
<p>When the Steelers have the ball, they’ll want to feed <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/LeVeon-Bell/" type="external">Le’Veon Bell</a>, who is coming off his best game of the season. Bell accounted for 186 yards from scrimmage in the Steelers’ win in Baltimore. The Jaguars struggle to defend the run, which should open the door for the Steelers to follow a similar plan at Heinz Field.</p>
<p>MATCHUPS TO WATCH:</p>
<p>–Steelers WR <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Antonio_Brown/" type="external">Antonio Brown</a> vs. Jaguars CBs <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jalen-Ramsey/" type="external">Jalen Ramsey</a> and A.J. Boone. Brown already has a pair of double-digit reception games that produced triple-digit yards. But he also has five- and four-catch games, the latter coming Sunday and leading to Brown’s rant during and after the game about the lack of passes in his direction. That might continue this week when either Ramsey or Buoye is glued to him. Both cornerbacks have played at a high level thus far, combining for three interceptions in the first four games. If Ramsey and/or Buoye do an effective job in shutting down Brown, it could lead to more frustration and more of a running attack by the Steelers.</p>
<p>–RB Leonard Fournette vs. Steelers LBs <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ryan-Shazier/" type="external">Ryan Shazier</a> and Vince Williams. Fournette has lived up to his preseason hype and has easily been Jacksonville’s most effective offensive weapon, whether it’s running the ball or taking short passes and turning them into big gains. He did suffer a slight ankle injury last week, and that could hamper how much he’s used against the Steelers. Shazier and Williams play the two inside linebacker spots. Shazier has been the standout, leading the team with 37 tackles, tied for fifth-most in the NFL. He’s quick enough to avoid blockers to make tackles and will likely key on Fournette much of the game. Fournette will need to have a big game in order for the Jaguars to win.</p>
<p>FRIDAY INJURY REPORT</p>
<p>JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS</p>
<p>–Out: LB Lerentee McCray (knee)</p>
<p>–Questionable: WR Marqise Lee (ribs), C Brandon Linder (illness), WR Jaelen Strong (hamstring), S Jarrod Wilson (shoulder)</p>
<p>PITTSBURGH STEELERS</p>
<p>–Doubtful: T Marcus Gilbert (hamstring)</p>
<p>PLAYER SPOTLIGHT: Jaguars DE Dante Fowler. Fowler has started only one of his 19 NFL games after missing his rookie season in 2015 with a torn ACL. While Fowler isn’t considered a starter, he continues to get as much time as starter Yannick Ngakoue. Fowler made two plays in New York last Sunday that could have reversed the outcome. On one, Fowler ran down Jets RB <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Bilal-Powell/" type="external">Bilal Powell</a> from behind and prevented him from gaining a first down late in the game. Earlier, Fowler was credited with his third sack this season when he knocked the ball free from Jets QB <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Josh_McCown/" type="external">Josh McCown</a>. The Jaguars didn’t recover the fumble deep in Jets territory. Fowler continues to get better each outing but still has occasional lapses where he plays out of control. When he is disciplined and does his job, he brings intensity to create havoc in opposing backfields.</p>
<p>FAST FACTS: Jaguars QB Blake Bortles has thrown five TD passes and just one pick in the past two games. He is tied for third in the AFC with seven TD passes. … WR <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Allen-Hurns/" type="external">Allen Hurns</a> leads the Jaguars with 16 catches and 186 yards. … The Jaguars lead the NFL with 18 sacks. DE <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Calais-Campbell/" type="external">Calais Campbell</a> is tied for second in the NFL with 5.5 sacks. He also is the only NFL player with at least five sacks in each of past nine seasons. … Steelers QB <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ben_Roethlisberger/" type="external">Ben Roethlisberger</a> has eight TD passes and one interception in the past four meetings. In his past six home games, he has 1,899 passing yards (316.5 per game), 19 TDs and three INTs (a 121.1 rating). … Pittsburgh WR Antonio Brown ranks second in the NFL with 30 catches and 388 yards. In his past 12 home games, he has 110 catches (9.2 per game) for 1,383 yards (115.3 per game) and 12 TDs. Since entering the league in 2010, he leads the NFL with 662 catches and 8,765 yards.</p>
<p>PREDICTION: The Steelers figure to get a lead and force Bortles to try to catch up, which is when Pittsburgh will put it away.</p>
<p>OUR PICK: Steelers, 27-17.</p>
<p>— <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Chris-Cluff/" type="external">Chris Cluff</a></p> | false | 1 | jacksonville jaguars 22 pittsburgh steelers 31 game snapshot kickoff sunday 1 pm et heinz field tv cbs kevin harlan rich gannon series history 23rd regularseason meeting series tied 1111 steelers past three meetings six 10 games pittsburgh jaguars three row heinz field including playoff game two teams jaguars beat steelers 3129 2008 afc wildcard game mike tomlins second season coach keys game jaguars need best effort year ground order beat steelers pittsburgh played well stopping opposing pass attacks secondbest mark league area jaguars struggled steelers tougher time defending run allowing 113 yards game better nine teams jacksonville rushed 150 yards three four games 1488 yards per game secondbest league could game leonard fournette gets 3035 touches possibly many 30 runs half dozen short throws backfield jaguars throw enough passes keep steelers loading box eight defenders easiest way beat jaguars forcing quarterback blake bortles beat bortles thrown three interceptions first four games three coming two losses posted quarterback rating 87 season thrown 250 yards yet means steelers stop fournette steelers ball theyll want feed leveon bell coming best game season bell accounted 186 yards scrimmage steelers win baltimore jaguars struggle defend run open door steelers follow similar plan heinz field matchups watch steelers wr antonio brown vs jaguars cbs jalen ramsey aj boone brown already pair doubledigit reception games produced tripledigit yards also five fourcatch games latter coming sunday leading browns rant game lack passes direction might continue week either ramsey buoye glued cornerbacks played high level thus far combining three interceptions first four games ramsey andor buoye effective job shutting brown could lead frustration running attack steelers rb leonard fournette vs steelers lbs ryan shazier vince williams fournette lived preseason hype easily jacksonvilles effective offensive weapon whether running ball taking short passes turning big gains suffer slight ankle injury last week could hamper much hes used steelers shazier williams play two inside linebacker spots shazier standout leading team 37 tackles tied fifthmost nfl hes quick enough avoid blockers make tackles likely key fournette much game fournette need big game order jaguars win friday injury report jacksonville jaguars lb lerentee mccray knee questionable wr marqise lee ribs c brandon linder illness wr jaelen strong hamstring jarrod wilson shoulder pittsburgh steelers doubtful marcus gilbert hamstring player spotlight jaguars de dante fowler fowler started one 19 nfl games missing rookie season 2015 torn acl fowler isnt considered starter continues get much time starter yannick ngakoue fowler made two plays new york last sunday could reversed outcome one fowler ran jets rb bilal powell behind prevented gaining first late game earlier fowler credited third sack season knocked ball free jets qb josh mccown jaguars didnt recover fumble deep jets territory fowler continues get better outing still occasional lapses plays control disciplined job brings intensity create havoc opposing backfields fast facts jaguars qb blake bortles thrown five td passes one pick past two games tied third afc seven td passes wr allen hurns leads jaguars 16 catches 186 yards jaguars lead nfl 18 sacks de calais campbell tied second nfl 55 sacks also nfl player least five sacks past nine seasons steelers qb ben roethlisberger eight td passes one interception past four meetings past six home games 1899 passing yards 3165 per game 19 tds three ints 1211 rating pittsburgh wr antonio brown ranks second nfl 30 catches 388 yards past 12 home games 110 catches 92 per game 1383 yards 1153 per game 12 tds since entering league 2010 leads nfl 662 catches 8765 yards prediction steelers figure get lead force bortles try catch pittsburgh put away pick steelers 2717 chris cluff | 598 |
<p>DALLAS COWBOYS (6-6) AT NEW YORK GIANTS (2-10)</p>
<p>GAME SNAPSHOT</p>
<p>KICKOFF: Sunday, 1 p.m. ET, MetLife Stadium. TV: FOX, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kevin-Burkhardt/" type="external">Kevin Burkhardt</a>, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Charles_Davis/" type="external">Charles Davis</a>, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Pam-Oliver/" type="external">Pam Oliver</a> (field reporter).</p>
<p>SERIES HISTORY: 111th regular-season meeting. Cowboys leads series, 63-45-2. Dallas has won six of the last nine. Dallas won 19-3 Sept. 10 in Dallas. The Giants won 10-7 in New York in 2016.</p>
<p>KEYS TO THE GAME: After being humiliated last week when he lost his starting job, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Eli_Manning/" type="external">Eli Manning</a> seems intent on putting to rest any notion that his skills have declined and that he should be more receptive to sharing time with rookie Davis Webb.</p>
<p>Manning sounds like a man who is on a mission to make someone pay for what happened last week. That someone could be the Cowboys, who have given up 234.8 passing yards per game. Dallas has allowed at least two passing touchdowns per game over the last five weeks. If the Giants can get the Cowboys’ pass rush blocked, they might be able to do some damage with their passing game.</p>
<p>The Cowboys will try to force the run with <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Alfred-Morris/" type="external">Alfred Morris</a> and get timely first downs from quarterback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Dak-Prescott/" type="external">Dak Prescott</a>. Morris has rushed for 50 or more yards in three of his last four games. Last week, he ran for 127 yards and a touchdown against Washington, his old team.</p>
<p>The Giants’ run defense is the worst in the league — the Giants have held their opponent under 100 yards only once — so Morris could have another good day.</p>
<p>MATCHUPS TO WATCH:</p>
<p>–Giants TE <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Evan-Engram/" type="external">Evan Engram</a> vs. Cowboys FS Byron Jones. Engram is the Giants’ lone remaining threat on offense. He had game-high totals of seven receptions for 99 yards and a touchdown against the Raiders last week. He has six touchdowns, most by a rookie tight end in team history, on 51 catches. Jones is the Cowboys’ noted tight end stopper. He has had snaps taken away from him in the regular defense, but he remains a solid cover guy against tight ends.</p>
<p>–Cowboys C Travis Frederick vs. Giants DT Damon Harrison. Harrison is not having the season he had a year ago, but he remains stout in the middle and is someone Frederick will have to contain and/or neutralize if the Cowboys hope to get the running game going. Harrison has 1.5 sacks and 59 tackles for a run defense that ranks last in the NFL. Fredericks will have to be up to the task if the Cowboys hope to exploit the Giants on the ground.</p>
<p>FRIDAY INJURY REPORTS</p>
<p>DALLAS COWBOYS</p>
<p>–Questionable: WR Brice Butler (foot), T La’el Collins (back), DT Maliek Collins (foot), LB Justin Durant (concussion, illness), DE <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/David_Irving/" type="external">David Irving</a> (concussion), CB Orlando Scandrick (back), T <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tyron-Smith/" type="external">Tyron Smith</a> (back)</p>
<p>NEW YORK GIANTS</p>
<p>–Out: LB B.J. Goodson (ankle), G Justin Pugh (back)</p>
<p>–Questionable: CB Eli Apple (hip, back), RB Orleans Darkwa (illness), DE <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jason-Pierre-Paul/" type="external">Jason Pierre-Paul</a> (finger), WR Travis Rudolph (hamstring), WR <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Sterling-Shepard/" type="external">Sterling Shepard</a> (hamstring), T Chad Wheeler (concussion)</p>
<p>PLAYER SPOTLIGHT: Giants QB Eli Manning. After the worst week of his professional career — a week in which his starts streak was snapped — Manning will return as the team’s starter, much to the delight of the fan base. Before he was benched, Manning had struggled to complete more than 55 percent of his pass attempts in his last two games. With order restored in the Giants’ universe, and an adoring home crowd sure to give him a rousing ovation once he takes the field, look for Manning to show his critics that he still has it.</p>
<p>FAST FACTS: Dallas QB Dak Prescott has just five TD passes in his past four road games. But he has run for three scores in those games and has 11 rushing TDs since 2016, most by an NFL QB. … RB Alfred Morris rushed for 127 yards in Week 13, his first 100-yard game with Dallas. He has 254 rushing yards and a TD in his past three games. … WR <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Dez_Bryant/" type="external">Dez Bryant</a> has 72 TD catches, one more than <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Bob_Hayes/" type="external">Bob Hayes</a> for the franchise record. He hasn’t had many big games in New York, with just 441 yards and three TDs in his past six games. … TE <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jason_Witten/" type="external">Jason Witten</a> has 153 receptions and 14 TDs vs. the Giants, his most vs. any opponent. … DE <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/DeMarcus-Lawrence/" type="external">Demarcus Lawrence</a> leads the NFL with 13.5 sacks is tied for second with four forced fumbles. He had two sacks last week, his league-best fourth multi-sack game in 2017. He had 1.5 sacks in the last meeting. … DL David Irving has three sacks in his past three road games. … Giants QB Eli Manning has 10 TD passes and two interceptions (a 100.9 rating) in his past six home games vs. Dallas. … WR Sterling Shepard has 14 receptions for 198 yards in his past two games. … Rookie TE Evan Engram has five TDs in his past seven games. He leads NFL rookies in TD catches (6) and ranks third in receptions (51) and fourth in receiving yards (569). … DE Jason Pierre-Paul has seven sacks in his past 10 games vs. Dallas. … S <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Landon-Collins/" type="external">Landon Collins</a> has 35 tackles, an interception and a fumble recovery in his past three games. He ranks second among NFL safeties with 90 tackles. … LB B.J. Goodson had a career-high 18 tackles in the last meeting, most by any NFL player in 2017.</p>
<p>PREDICTION: The Cowboys should own time of possession in this one, with Morris keeping the pressure off Prescott.</p>
<p>OUR PICK: Cowboys, 23-13.</p>
<p>— <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Chris-Cluff/" type="external">Chris Cluff</a></p> | false | 1 | dallas cowboys 66 new york giants 210 game snapshot kickoff sunday 1 pm et metlife stadium tv fox kevin burkhardt charles davis pam oliver field reporter series history 111th regularseason meeting cowboys leads series 63452 dallas six last nine dallas 193 sept 10 dallas giants 107 new york 2016 keys game humiliated last week lost starting job eli manning seems intent putting rest notion skills declined receptive sharing time rookie davis webb manning sounds like man mission make someone pay happened last week someone could cowboys given 2348 passing yards per game dallas allowed least two passing touchdowns per game last five weeks giants get cowboys pass rush blocked might able damage passing game cowboys try force run alfred morris get timely first downs quarterback dak prescott morris rushed 50 yards three last four games last week ran 127 yards touchdown washington old team giants run defense worst league giants held opponent 100 yards morris could another good day matchups watch giants te evan engram vs cowboys fs byron jones engram giants lone remaining threat offense gamehigh totals seven receptions 99 yards touchdown raiders last week six touchdowns rookie tight end team history 51 catches jones cowboys noted tight end stopper snaps taken away regular defense remains solid cover guy tight ends cowboys c travis frederick vs giants dt damon harrison harrison season year ago remains stout middle someone frederick contain andor neutralize cowboys hope get running game going harrison 15 sacks 59 tackles run defense ranks last nfl fredericks task cowboys hope exploit giants ground friday injury reports dallas cowboys questionable wr brice butler foot lael collins back dt maliek collins foot lb justin durant concussion illness de david irving concussion cb orlando scandrick back tyron smith back new york giants lb bj goodson ankle g justin pugh back questionable cb eli apple hip back rb orleans darkwa illness de jason pierrepaul finger wr travis rudolph hamstring wr sterling shepard hamstring chad wheeler concussion player spotlight giants qb eli manning worst week professional career week starts streak snapped manning return teams starter much delight fan base benched manning struggled complete 55 percent pass attempts last two games order restored giants universe adoring home crowd sure give rousing ovation takes field look manning show critics still fast facts dallas qb dak prescott five td passes past four road games run three scores games 11 rushing tds since 2016 nfl qb rb alfred morris rushed 127 yards week 13 first 100yard game dallas 254 rushing yards td past three games wr dez bryant 72 td catches one bob hayes franchise record hasnt many big games new york 441 yards three tds past six games te jason witten 153 receptions 14 tds vs giants vs opponent de demarcus lawrence leads nfl 135 sacks tied second four forced fumbles two sacks last week leaguebest fourth multisack game 2017 15 sacks last meeting dl david irving three sacks past three road games giants qb eli manning 10 td passes two interceptions 1009 rating past six home games vs dallas wr sterling shepard 14 receptions 198 yards past two games rookie te evan engram five tds past seven games leads nfl rookies td catches 6 ranks third receptions 51 fourth receiving yards 569 de jason pierrepaul seven sacks past 10 games vs dallas landon collins 35 tackles interception fumble recovery past three games ranks second among nfl safeties 90 tackles lb bj goodson careerhigh 18 tackles last meeting nfl player 2017 prediction cowboys time possession one morris keeping pressure prescott pick cowboys 2313 chris cluff | 590 |
<p>President Donald Trump said Thursday he is “fairly close” to a deal with congressional leaders on legislation to protect from deportation about 800,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.</p>
<p>“We’re working on a plan,” Trump told reporters as he headed from the White House for a trip to hurricane-ravaged Florida. Funding for a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico “will come later,” he said.</p>
<p>Trump’s comments followed his dinner at the White House on Wednesday with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, top Democrats who later said they had reached a tentative agreement to combine the deportation protections for so-called “Dreamers” with added resources to bolster border security. While the Democrats said the deal wouldn’t include funding for Trump’s fortified border “wall,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said there was no such agreement on that item.</p>
<p>On Thursday, Trump said he’d spoken with Republican leaders in Congress and that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan were on board with the plan.</p>
<p>Earlier Thursday on Twitter, Trump had signaled support for protecting the immigrants but said “no deal” was made on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.</p>
<p>“No deal was made last night on DACA. Massive border security would have to be agreed to in exchange for consent,” he said. “Does anybody really want to throw out good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs, some serving in the military?”</p>
<p>A joint statement from Schumer and Pelosi on Thursday said Trump’s tweets “are not inconsistent with the agreement reached last night.”</p>
<p>“We agreed that the President would support enshrining DACA protections into law, and encourage the House and Senate to act,” according to the statement. “What remains to be negotiated are the details of border security, with a mutual goal of finalizing all details as soon as possible. While both sides agreed that the wall would not be any part of this agreement, the President made clear he intends to pursue it at a later time, and we made clear we would continue to oppose it.”</p>
<p>President Barack Obama shielded the young immigrants via executive order from expulsion by U.S. immigration authorities.</p>
<p>A key Republican in the debate reacted angrily to the possibility of a deal early Thursday. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, called out Trump on Twitter for undercutting efforts for a bipartisan agreement. Breitbart, the conservative news website run by former Trump aide Steve Bannon, carried the headline “‘Amnesty Don’” and said the president had caved on the issue.</p>
<p>The White House through an aide said that the president had a “constructive working dinner” with the two Democrats that addressed the plight of the young immigrants and a host of other issues, including tax reform, border security and trade. Another person at the dinner also said that Trump didn’t agree to exclude the border wall from the legislation.</p>
<p>White House chief of staff John Kelly, National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, budget director Mick Mulvaney and legislative affairs director Marc Short also attended the dinner.</p>
<p>Bipartisan Group</p>
<p>Earlier in the day, Trump promised a bipartisan group of House members that he would seek a vote in Congress soon on protecting the young undocumented immigrants, said Representative Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat.</p>
<p>“He did say, ‘We need to move on this quickly. I don’t want to wait six months. People forget about it in six months,’” Cuellar said after Trump met&#160;Wednesday at the White House with about a dozen lawmakers who call themselves the problem solvers.</p>
<p>Cuellar said the president wanted to put in law the Obama-era program shielding immigrants illegally brought to the U.S. as children, and combine it with increased security along the U.S.-Mexico border and elements of a separate proposal giving immigration priority to high-skilled workers. Trump also stressed the need for low-skilled workers in the agricultural industry, Cuellar said.</p>
<p>Trump said his demand for money for a border wall would be addressed separately, the lawmaker said.</p>
<p>The U.S. Customs and Border Protection is already pushing forward on Trump’s promised border wall between the U.S. and Mexico. Earlier this month, the agency awarded contracts to build mock-ups. Trump has said construction could cost between $8 billion and $12 billion and even threatened to shut down the government if lawmakers don’t give him the money.</p>
<p>Six Months</p>
<p>Last week, Trump said he would cancel DACA in six months and called on Congress to act on the issue. The young migrants are known as “dreamers” after the proposed Dream Act that would give them legal status.</p>
<p>Third-ranking Senate Republican John Thune, of South Dakota, said earlier Wednesday that a bill was possible this year pairing the young immigrants measure with stronger border security.</p>
<p>“If it’s combined with border security, that’s possible,” Thune said. “Republicans who are inclined to be supportive of some sort of permanent DACA would have to have some border security.”</p>
<p>Last week, the president shocked his fellow Republicans by accepting the Democrats’ offer to raise the debt limit and keep the government open through Dec. 8 while providing hurricane aid. The bill was enacted by the end of the week.</p>
<p>“It looks like the White House has a new strategy” to be bipartisan, Cuellar said.</p> | false | 1 | president donald trump said thursday fairly close deal congressional leaders legislation protect deportation 800000 undocumented immigrants brought us children working plan trump told reporters headed white house trip hurricaneravaged florida funding wall along us border mexico come later said trumps comments followed dinner white house wednesday senate minority leader chuck schumer house minority leader nancy pelosi top democrats later said reached tentative agreement combine deportation protections socalled dreamers added resources bolster border security democrats said deal wouldnt include funding trumps fortified border wall white house press secretary sarah huckabee sanders said agreement item thursday trump said hed spoken republican leaders congress senate majority leader mitch mcconnell house speaker paul ryan board plan earlier thursday twitter trump signaled support protecting immigrants said deal made deferred action childhood arrivals program daca deal made last night daca massive border security would agreed exchange consent said anybody really want throw good educated accomplished young people jobs serving military joint statement schumer pelosi thursday said trumps tweets inconsistent agreement reached last night agreed president would support enshrining daca protections law encourage house senate act according statement remains negotiated details border security mutual goal finalizing details soon possible sides agreed wall would part agreement president made clear intends pursue later time made clear would continue oppose president barack obama shielded young immigrants via executive order expulsion us immigration authorities key republican debate reacted angrily possibility deal early thursday senator chuck grassley iowa chairman judiciary committee called trump twitter undercutting efforts bipartisan agreement breitbart conservative news website run former trump aide steve bannon carried headline amnesty said president caved issue white house aide said president constructive working dinner two democrats addressed plight young immigrants host issues including tax reform border security trade another person dinner also said trump didnt agree exclude border wall legislation white house chief staff john kelly national economic council director gary cohn treasury secretary steven mnuchin budget director mick mulvaney legislative affairs director marc short also attended dinner bipartisan group earlier day trump promised bipartisan group house members would seek vote congress soon protecting young undocumented immigrants said representative henry cuellar texas democrat say need move quickly dont want wait six months people forget six months cuellar said trump met160wednesday white house dozen lawmakers call problem solvers cuellar said president wanted put law obamaera program shielding immigrants illegally brought us children combine increased security along usmexico border elements separate proposal giving immigration priority highskilled workers trump also stressed need lowskilled workers agricultural industry cuellar said trump said demand money border wall would addressed separately lawmaker said us customs border protection already pushing forward trumps promised border wall us mexico earlier month agency awarded contracts build mockups trump said construction could cost 8 billion 12 billion even threatened shut government lawmakers dont give money six months last week trump said would cancel daca six months called congress act issue young migrants known dreamers proposed dream act would give legal status thirdranking senate republican john thune south dakota said earlier wednesday bill possible year pairing young immigrants measure stronger border security combined border security thats possible thune said republicans inclined supportive sort permanent daca would border security last week president shocked fellow republicans accepting democrats offer raise debt limit keep government open dec 8 providing hurricane aid bill enacted end week looks like white house new strategy bipartisan cuellar said | 555 |
<p>By Jilian Mincer and Yasmeen Abutaleb</p>
<p>NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – For Nancy Minoui of Portland, Oregon, and Crystal Lett of Dublin, Ohio, Congress’ failure to fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program is not some distant tale of political wrangling.</p>
<p>For Minoui, it’s about how to provide care for her daughter, Marion Burgess, born last Valentine’s Day with a hole in her heart. For Lett it’s about providing care for her 6-year-old son, Noble, who was born with a complex genetic disorder.</p>
<p>They are among thousands of parents across the country scrambling to look after low-income children whose medical care is funded by a traditionally bipartisan program, known as CHIP, that is now facing a shutdown after Congressional Republicans tied its fate to other legislative battles.</p>
<p>U.S. states, which administer the program but rely on federal funds, and healthcare providers are now preparing for the shutdown they had desperately hoped to avoid.</p>
<p>Virginia began on Tuesday sending notices to tens of thousands of families that the 20-year-old program would close by Jan. 31 without new federal funding. Connecticut is due to mail similar notices this week.</p>
<p>More than a dozen states, including New York and Utah, are poised to send warning notices to families by the end of this month.</p>
<p>Some hospitals and medical providers are encouraging patients to schedule additional doctor appointments and refill prescriptions before the deadline. Others, like the Texas Children’s Hospital, are identifying families with the most seriously ill children, including cancer patients and transplant recipients, to help obtain alternate coverage.</p>
<p>CHIP provides health benefits to almost 9 million children whose families earn too much to be eligible for Medicaid but cannot afford private insurance, and has enjoyed bipartisan support since it was enacted in 1997.</p>
<p>But this year, funding for the program expired on Sept. 30. Congressional Republicans have tied its fate to other legislative battles, including attempts to repeal Obamacare and a newer effort to overhaul the U.S. tax system.</p>
<p>Lawmakers had hoped to pass a five-year CHIP funding extension before they adjourned for the year. But aides in the House of Representatives and the Senate say they may not get to it until early 2018.</p>
<p>In the meantime, states have been spending down whatever was left of their CHIP funds, and some have received temporary relief from a $3 billion reserve.</p>
<p>Minnesota became the first state to run out of money altogether in November, and is keeping the program afloat from its own budget, projecting a $178 million deficit if Congress does not act next year.</p>
<p>Oregon expects to run out of federal money before the end of 2017, while Colorado was the first to begin notifying families of a Jan. 31 cutoff in late November.</p>
<p>A third of states expect to exhaust funds by the end of January, and an additional 21 expect to run out by the end of March, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. More than 1.2 million children are expected to lose health benefits if funding is not restored in 2018.</p>
<p>“We are spending a ridiculous amount of time and energy trying to kick Congress in the seat of their pants to get this done,” Oregon Governor Kate Brown, a Democrat, said in an interview.</p>
<p>HOSPITALS PROMISING CARE</p>
<p>Hospitals have convened emergency meetings to see how they can salvage care for seriously ill patients, and determine their own financial hit from covering more uninsured children, according to interviews with nearly a dozen hospital officials.</p>
<p>“No child should be the pawn of politics,” said Dr. Judy Aschner, physician-in-chief of Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in New York City. “We provide all levels of care to children and their families, regardless of ability to pay, and will continue to do so whatever the outcome for CHIP.”</p>
<p>Denver Health Medical Center sent letters last week to 9,500 patients, encouraging them to schedule exams and refill prescriptions before the deadline. Dr. Meg Tomcho, a pediatrician affiliated with the hospital, plans to work additional shifts and write prescriptions for three months rather than one to accommodate families.</p>
<p>Jill Pidcock of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, scheduled early appointments for her two sons. She and her husband dropped their health insurance a few years ago, and CHIP has made a huge difference, particularly for her 14-year-old, who has autism.</p>
<p>Minoui, of Portland, Oregon, said her 10-month-old daughter may need heart surgery in the coming months.</p>
<p>“It’s hard enough when your child is sick and you’re waiting to see if they can get well, let alone waiting to see if you’re going to be covered,” Minoui said.</p>
<p>State officials have debated when to notify families, hoping that Congress would come through and spare them anxiety. Some must meet state laws requiring 30-day or 60-day advance notice of the program’s shutdown.</p>
<p>Lett, of Dublin, Ohio doesn’t know how she will afford care for her son, Noble, who, because of his complex genetic disorder Prader-Willi Syndrome, requires daily growth hormone injections, numerous doctor visits and multiple therapy sessions each week.</p>
<p>Lett works two part-time jobs in order to have flexibility for his many appointments.</p>
<p>“We’re holding onto the hope that they will do the right thing by our family and everybody else’s family,” she said.</p> | false | 1 | jilian mincer yasmeen abutaleb new yorkwashington reuters nancy minoui portland oregon crystal lett dublin ohio congress failure fund childrens health insurance program distant tale political wrangling minoui provide care daughter marion burgess born last valentines day hole heart lett providing care 6yearold son noble born complex genetic disorder among thousands parents across country scrambling look lowincome children whose medical care funded traditionally bipartisan program known chip facing shutdown congressional republicans tied fate legislative battles us states administer program rely federal funds healthcare providers preparing shutdown desperately hoped avoid virginia began tuesday sending notices tens thousands families 20yearold program would close jan 31 without new federal funding connecticut due mail similar notices week dozen states including new york utah poised send warning notices families end month hospitals medical providers encouraging patients schedule additional doctor appointments refill prescriptions deadline others like texas childrens hospital identifying families seriously ill children including cancer patients transplant recipients help obtain alternate coverage chip provides health benefits almost 9 million children whose families earn much eligible medicaid afford private insurance enjoyed bipartisan support since enacted 1997 year funding program expired sept 30 congressional republicans tied fate legislative battles including attempts repeal obamacare newer effort overhaul us tax system lawmakers hoped pass fiveyear chip funding extension adjourned year aides house representatives senate say may get early 2018 meantime states spending whatever left chip funds received temporary relief 3 billion reserve minnesota became first state run money altogether november keeping program afloat budget projecting 178 million deficit congress act next year oregon expects run federal money end 2017 colorado first begin notifying families jan 31 cutoff late november third states expect exhaust funds end january additional 21 expect run end march according kaiser family foundation 12 million children expected lose health benefits funding restored 2018 spending ridiculous amount time energy trying kick congress seat pants get done oregon governor kate brown democrat said interview hospitals promising care hospitals convened emergency meetings see salvage care seriously ill patients determine financial hit covering uninsured children according interviews nearly dozen hospital officials child pawn politics said dr judy aschner physicianinchief childrens hospital montefiore new york city provide levels care children families regardless ability pay continue whatever outcome chip denver health medical center sent letters last week 9500 patients encouraging schedule exams refill prescriptions deadline dr meg tomcho pediatrician affiliated hospital plans work additional shifts write prescriptions three months rather one accommodate families jill pidcock glenwood springs colorado scheduled early appointments two sons husband dropped health insurance years ago chip made huge difference particularly 14yearold autism minoui portland oregon said 10monthold daughter may need heart surgery coming months hard enough child sick youre waiting see get well let alone waiting see youre going covered minoui said state officials debated notify families hoping congress would come spare anxiety must meet state laws requiring 30day 60day advance notice programs shutdown lett dublin ohio doesnt know afford care son noble complex genetic disorder praderwilli syndrome requires daily growth hormone injections numerous doctor visits multiple therapy sessions week lett works two parttime jobs order flexibility many appointments holding onto hope right thing family everybody elses family said | 520 |
<p>For the second time in three years, there is a team in the Super Bowl that had a losing record just one year earlier. In fact, only one of the four teams in the conference championship games this season had a winning record last season.</p>
<p>Trend or aberration? Maybe a little of both. The <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Philadelphia-Eagles/" type="external">Philadelphia Eagles</a> were 7-9 in 2016 and 13-3 in the 2017 regular season. The 2015 <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Carolina_Panthers/" type="external">Carolina Panthers</a> finished 15-1 in the regular season after winning the division the year before with a 7-8-1 record.</p>
<p>But you have to go back to the 2001 season, the start of New England’s reign of terror, to find a team that actually won the Super Bowl a year after finishing with a losing record – something that has happened only three times in 51 years. (The Eagles would be the fourth, were they to pull off the upset in Minneapolis.)</p>
<p>The 2000 Patriots finished 5-11, last in the AFC East. The 2001 Patriots were <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tom_Brady/" type="external">Tom Brady</a>‘s coming-out party and a huge underdog before beating the Rams in the Super Bowl.</p>
<p>With that in mind, it’s possible to identify some of the teams that could spring a similar surprise in the 2018 season, and there is a surprisingly long list of candidates.</p>
<p>We will start with San Francisco, which was the hottest team in the NFL at the end of the season, winning five straight games after <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jimmy-Garoppolo/" type="external">Jimmy Garoppolo</a> was installed as the starting quarterback. The 49ers still have plenty of holes, but they have ample salary-cap room to address them and a good situation in the draft including a pick in the top 10 and four among the first 75.</p>
<p>San Francisco’s finish to the 2017 season conjured memories of 1980, when the 49ers won three in a row late in the year behind a second-year quarterback named <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Joe_Montana/" type="external">Joe Montana</a>, establishing him as the starter heading into the 1981 season, when the 49ers won the first of their five Super Bowls.</p>
<p>The 49ers in 1981, by the way, were the first team to win the Super Bowl a year after finishing with a losing record. (The other one, before the 2001 Patriots, was the Rams in 1999).</p>
<p>Granted, that was a different era, but even Montana never posted numbers like Garoppolo’s five-game average of 312 yards passing while completing two-thirds of his attempts. Tom Brady, who led the NFL in passing yardage this season, averaged 286.1 yards a game. In Montana’s most prolific season, he averaged 263 yards a game.</p>
<p>Remember, too, Garoppolo did this while learning on the fly without benefit of a training camp with the 49ers. It will be interesting to see if head coach <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kyle-Shanahan/" type="external">Kyle Shanahan</a> can do for Garoppolo what Kyle’s father, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Mike_Shanahan/" type="external">Mike Shanahan</a>, once did for <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Steve_Young/" type="external">Steve Young</a> with the 49ers.</p>
<p>What other teams have the potential to pull off a miraculous jump in 2018?</p>
<p>–Houston. Before <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Deshaun-Watson/" type="external">Deshaun Watson</a> got hurt, he was the biggest new thing in the NFL, throwing 18 touchdown passes and passing for 1,472 yards in five games while the Texans were averaging 39 points a game. The kid is a potent weapon on a team that is built around a great defensive line. Of course, the Texans’ chances would be enhanced were <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/JJ-Watt/" type="external">J.J. Watt</a>, who missed all but eight games the last two seasons, able to come back healthy.</p>
<p>—Oakland. Which are the real Raiders? The ones who went 12-4 a year ago or the ones who finished 6-10 this season? The key players, like quarterback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Derek-Carr/" type="external">Derek Carr</a> and defensive end <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Khalil-Mack/" type="external">Khalil Mack</a>, are still in the prime of their career. The key here will be the ability of old-now-new head coach <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jon_Gruden/" type="external">Jon Gruden</a> to get Carr to perform like he did in 2016 (28 touchdowns, six interceptions, 96.7 rating) instead of like he did in 2017 (22, 13, 86.4).</p>
<p>–Tampa Bay. A fall from 9-7 to 5-11 did not cost a head coach his job, but <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Dirk-Koetter/" type="external">Dirk Koetter</a> could have been gone if the Bucs, not the Raiders, had been able to entice Gruden to return. He will be under the gun in 2018 to find quarterback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jameis-Winston/" type="external">Jameis Winston</a> some help in the form of a decent running game and also to do something about a defense that allowed the most yards in the league in 2017.</p>
<p>–Chicago. New head coach Matt Nagy already scored a significant victory in getting defensive coordinator Vic Fangio to re-up. The Bears, despite a debilitating run of injuries, ranked 10th in the league on defense in 2017, not quite rekindling memories of the Monsters of the Midway, but good enough to carry a team with a rookie quarterback. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Mitchell-Trubisky/" type="external">Mitchell Trubisky</a> appeared to be a quick learner and showed improvement as the season went along, but now the Bears will need to put some help around him, particularly some receivers who actually can catch the ball.</p>
<p>–Indianapolis. Incoming head coach <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Josh_McDaniels/" type="external">Josh McDaniels</a> should be able to help, provided quarterback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Andrew-Luck/" type="external">Andrew Luck</a> comes back to full health after missing an entire season.</p>
<p>–N.Y. Giants. New head coach <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Pat-Shurmur/" type="external">Pat Shurmur</a> must walk a tight line between grooming a quarterback replacement for <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Eli_Manning/" type="external">Eli Manning</a> and getting more out of Manning than he showed the last two years. For starters, he must reduce his interceptions.</p>
<p>Ira Miller is an award-winning sportswriter who has covered the National Football League for more than five decades and is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Selection Committee. He is a national columnist for The Sports Xchange.</p> | false | 1 | second time three years team super bowl losing record one year earlier fact one four teams conference championship games season winning record last season trend aberration maybe little philadelphia eagles 79 2016 133 2017 regular season 2015 carolina panthers finished 151 regular season winning division year 781 record go back 2001 season start new englands reign terror find team actually super bowl year finishing losing record something happened three times 51 years eagles would fourth pull upset minneapolis 2000 patriots finished 511 last afc east 2001 patriots tom bradys comingout party huge underdog beating rams super bowl mind possible identify teams could spring similar surprise 2018 season surprisingly long list candidates start san francisco hottest team nfl end season winning five straight games jimmy garoppolo installed starting quarterback 49ers still plenty holes ample salarycap room address good situation draft including pick top 10 four among first 75 san franciscos finish 2017 season conjured memories 1980 49ers three row late year behind secondyear quarterback named joe montana establishing starter heading 1981 season 49ers first five super bowls 49ers 1981 way first team win super bowl year finishing losing record one 2001 patriots rams 1999 granted different era even montana never posted numbers like garoppolos fivegame average 312 yards passing completing twothirds attempts tom brady led nfl passing yardage season averaged 2861 yards game montanas prolific season averaged 263 yards game remember garoppolo learning fly without benefit training camp 49ers interesting see head coach kyle shanahan garoppolo kyles father mike shanahan steve young 49ers teams potential pull miraculous jump 2018 houston deshaun watson got hurt biggest new thing nfl throwing 18 touchdown passes passing 1472 yards five games texans averaging 39 points game kid potent weapon team built around great defensive line course texans chances would enhanced jj watt missed eight games last two seasons able come back healthy oakland real raiders ones went 124 year ago ones finished 610 season key players like quarterback derek carr defensive end khalil mack still prime career key ability oldnownew head coach jon gruden get carr perform like 2016 28 touchdowns six interceptions 967 rating instead like 2017 22 13 864 tampa bay fall 97 511 cost head coach job dirk koetter could gone bucs raiders able entice gruden return gun 2018 find quarterback jameis winston help form decent running game also something defense allowed yards league 2017 chicago new head coach matt nagy already scored significant victory getting defensive coordinator vic fangio reup bears despite debilitating run injuries ranked 10th league defense 2017 quite rekindling memories monsters midway good enough carry team rookie quarterback mitchell trubisky appeared quick learner showed improvement season went along bears need put help around particularly receivers actually catch ball indianapolis incoming head coach josh mcdaniels able help provided quarterback andrew luck comes back full health missing entire season ny giants new head coach pat shurmur must walk tight line grooming quarterback replacement eli manning getting manning showed last two years starters must reduce interceptions ira miller awardwinning sportswriter covered national football league five decades member pro football hall fame selection committee national columnist sports xchange | 516 |
<p>WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s new communications director exploded the smoldering tensions at the White House into a full-fledged conflagration Thursday, angrily daring Trump’s chief of staff to deny he’s a “leaker” and exposing West Wing backstabbing in language more suitable to a mobster movie than a seat of presidential stability.</p>
<p>In a pull-no-punches, impromptu CNN interview that he said was authorized by the president, Anthony Scaramucci went after chief of staff Reince Priebus in graphic terms. “The fish stinks from the head down,” he said. “I can tell you two fish that don’t stink, and that’s me and the president.”</p>
<p>Not even a week into his new job, Scaramucci accused unidentified senior officials of trying to sabotage him and committing a felony by leaking information. But the personal financial information that he said someone had “leaked” about him had simply been obtained through a public records request.</p>
<p>Then in an interview published by The New Yorker late Thursday, an angry Scaramucci used an expletive to accuse Priebus of being a “f——— paranoid schizophrenic” and White House chief strategist Steve Bannon of trying to burnish his own reputation.</p>
<p>He also threatened to fire White House staffers who leaked about a dinner he had with the president.</p>
<p>“They’ll all be fired by me,” Scaramucci told the magazine. “I fired one guy the other day. I have three to four people I’ll fire tomorrow. I’ll get to the person who leaked that to you. Reince Priebus — if you want to leak something — he’ll be asked to resign very shortly.”</p>
<p>By day’s end Scaramucci sounded calmer, though not regretful.</p>
<p>“I sometimes use colorful language. I will refrain in this arena but not give up the passionate fight for @realDonaldTrump’s agenda. #MAGA,” he tweeted. The tag at the end stands for Trump’s “Make America Great Again.”</p>
<p>He also blamed the reporter, Ryan Lizza. “I made a mistake in trusting in a reporter,” he added later. “It won’t happen again.”</p>
<p>White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders referred reporters to the first tweet.</p>
<p>The president’s senior counselor, Kellyanne Conway, had earlier speculated in a Fox News interview that unnamed forces were out to get Scaramucci, saying: “Somebody is trying to get in his way and scare him off.”</p>
<p>“There are leaks and then there are people using the press to shiv each other in the ribs,” she said.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, no one in the White House took up for Priebus — including Priebus himself. Sanders avoided giving a direct answer when asked whether Trump has confidence in Priebus.</p>
<p>The past 24 hours provided the clearest evidence yet that Scaramucci and Trump, both brash New Yorkers, are cut from the same cloth. One of their shared techniques: publicly shaming members of their own team.</p>
<p>Scaramucci’s goading of Priebus came as Trump continued to fume publicly and privately about his attorney general. Trump has been critical of Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Justice Department investigation into whether the president’s campaign had anything to do with Russian interference in the election last fall.</p>
<p>“It hasn’t been my best week … for my relationship with the president,” Sessions acknowledged in an interview with The Associated Press in El Salvador, where he was on a mission to increase international cooperation against gangs.</p>
<p>He said he would stay in his post and fight for Trump’s agenda “as long as he sees that as appropriate.”</p>
<p>Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker and frequent outside adviser to Trump, said in an interview that Scaramucci’s attacks on Priebus are problematic.</p>
<p>“They’ve got to get this sorted out between the two of them, and it would be nice if they didn’t do it in public,” he said.</p>
<p>Yet after Scaramucci’s call-in CNN performance — a move lifted from his boss’ playbook — it was difficult to see how the two could mend fences.</p>
<p>“I don’t know if this is repairable or not — that will be up to the president,” Scaramucci said on air. He compared their relationship to that of brothers who are “rough on each other,” invoking Cain and Abel. One of those biblical brothers murdered the other.</p>
<p>The bad blood stems from Scaramucci’s view that Priebus was insufficiently supportive of Trump at the end of the election campaign and his belief that Priebus persuaded the president to keep him out of the White House in January. Six months later, Scaramucci’s close relationship with the president trumped the opposition of Priebus and Bannon.</p>
<p>Scaramucci’s arrival in the West Wing last Friday marked the first in a series of falling dominoes that seemed to be leading toward Priebus. Press secretary Sean Spicer, a close ally of Priebus, resigned last week. Scaramucci then forced out another communications aide close to Priebus.</p>
<p>Scaramucci then tweeted that someone had illegally leaked financial information about him, conspicuously mentioning Priebus’ Twitter handle. Scaramucci later deleted that tweet and said he had only mentioned Priebus to show that all senior leaders are taking leaks seriously.</p>
<p>“In light of the leak of my financial disclosure info which is a felony, I will be contacting @FBI and the @JusticeDept #swamp @Reince45,” his since-deleted tweet read.</p>
<p>Scaramucci’s financial disclosure form wasn’t leaked at all. It was released after a public records request by a Politico reporter.</p>
<p>In the CNN interview, Scaramucci said he’d be reaching out to his “buddies” in the FBI about the matter.</p>
<p>If Scaramucci tries to direct the FBI to conduct a leak investigation, that could brush up against the Justice Department’s obligation to function independently from the White House, said Mark Zaid, a national security lawyer in Washington.</p>
<p>“It starts to potentially smell and approach an inappropriate line,” Zaid said.</p>
<p>Brad Gerstman, a New York lobbyist and public relations executive, said it probably doesn’t matter to Trump that Scaramucci and Priebus don’t get along. Gerstman has done projects for the Trump Organization and is a neighbor and longtime friend of Scaramucci’s.</p>
<p>“In my experience, he’s of the belief that sometimes a little friction in the ranks is how you surface the best ideas,” Gerstman said of Trump.</p>
<p>But another rule of thumb in Trump’s inner circle is that it’s never wise to outshine the president.</p>
<p>Trump has reacted angrily when certain aides — including Bannon and, briefly, son-in-law Jared Kushner — received outsized media attention.</p>
<p>Ari Fleischer, who served as press secretary under George W. Bush, said, “Ask Steve Bannon what happens if you get too much publicity and go too far.”</p>
<p>“It reminds me of Icarus flying too close to the sun.”</p> | false | 1 | washington president donald trumps new communications director exploded smoldering tensions white house fullfledged conflagration thursday angrily daring trumps chief staff deny hes leaker exposing west wing backstabbing language suitable mobster movie seat presidential stability pullnopunches impromptu cnn interview said authorized president anthony scaramucci went chief staff reince priebus graphic terms fish stinks head said tell two fish dont stink thats president even week new job scaramucci accused unidentified senior officials trying sabotage committing felony leaking information personal financial information said someone leaked simply obtained public records request interview published new yorker late thursday angry scaramucci used expletive accuse priebus f paranoid schizophrenic white house chief strategist steve bannon trying burnish reputation also threatened fire white house staffers leaked dinner president theyll fired scaramucci told magazine fired one guy day three four people ill fire tomorrow ill get person leaked reince priebus want leak something hell asked resign shortly days end scaramucci sounded calmer though regretful sometimes use colorful language refrain arena give passionate fight realdonaldtrumps agenda maga tweeted tag end stands trumps make america great also blamed reporter ryan lizza made mistake trusting reporter added later wont happen white house spokeswoman sarah huckabee sanders referred reporters first tweet presidents senior counselor kellyanne conway earlier speculated fox news interview unnamed forces get scaramucci saying somebody trying get way scare leaks people using press shiv ribs said meanwhile one white house took priebus including priebus sanders avoided giving direct answer asked whether trump confidence priebus past 24 hours provided clearest evidence yet scaramucci trump brash new yorkers cut cloth one shared techniques publicly shaming members team scaramuccis goading priebus came trump continued fume publicly privately attorney general trump critical attorney general jeff sessions recusing justice department investigation whether presidents campaign anything russian interference election last fall hasnt best week relationship president sessions acknowledged interview associated press el salvador mission increase international cooperation gangs said would stay post fight trumps agenda long sees appropriate newt gingrich former house speaker frequent outside adviser trump said interview scaramuccis attacks priebus problematic theyve got get sorted two would nice didnt public said yet scaramuccis callin cnn performance move lifted boss playbook difficult see two could mend fences dont know repairable president scaramucci said air compared relationship brothers rough invoking cain abel one biblical brothers murdered bad blood stems scaramuccis view priebus insufficiently supportive trump end election campaign belief priebus persuaded president keep white house january six months later scaramuccis close relationship president trumped opposition priebus bannon scaramuccis arrival west wing last friday marked first series falling dominoes seemed leading toward priebus press secretary sean spicer close ally priebus resigned last week scaramucci forced another communications aide close priebus scaramucci tweeted someone illegally leaked financial information conspicuously mentioning priebus twitter handle scaramucci later deleted tweet said mentioned priebus show senior leaders taking leaks seriously light leak financial disclosure info felony contacting fbi justicedept swamp reince45 sincedeleted tweet read scaramuccis financial disclosure form wasnt leaked released public records request politico reporter cnn interview scaramucci said hed reaching buddies fbi matter scaramucci tries direct fbi conduct leak investigation could brush justice departments obligation function independently white house said mark zaid national security lawyer washington starts potentially smell approach inappropriate line zaid said brad gerstman new york lobbyist public relations executive said probably doesnt matter trump scaramucci priebus dont get along gerstman done projects trump organization neighbor longtime friend scaramuccis experience hes belief sometimes little friction ranks surface best ideas gerstman said trump another rule thumb trumps inner circle never wise outshine president trump reacted angrily certain aides including bannon briefly soninlaw jared kushner received outsized media attention ari fleischer served press secretary george w bush said ask steve bannon happens get much publicity go far reminds icarus flying close sun | 621 |
<p />
<p>The payroll jobs report for November from the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that the US economy created 203,000 jobs in November. As it takes about 130,000 new jobs each month to keep up with population growth, if the payroll report is correct, then most of the new jobs would have been used up keeping the unemployment rate constant for the growth in the population of working age persons, and about 70,000 of the jobs would have slightly reduced the rate of unemployment. Yet, the unemployment rate (U3) fell from 7.3 to 7.0, which is too much for the job gain. It seems that the numbers and the news reports are not conveying correct information.</p>
<p>As the payroll jobs and unemployment rate reports are released together and are usually covered in the same press report, it is natural to assume that the reports come from the same data. However, the unemployment rate is calculated from the household survey, not from payroll jobs, so there is no statistical relationship between the number of new payroll jobs and the change in the rate of unemployment.</p>
<p>It is doubtful that the differences in the two data sets can be meaningfully resolved. Consider only the definitional differences. The payroll survey counts a person holding two jobs as if it were two employed persons, while the household survey counts a person holding two jobs as one job. Also the two surveys treated furloughed government workers during the shutdown differently. They were unemployed according to the household survey and employed according to the payroll survey.</p>
<p>To delve into the meaning of the numbers produced by the two surveys, keep in mind that payroll jobs can increase simply because the birth-death model used to estimate the numbers of unreported business shutdowns and startups can underestimate the former and overestimate the latter.</p>
<p>The unemployment rate can decline simply because the definition of the work force excludes discouraged workers. Thus, an increase in the number of discouraged workers can lower the measured rate of unemployment.</p>
<p>Before reviewing this, let’s first assume that the story of 203,000 new payroll jobs in November is correct. Where does the BLS say these jobs are? Are these the long-missing New Economy jobs that we were promised in exchange for giving China our well-paid manufacturing jobs and giving India our well-paid professional service jobs?</p>
<p>Unfortunately, no.</p>
<p>According to BLS, the jobs are mainly the same lowly-paid, part-time, nontradable domestic service jobs that I have been reporting for a decade or longer.</p>
<p>BLS reports that 17,000 jobs are in construction. On the surface, this looks like some slight pickup in housing, but less than 5,000 of the jobs are in residential and nonresidential construction. The bulk of the claimed jobs are in “specialty trade contractors.” Specialty trade contractors are involved in repairs, alterations, and maintenance, but some of the work pertains to site preparation for new construction.</p>
<p>The BLS also claims 27,000 jobs in manufacturing. What precisely is being manufactured? Apparently, very little. The manufacturing jobs are spread over about 23 categories.</p>
<p>The manufacture of wood products gained 600 jobs. (Keep in mind that we are talking about a population over 300,000,000, and a participating work force of approximately 155,000,000.) Nonmetallic mineral products experienced, according to the BLS, 2,000 new jobs. Machinery gained 300 new jobs. Computer and electronic products gained 500 new jobs. Electrical equipment and appliances gained 600 jobs. Transportation equipment gained 4,900 jobs. Furniture manufacture gained 2,100 jobs (apparently to fill the foreclosed unoccupied houses). Food manufacturing gained 7,800 jobs. Petroleum and coal products gained 1,600 jobs, chemicals gained 2,200 jobs, and plastics and rubber products gained 1,300 jobs. You can review the remaining categories on the BLS site.</p>
<p>Most the rest of the 203,000 jobs–152,000–were in lowly paid domestic nontradable services (nontradable means that the jobs do not produce a service that can be exported), such as retail trade with 22,300 jobs, transportation and warehousing with 30,500 jobs, temporary help services with 16,400 jobs, ambulatory health care services with 26,300 jobs, home health care services with 11,800 jobs, and the old reliable waitresses and bartenders with 17,900 jobs.</p>
<p>This is the jobs profile of the American super economy. It is the profile of India 30 or 40 years ago.</p>
<p>Are even these lowly paid part-time domestic jobs really there? Perhaps not. According to statistician John Williams ( <a href="http://shadowstats.com" type="external">shadowstats.com</a>), the government shutdown and reopening, the birth-death model, and concurrent-seasonal-adjustment problems can result in misstated jobs.</p>
<p>The unemployment rate is affected by not counting discouraged workers who cannot find employment. No discouraged unemployed worker and no person forced to work in a part-time job because he cannot find full-time employment is counted in the 7.0 unemployment rate (U3).</p>
<p>To be included in the U3 unemployment rate, an unemployed person has to have looked for a job in the past four weeks. Those who have looked for a job until they are blue in the face and have given up looking are not counted in the U3 rate. In November any unemployed workers, discouraged by the absence of jobs, who ceased to look for employment were dropped from the labor force that U3 considers to be the base for the measure of unemployment. Thus, if unemployed workers move into the discouraged category, the rate of unemployment falls even if not a single person finds a job.</p>
<p>The government has a second unemployment rate, U6, about which little is heard. This rate counts workers who have been discouraged for less than one year. This unemployment rate is 13.2%, almost double the reported rate.</p>
<p>In other words, the U3 measure of unemployment can decline for two different reasons: the economy can create more employment opportunities or people become discouraged and stop looking for jobs. Discouraged workers move into the U6 category where they are counted as unemployed until they have been discouraged for more than one year when they are no longer officially considered to be part of the labor force. The U6 unemployment rate can rise as short-term discouraged workers are dropped out of the U3 measure and moved into the U6 measure, and the U6 rate can fall when the workers become long-term discouraged and are officially removed from the labor force.</p>
<p>Think about this for a minute. The BLS admits that the US unemployment rate that includes people who have been discouraged about finding a job for less than one year is 13.2%. The official line is that the US economy has been enjoying a recovery since June 2009. How is there a recovery when 13.2% of the population is unemployed?</p>
<p>This question becomes even more pointed when the long-term (more than one year) discouraged workers who cannot find a job are included in the measure of unemployment. The US government does not provide such a measure. However, John Williams ( <a href="http://shadowstats.com" type="external">shadowstats.com</a>) does. His estimate produces a 23.2% rate of US unemployment. An increase in the number of long-term discouraged workers is consistent with the drop in the US labor force participation rate from 66% in December 2007 to 63% in November 2013.</p>
<p>There is no such thing as a recovery with 23.2% unemployment.</p>
<p>So, if there is no economic recovery, why are stock and bond prices so high, at all-time records? The answer is simple. The Federal Reserve is printing $1,000 billion new dollars annually and the newly created money is going into the bond and stock markets, driving them to high bubble levels.</p>
<p>So here sits the US economy with substantial unemployment, with massive trade and budget deficits that are taxing the US dollar’s credibility, with the labor force participation rate declining because there are no jobs to be found, and we are enjoying economic recovery with bond and stock prices at historic highs.</p>
<p>If this isn’t enough of a puzzle, consider the official second estimate of third quarter GDP growth. According to this estimate, the US economy expanded at a 3.6% rate in the third quarter; yet official U6 unemployment is 13.2%.</p>
<p>And if you believe the government, there is no inflation either. Yes, I know, your grocery bills go up each month.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that many of the new November payroll jobs could reflect seasonal hiring gearing up for the Christmas sales season. Remember, the payroll survey counts one person with two part-time jobs as two jobs.</p>
<p>Economic recovery requires a growth in real median family income and/or an increase in consumer debt, and, except for a rise in student loan debt, there is no sign of either.</p>
<p>US real <a href="http://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/us/" type="external">median household income</a> has declined from $56,189 in 2007 to $51,371 in 2012, a decline of $4,818 or 8.6%.</p>
<p>US real per capita income has declined from $29,554 in 2007 to $27,319 in 2012, a drop of $2,235 or 7.5%.</p>
<p>How do consumers take on more debt in order to finance their consumption when their real incomes are falling? The growth in consumer credit outstanding is due to student loan growth.</p>
<p>I have not seen the establishment’s explanation of how recovery can occur without growth in real purchasing power either from rising real incomes or rising consumer indebtedness.</p>
<p>According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 1,277,000 fewer seasonally adjusted payroll jobs in November 2013 than in December 2007.</p>
<p>How it is possible for the economy to have been in recovery since June 2009 (according to the National Bureau of Economic Research) when there are 1,277,000 fewer jobs today than existed six years ago prior to the recession?</p>
<p>How has real Gross Domestic Product recovered when jobs and real consumer incomes have not?</p>
<p>These are among the many questions that go unasked and unanswered.</p>
<p>Statistician John Williams says that the economic recovery is a statistical illusion created by deflating nominal GDP with an understated measure of inflation.</p> | false | 1 | payroll jobs report november bureau labor statistics says us economy created 203000 jobs november takes 130000 new jobs month keep population growth payroll report correct new jobs would used keeping unemployment rate constant growth population working age persons 70000 jobs would slightly reduced rate unemployment yet unemployment rate u3 fell 73 70 much job gain seems numbers news reports conveying correct information payroll jobs unemployment rate reports released together usually covered press report natural assume reports come data however unemployment rate calculated household survey payroll jobs statistical relationship number new payroll jobs change rate unemployment doubtful differences two data sets meaningfully resolved consider definitional differences payroll survey counts person holding two jobs two employed persons household survey counts person holding two jobs one job also two surveys treated furloughed government workers shutdown differently unemployed according household survey employed according payroll survey delve meaning numbers produced two surveys keep mind payroll jobs increase simply birthdeath model used estimate numbers unreported business shutdowns startups underestimate former overestimate latter unemployment rate decline simply definition work force excludes discouraged workers thus increase number discouraged workers lower measured rate unemployment reviewing lets first assume story 203000 new payroll jobs november correct bls say jobs longmissing new economy jobs promised exchange giving china wellpaid manufacturing jobs giving india wellpaid professional service jobs unfortunately according bls jobs mainly lowlypaid parttime nontradable domestic service jobs reporting decade longer bls reports 17000 jobs construction surface looks like slight pickup housing less 5000 jobs residential nonresidential construction bulk claimed jobs specialty trade contractors specialty trade contractors involved repairs alterations maintenance work pertains site preparation new construction bls also claims 27000 jobs manufacturing precisely manufactured apparently little manufacturing jobs spread 23 categories manufacture wood products gained 600 jobs keep mind talking population 300000000 participating work force approximately 155000000 nonmetallic mineral products experienced according bls 2000 new jobs machinery gained 300 new jobs computer electronic products gained 500 new jobs electrical equipment appliances gained 600 jobs transportation equipment gained 4900 jobs furniture manufacture gained 2100 jobs apparently fill foreclosed unoccupied houses food manufacturing gained 7800 jobs petroleum coal products gained 1600 jobs chemicals gained 2200 jobs plastics rubber products gained 1300 jobs review remaining categories bls site rest 203000 jobs152000were lowly paid domestic nontradable services nontradable means jobs produce service exported retail trade 22300 jobs transportation warehousing 30500 jobs temporary help services 16400 jobs ambulatory health care services 26300 jobs home health care services 11800 jobs old reliable waitresses bartenders 17900 jobs jobs profile american super economy profile india 30 40 years ago even lowly paid parttime domestic jobs really perhaps according statistician john williams shadowstatscom government shutdown reopening birthdeath model concurrentseasonaladjustment problems result misstated jobs unemployment rate affected counting discouraged workers find employment discouraged unemployed worker person forced work parttime job find fulltime employment counted 70 unemployment rate u3 included u3 unemployment rate unemployed person looked job past four weeks looked job blue face given looking counted u3 rate november unemployed workers discouraged absence jobs ceased look employment dropped labor force u3 considers base measure unemployment thus unemployed workers move discouraged category rate unemployment falls even single person finds job government second unemployment rate u6 little heard rate counts workers discouraged less one year unemployment rate 132 almost double reported rate words u3 measure unemployment decline two different reasons economy create employment opportunities people become discouraged stop looking jobs discouraged workers move u6 category counted unemployed discouraged one year longer officially considered part labor force u6 unemployment rate rise shortterm discouraged workers dropped u3 measure moved u6 measure u6 rate fall workers become longterm discouraged officially removed labor force think minute bls admits us unemployment rate includes people discouraged finding job less one year 132 official line us economy enjoying recovery since june 2009 recovery 132 population unemployed question becomes even pointed longterm one year discouraged workers find job included measure unemployment us government provide measure however john williams shadowstatscom estimate produces 232 rate us unemployment increase number longterm discouraged workers consistent drop us labor force participation rate 66 december 2007 63 november 2013 thing recovery 232 unemployment economic recovery stock bond prices high alltime records answer simple federal reserve printing 1000 billion new dollars annually newly created money going bond stock markets driving high bubble levels sits us economy substantial unemployment massive trade budget deficits taxing us dollars credibility labor force participation rate declining jobs found enjoying economic recovery bond stock prices historic highs isnt enough puzzle consider official second estimate third quarter gdp growth according estimate us economy expanded 36 rate third quarter yet official u6 unemployment 132 believe government inflation either yes know grocery bills go month keep mind many new november payroll jobs could reflect seasonal hiring gearing christmas sales season remember payroll survey counts one person two parttime jobs two jobs economic recovery requires growth real median family income andor increase consumer debt except rise student loan debt sign either us real median household income declined 56189 2007 51371 2012 decline 4818 86 us real per capita income declined 29554 2007 27319 2012 drop 2235 75 consumers take debt order finance consumption real incomes falling growth consumer credit outstanding due student loan growth seen establishments explanation recovery occur without growth real purchasing power either rising real incomes rising consumer indebtedness according bureau labor statistics 1277000 fewer seasonally adjusted payroll jobs november 2013 december 2007 possible economy recovery since june 2009 according national bureau economic research 1277000 fewer jobs today existed six years ago prior recession real gross domestic product recovered jobs real consumer incomes among many questions go unasked unanswered statistician john williams says economic recovery statistical illusion created deflating nominal gdp understated measure inflation | 939 |
<p>TEMPE, Ariz. — If the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Arizona-Cardinals/" type="external">Arizona Cardinals</a> hope to duplicate the type of season they had in 2015 when they set multiple franchise records on offense, from yards gained to touchdowns scored and more, everyone from top to bottom agrees they’re going to need a completely healthy <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/John_Brown/" type="external">John Brown</a> to do it.</p>
<p>Well, maybe not everyone agrees they need the wide receiver to be perfectly healthy.</p>
<p>“His 90 percent is better than most people’s 100 percent,” teammate and fellow Cardinals receiver <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Larry_Fitzgerald/" type="external">Larry Fitzgerald</a> said. “So, you’ve got to look at it from that perspective.”</p>
<p>Brown said he’s only operating at about 90 percent health because of a quadriceps injury that has slowed him for most of the preseason. He pushed through the pain in his first preseason game on Saturday night in Atlanta, and he showed impressive breakaway speed in hauling in two long touchdowns during the Cardinals’ 24-14 victory over the defending NFC champion Falcons.</p>
<p>“He knows what he’s capable of, but for him to be able to put it on tape against the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Atlanta-Falcons/" type="external">Atlanta Falcons</a>, a team that played in the Super Bowl year and doing it against their first-team unit, he showed he’s still more than capable of making big plays,” Fitzgerald said.</p>
<p>“He’s an integral part of our system. When he is playing at the level he’s capable of playing, it adds a whole other dimension to our system, to our offense and what we’re capable of doing.”</p>
<p>Brown’s super speed and ability to make opposing safeties play deep makes the rest of the offense run like clockwork. It opens up Fitzgerald underneath, allows other receivers like fellow speedster J.J, Nelson to get single coverage on the other side of the field.</p>
<p>And more important than anything, perhaps, is how it frees up the ground game and receptions coming out of the backfield for star running back <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/David_Johnson/" type="external">David Johnson</a>.</p>
<p>Asked how important a healthy John Brown is to Arizona’s success, Cardinals general manager <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Steve-Keim/" type="external">Steve Keim</a> said it’s obvious.</p>
<p>“Pretty simple, the playmaking ability,” Keim said Monday during his weekly appearance on the team’s flagship radio station. “Listen, we all know what kind of player John Brown can be and the injuries have been an issue.</p>
<p>But when John Brown’s healthy, there’s no doubt he’s a dynamic player that can create mismatches, especially in the vertical game, which is something we desperately need from him.”</p>
<p>Brown’s body, however, has been slow to recover from aches and strains and pulls because he has the sickle cell trait. The Cardinals thought they had found a remedy to speed up his recovery time, especially after Brown had a troublesome cyst removed from his spine, but the quad injury has remained a bit of a mystery.</p>
<p>“I mean, I’m hoping I can be 100 percent, but it don’t matter,” Brown said. “As long as I can push through it and do what I did last week (against Atlanta), it’s going to be good enough. But if I’m 100 (percent), I feel like I can give us an extra boost and help a lot more.”</p>
<p>When he can’t push through, Brown vowed he will push back and tell Cardinals coach and trainers when he can play and when he can’t. He said as much during training camp when coach <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Bruce-Arians/" type="external">Bruce Arians</a> complained about his quad issue and inability to get back onto the field.</p>
<p>“I’m able to speak up now that I’ve got more years in the league,” Brown said. “If I feel like it’s not good to go, I’ll speak up and say something. I pray it don’t come to that, though, and hopefully I can play through it for the whole season.”</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>ILB Deon Bucannon, who missed most of camp while recovering from offseason ankle surgery, went through individual drills in practice on Monday and came out of it OK, according to coach Bruce Arians.</p>
<p>“He’s right on schedule,” Arians said. “We took him off PUP, did the walkthroughs last week and started doing some individual drills. Just see how he progresses each day. He’s got to get in <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/John_Walker/" type="external">football</a> shape real fast.”</p>
<p>The hope is Bucannon is back and fully ready to play in time for the season opener Sept. 10 at Detroit, but Arians said, “It’s way too early” to know if that’s still a realistic goal.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>WR Aaron Dobson caught one pass for 13 yards against the Falcons in his first preseason appearance, but coach Bruce Arians said he like what he’s seen out of the veteran, who’s been hobbled most of camp because of a sore hamstring.</p>
<p>“I thought he looked really, really good,” Arians said. “He’s finally healthy. He missed a month. He had a great spring, though, and looked very explosive.”</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>DL Olsen Pierre left Saturday night’s game with concussion symptoms and is going through the league’s concussion protocol this week. His availability for Thursday’s final preseason game, in Denver against the Broncos, is unknown.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>OLB Kareem Martin drew strong praise from general manager Steve Keim, who said during his weekly appearance on the team’s flagship radio station that “no one on our team has worked harder this offseason than Kareem.</p>
<p>“Kareem Martin, in my opinion, is the most improved football player on our entire team, when you look at his body of work and how far he’s come,” Keim said. “When we drafted him, he was a long, lanky athlete who had some speed and straight-line ability. But he has grown into his body, he’s spent tons of time in our weight room and when you do that, you become more confident as a player form a physical standpoint.</p>
<p>“Kareem, I’m truly about the way that he’s worked because it shows the rest of the team that if you put in the time and the effort, you can get better.”</p> | false | 1 | tempe ariz arizona cardinals hope duplicate type season 2015 set multiple franchise records offense yards gained touchdowns scored everyone top bottom agrees theyre going need completely healthy john brown well maybe everyone agrees need wide receiver perfectly healthy 90 percent better peoples 100 percent teammate fellow cardinals receiver larry fitzgerald said youve got look perspective brown said hes operating 90 percent health quadriceps injury slowed preseason pushed pain first preseason game saturday night atlanta showed impressive breakaway speed hauling two long touchdowns cardinals 2414 victory defending nfc champion falcons knows hes capable able put tape atlanta falcons team played super bowl year firstteam unit showed hes still capable making big plays fitzgerald said hes integral part system playing level hes capable playing adds whole dimension system offense capable browns super speed ability make opposing safeties play deep makes rest offense run like clockwork opens fitzgerald underneath allows receivers like fellow speedster jj nelson get single coverage side field important anything perhaps frees ground game receptions coming backfield star running back david johnson asked important healthy john brown arizonas success cardinals general manager steve keim said obvious pretty simple playmaking ability keim said monday weekly appearance teams flagship radio station listen know kind player john brown injuries issue john browns healthy theres doubt hes dynamic player create mismatches especially vertical game something desperately need browns body however slow recover aches strains pulls sickle cell trait cardinals thought found remedy speed recovery time especially brown troublesome cyst removed spine quad injury remained bit mystery mean im hoping 100 percent dont matter brown said long push last week atlanta going good enough im 100 percent feel like give us extra boost help lot cant push brown vowed push back tell cardinals coach trainers play cant said much training camp coach bruce arians complained quad issue inability get back onto field im able speak ive got years league brown said feel like good go ill speak say something pray dont come though hopefully play whole season ilb deon bucannon missed camp recovering offseason ankle surgery went individual drills practice monday came ok according coach bruce arians hes right schedule arians said took pup walkthroughs last week started individual drills see progresses day hes got get football shape real fast hope bucannon back fully ready play time season opener sept 10 detroit arians said way early know thats still realistic goal wr aaron dobson caught one pass 13 yards falcons first preseason appearance coach bruce arians said like hes seen veteran whos hobbled camp sore hamstring thought looked really really good arians said hes finally healthy missed month great spring though looked explosive dl olsen pierre left saturday nights game concussion symptoms going leagues concussion protocol week availability thursdays final preseason game denver broncos unknown olb kareem martin drew strong praise general manager steve keim said weekly appearance teams flagship radio station one team worked harder offseason kareem kareem martin opinion improved football player entire team look body work far hes come keim said drafted long lanky athlete speed straightline ability grown body hes spent tons time weight room become confident player form physical standpoint kareem im truly way hes worked shows rest team put time effort get better | 534 |
<p>WASHINGTON — Electoral pressures and divisions in the GOP have left Nevada Republicans in a Senate race mum over President Donald Trump’s comments about racially charged violence in Virginia this week.</p>
<p>Both Republican Senate candidates in Nevada and national GOP leaders were quick to condemn the violence and hate groups like neo-Nazis and the KKK.</p>
<p>But only a few GOP senators have pointedly criticized the president for saying “both sides” shoulder the blame for the violence in Charlottesville.</p>
<p>Trump fired back Thursday with veiled threats of electoral retribution for Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz.</p>
<p>Graham told Trump on social media that “because of the manner in which you have handled the Charlottesville tragedy you are now receiving praise from some of the most racist and hate-filled individuals and groups in our country.”</p>
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<p>Graham was referring to praise from former KKK leader David Duke and white supremacist Richard Spencer.</p>
<p>But the president slapped back on social media, saying “publicity seeking Lindsey Graham” falsely stated that I said there is a moral equivalency between the KKK, neo-Nazis &amp; white supremacists and Heather Heyer, who died in Charlottesville.</p>
<p>“What a disgusting lie,” Trump said of Graham’s claim, adding that “South Carolina will remember.”</p>
<p>Trump also took aim at Flake, who has been critical of Trump’s comments on Charlottesville, and who faces a competitive GOP primary election next year.</p>
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<p>The president touted Flake’s GOP primary opponent, Dr. Kelli Ward, and said Flake is “WEAK on borders, crime and a non-factor in Senate. He’s toxic!”</p>
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<p>Trump is planning a campaign-style appearance in Phoenix next week.</p>
<p>Like most GOP leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., Nevada Republicans quickly condemned the violence in Charlottesville.</p>
<p>But those Republicans were nuanced in their criticism of Trump for suggesting counter-protesters shouldered some blame — a stance that <a href="" type="internal">prompted corporate executives to resign from White House economic</a> <a href="" type="internal">councils</a>.</p>
<p>Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., condemned the Charlottesville violence on Saturday. After the president spoke again on Tuesday, Heller was more pointed.</p>
<p>“There is no defense or justification for evil in the form of white supremacists and Nazis. None,” Heller said in a message, which did not mention Trump by name.</p>
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<p>Las Vegas attorney Danny Tarkanian, who is challenging Heller in the GOP primary, said Saturday that he, too, condemns “hate, bigotry, and violence in the strongest possible terms.” But he has not criticized the president.</p>
<p>Tarkanian has invoked Trump in his campaign against Heller — questioning Heller’s conservative bona fides.</p>
<p>A Democrat candidate, Rep. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., said Trump unequivocally defended white supremacists this week. She claimed Heller and Tarkanian are embracing the president, when “they should be directly condemning him.”</p>
<p>Heller is considered the most vulnerable Republican seeking re-election in 2018 in a state that Hillary Clinton won in 2016. Democrats have targeted the race in Nevada as part of their efforts to retake control of the Senate, which Republicans hold with a slim 52-48 majority.</p>
<p>On Thursday, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report moved the Senate race ranking to a “toss up.” The change noted a competitive GOP primary, despite Tarkanian’s record of electoral losses.</p>
<p>The University of Virginia Center for Politics also moved the race to “toss up” from “leans Republican” earlier this month and shortly after Rosen entered the race.</p>
<p>The Center for Politics’ changed rating noted Heller’s votes on health care, Rosen’s candidacy and “the perils of being a member of the president’s party in a midterm when that president is, at least at the moment, unpopular.”</p>
<p>Trump issued a veiled threat to Heller earlier this year, noting Heller’s desire to keep his seat before the Senate voted on several bills to repeal the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. Heller voted for a limited repeal.</p>
<p>Heller had earlier opposed a broad repeal because of Medicaid cuts, which prompted a pro-Trump PAC to air TV ads attacking the Nevada senator. Those ads were discontinued almost immediately when Senate Republican leaders spoke out against the tactic.</p>
<p>Trump praised Heller on Saturday when he first spoke out about the Charlottesville violence during a signing ceremony for a bill the Nevada senator sponsored to <a href="" type="internal">continue funding for veterans who receive medical care from private</a> <a href="" type="internal">providers</a>.</p>
<p>The legislation is important to veterans in rural Nevada who would be forced to travel long distances for medical care at veterans facilities.</p>
<p>Heller’s path to victory is maximizing his vote in the very Republican rural counties, according to the Center for Politics.</p>
<p>Contact Gary Martin at 202-662-7390 or [email protected]. Follow <a href="http://www.twitter.com/@garymartindc" type="external">@garymartindc</a> on Twitter.</p>
<p>Senate race tightens</p>
<p>The nonpartisan Cook Political Report on Thursday called the Senate race between Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., and attorney Danny Tarkanian a “toss up.”</p>
<p>Earlier this month, the University of Virginia Center for Politics also moved the race to “toss up” from “leans Republican” shortly after Rep. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., entered the race for Heller’s seat.</p>
<p>The center’s changed rating noted Heller’s votes on health care, Rosen’s candidacy and “the perils of being a member of the president’s party in a midterm when that president is, at least at the moment, unpopular.”</p>
<p /> | false | 1 | washington electoral pressures divisions gop left nevada republicans senate race mum president donald trumps comments racially charged violence virginia week republican senate candidates nevada national gop leaders quick condemn violence hate groups like neonazis kkk gop senators pointedly criticized president saying sides shoulder blame violence charlottesville trump fired back thursday veiled threats electoral retribution sen lindsey graham rsc sen jeff flake rariz graham told trump social media manner handled charlottesville tragedy receiving praise racist hatefilled individuals groups country graham referring praise former kkk leader david duke white supremacist richard spencer president slapped back social media saying publicity seeking lindsey graham falsely stated said moral equivalency kkk neonazis amp white supremacists heather heyer died charlottesville disgusting lie trump said grahams claim adding south carolina remember trump also took aim flake critical trumps comments charlottesville faces competitive gop primary election next year president touted flakes gop primary opponent dr kelli ward said flake weak borders crime nonfactor senate hes toxic trump planning campaignstyle appearance phoenix next week like gop leaders including senate majority leader mitch mcconnell rky house speaker paul ryan rwis nevada republicans quickly condemned violence charlottesville republicans nuanced criticism trump suggesting counterprotesters shouldered blame stance prompted corporate executives resign white house economic councils sen dean heller rnev condemned charlottesville violence saturday president spoke tuesday heller pointed defense justification evil form white supremacists nazis none heller said message mention trump name las vegas attorney danny tarkanian challenging heller gop primary said saturday condemns hate bigotry violence strongest possible terms criticized president tarkanian invoked trump campaign heller questioning hellers conservative bona fides democrat candidate rep jacky rosen dnev said trump unequivocally defended white supremacists week claimed heller tarkanian embracing president directly condemning heller considered vulnerable republican seeking reelection 2018 state hillary clinton 2016 democrats targeted race nevada part efforts retake control senate republicans hold slim 5248 majority thursday nonpartisan cook political report moved senate race ranking toss change noted competitive gop primary despite tarkanians record electoral losses university virginia center politics also moved race toss leans republican earlier month shortly rosen entered race center politics changed rating noted hellers votes health care rosens candidacy perils member presidents party midterm president least moment unpopular trump issued veiled threat heller earlier year noting hellers desire keep seat senate voted several bills repeal affordable care act known obamacare heller voted limited repeal heller earlier opposed broad repeal medicaid cuts prompted protrump pac air tv ads attacking nevada senator ads discontinued almost immediately senate republican leaders spoke tactic trump praised heller saturday first spoke charlottesville violence signing ceremony bill nevada senator sponsored continue funding veterans receive medical care private providers legislation important veterans rural nevada would forced travel long distances medical care veterans facilities hellers path victory maximizing vote republican rural counties according center politics contact gary martin 2026627390 gmartinreviewjournalcom follow garymartindc twitter senate race tightens nonpartisan cook political report thursday called senate race sen dean heller rnev attorney danny tarkanian toss earlier month university virginia center politics also moved race toss leans republican shortly rep jacky rosen dnev entered race hellers seat centers changed rating noted hellers votes health care rosens candidacy perils member presidents party midterm president least moment unpopular | 526 |
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<p>The Islamic State organization seems to have arisen overnight, well-armed, and swiftly moving through Iraq and Syria, seemingly unstoppable. One might wonder as to how plausible it is to believe the CIA, U.S. National Security Council, and Mossad supposedly hitherto knew little or nothing of the Islamic State jihadists. We are apparently expected to believe that they appeared from nowhere as if by magic.</p>
<p>It is apt to recall the present Jihad bogeyman arose from the Mujahideen, which was formed by the CIA as a guerrilla force against the Russians in Afghanistan. The “clash of civilizations,” as neocon historians refer to the “war on terrorism,” was a contrivance; not the result of an inexorable historical law. By the end of the First World War much goodwill existed between the Entente and the Arabs who had fought together against the Ottoman Empire, with the expectation that the Arab states would achieve independence, thanks to the heroic efforts of T. E. Lawrence and the Arabic fighters. Their guerrilla war against the Turks had been crucial to the war effort, although subsequently besmirched by Zionist propagandists.[1] Thanks to Zionist machinations, the Entente had spoken with a forked tongue to the Arabs while making a contrary promise to the Zionists to back a Jewish state in Palestine in return for Jewish influence supporting the Entente cause, by then in a predicament, in the USA. The result was the Balfour Declaration and the needless prolongation of the war[2] so that the Zionists and the messianists could get their nose poked into Palestine until such time as being able to dump themselves en masse after the Second World War.</p>
<p>It is also opportune at this point to recall those who introduced terrorism into Palestine. The Irgun, Stern and Palmach underground regarded the British as the “new Nazis,” and for that matter anyone who stood in the way of their messianic dreams. Hence, United Nations envoy Count Folke Bernadotte, who had negotiated for thousands of Jews to leave German occupied territory, was gunned down by the Sternists because his suggestions for the boundaries of Israel were regarded as an affront to Jewry.[3] Ultimately, the Zionist dream for Israel extends the boundaries from the rivers Nile to Euphrates (Genesis 15: 18) and any compromise of captured territory would mean the surrendering of the deeds of promise from God Himself,[4] unless there is a longer-term motive involved. There cannot be peace in the Middle East until that dream is forgotten, which is not going to happen, any more than the aim of rebuilding the Temple of Solomon upon the ruins of the Al Aqsa Mosque as the prerequisite for the coming of the Jewish Messiah;[5] the declaration of Jerusalem as the capitol of the world, and the elimination of “idolatrous” religions, to be replaced by the Seven Noahide Laws, already promulgated by U.S. Congress.[6] As the Israeli scholar Dr. Israel Shahak documented, such notions are alive and kicking in Israel.[7] Yet we are constantly told of “Muslim fanaticism.” We are also told of the hatred Islam possesses for Christianity, despite the recognition of Jesus as a great prophet, and his mother. Meanwhile, Talmudic Judaism teaches that Jesus was the son of a whore and a Roman soldier, Pandira, and is in hell boiling in semen. The hatred of Talmudic Jews for Christianity is frequently manifested by the Orthodox custom of spitting on monks and priests, and in many other ways, again documented by Shahak.[8]</p>
<p>In short, the origins of the present Middle East terrorism stem from Franco-British duplicity and Zionist machinations during the First World War, and rampant religious lunacy from Judaism rather than Islam. As the political and judicial theorist Dr. Carl Schmitt pointed out, an outer enemy is often the prerequisite for the formation or maintenance of unity among disparate elements. Hence, Zionism requires “anti-Semitism” to exist. Israel requires the myth of belligerent Arab neighbors ever ready to run them into the Dead Sea. The USA requires a new global bogeyman after the demise of the USSR, to maintain its role as the world’s “big brother,” albeit one of a particularly vulgar and bullying type. While Putin’s Russia has somewhat served the role once occupied by the USSR, it is difficult to imbed the notion into the world’s consciousness that Putinism, like Sovietism, supposedly aims at world conquest, and only the USA can stop this. An added factor is required. Jihadism serves these purposes for both the USA and Israel. Where would the USA have been since the implosion of the Soviet bloc, had it not been for Jihadism? Largely obliged to mind its own business for the first time since before Woodrow Wilson.</p>
<p>The ground for Jihadism was sown by the U.S. arming of the Mujahideen against the USSR in Afghanistan. The CIA describes its role in founding Jihadism:</p>
<p>After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, President Carter directed CIA to assist the Afghan mujahidin. CIA came to see that the indigenous Afghan opposition to the Soviets was less an organized movement than widespread opposition by villages and tribes. Through Pakistan, CIA provided the mujahidin with money, weapons, medical supplies, and communications equipment. Initially the goal was to drain Soviet resources by keeping their forces bogged down. In 1985, CIA shifted from a plan of attrition to one that would help the rebels win. One of the pivotal moments came in September 1986, when the mujahidin used CIA-provided Stinger missiles to shoot down three Soviet Mi-24D helicopter gunships. As part of this escalation of financial and materiel support, President Reagan issued new guidance that put CIA into more direct contact with rebel commanders, beginning an era of CIA interaction with tribal and local leaders that continues through the post-9/11 era. [9]</p>
<p>The CIA then supported the Northern Alliance against the Taliban government. The CIA also claims that it supported the Northern Alliance against Al Qaeda and bin Laden when they moved into Afghanistan from the Sudan. However, an NBC report states of CIA support for bin Laden:</p>
<p>As his unclassified CIA biography states, bin Laden left Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan after Moscow’s invasion in 1979. By 1984, he was running a front organization known as Maktab al-Khidamar – the MAK – which funneled money, arms and fighters from the outside world into the Afghan war.</p>
<p>What the CIA bio conveniently fails to specify (in its unclassified form, at least) is that the MAK was nurtured by Pakistan’s state security services, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the CIA’s primary conduit for conducting the covert war against Moscow’s occupation.</p>
<p>The CIA, concerned about the factionalism of Afghanistan … found that Arab zealots who flocked to aid the Afghans were easier to “read” than the rivalry-ridden natives. While the Arab volunteers might well prove troublesome later, the agency reasoned, they at least were one-dimensionally anti-Soviet for now. So bin Laden, along with a small group of Islamic militants from Egypt, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestinian refugee camps all over the Middle East, became the “reliable” partners of the CIA in its war against Moscow.[10]</p>
<p>These Afghan veterans became the nucleus for Jihadists further afield.[11]</p>
<p>When the U.S. globalists wanted to dismember Yugoslavia and globalize the wealth of Kosovo, again we find the Mujahideen. The USA claims to be fighting Islamic terrorism worldwide. Milosevic’s Serbia was on the frontline fighting Islamist terrorism. Rather than U.S. support for the Serbs, the support went to Islamist terrorists and gangsters. Serbs had been the target of Islamists for decades. They aimed to carve out a Greater Albania by annexing Kosovo. The U.S./NATO interest was that of privatizing the globalizing the vast mineral wealth and other resources of the region run by the State.</p>
<p>In 1998 the Kosovo Liberation Army was described by U.S. special envoy to Bosnia, Robert Gelbard, as “terrorists.” The U.S. State Department had previously prepared a report detailing the methods of the KLA to intimidate Kosovan-Albanian ethnics into supporting them. Prior to Milosevic’s intervention to restore order, U.S. official sources were reporting that Albanian ethnics were fleeing their villages in their entirety to escape the KLA. Also well-known by American and European police agencies were the drug-trafficking connections the KLA had with organized crime in Europe and Turkey.[12]</p>
<p>The KLA aim was for a Greater Albania including parts of Serbia, Greece, Macedonia, and Montenegro. Chris Hedges, when New York Times Balkans Bureau Chief (1995-1998), wrote in Foreign Affairs of a map of the Greater Albania found at a KLA compound. Hedges reported: “Between 1966 and 1989 an estimated 130,000 Serbs left the province because of frequent harassment and discrimination by the Kosovar Albanian majority.” Hedges mentioned the funding that the KLA was receiving from Islamic states and the presence of Mujahideen in the KLA staging area in northern Albania. In 1981, the Associated Press reported that 4000 Serbs fled Kosovo due to anti-Serb riots, and the desecration of Orthodox churches and graves. [13]</p>
<p>When Serb forces attacked Srebrenica, it was to end the armed attacks mounted from the Islamist base on nearby villages. A news report of the time cites “intelligence sources” as stating that it was “harassment which precipitated the Serb attack on the 1,500 Muslim defenders inside the enclave.”[14] General Philippe Morillon, commander of the U.N. troops in Bosnia (1992-1993), testified before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia that Muslim forces based in Srebrenica had “engaged in attacks during Orthodox holidays and destroyed villages, massacring all the inhabitants. This created a degree of hatred that was quite extraordinary in the region.” Between May and December 1992, Muslim forces repeatedly attacked Serb villages around Srebrenica, killing and torturing civilians; some were mutilated and burned alive. Muslim forces in Srebrenica murdered over 1,300 Serbs and had “ethnically cleansed” a vast area.[15]</p>
<p>The London Spectator reported that during 1992-1995 the Pentagon helped Islamists from Central Asia to reach Bosnia and join the Bosnian Muslims, stating:</p>
<p>As part of the Dutch government’s inquiry into the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995, Professor Cees Wiebes of Amsterdam University compiled a report entitled “Intelligence and the War in Bosnia”, published in April 2002. In it he details the secret alliance between the Pentagon and radical Islamic groups from the Middle East, and their efforts to assist Bosnia’s Muslims. By 1993, there was a vast amount of weapons-smuggling through Croatia to the Muslims, organised by ‘clandestine agencies’ of the USA, Turkey and Iran, in association with a range of Islamic groups that included Afghan Mujahideen and the pro-Iranian Hezbollah. Arms bought by Iran and Turkey with the financial backing of Saudi Arabia were airlifted from the Middle East to Bosnia – airlifts with which, Wiebes points out, the USA was “very closely involved.”[16]</p>
<p>One of the stated war aims of NATO was that the Yugoslav Federation would become a “free market” economy. The fight for a “free market” economy was not an aim that seems to have been widely publicized by the spokesmen for the U.S. State Department and British Foreign Office at the time. The prize was the Trepca mining complex, which had operated 24 hours a day, having the richest lead, lignite and zinc deposits in Europe, and one of the richest world-wide. Once the moral pontifications of the Rambouillet diktat were dispensed with, chapter four makes the aim clear enough: Article I (1): “The economy of Kosovo shall function in accordance with free market principles.”[17] A Privatization agency of Kosovo was established, but the economy, including Trepca, remains in a shambles.</p>
<p>Islamists have likewise proven useful within the Russian Federation. The primary pro-Chechnya lobby in the USA was the Freedom House-founded American Committee for Peace in Chechnya. This included some of the most notable neocons and Zionists: Richard Perle; Elliott Abrams; former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Kenneth Adelman; Midge Decter of the Heritage Foundation; Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy; Bruce Jackson of the U.S. Committee on NATO; Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, and former CIA director R. James Woolsey.[18] It is strange that of these enthusiasts for the rights of Muslims in Russia, all but Abrams and Ledeen were members of the arch-Zionist Project for a New American Century, founded in 1997. A sub-branch was the Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000 headed by Perle, which prepared a blueprint for the reorganization of the Middle East, that calls in particular for “regime change” in Syria and Iran, This seems to be the plan that is be is being followed.[19]</p>
<p>While the ACPC changed its name to American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus, it seems to have become largely defunct since 2013. That is the year of the Chechan bombing in Boston. Wayne Madsen, writing for the Strategic Culture Foundation, commented:</p>
<p>After revelations that an entity called the Caucasus Fund was used by the CIA-linked Jamestown Foundation of Washington, DC to sponsor seminars on the North Caucasus in Tbilisi from January to July 2012, Georgian authorities moved to shut down the fund. The reason given by Georgia was that the organization had “fulfilled its stated mission”. Caucasus Fund and Jamestown Foundation events were attended by accused Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, a citizen of Kyrgyzstan born to parents from Dagestan. Jamestown had previously held a seminar in Tbilisi on “Hidden Nations” in the Caucasus, which, among other issues, promoted a “Greater Circassia” in the Caucasus. [20]</p>
<p>Madsen remarks of the general strategy:</p>
<p>U.S. “humanitarian” and “civil society” assistance to radical Islamist groups has, for the past three decades, filtered into the coffers of terrorist groups celebrated as “freedom fighters” in Washington. This was the case with U.S. support for the Afghan Mujaheddin through such groups as the Committee for a Free Afghanistan during the Islamist insurgency against the People’s Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in the 1980s and the Bosnia Defense Fund in the 1990s. In the case of Afghanistan, U.S. and Saudi money ended up in the hands of insurgents who would later form “Al Qaeda” and in Bosnia U.S. funds were used by Al Qaeda elements fighting against Yugoslavia and the Bosnian Serb Republic and, later, Al Qaeda elements supporting the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in its war against Serbia.[21]</p>
<p>Terrorists supported by the USA to oust Qaddafi were then sent to Syria to continue the American Jihad against stable states. The CIA had been funding a Libyan rebel army since 1988, Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army. Haftar had been living for twenty years in Virginia, prior to returning to Libya with CIA and Saudi backing. Patrick Cockburn commented in The Independent:</p>
<p>Even shadier is the background of Abdul Hakeen al-Hassadi, a Libyan who fought against the US in Afghanistan, was arrested in Pakistan, imprisoned probably at Bagram, Afghanistan, and then mysteriously released. The US Deputy Secretary of State, James Steinberg, told Congressmen he would speak of Mr Hassadi’s career only in a closed session.[22]</p>
<p>Israel has sought to keep the entire region in a state of destabilization. This serves several factors. A constant state of conflict portrays Israel as the only stable entity in a volatile region. Destabilization ensures that there can be no united front against Israeli’s aspirations, which are never-ending. The notion of Jews being surrounded by mad Arabs keeps the Israelis in a state of preparedness and unity. Israel went to the extent of backing the Red Brigades in Italy during the 1970s as part of a destabilization strategy, indicating the extent of the strategy. According to Magistrate Ferdinando Imposimato, who led the investigations into the 1978 kidnapping and murder of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro, “‘at least until 1978 Israeli secret services had infiltrated Italian subversive groups. He said that based on confessions of jailed guerrillas who turned police informers there had been an Israeli plan to destabilize Italy. The plan aimed at reducing Italy to a country convulsed by civil war so that the United States would be forced to count more on Israeli for the security of the Mediterranean,’ the judge said.” [23]</p>
<p>The extent of this destabilization strategy has included Mossad backing of Islamists at an early stage. According to a UPI news report on a 2002 Hamas bombing of a Jersualem city bus,</p>
<p>Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon immediately vowed to fight “Palestinian terror” and summoned his cabinet to decide on a military response to the organization that Sharon had once described as “the deadliest terrorist group that we have ever had to face.” Active in Gaza and the West Bank, Hamas wants to liberate all of Palestine and establish a radical Islamic state in place of Israel. It has gained notoriety with its assassinations, car bombs and other acts of terrorism. But Sharon left something out.</p>
<p>Israel and Hamas may currently be locked in deadly combat, but, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials, beginning in the late 1970s, Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over a period of years. Israel “aided Hamas directly – the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization),” said Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic [and International] Studies [CSIS]. Israel’s support for Hamas “was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative,” said a former senior CIA official. … According to U.S. administration officials, funds for the movement came from the oil-producing states and directly and indirectly from Israel. The PLO was secular and leftist and promoted Palestinian nationalism. Hamas wanted to set up a transnational state under the rule of Islam, much like Khomeini’s Iran.[24]</p>
<p>Even when the support for Hamas seemed to be backfiring there were those who continued to see a dialectical advantage:</p>
<p>But even then, some in Israel saw some benefits to be had in trying to continue to give Hamas support: “The thinking on the part of some of the right-wing Israeli establishment was that Hamas and the others, if they gained control, would refuse to have any part of the peace process and would torpedo any agreements put in place,” said a U.S. government official who asked not to be named. “Israel would still be the only democracy in the region for the United States to deal with,” he said. All of which disgusts some former U.S. intelligence officials.[25]</p>
<p>The strategy was confirmed by Mossad defector Victor Ostrovsky, who was told by a prominent Mossad officer that a decision was made to “destabilize Jordan to the point of civil anarchy.” The officer explained to Ostrovsky that this would be done by circulating counterfeit money and “arming religious fundamentalist elements, similar to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood,” assassinating leading figures who are symbols of stability, causing riots in the university to prompt government repression. The plan was also to destabilize Egypt in the same manner, with Mossad running guns to “Egyptian fundamentalists” through Afghanistan.[26]</p>
<p>Ostrovsky further relates that “Mossad had to come up with a new threat to the region, a threat of such magnitude that it would justify whatever action the Mossad might see fit to take.” The attitude of many in Mossad and elsewhere in Israeli ruling circles is that in order to maintain “fortress Israel” the “constant threat of war” needs to be maintained.[27]</p>
<p>Supporting the radical elements of Muslim fundamentalism sat well with the Mossad’s general plan for the region. An Arab world run by fundamentalists would not be a party to any negotiations in the West, thus leaving Israel once again as the only democratic, rational country in the region.&#160; And if the Mossad could arrange for the Hamas to take over the Palestinian streets from the PLO, then the picture would be complete.[28]</p>
<p>This destabilization dialectic is the same as that being enacted on a global scale by the USA to maintain its global ambitions. Since the Soviet bogeyman no longer exists as justification for U.S. global ambitions, the bogeyman of the “global war on Islamic terrorism” was quickly created as a substitute. While Putin has been demonized to at least keep the semblance of a Russian bogeyman intact, it cannot convincingly be said that Putin aims at “world conquest.” However, “Islamism” is a new threat to world peace, with a world Jihad and the aim of imposing Sharia law over the world. This new global threat must be met under U.S. leadership, which generally means U.S. domination, politically, economically and even morally and culturally, or what has been described as the “new world order.”</p>
<p>The Study Group for a New Israeli Strategy stated that Israel’s aims must be to</p>
<p>Work closely with Turkey and Jordan to contain, destabilize, and roll-back some of its most dangerous threats. This implies clean break from the slogan, “comprehensive peace” to a traditional concept of strategy based on balance of power. Change the nature of its relations with the Palestinians, including upholding the right of hot pursuit for self defense into all Palestinian areas and nurturing alternatives to Arafat’s exclusive grip on Palestinian society. [29]</p>
<p>Both aims have been fulfilled. As we have seen the backing of Jiahists involves the use of Jordan and Turkey, and the primary target is Syria, now that Saddam has been eliminated from Iraq. While the blueprint was addressed to Israel, one can see the role being played out by the USA in its fulfilment:</p>
<p>Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions. [30]</p>
<p>Suddenly ISIL (or ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) snaps onto the scene to pose the biggest threat to world peace, whose path of terror also happens to be a march through the states that have been marked for destruction by the Zio-neocons; Syria particularly. Like Hafta in Libya, and later Syria, the head of the Islamic State organization, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has links with the USA. He was a “civilian internee” at an U.S. internment center in Umm Qasr, Iraq. He was “unconditionally released” in 2009.</p>
<p>What can be said is that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s declaration of himself as Caliph of all Muslims world-wide has spread further factionalism among Muslims. Despite the universal repudiation among even radical Muslims, U.S. foreign policy strategists are building up ISIL as the most potent Islamic force. Assem Barqawi, the spokesperson for the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front – an erstwhile ally of ISIL in the Syrian war – spurned al-Baghdadi’s claim to a universal Caliphate, countering: “In short, al-Baghdadi and ISIL have no support whatsoever among Muslims. They are loathed even by their fellow ultra-Salafis, Wahhabis and Takfiris.” On the other hand terrorism expert William McCants of the Brookings Institution, said to the New York Times: “ISIS is now officially the biggest and baddest global jihadi group on the planet… Nothing says ‘hard-core’ like being cast out by Al Qaeda.” Dr. Kevin Barrett, an Arabist scholar, regards it likely that al-Baghdadi is a mind-control asset from his time at Umm Qasr camp:</p>
<p>The secrecy surrounding al-Baghdadi’s five years in US custody strongly suggests that the self-proclaimed “caliph of Islam” is actually a Muslim version of Jim Jones. His “Islamic State” is a Muslim Jonestown. It is designed to mass-suicide Islam by turning Muslims against each other.[31]</p>
<p>William Engdahl, a foreign policy specialist, opines:</p>
<p>Key members of ISIS it now emerges were trained by US CIA and Special Forces command at a secret camp in Jordan in 2012, according to informed Jordanian officials. The US, Turkish and Jordanian intelligence were running a training base for the Syrian rebels in the Jordanian town of Safawi in the country’s northern desert region, conveniently near the borders to both Syria and Iraq. Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the two Gulf monarchies most involved in funding the war against Syria’s Assad, financed the Jordan ISIS training. Advertised publicly as training of “non-extremist” Muslim jihadists to wage war against the Syrian Bashar Assad regime, the secret US training camps in Jordan and elsewhere have trained perhaps several thousand Muslim fighters in techniques of irregular warfare, sabotage and general terror. The claims by Washington that they took special care not to train ‘Salafist’ or jihadist extremists, is a joke. How do you test if a recruit is not a jihadist? Is there a special jihad DNA that the CIA doctors have discovered?[32]</p>
<p>In 2012, Aaron Klein reported that Egyptian officials had talked of training being given to terrorist forces to be deployed to Syria by the USA, Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The training camp was at the Jordanian town of Safawi.[33]</p>
<p>Among the tangled intricacies of the Middle East imbroglio a course was established to bring chaos to the region, formulated by think tanks where American and Jewish messianists converge. Their recommendations appear as the ones being enacted, but these strategists themselves are the heirs to aims of long duration and a politicized religious fanaticism that is obscured by a worldwide barrage of propaganda about a new Muslim threat.</p> | false | 1 | download article pdf islamic state organization seems arisen overnight wellarmed swiftly moving iraq syria seemingly unstoppable one might wonder plausible believe cia us national security council mossad supposedly hitherto knew little nothing islamic state jihadists apparently expected believe appeared nowhere magic apt recall present jihad bogeyman arose mujahideen formed cia guerrilla force russians afghanistan clash civilizations neocon historians refer war terrorism contrivance result inexorable historical law end first world war much goodwill existed entente arabs fought together ottoman empire expectation arab states would achieve independence thanks heroic efforts e lawrence arabic fighters guerrilla war turks crucial war effort although subsequently besmirched zionist propagandists1 thanks zionist machinations entente spoken forked tongue arabs making contrary promise zionists back jewish state palestine return jewish influence supporting entente cause predicament usa result balfour declaration needless prolongation war2 zionists messianists could get nose poked palestine time able dump en masse second world war also opportune point recall introduced terrorism palestine irgun stern palmach underground regarded british new nazis matter anyone stood way messianic dreams hence united nations envoy count folke bernadotte negotiated thousands jews leave german occupied territory gunned sternists suggestions boundaries israel regarded affront jewry3 ultimately zionist dream israel extends boundaries rivers nile euphrates genesis 15 18 compromise captured territory would mean surrendering deeds promise god himself4 unless longerterm motive involved peace middle east dream forgotten going happen aim rebuilding temple solomon upon ruins al aqsa mosque prerequisite coming jewish messiah5 declaration jerusalem capitol world elimination idolatrous religions replaced seven noahide laws already promulgated us congress6 israeli scholar dr israel shahak documented notions alive kicking israel7 yet constantly told muslim fanaticism also told hatred islam possesses christianity despite recognition jesus great prophet mother meanwhile talmudic judaism teaches jesus son whore roman soldier pandira hell boiling semen hatred talmudic jews christianity frequently manifested orthodox custom spitting monks priests many ways documented shahak8 short origins present middle east terrorism stem francobritish duplicity zionist machinations first world war rampant religious lunacy judaism rather islam political judicial theorist dr carl schmitt pointed outer enemy often prerequisite formation maintenance unity among disparate elements hence zionism requires antisemitism exist israel requires myth belligerent arab neighbors ever ready run dead sea usa requires new global bogeyman demise ussr maintain role worlds big brother albeit one particularly vulgar bullying type putins russia somewhat served role occupied ussr difficult imbed notion worlds consciousness putinism like sovietism supposedly aims world conquest usa stop added factor required jihadism serves purposes usa israel would usa since implosion soviet bloc jihadism largely obliged mind business first time since woodrow wilson ground jihadism sown us arming mujahideen ussr afghanistan cia describes role founding jihadism soviet union invaded afghanistan december 1979 president carter directed cia assist afghan mujahidin cia came see indigenous afghan opposition soviets less organized movement widespread opposition villages tribes pakistan cia provided mujahidin money weapons medical supplies communications equipment initially goal drain soviet resources keeping forces bogged 1985 cia shifted plan attrition one would help rebels win one pivotal moments came september 1986 mujahidin used ciaprovided stinger missiles shoot three soviet mi24d helicopter gunships part escalation financial materiel support president reagan issued new guidance put cia direct contact rebel commanders beginning era cia interaction tribal local leaders continues post911 era 9 cia supported northern alliance taliban government cia also claims supported northern alliance al qaeda bin laden moved afghanistan sudan however nbc report states cia support bin laden unclassified cia biography states bin laden left saudi arabia fight soviet army afghanistan moscows invasion 1979 1984 running front organization known maktab alkhidamar mak funneled money arms fighters outside world afghan war cia bio conveniently fails specify unclassified form least mak nurtured pakistans state security services interservices intelligence agency isi cias primary conduit conducting covert war moscows occupation cia concerned factionalism afghanistan found arab zealots flocked aid afghans easier read rivalryridden natives arab volunteers might well prove troublesome later agency reasoned least onedimensionally antisoviet bin laden along small group islamic militants egypt pakistan lebanon syria palestinian refugee camps middle east became reliable partners cia war moscow10 afghan veterans became nucleus jihadists afield11 us globalists wanted dismember yugoslavia globalize wealth kosovo find mujahideen usa claims fighting islamic terrorism worldwide milosevics serbia frontline fighting islamist terrorism rather us support serbs support went islamist terrorists gangsters serbs target islamists decades aimed carve greater albania annexing kosovo usnato interest privatizing globalizing vast mineral wealth resources region run state 1998 kosovo liberation army described us special envoy bosnia robert gelbard terrorists us state department previously prepared report detailing methods kla intimidate kosovanalbanian ethnics supporting prior milosevics intervention restore order us official sources reporting albanian ethnics fleeing villages entirety escape kla also wellknown american european police agencies drugtrafficking connections kla organized crime europe turkey12 kla aim greater albania including parts serbia greece macedonia montenegro chris hedges new york times balkans bureau chief 19951998 wrote foreign affairs map greater albania found kla compound hedges reported 1966 1989 estimated 130000 serbs left province frequent harassment discrimination kosovar albanian majority hedges mentioned funding kla receiving islamic states presence mujahideen kla staging area northern albania 1981 associated press reported 4000 serbs fled kosovo due antiserb riots desecration orthodox churches graves 13 serb forces attacked srebrenica end armed attacks mounted islamist base nearby villages news report time cites intelligence sources stating harassment precipitated serb attack 1500 muslim defenders inside enclave14 general philippe morillon commander un troops bosnia 19921993 testified international criminal tribunal former yugoslavia muslim forces based srebrenica engaged attacks orthodox holidays destroyed villages massacring inhabitants created degree hatred quite extraordinary region may december 1992 muslim forces repeatedly attacked serb villages around srebrenica killing torturing civilians mutilated burned alive muslim forces srebrenica murdered 1300 serbs ethnically cleansed vast area15 london spectator reported 19921995 pentagon helped islamists central asia reach bosnia join bosnian muslims stating part dutch governments inquiry srebrenica massacre july 1995 professor cees wiebes amsterdam university compiled report entitled intelligence war bosnia published april 2002 details secret alliance pentagon radical islamic groups middle east efforts assist bosnias muslims 1993 vast amount weaponssmuggling croatia muslims organised clandestine agencies usa turkey iran association range islamic groups included afghan mujahideen proiranian hezbollah arms bought iran turkey financial backing saudi arabia airlifted middle east bosnia airlifts wiebes points usa closely involved16 one stated war aims nato yugoslav federation would become free market economy fight free market economy aim seems widely publicized spokesmen us state department british foreign office time prize trepca mining complex operated 24 hours day richest lead lignite zinc deposits europe one richest worldwide moral pontifications rambouillet diktat dispensed chapter four makes aim clear enough article 1 economy kosovo shall function accordance free market principles17 privatization agency kosovo established economy including trepca remains shambles islamists likewise proven useful within russian federation primary prochechnya lobby usa freedom housefounded american committee peace chechnya included notable neocons zionists richard perle elliott abrams former us ambassador un kenneth adelman midge decter heritage foundation frank gaffney center security policy bruce jackson us committee nato michael ledeen american enterprise institute former cia director r james woolsey18 strange enthusiasts rights muslims russia abrams ledeen members archzionist project new american century founded 1997 subbranch study group new israeli strategy toward 2000 headed perle prepared blueprint reorganization middle east calls particular regime change syria iran seems plan followed19 acpc changed name american committee peace caucasus seems become largely defunct since 2013 year chechan bombing boston wayne madsen writing strategic culture foundation commented revelations entity called caucasus fund used cialinked jamestown foundation washington dc sponsor seminars north caucasus tbilisi january july 2012 georgian authorities moved shut fund reason given georgia organization fulfilled stated mission caucasus fund jamestown foundation events attended accused boston marathon bomber tamerlan tsarnaev citizen kyrgyzstan born parents dagestan jamestown previously held seminar tbilisi hidden nations caucasus among issues promoted greater circassia caucasus 20 madsen remarks general strategy us humanitarian civil society assistance radical islamist groups past three decades filtered coffers terrorist groups celebrated freedom fighters washington case us support afghan mujaheddin groups committee free afghanistan islamist insurgency peoples democratic republic afghanistan 1980s bosnia defense fund 1990s case afghanistan us saudi money ended hands insurgents would later form al qaeda bosnia us funds used al qaeda elements fighting yugoslavia bosnian serb republic later al qaeda elements supporting kosovo liberation army kla war serbia21 terrorists supported usa oust qaddafi sent syria continue american jihad stable states cia funding libyan rebel army since 1988 khalifa haftars libyan national army haftar living twenty years virginia prior returning libya cia saudi backing patrick cockburn commented independent even shadier background abdul hakeen alhassadi libyan fought us afghanistan arrested pakistan imprisoned probably bagram afghanistan mysteriously released us deputy secretary state james steinberg told congressmen would speak mr hassadis career closed session22 israel sought keep entire region state destabilization serves several factors constant state conflict portrays israel stable entity volatile region destabilization ensures united front israelis aspirations neverending notion jews surrounded mad arabs keeps israelis state preparedness unity israel went extent backing red brigades italy 1970s part destabilization strategy indicating extent strategy according magistrate ferdinando imposimato led investigations 1978 kidnapping murder former prime minister aldo moro least 1978 israeli secret services infiltrated italian subversive groups said based confessions jailed guerrillas turned police informers israeli plan destabilize italy plan aimed reducing italy country convulsed civil war united states would forced count israeli security mediterranean judge said 23 extent destabilization strategy included mossad backing islamists early stage according upi news report 2002 hamas bombing jersualem city bus israeli prime minister ariel sharon immediately vowed fight palestinian terror summoned cabinet decide military response organization sharon described deadliest terrorist group ever face active gaza west bank hamas wants liberate palestine establish radical islamic state place israel gained notoriety assassinations car bombs acts terrorism sharon left something israel hamas may currently locked deadly combat according several current former us intelligence officials beginning late 1970s tel aviv gave direct indirect financial aid hamas period years israel aided hamas directly israelis wanted use counterbalance plo palestinian liberation organization said tony cordesman middle east analyst center strategic international studies csis israels support hamas direct attempt divide dilute support strong secular plo using competing religious alternative said former senior cia official according us administration officials funds movement came oilproducing states directly indirectly israel plo secular leftist promoted palestinian nationalism hamas wanted set transnational state rule islam much like khomeinis iran24 even support hamas seemed backfiring continued see dialectical advantage even israel saw benefits trying continue give hamas support thinking part rightwing israeli establishment hamas others gained control would refuse part peace process would torpedo agreements put place said us government official asked named israel would still democracy region united states deal said disgusts former us intelligence officials25 strategy confirmed mossad defector victor ostrovsky told prominent mossad officer decision made destabilize jordan point civil anarchy officer explained ostrovsky would done circulating counterfeit money arming religious fundamentalist elements similar hamas muslim brotherhood assassinating leading figures symbols stability causing riots university prompt government repression plan also destabilize egypt manner mossad running guns egyptian fundamentalists afghanistan26 ostrovsky relates mossad come new threat region threat magnitude would justify whatever action mossad might see fit take attitude many mossad elsewhere israeli ruling circles order maintain fortress israel constant threat war needs maintained27 supporting radical elements muslim fundamentalism sat well mossads general plan region arab world run fundamentalists would party negotiations west thus leaving israel democratic rational country region160 mossad could arrange hamas take palestinian streets plo picture would complete28 destabilization dialectic enacted global scale usa maintain global ambitions since soviet bogeyman longer exists justification us global ambitions bogeyman global war islamic terrorism quickly created substitute putin demonized least keep semblance russian bogeyman intact convincingly said putin aims world conquest however islamism new threat world peace world jihad aim imposing sharia law world new global threat must met us leadership generally means us domination politically economically even morally culturally described new world order study group new israeli strategy stated israels aims must work closely turkey jordan contain destabilize rollback dangerous threats implies clean break slogan comprehensive peace traditional concept strategy based balance power change nature relations palestinians including upholding right hot pursuit self defense palestinian areas nurturing alternatives arafats exclusive grip palestinian society 29 aims fulfilled seen backing jiahists involves use jordan turkey primary target syria saddam eliminated iraq blueprint addressed israel one see role played usa fulfilment israel shape strategic environment cooperation turkey jordan weakening containing even rolling back syria effort focus removing saddam hussein power iraq important israeli strategic objective right means foiling syrias regional ambitions 30 suddenly isil isis islamic state iraq syria snaps onto scene pose biggest threat world peace whose path terror also happens march states marked destruction zioneocons syria particularly like hafta libya later syria head islamic state organization abu bakr albaghdadi links usa civilian internee us internment center umm qasr iraq unconditionally released 2009 said abu bakr albaghdadis declaration caliph muslims worldwide spread factionalism among muslims despite universal repudiation among even radical muslims us foreign policy strategists building isil potent islamic force assem barqawi spokesperson alqaedaaffiliated alnusra front erstwhile ally isil syrian war spurned albaghdadis claim universal caliphate countering short albaghdadi isil support whatsoever among muslims loathed even fellow ultrasalafis wahhabis takfiris hand terrorism expert william mccants brookings institution said new york times isis officially biggest baddest global jihadi group planet nothing says hardcore like cast al qaeda dr kevin barrett arabist scholar regards likely albaghdadi mindcontrol asset time umm qasr camp secrecy surrounding albaghdadis five years us custody strongly suggests selfproclaimed caliph islam actually muslim version jim jones islamic state muslim jonestown designed masssuicide islam turning muslims other31 william engdahl foreign policy specialist opines key members isis emerges trained us cia special forces command secret camp jordan 2012 according informed jordanian officials us turkish jordanian intelligence running training base syrian rebels jordanian town safawi countrys northern desert region conveniently near borders syria iraq saudi arabia qatar two gulf monarchies involved funding war syrias assad financed jordan isis training advertised publicly training nonextremist muslim jihadists wage war syrian bashar assad regime secret us training camps jordan elsewhere trained perhaps several thousand muslim fighters techniques irregular warfare sabotage general terror claims washington took special care train salafist jihadist extremists joke test recruit jihadist special jihad dna cia doctors discovered32 2012 aaron klein reported egyptian officials talked training given terrorist forces deployed syria usa turkey jordan saudi arabia training camp jordanian town safawi33 among tangled intricacies middle east imbroglio course established bring chaos region formulated think tanks american jewish messianists converge recommendations appear ones enacted strategists heirs aims long duration politicized religious fanaticism obscured worldwide barrage propaganda new muslim threat | 2,414 |
<p>This is an eye-catcher:</p>
<p>A majority of Americans think the federal government poses a threat to the rights of Americans, according to a new national poll. Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a <a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/02/26/cnn-poll-majority-says-government-a-threat-to-citizens-rights/?fbid=PcUOFXQ1m5x" type="external">CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey</a> released Friday say they think the federal government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. Forty-four percent of those polled disagree. The survey indicates a partisan divide on the question: only 37 percent of Democrats, but nearly 7 in 10 Republicans, say the federal government poses a threat to the rights of Americans.</p>
<p>This survey should be seen in conjunction with others, including <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2010/02/11/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry6199132.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody" type="external">a recent CBS News-New York Times poll</a> showing congressional job approval ratings at 15 percent. The disapproval ratings for Congress <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2010/02/16/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry6214095.shtml" type="external">match the highest level ever recorded</a>, with only 8 percent of respondents saying that most members of Congress deserve re-election. And a Gallup Poll from the latter half of last year shows <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/5392/trust-government.aspx" type="external">trust in the federal government</a> was near an all-time low (19 percent).</p>
<p>About these findings I would say several things. The first is that they underscore how badly President Obama misread the public mood when he decided to push for the nationalization of our health care system. Its success was predicated on the belief that a large percentage of the public trusted government to do the right thing. And this, in turn, depended on the belief that the 2008 election marked an ideological hinge moment in America. That was not the case. When Obama took office, trust in government was already low; rather than setting about to incrementally rebuild confidence, Obama made a fateful decision to exploit the economic crisis in order to enlarge the size, scope and reach of the state. Obama and congressional Democrats are paying a fearsome price for this miscalculation. The political analyst Charlie Cook calls this power grab, manifest most especially in ObamaCare, “one of the biggest miscalculations that we've seen in modern political history.”</p>
<p>Second, we are witnessing (for liberals) a bitter irony in the making: Barack Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are undermining the modern liberal project, which is predicated on an almost limitless faith in the federal government. They are creating the conditions for an epic counterreaction. We see it in every way imaginable, from polls to elections to the organic uprising against ObamaCare specifically and his economic and spending policies more broadly.</p>
<p>Third, the crisis in confidence in government, which has certainly been accelerated by Obama and congressional Democrats, is rooted in events that go beyond them. There is a great deal of skepticism toward many public institutions, as well as toward the Republican Party and Wall Street (the military is one of the few institutions in American life that is rightly immune to what is happening). The mistrust is deep and pervasive. And I will confess that I not only understand the public's current mistrust of government; I share in much of it. Public objections to Obama-ism, in almost all their particulars, are in my view fully justified. At the same time, the levels of mistrust toward government can also be corrosive and harmful to our nation.</p>
<p>“Government,” wrote Edmund Burke, the most important figure in conservatism in the last 350 years, “is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.” Its role is to contain evil and to promote justice (“Justice is the end of government” is how James Madison, the father of the American Constitution, put it in Federalist No. 51). Laws shape national character. Government, therefore, plays a role in unifying a nation and acting on its behalf.</p>
<p>A healthy, well-functioning society is one in which the government commands the loyalty and trust of its citizens. If that bond is broken, something terribly important has been lost. It is difficult, and it may be very nearly impossible, to sustain a deep love of country if its citizens have nothing but contempt for its government. But contempt is what we often have.</p>
<p>This is where a responsive, and responsible, Republican Party comes in. It can continue to be responsive to the real concerns of the public. And it can be responsible by taking the public's scorn for government and channeling it in a constructive manner, in a way that translates into an actual governing and reform agenda. It is not enough to simply pour kerosene onto the bonfire. Republicans need public figures (like Gov. Mitch Daniels, former Gov. Jeb Bush and Rep. Paul Ryan) who can articulate an alternative view of government in a way that isn't simplistic, that isn't angry, or that doesn't appeal (as I worry Sarah Palin sometimes does) to cultural resentments.</p>
<p>Once again, those arguing for limited government are in the best position to restore trust in government (Reagan achieved this in the aftermath of Carter). Government is the “offspring of our own choice,” President Washington said in his Farewell Address — one that “has a just claim to [our] confidence and [our] support.” One of the arguments Republicans need to forcefully advance in the Age of Obama is that government has a vital but limited role to play; that its laws and institutions matter; that its de-legitimization is dangerous; and that the modern GOP has a specific, credible plan to restore a healthy respect for the state and its institutions.</p>
<p>This would be a deeply conservative undertaking — and an ennobling one as well.</p>
<p>Peter Wehner is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. He served in the Bush White House as director of the office of strategic initiatives.</p> | false | 1 | eyecatcher majority americans think federal government poses threat rights americans according new national poll fiftysix percent people questioned cnnopinion research corporation survey released friday say think federal government become large powerful poses immediate threat rights freedoms ordinary citizens fortyfour percent polled disagree survey indicates partisan divide question 37 percent democrats nearly 7 10 republicans say federal government poses threat rights americans survey seen conjunction others including recent cbs newsnew york times poll showing congressional job approval ratings 15 percent disapproval ratings congress match highest level ever recorded 8 percent respondents saying members congress deserve reelection gallup poll latter half last year shows trust federal government near alltime low 19 percent findings would say several things first underscore badly president obama misread public mood decided push nationalization health care system success predicated belief large percentage public trusted government right thing turn depended belief 2008 election marked ideological hinge moment america case obama took office trust government already low rather setting incrementally rebuild confidence obama made fateful decision exploit economic crisis order enlarge size scope reach state obama congressional democrats paying fearsome price miscalculation political analyst charlie cook calls power grab manifest especially obamacare one biggest miscalculations weve seen modern political history second witnessing liberals bitter irony making barack obama speaker nancy pelosi senate majority leader harry reid undermining modern liberal project predicated almost limitless faith federal government creating conditions epic counterreaction see every way imaginable polls elections organic uprising obamacare specifically economic spending policies broadly third crisis confidence government certainly accelerated obama congressional democrats rooted events go beyond great deal skepticism toward many public institutions well toward republican party wall street military one institutions american life rightly immune happening mistrust deep pervasive confess understand publics current mistrust government share much public objections obamaism almost particulars view fully justified time levels mistrust toward government also corrosive harmful nation government wrote edmund burke important figure conservatism last 350 years contrivance human wisdom provide human wants role contain evil promote justice justice end government james madison father american constitution put federalist 51 laws shape national character government therefore plays role unifying nation acting behalf healthy wellfunctioning society one government commands loyalty trust citizens bond broken something terribly important lost difficult may nearly impossible sustain deep love country citizens nothing contempt government contempt often responsive responsible republican party comes continue responsive real concerns public responsible taking publics scorn government channeling constructive manner way translates actual governing reform agenda enough simply pour kerosene onto bonfire republicans need public figures like gov mitch daniels former gov jeb bush rep paul ryan articulate alternative view government way isnt simplistic isnt angry doesnt appeal worry sarah palin sometimes cultural resentments arguing limited government best position restore trust government reagan achieved aftermath carter government offspring choice president washington said farewell address one claim confidence support one arguments republicans need forcefully advance age obama government vital limited role play laws institutions matter delegitimization dangerous modern gop specific credible plan restore healthy respect state institutions would deeply conservative undertaking ennobling one well peter wehner senior fellow ethics public policy center washington dc served bush white house director office strategic initiatives | 518 |
<p>To the untrained eye, Tule Springs is a barren desert landscape.</p>
<p>Thousands of years before the Strip’s skyline rose in the Southern Nevada desert, prehistoric wolves, camels and mammoths roamed the region. Snails and other mollusks lived in the springs. The creatures left a treasure trove of fossils throughout Tule Springs.</p>
<p>The piece of Nevada’s ancient history is part of Gov. Brian Sandoval’s state budget proposal to create of Tule Springs State Park, a 315-acre stretch of fossil-rich land in North Las Vegas often overlooked by passersby despite being adjacent to <a href="" type="internal">Tule Springs Fossils National</a> <a href="" type="internal">Monument</a>. State officials and supporters of Tule Springs anticipate it will be a seamless experience between the state park and federal monument.</p>
<p>Goals for Tule Springs State Park include establishing a staff presence to start educating the public and building a visitors center, said Eric Johnson, administrator of Nevada Division of Parks.</p>
<p>“Many people just aren’t aware that it’s there,” Johnson said.</p>
<p>Sandoval wants to change that, he said in his <a href="" type="internal">State of the State address</a> last week.</p>
<p>“Our state parks team has worked closely with UNLV to document mammoth and other ice age fossils,” Sandoval said in his speech. “Together we can develop Tule Springs State Park into a special destination for all ages to learn about Nevada’s unique prehistoric habitat.”</p>
<p>Sandoval’s proposed budget includes $15 million for Tule Springs State Park and Walker River State Recreation Area, and myriad improvements throughout existing state parks, such as campsites and wifi at some locations. It represents the first major investment in the state’s park system in years.</p>
<p>Sandoval said he “set out on a personal journey to visit every state park in Nevada.”</p>
<p>“I discovered pristine mountains, lakes and trails that moved me to share what I saw with the world,” he said in his speech.</p>
<p>For Tule Springs State Park, the two-year budget proposal would provide $306,004 for staff and operations costs and slightly more than $1 million for one-time expenses like building the visitors center and interpretative signage and features guiding visitors through the landscape.</p>
<p>Park officials plan for staff to be on hand at Tule Springs this fall, when construction would begin. In mid-2018, the finished park will have a grand opening.</p>
<p>For planners, educating and guiding visitors through the area will be key.</p>
<p>“It’s a sight that when you first see it it does not present itself as anything other than Mojave Desert landscape,” Johnson said.</p>
<p>RICH HISTORY</p>
<p>But the signs of both ancient life and 20th-century exploration are there.</p>
<p>Tule Springs has a rich history. Between 1962 and 1963, the “Big Dig” unfolded, and paleontologists and geologists uncovered fossils in bulldozed trenches.</p>
<p>More than a half-century later, signs of the big dig remain. Deep trenches are in the ground. In one place, rocks are organized in a square outline, where a tent was pitched for the dig.</p>
<p>Other remnants of the dig’s history are less obvious. For example, a tree still stands that was once decorated with tinsel in 1962 and was used as the Christmas tree at the dig site.</p>
<p>“The state park land is a really critically important part of the whole story,” said Steve Rowland, a geology professor at UNLV.</p>
<p>When it rains, water flows through the hills in Tule Springs, reshaping the badlands and creating opportunities for new discoveries.</p>
<p>“Every time we’re out there we find something new,” said Josh Bonde, a UNLV assistant professor specializing in paleontology.</p>
<p>In 2011, Bonde surveyed the site with undergraduates and student volunteers. They found dozens of new fossil sites, including a mammoth tusk and evidence of Dire wolves, an extinct prehistoric carnivore.</p>
<p>“It’s one big, amazing story,” said Jill DeStefano, president of Protectors of Tule Springs, a nonprofit organization that supports the National Park Service’s work at the monument.</p>
<p>The whole Tule Springs area is equally unique and central to a visitor’s experience, she said.</p>
<p>“My hope is that when there are visitor facilities out there and tourists and <a href="" type="internal">hiking</a> <a href="" type="internal">trails</a>, that they encompass to a visitor the entire area,” she said.</p>
<p>Contact Ben Botkin at [email protected] or 775-461-0661. Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/BenBotkin1" type="external">@BenBotkin1</a> on Twitter.</p>
<p>WALKER RIVER PLANS</p>
<p>Gov. Brian Sandoval’s plan to add two state parks to Nevada’s inventory includes the Walker River State Recreation Area, more 12,000 acres in northern Nevada.</p>
<p>The area is being started by land donated from the Walker Basin Restoration Program, which focuses on securing water for Walker Lake. The planned recreation area is in western Nevada and south of Reno and Carson City.</p>
<p>The recreation area will open up access to 28 miles of river corridor on the East Walker River. The donated property is linked to three former ranches: Pitchfork, Rafter and Flying M.</p>
<p>The area will be open for activities like camping, hiking, wildlife viewing, nature study and fishing.</p>
<p>Sandoval’s budget proposal calls for slightly more than $2 million for ongoing costs and nearly $2.7 million for initial costs; another $550,000 for cabins and $1.42 million for campsites and hookups.</p>
<p>The public can to start accessing part of the area in the fall, with access throughout the area gradually increasing as the state puts infrastructure in place.</p>
<p /> | false | 1 | untrained eye tule springs barren desert landscape thousands years strips skyline rose southern nevada desert prehistoric wolves camels mammoths roamed region snails mollusks lived springs creatures left treasure trove fossils throughout tule springs piece nevadas ancient history part gov brian sandovals state budget proposal create tule springs state park 315acre stretch fossilrich land north las vegas often overlooked passersby despite adjacent tule springs fossils national monument state officials supporters tule springs anticipate seamless experience state park federal monument goals tule springs state park include establishing staff presence start educating public building visitors center said eric johnson administrator nevada division parks many people arent aware johnson said sandoval wants change said state state address last week state parks team worked closely unlv document mammoth ice age fossils sandoval said speech together develop tule springs state park special destination ages learn nevadas unique prehistoric habitat sandovals proposed budget includes 15 million tule springs state park walker river state recreation area myriad improvements throughout existing state parks campsites wifi locations represents first major investment states park system years sandoval said set personal journey visit every state park nevada discovered pristine mountains lakes trails moved share saw world said speech tule springs state park twoyear budget proposal would provide 306004 staff operations costs slightly 1 million onetime expenses like building visitors center interpretative signage features guiding visitors landscape park officials plan staff hand tule springs fall construction would begin mid2018 finished park grand opening planners educating guiding visitors area key sight first see present anything mojave desert landscape johnson said rich history signs ancient life 20thcentury exploration tule springs rich history 1962 1963 big dig unfolded paleontologists geologists uncovered fossils bulldozed trenches halfcentury later signs big dig remain deep trenches ground one place rocks organized square outline tent pitched dig remnants digs history less obvious example tree still stands decorated tinsel 1962 used christmas tree dig site state park land really critically important part whole story said steve rowland geology professor unlv rains water flows hills tule springs reshaping badlands creating opportunities new discoveries every time find something new said josh bonde unlv assistant professor specializing paleontology 2011 bonde surveyed site undergraduates student volunteers found dozens new fossil sites including mammoth tusk evidence dire wolves extinct prehistoric carnivore one big amazing story said jill destefano president protectors tule springs nonprofit organization supports national park services work monument whole tule springs area equally unique central visitors experience said hope visitor facilities tourists hiking trails encompass visitor entire area said contact ben botkin bbotkinreviewjournalcom 7754610661 follow benbotkin1 twitter walker river plans gov brian sandovals plan add two state parks nevadas inventory includes walker river state recreation area 12000 acres northern nevada area started land donated walker basin restoration program focuses securing water walker lake planned recreation area western nevada south reno carson city recreation area open access 28 miles river corridor east walker river donated property linked three former ranches pitchfork rafter flying area open activities like camping hiking wildlife viewing nature study fishing sandovals budget proposal calls slightly 2 million ongoing costs nearly 27 million initial costs another 550000 cabins 142 million campsites hookups public start accessing part area fall access throughout area gradually increasing state puts infrastructure place | 534 |
<p>Is there anything the general public can do about the politically correct academy? In a word, yes. It’s easy to write off the academy as hopeless. Take the Larry Summers affair. Although the public, and Harvard’s own students, overwhelmingly supported Summers, the tenured faculty won that battle. The professors held the power, and by definition, tenured faculty cannot be dislodged.</p>
<p>Yet there’s actually a lot the public can do to change the academy. Take grade inflation. With grade inflation now a general practice, it’s impossible for a few scattered professors, however courageous, to overcome it. That would only punish students who dared to take their courses. Even Harvard’s famous Harvey “C-” Mansfield had to give in and assign his students two grades: a public (inflated) grade and a private (real) grade. Nonetheless, although it isn’t widely known, there are actually plenty of good practical strategies for solving the problem of grade inflation. It only requires public attention and involvement to break the vicious circle of grade inflation and replace it with a virtuous one. So let’s take another look at the seemingly familiar problem of grade inflation, because new work and new developments now point the way to successful reform.</p>
<p>DupedA professor I knew used to tell a funny story about a businessman who’d hired a Harvard graduate. This executive crowed about bagging a Harvard man: “and he’s got a B average, too!” That’s the punch line. At Harvard, and other elite colleges, a B average is now virtually sub-par. A B+ performance would have been average-to-decent, while an A- performance would have meant something closer to what this businessman thought he’d gotten. In effect, grade inflation allowed this student to pull the wool over his employer’s eyes. And that advantageous little bit of deception helps make grade inflation an exceedingly difficult problem to solve.</p>
<p>It’s tough to deny that grade inflation exists&#160;— although some radical professors still do. (For useful data, see <a href="http://www.gradeinflation.com/" type="external">gradeinflation.com</a>.) Since the 1960s, average college grades have crept steadily upwards, with little indication of comparable increases in student achievement. On the contrary, standardized test scores indicate that as average student achievement has gone down, average college grades have gone up&#160;— way up. One study of 4,900 undergraduates at all types of institutions found that between 1969 and 1993, the number of A’s increased nearly four fold. Another study (called “A is for average”) found that only between 10 and 20 percent of students receive grades lower than a B-. True, there is evidence of somewhat higher standardized test scores at the best schools, but those increases do not match the magnitude of grade inflation. And grade inflation itself has spread far beyond the elite schools.</p>
<p>Yet the problem is greatest at good private schools. In 1966, 22 percent of Harvard grades were in the A range. By 1996, that number was 46 percent. And in 1996, 82 percent of Harvard seniors graduated with academic honors. At the University of Chicago, the average grade rose from 2.5 in 1965 to 3.26 in 1999. Humanities courses, with more subjective standards (and more radically egalitarian professors), have significantly more inflated grades than courses in the hard sciences. And this difference seems to have increased over time.</p>
<p>CausesA number of factors have combined to cause grade inflation. (On this and related issues, see the American Academy of Arts and Sciences report, <a href="http://www.amacad.org/publications/monographs/Evaluation_and_the_Academy.pdf" type="external">Evaluation and the Academy: Are We Doing the Right Thing?</a>) Grade inflation appears to have started in the 1960s, when radical faculty members, who themselves had used graduate school as a refuge from the draft, were reluctant to assign low grades to students who might lose their academic deferments. Meanwhile, the rise of student evaluations (on which many teachers depend for hiring, promotion, and pay increases) has created a motive to trade easy grading for student praise&#160;— especially among those vulnerable, part-time “adjuncts” who increasingly shoulder the university’s teaching burden. The elimination of required math and science courses has created still more inflationary pressure. And the official addition of pluses and minuses at many institutions has enabled what is effectively the substitution of an A, A-, B+, B scale for the old A, B, C, D scale (while allowing students to fool employers who remain ignorant of the shift).</p>
<p>Of all the contributing factors to grade inflation, race preferences are the most controversial. The AAAS report I cited above goes out of its way to dismiss the notion that affirmative action (so-called) may have contributed to grade inflation. After all, says the report, grade inflation began several years before large numbers of “diversity” admits entered the academy. Yet the same report notes that increased commercial competition among universities in the 1980s contributed to grade inflation. So if consumerism created additional grade inflation pressures some years after the initial surge, why couldn’t preferential admissions have done the same?</p>
<p>Relying on <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/redirect/amazon.p?j=0691050198" type="external">The Shape of the River</a>, by former Princeton president William Bowen and Harvard president Derek Bok, the AAAS report notes that, on average, black students actually do somewhat less well in college than white students with the “same” SAT scores. Supposedly, this proves that preferential admissions do not contribute to grade inflation. I find this unconvincing.</p>
<p>In the Bowen and Bok sample, there are a great many more blacks with low SAT scores than whites. Those relatively few whites with low SAT scores admitted to top schools likely had relatively strong high-school grades (high grades would be needed to compensate for low test scores, a compensation less likely to be required of affirmative action admits). It is in no way inconceivable that black grade averages somewhat below those of white admits (with what were probably fairly strong high school grades) could nonetheless be inflated. In fact, it is likely. Grade inflation is most powerful at the bottom of the range.</p>
<p>Arthur Andersen and EnronBut let’s move on from this old argument over grade inflation to a new and more hopeful phase of the struggle. Grade inflation is a solvable problem, and there are already signs of progress.</p>
<p>Strangely enough, the Ward Churchill fiasco at the University of Colorado may actually have set the ball rolling for a new wave grade inflation reform. It’s no secret that the questionable decision to grant Churchill tenure has seriously damaged the University of Colorado’s prestige. No doubt as part of an effort to help restore his school’s sagging reputation, University of Colorado president Hank Brown recently floated the idea of disclosing class rank on student transcripts as a way of fighting grade inflation. (See <a href="http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_4264110" type="external">here</a> and <a href="http://www.insidedenver.com/drmn/education/article/0,1299,DRMN_957_4956296,00.html" type="external">here</a>.) When President Brown graduated from U. Colorado in 1961, his own class rank was on his transcripts. But the practice fell by the wayside during the era of grade inflation.</p>
<p>President Brown’s proposed reform makes sense in light of the game of informational cat and mouse that grade inflation has become. In their fascinating <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=336880" type="external">study</a>, William Chan, Li Hao, and Wing Suen explain grade inflation using the example of an accounting firm that slants its analysis to make risky companies look healthy. An accounting firm might be able to win more business if it is willing to mislead the public about a shaky firm that wants to look strong. The accounting firm risks, however, having the value of its seal of approval diluted. If ever the firm were to be found out by the general public, its reputation would be shattered, as Arthur Andersen’s was in the wake of the Enron scandal.</p>
<p>Chan, Hao, and Suen show that grade inflation works something like a dishonest accounting firm.Top schools start inflating their grades, usually with the justification that is would be unfair to grade such good students on a curve. Some employers continue to believe that a B average is pretty good. But even sophisticated employers who understand that a B isn’t what it used to be will expect grades to cluster at the top of the range only at the best schools. Then, however, grade inflation gradually spreads from top schools to a much wider range of colleges. Grade inflation becomes a way of appearing to be an elite school. Lesser schools will suppose that, by means of grade inflation, they can fool employers into thinking they are dealing with a top-quality school. Just as an accounting firm gains more business by lowering its standards, so too do colleges attempt to raise the value of their degrees by inflating grades. And just as a shady accounting firm helps its weak clients and hurts its good ones, so too grade inflation helps mediocre students and middle-range schools, while hurting good students and good schools. And let’s be clear about what “helping” and “hurting” mean here. Grade inflation “helps” middling students and middle-range schools by duping employers, whereas it hurts good students and good schools by degrading the value of their accomplishments.</p>
<p>If this deception is ever exposed, the system runs the risk of crashing. For an accounting firm, such deception is intolerable, as large amounts of money are at stake. For a university, its reputation is less immediately tarnished; employers, and the public at large, do not register so quickly the problems with grade inflation.That’s where a spectacle like the Ward Churchill fiasco comes in. Although it was not a matter of grade inflation, the obvious lapse in standards revealed by the granting of tenure to this supposed American Indian called the quality of the University of Colorado (and implicitly, of the academy as a whole) into question.</p>
<p>SolutionsThe resulting loss of public confidence put pressure on Colorado to restore its reputation (and with it, contributions, applications, etc.) through an ostentatious raising of standards. Thus we have President Brown’s proposal to disclose class rank. And thus is revealed a fundamental truth: Universities ultimately depend upon public regard, and can therefore be forced into action through public criticism. In the matter of grade inflation, where simple solutions like reporting class rank already exist, heightened public discussion, and exposure of embarrassing statistics, are the keys to reform. Public exposure can break the vicious cycle of “contagious” grade deception, and put a virtuous cycle of prestigious reform in its place. If enough schools are shamed into following the lead of the University of Colorado, schools that haven’t reformed their grading practices will increasingly come under suspicion.</p>
<p>Restoring class rank is clearly one way to solve the problem of grade inflation. Under inflation, most grades are “compressed” at the top of the spectrum. Class rank would effectively restore a comparative curve. Opponents of class rank will complain that students with very similar grade averages are being pushed into different ranks. But that’s the point. Ranking defeats the strategy of bunching everyone’s grades at the top.</p>
<p>Yet disclosing class rank isn’t the only potential solution. Quota systems could also play a role. The could be limits to the number of A’s that could be assigned in a given class. And quotas could also be used to limit the number of honors graduates. In effect, limiting the total number of honors graduates, and keeping the usual three-level honors distinction (summa cum laude, magna cum laude, cum laude), would be a way of restoring class rank at the higher levels, without directly designating which students are in the lower ranks. If quotas for graduation honors were publicly adopted by a group of prestigious schools, it would create strong pressure on schools that refused to join the system.</p>
<p>Another way to defeat grade inflation is to include more information on transcripts. For example, beside a student’s course grade, a school could include the average grade in that course. This would expose and devalue the inflated grades in easy classes. Central Michigan University Professors James Felton and Peter T. Koper have <a href="http://www.abe.villanova.edu/proc2004/felton.pdf" type="external">proposed</a> a very promising version of this reform. The professors devised a simple way to calculate what they call a “real GPA” on the basis of a student’s nominal GPA. To find a student’s real grade in any given class, the average grade in the class is scaled to be a 2.0, or a C, and then the student’s grade is adjusted relative to this. If a student ends up with a grade of above a C, he has done better than average in the class.In effect, Felton and Koper use another form of comparative ranking to reveal and compensate for grade inflation. Adoption of this reform would actually reverse the pressures that drive grade inflation. Professors who routinely gave high “nominal” grades would be stigmatized as low “real” graders. Students would begin to avoid “gut courses,” and administrators would start to punish, rather than reward, the professors who taught them.</p>
<p>PublicityThere have already been close faculty votes on grading reform. In 1997, the Duke Arts and Sciences Council voted 19-14 to reject an early version of nominal/real grade reporting, with science and math professors mostly in favor of the change and most humanities professors opposed. Grades in humanities courses are dramatically higher than in the natural sciences, and many humanities courses are swollen by students in search of easy grades. Even so, the Duke vote was close. And some months from now, the University of Colorado faculty will be voting on President Brown’s proposal to restore class rank.</p>
<p>That’s where we come in. With faculty votes this close, public scrutiny could make the difference between success and failure for President Brown’s drive to restore class rank. And if class rank comes back to Colorado, the pressure of publicity could spread it further. As more schools adopted grading reform, other schools would come under pressure to explain why they’d refused to do so. And with that, the value of degrees and transcripts from schools with tougher standards would rise.</p>
<p>Grade inflation is a cheap way of tricking employers (and students themselves) into believing in achievements that have not been achieved. Putting high grades within easy reach of all students undercuts everyone’s motive to work and punishes students who actually do work hard. This hurts all of us, since society as a whole would benefit from a little more work, higher achievement, and perhaps just a bit less partying, at schools that are supposed to be devoted to excellence. So let’s start a national conversation about the many existing proposals designed to combat grade inflation. Above all, let’s keep an eye on President Brown’s drive to restore class rank to the University of Colorado. Oddly, the shame of the Ward Churchill affair may ultimately end up achieving some good&#160;— precisely because the public really can do something about the problems of the politically correct academy.</p>
<p>— Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the <a href="" type="internal">Ethics and Public Policy Center</a></p> | false | 1 | anything general public politically correct academy word yes easy write academy hopeless take larry summers affair although public harvards students overwhelmingly supported summers tenured faculty battle professors held power definition tenured faculty dislodged yet theres actually lot public change academy take grade inflation grade inflation general practice impossible scattered professors however courageous overcome would punish students dared take courses even harvards famous harvey c mansfield give assign students two grades public inflated grade private real grade nonetheless although isnt widely known actually plenty good practical strategies solving problem grade inflation requires public attention involvement break vicious circle grade inflation replace virtuous one lets take another look seemingly familiar problem grade inflation new work new developments point way successful reform dupeda professor knew used tell funny story businessman whod hired harvard graduate executive crowed bagging harvard man hes got b average thats punch line harvard elite colleges b average virtually subpar b performance would averagetodecent performance would meant something closer businessman thought hed gotten effect grade inflation allowed student pull wool employers eyes advantageous little bit deception helps make grade inflation exceedingly difficult problem solve tough deny grade inflation exists160 although radical professors still useful data see gradeinflationcom since 1960s average college grades crept steadily upwards little indication comparable increases student achievement contrary standardized test scores indicate average student achievement gone average college grades gone up160 way one study 4900 undergraduates types institutions found 1969 1993 number increased nearly four fold another study called average found 10 20 percent students receive grades lower b true evidence somewhat higher standardized test scores best schools increases match magnitude grade inflation grade inflation spread far beyond elite schools yet problem greatest good private schools 1966 22 percent harvard grades range 1996 number 46 percent 1996 82 percent harvard seniors graduated academic honors university chicago average grade rose 25 1965 326 1999 humanities courses subjective standards radically egalitarian professors significantly inflated grades courses hard sciences difference seems increased time causesa number factors combined cause grade inflation related issues see american academy arts sciences report evaluation academy right thing grade inflation appears started 1960s radical faculty members used graduate school refuge draft reluctant assign low grades students might lose academic deferments meanwhile rise student evaluations many teachers depend hiring promotion pay increases created motive trade easy grading student praise160 especially among vulnerable parttime adjuncts increasingly shoulder universitys teaching burden elimination required math science courses created still inflationary pressure official addition pluses minuses many institutions enabled effectively substitution b b scale old b c scale allowing students fool employers remain ignorant shift contributing factors grade inflation race preferences controversial aaas report cited goes way dismiss notion affirmative action socalled may contributed grade inflation says report grade inflation began several years large numbers diversity admits entered academy yet report notes increased commercial competition among universities 1980s contributed grade inflation consumerism created additional grade inflation pressures years initial surge couldnt preferential admissions done relying shape river former princeton president william bowen harvard president derek bok aaas report notes average black students actually somewhat less well college white students sat scores supposedly proves preferential admissions contribute grade inflation find unconvincing bowen bok sample great many blacks low sat scores whites relatively whites low sat scores admitted top schools likely relatively strong highschool grades high grades would needed compensate low test scores compensation less likely required affirmative action admits way inconceivable black grade averages somewhat white admits probably fairly strong high school grades could nonetheless inflated fact likely grade inflation powerful bottom range arthur andersen enronbut lets move old argument grade inflation new hopeful phase struggle grade inflation solvable problem already signs progress strangely enough ward churchill fiasco university colorado may actually set ball rolling new wave grade inflation reform secret questionable decision grant churchill tenure seriously damaged university colorados prestige doubt part effort help restore schools sagging reputation university colorado president hank brown recently floated idea disclosing class rank student transcripts way fighting grade inflation see president brown graduated u colorado 1961 class rank transcripts practice fell wayside era grade inflation president browns proposed reform makes sense light game informational cat mouse grade inflation become fascinating study william chan li hao wing suen explain grade inflation using example accounting firm slants analysis make risky companies look healthy accounting firm might able win business willing mislead public shaky firm wants look strong accounting firm risks however value seal approval diluted ever firm found general public reputation would shattered arthur andersens wake enron scandal chan hao suen show grade inflation works something like dishonest accounting firmtop schools start inflating grades usually justification would unfair grade good students curve employers continue believe b average pretty good even sophisticated employers understand b isnt used expect grades cluster top range best schools however grade inflation gradually spreads top schools much wider range colleges grade inflation becomes way appearing elite school lesser schools suppose means grade inflation fool employers thinking dealing topquality school accounting firm gains business lowering standards colleges attempt raise value degrees inflating grades shady accounting firm helps weak clients hurts good ones grade inflation helps mediocre students middlerange schools hurting good students good schools lets clear helping hurting mean grade inflation helps middling students middlerange schools duping employers whereas hurts good students good schools degrading value accomplishments deception ever exposed system runs risk crashing accounting firm deception intolerable large amounts money stake university reputation less immediately tarnished employers public large register quickly problems grade inflationthats spectacle like ward churchill fiasco comes although matter grade inflation obvious lapse standards revealed granting tenure supposed american indian called quality university colorado implicitly academy whole question solutionsthe resulting loss public confidence put pressure colorado restore reputation contributions applications etc ostentatious raising standards thus president browns proposal disclose class rank thus revealed fundamental truth universities ultimately depend upon public regard therefore forced action public criticism matter grade inflation simple solutions like reporting class rank already exist heightened public discussion exposure embarrassing statistics keys reform public exposure break vicious cycle contagious grade deception put virtuous cycle prestigious reform place enough schools shamed following lead university colorado schools havent reformed grading practices increasingly come suspicion restoring class rank clearly one way solve problem grade inflation inflation grades compressed top spectrum class rank would effectively restore comparative curve opponents class rank complain students similar grade averages pushed different ranks thats point ranking defeats strategy bunching everyones grades top yet disclosing class rank isnt potential solution quota systems could also play role could limits number could assigned given class quotas could also used limit number honors graduates effect limiting total number honors graduates keeping usual threelevel honors distinction summa cum laude magna cum laude cum laude would way restoring class rank higher levels without directly designating students lower ranks quotas graduation honors publicly adopted group prestigious schools would create strong pressure schools refused join system another way defeat grade inflation include information transcripts example beside students course grade school could include average grade course would expose devalue inflated grades easy classes central michigan university professors james felton peter koper proposed promising version reform professors devised simple way calculate call real gpa basis students nominal gpa find students real grade given class average grade class scaled 20 c students grade adjusted relative student ends grade c done better average classin effect felton koper use another form comparative ranking reveal compensate grade inflation adoption reform would actually reverse pressures drive grade inflation professors routinely gave high nominal grades would stigmatized low real graders students would begin avoid gut courses administrators would start punish rather reward professors taught publicitythere already close faculty votes grading reform 1997 duke arts sciences council voted 1914 reject early version nominalreal grade reporting science math professors mostly favor change humanities professors opposed grades humanities courses dramatically higher natural sciences many humanities courses swollen students search easy grades even duke vote close months university colorado faculty voting president browns proposal restore class rank thats come faculty votes close public scrutiny could make difference success failure president browns drive restore class rank class rank comes back colorado pressure publicity could spread schools adopted grading reform schools would come pressure explain theyd refused value degrees transcripts schools tougher standards would rise grade inflation cheap way tricking employers students believing achievements achieved putting high grades within easy reach students undercuts everyones motive work punishes students actually work hard hurts us since society whole would benefit little work higher achievement perhaps bit less partying schools supposed devoted excellence lets start national conversation many existing proposals designed combat grade inflation lets keep eye president browns drive restore class rank university colorado oddly shame ward churchill affair may ultimately end achieving good160 precisely public really something problems politically correct academy stanley kurtz senior fellow ethics public policy center | 1,451 |
<p>The Russian Ministry of Defense revealed its immediate and future plans for hardware procurement. The wish list, including conventional arms, and those “based on new principles of physics” was announced at a major military expo held near Moscow.</p>
<p>Deputy Defense Minister Yury Borisov said that during the Army 2017 expo, the ministry signed 23 contracts worth around 170 billion rubles (over $2.8 billion) with defense producers, many of them for weapons tested during the Syrian campaign.</p>
<p>The Armata platform, which is considered the future of Russian armor, remains a “trump card” for the defense ministry, Borsov said. “We can play it anytime we want, boost the series production when needed and stay ahead of our colleagues, so to speak,” he claimed.</p>
<p>The current plan is to have 100 Armata-based T-14 main battle tanks in the Russian armed forces by 2020. One of the tank’s main advantages is its fully automated and unmanned turret, as well as HD cameras that provide an outside view. In the future, the tank may be equipped with a drone.</p>
<p>Yet, the modernized versions of the modern Russian main battle tanks are on par with the competition, so the defense ministry will not rush the replacement of the current fleet with the T-14, Borisov said. The contract signed with Uralvagonzavod, Russia’s primary armor producer, is focused on upgrading older tanks. For the first time, the Russian military will receive T-90M tanks, the third major upgrade of the model, which now has a new turret with a longer 125mm gun and a new fire control system.</p>
<p>The ministry has also ordered a batch of BMPT Terminators, based on the T-72 tank chassis and is designed to support tank units by targeting enemy anti-tank weapons. Russia’s military purchased some Terminators for test purposes, but the new contract will result in them being put into regular service.</p>
<p>Another novel armor the ministry wants is the BMP-3 infantry fighting machine with the new Epokha turret. The remotely-controlled Epokha was designed as a modular platform that can be outfitted easily with new weapons. The version shown by the producer KBP at the Army 2017 expo had a 57mm autocannon, Kornet anti-tank missile launchers, and Bulat guided missile system, which is currently in development.</p>
<p>Another advanced weapon, the fifth-generation air superiority fighter Su-57, is set to enter service next year. The state-of-the-art aircraft would have an older engine dubbed ‘product 117,’ but work on the new one dubbed ‘product 30’ is “close to the finish line,” the official said. The jet features a body primarily built of composite materials for stealth and supermaneuverability during dog fights.</p>
<p>Far less imposing than the Su-57, but no less important for the strength of the air force, is the training plane Yak-152. The defense ministry expects to sign the first contract for three series Yak-152s before year’s end. The model is designed for military pilots making their first career steps before switching to a more powerful Yak-130, which can also be used as a light fighter. The new plane made its maiden flight last year and will gradually replace the outdated Yak-52 model.</p>
<p>For the Navy, the ministry ordered several more Karakurt-class corvettes, although Borisov refrained from disclosing the amount. The lead ship of the class, the Uragan, was commissioned earlier this year and five more are currently under construction.</p>
<p>The 800-ton ships are meant for littoral zone combat and carry eight Oniks or Kalibr missiles as their main weapon.</p>
<p>The ministry is also considering new orders for two Admiral Grigorovich-class frigates in addition to the three currently under construction for the Black Sea fleet and the three already complete, the official said. Another possible purchase is two more advanced Lada-class stealth attack submarines. Funding for both has been requested for the new military procurement program launching next year.</p>
<p>A more distant prospect for the ministry is to fund the construction of a new aircraft carrier, which, according to Borisov, may happen as soon as 2025. The future ship will have a new naval fighter jet designed for its deck and possibly another one capable of vertical lift-off, the official said.</p>
<p>The missile producer OKB Novator signed a contract to produce more cruise missiles for the Iskander-M system. The tactical launcher can fire either ballistic or cruise missiles. The ministry also ordered launchers, radar, and control points to arm two more Iskander-M brigades for the Russian ground forces.</p>
<p>Another purchase announced by the Russian military is of the Lotos-M reconnaissance satellite, which “will join a constellation working in the interest of the armed forces” and “provide information support for the Navy,” he said. The spacecraft may be a new version of the Lotos-S signal intelligence satellite. The Russian military has two of them in orbit now and uses them as part of the Liana system, used by the Russian Navy to detect and target potentially hostile targets.</p>
<p>The deputy minister also mentioned two R&amp;D projects for the Russian military. One, called Skorost (Russian for ‘speed’), will be conducted over two years by helicopter producer Mil “to create technology basis for developing an aircraft of a new type.” Earlier reports said Mil was working on a Mi-24 version dubbed PSV, which will be capable of attaining speeds of up to 500kmh.</p>
<p>Another, the Zadira-16 (Russian for ‘cocky’) was signed with the Russian Federal Nuclear Center, a Sarov-based nuclear lab with historic ties to Russia’s nuclear weapons program. The system would be “based on new principles of physics,” a term used in the Russian military for non-traditional weapons systems, from direct energy weapons to anything more exotic.</p> | false | 1 | russian ministry defense revealed immediate future plans hardware procurement wish list including conventional arms based new principles physics announced major military expo held near moscow deputy defense minister yury borisov said army 2017 expo ministry signed 23 contracts worth around 170 billion rubles 28 billion defense producers many weapons tested syrian campaign armata platform considered future russian armor remains trump card defense ministry borsov said play anytime want boost series production needed stay ahead colleagues speak claimed current plan 100 armatabased t14 main battle tanks russian armed forces 2020 one tanks main advantages fully automated unmanned turret well hd cameras provide outside view future tank may equipped drone yet modernized versions modern russian main battle tanks par competition defense ministry rush replacement current fleet t14 borisov said contract signed uralvagonzavod russias primary armor producer focused upgrading older tanks first time russian military receive t90m tanks third major upgrade model new turret longer 125mm gun new fire control system ministry also ordered batch bmpt terminators based t72 tank chassis designed support tank units targeting enemy antitank weapons russias military purchased terminators test purposes new contract result put regular service another novel armor ministry wants bmp3 infantry fighting machine new epokha turret remotelycontrolled epokha designed modular platform outfitted easily new weapons version shown producer kbp army 2017 expo 57mm autocannon kornet antitank missile launchers bulat guided missile system currently development another advanced weapon fifthgeneration air superiority fighter su57 set enter service next year stateoftheart aircraft would older engine dubbed product 117 work new one dubbed product 30 close finish line official said jet features body primarily built composite materials stealth supermaneuverability dog fights far less imposing su57 less important strength air force training plane yak152 defense ministry expects sign first contract three series yak152s years end model designed military pilots making first career steps switching powerful yak130 also used light fighter new plane made maiden flight last year gradually replace outdated yak52 model navy ministry ordered several karakurtclass corvettes although borisov refrained disclosing amount lead ship class uragan commissioned earlier year five currently construction 800ton ships meant littoral zone combat carry eight oniks kalibr missiles main weapon ministry also considering new orders two admiral grigorovichclass frigates addition three currently construction black sea fleet three already complete official said another possible purchase two advanced ladaclass stealth attack submarines funding requested new military procurement program launching next year distant prospect ministry fund construction new aircraft carrier according borisov may happen soon 2025 future ship new naval fighter jet designed deck possibly another one capable vertical liftoff official said missile producer okb novator signed contract produce cruise missiles iskanderm system tactical launcher fire either ballistic cruise missiles ministry also ordered launchers radar control points arm two iskanderm brigades russian ground forces another purchase announced russian military lotosm reconnaissance satellite join constellation working interest armed forces provide information support navy said spacecraft may new version lotoss signal intelligence satellite russian military two orbit uses part liana system used russian navy detect target potentially hostile targets deputy minister also mentioned two rampd projects russian military one called skorost russian speed conducted two years helicopter producer mil create technology basis developing aircraft new type earlier reports said mil working mi24 version dubbed psv capable attaining speeds 500kmh another zadira16 russian cocky signed russian federal nuclear center sarovbased nuclear lab historic ties russias nuclear weapons program system would based new principles physics term used russian military nontraditional weapons systems direct energy weapons anything exotic | 575 |
<p>Three US Congress members have demanded answers from Washington after a new book claims to reveal details of how the government secretly sprayed, injected, and fed radiation and other hazardous materials to “vulnerable” people during the Cold War.</p>
<p>The congressmen’s outrage comes in response to the book ‘Behind the Fog: How the US Cold War Radiological Weapons Program Exposed Innocent Americans,’ which is said to have revealed the practices when it was published in August.</p>
<p>Author Lisa Martino-Taylor, an associate professor of sociology at St. Louis Community College, said the radiological weapons program was a top priority for the government at the time.</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/usa/404273-un-tillerson-soviet-hero-praise/" type="external" /></p>
<p>According to the author, unsuspecting people across the United States – and even in England and Canada – were subjected to potentially deadly material through open-air spraying, ingestion, and injection.</p>
<p>“They targeted the most vulnerable in society in most cases,” Martino-Taylor said, as quoted by AP. “They targeted children. They targeted pregnant women in Nashville. People who were ill in hospitals. They targeted wards of the state. And they targeted minority populations.”&#160;The testing took place in various locations throughout the United States.</p>
<p>Tests in Nashville in the late 1940s saw 820 poor and pregnant white women receive a mixture during their first pre-natal visit which included radioactive iron, Martino-Taylor said. The expectant mothers were unknowingly chosen to take part in the program.</p>
<p>Blood tests were apparently used to determine how much radioactive iron had been absorbed by the women, and the babies’ blood was tested at birth. Similar tests also took place in Chicago and San Francisco, according to Martino-Taylor.</p>
<p>In St. Louis, the government was busy testing a spray which it claimed was for a smoke screen which could shield the city from aerial observation in case of a Soviet attack. However, evidence now shows that the spray included radioactive material, according to the associate professor.</p>
<p>In California, investigators installed a radiation field inside a building at North Hollywood High School in 1961. Similar testing was performed at the University of California Los Angeles and at a Los Angeles Police Department building.</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/news/403625-nuclear-soviet-officer-died/" type="external" /></p>
<p>In St. Louis, the government was busy testing a spray which it claimed was for a smoke screen which could shield the city from aerial observation in case of a Soviet attack. However, evidence now shows that the spray included radioactive material, according to the associate professor.</p>
<p>In California, investigators installed a radiation field inside a building at North Hollywood High School in 1961. Similar testing was performed at the University of California Los Angeles and at a Los Angeles Police Department building.</p>
<p>Martino-Taylor has revealed that other tests in Chicago; Berkeley, California; Rochester, New York; and Oak Ridge, Tennessee, involved injecting people with plutonium-239.</p>
<p>The author used Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain previously unreleased documents, including Army records, which revealed the government’s practices. She also reviewed public records and published articles.</p>
<p>She also told AP that she found that a small group of researchers aided by academic institutions worked to develop radiological weapons and “combination weapons” using radioactive materials along with chemical or biological weapons.</p>
<p>Any negative health effects of the testing have not been proven, with Martino-Taylor admitting that tracing diseases like cancer to specific causes is difficult.&#160;However, Mary Helen Brindell, now 73, can remember playing baseball on a street in St. Louis as a child in the 1950s. Suddenly, a squadron of planes flew low overhead, covering her and her friends in a fine powdery substance that stuck to her skin.</p>
<p>She has suffered from breast, thyroid, skin, and uterine cancers, and her sister died of a rare form of esophageal cancer.&#160;“I just want an explanation from the government,” Brindell said. “Why would you do that to people?”</p>
<p>Doris Spates, now 62, was born on the top floor of the Pruitt-Igoe low-income building in St. Louis, where the Army sprayed material from the roof. Just three months after her birth, her father suddenly died. Four of her 11 siblings died from cancer at relatively young ages, and she herself has survived cervical cancer and suffers from skin and breathing issues.</p>
<p>“It makes me angry,” Spates said. “It’s wrong to do something like that to people who don’t have any knowledge of it.”</p>
<p>Responding to the revelations, three congressmen who represent areas where the testing took place have expressed outrage at the practices.</p>
<p>Lacy Clay (D-MO) said he was angry that Americans were used as “guinea pigs.”</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/uk/375031-nuclear-submarine-collision-war/" type="external" /></p>
<p>He was joined by Jim Cooper (D-TN), whose office plans to seek more information from the Army Legislative Liaison.</p>
<p>“We are asking for details on the Pentagon’s role, along with any cooperation by research institutions and other organizations,” office spokesperson Chris Carroll said. “These revelations are shocking, disturbing and painful.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Brad Sherman (D-CA) – whose district includes North Hollywood High School, site of a radiation field – called the government’s actions an “incredibly stupid, reckless thing to do.”</p>
<p>He said he wants a survey of people who graduated from the school around that time, to see if there was a higher incidence of illness, including cancer, and has vowed to seek more information from the Department of Energy.</p>
<p>Martino-Taylor says her book speaks of the mostly young scientists tasked with developing radiological weapons, noting that they were mostly unsupervised from anyone “who could say, ‘this isn’t right,’ or put some sort of moral compass on it.”</p>
<p>The book is a follow-up to Martino-Taylor’s 2012 dissertation, which found that the US government conducted secret testing of zinc cadmium sulfide in a poor area of St. Louis in the 1950s and 1960s. Although her 2012 report prompted an Army investigation, the probe determined that no evidence had been found to prove that the St. Louis testing posed a health threat.</p> | false | 1 | three us congress members demanded answers washington new book claims reveal details government secretly sprayed injected fed radiation hazardous materials vulnerable people cold war congressmens outrage comes response book behind fog us cold war radiological weapons program exposed innocent americans said revealed practices published august author lisa martinotaylor associate professor sociology st louis community college said radiological weapons program top priority government time read according author unsuspecting people across united states even england canada subjected potentially deadly material openair spraying ingestion injection targeted vulnerable society cases martinotaylor said quoted ap targeted children targeted pregnant women nashville people ill hospitals targeted wards state targeted minority populations160the testing took place various locations throughout united states tests nashville late 1940s saw 820 poor pregnant white women receive mixture first prenatal visit included radioactive iron martinotaylor said expectant mothers unknowingly chosen take part program blood tests apparently used determine much radioactive iron absorbed women babies blood tested birth similar tests also took place chicago san francisco according martinotaylor st louis government busy testing spray claimed smoke screen could shield city aerial observation case soviet attack however evidence shows spray included radioactive material according associate professor california investigators installed radiation field inside building north hollywood high school 1961 similar testing performed university california los angeles los angeles police department building read st louis government busy testing spray claimed smoke screen could shield city aerial observation case soviet attack however evidence shows spray included radioactive material according associate professor california investigators installed radiation field inside building north hollywood high school 1961 similar testing performed university california los angeles los angeles police department building martinotaylor revealed tests chicago berkeley california rochester new york oak ridge tennessee involved injecting people plutonium239 author used freedom information act requests obtain previously unreleased documents including army records revealed governments practices also reviewed public records published articles also told ap found small group researchers aided academic institutions worked develop radiological weapons combination weapons using radioactive materials along chemical biological weapons negative health effects testing proven martinotaylor admitting tracing diseases like cancer specific causes difficult160however mary helen brindell 73 remember playing baseball street st louis child 1950s suddenly squadron planes flew low overhead covering friends fine powdery substance stuck skin suffered breast thyroid skin uterine cancers sister died rare form esophageal cancer160i want explanation government brindell said would people doris spates 62 born top floor pruittigoe lowincome building st louis army sprayed material roof three months birth father suddenly died four 11 siblings died cancer relatively young ages survived cervical cancer suffers skin breathing issues makes angry spates said wrong something like people dont knowledge responding revelations three congressmen represent areas testing took place expressed outrage practices lacy clay dmo said angry americans used guinea pigs read joined jim cooper dtn whose office plans seek information army legislative liaison asking details pentagons role along cooperation research institutions organizations office spokesperson chris carroll said revelations shocking disturbing painful meanwhile brad sherman dca whose district includes north hollywood high school site radiation field called governments actions incredibly stupid reckless thing said wants survey people graduated school around time see higher incidence illness including cancer vowed seek information department energy martinotaylor says book speaks mostly young scientists tasked developing radiological weapons noting mostly unsupervised anyone could say isnt right put sort moral compass book followup martinotaylors 2012 dissertation found us government conducted secret testing zinc cadmium sulfide poor area st louis 1950s 1960s although 2012 report prompted army investigation probe determined evidence found prove st louis testing posed health threat | 584 |
<p>Barack Obama wanted to be the Democrats’ Ronald Reagan. Instead, he is leaving office more like the Democrats’ Jerry Ford: personally popular but with his party defeated, divided, and in despair. Democrats on Obama’s watch have, like Republicans after Ford, dropped to historically low numbers of congressmen, governors, and state legislators. The Democratic party today has less direct influence on American government at all levels than at any time since Reconstruction. On the surface, that looks like a pretty awful political legacy.</p>
<p>But recall that Reagan and Republican renewal came just four years after Ford’s 1976 defeat. The seeds for that renewal were present for all who had eyes to see. Those seeds, coupled with an inexperienced Democratic president who could not meet the demands of his office and a series of economic and international crises that would have tested even the most skilled statesman, did not take long to bear fruit.</p>
<p>Obama planted a number of political seeds during his tenure, seeds that could, in the hands of a skilled gardener, blossom quite quickly if Donald Trump and the Republican Congress don’t govern wisely. If Obama’s strategy played poorly in the short run, we cannot yet count out the possibility that it will play out quite well over the coming years.</p>
<p>First, though, let us recount his political shortcomings. The president’s smug arrogance did not simply drive Republicans crazy, it led him to push on in pursuit of a progressive paradise when wiser Democrats were counselling caution. Obama had campaigned as a healer, a person who could mix red and blue in pursuit of a common American vision. When he instead governed as a progressive (albeit as one never pure enough for the faithful), pushing climate change and Obamacare as his major priorities, he broke faith with the independents and moderate blue-collar Democrats who had elected him and given Democrats the largest House and Senate majorities they had possessed since before Ronald Reagan.</p>
<p>These were simply unwise priorities to push when the nation was wracked with a massive, worsening recession. But that did not matter to the 47-year-old who had already authored two autobiographies. According to the New York Times, Obama’s first treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, told him early on that his legacy would be preventing a second great depression. Obama replied, “That’s not good enough for me.” That, plus encouraging a fast recovery, would have been plenty good for most Americans.</p>
<p>Obama’s progressive advisers, ignoring the counsel of his first chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, believed the reason Bill Clinton’s Democrats had been wiped out in 1994—after they had sought to pass a progressive wish list—was that they had flinched and not rammed their priorities through Congress. Do that, they told Obama, and Americans will reward the bold. Instead, Democrats lost even more seats in the House in 2010 than they had in 1994, dropping to their lowest level since 1946.</p>
<p>Devastation dogged down-ballot Democrats, too. Republicans picked up five governorships, winning in the large states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. They gained an incredible 720 state legislative seats, picking up majority control in 21 legislative chambers. These gains allowed the GOP to control redistricting in each of the states listed above, as well as other important states they already controlled, such as Texas. This in turn allowed Republicans to dominate the redistricting process for the first time in decades, redrawing congressional and state legislative lines heavily in their favor.</p>
<p>Bill Clinton learned from his early mistakes and tacked to the center for the remainder of his presidency. Obama never did. He continued to push progressive priorities instead of those championed by the broad center of America, relying on the power of the executive to move them forward when the Republican-controlled House wouldn’t act. So, add stubbornness to arrogance as a second compounding feature of Obama’s political legacy.</p>
<p>Obama did win reelection in 2012, but that was because of Republican failure as much as his own genius. The Republican party thought it didn’t need to offer an attractive alternative vision to reach the disaffected center. It nominated in Mitt Romney a man who would have made a great scoutmaster but who developed no agenda that could make up for his bland, MBA-as-savior political persona. And so Republicans failed to win the White House or take control of the Senate in what they had thought would be an easy victory, given the seats up for grabs.</p>
<p>But Obama seems to think that he, not the Dos Equis guy, is the most interesting man in the world, and so he followed up his narrow escape with a second dose of stubbornness in pursuit of progressive ideals. The Paris climate accords, the Iran deal, the executive orders on immigration—all seemed wildly out of sorts with the priorities and policies preferred by the independents and blue-collar voters who had just reelected him. They therefore delivered another Democratic drubbing in 2014.</p>
<p>Trump’s nomination gave Democrats a golden opportunity to move beyond Obama. The Donald might indeed be the most interesting man in America, but throughout 2016 he was certainly among the least popular. As Hillary moved to the left to attract progressives, she doubled down on the policy priorities middle America didn’t value. Middle America had been screaming “What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand?” to Democrats for eight years. They didn’t listen, and so we are where we are.</p>
<p>Obama may look the fool now; he might, however, look the genius in the not-so-distant future. That’s because the very policies and priorities that don’t attract the current American center are quite popular with the future American voter.</p>
<p>Many young, college-educated whites want a form of secular multiculturalism. Many first-generation Latinos want friendly immigration policies and expanding government. These voters are poised to make up an ever-growing share of the electorate.</p>
<p>We should not forget that Clinton won the popular vote and only barely lost the three midwestern states that gave Trump the presidency. She also lost Florida and North Carolina by close margins and reduced the GOP’s winning margin in Arizona by almost two-thirds. Had she shown even the slightest interest in moving to the middle, Hillary Clinton would be president and the Democrats would control the Senate.</p>
<p>Other, wiser Democrats have run campaigns that appeal to the center and the Left, and they have won in key swing states. There is no reason a Democratic Reagan can’t see this and make the small but necessary adjustments to regain the White House.</p>
<p>Obama’s great success as a politician has been to build a very large and very loyal Democratic constituency. Even in his darkest hours, Obama’s popularity ratings never dropped below 40 percent, usually hovering in the low to mid 40s even when he was down. The Democrats’ progressivism may give them a low ceiling, but it also seems to give them a very high floor.</p>
<p>The Republicans would be wrong to think that their hold on the House or the states is impregnable. The GOP has nine governorships up for election in 2017 or 2018 in states that voted for Hillary Clinton and that Obama won twice. It holds another five up for election in those years in Obama/Trump states. It wouldn’t take much for Democrats to make a huge rebound in statehouses, and every governor elected in those years will be able to block Republican redistricting efforts in 2021.</p>
<p>Gerrymandering is a big reason Republicans hold large majorities in many statehouses, and is a significant reason they have a House majority. Fairer redistricting plans in states such as Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan could cost the GOP as many as 15 House seats. A court challenge to the Republican gerrymander of Wisconsin is already on its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Anthony Kennedy previously suggested that partisan gerrymanders can violate the Constitution. If he joins with the Court’s liberals in judging that Wisconsin’s plan does so, and if the majority were to adopt legal standards to constrain future redistricting, then the GOP’s House and state legislative majorities would no longer be secure.</p>
<p>The Obama political legacy, therefore, remains a work in progress. Moving the Democratic party to the left has given the Republicans a chance to come back. Only eight years ago, they were defeated, divided, and in despair. Obama gave them something to unite behind and the massive win in 2010 gave them hope. But a party that controls all the levers of government can no longer unite by being against something. It can only unite by being for something—and that remains a challenge for the GOP.</p>
<p>Republicans must do what Obama and Hillary Clinton failed to do: Find a way to unite the concerns of their base with those of the center. That will require what neither Democrat was willing to do, be creative and compromise. Trump’s core voters, in particular, believe they have been given a raw deal by both parties for a very long time. They flocked to him precisely because he seemed to be free of both parties’ bases and their tribal concerns. Republicans’ failure to recognize this would set the stage for conflict with the White House and defeat in 2018.</p>
<p>To avoid such an outcome, Republicans need to learn the difference between principle and ideology. Fortunately, they had a great teacher in Ronald Reagan.</p>
<p>Reagan’s 1977 speech “The New Republican Party” asserts that this difference provides the secret to winning. Americans hate ideology, which Reagan defined as the “slavish adherence to abstraction.” Ideologues, Reagan said, make the facts fit their preconceived theories. Conservatives derive their ideals from facts—and adjust their policies when they see new facts.</p>
<p>As president, Reagan did exactly that. He was for free trade but levied penalties on Japan many times because of what he saw as unfair trading practices. He was against tax increases, but he signed off on two tax hikes during his tenure, including one designed to keep Social Security solvent for decades. He hated the Soviet Union but was willing to sign an arms-control agreement with Mikhail Gorbachev when he came to believe Gorbachev was a different type of Soviet leader.</p>
<p>In his speech, Reagan specifically criticized ideological fanatics, people who “sacrifice principle to theory, worship only the god of political, social, and economic abstractions, ignoring the realities of everyday life. They are not conservatives.” Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were rightly judged by the American people to be ideologues, people who cared more about their abstractions than about everyday life. Smug, arrogant, and stubborn are no ways to go through political life. Republicans who want to make Obama’s political legacy an unambiguously negative one should listen to Reagan.</p>
<p>Mr. Olsen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and an adjunct professor at Villanova University. He is the author of the forthcoming book Ronald Reagan: New Deal Republican.</p> | false | 1 | barack obama wanted democrats ronald reagan instead leaving office like democrats jerry ford personally popular party defeated divided despair democrats obamas watch like republicans ford dropped historically low numbers congressmen governors state legislators democratic party today less direct influence american government levels time since reconstruction surface looks like pretty awful political legacy recall reagan republican renewal came four years fords 1976 defeat seeds renewal present eyes see seeds coupled inexperienced democratic president could meet demands office series economic international crises would tested even skilled statesman take long bear fruit obama planted number political seeds tenure seeds could hands skilled gardener blossom quite quickly donald trump republican congress dont govern wisely obamas strategy played poorly short run yet count possibility play quite well coming years first though let us recount political shortcomings presidents smug arrogance simply drive republicans crazy led push pursuit progressive paradise wiser democrats counselling caution obama campaigned healer person could mix red blue pursuit common american vision instead governed progressive albeit one never pure enough faithful pushing climate change obamacare major priorities broke faith independents moderate bluecollar democrats elected given democrats largest house senate majorities possessed since ronald reagan simply unwise priorities push nation wracked massive worsening recession matter 47yearold already authored two autobiographies according new york times obamas first treasury secretary timothy geithner told early legacy would preventing second great depression obama replied thats good enough plus encouraging fast recovery would plenty good americans obamas progressive advisers ignoring counsel first chief staff rahm emmanuel believed reason bill clintons democrats wiped 1994after sought pass progressive wish listwas flinched rammed priorities congress told obama americans reward bold instead democrats lost even seats house 2010 1994 dropping lowest level since 1946 devastation dogged downballot democrats republicans picked five governorships winning large states wisconsin michigan ohio pennsylvania florida gained incredible 720 state legislative seats picking majority control 21 legislative chambers gains allowed gop control redistricting states listed well important states already controlled texas turn allowed republicans dominate redistricting process first time decades redrawing congressional state legislative lines heavily favor bill clinton learned early mistakes tacked center remainder presidency obama never continued push progressive priorities instead championed broad center america relying power executive move forward republicancontrolled house wouldnt act add stubbornness arrogance second compounding feature obamas political legacy obama win reelection 2012 republican failure much genius republican party thought didnt need offer attractive alternative vision reach disaffected center nominated mitt romney man would made great scoutmaster developed agenda could make bland mbaassavior political persona republicans failed win white house take control senate thought would easy victory given seats grabs obama seems think dos equis guy interesting man world followed narrow escape second dose stubbornness pursuit progressive ideals paris climate accords iran deal executive orders immigrationall seemed wildly sorts priorities policies preferred independents bluecollar voters reelected therefore delivered another democratic drubbing 2014 trumps nomination gave democrats golden opportunity move beyond obama donald might indeed interesting man america throughout 2016 certainly among least popular hillary moved left attract progressives doubled policy priorities middle america didnt value middle america screaming part dont understand democrats eight years didnt listen obama may look fool might however look genius notsodistant future thats policies priorities dont attract current american center quite popular future american voter many young collegeeducated whites want form secular multiculturalism many firstgeneration latinos want friendly immigration policies expanding government voters poised make evergrowing share electorate forget clinton popular vote barely lost three midwestern states gave trump presidency also lost florida north carolina close margins reduced gops winning margin arizona almost twothirds shown even slightest interest moving middle hillary clinton would president democrats would control senate wiser democrats run campaigns appeal center left key swing states reason democratic reagan cant see make small necessary adjustments regain white house obamas great success politician build large loyal democratic constituency even darkest hours obamas popularity ratings never dropped 40 percent usually hovering low mid 40s even democrats progressivism may give low ceiling also seems give high floor republicans would wrong think hold house states impregnable gop nine governorships election 2017 2018 states voted hillary clinton obama twice holds another five election years obamatrump states wouldnt take much democrats make huge rebound statehouses every governor elected years able block republican redistricting efforts 2021 gerrymandering big reason republicans hold large majorities many statehouses significant reason house majority fairer redistricting plans states florida pennsylvania ohio michigan could cost gop many 15 house seats court challenge republican gerrymander wisconsin already way us supreme court justice anthony kennedy previously suggested partisan gerrymanders violate constitution joins courts liberals judging wisconsins plan majority adopt legal standards constrain future redistricting gops house state legislative majorities would longer secure obama political legacy therefore remains work progress moving democratic party left given republicans chance come back eight years ago defeated divided despair obama gave something unite behind massive win 2010 gave hope party controls levers government longer unite something unite somethingand remains challenge gop republicans must obama hillary clinton failed find way unite concerns base center require neither democrat willing creative compromise trumps core voters particular believe given raw deal parties long time flocked precisely seemed free parties bases tribal concerns republicans failure recognize would set stage conflict white house defeat 2018 avoid outcome republicans need learn difference principle ideology fortunately great teacher ronald reagan reagans 1977 speech new republican party asserts difference provides secret winning americans hate ideology reagan defined slavish adherence abstraction ideologues reagan said make facts fit preconceived theories conservatives derive ideals factsand adjust policies see new facts president reagan exactly free trade levied penalties japan many times saw unfair trading practices tax increases signed two tax hikes tenure including one designed keep social security solvent decades hated soviet union willing sign armscontrol agreement mikhail gorbachev came believe gorbachev different type soviet leader speech reagan specifically criticized ideological fanatics people sacrifice principle theory worship god political social economic abstractions ignoring realities everyday life conservatives barack obama hillary clinton rightly judged american people ideologues people cared abstractions everyday life smug arrogant stubborn ways go political life republicans want make obamas political legacy unambiguously negative one listen reagan mr olsen senior fellow ethics public policy center adjunct professor villanova university author forthcoming book ronald reagan new deal republican | 1,029 |
<p>WASHINGTON — When Justice Antonin Scalia backed out of a book project with writing partner Bryan Garner, the justice recommended who might take his place. Neil Gorsuch was first on this list.</p>
<p>Experts who spend time examining the writing of the nation’s top judges say it’s not hard to see why the veteran jurist would recommend the man whom President Donald Trump would later nominate to fill the Supreme Court seat Scalia held for nearly 30 years.</p>
<p>“He has a great facility with ideas and with words,” Garner said.</p>
<p>An examination of Gorsuch’s writings shows he can be breezy with the written word. He can be jocular. He invokes myth and literature and even sports. And you don’t have to agree with his opinions as a judge on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver to appreciate the final product.</p>
<p>“He has a knack for narrative, he’s clever, he has an appealing style,” said Ross Guberman, the author of “Point Taken: How to Write Like the World’s Best Judges.”</p>
<p>Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg also has called Gorsuch a good writer, and legal writing coaches and experts agree. And that’s more than casual praise: Writing opinions that explain the law is the main part of a justice’s job.</p>
<p>Part of Gorsuch’s appeal is that he explains himself using words you don’t need to be a lawyer to understand.</p>
<p>Gorsuch has likened a legal notice to a basketball bank shot, referenced ghosts and goblins in a lawsuit over injuries suffered at a haunted house and invoked Sisyphus’ eternal quest to push a boulder uphill in an opinion about a decades-long legal dispute.</p>
<p>The bank shot reference came in in Gorsuch’s opinion in favor of a Colorado couple who faced a claim that prints that echoed images created by the artist Erte and that they sold on eBay violated the copyright of the company that held rights to the images. The issue before the 10th Circuit was whether the couple could seek a ruling in Colorado that they did nothing wrong, or instead had to sue in California. That’s where the company sent California-based eBay a demand that it block the couple from taking bids on and selling the prints.</p>
<p>The action in California was done “with the ultimate purpose of canceling plaintiffs’ auction in Colorado,” Gorsuch wrote in 2008. The company’s aim “thus can be said to have reached into Colorado in much the same way that a basketball player’s express aim in shooting off of the backboard is not simply to hit the backboard, but to make a basket.”</p>
<p>Tim Meyer was fairly new to Gorsuch’s office in Denver when he read an early draft of the judge’s opinion. At first, Meyer thought the basketball reference didn’t belong in a judicial opinion.</p>
<p>But Meyer came to believe it was an effective way to explain the law to the couple, who represented themselves in court. “He really was trying to speak to litigants who were not educated or trained in the law,” said Meyer, now a Vanderbilt University law professor.</p>
<p>A prison inmate’s defamation lawsuit showcased another strength in Gorsuch’s writing, Garner said.</p>
<p>“Can you win damages in a defamation suit for being called a member of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang on cable television when, as it happens, you have merely conspired with the Brotherhood in a criminal enterprise? The answer is no,” Gorsuch wrote in 2011.</p>
<p>Garner said he liked the “down-to-earth, practical, fully understandable questions” that Gorsuch sometimes asks at the start of his opinions. Gorsuch is among 13 state and federal judges who joined as co-authors, with Garner, of “The Law of Judicial Precedent,” the book about judges’ opinions that Garner originally hoped to write with Scalia.</p>
<p>In another case, Gorsuch disagreed with colleagues who dismissed a mother’s lawsuit claiming her son had been subjected to false arrest and excessive force stemming from incidents at an Albuquerque middle school. “If a seventh grader starts trading fake burps for laughs in gym class, what’s a teacher to do? Order extra laps? Detention? A trip to the principal’s office? Maybe. But then again, maybe that’s too old school,” he wrote.</p>
<p>With Scalia’s death last year, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan are widely regarded as the two most engaging — and at times entertaining — writers on the court.</p>
<p>Roberts began a dissenting opinion in October 2008 with a few hard-boiled paragraphs straight out of crime fiction. “Narcotics Strike Force, North Philly, May 4, 2001. Officer Sean Devlin, Narcotics Strike Force, was working the morning shift. Undercover surveillance. The neighborhood? Tough as a three-dollar steak,” Roberts wrote, describing a drug bust that Roberts thought was mistakenly thrown out by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.</p>
<p>In April 2012, Kagan invoked her favorite team’s batting woes as she explained that the meaning of a phrase can vary, depending on context. “And if a sports-fan friend bemoans that ‘the New York Mets do not have a chance of winning the World Series,’ you will gather that the team has no chance whatsoever (because they have no hitting),” she wrote, unimpressed with the team’s strong 7-3 start. (Turns out, she was right. The Mets were 10th in the 16-team National League in hitting and 12th in runs scored that year.)</p>
<p>Kagan is in a class by herself at the moment because her entire opinions, not just the opening sentences, read well, Guberman said.</p>
<p>“In my line of work, you have to look past the first paragraph,” Guberman said. Kagan often is clever and witty, he said, “but when she gets to the drier, more systematic legal analysis, she is still an extraordinarily good writer.”</p>
<p>Gorsuch has yet to reach his full potential as a writer, said Guberman, who considers the 49-year-old’s prose “a little more uneven.”</p>
<p>A justice’s ability to write well improves the chances that the other judges, lawyers and anyone else who reads opinions will understand what the law is.</p>
<p>Justices who write poorly tend to have little lasting influence and can be easily forgotten, Garner said. His case in point is Noah Swayne, President Abraham Lincoln’s first Supreme Court appointee. “His entire career is a monument to mediocrity because the man could not write,” Garner said.</p> | false | 1 | washington justice antonin scalia backed book project writing partner bryan garner justice recommended might take place neil gorsuch first list experts spend time examining writing nations top judges say hard see veteran jurist would recommend man president donald trump would later nominate fill supreme court seat scalia held nearly 30 years great facility ideas words garner said examination gorsuchs writings shows breezy written word jocular invokes myth literature even sports dont agree opinions judge 10th us circuit court appeals denver appreciate final product knack narrative hes clever appealing style said ross guberman author point taken write like worlds best judges justice ruth bader ginsburg also called gorsuch good writer legal writing coaches experts agree thats casual praise writing opinions explain law main part justices job part gorsuchs appeal explains using words dont need lawyer understand gorsuch likened legal notice basketball bank shot referenced ghosts goblins lawsuit injuries suffered haunted house invoked sisyphus eternal quest push boulder uphill opinion decadeslong legal dispute bank shot reference came gorsuchs opinion favor colorado couple faced claim prints echoed images created artist erte sold ebay violated copyright company held rights images issue 10th circuit whether couple could seek ruling colorado nothing wrong instead sue california thats company sent californiabased ebay demand block couple taking bids selling prints action california done ultimate purpose canceling plaintiffs auction colorado gorsuch wrote 2008 companys aim thus said reached colorado much way basketball players express aim shooting backboard simply hit backboard make basket tim meyer fairly new gorsuchs office denver read early draft judges opinion first meyer thought basketball reference didnt belong judicial opinion meyer came believe effective way explain law couple represented court really trying speak litigants educated trained law said meyer vanderbilt university law professor prison inmates defamation lawsuit showcased another strength gorsuchs writing garner said win damages defamation suit called member aryan brotherhood prison gang cable television happens merely conspired brotherhood criminal enterprise answer gorsuch wrote 2011 garner said liked downtoearth practical fully understandable questions gorsuch sometimes asks start opinions gorsuch among 13 state federal judges joined coauthors garner law judicial precedent book judges opinions garner originally hoped write scalia another case gorsuch disagreed colleagues dismissed mothers lawsuit claiming son subjected false arrest excessive force stemming incidents albuquerque middle school seventh grader starts trading fake burps laughs gym class whats teacher order extra laps detention trip principals office maybe maybe thats old school wrote scalias death last year chief justice john roberts justice elena kagan widely regarded two engaging times entertaining writers court roberts began dissenting opinion october 2008 hardboiled paragraphs straight crime fiction narcotics strike force north philly may 4 2001 officer sean devlin narcotics strike force working morning shift undercover surveillance neighborhood tough threedollar steak roberts wrote describing drug bust roberts thought mistakenly thrown pennsylvania supreme court april 2012 kagan invoked favorite teams batting woes explained meaning phrase vary depending context sportsfan friend bemoans new york mets chance winning world series gather team chance whatsoever hitting wrote unimpressed teams strong 73 start turns right mets 10th 16team national league hitting 12th runs scored year kagan class moment entire opinions opening sentences read well guberman said line work look past first paragraph guberman said kagan often clever witty said gets drier systematic legal analysis still extraordinarily good writer gorsuch yet reach full potential writer said guberman considers 49yearolds prose little uneven justices ability write well improves chances judges lawyers anyone else reads opinions understand law justices write poorly tend little lasting influence easily forgotten garner said case point noah swayne president abraham lincolns first supreme court appointee entire career monument mediocrity man could write garner said | 600 |
<p>December is right around the corner and with it comes holiday greetings, inexplicable fruitcake, and the inevitable visits from family members. So in order to help you get in the mood or to keep those holiday guests entertained, the streaming services are here to help you&#160; whether you’ve been naughty or nice.</p>
<p><a href="http://variety.com/t/netflix/" type="external">Netflix</a> is helping to kickstart the Christmas cheer with Disney’s “Santa Clause” films, “You Can’t Fight Christmas” and&#160; a holiday special from “Trolls.” Christmas not your thing? There’s still plenty of new non-holiday content to watch like Eminem’s “8 Mile,” season 2 of “The Crown,” “Planet Earth II” — albeit without Snoop Dogg’s narration, and the new fantasy cop movie “Bright.”</p>
<p>Aside from delivering gifts this holiday season, Amazon is also delivering quality films this December. The “Kill Bill” and “Rocky” series will both be available to stream along with other classic films like “Apocalypse Now,” “Silence of the Lambs” and “Titanic.”</p>
<p><a href="http://variety.com/t/hulu/" type="external">Hulu</a> is also here to help provide some hearty holiday cheer at home with films like “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” “One Magic Christmas,” and “Chilly Christmas.” Other fun films to check out include “Space Jam,” the “Robocop” series, “George of the Jungle” and “Superbad.”</p>
<p><a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/netflix-sex-education-1202624394/" type="external">NETFLIX</a></p>
<p>Dec. 1</p>
<p>8 MileAce Ventura: Pet DetectiveAce Ventura: When Nature CallsAll Hail King Julien: Season 5A StoryBots ChristmasAugust RushChef &amp; My Fridge: 2017Dark: Season 1Diana: In Her Own WordsDreamcatcherDreamWorks Home: For the HolidaysEasy: Season 2Exporting RaymondForbidden Games: The Justin Fashanu StoryFull Metal JacketHitchMy Happy FamilyNacho LibreSaharaThe Farthest – Voyager in SpaceThe Little RascalsThe WacknessThe Young VictoriaTysonV for VendettaTURN: Washington’s Spies: Season 4VoyeurWhile You Were Sleeping</p>
<p>Dec. 4When Calls the Heart: Season 4</p>
<p>Dec. 5Craig Ferguson: Tickle FightMarvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2</p>
<p>Dec. 6Trolls Holiday Special</p>
<p>Dec. 8El Camino ChristmasThe Crown: Season 2</p>
<p>Dec. 11CatwomanThe Magicians: Season 2</p>
<p>Dec. 12Disney’s The Santa ClauseDisney’s The Santa Clause 2Disney’s The Santa Clause 3: The Escape ClauseJudd Apatow: The Return</p>
<p>Dec. 1441 Dogs in My HomeA&amp;E: When Patients AttackAinsley Eats the Streets: Season 1Halt and Catch Fire: Season 4</p>
<p>Dec. 15A Five Star LifeChristmas InheritanceDiscovering BigfootEl Señor de los Cielos: Season 5Erased: Season 1Freeway: Crack In The SystemNeverlakePottersvilleReggie Yates Outside Man: Volume 2The Haunting of HelenaThe Mafia Kills Only in SummerThe Ranch: Part 4Trollhunters: Part 2Ultimate BeastmasterWormwood</p>
<p>Dec. 18</p>
<p>Hello, My Twenties!: Season 2</p>
<p>Dec. 19Miss Me This ChristmasRussell Howard: RecalibrateThe Indian Detective: Season 1You Can’t Fight Christmas</p>
<p>Dec. 20La Casa de Papel: Season 1</p>
<p>Dec. 21Peaky Blinders: Season 4</p>
<p>Dec. 2272 Dangerous Animals: Latin America: Season 1BrightDope: Season 1Fuller House: Season 3, New EpisodesRosario Tijeras: Season 1The Toys That Made Us: Season 1</p>
<p>Dec. 23Creep 2Myths &amp; Monsters: Season 1</p>
<p>Dec. 25Cable Girls: Season 2Planet Earth II</p>
<p>Dec. 26Todd Barry: Spicy HoneyTravelers: Season 2All Hail King Julien: New Year’s Eve Countdown 2018Beat Bugs: New Year’s Eve Countdown 2018Larva: New Year’s Eve Countdown 2018Pororo: New Year’s Eve Countdown 2018Puffin Rock: New Year’s Eve Countdown 2018Skylanders Academy: New Year’s Eve Countdown 2018Trollhunters: New Year’s Eve Countdown 2018True and The Rainbow Kingdom: New Year’s Eve Countdown 2018Word Party: New Year’s Eve Countdown 2018</p>
<p>Dec. 27</p>
<p>Pusher</p>
<p>Dec. 29Bill Nye Saves the World: Season 2: Part 1Killer LegendsLa Mante: Season 1ShelterThe Climb</p>
<p>Dec. 31Dave Chappelle: EquanimityFun Mom Dinner</p>
<p>AMAZON</p>
<p>Dec. 1Apocalypse NowAt Close RangeBasic Instinct 2BloodsportBrothers GrimmChild’s PlayDr. StrangeGremlins 2: The New BatchHammettHannibalHitchHulk Vs.In &amp; OutIn Enemy HandsMoonstruckNext Avengers: Heroes of TomorrowPlanet HulkRockyRocky IIRocky IIIRocky IVRocky VSearching for Bobby FischerSilenceStigmataThe Final CutThe Heartbreak KidThe Invincible Iron ManThe Silence of the LambsThe Weight of WaterThor Animated Movie: Tales of AsgardTitanicUltimate Avengers IIUltimate Avengers the Movie</p>
<p>Dec. 3</p>
<p>Class: Season 1</p>
<p>Dec. 4</p>
<p>The Royals: Season 3</p>
<p>Dec. 5</p>
<p>Stronger</p>
<p>Dec. 8Crank 2: High VoltageThe Grand Tour: Season 2</p>
<p>Dec. 9</p>
<p>It Comes at Night</p>
<p>Dec. 10NightcrawlerRosewater</p>
<p>Dec. 12</p>
<p>Foreman</p>
<p>Dec. 14</p>
<p>Thursday Night Football: Broncos vs. Colts</p>
<p>Dec. 15</p>
<p>Jean-Claude Van Johnson: Season 1</p>
<p>Dec. 18</p>
<p>Doctor Who Christmas Special</p>
<p>Dec. 21</p>
<p>Humans: Season 2Woodshock</p>
<p>Dec. 22</p>
<p>Monster Trucks</p>
<p>Dec. 23Anne of Green Gables: Season 2Banksy Does New YorkSomeone Marry BarryTeen Wolf: Season 6</p>
<p>Dec. 25</p>
<p>Thursday Night Football: Steelers vs. Texans</p>
<p>Dec.&#160; 29</p>
<p>Rings</p>
<p>Dec. 31</p>
<p>Brawl in Cell Block 99Solace</p>
<p><a href="http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/hulu-exec-noah-heller-departure-1202621074/" type="external">HULU</a></p>
<p>Dec. 13 NinjasThe Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. ToadAliens of the DeepApocalypse NowApocalypse Now ReduxAt Close RangeBasic Instinct 2: Risk AddictionThe Black CauldronBloodsportBreakheart PassThe Brothers GrimmBuffalo 66ChicagoChild’s PlayChilly ChristmasCoopers Camera (AKA Coopers’ Christmas)The Count of Monte CristoCrazy/BeautifulDirty Rotten ScoundrelsDownhill RacerDriftwoodExtortionThe Falcon and the SnowmanThe Final CutGeorge of the JungleHammettHannibalHeaven’s GateThe History of Comedy: Complete Season 1HitchI’ll Be Home for ChristmasThe Improv: 50 Years Behind the Brick WallIn &amp; OutIn Enemy HandsIn the Line of FireInside Number 9: Complete Season 2JackKill Bill:&#160;Volume 1Kill Bill: Volume 2L7 Pretend We’re DeadThe Last WarriorThe MissingMississippi BurningMoonstruckMr. WrongOne Magic ChristmasP2PenelopePrimal FearPuppetmaster: Axis TerminationRobocopRobocop 2Robocop 3RockyRocky IIRocky IIIRocky IVRocky VS.F.W.Sarafina!Searching for Bobby FischerSearching for Sugar ManSilenceThe Silence of the LambsSpace JamStealing HarvardStigmataThe Three MusketeersThe Thomas Crown Affair&#160;(1968)Three Men and a BabyTitanicTotal RecallTree Fu Tom: Complete Seasons 3 &amp; 4Trust Me: Complete Season 1ValkyrieThe Water HorseThe Wine Show: Complete Season 2Winnie the Pooh, A Valentine for You</p>
<p>Dec. 2</p>
<p>Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Season 5 Premiere</p>
<p>Dec. 3</p>
<p>Cop LandSweet Home AlabamaThe Rules of Attraction</p>
<p>Dec. 4FronteraSuperbad</p>
<p>Dec. 5The Great Christmas Light Fight: Season 5 PremiereIron Protector</p>
<p>Dec. 6Shut Eye: Season 2 PremiereKillers</p>
<p>Dec. 8</p>
<p>Crank: High VoltageDefining Moments: Season 1 PremiereThe Great American Baking Show: Season 3 PremiereLegion: Complete Season 1Legion of Brothers</p>
<p>Dec. 9</p>
<p>Dave Made a Maze</p>
<p>Dec. 11</p>
<p>Steven Universe: Complete Season 4</p>
<p>Dec. 13</p>
<p>Vengeance of an Assassin</p>
<p>Dec. 14</p>
<p>Bunheads: Complete Season 1</p>
<p>Dec. 1540 Days and 40 NightsThe CrowEverestKate and LeopoldThe Limehouse GolemScoreTears of the Sun</p>
<p>Dec. 16</p>
<p>The Next Step: Complete Season 5B</p>
<p>Dec. 18</p>
<p>Graves: Complete Season 1Made In Chelsea: Complete Seasons 1-13Mighty Magiswords: Complete Season S1ARagnarok</p>
<p>Dec. 19</p>
<p>Decorating Disney: Special</p>
<p>Dec. 20</p>
<p>Kim Dotcom: Caught in the Web</p>
<p>Dec. 22</p>
<p>Goat</p>
<p>Monster Trucks</p>
<p>Dec. 23Clarence: Complete Season 3Banksy Does New York</p>
<p>Dec. 25</p>
<p>The Hollow OneUnited Shades of America: Complete Season 2</p>
<p>Dec. 29</p>
<p>GilbertRings</p>
<p>Dec. 30</p>
<p>The Art of the Game: Ukiyo E Heros</p>
<p>Dec. 31</p>
<p>Always WatchingAnarchy ParlorOsiris Child: SFv1PilgrimageSolace</p> | false | 1 | december right around corner comes holiday greetings inexplicable fruitcake inevitable visits family members order help get mood keep holiday guests entertained streaming services help you160 whether youve naughty nice netflix helping kickstart christmas cheer disneys santa clause films cant fight christmas and160 holiday special trolls christmas thing theres still plenty new nonholiday content watch like eminems 8 mile season 2 crown planet earth ii albeit without snoop doggs narration new fantasy cop movie bright aside delivering gifts holiday season amazon also delivering quality films december kill bill rocky series available stream along classic films like apocalypse silence lambs titanic hulu also help provide hearty holiday cheer home films like ill home christmas one magic christmas chilly christmas fun films check include space jam robocop series george jungle superbad netflix dec 1 8 mileace ventura pet detectiveace ventura nature callsall hail king julien season 5a storybots christmasaugust rushchef amp fridge 2017dark season 1diana wordsdreamcatcherdreamworks home holidayseasy season 2exporting raymondforbidden games justin fashanu storyfull metal jackethitchmy happy familynacho libresaharathe farthest voyager spacethe little rascalsthe wacknessthe young victoriatysonv vendettaturn washingtons spies season 4voyeurwhile sleeping dec 4when calls heart season 4 dec 5craig ferguson tickle fightmarvels guardians galaxy vol 2 dec 6trolls holiday special dec 8el camino christmasthe crown season 2 dec 11catwomanthe magicians season 2 dec 12disneys santa clausedisneys santa clause 2disneys santa clause 3 escape clausejudd apatow return dec 1441 dogs homeaampe patients attackainsley eats streets season 1halt catch fire season 4 dec 15a five star lifechristmas inheritancediscovering bigfootel señor de los cielos season 5erased season 1freeway crack systemneverlakepottersvillereggie yates outside man volume 2the haunting helenathe mafia kills summerthe ranch part 4trollhunters part 2ultimate beastmasterwormwood dec 18 hello twenties season 2 dec 19miss christmasrussell howard recalibratethe indian detective season 1you cant fight christmas dec 20la casa de papel season 1 dec 21peaky blinders season 4 dec 2272 dangerous animals latin america season 1brightdope season 1fuller house season 3 new episodesrosario tijeras season 1the toys made us season 1 dec 23creep 2myths amp monsters season 1 dec 25cable girls season 2planet earth ii dec 26todd barry spicy honeytravelers season 2all hail king julien new years eve countdown 2018beat bugs new years eve countdown 2018larva new years eve countdown 2018pororo new years eve countdown 2018puffin rock new years eve countdown 2018skylanders academy new years eve countdown 2018trollhunters new years eve countdown 2018true rainbow kingdom new years eve countdown 2018word party new years eve countdown 2018 dec 27 pusher dec 29bill nye saves world season 2 part 1killer legendsla mante season 1shelterthe climb dec 31dave chappelle equanimityfun mom dinner amazon dec 1apocalypse nowat close rangebasic instinct 2bloodsportbrothers grimmchilds playdr strangegremlins 2 new batchhammetthannibalhitchhulk vsin amp outin enemy handsmoonstrucknext avengers heroes tomorrowplanet hulkrockyrocky iirocky iiirocky ivrocky vsearching bobby fischersilencestigmatathe final cutthe heartbreak kidthe invincible iron manthe silence lambsthe weight waterthor animated movie tales asgardtitanicultimate avengers iiultimate avengers movie dec 3 class season 1 dec 4 royals season 3 dec 5 stronger dec 8crank 2 high voltagethe grand tour season 2 dec 9 comes night dec 10nightcrawlerrosewater dec 12 foreman dec 14 thursday night football broncos vs colts dec 15 jeanclaude van johnson season 1 dec 18 doctor christmas special dec 21 humans season 2woodshock dec 22 monster trucks dec 23anne green gables season 2banksy new yorksomeone marry barryteen wolf season 6 dec 25 thursday night football steelers vs texans dec160 29 rings dec 31 brawl cell block 99solace hulu dec 13 ninjasthe adventures ichabod mr toadaliens deepapocalypse nowapocalypse reduxat close rangebasic instinct 2 risk addictionthe black cauldronbloodsportbreakheart passthe brothers grimmbuffalo 66chicagochilds playchilly christmascoopers camera aka coopers christmasthe count monte cristocrazybeautifuldirty rotten scoundrelsdownhill racerdriftwoodextortionthe falcon snowmanthe final cutgeorge junglehammetthannibalheavens gatethe history comedy complete season 1hitchill home christmasthe improv 50 years behind brick wallin amp outin enemy handsin line fireinside number 9 complete season 2jackkill bill160volume 1kill bill volume 2l7 pretend deadthe last warriorthe missingmississippi burningmoonstruckmr wrongone magic christmasp2penelopeprimal fearpuppetmaster axis terminationrobocoprobocop 2robocop 3rockyrocky iirocky iiirocky ivrocky vsfwsarafinasearching bobby fischersearching sugar mansilencethe silence lambsspace jamstealing harvardstigmatathe three musketeersthe thomas crown affair1601968three men babytitanictotal recalltree fu tom complete seasons 3 amp 4trust complete season 1valkyriethe water horsethe wine show complete season 2winnie pooh valentine dec 2 marvels agents shield season 5 premiere dec 3 cop landsweet home alabamathe rules attraction dec 4fronterasuperbad dec 5the great christmas light fight season 5 premiereiron protector dec 6shut eye season 2 premierekillers dec 8 crank high voltagedefining moments season 1 premierethe great american baking show season 3 premierelegion complete season 1legion brothers dec 9 dave made maze dec 11 steven universe complete season 4 dec 13 vengeance assassin dec 14 bunheads complete season 1 dec 1540 days 40 nightsthe croweverestkate leopoldthe limehouse golemscoretears sun dec 16 next step complete season 5b dec 18 graves complete season 1made chelsea complete seasons 113mighty magiswords complete season s1aragnarok dec 19 decorating disney special dec 20 kim dotcom caught web dec 22 goat monster trucks dec 23clarence complete season 3banksy new york dec 25 hollow oneunited shades america complete season 2 dec 29 gilbertrings dec 30 art game ukiyo e heros dec 31 always watchinganarchy parlorosiris child sfv1pilgrimagesolace | 841 |
<p>Suppressing RT and comments the US government doesn’t like is a direct violation of the First Amendment and freedom of speech, says NSA whistleblower William Binney. Other RT commentators say what they think of the US government move.</p>
<p>RT America has been forced to register as a ‘foreign agent’ in the US. The pressure from Washington began after US intelligence claimed the channel was an instrument for meddling and manipulation in America.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/news/409758-rt-registration-foreign-agent-us/" type="external">RT files for registration as ‘foreign agent’ in US facing ultimatum from Washington</a></p>
<p>In September, the Justice Department demanded RT register as a foreign agent. Social media companies then began blocking its adverts on such networks as Google, YouTube, and Twitter. They did that ahead of testimony in Congress, despite having no problem with RT before that.</p>
<p>But why is RT facing such unprecedented pressure from the US government and what are the possible consequences of this latest move?</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/news/409780-rt-foreign-agent-reactions/" type="external" /></p>
<p>“It is a slap at the First Amendment. We, here in America, are always proud of having free speech, meaning that we weren’t going to suppress any kind of comments by anybody, even if we didn’t like them. That was our fundamental principle… Now that is pretty much a slap in the face. If we’re going to have TV stations like RT, who are funded by the Russians [register as foreign agents], why aren’t we going to force the BBC or other TV stations that are funded by countries to register also? We have no consistency in this – except we are selectively suppressing any kind of speech. That to me is a direct violation of our First Amendment to the Constitution.”</p>
<p>“One thing I’d just point out that is distinctive about RT – I have to admit this, and this is this: RT has never asked me for a pre-interview interview. CBS, ABC, NBC, Al Jazeera – they all say: “Can we figure out what you’re going to say, Mr. McGovern? Would you tell us what you’re going to say?” Sometimes BBC said: “Oh, we don’t need to hear that. We have somebody else.” RT has never asked: “What’s your gloss on this? What would you say about this?” All they do is say; “Here is the link, Mr. McGovern. We know you might know something about it. Please come on.” That is distinctive. And that is why I rejoice being asked to at least to talk to the people, who are smart enough to watch RT.”</p>
<p>GG: It’s dark and dangerous path, and we don’t know how far that path will now go. It is the branding of journalists as agents. That is very dangerous for the safety of journalists in many hot spots and difficult parts of the world…</p>
<p>Al Jazeera America was broadcasting freely and openly for many years in the US, even though the political line of Al Jazeera in places like Syria, for example, was deeply controversial, to say the very least. If we’re going to brand one group of journalists and broadcasters as foreign agents then inevitably all journalists will be branded by somebody as foreign agents…</p>
<p>The British Prime Minister just hours ago <a href="https://www.rt.com/uk/409784-russia-threat-uk-security/" type="external">made similar noises</a> unexpectedly. No one was expecting the statement that she just made. But if you follow the logic of the path that many British parliamentarians are now on – Theresa May is the prime minister because of Russia after all, if Putin fixed Brexit and Brexit ditched Cameron, then Theresa May is the prime minister because of the Russians. I’ll tell you what: if that turns out to be true – I’ll for one never forgive you!</p>
<p>RT:Is there a concerted effort to push RT out of the US? It’s been removed from YouTube’s premium package in the US, blocked from advertising on Twitter, etc. Now, this…</p>
<p>GG: Despite the fact that both – Google at the Congress and the others admitted that RT and Russia have broken none of the rules on the platform, but this package has not been yet reinstated on YouTube. Yes, of course except that in the 21st century – 17 years, almost 18 years – you can’t block coverage; you can’t block people consuming coverage in the modern world, but you can make it more difficult, and that seems to be where the US and maybe even the UK is headed.</p>
<p>But again you see with the 21st-century psychology – the book they try to ban always goes to the top of the best sellers list. The more difficult they try to make it, the more popular RT is becoming. People wear it as a kind of badge. Maybe I should get a badge – I am a foreign agent. It might become trendy; it might well backfire on the witch hunters – the people who are doing their best to destroy the very freedom of speech and expression they claim to stand for.</p>
<p>Ken Livingstone: The problem is that RT broadcast news that is true that American governments don’t want people to hear. Every evening I flip backward and forwards between BBC and RT, and Sky – every television channel has some sort of reflection of its national interest – it is inevitable.</p>
<p>But if I think back to what I saw on American television in the 1960s and 70s about the Vietnam War – it was an appalling level of bias and all of that. What I found very helpful about RT – it is telling us much more about what is happening in a horrific war in Yemen that you ever see on Western televisions. Western governments are trying to suppress the news of what Saudi Arabia is doing.</p>
<p>RT:&#160;To what extent will this latest step further damage bilateral relations between Russia and the US?</p>
<p>KL: We had this sort of attempt to demonize Putin’s regime. We’re told endless lies about what happened in Ukraine, in Crimea, and so on. I almost never find anywhere in the Western media the truth about what happened in Ukraine and in Crimea, and what the origins in the past of all that are. Basically to understand today’s politics you really have to understand some history as well. Broadly, what you get on American television is almost like adverts, rather than a serious historical analysis.</p>
<p>RT:What does this move say about the state of press freedom in the US?</p>
<p>KL: The idea that there is a free press is nonsense. Here in Britain and certainly in America so many of the newspapers are owned by billionaires who don’t pay their tax locally, launder their money offshore – they are not really representing the American people, they are just making a lot of money themselves…I just think myself, when I was questioning the British government’s policy under Mrs. Thatcher about what they were doing in Northern Ireland – the BBC was told that I should be on their television. For about 18 months I wasn’t interviewed at all…</p> | false | 1 | suppressing rt comments us government doesnt like direct violation first amendment freedom speech says nsa whistleblower william binney rt commentators say think us government move rt america forced register foreign agent us pressure washington began us intelligence claimed channel instrument meddling manipulation america rt files registration foreign agent us facing ultimatum washington september justice department demanded rt register foreign agent social media companies began blocking adverts networks google youtube twitter ahead testimony congress despite problem rt rt facing unprecedented pressure us government possible consequences latest move read slap first amendment america always proud free speech meaning werent going suppress kind comments anybody even didnt like fundamental principle pretty much slap face going tv stations like rt funded russians register foreign agents arent going force bbc tv stations funded countries register also consistency except selectively suppressing kind speech direct violation first amendment constitution one thing id point distinctive rt admit rt never asked preinterview interview cbs abc nbc al jazeera say figure youre going say mr mcgovern would tell us youre going say sometimes bbc said oh dont need hear somebody else rt never asked whats gloss would say say link mr mcgovern know might know something please come distinctive rejoice asked least talk people smart enough watch rt gg dark dangerous path dont know far path go branding journalists agents dangerous safety journalists many hot spots difficult parts world al jazeera america broadcasting freely openly many years us even though political line al jazeera places like syria example deeply controversial say least going brand one group journalists broadcasters foreign agents inevitably journalists branded somebody foreign agents british prime minister hours ago made similar noises unexpectedly one expecting statement made follow logic path many british parliamentarians theresa may prime minister russia putin fixed brexit brexit ditched cameron theresa may prime minister russians ill tell turns true ill one never forgive rtis concerted effort push rt us removed youtubes premium package us blocked advertising twitter etc gg despite fact google congress others admitted rt russia broken none rules platform package yet reinstated youtube yes course except 21st century 17 years almost 18 years cant block coverage cant block people consuming coverage modern world make difficult seems us maybe even uk headed see 21stcentury psychology book try ban always goes top best sellers list difficult try make popular rt becoming people wear kind badge maybe get badge foreign agent might become trendy might well backfire witch hunters people best destroy freedom speech expression claim stand ken livingstone problem rt broadcast news true american governments dont want people hear every evening flip backward forwards bbc rt sky every television channel sort reflection national interest inevitable think back saw american television 1960s 70s vietnam war appalling level bias found helpful rt telling us much happening horrific war yemen ever see western televisions western governments trying suppress news saudi arabia rt160to extent latest step damage bilateral relations russia us kl sort attempt demonize putins regime told endless lies happened ukraine crimea almost never find anywhere western media truth happened ukraine crimea origins past basically understand todays politics really understand history well broadly get american television almost like adverts rather serious historical analysis rtwhat move say state press freedom us kl idea free press nonsense britain certainly america many newspapers owned billionaires dont pay tax locally launder money offshore really representing american people making lot money themselvesi think questioning british governments policy mrs thatcher northern ireland bbc told television 18 months wasnt interviewed | 576 |
<p>WASHINGTON — Just hours after text of the legislation was revealed, the Senate early Friday killed a barebones repeal of the Affordable Care Act that would eliminate personal and employer mandates under Obamacare.</p>
<p>Vice President Mike Pence was brought to the Capitol to cast a tie-breaking vote, if needed.</p>
<p>But the bill was defeated when senators John McCain of Arizona, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted against the legislation.</p>
<p>Early Friday, President Donald Trump tweeted, “3 Republicans and 48 Democrats let the American people down. As I said from the beginning, let ObamaCare implode, then deal. Watch!”</p>
<p />
<p>Said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.: “This is a disappointing moment. A disappointment indeed.”</p>
<p>The Senate “skinny” bill repeal was modified after a broader repeal and a Senate health care replacement plan failed to get the votes for passage.</p>
<p>U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) released the following statement after the latest Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act failed to advance in the Senate:</p>
<p>“In the dead of night, Senate Republicans tried and failed to rip away the health care of hundreds of thousands of Nevadans and millions of Americans. Their failed attempt is the result of overwhelming public opposition – your calls, letters, protests and tweets put Republicans on notice.</p>
<p>“The Affordable Care Act has provided lifesaving, affordable health care coverage to millions. While tonight is a victory, we must all remain vigilant, continue to shine a light on Republican efforts to repeal this bill, and together speak out and fully defeat this effort.”</p>
<p>Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said the process eroded Senate traditions and that two hours after the bill was introduced left little time for lawmakers to fully understand what is in the legislation.</p>
<p>“Let’s start over,” Schumer said. “It’s not too late to turn back.”</p>
<p>Three Republicans joined with all Democrats to reject the amendment, which would have also delayed a tax on medical devices and denied funding to Planned Parenthood for a year.</p>
<p>The final vote was 49-51.</p>
<p>The amendment was a last resort for Senate Republicans to pass something — anything — to trigger negotiations with the House.</p>
<p>Buoyed by a signal from House Speaker Paul Ryan, McConnell had introduced a pared-down health care bill late Thursday that he hoped would keep alive Republican ambitions to repeal “Obamacare.”</p>
<p>“It’s time to turn the page,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer of New York. “We are not celebrating. We are relieved.”</p>
<p>McConnell, R-Ky., had called his measure the Health Care Freedom Act. It was not intended to become law, but to open a path for a House-Senate conference committee to try to work out comprehensive legislation Congress could pass and send to Trump.</p>
<p>The measure would have repealed the unpopular Affordable Care Act requiring most people to have health insurance or risk a fine from the IRS. A similar requirement on larger employers would be suspended for eight years.</p>
<p>Additionally it would have denied funding to Planned Parenthood for a year, and suspended for three years a tax on medical device manufacturers. States could seek waivers from consumer protections in the Obama-era law, and individuals could increase the amount they contribute to tax-sheltered health savings accounts for medical expenses.</p>
<p>Ryan, R-Wis., seemingly opened a path for McConnell earlier Thursday evening by signaling a willingness to negotiate a more comprehensive bill with the Senate. Some Republican senators had been concerned that the House would simply pass the “skinny bill” and send it to Trump. That would have sent a shock wave through health insurance markets, spiking premiums.</p>
<p>Ryan sent senators a statement saying that if “moving forward” requires talks with the Senate, the House would be “willing” to do so. But shortly afterward, his words received varied responses from three GOP senators who’d insisted on a clear commitment from Ryan. It was not immediately clear whether the maneuver would succeed.</p>
<p>“Not sufficient,” said McCain, who returned to the Capitol Tuesday to provide a pivotal vote that allowed the Senate to begin debating the health care bill, a paramount priority for Trump and the GOP. The 80-year-old McCain had been home in Arizona trying to decide on treatment options for brain cancer.</p>
<p>Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., initially said “not yet” when asked if he was ready to vote for the scaled-back Senate bill. But later, he told reporters that Ryan had assured him and others in a phone conversation that the House would hold talks with the Senate.</p>
<p>“I feel comfortable personally. I know Paul; he’s a man of his word,” said Graham.</p>
<p>“Let’s see how everything turns out here, guys,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told reporters.</p>
<p>The convoluted developments played out as a divided Senate debated legislation to repeal and replace the Obama-era law. With Democrats unanimously opposed, the slender 52-48 GOP majority was divided among itself over what it could agree to.</p>
<p>After a comprehensive bill failed on the Senate floor, and a straight-up repeal failed too, McConnell and his top lieutenants turned toward a lowest-common-denominator solution known as “skinny repeal.”</p>
<p>It would have been the ticket to negotiations with the House, which passed its own legislation in May.</p>
<p>But that strategy caused consternation among GOP senators after rumors began to surface that the House might just pass the “skinny bill,” call it a day and move on to other issues like tax reform after frittering away the first six months of Trump’s presidency on unsuccessful efforts over health care.</p>
<p>Ryan responded not long after with a discursive and far from definitive statement that blamed the Senate for being unable to pass anything, but said, “if moving forward requires a conference committee, that is something the House is willing to do.”</p>
<p>“The reality, however, is that repealing and replacing Obamacare still ultimately requires the Senate to produce 51 votes for an actual plan,” he said.</p>
<p>But leaders encountered problems. The Senate parliamentarian advised that the waiver language violated chamber rules, meaning Democrats could block it.</p>
<p>The insurance company lobby group, America’s Health Insurance Plans, wrote to Senate leaders Thursday saying that ending Obama’s requirement that people buy insurance without strengthening insurance markets would produce “higher premiums, fewer choices for consumers and fewer people covered next year.”</p>
<p>And a bipartisan group of governors including John Kasich of Ohio and Brian Sandoval of Nevada also announced against it.</p>
<p>On their own, the changes in the skinny bill could roil insurance markets. Yet the scenario at hand, with senators trying to pass something while hoping it does not clear the House or become law, was highly unusual.</p>
<p>“We’re in the twilight zone of legislating,” said Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri.</p>
<p>Contact Gary Martin at 202-662-7390 or [email protected]. Follow <a href="http://www.twitter.com/garymartindc" type="external">@garymartindc</a> on Twitter.</p>
<p>The Associated Press contributed to this report.</p> | false | 1 | washington hours text legislation revealed senate early friday killed barebones repeal affordable care act would eliminate personal employer mandates obamacare vice president mike pence brought capitol cast tiebreaking vote needed bill defeated senators john mccain arizona susan collins maine lisa murkowski alaska voted legislation early friday president donald trump tweeted 3 republicans 48 democrats let american people said beginning let obamacare implode deal watch said senate majority leader mitch mcconnell rky disappointing moment disappointment indeed senate skinny bill repeal modified broader repeal senate health care replacement plan failed get votes passage us sen catherine cortez masto dnev released following statement latest republican effort repeal affordable care act failed advance senate dead night senate republicans tried failed rip away health care hundreds thousands nevadans millions americans failed attempt result overwhelming public opposition calls letters protests tweets put republicans notice affordable care act provided lifesaving affordable health care coverage millions tonight victory must remain vigilant continue shine light republican efforts repeal bill together speak fully defeat effort senate majority leader charles schumer dny said process eroded senate traditions two hours bill introduced left little time lawmakers fully understand legislation lets start schumer said late turn back three republicans joined democrats reject amendment would also delayed tax medical devices denied funding planned parenthood year final vote 4951 amendment last resort senate republicans pass something anything trigger negotiations house buoyed signal house speaker paul ryan mcconnell introduced pareddown health care bill late thursday hoped would keep alive republican ambitions repeal obamacare time turn page said senate minority leader charles schumer new york celebrating relieved mcconnell rky called measure health care freedom act intended become law open path housesenate conference committee try work comprehensive legislation congress could pass send trump measure would repealed unpopular affordable care act requiring people health insurance risk fine irs similar requirement larger employers would suspended eight years additionally would denied funding planned parenthood year suspended three years tax medical device manufacturers states could seek waivers consumer protections obamaera law individuals could increase amount contribute taxsheltered health savings accounts medical expenses ryan rwis seemingly opened path mcconnell earlier thursday evening signaling willingness negotiate comprehensive bill senate republican senators concerned house would simply pass skinny bill send trump would sent shock wave health insurance markets spiking premiums ryan sent senators statement saying moving forward requires talks senate house would willing shortly afterward words received varied responses three gop senators whod insisted clear commitment ryan immediately clear whether maneuver would succeed sufficient said mccain returned capitol tuesday provide pivotal vote allowed senate begin debating health care bill paramount priority trump gop 80yearold mccain home arizona trying decide treatment options brain cancer sen lindsey graham rsc initially said yet asked ready vote scaledback senate bill later told reporters ryan assured others phone conversation house would hold talks senate feel comfortable personally know paul hes man word said graham lets see everything turns guys sen ron johnson rwis told reporters convoluted developments played divided senate debated legislation repeal replace obamaera law democrats unanimously opposed slender 5248 gop majority divided among could agree comprehensive bill failed senate floor straightup repeal failed mcconnell top lieutenants turned toward lowestcommondenominator solution known skinny repeal would ticket negotiations house passed legislation may strategy caused consternation among gop senators rumors began surface house might pass skinny bill call day move issues like tax reform frittering away first six months trumps presidency unsuccessful efforts health care ryan responded long discursive far definitive statement blamed senate unable pass anything said moving forward requires conference committee something house willing reality however repealing replacing obamacare still ultimately requires senate produce 51 votes actual plan said leaders encountered problems senate parliamentarian advised waiver language violated chamber rules meaning democrats could block insurance company lobby group americas health insurance plans wrote senate leaders thursday saying ending obamas requirement people buy insurance without strengthening insurance markets would produce higher premiums fewer choices consumers fewer people covered next year bipartisan group governors including john kasich ohio brian sandoval nevada also announced changes skinny bill could roil insurance markets yet scenario hand senators trying pass something hoping clear house become law highly unusual twilight zone legislating said democratic sen claire mccaskill missouri contact gary martin 2026627390 gmartinreviewjournalcom follow garymartindc twitter associated press contributed report | 704 |
<p>Last Thursday, the United States, its Western partners, and Iran announced a framework deal on the latter’s nuclear program. The conventional wisdom quickly ended up being that Iran blinked.</p>
<p>Indeed, on paper, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/highlights-of-the-iran-deal/2015/04/02/c4f0e646-d98a-11e4-b3f2-607bd612aeac_graphic.html" type="external">the deal looks pretty good</a>. Iran agreed to virtually all of the United States’ demands, in exchange for seemingly cosmetic concessions (the agreement runs for 10 years instead of indefinitely, as the U.S. requested — with further negotiations guaranteed no matter what). Crucially, the sanctions on Iran are to be suspended, not lifted, meaning they could be snapped back if Iran is caught cheating. Plus, the inspections regime (at least in the framework) looks as tough as could be hoped for.</p>
<p>And yet, there are still good reasons to be skeptical. Here are five:</p>
<p>1. The talks might still break down.</p>
<p>It’s a framework agreement. It’s a piece of paper, with not much written on it. None of the details are worked out. And, apparently, some of the things which did get worked out did not get worked out — right after the deal was announced, Iran’s foreign minister and chief negotiator Javad Zarif&#160; <a href="https://twitter.com/JZarif/status/583723860522115072" type="external">denounced</a> some of the items on the U.S./EU “fact sheet” on the deal. This is not an auspicious start.</p>
<p>More broadly, as The Washington Post‘s Dan Drezner <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/03/how-can-the-iran-deal-fall-apart-let-me-count-the-ways/" type="external">points out</a>, there are countless issues that could sink the deal yet. Basically, domestic politics (whether in Iran or the U.S.), or broader Middle East politics, where everything is unpredictable and volatile, could seriously imperil the agreement.</p>
<p>Don’t break out the champagne.</p>
<p>2. Iran’s leadership lies.</p>
<p>It might be impolitic to state things so bluntly, but Iran’s leadership lies. Every government lies, of course, but Iran’s leadership’s record in the area bears the stamp of a totalitarian regime’s brazen and constant distortion of reality. There is a difference between occasionally lying to protect one’s interests, and lying as a matter of routine.</p>
<p>Iran lies about its ties to Hezbollah. It lies about its ties to Iraq. It lies about its genocidal aims towards Israel. Iran’s leadership lies constantly.</p>
<p>It also lies, more specifically, about its nuclear program. The deal is premised on the idea that the true extent of Iran’s nuclear program is known. But, of course, we don’t know that. For example, the deal specifies that the nuclear facility at Fordow be repurposed for civilian use. But the nuclear facility at Fordow was built secretly by Iran’s government and we only know about it because the West eventually found out about it. Similarly, the deal envisions Iran reducing its stockpiles of uranium — that is to say, reducing the stockpiles we know about.</p>
<p>The touted “win” of the deal, which would put Iran’s nuclear capabilities at a “one-year breakout” (meaning it would take them a full year to build a bomb given the materials and facilities they would be left with), is premised on the idea that we know the true extent of their nuclear program, and we don’t.</p>
<p>3. There probably won’t be a second chance.</p>
<p>Another aspect of the deal is the idea that sanctions will not be lifted, only suspended, so that they can be implemented again immediately if Iran cheats or stalls on its end of the deal. In theory, this is attractive. But then, there is the political reality.</p>
<p>Iran has major oil reserves and is a large country in the Middle East. It’s one thing for there to be the legal tools to reapply sanctions. It’s quite another for there to be the political capital to do so. Iran is too smart to be caught red-handed in some blatant violation. If there is talk of putting sanctions back on, the situation will be murky. Political will for sanctions in the EU has always been low, and business interests, once they have begun reinvesting in Iran, will push hard against reestablishing sanctions. Russia was never truly on board with the sanctions regime, and wants to sell lots of arms and oil equipment to Iran. China is no fan of proliferation, but it also wants partners in the Middle East that can quench its ravenous thirst for oil (and if they make trouble for the United States, that’s icing on the cake).</p>
<p>The deal’s advocates say that if the agreement doesn’t work, we can just go back to square one, put the pressure back on the Iranians, and start waiting them out again. The reality probably won’t work out like that.</p>
<p>4. We don’t know enough about Iran’s internal politics.</p>
<p>What can sink this deal isn’t just regional and international politics, but also the domestic politics of the biggest stakeholders. The conventional wisdom is that the danger is American domestic politics — those dastardly Republicans in Congress. But Iran’s domestic politics are also famously byzantine and complicated.</p>
<p>Iran’s Supreme Leader wields, well, supreme power, but he also has many constituencies to please (and we don’t know what goes on in his head anyway). Iran’s Revolutionary Guard — one of the most important parts of the regime, since they not only provide security but have also grown into a giant corporation of sorts, investing in manifold business interests — is split between factions that simply want to accumulate money and power and factions that really believe that “Death to America! Death to Israel!” stuff. Similarly, while a good number of Iran’s mullahs are really savvy, hard-nosed political players, a good number are also bona fide fanatics.</p>
<p>It might be hard for us in the West to imagine the near-hypnotic appeal that the prospect of owning nuclear weapons has on a proud nation with an acute inferiority complex and a deep urge to be recognized as a real power. When Pakistan’s leader said that Pakistan would get the nuke, even if it meant his people had to eat grass, he was reflecting popular opinion, not ignoring it. (As a Gaullist Frenchman, I can relate.)</p>
<p>5. We simply can’t know whether the Iranians are rational.</p>
<p>This one goes deep. The fear of Iranian nukes is not simply that Iran will precipitate an arms race in the Middle East if it gets nukes (although it would, and that would be a catastrophe). The fear is also that Iran really wants to kill as many Jews as possible and would nuke Israel if it gets the bomb. To do so would be insane — it would be national suicide. But, well, insane people exist.</p>
<p>In the modern, secular West, it is extremely hard for us to believe that people, including political leaders, might truly and deeply hold to an insane apocalyptic worldview. Instead we marinate every day in the Enlightenment myth of pure reason, and the economic myth of rational action, and the reductionist myth that we are, at bottom, simply animals with no profounder wishes than to survive and reproduce. But these are just the myths we tell ourselves, even if they profoundly shape how we understand others’ motivations. Other cultures have other myths, which have just as deep a hold on foreign worldviews.</p>
<p>It <a href="http://theweek.com/articles/448902/defense-nazi-analogies" type="external">sometimes has to be said</a>: Hitler was thought rational; he was not. It was thought he was not suicidal; he was. It was thought his and his regime’s anti-semitism was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/times-insider/2015/02/10/1922-hitler-in-bavaria/?_r=0" type="external">simply a political sop</a>, that they couldn’t truly believe it; they did. It was thought no one could do what they clearly said and showed they were doing; they did. It is hard for us in the modern West to wrap our minds around <a href="http://theamericanscene.com/2013/04/29/why-good-societies-stigmatize-anti-semitic-language%22" type="external">the truly demonic power of anti-Semitism</a>, but it is real, as the preponderance of history shows.</p>
<p>Ayatollah Khomenei’s brand of Shia Islam, into which Iran has been indoctrinated for decades, includes as one of its strongest aspects a fascination and love for death and martyrdom. During the Iran-Iraq War, ordinary Iranians showed up at military recruiting stations carrying their funeral shrouds. Facing superior arms, the Iranians held the Iraqis back with suicide waves of infantry. Many went smiling, and their memory is now treasured in the collective mind. Iran’s chief spy and mischief-maker Qassem Suleimani writes poetry about his love of death in his spare time.</p>
<p>Just because it is very hard for us to wrap our heads around this kind of a worldview does not mean it cannot exist. The belief that Iran’s leadership is rational is just that — a belief, and one based on ethnocentric presumptions and metaphysical a prioris that cannot be justified apart from their own system.</p>
<p>Whether Iran’s leadership are just apparatchiks, or whether they truly believe what they say they believe, no one can say. But this risk is severely underestimated in the West relative to the evidence. And that should scare us all.</p>
<p>Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.</p> | false | 1 | last thursday united states western partners iran announced framework deal latters nuclear program conventional wisdom quickly ended iran blinked indeed paper deal looks pretty good iran agreed virtually united states demands exchange seemingly cosmetic concessions agreement runs 10 years instead indefinitely us requested negotiations guaranteed matter crucially sanctions iran suspended lifted meaning could snapped back iran caught cheating plus inspections regime least framework looks tough could hoped yet still good reasons skeptical five 1 talks might still break framework agreement piece paper much written none details worked apparently things get worked get worked right deal announced irans foreign minister chief negotiator javad zarif160 denounced items useu fact sheet deal auspicious start broadly washington posts dan drezner points countless issues could sink deal yet basically domestic politics whether iran us broader middle east politics everything unpredictable volatile could seriously imperil agreement dont break champagne 2 irans leadership lies might impolitic state things bluntly irans leadership lies every government lies course irans leaderships record area bears stamp totalitarian regimes brazen constant distortion reality difference occasionally lying protect ones interests lying matter routine iran lies ties hezbollah lies ties iraq lies genocidal aims towards israel irans leadership lies constantly also lies specifically nuclear program deal premised idea true extent irans nuclear program known course dont know example deal specifies nuclear facility fordow repurposed civilian use nuclear facility fordow built secretly irans government know west eventually found similarly deal envisions iran reducing stockpiles uranium say reducing stockpiles know touted win deal would put irans nuclear capabilities oneyear breakout meaning would take full year build bomb given materials facilities would left premised idea know true extent nuclear program dont 3 probably wont second chance another aspect deal idea sanctions lifted suspended implemented immediately iran cheats stalls end deal theory attractive political reality iran major oil reserves large country middle east one thing legal tools reapply sanctions quite another political capital iran smart caught redhanded blatant violation talk putting sanctions back situation murky political sanctions eu always low business interests begun reinvesting iran push hard reestablishing sanctions russia never truly board sanctions regime wants sell lots arms oil equipment iran china fan proliferation also wants partners middle east quench ravenous thirst oil make trouble united states thats icing cake deals advocates say agreement doesnt work go back square one put pressure back iranians start waiting reality probably wont work like 4 dont know enough irans internal politics sink deal isnt regional international politics also domestic politics biggest stakeholders conventional wisdom danger american domestic politics dastardly republicans congress irans domestic politics also famously byzantine complicated irans supreme leader wields well supreme power also many constituencies please dont know goes head anyway irans revolutionary guard one important parts regime since provide security also grown giant corporation sorts investing manifold business interests split factions simply want accumulate money power factions really believe death america death israel stuff similarly good number irans mullahs really savvy hardnosed political players good number also bona fide fanatics might hard us west imagine nearhypnotic appeal prospect owning nuclear weapons proud nation acute inferiority complex deep urge recognized real power pakistans leader said pakistan would get nuke even meant people eat grass reflecting popular opinion ignoring gaullist frenchman relate 5 simply cant know whether iranians rational one goes deep fear iranian nukes simply iran precipitate arms race middle east gets nukes although would would catastrophe fear also iran really wants kill many jews possible would nuke israel gets bomb would insane would national suicide well insane people exist modern secular west extremely hard us believe people including political leaders might truly deeply hold insane apocalyptic worldview instead marinate every day enlightenment myth pure reason economic myth rational action reductionist myth bottom simply animals profounder wishes survive reproduce myths tell even profoundly shape understand others motivations cultures myths deep hold foreign worldviews sometimes said hitler thought rational thought suicidal thought regimes antisemitism simply political sop couldnt truly believe thought one could clearly said showed hard us modern west wrap minds around truly demonic power antisemitism real preponderance history shows ayatollah khomeneis brand shia islam iran indoctrinated decades includes one strongest aspects fascination love death martyrdom iraniraq war ordinary iranians showed military recruiting stations carrying funeral shrouds facing superior arms iranians held iraqis back suicide waves infantry many went smiling memory treasured collective mind irans chief spy mischiefmaker qassem suleimani writes poetry love death spare time hard us wrap heads around kind worldview mean exist belief irans leadership rational belief one based ethnocentric presumptions metaphysical prioris justified apart system whether irans leadership apparatchiks whether truly believe say believe one say risk severely underestimated west relative evidence scare us pascalemmanuel gobry fellow ethics public policy center | 778 |
<p>ATLANTA — The Virginia House of Delegates. The Arizona attorney general’s office. Atlanta City Hall.</p>
<p>Seats of power unaccustomed to intense political attention are the focus of liberal groups as they try to turn the Trump resistance movement into tangible victories.</p>
<p>Long-established organizations such as MoveOn.org to newer outfits like “Our Revolution,” the offshoot of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ unsuccessful presidential campaign, are backing scores of candidates for down-ballot races in 2017 as a precursor to next year’s elections, when Democrats will try to dent the GOP’s monopoly in Washington.</p>
<p>They’ve already picked up some victories.</p>
<p>Newly elected Mayor Chokwe Lumumba won in Jackson, Mississippi, promising to make the city “the most radical … on the planet.” New York lawmaker Christine Pellegrino, a Sanders delegate in 2016, prevailed in a special election in a state House district President Donald Trump won easily in November.</p>
<p>“There’s a groundswell of progressive leaders already running and winning,” said Joe Dinkin of the Working Families Party, which endorsed both Lumumba and Pellegrino. “They’re doing it by taking ideas pundits may have called outside the political mainstream and putting them at the center of the conversation.”</p>
<p>It’s a page from the conservative movement’s playbook, with activists and their chosen candidates operating mostly outside the official party structure to reshape Democrats’ identity from the ground up. They want to win seats held by Republicans — as Pellegrino did in New York — and elect more liberal candidates even in Democratic strongholds, like Lumumba in Jackson.</p>
<p>The idea, they say, is not just to build a stronger bench that produces future senators, governors and presidents, but redefine the party by delivering on issues from a minimum-wage increase and universal health care to overhauling police practices and the criminal justice system.</p>
<p>“We don’t have to wait for 2020,” said Annie Weinberg, the chief elections strategist for Democracy for America, the political action committee founded by former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean.</p>
<p>“We can fight and win on these policies now,” Weinberg added, describing an “inclusive populism” she says speaks to working-class angst, like Trump did, while maintaining Democrats’ current positions on social policy.</p>
<p>Weinberg says her group has heard from “more than 7,000 people” expressing interest in running for office. The organization has endorsed dozens of candidates in 2017, including a slate of Democrats aiming to flip control of the Virginia House of Delegates this fall.</p>
<p>Working Families, meanwhile, is sending out more than 1,000 candidate questionnaires to 2017 municipal candidates.</p>
<p>At MoveOn, executive director Ilya Sheyman says he expects his group to back “dozens and dozens of down-ballot candidates” in the coming election after barely playing in local races for the first 19 years of its existence. “It’s not enough just to fight in federal races given how much the down-ballot races will affect what happens to the Democratic Party five, 10, even 15 years from now,” Sheyman said.</p>
<p>In Atlanta, mayoral candidate Vincent Fort, long a liberal voice in the Georgia General Assembly, has the backing of Our Revolution and Working Families.</p>
<p>Fort said the ideas he and other candidates on the left are offering have been around long before Trump’s election.</p>
<p>“City Hall for too long has been under the control and too responsive to the 1 percent,” Fort said, offering a localized version of Sanders’ presidential stump speech, only subbing local developers and the city’s professional sports teams — all recipients of various tax credits and outright subsidies — for the Vermont senator’s digs at “millionaires and billionaires” at “the big banks.”</p>
<p>But Fort said he’s perfectly willing to feed off the anti-Trump energy.</p>
<p>“We are a critical juncture in this atmosphere,” he said. “In a Trump world, we need strong elected progressive officials … and people understand that if there’s going to be change, it’s going to have to happen at the local level.”</p>
<p>Democracy for America is focusing on a Washington state Senate special election that could give Democrats “trifecta” control of the state — the governor’s office and both legislative chambers — and the group has endorsed 16 candidates in the Virginia House of Delegates, which is now controlled by Republicans.</p>
<p>Those legislative races in Virginia and elsewhere will in turn play a critical role in shaping Congress. State lawmakers draw congressional district boundaries, a task that Republicans used after the 2010 census to give the GOP a considerable advantage in building a U.S. House majority.</p>
<p>Democracy for America has lined up behind a 2018 Arizona attorney general candidate, January Contreras, who could become a key voice in fighting Trump administration immigration policy.</p>
<p>A Working Families candidate in Detroit could be a quiet influence on a presidential race. Garlin Gilchrist is running for city clerk on a platform of making it easier to vote in the largest city of a battleground state that Trump won by 10,000 votes.</p>
<p>And where they don’t win, the liberal activists say they will see progress. Democracy for America made 300,000 phone calls in a Kansas special congressional election this spring that national Democrats had largely ignored. Republican Ron Estes still won, but by 6 percentage points — after a 30-point GOP win last November.</p>
<p>“We do play to win,” Weinberg said. “But we know this is not a three-month process or a six-month process or even a one-cycle process.”</p> | false | 1 | atlanta virginia house delegates arizona attorney generals office atlanta city hall seats power unaccustomed intense political attention focus liberal groups try turn trump resistance movement tangible victories longestablished organizations moveonorg newer outfits like revolution offshoot sen bernie sanders unsuccessful presidential campaign backing scores candidates downballot races 2017 precursor next years elections democrats try dent gops monopoly washington theyve already picked victories newly elected mayor chokwe lumumba jackson mississippi promising make city radical planet new york lawmaker christine pellegrino sanders delegate 2016 prevailed special election state house district president donald trump easily november theres groundswell progressive leaders already running winning said joe dinkin working families party endorsed lumumba pellegrino theyre taking ideas pundits may called outside political mainstream putting center conversation page conservative movements playbook activists chosen candidates operating mostly outside official party structure reshape democrats identity ground want win seats held republicans pellegrino new york elect liberal candidates even democratic strongholds like lumumba jackson idea say build stronger bench produces future senators governors presidents redefine party delivering issues minimumwage increase universal health care overhauling police practices criminal justice system dont wait 2020 said annie weinberg chief elections strategist democracy america political action committee founded former democratic national committee chairman howard dean fight win policies weinberg added describing inclusive populism says speaks workingclass angst like trump maintaining democrats current positions social policy weinberg says group heard 7000 people expressing interest running office organization endorsed dozens candidates 2017 including slate democrats aiming flip control virginia house delegates fall working families meanwhile sending 1000 candidate questionnaires 2017 municipal candidates moveon executive director ilya sheyman says expects group back dozens dozens downballot candidates coming election barely playing local races first 19 years existence enough fight federal races given much downballot races affect happens democratic party five 10 even 15 years sheyman said atlanta mayoral candidate vincent fort long liberal voice georgia general assembly backing revolution working families fort said ideas candidates left offering around long trumps election city hall long control responsive 1 percent fort said offering localized version sanders presidential stump speech subbing local developers citys professional sports teams recipients various tax credits outright subsidies vermont senators digs millionaires billionaires big banks fort said hes perfectly willing feed antitrump energy critical juncture atmosphere said trump world need strong elected progressive officials people understand theres going change going happen local level democracy america focusing washington state senate special election could give democrats trifecta control state governors office legislative chambers group endorsed 16 candidates virginia house delegates controlled republicans legislative races virginia elsewhere turn play critical role shaping congress state lawmakers draw congressional district boundaries task republicans used 2010 census give gop considerable advantage building us house majority democracy america lined behind 2018 arizona attorney general candidate january contreras could become key voice fighting trump administration immigration policy working families candidate detroit could quiet influence presidential race garlin gilchrist running city clerk platform making easier vote largest city battleground state trump 10000 votes dont win liberal activists say see progress democracy america made 300000 phone calls kansas special congressional election spring national democrats largely ignored republican ron estes still 6 percentage points 30point gop win last november play win weinberg said know threemonth process sixmonth process even onecycle process | 534 |
<p />
<p>&lt;img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2009" style="margin-top: 5px; margin-bottom: 5px;" title="troops-afghanistan" src="https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/troops-afghanistan.jpg" alt="troops-afghanistan" width="405" height="228" srcset="https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/troops-afghanistan.jpg 450w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/troops-afghanistan-300x169.jpg 300w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/troops-afghanistan-280x157.jpg 280w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/troops-afghanistan-118x66.jpg 118w" sizes="(max-width: 405px) 100vw, 405px" /&gt; Left out of the options under consideration in “Obama’s war” is the only one with any chance of success.</p>
<p>Despite assurances to the contrary in Washington and a major policy speech in London, one need not quibble with the obvious fact that the situation is deteriorating beyond repair in Afghanistan. Although international media is more concerned with what that means politically for United States President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, little attention is given to the browbeaten and war-weary people of that country.</p>
<p>One should know that public support for the war has greatly diminished, when conservative commentators like Washington Post columnist George Will write: “US forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy. America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, air strikes and small, potent Special Forces units.”</p>
<p>Okay, so his narrative is still ultimately violent, but the fact remains that the war mood is changing. After all, Will’s&#160; September 1 article was entitled, “Time to Get Out of Afghanistan.”</p>
<p>Dan Senor and Peter Wehner responded with a peculiar diatribe in the New York Times, accusing Will of allowing his party allegiance to influence his views on the war. The two authors, senior fellows at major US think tanks, offered a bloody rationale wrapped in deceptive wording. They argued that historically Democrats opposed Republican wars and Republicans have done the same, and that must change. It was implied that pretty much every major war in recent decades was a war that served US national security interests; therefore, “Republicans should resist the reflex that all opposition parties have, which is to oppose the stands of a president of the other party because he is a member of the other party.” In other words, yes to war, whether by Democrats or Republicans.</p>
<p>The intellectual wrangling, of course, is not happening in a vacuum; it almost never does. Indeed, there is much politicking going on; intense deliberation in Washington, political debates in London; defensive French statements, and more. It seems that the war in Afghanistan is reaching a decisive point, militarily in Afghanistan itself, and politically in major Western capitals.</p>
<p>But why the sudden hoopla over Afghanistan? For after all, the bloody war has been grinding on for eight long years.</p>
<p>The Taliban and various groups opposing the Kabul government and their Western benefactors are gaining ground, not just in the southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan. Daring Taliban attacks are now taking place in the north as well, long seen as peaceful, thus requiring little attention. On August 26 a roadside bomb hit the car of the chief of the provincial Justice Department in the northern Kunduz province, killing him, and sending shock waves through Kabul. The bloody message was meant to echo as a political one: no one is safe, nowhere is safe. Another attack was reported in the province of Laghman, in the east, where 22 people, mostly civilians, were killed. Among the dead were four Afghan officials including the deputy chief of the National Directorate of Security, Abdullah Laghmani. The irony is too obvious to state.</p>
<p>In Washington, London, and Paris politicians wish us to believe that they are not unnerved by all of this. They exaggerated the significance of the recent Afghani elections, attempting to once again underscore that the “crucial” elections placed Afghanistan on a crossroads. Crossroads? What does that even mean, in any practical terms? George Will, although selective in his logic, was honest enough to mention that President Hamid Karzai’s “vice-presidential running mate is a drug trafficker.” Even US officials admit that the government they’ve created following the war is corrupt, to say the least.</p>
<p>Richard Holbrooke, among other foreign envoys “responsible for Afghanistan”, told reporters in Paris on September 2 that US officials have no preference among the candidates, nor are they particularly interested in runoff elections, but they wished to see a government that appoints “more efficient, less corrupt ministers”. It behooves those “responsible for Afghanistan” to remember that inefficiency and corruption were the outcome of the very policies they have so eagerly adopted in the country. No sympathy for Karzai here, but it’s unfair to point the finger at a feeble leader whenever a Western strategy fumbles, as it has repeatedly.</p>
<p>Speaking of strategies, what is the plan ahead? French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner promised that foreign troops will stay put in Afghanistan unless the country’s security was ensured, reported Xinhua. In practical terms, this means never, for how could security ever visit that region as long as the strategy is hostage to two equally destructive narratives — the Senor/Wehner troop surges vs Will’s “offshore” strategy?</p>
<p>Hubris aside, Washington and London are facing some difficult political and military decisions ahead. Top officials in both capitals are using grim and somber language. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, responding to a call by the top US general in Afghanistan for a fresh approach to the conflict, is considering yet another troop increase as part of Obama’s new Afghan strategy.</p>
<p>The sense of urgency was invited by the detailed report of the newly appointed General Stanley McChrystal, who maintains that “success” was still possible, but a change of strategy is needed. The report resulted in intense deliberation in Washington, highlighted by grim press conferences involving the Pentagon’s heavyweights, including Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, over what to do about “Obama’s war”.</p>
<p>Speaking at the Pentagon, Gates equivocated: “I don’t believe that the war is slipping through the administration’s fingers. I absolutely do not think it is time to get out of Afghanistan (but there remains) limited time for us to show that this approach is working.”</p>
<p>The details of the new Obama strategy are still not very clear, but the commitment to the war is still unquestionable, as expressed in a “major” September 4 speech by Prime Minister Gordon Brown. “When the security of our country is at stake we cannot walk away,” said Brown, according to the BBC.</p>
<p>As Brown was solemnly speaking about British security, NATO air strikes on a pair of fuel tankers killed up to 90 people, according to Afghan authorities.</p>
<p>Indeed, the situation in Afghanistan requires a fresh approach, although not the one George Will had in mind.</p> | false | 1 | ltimg classaligncenter sizefull wpimage2009 stylemargintop 5px marginbottom 5px titletroopsafghanistan srchttpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads200909troopsafghanistanjpg alttroopsafghanistan width405 height228 srcsethttpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads200909troopsafghanistanjpg 450w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads200909troopsafghanistan300x169jpg 300w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads200909troopsafghanistan280x157jpg 280w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads200909troopsafghanistan118x66jpg 118w sizesmaxwidth 405px 100vw 405px gt left options consideration obamas war one chance success despite assurances contrary washington major policy speech london one need quibble obvious fact situation deteriorating beyond repair afghanistan although international media concerned means politically united states president barack obama british prime minister gordon brown little attention given browbeaten warweary people country one know public support war greatly diminished conservative commentators like washington post columnist george write us forces substantially reduced serve comprehensively revised policy america done offshore using intelligence drones cruise missiles air strikes small potent special forces units okay narrative still ultimately violent fact remains war mood changing wills160 september 1 article entitled time get afghanistan dan senor peter wehner responded peculiar diatribe new york times accusing allowing party allegiance influence views war two authors senior fellows major us think tanks offered bloody rationale wrapped deceptive wording argued historically democrats opposed republican wars republicans done must change implied pretty much every major war recent decades war served us national security interests therefore republicans resist reflex opposition parties oppose stands president party member party words yes war whether democrats republicans intellectual wrangling course happening vacuum almost never indeed much politicking going intense deliberation washington political debates london defensive french statements seems war afghanistan reaching decisive point militarily afghanistan politically major western capitals sudden hoopla afghanistan bloody war grinding eight long years taliban various groups opposing kabul government western benefactors gaining ground southern eastern parts afghanistan daring taliban attacks taking place north well long seen peaceful thus requiring little attention august 26 roadside bomb hit car chief provincial justice department northern kunduz province killing sending shock waves kabul bloody message meant echo political one one safe nowhere safe another attack reported province laghman east 22 people mostly civilians killed among dead four afghan officials including deputy chief national directorate security abdullah laghmani irony obvious state washington london paris politicians wish us believe unnerved exaggerated significance recent afghani elections attempting underscore crucial elections placed afghanistan crossroads crossroads even mean practical terms george although selective logic honest enough mention president hamid karzais vicepresidential running mate drug trafficker even us officials admit government theyve created following war corrupt say least richard holbrooke among foreign envoys responsible afghanistan told reporters paris september 2 us officials preference among candidates particularly interested runoff elections wished see government appoints efficient less corrupt ministers behooves responsible afghanistan remember inefficiency corruption outcome policies eagerly adopted country sympathy karzai unfair point finger feeble leader whenever western strategy fumbles repeatedly speaking strategies plan ahead french foreign minister bernard kouchner promised foreign troops stay put afghanistan unless countrys security ensured reported xinhua practical terms means never could security ever visit region long strategy hostage two equally destructive narratives senorwehner troop surges vs wills offshore strategy hubris aside washington london facing difficult political military decisions ahead top officials capitals using grim somber language us defense secretary robert gates responding call top us general afghanistan fresh approach conflict considering yet another troop increase part obamas new afghan strategy sense urgency invited detailed report newly appointed general stanley mcchrystal maintains success still possible change strategy needed report resulted intense deliberation washington highlighted grim press conferences involving pentagons heavyweights including admiral mike mullen chairman joint chiefs staff obamas war speaking pentagon gates equivocated dont believe war slipping administrations fingers absolutely think time get afghanistan remains limited time us show approach working details new obama strategy still clear commitment war still unquestionable expressed major september 4 speech prime minister gordon brown security country stake walk away said brown according bbc brown solemnly speaking british security nato air strikes pair fuel tankers killed 90 people according afghan authorities indeed situation afghanistan requires fresh approach although one george mind | 633 |
<p>Edgar Rice Burroughs foresaw the situation at Evergreen State and other campuses. He described it in Tarzan Untamed, a 1919 novel in which the hero finds himself in the lost city of Xuja.</p>
<p>Xuja, hidden in a secret valley, cut off from the rest of the world, resembles the typical American campus today in that the Xujans are also given to occasional eruptions of insanity. A citizen might be walking down a street, conducting a rational conversation when he will be suddenly enraged (triggered, you might say). His eyes will go dull, enameled by some obscure idea, and he will assault a fellow Xujan, and beat him savagely.</p>
<p>The entire country feels like Xuja now—a circus of the Id. It’s not just the universities. Donald Trump is the President of Xuja. A hitherto respectable citizen of lesser rank (Congressman-elect Greg Gianforte, let’s say) will erupt in a mad fit and throw a reporter to the floor.</p>
<p>If Edgar Rice Burroughs was a racist, it is not evident in the Xuja story: His villains in the tale—aside from the crazies in the lost city, who are sort of white, or something—were Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germans, who appear earlier in the story; they had been marauding in East Africa in the years just before Burroughs wrote the novel.</p>
<p>Too many American colleges — sometimes I think all of them — have become satellite campuses of the University of Xuja. They have aspects of the insane asylum (in which the patients are of course not responsible for their actions). Giving the matter a different emphasis, you might call them institutions of higher daycare.</p>
<p>Evergreen State is an especially vivid case because of the widely shared video in which students confront Professor Weinstein outside his classroom. Professor Weinstein is a professor of evolutionary biology; here we see him in dialogue with the adolescent reptilian brain. &#160;Amazing.&#160; The students are perfectly moronic in their virtue. Send the video over to the anthropology department. Jean Cocteau once wrote: “Stupidity is always amazing, no matter how often one encounters it.”</p>
<p />
<p>The Red Guards in China’s Cultural Revolution behaved in this fashion—banging through the institutions, humiliating their elders and now and then destroying a professor’s life’s work.&#160; Pol Pot’s youthful idealists did the same before they got down to the hard work of Cambodian genocide.&#160; This is human nature in its state of raw and most profound stupidity— murderous and yet astonishingly sentimental about itself. What could equal the chivalrous indignation of a Mississippi lynch mob assembled on a Saturday night in 1910 to vindicate the virtue of Southern Womanhood?</p>
<p>What’s at work in the campus eruptions is not virtue or social justice; it has nothing whatever to do with learning or knowledge or the life of the mind.&#160; It’s the other way around. These performances — a travesty of education — do not expand the mind, they devour it.</p>
<p>College authorities — a term of irony, a perverse oxymoron — are desperate for the approval of the children. That’s what is essentially wrong. The college sets up bouncy castles in the quad. They go over language and Halloween costumes with a fine-tooth comb, seeking not truth or knowledge or insight, but, rather, evidence of micro-aggressions. Brains shut down and become Play-Doh.</p>
<p>Yet, at the same time: they are given over to a permanent state of agitation – to hysteria. Learning to tend the fires and ceremonies of their grievances, they acquire plausible historical and ideological excuses for not studying — and indeed for not thinking. Ideology does the thinking. Some parents pay something in the high five figures for four years to have their sons’ and daughters’ minds systematically disabled.&#160; Pre-frontal lobotomy would be cheaper.</p>
<p>The Evergreen president’s message to his students — after they had assaulted one of his professors and demanded the destruction of that honest man’s career and livelihood, on grounds of an imagined ideological slight — was a masterpiece of the sniveling and craven. Although Evergreen President George Bridges&#160; <a href="http://www.cooperpointjournal.com/2017/05/27/george-bridges-statement-in-response-to-student-demands-delivered-in-the-longhouse-on-friday-may-26/" type="external">announced</a>&#160;that progressive professor Bret Weinstein wouldn’t be suspended, Bridges said that he would comply with the long list of demands brought by the students, whom he called “courageous.”</p>
<p>University presidents in the twenty-first century have perfected this form of self-abasement. It is one of their tools of survival.</p>
<p>The sane response at Evergreen, Middlebury, Yale and elsewhere would be to expel the students involved:&#160; Not to warn them, not to counsel them, not to suspend them, but to expel them. In no other way will the virus be brought under control. At Yale, &#160;angry students who abused and threatened the husband and wife professors drew no punishment, but the innocent professors were driven from the campus as the students demanded, and the president of the university took no action.</p>
<p>A good education, ardently pursued, would go a long way to curing crises of identity and to composing differences.&#160; But those presiding over the ideologies have no wish to cure; the point is to use the crises and to inflame them.</p>
<p>In loco parentis, indeed.&#160; The elders (so many of them veterans of the Long March of the nineteen sixties, now holding the presidencies and chancellorships and tenured professorships) busy themselves at making the young as fatuous — as intellectually lifeless — as themselves, bundled up in the neurotic vocabularies of Caring.&#160; It is an ignoble business.</p>
<p>Self-confidently virtuous students and college presidents might take a few hours to study Robert Jay Lifton’s extraordinary 1986 book, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, which has just been reissued in paperback.</p>
<p>A quote: “As Bavarian professors were told by their new minister of culture: ‘From now on, it will not be your job to determine whether something is true, but whether it is in the spirit of National Socialist Revolution.’”</p>
<p>Of course, zealous American students and educators claim that they are, quite precisely, fighting Nazis. If so, they should be more careful not to imitate them. They should look in the mirror, and then look a second time, and a third, and try to see how, with an entirely different eye from theirs, history will see them.</p>
<p>What is at stake is not students’ racial, ethnic, or gender identity. Such issues, believe it or not, are transient.&#160; The twenty-first century is moving on at the speed of light and has far&#160;more serious business in mind.</p>
<p>As for the universities, their very reason for being is at stake. Right now, it seems to me that they are in the active process of trying to destroy themselves.</p>
<p>Lance Morrow, a visiting fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is writing a book about Henry Luce and the 20th Century.</p> | false | 1 | edgar rice burroughs foresaw situation evergreen state campuses described tarzan untamed 1919 novel hero finds lost city xuja xuja hidden secret valley cut rest world resembles typical american campus today xujans also given occasional eruptions insanity citizen might walking street conducting rational conversation suddenly enraged triggered might say eyes go dull enameled obscure idea assault fellow xujan beat savagely entire country feels like xuja nowa circus id universities donald trump president xuja hitherto respectable citizen lesser rank congressmanelect greg gianforte lets say erupt mad fit throw reporter floor edgar rice burroughs racist evident xuja story villains taleaside crazies lost city sort white somethingwere kaiser wilhelms germans appear earlier story marauding east africa years burroughs wrote novel many american colleges sometimes think become satellite campuses university xuja aspects insane asylum patients course responsible actions giving matter different emphasis might call institutions higher daycare evergreen state especially vivid case widely shared video students confront professor weinstein outside classroom professor weinstein professor evolutionary biology see dialogue adolescent reptilian brain 160amazing160 students perfectly moronic virtue send video anthropology department jean cocteau wrote stupidity always amazing matter often one encounters red guards chinas cultural revolution behaved fashionbanging institutions humiliating elders destroying professors lifes work160 pol pots youthful idealists got hard work cambodian genocide160 human nature state raw profound stupidity murderous yet astonishingly sentimental could equal chivalrous indignation mississippi lynch mob assembled saturday night 1910 vindicate virtue southern womanhood whats work campus eruptions virtue social justice nothing whatever learning knowledge life mind160 way around performances travesty education expand mind devour college authorities term irony perverse oxymoron desperate approval children thats essentially wrong college sets bouncy castles quad go language halloween costumes finetooth comb seeking truth knowledge insight rather evidence microaggressions brains shut become playdoh yet time given permanent state agitation hysteria learning tend fires ceremonies grievances acquire plausible historical ideological excuses studying indeed thinking ideology thinking parents pay something high five figures four years sons daughters minds systematically disabled160 prefrontal lobotomy would cheaper evergreen presidents message students assaulted one professors demanded destruction honest mans career livelihood grounds imagined ideological slight masterpiece sniveling craven although evergreen president george bridges160 announced160that progressive professor bret weinstein wouldnt suspended bridges said would comply long list demands brought students called courageous university presidents twentyfirst century perfected form selfabasement one tools survival sane response evergreen middlebury yale elsewhere would expel students involved160 warn counsel suspend expel way virus brought control yale 160angry students abused threatened husband wife professors drew punishment innocent professors driven campus students demanded president university took action good education ardently pursued would go long way curing crises identity composing differences160 presiding ideologies wish cure point use crises inflame loco parentis indeed160 elders many veterans long march nineteen sixties holding presidencies chancellorships tenured professorships busy making young fatuous intellectually lifeless bundled neurotic vocabularies caring160 ignoble business selfconfidently virtuous students college presidents might take hours study robert jay liftons extraordinary 1986 book nazi doctors medical killing psychology genocide reissued paperback quote bavarian professors told new minister culture job determine whether something true whether spirit national socialist revolution course zealous american students educators claim quite precisely fighting nazis careful imitate look mirror look second time third try see entirely different eye history see stake students racial ethnic gender identity issues believe transient160 twentyfirst century moving speed light far160more serious business mind universities reason stake right seems active process trying destroy lance morrow visiting fellow ethics public policy center writing book henry luce 20th century | 572 |
<p>In January, the House of Representatives passed a bill to overturn President Bush’s embryonic-stem-cell funding policy. Sponsored by Democrat Diana DeGette of Colorado and Republican Mike Castle of Delaware, the bill was exactly identical to one passed by Congress and vetoed by the president last July. And this time, too, the House was nowhere near the margin needed to overturn another presidential veto.</p>
<p>The Senate will act on the measure in the coming days, but the bill’s Senate sponsors have added a wrinkle to what had seemed like an instant replay of last year’s debate. They have inserted language funding the development of new techniques to derive cells like those obtained through the destruction of embryos, but without requiring such destruction. These emerging techniques&#160;— like the reprogramming of adult cells to function like embryonic stem cells, or the derivation of stem cells from amniotic fluid — have been the big stem-cell story of the past few years, and offer hope that researchers may be able to explore the potential of so-called “pluripotent” cells without ethical violations.</p>
<p>The language added to the Senate bill was taken verbatim from another bill the Congress considered last year. That measure, cosponsored by Senator Arlen Specter and then-Senator Rick Santorum, passed the Senate unanimously in July, but was then killed by House Democrats and about a dozen Republicans, who saw it as a threat to the embryo-research agenda. These opponents claimed the Specter-Santorum bill was deceptive, unethical, and a waste of time. All of these claims proved unfounded, but they were enough to kill the bill, and so to prevent an infusion of support to scientific techniques that might provide a way around the ethical dilemmas of embryonic-stem-cell research.</p>
<p>Since then, the new ethical alternatives have shown more progress and promise. In January, just days before the House voted, a team from Wake Forest University published a study showing that cells collected from amniotic fluid possessed key pluripotent qualities and could be transformed into a wide variety of cell types — indeed, every type the researchers tried.</p>
<p>Then just last month Ian Wilmut, the British scientist whose lab cloned Dolly the sheep, offered another sign that the new alternative techniques may just provide a way forward. Asked to compare the potential of human cloning with that of reprogramming techniques that might achieve the same end without harming embryos, Wilmut told a reporter “if I had to bet money, I would probably bet on reprogramming.”</p>
<p>All of this has caused senators to revise the House bill and include support for ethical alternatives. But given that revision, the Senate bill now contains a contradiction that its sponsors will need to learn from for next time. It acknowledges the value of exploring means of deriving pluripotent stem cells without destroying embryos, and so acknowledges also the problem inherent in such destruction. But if they now recognize that problem, and the value of advancing scientific techniques that allow us to avert it, the sponsors of the Senate bill need to rethink the rest of their measure.</p>
<p>Given the possibility of alternatives, and given the very preliminary state of embryonic-stem-cell research today; and given the support it already receives within ethical bounds through the Bush policy (more than $130 million since 2001); and given the recognition inherent in this revised bill of the problem with violating those moral bounds; what is the case for the part of the bill that commits exactly that violation? What is the case for overturning the Bush policy and compelling taxpayers to encourage the destruction of embryos just at the moment when ethical alternatives may be emerging?</p>
<p>That case used to involve a whole series of arguments — from complaints of a “ban” on the research, to absurd exaggerations of its potential, to the idea that Americans had fallen behind other countries, and on and on — that have fallen apart one by one.</p>
<p>So what remains? What remained in the last iteration of the stem-cell debate was fervent rejection of the possibility of effective and ethical alternative sources of cells. That, too, is now falling away, as the language of the Senate bill makes crystal clear. And all it leaves behind is a political crusade that contradicts not only the facts but now also itself.</p>
<p>The Senate sponsors of the bill probably hoped their revision would gain them new supporters. But the bill still directs public dollars to encourage human-embryo destruction, and so still crosses the ethical line that opponents deem critical, and that President Bush has vowed to protect with his veto pen. On the basic ethical question that has defined the stem-cell debate, it still takes the wrong side — insisting on setting science and ethics in conflict even as it recognizes ways of avoiding precisely that conflict.</p>
<p>Such blatant self-contradiction is not the solution to the stem-cell debate, but perhaps in this case it could begin to point the way. The solution would be a bill that contains only the second half of what the revised Senate bill now contains: only support for alternative new ethical ways of deriving embryonic-like cells, and not public funding to encourage the destruction of embryos. Senators Coleman and Isakson have proposed just such a bill, and President Bush has said he would sign it. But it remains to be seen if the Democratic Congress — especially the House — will take that yes for an answer.</p>
<p>— Yuval Levin is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and senior editor of The New Atlantis magazine.</p> | false | 1 | january house representatives passed bill overturn president bushs embryonicstemcell funding policy sponsored democrat diana degette colorado republican mike castle delaware bill exactly identical one passed congress vetoed president last july time house nowhere near margin needed overturn another presidential veto senate act measure coming days bills senate sponsors added wrinkle seemed like instant replay last years debate inserted language funding development new techniques derive cells like obtained destruction embryos without requiring destruction emerging techniques160 like reprogramming adult cells function like embryonic stem cells derivation stem cells amniotic fluid big stemcell story past years offer hope researchers may able explore potential socalled pluripotent cells without ethical violations language added senate bill taken verbatim another bill congress considered last year measure cosponsored senator arlen specter thensenator rick santorum passed senate unanimously july killed house democrats dozen republicans saw threat embryoresearch agenda opponents claimed spectersantorum bill deceptive unethical waste time claims proved unfounded enough kill bill prevent infusion support scientific techniques might provide way around ethical dilemmas embryonicstemcell research since new ethical alternatives shown progress promise january days house voted team wake forest university published study showing cells collected amniotic fluid possessed key pluripotent qualities could transformed wide variety cell types indeed every type researchers tried last month ian wilmut british scientist whose lab cloned dolly sheep offered another sign new alternative techniques may provide way forward asked compare potential human cloning reprogramming techniques might achieve end without harming embryos wilmut told reporter bet money would probably bet reprogramming caused senators revise house bill include support ethical alternatives given revision senate bill contains contradiction sponsors need learn next time acknowledges value exploring means deriving pluripotent stem cells without destroying embryos acknowledges also problem inherent destruction recognize problem value advancing scientific techniques allow us avert sponsors senate bill need rethink rest measure given possibility alternatives given preliminary state embryonicstemcell research today given support already receives within ethical bounds bush policy 130 million since 2001 given recognition inherent revised bill problem violating moral bounds case part bill commits exactly violation case overturning bush policy compelling taxpayers encourage destruction embryos moment ethical alternatives may emerging case used involve whole series arguments complaints ban research absurd exaggerations potential idea americans fallen behind countries fallen apart one one remains remained last iteration stemcell debate fervent rejection possibility effective ethical alternative sources cells falling away language senate bill makes crystal clear leaves behind political crusade contradicts facts also senate sponsors bill probably hoped revision would gain new supporters bill still directs public dollars encourage humanembryo destruction still crosses ethical line opponents deem critical president bush vowed protect veto pen basic ethical question defined stemcell debate still takes wrong side insisting setting science ethics conflict even recognizes ways avoiding precisely conflict blatant selfcontradiction solution stemcell debate perhaps case could begin point way solution would bill contains second half revised senate bill contains support alternative new ethical ways deriving embryoniclike cells public funding encourage destruction embryos senators coleman isakson proposed bill president bush said would sign remains seen democratic congress especially house take yes answer yuval levin fellow ethics public policy center senior editor new atlantis magazine | 516 |
<p>Since Sept. 11, Americans have grown more aware of the Central Intelligence Agency’s singular contribution to our war against terrorism. In Afghanistan the CIA has provided vital strategic and tactical information for U.S. and allied troops in their efforts to destroy the elusive and dug-in Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters. These fanatical terrorists insist that the deadly assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are just punishment for the Great Satan.</p>
<p>Over the years, most Americans have quietly accepted the need for foreign intelligence activities by our government, including spying and covert action. Such activities, in their view, are essential to defend our national security and are compatible with democracy and the American ethic. This view is especially strong among our fighting men and women who know firsthand the importance of tactical intelligence.</p>
<p>Among intellectuals and media elites, however, the CIA has all too often been a target of unjustified criticism, even derision. To be sure, covert action abroad and intelligence gathering at home pose serious problems for an open society.</p>
<p>In a real sense, espionage, which T.S. Eliot aptly called “a wilderness of mirrors,” is a necessary evil. But it is more. Properly conducted, spying and covert action are necessary and good in a just struggle. And who doubts that American’s war against terror is just?</p>
<p>Espionage is as old as history. In the Old Testament we read that Moses sent spies into the land of Canaan to see whether “the cities they dwell in are camps or strongholds.” (Numbers: 13:17-19)</p>
<p>Cold War Dilemmas</p>
<p>The Cold War was unique because one adversary was fueled by a crusading ideology while the other was constrained by its democratic policy and humane ethic. Yet, Moscow and Washington both employed similar means to advance their interest abroad—persuasion, economic and military aid, espionage, and covert action. Both were engaged in covert activities in the Third World.</p>
<p>Chile is a case in point. The Marxist takeover in Santiago in 1970 by Salvador Allende became a flashpoint in the Cold War. American critics of the CIA seized upon events there to denounce the agency’s involvement before and after the September 1973 coup that overthrew the Marxist regime. Specifically, they charged the agency with complicity in an assassination to prevent Allende from becoming president after he had won one-third of the vote.</p>
<p>The events surrounding the coup which made General Augusto Pinochet leader of the post-Allende junta sparked my interest. So, along with two academic colleagues, I spent ten days in Santiago in July 1974 to examine the situation. The Nixon administration was seeking to mitigate the junta’s human rights abuses without reviving the Marxist threat. As realists, we assumed that the CIA and KGB were involved in Chilean affairs and that the CIA made mistakes.</p>
<p>Focusing on events surrounding the coup, we interviewed all sides: American, Chilean, Red Cross, and UN officials; former president Eduardo Frei; the wife of Ambassador Orlando Letelier, who had served in Washington; junta general Gustavo Leigh Guzman; Raul Cardinal Silva Henrequez, and many others. The Marxists we talked with claimed that Allende was killed by the plotters, but his personal physician told us exactly how Allende had died. Minutes before the soldiers reached the president’s second-story palace office, Allende shot himself in the head.</p>
<p>After spending hours with the U.S. ambassador David Popper and other embassy officials, I concluded that whatever the CIA may have done to scuttle Allende’s election in 1970, it was not involved in the coup that deposed him. I reported my findings at a House subcommittee hearing to the consternation of several members who saw the agency as a “rogue elephant.”</p>
<p>Seizing on Chile as a prime example of the CIA’s perfidy, critics quickly organized a high-powered “anti-intelligence lobby,” which, according to ambassador Charles M. Lichenstein, openly sought to “diminish if not abolish existing U.S. capabilities in clandestine collection, counterintelligence, and particularly covert operations.” This effort eventually included ACLU activists, renegade CIA officer Philip Agee, and former Pentagon consultant Morton Halperin, who provided Agee with classified information for his KBG-assisted book attacking the CIA.</p>
<p>These CIA critics sought to discredit and dismantle what they called “the nation’s vast surveillance network” at home and abroad. They supported the 1974 Hughes-Ryan Amendment requiring the president to inform in advance eight different congressional committees of CIA plans for covert operations. This seriously curtailed sensitive activities aboard. Senator Patrick Moynihan said Hughes-Ryan reflected the bizarre view that America was more threated by the “activities of the U.S. Government” than by those of Moscow. In 1980, it was replaced by the Intelligence Accountability Act, which required that only two committees be informed.</p>
<p>TV Networks vs. the CIA</p>
<p>The elite media also had a field day trouncing the CIA. In an intensive content analysis of the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening TV news from January 1974 through October 1978, I found that only five per cent of their reporting on intelligence was devoted to Soviet-bloc agencies; 95 per cent dealt with the CIA. More disturbing, the networks portrayed the CIA as operating in a political and moral vacuum devoid of threats and adversaries, like some villainous Don Quixote tilting at vaporous windmills. Further, the networks cast the CIA in an overwhelmingly negative light—68.2 per cent of the stories were unfavorable; only 13.9 were favorable. (See my book, The CIA and the American Ethic, 1979.)</p>
<p>Is Covert Action Just?</p>
<p>Throughout the Cold War, I insisted that the just war doctrine is an appropriate guide for assessing CIA activities. Responsible covert operations are essential to our security and freedom because they provide a range of policy options short of open war. Clandestine action inside another state requires secrecy and deception, is usually illegal, and sometimes lethal. Yet such activities are morally admissible if they meet the basic just war criteria: just intention, just and proportional means, and a probable just outcome. Who doubts that an Allied victory in World War II—with countless covert operations and massive deception—served a just cause and was morally superior to permitting an Axis victory?</p>
<p>“In wartime,” wrote Churchill, “truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”</p>
<p>Varieties of Covert Action</p>
<p>The just war argument and common sense did little to convince critics like Senator Frank Church, who, in the name of congressional oversight, severely restricted covert operations. The emasculation of agency activities reached its apogee under President Carter’s CIA Director, Stansfield Turner. In 1977, Turner fired 400 of his experts that kept an eye on Soviet behavior abroad. His excessive reliance on technical intelligence at the expense of human assets (i.e., real people risking their lives for freedom) demoralized the staff and made it virtually impossible to respond effectively to the Iran hostage crisis the following year. These self-inflicted wounds also contributed to serious U.S. reverses in Angola, Ethiopia, Iran, and Afghanistan. Congress and the Carter White House must share the blame for these disasters.</p>
<p>Back in 1953 when the CIA had a freer hand, it supported a coup that overthrew Prime Minister Mossadegh in Iran and restored the Shah to the Peacock Throne. For the small cost of hiring several hundred Iranians to demonstrate against Mossadegh’s Soviet-backed regime, Washington helped restore a friendly one that helped provide twenty-five years of stability in the Persian Gulf.</p>
<p>Covert action takes many forms, from the CIA’s provision of newsprint to the only opposition newspaper during Allende’s regime, to assisting the Contras to unseat the Soviet-backed Sandinistas in Nicaragua. The most controversial action, the assassination of a national leader, was banned by President Gerald Ford in a mid-1970’s Executive Order which is still in force.</p>
<p>Can Tyrannicide Be Justified?</p>
<p>The moral and practical arguments against tyrannicide, which George Bernard Shaw once called “the extreme form of censorship,” are strong, but not absolute. Iraq provides an example. After Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 and threated the oil fields in Saudi Arabia, I argued that he was an appropriate candidate for justifiable tyrannicide. Such an extreme act was not American’s responsibility, but that of the Iraqi people. I cited Abraham Lincoln, who asserted the right of any people to overthrow a tyrant by violent means, including, by inference, assassination. Such a drastic act, said Lincoln, can be justified when the tyrant has been in power a long time, when all legal and peaceable means for ousting him have been exhausted, and when the prospects for his early departure are dim. Then, his long-suffering people have a right to strike. At the same time, Lincoln warned that “it is the duty of our government to neither foment, nor assist, such revolutions in other governments.” Under certain circumstances, I argued, Washington would be morally justified in providing technical assistance to citizens seeking to remove their own tyrant. But I did not rule out more direct means.</p>
<p>Berlin, Stasi, and the KGB</p>
<p>In September 1991, two years after the Berlin Wall had fallen and exactly forty-four years after my first visit, I was again in the city. In 1947, I had seen Hitler’s empty chancellery office and the spot where his and Eva Braun’s bodies had been dowsed with gasoline and burned. Now Berlin, soon to be the capital of a reunited Germany, was again a major actor in world politics.</p>
<p>A staunch anti-Nazi and anti-communist German friend and I visited the former Gestapo and Stasi headquarters. Stasi, the East German State Security Service, was run by the KGB. Its senior KGB advisor was Vladimir Putin, now Russia’s president.</p>
<p>Inside the large brick Stasi complex, now a ghoulish museum, we saw numerous portraits and busts of Marx and Lenin, but only a few of Stalin. The rows of empty files bore silent witness to the brutality and paranoia that had reigned there. As we left, I noticed four spray-painted words on the wall in English: “Piss off, Nazi Pigs!”</p>
<p>This cryptic, if inelegant, slogan symbolized the demonic kinship of the two totalitarian systems, each hell-bent on making the world over in its own image. The Gestapo and the KGB were sinister soul brothers. Established by Lenin as the “sword and shield” of the Communist Party, the KGB (originally called the OGPU) did battle against its perceived internal and external enemies. Given the KGB’s sweeping powers of investigation, arrest, interrogation, prosecution, and punishment, the Soviet judicial system was little more than an adjunct. A state within a state, the KGB rivaled the power of the Communist Party and the Red Army.</p>
<p>Out of deep moral and political confusion, some American liberals equated the CIA with the KGB, which is like equating Lincoln and Lenin. In his lofty ideological symmetry, British spy novelist John Le Carré was fond of putting the CIA and the KGB in the same moral pod. Of course, both used deception and occasionally violence, but there is a profound difference in intent and consequences. At root, the CIA fought for freedom and democracy and the KGB fought to uphold Soviet tyranny and expansion. The CIA is constrained by the rule of law, while the KGB was often a law unto itself.</p>
<p>Now the Soviet Union and its KGB are gone, but the need for a vigilant CIA remains. Russia still has 6,000 nuclear warheads. Tyrants still brutalize their people and the totalitarian temptation has not been exorcised. The Axis of Evil is a dangerous reality.</p>
<p>Technology has changed, but evil still threatens. The enduring need for espionage was acknowledged in a parable of Jesus (Luke 14:31-32): “What king will march to battle against another king, without first sitting down to consider whether with ten thousand men he can face an enemy coming to meet him with twenty thousand?”</p> | false | 1 | since sept 11 americans grown aware central intelligence agencys singular contribution war terrorism afghanistan cia provided vital strategic tactical information us allied troops efforts destroy elusive dugin taliban al qaeda fighters fanatical terrorists insist deadly assaults world trade center pentagon punishment great satan years americans quietly accepted need foreign intelligence activities government including spying covert action activities view essential defend national security compatible democracy american ethic view especially strong among fighting men women know firsthand importance tactical intelligence among intellectuals media elites however cia often target unjustified criticism even derision sure covert action abroad intelligence gathering home pose serious problems open society real sense espionage ts eliot aptly called wilderness mirrors necessary evil properly conducted spying covert action necessary good struggle doubts americans war terror espionage old history old testament read moses sent spies land canaan see whether cities dwell camps strongholds numbers 131719 cold war dilemmas cold war unique one adversary fueled crusading ideology constrained democratic policy humane ethic yet moscow washington employed similar means advance interest abroadpersuasion economic military aid espionage covert action engaged covert activities third world chile case point marxist takeover santiago 1970 salvador allende became flashpoint cold war american critics cia seized upon events denounce agencys involvement september 1973 coup overthrew marxist regime specifically charged agency complicity assassination prevent allende becoming president onethird vote events surrounding coup made general augusto pinochet leader postallende junta sparked interest along two academic colleagues spent ten days santiago july 1974 examine situation nixon administration seeking mitigate juntas human rights abuses without reviving marxist threat realists assumed cia kgb involved chilean affairs cia made mistakes focusing events surrounding coup interviewed sides american chilean red cross un officials former president eduardo frei wife ambassador orlando letelier served washington junta general gustavo leigh guzman raul cardinal silva henrequez many others marxists talked claimed allende killed plotters personal physician told us exactly allende died minutes soldiers reached presidents secondstory palace office allende shot head spending hours us ambassador david popper embassy officials concluded whatever cia may done scuttle allendes election 1970 involved coup deposed reported findings house subcommittee hearing consternation several members saw agency rogue elephant seizing chile prime example cias perfidy critics quickly organized highpowered antiintelligence lobby according ambassador charles lichenstein openly sought diminish abolish existing us capabilities clandestine collection counterintelligence particularly covert operations effort eventually included aclu activists renegade cia officer philip agee former pentagon consultant morton halperin provided agee classified information kbgassisted book attacking cia cia critics sought discredit dismantle called nations vast surveillance network home abroad supported 1974 hughesryan amendment requiring president inform advance eight different congressional committees cia plans covert operations seriously curtailed sensitive activities aboard senator patrick moynihan said hughesryan reflected bizarre view america threated activities us government moscow 1980 replaced intelligence accountability act required two committees informed tv networks vs cia elite media also field day trouncing cia intensive content analysis abc cbs nbc evening tv news january 1974 october 1978 found five per cent reporting intelligence devoted sovietbloc agencies 95 per cent dealt cia disturbing networks portrayed cia operating political moral vacuum devoid threats adversaries like villainous quixote tilting vaporous windmills networks cast cia overwhelmingly negative light682 per cent stories unfavorable 139 favorable see book cia american ethic 1979 covert action throughout cold war insisted war doctrine appropriate guide assessing cia activities responsible covert operations essential security freedom provide range policy options short open war clandestine action inside another state requires secrecy deception usually illegal sometimes lethal yet activities morally admissible meet basic war criteria intention proportional means probable outcome doubts allied victory world war iiwith countless covert operations massive deceptionserved cause morally superior permitting axis victory wartime wrote churchill truth precious always attended bodyguard lies varieties covert action war argument common sense little convince critics like senator frank church name congressional oversight severely restricted covert operations emasculation agency activities reached apogee president carters cia director stansfield turner 1977 turner fired 400 experts kept eye soviet behavior abroad excessive reliance technical intelligence expense human assets ie real people risking lives freedom demoralized staff made virtually impossible respond effectively iran hostage crisis following year selfinflicted wounds also contributed serious us reverses angola ethiopia iran afghanistan congress carter white house must share blame disasters back 1953 cia freer hand supported coup overthrew prime minister mossadegh iran restored shah peacock throne small cost hiring several hundred iranians demonstrate mossadeghs sovietbacked regime washington helped restore friendly one helped provide twentyfive years stability persian gulf covert action takes many forms cias provision newsprint opposition newspaper allendes regime assisting contras unseat sovietbacked sandinistas nicaragua controversial action assassination national leader banned president gerald ford mid1970s executive order still force tyrannicide justified moral practical arguments tyrannicide george bernard shaw called extreme form censorship strong absolute iraq provides example saddam hussein invaded kuwait 1990 threated oil fields saudi arabia argued appropriate candidate justifiable tyrannicide extreme act americans responsibility iraqi people cited abraham lincoln asserted right people overthrow tyrant violent means including inference assassination drastic act said lincoln justified tyrant power long time legal peaceable means ousting exhausted prospects early departure dim longsuffering people right strike time lincoln warned duty government neither foment assist revolutions governments certain circumstances argued washington would morally justified providing technical assistance citizens seeking remove tyrant rule direct means berlin stasi kgb september 1991 two years berlin wall fallen exactly fortyfour years first visit city 1947 seen hitlers empty chancellery office spot eva brauns bodies dowsed gasoline burned berlin soon capital reunited germany major actor world politics staunch antinazi anticommunist german friend visited former gestapo stasi headquarters stasi east german state security service run kgb senior kgb advisor vladimir putin russias president inside large brick stasi complex ghoulish museum saw numerous portraits busts marx lenin stalin rows empty files bore silent witness brutality paranoia reigned left noticed four spraypainted words wall english piss nazi pigs cryptic inelegant slogan symbolized demonic kinship two totalitarian systems hellbent making world image gestapo kgb sinister soul brothers established lenin sword shield communist party kgb originally called ogpu battle perceived internal external enemies given kgbs sweeping powers investigation arrest interrogation prosecution punishment soviet judicial system little adjunct state within state kgb rivaled power communist party red army deep moral political confusion american liberals equated cia kgb like equating lincoln lenin lofty ideological symmetry british spy novelist john le carré fond putting cia kgb moral pod course used deception occasionally violence profound difference intent consequences root cia fought freedom democracy kgb fought uphold soviet tyranny expansion cia constrained rule law kgb often law unto soviet union kgb gone need vigilant cia remains russia still 6000 nuclear warheads tyrants still brutalize people totalitarian temptation exorcised axis evil dangerous reality technology changed evil still threatens enduring need espionage acknowledged parable jesus luke 143132 king march battle another king without first sitting consider whether ten thousand men face enemy coming meet twenty thousand | 1,133 |
<p>Nov. 9 (UPI) — If nations and their research institutions are to produce more impactful science, they need to encourage scientists to travel, collaborate and work across international borders — not restrict them.</p>
<p>Concerned and curious about how new policies like Brexit and U.S. President <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Donald_Trump/" type="external">Donald Trump</a>‘s travel ban might impact science, researchers have been taking a closer look at the relationship between movement, collaboration and productivity.</p>
<p>Their work has revealed patterns that include strong correlations between mobility, collaboration and scientific impact.</p>
<p>These correlations were revealed by an analysis of scientific citations. Thanks to improved databases, scientists can now more accurately track how many times a study and its authors are cited by others. They can also normalize these numbers for each specific scientific field.</p>
<p>If a scientist publishing in the field of biology is cited 20 times, and the average biology paper is cited four times, the scientist earns an impact factor of four.</p>
<p>When Cassidy Sugimoto and her research partners looked at how a scientist’s movement affected their impact, they found mobile scientists were more impactful on average than non-mobile scientists. They also found scientists became more impactful after they became mobile.</p>
<p>Sugimoto and her colleagues are careful, however, not to equate impact with quality.</p>
<p>“A citation score is not a good measure of scientific quality,” Sugimoto, an associate professor of informatics at Indiana University, told UPI. “The best word for it is visibility, what I see is connection between impact and the visibility.”</p>
<p>In interviews, Sugimoto and her colleagues regularly reference the Matthew effect, which describes the accumulative advantage enjoyed by the most accomplished scientists. The effect works like a positive feedback loop, the most cited scientists are more likely to be mobile, and their mobility leads to more citations — the richer get richer.</p>
<p>But by narrowing their focus and viewing the correlation from a variety of angles, researchers say they were able to show mobility truly is a boon to impactful science.</p>
<p>“The patterns are quite consistent, so we are more or less certain that this is happening,” said Nicolas Robinson-Garcia, a social scientist and bibliometrics specialist at the Technical University of Valencia in Spain.</p>
<p>But besides more impactful, visible science, what happens when researchers move? How do they move and where do they go?</p>
<p>Sugimoto, Robinson-Garcia and their colleagues tracked scientists’ movement by tracing citations. Each citation is linked with an author’s affiliation with one or more universities or research institutions. The country where a scientist first publishes is considered the scientist’s country of origin.</p>
<p>“It’s really important to disentangle academic origin from country of origin,” Sugimoto said. “We’re most interested in the country that produced you academically.”</p>
<p>When a researcher is cited with a new affiliation in a different country, the scientist is classified as mobile. Researchers classify mobile scientists as either migrants or travelers.</p>
<p>If someone continues to add new affiliations around the world, but never drops their original affiliation — or maintains affiliations with their home country — they are travelers.</p>
<p>Most mobile scientists are travelers. So while some Asian countries may suffer brain drain in the sense that more scientists add North American affiliations to their Asian affiliations than vice versa, most scientists maintain relationships with their country long after they become mobile.</p>
<p>Not all mobility is created equal. North America and Europe tend to operate as both an incubator and producer — cultivating talent from elsewhere and introducing well-cited scientists to other parts of the world. Asian countries are mostly recruiters, bringing already accomplished scientists into their networks.</p>
<p>“We found women coming from many Middle Eastern countries, once they arrive in the U.S., had a much higher jump in their production and impact than their male counterparts,” Sugimoto said. “Mobility allows for new voices in science that might not have been heard otherwise.”</p>
<p>But mobility can also be a double-edged sword — the Matthew effect is always lurking.</p>
<p>Men tend to be more mobile, and thus are in an advantaged position when it comes to benefiting from the impact boost movement offers.</p>
<p>“Young moms don’t move around as much and don’t go to conferences as much,” said Caroline Wagner, who conducts research in the field of science and technology at Ohio State University.</p>
<p>Wagner is the lead author of another study looking at how a country’s openness impacts scientific productivity and impact. Wagner and her colleagues assigned countries openness scores based on how easily researchers are able to come and go, how much collaboration is emphasized and how often scientists share co-authorship with scientists from other countries.</p>
<p>Like Sugimoto, Wagner found a correlation between the ability to move and scientific impact. In fact, Wagner’s work showed a country’s openness was a better predictor of impactful science — more frequently cited science — than investment in research and development.</p>
<p>“New knowledge creation is recombination of ideas and thoughts into new and usually unexpected formations,” Wagner said. “Brains working together, challenging one another tends to contribute to creativity.”</p>
<p>Wagner says the research shows diversity breeds greater creativity, which is why she thinks it’s important to encourage, not restrict, mobility and collaboration.</p>
<p>“Diverse teams are more creative, and gendered diverse teams are even more creative,” she said. “This has been shown in research.”</p>
<p>To encourage this kind of diversity, Sugimoto would like to see places like the United States change the way they fund the sciences.</p>
<p>“Our funding agencies keep thinking about national competitiveness and so we fund nationally instead of internationally,” Sugimoto said. “The EU has taken a different approach — and the U.S. is falling behind on that — by cultivating relationships and not creating barriers.”</p>
<p>But just as mobility can be a double-edged sword, so can international collaboration. Like Sugimoto, Wagner stresses the importance of mobility, openness and collaboration, but she worries the Matthew effect could see only the most accomplished scientists benefit from the advantages of international collaboration, while local researchers get left behind.</p>
<p>“I am very concerned that international collaboration — while exciting and fruitful — can leave the local level somewhat impoverished,” Wagner said.</p>
<p>Now, the question for Wagner, Sugimoto and others becomes, how can science policy encourage mobility and collaboration while ensuring the benefits they offer are broadly shared.</p>
<p>“Policymaking needs to shift from a ‘push’ model of creating knowledge to a ‘scan and integrate’ model,” Wagner said. “Smart people are all over and new ideas are emerging worldwide. Governments need to be scanning the global and helping reintegrate knowledge so that it is available locally when and where needed.”</p> | false | 1 | nov 9 upi nations research institutions produce impactful science need encourage scientists travel collaborate work across international borders restrict concerned curious new policies like brexit us president donald trumps travel ban might impact science researchers taking closer look relationship movement collaboration productivity work revealed patterns include strong correlations mobility collaboration scientific impact correlations revealed analysis scientific citations thanks improved databases scientists accurately track many times study authors cited others also normalize numbers specific scientific field scientist publishing field biology cited 20 times average biology paper cited four times scientist earns impact factor four cassidy sugimoto research partners looked scientists movement affected impact found mobile scientists impactful average nonmobile scientists also found scientists became impactful became mobile sugimoto colleagues careful however equate impact quality citation score good measure scientific quality sugimoto associate professor informatics indiana university told upi best word visibility see connection impact visibility interviews sugimoto colleagues regularly reference matthew effect describes accumulative advantage enjoyed accomplished scientists effect works like positive feedback loop cited scientists likely mobile mobility leads citations richer get richer narrowing focus viewing correlation variety angles researchers say able show mobility truly boon impactful science patterns quite consistent less certain happening said nicolas robinsongarcia social scientist bibliometrics specialist technical university valencia spain besides impactful visible science happens researchers move move go sugimoto robinsongarcia colleagues tracked scientists movement tracing citations citation linked authors affiliation one universities research institutions country scientist first publishes considered scientists country origin really important disentangle academic origin country origin sugimoto said interested country produced academically researcher cited new affiliation different country scientist classified mobile researchers classify mobile scientists either migrants travelers someone continues add new affiliations around world never drops original affiliation maintains affiliations home country travelers mobile scientists travelers asian countries may suffer brain drain sense scientists add north american affiliations asian affiliations vice versa scientists maintain relationships country long become mobile mobility created equal north america europe tend operate incubator producer cultivating talent elsewhere introducing wellcited scientists parts world asian countries mostly recruiters bringing already accomplished scientists networks found women coming many middle eastern countries arrive us much higher jump production impact male counterparts sugimoto said mobility allows new voices science might heard otherwise mobility also doubleedged sword matthew effect always lurking men tend mobile thus advantaged position comes benefiting impact boost movement offers young moms dont move around much dont go conferences much said caroline wagner conducts research field science technology ohio state university wagner lead author another study looking countrys openness impacts scientific productivity impact wagner colleagues assigned countries openness scores based easily researchers able come go much collaboration emphasized often scientists share coauthorship scientists countries like sugimoto wagner found correlation ability move scientific impact fact wagners work showed countrys openness better predictor impactful science frequently cited science investment research development new knowledge creation recombination ideas thoughts new usually unexpected formations wagner said brains working together challenging one another tends contribute creativity wagner says research shows diversity breeds greater creativity thinks important encourage restrict mobility collaboration diverse teams creative gendered diverse teams even creative said shown research encourage kind diversity sugimoto would like see places like united states change way fund sciences funding agencies keep thinking national competitiveness fund nationally instead internationally sugimoto said eu taken different approach us falling behind cultivating relationships creating barriers mobility doubleedged sword international collaboration like sugimoto wagner stresses importance mobility openness collaboration worries matthew effect could see accomplished scientists benefit advantages international collaboration local researchers get left behind concerned international collaboration exciting fruitful leave local level somewhat impoverished wagner said question wagner sugimoto others becomes science policy encourage mobility collaboration ensuring benefits offer broadly shared policymaking needs shift push model creating knowledge scan integrate model wagner said smart people new ideas emerging worldwide governments need scanning global helping reintegrate knowledge available locally needed | 629 |
<p>By Conor Humphries and Victoria Bryan</p>
<p>DUBLIN/BERLIN (Reuters) – Ryanair blames an internal “cock up”, but its cancellation of 2,000 flights exposes the struggle that low-cost carriers face as they risk growing faster than their ability to recruit experienced pilots.</p>
<p>Junior pilots are readily available, with hundreds unemployed in Britain alone, but Europe’s budget airlines require many extra captains who can take flights without needing lengthy and expensive training, or to accumulate flying hours.</p>
<p>Ireland’s Ryanair (I:), which has overtaken established carriers to become Europe’s biggest airline by passenger numbers, is hiring around 600 pilots this year, as is Norwegian Air Shuttle (OL:). For British-based easyJet (L:) the figure is 450 and in all cases these are their highest ever levels of pilot recruitment.</p>
<p>“The low cost airlines are arguably more vulnerable to a pilot shortage because of their growth, which is now compounded by their size,” said Gerald Khoo, an analyst with Liberum.</p>
<p>“Normally, in a tight labor market I would assume slightly higher staff costs or the airline could trim its capacity growth,” he said. “Not getting the balance right results in the situation we have seen at Ryanair in the past week.”</p>
<p>Ryanair has disrupted plans for hundreds of thousands of travelers with the cancellations this month due to the pilot shortage.</p>
<p>The carrier put its problems down to too many pilots taking leave at the same time. But the shortages are being felt across an industry where the budget airlines are flying tens of millions more passengers each year, driving an increase in European short-haul capacity of around seven percent.</p>
<p>Norwegian is particularly jostling Ryanair for senior talent. Both have Boeing (N:) fleets, meaning that when pilots defect they fly similar aircraft, lessening training time and expense. Norwegian says it has poached more than 140 pilots from Ryanair; Dublin-based Ryanair puts the number at less than 100.</p>
<p>Ryanair is increasing wages for its pilots based in Frankfurt and Berlin in order to steal staff from Air Berlin (DE:), even though the insolvent German carrier flies Airbus (PA:) jets rather than Boeings, making this a more expensive exercise.</p>
<p>Lufthansa’s (DE:) budget unit Eurowings is also making a bid for Air Berlin’s experienced pilots.</p>
<p>Mark Simpson, an analyst with Goodbody Stockbrokers, said he didn’t see a significant risk that Ryanair would have to curb its expansion plans. “This is a pinch they are facing,” he said. “But it hasn’t reached a crisis point.”</p>
<p>Aside from Air Berlin, Italy’s Alitalia, Latvia’s Air Baltic and Romania’s Tarom were all struggling and could to shed pilots, easing the shortage, he added.</p>
<p>HIGHER GRADES</p>
<p>The pressure is being felt acutely in senior roles, according to the British Airline Pilots’ Association, which says around 500 of its more junior members are unemployed.</p>
<p>“We’ve seen huge recruitment drives …. in recent years. However, this recruitment tends to be for experienced pilots,” said BALPA General Secretary Brian Strutton.</p>
<p>Recruitment web site Indeed.com said pilot vacancies in Britain were 60 percent harder to fill than other jobs, as measured by the number of positions still vacant after 60 days.</p>
<p>Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary said captains have been targeted since the cancellations with a 10,000 euro sign-on bonus. “We may have got pilot pay a little on the low side,” he told investors at Ryanair’s annual general meeting this week.</p>
<p>He insisted the problems were localized and that certain parts of Europe had a surplus of experienced pilots.</p>
<p>Ryanair this week also announced wage increases in Dublin, where it says it believes Norwegian Air is trying to hire 40 of its pilots, and in London where it says pilots are being targeted by a number of rivals.</p>
<p>A spokesman for Norwegian Air said it saw significant competition for pilots, but was offering competitive conditions and the prospect of flying to destinations in southeast Asia and the United States that Ryanair could not match.</p>
<p>EasyJet declined to comment on whether it was struggling to attract senior pilots.</p>
<p>JOB SATISFACTION</p>
<p>Ryanair is widely regarded to pay competitive wages to senior pilots. Captains earn 150,000-180,000 euros a year, while first officers get 80,000-120,000. But it has been criticized by some current and former staff about working conditions and the way the blunt-speaking O’Leary talks about his staff.</p>
<p>Pilots are often employed via agencies and do not enjoy standard benefits for sick pay, pensions or health insurance.</p>
<p>O’Leary insisted at the AGM he had a good relationship with his pilots, but said: “I would challenge any pilot to explain how this is a difficult job,” expressing doubt that anyone could be fatigued after what he said was a maximum of 18 hours of flying per week.</p>
<p>Ryanair gets a rating of 2.4 on employee-review site Glassdoor, against 4.0 for easyJet.</p>
<p>ALWAYS GETTING BETTER</p>
<p>Four years ago Ryanair was berated by investors for treating its customers badly, forcing a promise from O’Leary to stop “unnecessarily pissing people off” and launching its successful Always Getting Better customer service drive.</p>
<p>But unlike the current crisis, poor customer service never threatened the airline’s core operations. Investors remain skittish, with its shares down 5.5 percent since the crisis broke to close at 16.44 euros on Friday.</p>
<p>There are signs that pilots are using the shortage to assert themselves. While Ryanair doesn’t recognize trade unions, staff at a number of bases wrote a joint letter to management with a series of demands including the implementation of permanent local contracts under local employment law.</p>
<p>The European Cockpit Association said Ryanair may now have to treat its staff better as well as its customers.</p>
<p>“The Always Getting Better program could have been applied to staff too,” ECA Secretary General Philip von Schöppenthau told Reuters. “It would certainly be welcomed by the crew and contribute to the success of the company.”</p> | false | 1 | conor humphries victoria bryan dublinberlin reuters ryanair blames internal cock cancellation 2000 flights exposes struggle lowcost carriers face risk growing faster ability recruit experienced pilots junior pilots readily available hundreds unemployed britain alone europes budget airlines require many extra captains take flights without needing lengthy expensive training accumulate flying hours irelands ryanair overtaken established carriers become europes biggest airline passenger numbers hiring around 600 pilots year norwegian air shuttle ol britishbased easyjet l figure 450 cases highest ever levels pilot recruitment low cost airlines arguably vulnerable pilot shortage growth compounded size said gerald khoo analyst liberum normally tight labor market would assume slightly higher staff costs airline could trim capacity growth said getting balance right results situation seen ryanair past week ryanair disrupted plans hundreds thousands travelers cancellations month due pilot shortage carrier put problems many pilots taking leave time shortages felt across industry budget airlines flying tens millions passengers year driving increase european shorthaul capacity around seven percent norwegian particularly jostling ryanair senior talent boeing n fleets meaning pilots defect fly similar aircraft lessening training time expense norwegian says poached 140 pilots ryanair dublinbased ryanair puts number less 100 ryanair increasing wages pilots based frankfurt berlin order steal staff air berlin de even though insolvent german carrier flies airbus pa jets rather boeings making expensive exercise lufthansas de budget unit eurowings also making bid air berlins experienced pilots mark simpson analyst goodbody stockbrokers said didnt see significant risk ryanair would curb expansion plans pinch facing said hasnt reached crisis point aside air berlin italys alitalia latvias air baltic romanias tarom struggling could shed pilots easing shortage added higher grades pressure felt acutely senior roles according british airline pilots association says around 500 junior members unemployed weve seen huge recruitment drives recent years however recruitment tends experienced pilots said balpa general secretary brian strutton recruitment web site indeedcom said pilot vacancies britain 60 percent harder fill jobs measured number positions still vacant 60 days ryanair boss michael oleary said captains targeted since cancellations 10000 euro signon bonus may got pilot pay little low side told investors ryanairs annual general meeting week insisted problems localized certain parts europe surplus experienced pilots ryanair week also announced wage increases dublin says believes norwegian air trying hire 40 pilots london says pilots targeted number rivals spokesman norwegian air said saw significant competition pilots offering competitive conditions prospect flying destinations southeast asia united states ryanair could match easyjet declined comment whether struggling attract senior pilots job satisfaction ryanair widely regarded pay competitive wages senior pilots captains earn 150000180000 euros year first officers get 80000120000 criticized current former staff working conditions way bluntspeaking oleary talks staff pilots often employed via agencies enjoy standard benefits sick pay pensions health insurance oleary insisted agm good relationship pilots said would challenge pilot explain difficult job expressing doubt anyone could fatigued said maximum 18 hours flying per week ryanair gets rating 24 employeereview site glassdoor 40 easyjet always getting better four years ago ryanair berated investors treating customers badly forcing promise oleary stop unnecessarily pissing people launching successful always getting better customer service drive unlike current crisis poor customer service never threatened airlines core operations investors remain skittish shares 55 percent since crisis broke close 1644 euros friday signs pilots using shortage assert ryanair doesnt recognize trade unions staff number bases wrote joint letter management series demands including implementation permanent local contracts local employment law european cockpit association said ryanair may treat staff better well customers always getting better program could applied staff eca secretary general philip von schöppenthau told reuters would certainly welcomed crew contribute success company | 598 |
<p>Africa’s willingness to adapt is why leading brands within it today have the capacity and drive to remain on the cutting edge of global marketplace innovation.</p>
<p>MyBucks recently launched our Initial Public Offering (IPO) on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (FWB), pleasingly fully subscribed and indeed at a particularly intriguing moment in European and no doubt world history.</p>
<p>Germany, long the financial steward of the European Union, faces a challenge in assisting in the transition process for Great Britain’s departure from the EU, while holding the tiller from any socioeconomic squall that may rear from ‘Brexit’.</p>
<p>Yet while confidence behind European ‘interconnectedness’ may at times such as these damper and no doubt only briefly, globalization in practice has never been more effervescent. And while we may have become the first African-focused Financial Technology company to list on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange to exemplify this, it is African ‘FinTech’, now reaching Germany and the world, which truly symbolizes globalization at its core; for the dynamic, malleable and importantly, sustainable development boons driven by FinTech in Africa will be connecting our citizenries, creating jobs, empowering the next generation to achieve a confidence and independence they have never experienced before and will be ushering in a new era of opportunity on the continent and throughout a shifting marketplace in the world to come.</p>
<p>As investors now pivot toward emerging market opportunities, FinTech is booming—global investment in the industry has tripled over the last half decade and will double again, to an estimated $6 Billion by 2018—this, according to a recent report by Accenture and the Partnership Fund of New York City.</p>
<p>Making our mark on the Frankfurt Exchange was ideal for MyBucks—Germany has long held a reputation for strong governance and corporate adherence to rule-of-law, which will in turn enhance our reputation abroad, creating a measurable and transparent valuation of the company; an incentive for further investment. We will use the capital raised from said investment to finance our technology platforms and accordingly seek out new growth opportunities.</p>
<p>Similar enterprises such as ours have successfully listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and have been able to grow their businesses accordingly and quite substantially by doing so.</p>
<p>However, our offering is not just for the intrepid investor. We view Africa as a greenfield prospect and proven hub for FinTech; a bountiful market for the industry to flourish. We say this out of heritage, in-part due to the continent’s long-regaled and endowed resources but also, for new offerings such as ours, which leverages the power of digital network to make financial services available for Africa.</p>
<p>Perhaps contrary to popular belief, although 88 percent of Africans didn’t have a bank account according to 2015 research statistics, let alone a credit card—they did have a mobile phone. And this makes services like ours not only relevant, but also essential.</p>
<p>Conversely and as preamble, it is perhaps Africa that faces the harshest of conditions with regard to doing business on a day-to-day basis. This is not due to oft-misguided stigmas of bureaucracy, the cumbersome speed bumps inherent in working through political power constellations that may vary by country, but in the lack of fundamental and sheer access for the ‘unbanked’ to change their present-day situation, literally reach an institution, open an account and provide for their families. Many of our subscribers live in rural areas only today ‘connecting’ in a manner ‘2.0’ and many also were at one time considered ‘uncreditworthy’ because of a lack of credit history and access to financial services.</p>
<p>And yet, in no rival emerging marketplace do we see such a backdrop of resilience amidst adversity; for that is Africa personified.</p>
<p>So that’s where we have chosen to step in—‘Banking the Unbanked’, MyBucks, along with our strategic partnerships with non-governmental organization Opportunity International (also a first in FinTech) will be bringing financial inclusion to all of Africa as a first task at hand. We are a multipronged outfit that encapsulates consumer finance solutions in the digital era to the fullest (through our subsidiary enterprises: GetBucks, GetBanked and GetSure). And together, we have replicated our model effectively and with an aerial-methodology within the countries where we operate.&#160; For, as globalization and the innovations from it can today connect the farmer to the manufacturer to the point of sale, so too can mobile banking penetration allow for individual success and at the same time and at a national level, proper taxation to befit governmental infrastructure and growth.</p>
<p>We tend to believe our model is particularly unique. For example, we remain the first, and currently only FinTech business in Africa to make use of credit technology, supported by an in-house Artificial Intelligence (AI) system; whether or not someone can pay back a loan is arguably the most critical role that AI can play and our cloud-based proprietary software solution (called FinCloud) is both an interface to our customers, as well as to our internal loan management system, able to access our customers’ bank statements and bank accounts upon application date, to better assess creditworthiness.</p>
<p>It is in the ease of doing business via FinTech breakthroughs such as this, coupled with aligning ourselves with long-ingrained African ingenuity that makes us truly stand out. This belief is buttressed by greater foreign interest in the opportunities that Africa provides on the whole; those that have allowed for frenetic intercontinental growth and for us to arrive at the Frankfurt Exchange more than prepared for the road ahead.</p>
<p>We understand the challenges before us and the molds that need to be broken; our hurdles mirror that of Africa at a misinformed first glance, with many international bodies still remaining reluctant to play a role in our ‘next generation realization’. I liken this trepidation to that of an African race-car built for the Formula 1: no matter the modernity of the engine or the crack team of innovators and engineers behind it, there remains a lingering westernized perception of it being an ‘African car’ and thusly operating on an uneven playing field.</p>
<p>We look to right this misnomer; we are standing up to traditional norms and institutions at home in Africa and abroad as a force to be reckoned with from within the industry and in a new era of ever globalizing business.</p>
<p>As Germany hosts the potential to steward in this present state of geopolitical affairs following ‘Brexit’, Africa so, too, continues to make its mark in foreign centers of power as an onus of responsibility. We will not waste the opportunity allocated through globalization, yet we need repay no one for our rise to the forefront of the modern marketplace.</p>
<p>FinTech’s ability to adapt will allow the industry to thrive in the traditional financial sector, across the continent and around the world, despite recent, perhaps seismic shifts; Africa’s willingness to adapt is why leading brands within it today have the capacity and drive to remain on the cutting edge of global marketplace innovation.</p>
<p>German philosopher Friedrich Nietsche once stated that “necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation”. While we understand the need for empowerment through connectivity across Africa, we interpret the application for Financial Technology as one beyond any brick and mortar institution and any one country, but malleable to reinvigorate the banking sector and guide it through.</p>
<p>We look forward to playing our role in captaining this industry as it integrates further in to the traditional financial sector, amidst calm or choppy weather alike.</p> | false | 1 | africas willingness adapt leading brands within today capacity drive remain cutting edge global marketplace innovation mybucks recently launched initial public offering ipo frankfurt stock exchange fwb pleasingly fully subscribed indeed particularly intriguing moment european doubt world history germany long financial steward european union faces challenge assisting transition process great britains departure eu holding tiller socioeconomic squall may rear brexit yet confidence behind european interconnectedness may times damper doubt briefly globalization practice never effervescent may become first africanfocused financial technology company list frankfurt stock exchange exemplify african fintech reaching germany world truly symbolizes globalization core dynamic malleable importantly sustainable development boons driven fintech africa connecting citizenries creating jobs empowering next generation achieve confidence independence never experienced ushering new era opportunity continent throughout shifting marketplace world come investors pivot toward emerging market opportunities fintech boomingglobal investment industry tripled last half decade double estimated 6 billion 2018this according recent report accenture partnership fund new york city making mark frankfurt exchange ideal mybucksgermany long held reputation strong governance corporate adherence ruleoflaw turn enhance reputation abroad creating measurable transparent valuation company incentive investment use capital raised said investment finance technology platforms accordingly seek new growth opportunities similar enterprises successfully listed frankfurt stock exchange able grow businesses accordingly quite substantially however offering intrepid investor view africa greenfield prospect proven hub fintech bountiful market industry flourish say heritage inpart due continents longregaled endowed resources also new offerings leverages power digital network make financial services available africa perhaps contrary popular belief although 88 percent africans didnt bank account according 2015 research statistics let alone credit cardthey mobile phone makes services like relevant also essential conversely preamble perhaps africa faces harshest conditions regard business daytoday basis due oftmisguided stigmas bureaucracy cumbersome speed bumps inherent working political power constellations may vary country lack fundamental sheer access unbanked change presentday situation literally reach institution open account provide families many subscribers live rural areas today connecting manner 20 many also one time considered uncreditworthy lack credit history access financial services yet rival emerging marketplace see backdrop resilience amidst adversity africa personified thats chosen step inbanking unbanked mybucks along strategic partnerships nongovernmental organization opportunity international also first fintech bringing financial inclusion africa first task hand multipronged outfit encapsulates consumer finance solutions digital era fullest subsidiary enterprises getbucks getbanked getsure together replicated model effectively aerialmethodology within countries operate160 globalization innovations today connect farmer manufacturer point sale mobile banking penetration allow individual success time national level proper taxation befit governmental infrastructure growth tend believe model particularly unique example remain first currently fintech business africa make use credit technology supported inhouse artificial intelligence ai system whether someone pay back loan arguably critical role ai play cloudbased proprietary software solution called fincloud interface customers well internal loan management system able access customers bank statements bank accounts upon application date better assess creditworthiness ease business via fintech breakthroughs coupled aligning longingrained african ingenuity makes us truly stand belief buttressed greater foreign interest opportunities africa provides whole allowed frenetic intercontinental growth us arrive frankfurt exchange prepared road ahead understand challenges us molds need broken hurdles mirror africa misinformed first glance many international bodies still remaining reluctant play role next generation realization liken trepidation african racecar built formula 1 matter modernity engine crack team innovators engineers behind remains lingering westernized perception african car thusly operating uneven playing field look right misnomer standing traditional norms institutions home africa abroad force reckoned within industry new era ever globalizing business germany hosts potential steward present state geopolitical affairs following brexit africa continues make mark foreign centers power onus responsibility waste opportunity allocated globalization yet need repay one rise forefront modern marketplace fintechs ability adapt allow industry thrive traditional financial sector across continent around world despite recent perhaps seismic shifts africas willingness adapt leading brands within today capacity drive remain cutting edge global marketplace innovation german philosopher friedrich nietsche stated necessity established fact interpretation understand need empowerment connectivity across africa interpret application financial technology one beyond brick mortar institution one country malleable reinvigorate banking sector guide look forward playing role captaining industry integrates traditional financial sector amidst calm choppy weather alike | 677 |
<p>WASHINGTON — Americans awoke Saturday to learn that bickering politicians in Washington had failed to keep their government in business, halting all but the most essential operations and marring the one-year anniversary of President Donald Trump's inauguration.</p>
<p>It was a striking display of Washington dysfunction, and the finger-pointing came quickly. Trump tweeted that Democrats "wanted to give me a nice present" to mark the start of his second year in office.</p>
<p>The Republican-controlled Congress scheduled an unusual weekend session to begin considering a three-week version of a short-term spending measure and to broadcast to the people they serve that they were at work as the closure commenced. It seemed likely that each side would push for votes aimed at making the other party look culpable for shuttering federal agencies.</p>
<p>The fourth government shutdown in a quarter-century began at the stroke of midnight Friday, last gasp negotiations crumbling when Senate Democrats blocked a four-week budget extension. Behind the scenes, however, leading Republicans and Democrats were trying to work out a compromise to avert a lengthy shutdown.</p>
<p>The closure began at the start of a weekend, so many of the immediate effects will be muted for most Americans. Damage could build quickly if the closure is prolonged. And it comes with no shortage of embarrassment for the president and political risk for both parties, as they wager that voters will punish the other at the ballot box in November.</p>
<p>Trump said Democrats "could have easily made a deal but decided to play Shutdown politics instead." In a series of tweets hours after the shutdown began, the president tried to make the case for Americans to elect more Republicans in November "in order to power through this mess." He noted that there are 51 Republicans in the 100-member Senate, and it often takes 60 votes to advance legislation.</p>
<p>Social Security and most other safety net programs are unaffected by the lapse in federal spending authority. Critical government functions will continue, with uniformed service members, health inspectors and law enforcement officers set to work without pay. But if no deal is brokered before Monday, hundreds of thousands of federal employees will be furloughed.</p>
<p>After hours of closed-door meetings and phone calls, the Senate scheduled its late Friday night vote on a House-passed plan. It gained 50 votes to proceed to 49 against, but 60 were needed to break a Democratic filibuster.</p>
<p>Democrats balked in an effort to pressure on the White House to cut a deal to protect "dreamer" immigrants brought to the country as children and now here illegally — before their legal protection runs out in March.</p>
<p>Democrats are laying fault for the shutdown on Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress and the White House and have struggled with building internal consensus. Republicans are holding Democrats responsible after they declined to provide the votes needed to overcome a filibuster over their desire to force the passage of legislation to protect some 700,000 younger immigrants from deportation.</p>
<p>"Democrats are far more concerned with Illegal Immigrants than they are with our great Military or Safety at our dangerous" border with Mexico, Trump tweeted.</p>
<p>Republicans branded the confrontation a "Schumer shutdown," after New York Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader. He said a "Trump shutdown" was more accurate.</p>
<p>Earlier Friday, Trump had brought Schumer to the White House in hopes of cutting a deal on a short-term spending agreement.</p>
<p>The two New Yorkers, who pride themselves on their negotiating abilities, started talking over cheeseburgers about a larger agreement that would have included greater military spending and money for a southern border wall. But the talks fell apart almost as abruptly as they started.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney predicted a deal would be reached by Monday, when most government offices are to reopen after the weekend.</p>
<p>Trump had been an unreliable negotiator in the weeks leading up to the showdown. Earlier this week he tweeted opposition to the four-week plan, forcing the White House to later affirm his support. He expressed openness to extending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, only to reject a bipartisan proposal. His disparaging remarks about African and Haitian immigrants last week helped derail further negotiations.</p>
<p>Trump had been set to leave Friday afternoon to attend a fundraiser at his Palm Beach, Florida, estate marking the inauguration anniversary but delayed his travel.</p>
<p>The four-week measure would have been the fourth stopgap spending bill since the current budget year started in October. A pile of unfinished Capitol Hill business has been on hold, first as Republicans ironed out last fall's tax bill and now as Democrats insist on progress on immigration. Talks on a budget deal to ease tight spending limits on both the Pentagon and domestic agencies are on hold, as is progress on a huge $80 billion-plus disaster aid bill.</p>
<p>The last shutdown came in 2013. Tea party Republicans, in a strategy not unlike the one Schumer is employing now, sought to use a must-pass budget bill to try to force President Barack Obama to delay implementation of his health care law. At the time, Trump told Fox &amp; Friends that the ultimate blame for a shutdown lies at the top. "I really think the pressure is on the president," he said.</p>
<p>Arguing that Trump's predecessors "weaponized" that shutdown, Mulvaney said his budget office would direct agencies to work to mitigate the impact this time. That position is a striking role-reversal for the conservative former congressman who was one of the architects of the 2013 shutdown over the Affordable Care Act.</p>
<p /> | false | 1 | washington americans awoke saturday learn bickering politicians washington failed keep government business halting essential operations marring oneyear anniversary president donald trumps inauguration striking display washington dysfunction fingerpointing came quickly trump tweeted democrats wanted give nice present mark start second year office republicancontrolled congress scheduled unusual weekend session begin considering threeweek version shortterm spending measure broadcast people serve work closure commenced seemed likely side would push votes aimed making party look culpable shuttering federal agencies fourth government shutdown quartercentury began stroke midnight friday last gasp negotiations crumbling senate democrats blocked fourweek budget extension behind scenes however leading republicans democrats trying work compromise avert lengthy shutdown closure began start weekend many immediate effects muted americans damage could build quickly closure prolonged comes shortage embarrassment president political risk parties wager voters punish ballot box november trump said democrats could easily made deal decided play shutdown politics instead series tweets hours shutdown began president tried make case americans elect republicans november order power mess noted 51 republicans 100member senate often takes 60 votes advance legislation social security safety net programs unaffected lapse federal spending authority critical government functions continue uniformed service members health inspectors law enforcement officers set work without pay deal brokered monday hundreds thousands federal employees furloughed hours closeddoor meetings phone calls senate scheduled late friday night vote housepassed plan gained 50 votes proceed 49 60 needed break democratic filibuster democrats balked effort pressure white house cut deal protect dreamer immigrants brought country children illegally legal protection runs march democrats laying fault shutdown republicans control chambers congress white house struggled building internal consensus republicans holding democrats responsible declined provide votes needed overcome filibuster desire force passage legislation protect 700000 younger immigrants deportation democrats far concerned illegal immigrants great military safety dangerous border mexico trump tweeted republicans branded confrontation schumer shutdown new york chuck schumer democratic leader said trump shutdown accurate earlier friday trump brought schumer white house hopes cutting deal shortterm spending agreement two new yorkers pride negotiating abilities started talking cheeseburgers larger agreement would included greater military spending money southern border wall talks fell apart almost abruptly started nonetheless white house budget director mick mulvaney predicted deal would reached monday government offices reopen weekend trump unreliable negotiator weeks leading showdown earlier week tweeted opposition fourweek plan forcing white house later affirm support expressed openness extending deferred action childhood arrivals program reject bipartisan proposal disparaging remarks african haitian immigrants last week helped derail negotiations trump set leave friday afternoon attend fundraiser palm beach florida estate marking inauguration anniversary delayed travel fourweek measure would fourth stopgap spending bill since current budget year started october pile unfinished capitol hill business hold first republicans ironed last falls tax bill democrats insist progress immigration talks budget deal ease tight spending limits pentagon domestic agencies hold progress huge 80 billionplus disaster aid bill last shutdown came 2013 tea party republicans strategy unlike one schumer employing sought use mustpass budget bill try force president barack obama delay implementation health care law time trump told fox amp friends ultimate blame shutdown lies top really think pressure president said arguing trumps predecessors weaponized shutdown mulvaney said budget office would direct agencies work mitigate impact time position striking rolereversal conservative former congressman one architects 2013 shutdown affordable care act | 538 |
<p>WASHINGTON — America’s ugly and unpredictable presidential election entered its final hours Tuesday, with voters flocking to polls to choose between Democrat Hillary Clinton, hoping to become the first woman to serve as commander in chief, and Republican Donald Trump, the billionaire businessman who tapped into a searing strain of economic populism.</p>
<p>Clinton appeared to have multiple paths to triumph, while Trump needed to prevail in most of the battleground states to secure an upset. Control of the Senate was also at stake, with Democrats needing to net four seats if Clinton wins the White House.</p>
<p>The 45th president will inherit an anxious nation, deeply divided by economic and educational opportunities, race and culture. The economy has rebounded from the depths of recession, though many Americans have yet to benefit. New terror threats from home and abroad have raised security fears.</p>
<p>Clinton asked voters to keep the White House in Democratic hands for a third straight term. She cast herself as heir to President Barack Obama’s legacy and pledged to make good on his unfinished agenda, including passing immigration legislation, tightening restrictions on guns and tweaking his signature health care law.</p>
<p />
<p>“I know how much responsibility goes with this,” Clinton said after voting Tuesday at her local polling station in Chappaqua, New York, with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, at her side. “So many people are counting on the outcome of this election, what it means for our country, and I will do the very best I can if I’m fortunate enough to win today.”</p>
<p>Trump, the New York real estate developer who lives in a gold-plated Manhattan penthouse, forged a striking connection with white, working-class Americans who feel left behind in the changing economy and diversifying country. He cast immigration, both from Latin America and the Middle East, as the root of many problems plaguing the nation and called for building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.</p>
<p>“I see so many hopes and so many dreams out there that didn’t happen, that could have happened, with leadership, with proper leadership,” he said by telephone on Fox News before casting his own ballot in Manhattan. “And people are hurt so badly.”</p>
<p />
<p>Seven in 10 Americans who went to the polls Tuesday said immigrants now in the country illegally should be allowed to stay, while just a quarter said they should be deported. More than half oppose building a border wall, according to preliminary results from the exit poll conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research.</p>
<p>The Republican Party’s tortured relationship with its nominee was evident right up to the end. Former President George W. Bush and wife Laura Bush declined to back Trump, instead selecting “none of the above” when they voted for president, according to spokesman Freddy Ford.</p>
<p>Trump set both parties on edge when he refused to say in the third and final debate whether he would accept the election’s results, citing with no evidence the possibility of a rigged outcome. His statement threatened to undermine a fundamental pillar of American democracy and raised the prospect that his fervent supporters would not view Clinton as a legitimate president if she won.</p>
<p>Asked Tuesday in an interview with Fox News if he would accept the election results, Trump continued to demur, saying “We’re going to see how things play out.”</p>
<p>According to the preliminary exit polls, most Americans who voted had at least a moderate amount of confidence that election ballots would be counted accurately.</p>
<p>Most problems that did pop up at polling places Tuesday appeared to be routine — the kinds of snags that come every four years, including long lines, machines not working properly and issues with ballots or voter rolls.</p>
<p>Even before Tuesday, almost 45 million people had cast ballots for president. Many expressed relief the end was in sight after an election season in which personal attacks often drowned out the issues.</p>
<p>“I’m tired of the mudslinging,” said Laura Schmitt, a 54-year-old Republican from Woodbury, Minnesota, who was voting for Trump. Emetric Whittington, a 51-year-old Democratic mother of three on Chicago’s violence-plagued South Side, agreed: “I can’t wait for this night to be over.”</p>
<p>Clinton has denounced Trump for calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” and promoting a ban on Muslims entering the U.S., and for his long line of remarks about women that culminated in an audio in which he bragged about grabbing their genitals. Trump called his opponent “Crooked Hillary” for her use of a private email server as secretary of state and her complicated ties to the family’s Clinton Foundation.</p>
<p>“I can’t vote for somebody who’s so morally reprehensible,” said Lisa Moore, a 48-year-old Republican from Glen Rock, New Jersey, who picked Clinton. Democrat Charles Ikner of Cross Lanes, West Virginia, opted for Trump, saying it was time for “fresh blood” in the White House.</p>
<p>In the final days, Clinton was buoyed by FBI Director James Comey’s weekend declaration that he wouldn’t recommend criminal charges against her following a new email review. Comey announced the inquiry late last month, sapping Clinton’s surging momentum and threatening Democrats in down-ballot races.</p> | false | 1 | washington americas ugly unpredictable presidential election entered final hours tuesday voters flocking polls choose democrat hillary clinton hoping become first woman serve commander chief republican donald trump billionaire businessman tapped searing strain economic populism clinton appeared multiple paths triumph trump needed prevail battleground states secure upset control senate also stake democrats needing net four seats clinton wins white house 45th president inherit anxious nation deeply divided economic educational opportunities race culture economy rebounded depths recession though many americans yet benefit new terror threats home abroad raised security fears clinton asked voters keep white house democratic hands third straight term cast heir president barack obamas legacy pledged make good unfinished agenda including passing immigration legislation tightening restrictions guns tweaking signature health care law know much responsibility goes clinton said voting tuesday local polling station chappaqua new york husband former president bill clinton side many people counting outcome election means country best im fortunate enough win today trump new york real estate developer lives goldplated manhattan penthouse forged striking connection white workingclass americans feel left behind changing economy diversifying country cast immigration latin america middle east root many problems plaguing nation called building wall along usmexico border see many hopes many dreams didnt happen could happened leadership proper leadership said telephone fox news casting ballot manhattan people hurt badly seven 10 americans went polls tuesday said immigrants country illegally allowed stay quarter said deported half oppose building border wall according preliminary results exit poll conducted associated press television networks edison research republican partys tortured relationship nominee evident right end former president george w bush wife laura bush declined back trump instead selecting none voted president according spokesman freddy ford trump set parties edge refused say third final debate whether would accept elections results citing evidence possibility rigged outcome statement threatened undermine fundamental pillar american democracy raised prospect fervent supporters would view clinton legitimate president asked tuesday interview fox news would accept election results trump continued demur saying going see things play according preliminary exit polls americans voted least moderate amount confidence election ballots would counted accurately problems pop polling places tuesday appeared routine kinds snags come every four years including long lines machines working properly issues ballots voter rolls even tuesday almost 45 million people cast ballots president many expressed relief end sight election season personal attacks often drowned issues im tired mudslinging said laura schmitt 54yearold republican woodbury minnesota voting trump emetric whittington 51yearold democratic mother three chicagos violenceplagued south side agreed cant wait night clinton denounced trump calling mexican immigrants rapists promoting ban muslims entering us long line remarks women culminated audio bragged grabbing genitals trump called opponent crooked hillary use private email server secretary state complicated ties familys clinton foundation cant vote somebody whos morally reprehensible said lisa moore 48yearold republican glen rock new jersey picked clinton democrat charles ikner cross lanes west virginia opted trump saying time fresh blood white house final days clinton buoyed fbi director james comeys weekend declaration wouldnt recommend criminal charges following new email review comey announced inquiry late last month sapping clintons surging momentum threatening democrats downballot races | 515 |
<p>If five U.S. Supreme Court justices can concoct a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage, what else might they impose? Just about anything on the Left’s agenda.</p>
<p>Until barely a decade ago, the laws of every state had always defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman. That was true when the Constitution was first established, and it was true when the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868. The intelligent citizen will reasonably wonder how five Supreme Court justices could have ruled two weeks ago that these state laws violate the 14th Amendment and that there is a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage.</p>
<p>The short answer: Those five justices were just making it up.</p>
<p>Oh, to be sure, Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion tries to dress things up in the sort of legal-sounding jargon designed to mystify non-lawyers. But Kennedy and the four liberals who joined his opinion are all supporters of the misnamed “living Constitution” approach to constitutional decision-making.</p>
<p>Proponents of the “living Constitution” claim that freewheeling judicial authority to invent new constitutional rights is somehow needed to adapt our country to modern circumstances. But that claim ignores the broad play that the Constitution gives to the democratic processes to revise laws in light of changed conditions and perceptions. (Witness, for example, the dozen or so states that legislatively enacted same-sex marriage.) Even worse, by entrenching in the Constitution whatever rights five justices think important, living-constitutionalism deprives future generations of Americans of the very flexibility that it falsely claims to advance.</p>
<p>At bottom, the “living Constitution” approach is nothing more than an excuse for five justices to indulge and impose their own policy preferences in the guise of newly discovered constitutional rights. As one astute critic has put it, the “living” Constitution is really a “zombie” Constitution, with the corpse of the real Constitution reanimated with the Left’s favored positions.</p>
<p>It is instructive to observe how radically unstable living-constitutionalism is. In 1972, two gay activists filed an appeal in the Supreme Court claiming that a state law defining marriage as a male-female union violated the federal Constitution. In dismissing the appeal “for want of a substantial federal question,” a unanimous Supreme Court treated the claim as so frivolous, so clearly devoid of merit, that there was no point in bothering with briefing and oral argument. Among the justices who joined in that dismissal were three of the most aggressive left-wing living-constitutionalists ever — William O. Douglas, William Brennan, and Thurgood Marshall.</p>
<p>Indeed, a mere decade ago, a living-constitutionalist law professor who supports same-sex marriage — Cass Sunstein, later the regulatory affairs czar in the Obama White House — testified to Congress that it was inconceivable that the Supreme Court would decide there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.</p>
<p>How is it that five living-constitutionalist justices would suddenly find compelling and meritorious the same claim that their more extreme ideological predecessors regarded as frivolous four decades ago? There’s no doubt that the public’s position on issues related to homosexuality changed considerably over that period, and those changes would reasonably be expected to be reflected in revised laws and policies. But the 14th&#160;Amendment did not change one iota</p>
<p>What happened, I would submit, is simple: Same-sex marriage rose high on the Left’s agenda. Five justices decided that it was a good idea. And they figured they had ample political cover to impose it on the American people as a supposed constitutional right.</p>
<p>One other event in the years between 1972 and 2015 deserves mention: the successful smear campaign against President Reagan’s nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987. Folks on the Left harshly opposed Bork because he was an eloquent critic of living-constitutionalism and, especially, because they feared, with good reason, that he would vote to overturn the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade that invented a constitutional right to abortion. After the defeat of the Bork nomination, Reagan ended up appointing Kennedy to the vacancy. And, among his many living-constitutionalist extravagances, Kennedy wrote 5-4 majority opinions retaining Roe (in 1992), striking down the federal Defense of Marriage Act (two years ago), and, now, inventing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.</p>
<p>The broader lesson for the long-term, I would submit, is that there is no rewriting of the Constitution that is beyond the bounds of the possible if something matters to the Left and there are five or more living-constitutionalist justices on the Court. Indeed, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Justice Stephen Breyer illustrated the point in another case two weeks ago, in which, after more than 20 years each on the Court, they suddenly called into question the constitutionality of the death penalty.</p>
<p>The list of possible living-constitutionalist innovations is endless: Voting rights for illegal aliens; taxpayer funding of abortion and of sex-change operations; mandatory equalized spending for public-school districts; a right to welfare payments above the poverty line; and a right to have multiple spouses.</p>
<p>Other innovations might also severely impair existing rights. Legal academics are enamored of restrictions on so-called “hate speech”— an amorphous category that is already expanding to include criticism of racial preferences or use of male pronouns to refer to a man who thinks he’s a woman. The First Amendment, as long construed, would bar the government from imposing such restrictions. But that’s no barrier against five willful justices. Ditto for a robust understanding of religious liberty and for Second Amendment rights to firearms.</p>
<p>One good (if admittedly imperfect) way to protect against these threats is to elect a president in 2016 who is determined to appoint textualist justices rather than living-constitutionalists. Given the ideological orientations of the two parties, only a Republican president might genuinely have that commitment. Four of the sitting justices are between 77 and 82 years old, and three of those four — Kennedy, Ginsburg, and Breyer — are living-constitutionalists. If the next president is able to replace these justices with sound nominees, then our Constitution might be rescued from yet further assaults.</p>
<p>Edward Whelan is president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a regular contributor to National Review Online’s Bench Memos blog. He is a former law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia.</p> | false | 1 | five us supreme court justices concoct federal constitutional right samesex marriage else might impose anything lefts agenda barely decade ago laws every state always defined marriage union man woman true constitution first established true 14th amendment ratified 1868 intelligent citizen reasonably wonder five supreme court justices could ruled two weeks ago state laws violate 14th amendment federal constitutional right samesex marriage short answer five justices making oh sure justice anthony kennedys majority opinion tries dress things sort legalsounding jargon designed mystify nonlawyers kennedy four liberals joined opinion supporters misnamed living constitution approach constitutional decisionmaking proponents living constitution claim freewheeling judicial authority invent new constitutional rights somehow needed adapt country modern circumstances claim ignores broad play constitution gives democratic processes revise laws light changed conditions perceptions witness example dozen states legislatively enacted samesex marriage even worse entrenching constitution whatever rights five justices think important livingconstitutionalism deprives future generations americans flexibility falsely claims advance bottom living constitution approach nothing excuse five justices indulge impose policy preferences guise newly discovered constitutional rights one astute critic put living constitution really zombie constitution corpse real constitution reanimated lefts favored positions instructive observe radically unstable livingconstitutionalism 1972 two gay activists filed appeal supreme court claiming state law defining marriage malefemale union violated federal constitution dismissing appeal want substantial federal question unanimous supreme court treated claim frivolous clearly devoid merit point bothering briefing oral argument among justices joined dismissal three aggressive leftwing livingconstitutionalists ever william douglas william brennan thurgood marshall indeed mere decade ago livingconstitutionalist law professor supports samesex marriage cass sunstein later regulatory affairs czar obama white house testified congress inconceivable supreme court would decide constitutional right samesex marriage five livingconstitutionalist justices would suddenly find compelling meritorious claim extreme ideological predecessors regarded frivolous four decades ago theres doubt publics position issues related homosexuality changed considerably period changes would reasonably expected reflected revised laws policies 14th160amendment change one iota happened would submit simple samesex marriage rose high lefts agenda five justices decided good idea figured ample political cover impose american people supposed constitutional right one event years 1972 2015 deserves mention successful smear campaign president reagans nomination judge robert h bork supreme court 1987 folks left harshly opposed bork eloquent critic livingconstitutionalism especially feared good reason would vote overturn 1973 decision roe v wade invented constitutional right abortion defeat bork nomination reagan ended appointing kennedy vacancy among many livingconstitutionalist extravagances kennedy wrote 54 majority opinions retaining roe 1992 striking federal defense marriage act two years ago inventing constitutional right samesex marriage broader lesson longterm would submit rewriting constitution beyond bounds possible something matters left five livingconstitutionalist justices court indeed justice ruth bader ginsburg justice stephen breyer illustrated point another case two weeks ago 20 years court suddenly called question constitutionality death penalty list possible livingconstitutionalist innovations endless voting rights illegal aliens taxpayer funding abortion sexchange operations mandatory equalized spending publicschool districts right welfare payments poverty line right multiple spouses innovations might also severely impair existing rights legal academics enamored restrictions socalled hate speech amorphous category already expanding include criticism racial preferences use male pronouns refer man thinks hes woman first amendment long construed would bar government imposing restrictions thats barrier five willful justices ditto robust understanding religious liberty second amendment rights firearms one good admittedly imperfect way protect threats elect president 2016 determined appoint textualist justices rather livingconstitutionalists given ideological orientations two parties republican president might genuinely commitment four sitting justices 77 82 years old three four kennedy ginsburg breyer livingconstitutionalists next president able replace justices sound nominees constitution might rescued yet assaults edward whelan president ethics public policy center regular contributor national review onlines bench memos blog former law clerk justice antonin scalia | 607 |
<p>42 Up, the sixth in Michael Apted’s fascinating series of documentaries about a group of English schoolchildren first introduced to us at the age of seven in 1964, is the best yet. In a way this was predictable, since at 42 the sense of youthful expectation in which anything still seems possible has at last dissipated and, in most lives, a permanent course has been set which may complement or contrast with one’s earlier promise but which is unlikely to change very much henceforth. At the least, Act II has begun and the ultimate shape of the drama has been made clear, and in most cases the peripeteia of life has already taken place—the marriage, the divorce, the move, the career change—from which all else will follow. Apted’s subjects know this—as nearly all of us do by the age of 42—and so he catches them at the moment when they are facing up to the reality of what they have made of their lives so far.</p>
<p>It is a difficult and emotional moment and makes for absolutely riveting cinema—which, by the way, is not at all of a kind that Apted expected when he started out on this extraordinary journey 35 years ago. Then, he thought he was going to be telling us something about the British class system, a subject that was almost an obsession for British intellectuals of the 1960s. That is why he chose half his subjects from posh private schools and half from children’s homes. As we might have expected, the posh kids now tend to be lawyers and professors while the non-posh ones tend to be taxi drivers and secretaries, but what stands out about them in the aggregate is how little interest or importance attaches to the class differences by this stage of their lives. No one is either immensely rich or desperately poor. There is more a sense of guilt among the posh than of resentment among the unposh, but both are much more concerned about the opportunities they have missed than those that society has or has not given them.</p>
<p>Above all, there is the common bond provided by the amount of hard living nearly all the subjects have invested in their marriages, or other form of love lives, and childbearing. They have now arrived at the state of middle-aged wisdom when you realize, as one of them says, that “Until you go through it on your own, you never realize what hell you put your parents through.” Tony, the unforgettably cheery Cockney taxi driver sets the tone for the two hours and more to follow by wryly noting that “I must say, it’s not easy being married.” He, we learn, has been detected in infidelity and, with a typically robust sense of moral consequence, notes that “when you get caught with your hand in the till, you pay the price.” The expression on the face of ’er indoors, his dour and plump wife Deb, who insists she would have left the bum if it hadn’t been for the children, tells us all we need to know about the price he is paying.</p>
<p>And yet Deb, whom we also see in happier times with Tony from the earlier films, also says that “there is still something there” with Tony—and we can believe her. Altogether, there are more happy couples than unhappy, it seems, and Bruce, who at seven wanted to be a missionary and “teach people who are not civilized to be more or less good” and now teaches the children of immigrants in a Catholic girls’ school in the East End of London, sums it up when he says with seeming resignation that “Middle-aged content is the best description” of his life at 42. Oddly, he has come to this state of mind later than almost anyone else. He only married for the first time last year, to a teaching colleague called Penny, and even his teaching job is relatively new. At 35 he had been in Bangladesh, living something close to the “missionary” life he had projected for himself at seven. Now he talks about doing good by working toward “a more harmonious, multicultural society” and staying in the classroom instead of moving up into an administrative position. Penny tells us that “He’s the nicest person I’ve ever met; just someone you can rely on the whole time.”</p>
<p>This assessment is borne out by what we see of his friendship with Neil, the troubled young man whom we remember living in a London squat, a derelict trailer in the north of England and a council estate in Shetland in earlier films in the series. Now Neil is back in London, where he has been able to get back on his feet (as much as, probably, he ever will be on his feet) after staying with Bruce for two months. “He’s been a good, loyal friend,” says Neil, who is shown giving a blessing at Bruce and Penny’s wedding. It is the only friendship among Apted’s subjects, yet it is not exactly an ordinary friendship either. Neil is a damaged personality, whom we see in earlier films describing himself as “eccentric,” saying that he would cut his throat if he had to live in the suburbs and objecting strenuously to the “horrible question” of what he thinks he might be doing in another seven years. At 28 we see him answering the question, “Do you worry about your sanity?” with a truculent: “Other people sometimes worry about it.” Now he is asked, “Do you sometimes think you’re going mad?” by confiding: “I don’t think it, I know it.”</p>
<p>But, he swiftly adds, “I don’t like the word ‘mad.’,” and adds that he has never been happier. In fact, though he is still living on the dole (as he has done all his life), he has also managed to get himself elected as an unpaid, Liberal-Democratic member of the Hackney council where he feels useful for perhaps the first time in his life. How strange to hear this man, who seems to have spent most of his adult life in a state of depression, say that “the most enjoyable thing in life is looking to the future” ! Yet he also adds that “I always told myself that I would never have children”—for fear that they would inherit his tendency to unhappiness. After looking like the odd man out in so many of the earlier films, Neil with his odd combination of hope and despair now offers to our view a kind of summing up of all the subjects’ state of mind in early middle age.</p>
<p>Now, the odd ones out are John and Charles, two of a trio first encountered at their posh prep school in 1964 who have declined to take any further part in the series—though one of them, Charles, is himself a producer of documentaries for British television. The third, Andrew, is perfectly amiable and cooperative, a prosperous lawyer with a charming wife and children, but he, too, seems somewhat uncomfortable in front of the camera. Perhaps it is because of the un-Britishness of this public inquiry into people’s private lives—or perhaps it is because the difficulty of facing up to what you have become at 42 is particularly difficult for the privileged, who have had more opportunities to miss. We see a clip of John from earlier in the series foreshadowing his later exit from it as he tells how he “bitterly resents” what to him has become “every seven years a little pill of poison.” Such an attitude is entirely understandable. How many of us would willingly submit to such a pitiless assessment of our more or less pitiable lives? We must just be grateful that so many of Apted’s kids still do.</p> | false | 1 | 42 sixth michael apteds fascinating series documentaries group english schoolchildren first introduced us age seven 1964 best yet way predictable since 42 sense youthful expectation anything still seems possible last dissipated lives permanent course set may complement contrast ones earlier promise unlikely change much henceforth least act ii begun ultimate shape drama made clear cases peripeteia life already taken placethe marriage divorce move career changefrom else follow apteds subjects know thisas nearly us age 42and catches moment facing reality made lives far difficult emotional moment makes absolutely riveting cinemawhich way kind apted expected started extraordinary journey 35 years ago thought going telling us something british class system subject almost obsession british intellectuals 1960s chose half subjects posh private schools half childrens homes might expected posh kids tend lawyers professors nonposh ones tend taxi drivers secretaries stands aggregate little interest importance attaches class differences stage lives one either immensely rich desperately poor sense guilt among posh resentment among unposh much concerned opportunities missed society given common bond provided amount hard living nearly subjects invested marriages form love lives childbearing arrived state middleaged wisdom realize one says go never realize hell put parents tony unforgettably cheery cockney taxi driver sets tone two hours follow wryly noting must say easy married learn detected infidelity typically robust sense moral consequence notes get caught hand till pay price expression face er indoors dour plump wife deb insists would left bum hadnt children tells us need know price paying yet deb also see happier times tony earlier films also says still something tonyand believe altogether happy couples unhappy seems bruce seven wanted missionary teach people civilized less good teaches children immigrants catholic girls school east end london sums says seeming resignation middleaged content best description life 42 oddly come state mind later almost anyone else married first time last year teaching colleague called penny even teaching job relatively new 35 bangladesh living something close missionary life projected seven talks good working toward harmonious multicultural society staying classroom instead moving administrative position penny tells us hes nicest person ive ever met someone rely whole time assessment borne see friendship neil troubled young man remember living london squat derelict trailer north england council estate shetland earlier films series neil back london able get back feet much probably ever feet staying bruce two months hes good loyal friend says neil shown giving blessing bruce pennys wedding friendship among apteds subjects yet exactly ordinary friendship either neil damaged personality see earlier films describing eccentric saying would cut throat live suburbs objecting strenuously horrible question thinks might another seven years 28 see answering question worry sanity truculent people sometimes worry asked sometimes think youre going mad confiding dont think know swiftly adds dont like word mad adds never happier fact though still living dole done life also managed get elected unpaid liberaldemocratic member hackney council feels useful perhaps first time life strange hear man seems spent adult life state depression say enjoyable thing life looking future yet also adds always told would never childrenfor fear would inherit tendency unhappiness looking like odd man many earlier films neil odd combination hope despair offers view kind summing subjects state mind early middle age odd ones john charles two trio first encountered posh prep school 1964 declined take part seriesthough one charles producer documentaries british television third andrew perfectly amiable cooperative prosperous lawyer charming wife children seems somewhat uncomfortable front camera perhaps unbritishness public inquiry peoples private livesor perhaps difficulty facing become 42 particularly difficult privileged opportunities miss see clip john earlier series foreshadowing later exit tells bitterly resents become every seven years little pill poison attitude entirely understandable many us would willingly submit pitiless assessment less pitiable lives must grateful many apteds kids still | 621 |
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<p>“Before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived…We are a generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and gun barrel, we shall not be able to plant a tree or build a house.”</p>
<p>— Moshe Dayan,&#160;Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff,&#160; <a href="http://imeu.net/news/article001252.shtml" type="external">speaking</a> at the funeral of an Israeli farmer killed by a Palestinian in April 1956</p>
<p>The public debate over the Israeli&#160; <a href="http://bdsmovement.net/" type="external">Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions</a> (BDS) campaign was reignited recently with the&#160; <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/major-theaters-raise-curtain-across-green-line-1.310040" type="external">news</a> that the&#160; <a href="http://www.fmep.org/settlement_info/settlement-info-and-tables/stats-data/settlements-in-the-west-bank-1" type="external">illegal West Bank colony</a> of Ariel would soon be opening its newly-constructed, multi-million dollar cultural center and would host performances by several of Israel’s leading theater companies in its auditorium, built — tragically — by the very Palestinian construction workers that Israel has occupied and dispossessed. The announcement marked the first time these notable Israeli drama groups would be performing outside of the&#160; <a href="http://www.mideastweb.org/1949armistice.htm" type="external">1949 Armistice Line</a> in Israeli-occupied Palestine.</p>
<p>Within days of the report, over 50 Israeli&#160; <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israeli-theater-actors-refuse-to-perform-at-new-west-bank-cultural-center-1.310314" type="external">actors</a>, directors, playwrights, and producers had signed onto a letter addressed to the boards of Israel’s repertory theaters&#160; <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3944791,00.html" type="external">declaring</a> their&#160; <a href="http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2010/08/27/israeli-actors-refuse-to-perform-in-settlements/" type="external">refusal</a> to perform in Ariel, which is the fourth largest settlement in the West Bank. The letter stated:</p>
<p>We wish to express our disgust with the theater’s board’s plans to perform in the new auditorium in Ariel. The actors among us hereby declare that we will refuse to perform in Ariel, as well as in any other settlement. We urge the boards to hold their activity within the sovereign borders of the State of Israel within the Green Line.</p>
<p>Condemnation and outrage were quick to come from the Israeli government, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu&#160; <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/netanyahu-state-should-not-fund-any-theater-that-boycotts-ariel-1.310939" type="external">criticizing</a> what he called the “international delegitimization assault” on Israel through academic, cultural, and economic boycotts and&#160; <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3945238,00.html" type="external">stating</a>, “The last thing we need now is an attempt of boycotts from within.” Other ministers chimed in with their own, often fascist, statements, all implicitly (some explicitly) treating the&#160; <a href="http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=38589" type="external">militarized</a> and&#160; <a href="http://www.merip.org/mero/mero070804.html" type="external">messianic</a> Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank as part of Israel, which they are not. (Though, this should hardly be surprising considering that Netanyahu himself&#160; <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=167225" type="external">referred</a> to Ariel — with a straight face and utter contempt for international law — as the “capital of Samaria” and an “indisputable” part of Israel during a visit to the colony early this year. Additionally, Israel’s&#160; <a href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090413_israels_racist_in_chief/" type="external">racist, child-beating</a> Foreign Minister&#160; <a href="http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2006/10/27/a-jewish-hitler/" type="external">Avigdor Lieberman</a>, who openly calls for the&#160; <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5874.shtml" type="external">ethnic cleansing</a> of&#160; <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/a-lite-plan-for-the-enlightened-voter-1.183348" type="external">Palestinians</a>, lives in the illegal West Bank settlement of Nokdim.)</p>
<p>Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz&#160; <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3945238,00.html" type="external">called</a> the boycott letter “unthinkable” and “a case of unfounded hatred,” before suggesting that the government withdraw funding from theater companies which refuse to perform in Ariel. He also expressed his desire for the dissenting performers to be fired. “I hope that those who fail to fulfill their contracts will be removed from the theater,” he said, continuing, “There’s a limit to everything.”&#160; Everything, that is, according to Steinitz, except decades upon decades of&#160; <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/may/22/comment.israelandthepalestinians" type="external">land theft</a> and <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/human-rights-report-west-bank-situation-reminiscent-of-apartheid-regime-in-south-africa-1.259009" type="external">apartheid</a>.</p>
<p>Science and Technology Minister Daniel Hershkowitz, regretful of “the fact that people mix culture with politics,” called the boycott “inappropriate” and scolded one of the signatories for not serving in the Israeli military. It can be assumed that Hershkowitz doesn’t find it&#160;inappropriate for Israel to use its science and technology to&#160; <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/shaaban08312009.html" type="external">harvest</a> and <a href="http://www.wrmea.com/component/content/article/321-2009-november/6602-israeli-organ-trafficking-and-theft-from-moldova-to-palestine.html" type="external">traffic</a> <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israel-police-arrest-suspect-in-human-organ-trafficking-scam-1.305312" type="external">human</a> organs and&#160; <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3949384,00.html" type="external">spy</a> on the telephone calls and emails of “governments, international organizations, foreign companies, political groups and individuals” in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Europe.</p>
<p>Echoing Hershkowitz, the mayor of Ariel, Ron Nachman&#160; <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3944791,00.html" type="external">claimed</a>, “Culture has nothing to do with politics. If the actors and artists want to deal with politics, let them go to the Knesset. The vileness, baseness and hypocrisy of those who work in culture and call on a boycott of us, is intolerable,” while Naftali Bennett, the Director-General of the Yesha Council which speaks collectively for the municipal organizations of illegal West Bank settlements (which is&#160;all of them), blamed the motion on the “unfounded hatred and factionalism” that have historically affected the Jewish people. A counter-campaign by a group called&#160; <a href="http://www.sos-israel.com/index.asp?siteLang=2" type="external">Our Land of Israel</a> declared that the “liberals and enlightened” are “always on the Arabs’ side,” called the letter’s signers “traitors,” and suggested these enemies of Israel should perform in Gaza.</p>
<p>In one of the more ironic condemnations, Tel Aviv mayor Ron Huldai opined, “Those who work in a theater financed with public funds cannot refuse to perform in places decided by the theater’s management,” and expanded on his broader belief that, “A person who is part of the public system and works must respect the management’s decisions.” One wonders if Huldai extends this responsibility to Nazi soldiers and concentration camp guards who were “just following orders.” Perhaps he should bone up on his knowledge of the&#160; <a href="http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/FULL/390?OpenDocument" type="external">Nuremburg Principles</a>, the fourth of which affirms,</p>
<p>The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.</p>
<p>The Israeli signatories of the boycott letter are clearly better versed in international law than the mayor of Tel Aviv. Citing both Article 49 of the&#160; <a href="http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/7c4d08d9b287a42141256739003e636b/6756482d86146898c125641e004aa3c5" type="external">Fourth Geneva Convention</a> (“The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”) and the very first&#160; <a href="http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/FULL/390?OpenDocument" type="external">Nuremberg Principal</a> (“Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment.”), Israeli dramaturgist Vardit Shalfi, one of the letter’s initiators, clearly&#160; <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3944791,00.html" type="external">explained</a>,</p>
<p>Ariel is not a legitimate community, and as such, is against international law and international treaties that the State of Israel has signed. This means anyone performing there would be considered a criminal according to international law. The theater’s boards should inform their actors that there are apartheid roads for Jews only that lead into the settlement of Ariel. The moment we perform there, we are giving legitimization to this settlement’s existence.</p>
<p>Despite the aggressive condemnation (including the&#160; <a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2010/09/israel-actors-threaten-settlement-boycott-lawmaker-disrupts-play-in-protest.html" type="external">heckling</a> of two actors who signed the letter by an Israeli parliamentarian and his aide during the performance of a play in Tel Aviv), the boycott quickly received support from influential sectors of Israeli society, as well as internationally. By the following week, over&#160; <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/150-academics-artists-back-actors-boycott-of-settlement-arts-center-1.311149" type="external">150 Israeli academics</a>, including professors Zeev Sternhell, Shlomo Sand, and Neve Gordon, signed a letter in solidarity with the Ariel boycott which states, “We will not take part in any kind of cultural activity beyond the Green Line, take part in discussions and seminars, or lecture in any kind of academic setting in these settlements.” In another supportive statement signed by several dozen noted Israeli authors David Grossman, A.B. Yehoshua, and Amos Oz, the signatories warn that “legitimization and acceptance of the settler enterprise cause critical damage to Israel’s chances of achieving a peace accord with its Palestinian neighbors.”</p>
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<p /> | false | 1 | eyes turn homestead land villages forefathers livedwe generation settlers without steel helmet gun barrel shall able plant tree build house moshe dayan160israel defense forces chief staff160 speaking funeral israeli farmer killed palestinian april 1956 public debate israeli160 boycott divestment sanctions bds campaign reignited recently the160 news the160 illegal west bank colony ariel would soon opening newlyconstructed multimillion dollar cultural center would host performances several israels leading theater companies auditorium built tragically palestinian construction workers israel occupied dispossessed announcement marked first time notable israeli drama groups would performing outside the160 1949 armistice line israelioccupied palestine within days report 50 israeli160 actors directors playwrights producers signed onto letter addressed boards israels repertory theaters160 declaring their160 refusal perform ariel fourth largest settlement west bank letter stated wish express disgust theaters boards plans perform new auditorium ariel actors among us hereby declare refuse perform ariel well settlement urge boards hold activity within sovereign borders state israel within green line condemnation outrage quick come israeli government prime minister benjamin netanyahu160 criticizing called international delegitimization assault israel academic cultural economic boycotts and160 stating last thing need attempt boycotts within ministers chimed often fascist statements implicitly explicitly treating the160 militarized and160 messianic jewish communities palestinian west bank part israel though hardly surprising considering netanyahu himself160 referred ariel straight face utter contempt international law capital samaria indisputable part israel visit colony early year additionally israels160 racist childbeating foreign minister160 avigdor lieberman openly calls the160 ethnic cleansing of160 palestinians lives illegal west bank settlement nokdim israeli finance minister yuval steinitz160 called boycott letter unthinkable case unfounded hatred suggesting government withdraw funding theater companies refuse perform ariel also expressed desire dissenting performers fired hope fail fulfill contracts removed theater said continuing theres limit everything160 everything according steinitz except decades upon decades of160 land theft apartheid science technology minister daniel hershkowitz regretful fact people mix culture politics called boycott inappropriate scolded one signatories serving israeli military assumed hershkowitz doesnt find it160inappropriate israel use science technology to160 harvest traffic human organs and160 spy telephone calls emails governments international organizations foreign companies political groups individuals middle east asia africa europe echoing hershkowitz mayor ariel ron nachman160 claimed culture nothing politics actors artists want deal politics let go knesset vileness baseness hypocrisy work culture call boycott us intolerable naftali bennett directorgeneral yesha council speaks collectively municipal organizations illegal west bank settlements is160all blamed motion unfounded hatred factionalism historically affected jewish people countercampaign group called160 land israel declared liberals enlightened always arabs side called letters signers traitors suggested enemies israel perform gaza one ironic condemnations tel aviv mayor ron huldai opined work theater financed public funds refuse perform places decided theaters management expanded broader belief person part public system works must respect managements decisions one wonders huldai extends responsibility nazi soldiers concentration camp guards following orders perhaps bone knowledge the160 nuremburg principles fourth affirms fact person acted pursuant order government superior relieve responsibility international law provided moral choice fact possible israeli signatories boycott letter clearly better versed international law mayor tel aviv citing article 49 the160 fourth geneva convention occupying power shall deport transfer parts civilian population territory occupies first160 nuremberg principal person commits act constitutes crime international law responsible therefore liable punishment israeli dramaturgist vardit shalfi one letters initiators clearly160 explained ariel legitimate community international law international treaties state israel signed means anyone performing would considered criminal according international law theaters boards inform actors apartheid roads jews lead settlement ariel moment perform giving legitimization settlements existence despite aggressive condemnation including the160 heckling two actors signed letter israeli parliamentarian aide performance play tel aviv boycott quickly received support influential sectors israeli society well internationally following week over160 150 israeli academics including professors zeev sternhell shlomo sand neve gordon signed letter solidarity ariel boycott states take part kind cultural activity beyond green line take part discussions seminars lecture kind academic setting settlements another supportive statement signed several dozen noted israeli authors david grossman ab yehoshua amos oz signatories warn legitimization acceptance settler enterprise cause critical damage israels chances achieving peace accord palestinian neighbors | 667 |
<p>“ <a href="http://variety.com/t/star-wars/" type="external">Star Wars</a>” merchandise is some of the most popular and coveted among all fandoms, and as the release of “ <a href="http://variety.com/t/star-wars-the-last-jedi/" type="external">Star Wars: The Last Jedi</a>” draws near, so do more goodies that fans can buy. But not all merch makes sense, and even Disney can steer an iconic brand like “ <a href="http://variety.com/2017/film/news/star-wars-last-jedi-premiere-1202635247/" type="external">Star Wars</a>” to the Dark Side of branding.</p>
<p>Here are some of the most astonishing, exciting, and downright head-scratching “Star Wars” branded products you can spend your galactic credits on:</p>
<p>Dole</p>
<p>Fruit is fruit, and generally the most important criteria when stocking up on produce is ripeness and price. Dole and “Star Wars” have partnered for a “Unite for a Healthy Galaxy” sweepstakes that includes prizes and an app that allows customers to scan special packaging for access to exclusive content and recipes. Which means, “Star Wars” lettuce is now a real thing that exists.&#160;</p>
<p>I was willing to store that C-3POs box in my garage for 30+ years because cereal is immortal — but I may finally have to draw the line at Star Wars brand lettuce. <a href="https://t.co/RAuPk9Qohn" type="external">pic.twitter.com/RAuPk9Qohn</a></p>
<p>— John Jackson Miller (@jjmfaraway) <a href="https://twitter.com/jjmfaraway/status/937761732306657282?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">December 4, 2017</a></p>
<p>Ample Hills Creamery Star Wars 3-Pack</p>
<p>What does evil taste like? According to&#160;Ample Hills Creamery, it’s chocolatey with an espresso twist. The Brooklyn-based creamy has released three different kinds of “The Last Jedi” ice cream including:&#160;The First Order (salted dark chocolate and espresso), The Resistance (brown sugar and vanilla bean with red velvet and butter cake chunks), and the Force (sweet cream and chocolate fudge swirl with white and dark chocolate pearls). Ice cream is great, but does the exclusivity warrant a $30 price tag?</p>
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<p>Samsung&#160;Star Wars Limited Edition POWERbot™ Robot Vacuum</p>
<p>Nothing says “I love Star Wars” like the severed head of Darth Vader rolling around on your carpet sucking up crumbs. According to a press release, this Samsung vacuum was designed, produced, marketed, and distributed with input from super fans. It comes complete with “Star Wars” sound effects and a whopping $600 to $800 price tag.</p>
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<p>Nissan</p>
<p>Following in the footsteps of their “Rogue One” partnership, Nissan unveiled seven different “Star Wars”-themed vehicles at the LA Auto Show. However, unlike last year’s “Star Wars” Edition Nissan Rogue, which could be purchased by consumers, this year’s cars are strictly promotional and not available for purchase. That being said, Nissan is sponsoring the “Droid Repair Bay” virtual reality experience.</p>
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<p>Cargo Cosmetics</p>
<p>Let your eyeshadow tell the world which side of the Force you fall on.&#160;Cargo Cosmetics released a line of fancy makeup including Light Side and Dark Side makeup palettes (which run from $20 to $28). And in exciting spoiler news, apparently the folks at Cargo have uncovered the actual color of the Force (surprise, it’s blue) thanks to a branded nail line with the names, “restore the republic” (silver), “praetorian guard” (red), and “rule the galaxy” (gold).</p>
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<p>Columbia Echo Base Collection</p>
<p>Columbia has recreated the hot looks of planet Hoth from “The Empire Strikes Back.” Dotted with references to the film, the Omni-Heat insulation promises to keep fans “warmer than a Tauntaun.” And it better because the jackets also come with a $400 price tag.</p>
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<p>Cross Star Wars Collection</p>
<p>These are Han Solo, Boba Fett, and Chewbacca pens that range from $450 for a roller ball and $575 for fountain pens. A pen.</p>
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<p>Philips Norelco Shavers</p>
<p>Aside from the color patterns, small symbols and increased price tags, the limited edition “ <a href="http://variety.com/2017/film/box-office/star-wars-the-last-jedi-global-weekend-box-office-1202637698/" type="external">Star Wars: The Last Jedi</a>” shavers are indistinguishable from the normal line of shavers and the only way to tell that they were Star Wars branded is if you knew what to look for or if someone bragged to you about owning one. Philips released a line of four different shavers inspired by Stormtroopers, R2-D2, Poe Dameron’s X-Wing ship, and by the Dark Side ranging in price from $50 to $260.</p>
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<p>Rag &amp; Bone Collection</p>
<p>Luxury fashion line Rag &amp; Bone released a “Star Wars” inspired collection with sneakers, purses and a whole Hoth chic ensemble. Although the collection was only released to the public on December 1, most of the items have already sold out including a Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker business card cases for $150 and Empire and Rebellion inspired boots for $695.</p>
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<p>Christian Louboutin Heels</p>
<p>Famed designer Christian Louboutin collaborated with “Star Wars” to create a set of five one-of-a-kind shoes based on the women of “The Last Jedi.” The line will never be available to the public and will be auctioned off for charity.</p>
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<p>Porgs</p>
<p>If you thought BB-8 was a charmingly diabolical cash grab, wait until you get a load of the Porgs. The fluffy, flying creatures are absolutely everywhere and “The Last Jedi” hasn’t even premiered yet.</p>
<p>The aliens can be found on ties, purses, hats and shoes. The Porgs are plushies, Funko figures and December 13 has been dubbed “take your Porg to work day.” Truly the power of the Dark Side is strong with these little beasts.</p>
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<p>EA’s “Star Wars: Battlefront II”</p>
<p>This list would be remiss not to include the most controversial “Star Wars” video game to date, the new “Star Wars: Battlefront II.” Disney should have expected problems when they partnered with EA (which was voted the worst company in America two years in a row in 2012 and 2013), especially after the DLC backlash from the original “Battlefront” reboot. “Battlefront II’s” <a href="http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/star-wars-video-game-controversy-microtransaction-loot-box-1202621913/" type="external">microtransactions</a> and loot boxes triggered massive anger among fans, who found the pay-to-win system unfair and blatantly greedy, and are now the center of a potential gambling regulation.</p>
<p /> | false | 1 | star wars merchandise popular coveted among fandoms release star wars last jedi draws near goodies fans buy merch makes sense even disney steer iconic brand like star wars dark side branding astonishing exciting downright headscratching star wars branded products spend galactic credits dole fruit fruit generally important criteria stocking produce ripeness price dole star wars partnered unite healthy galaxy sweepstakes includes prizes app allows customers scan special packaging access exclusive content recipes means star wars lettuce real thing exists160 willing store c3pos box garage 30 years cereal immortal may finally draw line star wars brand lettuce pictwittercomraupk9qohn john jackson miller jjmfaraway december 4 2017 ample hills creamery star wars 3pack evil taste like according to160ample hills creamery chocolatey espresso twist brooklynbased creamy released three different kinds last jedi ice cream including160the first order salted dark chocolate espresso resistance brown sugar vanilla bean red velvet butter cake chunks force sweet cream chocolate fudge swirl white dark chocolate pearls ice cream great exclusivity warrant 30 price tag samsung160star wars limited edition powerbot robot vacuum nothing says love star wars like severed head darth vader rolling around carpet sucking crumbs according press release samsung vacuum designed produced marketed distributed input super fans comes complete star wars sound effects whopping 600 800 price tag nissan following footsteps rogue one partnership nissan unveiled seven different star warsthemed vehicles la auto show however unlike last years star wars edition nissan rogue could purchased consumers years cars strictly promotional available purchase said nissan sponsoring droid repair bay virtual reality experience cargo cosmetics let eyeshadow tell world side force fall on160cargo cosmetics released line fancy makeup including light side dark side makeup palettes run 20 28 exciting spoiler news apparently folks cargo uncovered actual color force surprise blue thanks branded nail line names restore republic silver praetorian guard red rule galaxy gold columbia echo base collection columbia recreated hot looks planet hoth empire strikes back dotted references film omniheat insulation promises keep fans warmer tauntaun better jackets also come 400 price tag cross star wars collection han solo boba fett chewbacca pens range 450 roller ball 575 fountain pens pen philips norelco shavers aside color patterns small symbols increased price tags limited edition star wars last jedi shavers indistinguishable normal line shavers way tell star wars branded knew look someone bragged owning one philips released line four different shavers inspired stormtroopers r2d2 poe damerons xwing ship dark side ranging price 50 260 rag amp bone collection luxury fashion line rag amp bone released star wars inspired collection sneakers purses whole hoth chic ensemble although collection released public december 1 items already sold including darth vader luke skywalker business card cases 150 empire rebellion inspired boots 695 christian louboutin heels famed designer christian louboutin collaborated star wars create set five oneofakind shoes based women last jedi line never available public auctioned charity porgs thought bb8 charmingly diabolical cash grab wait get load porgs fluffy flying creatures absolutely everywhere last jedi hasnt even premiered yet aliens found ties purses hats shoes porgs plushies funko figures december 13 dubbed take porg work day truly power dark side strong little beasts eas star wars battlefront ii list would remiss include controversial star wars video game date new star wars battlefront ii disney expected problems partnered ea voted worst company america two years row 2012 2013 especially dlc backlash original battlefront reboot battlefront iis microtransactions loot boxes triggered massive anger among fans found paytowin system unfair blatantly greedy center potential gambling regulation | 579 |
<p>In early March, after an intellectually bracing lunch with the Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington, the thought occurred that I was tired of writing eulogies, after their deaths, for great men I had been privileged to know, and that I should write something in praise of Jim Billington while he was still very much alive. Now that he has come under attack, I’m even more inclined to do some witnessing, as my evangelical friends would say, on his behalf.</p>
<p>I am certainly no expert on the IT-management situation at the Library of Congress, so I’ve nothing to say about the recent GAO report urging reforms in that part of the Library’s functioning. But the sly, and not so sly, personal attacks on Jim Billington that, in typical Washington fashion, have followed the GAO report demand a response. Yes, the Librarian of Congress is 85. So what? He has more ideas in a week than most of Washington has in a year. And his stewardship of one of the world’s great cultural treasures has been nothing short of exemplary — indeed, visionary. Truth to tell, there’s something supremely ironic that this attack on Billington should involve information technology, for it has been under Billington’s leadership, and because of his vision, that the Library of Congress has thrust itself into the digital age in a way that will benefit not only Americans, but the entire world, for decades, indeed centuries, to come.</p>
<p>I first knew Jim Billington in his role as director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, which was then housed in the old Smithsonian Castle on the Mall. Thanks in no small part to Jim and the late Max Kampelman, then the chairman of the Wilson Center’s board, I had been awarded a year’s fellowship at the center, and found myself amidst a potpourri of scholars from multiple disciplines and a variety of political perspectives. James Renwick, that great architectural copycat, had modeled the castle on a medieval Norman monastery, and there was no doubt, even among the numerous large egos in our little monastic community in 1984–85, who the abbot was: It was Jim Billington. And not simply because of his mastery of his own discipline — Russian history and culture — and the breadth of his learning, but also because he had the striking ability, found primarily among master-teachers, to walk into any seminar or conversation, listen carefully, and then ask the one sharp, pregnant question that got everyone, including the most ideologically hardened academics, thinking about the matter at hand in a fresh, unbiased way.</p>
<p>It was because of that ability, and his taste for bringing to the Wilson Center men and women who didn’t fit the normal profile of the “distinguished academic,” that the nation’s official memorial to its only professor-president became, under Jim Billington’s intellectual leadership, a genuine community of conversation and a place where new ideas were brewed, as distinguished from old shibboleths’ being recycled.</p>
<p>One evening during my sabbatical there — March 10, 1985, to be precise — the Wilson Center hosted a dinner for a visiting Soviet delegation, and Billington (knowing my interest in religious-freedom issues behind the Iron Curtain and expecting, correctly, that&#160; I would prod our guests on that subject) invited me to be one of the Wilson Center fellows spread through the dozen or so tables of Soviet academics and Washington grandees. Somewhere between the main course and the dessert, the entire Soviet delegation got up and left, heading for the buses that would take them en masse back to the Soviet embassy on Mt. Alto. No one knew what had happened, so several of us walked out of the Castle to see if we could find out from our guests what was afoot.</p>
<p>It turned out that Premier Konstantin Chernenko had just dropped dead, and the Soviet delegation was being hustled back to the gated embassy compound on Mt. Alto, so that no one could say anything before the official line had been received from Moscow. It was all very strange, if entirely typical, and the next morning I walked into Jim Billington’s office and asked him what he thought Chernenko’s successor, Mikhail Gorbachev, would mean. Jim said that, whatever else could be said about Gorbachev, his formative political experience had not been the purge trials of the late 1930s, as was the case for Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko — all of whom had, if I remember Billington’s image correctly, that “reptilian” look in their eyes. That’s what happened to you, he suggested, when most of your friends were shot in the back of the head in the Lubyanka at the behest of men like Stalin, Beria, and Vyshinsky: You became a kind of cold-blooded creature, and your politics followed in due course. Gorbachev had not lived through that experience, so he would be different.</p>
<p>Little wonder that a man of such insight should have become the personal tutor in Russian affairs to several generations of members of the House and the Senate, whom he accompanied on congressional visits to the USSR and then to post-Soviet Russia.</p>
<p>In addition to bringing the Library of Congress — which the British historian Sir Michael Howard once described to me as the greatest collection of human knowledge on earth — into the digital age, Jim Billington has also worked, quietly but effectively, to challenge the stultifying secularism that has befogged American intellectual life for far too long. Thus a major 1993 exhibit at the LOC, “Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture,” demonstrated that Christian conviction and scholarship had played a significant role in the vast explosion of learning and art that took place during a period more typically presented as having been motored by secularist passions. Or, as Billington noted in his preface to the exhibit catalogue, the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana “consciously pursued an acquisitions policy that focused upon the liberal arts and sciences” because of “the conscious determination of the Renaissance papacy to place knowledge systematically at the service of governance.” And here was a conviction with consequences. For, as Billington continued, the “heir to that tradition, Thomas Jefferson, assigned precisely the same function to the Library of Congress in the context of American democracy: to ground the world of public affairs in the world of learning.” Only a man with the breadth of culture and the ecumenical sensibility of Jim Billington, I suggest, could find the link between Pope Nicholas V, founder of the Vatican Library, and the Sage of Monticello, founder of the Library of Congress.</p>
<p>Then there was the 1998 exhibit “Religion and the Founding of the American Republic,” which demonstrated that those who founded and shaped the novus ordo seclorum of the United States were, in the main and like their constituents, believers who shared Tocqueville’s conviction that religious conviction was indispensable to republican self-governance. The thought occurs that that exhibit might usefully be remounted today.</p>
<p>At the Library of Congress, Jim Billington has been a builder as well as a curator. The LOC’s Kluge Center, one of Billington’s major initiatives, aims to replicate the experience of intellectual community I found at the old Wilson Center, bringing scholars together with public officials for conversations that dig far deeper than the usual Washington chatter and that push the boundaries of debate into previously unexplored areas. Then there is the LOC’s Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity, another Billington initiative that, by focusing on lifetime achievement in the humanities and social sciences, fills a gap in the world’s cursus honorum left by the Nobel prizes; that its first honorees were such outstanding humanists as Leszek Kołakowski, Jaroslav Pelikan, Paul Ricoeur, and John Hope Franklin ought to be a source of pride to all Americans. The Kluge Center and Prize are but two examples of the public-private partnerships that Jim Billington has fostered at the LOC; other initiatives include the James Madison Council, a private-sector support group for LOC work, and the creation of the Library’s National Audio-Visual Conservation Center by the Packard Humanities Institute.</p>
<p>My lunch conversation with the Librarian of Congress last month was largely focused on one of his latest passions, the World Digital Library, which seeks to use the resources of 21st-century technology to make the greatest treasures of the world’s greatest libraries available, cost-free, to&#160;.&#160;.&#160;.&#160;everyone. It’s an extraordinary ambition, which could have been imagined only by an exceptional man with a deep belief in the liberating power of truth. And its realization is well underway.</p>
<p>The American people, the world of learning, the U.S. Congress, and truth-seekers throughout the world have been well served by James H. Billington since his swearing in as Librarian of Congress on September 14, 1987. It would be well for all concerned to keep that fundamental fact in mind at this moment.</p>
<p>— George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.&#160;</p> | false | 1 | early march intellectually bracing lunch librarian congress james h billington thought occurred tired writing eulogies deaths great men privileged know write something praise jim billington still much alive come attack im even inclined witnessing evangelical friends would say behalf certainly expert itmanagement situation library congress ive nothing say recent gao report urging reforms part librarys functioning sly sly personal attacks jim billington typical washington fashion followed gao report demand response yes librarian congress 85 ideas week washington year stewardship one worlds great cultural treasures nothing short exemplary indeed visionary truth tell theres something supremely ironic attack billington involve information technology billingtons leadership vision library congress thrust digital age way benefit americans entire world decades indeed centuries come first knew jim billington role director woodrow wilson international center scholars housed old smithsonian castle mall thanks small part jim late max kampelman chairman wilson centers board awarded years fellowship center found amidst potpourri scholars multiple disciplines variety political perspectives james renwick great architectural copycat modeled castle medieval norman monastery doubt even among numerous large egos little monastic community 198485 abbot jim billington simply mastery discipline russian history culture breadth learning also striking ability found primarily among masterteachers walk seminar conversation listen carefully ask one sharp pregnant question got everyone including ideologically hardened academics thinking matter hand fresh unbiased way ability taste bringing wilson center men women didnt fit normal profile distinguished academic nations official memorial professorpresident became jim billingtons intellectual leadership genuine community conversation place new ideas brewed distinguished old shibboleths recycled one evening sabbatical march 10 1985 precise wilson center hosted dinner visiting soviet delegation billington knowing interest religiousfreedom issues behind iron curtain expecting correctly that160 would prod guests subject invited one wilson center fellows spread dozen tables soviet academics washington grandees somewhere main course dessert entire soviet delegation got left heading buses would take en masse back soviet embassy mt alto one knew happened several us walked castle see could find guests afoot turned premier konstantin chernenko dropped dead soviet delegation hustled back gated embassy compound mt alto one could say anything official line received moscow strange entirely typical next morning walked jim billingtons office asked thought chernenkos successor mikhail gorbachev would mean jim said whatever else could said gorbachev formative political experience purge trials late 1930s case brezhnev andropov chernenko remember billingtons image correctly reptilian look eyes thats happened suggested friends shot back head lubyanka behest men like stalin beria vyshinsky became kind coldblooded creature politics followed due course gorbachev lived experience would different little wonder man insight become personal tutor russian affairs several generations members house senate accompanied congressional visits ussr postsoviet russia addition bringing library congress british historian sir michael howard described greatest collection human knowledge earth digital age jim billington also worked quietly effectively challenge stultifying secularism befogged american intellectual life far long thus major 1993 exhibit loc rome reborn vatican library renaissance culture demonstrated christian conviction scholarship played significant role vast explosion learning art took place period typically presented motored secularist passions billington noted preface exhibit catalogue biblioteca apostolica vaticana consciously pursued acquisitions policy focused upon liberal arts sciences conscious determination renaissance papacy place knowledge systematically service governance conviction consequences billington continued heir tradition thomas jefferson assigned precisely function library congress context american democracy ground world public affairs world learning man breadth culture ecumenical sensibility jim billington suggest could find link pope nicholas v founder vatican library sage monticello founder library congress 1998 exhibit religion founding american republic demonstrated founded shaped novus ordo seclorum united states main like constituents believers shared tocquevilles conviction religious conviction indispensable republican selfgovernance thought occurs exhibit might usefully remounted today library congress jim billington builder well curator locs kluge center one billingtons major initiatives aims replicate experience intellectual community found old wilson center bringing scholars together public officials conversations dig far deeper usual washington chatter push boundaries debate previously unexplored areas locs kluge prize achievement study humanity another billington initiative focusing lifetime achievement humanities social sciences fills gap worlds cursus honorum left nobel prizes first honorees outstanding humanists leszek kołakowski jaroslav pelikan paul ricoeur john hope franklin ought source pride americans kluge center prize two examples publicprivate partnerships jim billington fostered loc initiatives include james madison council privatesector support group loc work creation librarys national audiovisual conservation center packard humanities institute lunch conversation librarian congress last month largely focused one latest passions world digital library seeks use resources 21stcentury technology make greatest treasures worlds greatest libraries available costfree to160160160160everyone extraordinary ambition could imagined exceptional man deep belief liberating power truth realization well underway american people world learning us congress truthseekers throughout world well served james h billington since swearing librarian congress september 14 1987 would well concerned keep fundamental fact mind moment george weigel distinguished senior fellow washingtons ethics public policy center holds william e simon chair catholic studies160 | 799 |
<p>As the nation grieves the passing of a great jurist, I suspect many of us at MOJ have been thinking about&#160;the precise contours of Justice Scalia’s towering contribution to statutory and constitutional interpretation. I’ve found myself&#160; <a href="http://www.libertylawsite.org/liberty-forum/understanding-clarence-thomas-the-jurisprudence-of-constitutional-restoration/" type="external">reviewing</a> the philosophical and technical differences in Scalia and Thomas’ views, and I have been&#160;happy to see pieces like&#160; <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-scalia-comment-bg-5713e110-d401-11e5-a65b-587e721fb231-20160215-story.html" type="external">this</a> that&#160;throw out political categories to celebrate Scalia’s achievement for the rule of law.</p>
<p>Mary Ann Glendon’s comment on Scalia’s 1995&#160;Tanner lectures at Princeton, published together (with comments from Gordon Wood, Laurence Tribe and Ronald Dworkin) in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Matter-Interpretation-Federal-Courts-University/dp/0691004005" type="external">A Matter of Interpretation</a>&#160;in 1997, is well worth reading, as a comparatist complement&#160;to&#160;Scalia’s&#160;foundational lectures. Glendon republished her comment&#160;in the magnificent collection of some of her writings, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Traditions-Turmoil-Mary-Ann-Glendon/dp/1932589244" type="external">Traditions in Turmoil</a>. (I couldn’t find Glendon’s&#160;comment&#160;online but&#160; <a href="http://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/s/scalia97.pdf" type="external">here</a> is&#160;Scalia’s lecture.)</p>
<p>The issue at hand in Scalia’s celebrated lecture (over two days) was looking at how American lawyers trained almost exclusively in the great common law tradition (at the very least, in the first year of law school) would&#160;have the necessary habits of mind to properly interpret statutes (and, well, the Constitution). Scalia reminds us that common law judges performed two functions: applying the law to the facts and&#160;making the law [or, depending on your cast of mind, discovering the law&#160;according to the dictates of reason]. This, of course,&#160;requires&#160;resolving the particular dispute at bar by discerning the applicable legal/common law&#160;principle, distinguishing this case from prior cases (or not), and applying&#160;stare decisis. This is a very different practice from&#160;the work of the&#160;lawyer or judge in the civil law system (e.g., Germanic)&#160;“where it is the text of the law rather than any prior judicial interpretation of that text which is authoritative. Prior judicial opinions are consulted for their persuasive effect, much as academic commentary would be; but they are not binding.”</p>
<p>More Scalia:</p>
<p>As I have described, this system of making law by judicial opinion, and making law by distinguishing earlier cases, is what every American law student, what every newborn American lawyer, first sees when he opens his eyes. And the impression remains with him for life. His image of the great judge- the Holmes, the Cardozo – is the man (or woman) who has the intelligence to know what is the best rule of law to govern the case at hand, and&#160;then the skill to perform the broken-field running through earlier cases that leaves him free to impose that rule – distinguishing one prior case on his left, straight-arming another one on his right, high-stepping away from another precedent about to tackle him from the rear, until (bravo!) he reaches his goal: good law. That image of the great judge remains with the former law student when he himself becomes a judge, and thus the common-law tradition is passed on and on.</p>
<p>And then, Scalia writes: &#160;“All of this would be an unqualified good, were it not for a trend in government that has developed in recent centuries, called democracy.” !! Scalia describes the&#160;tension&#160;between common law judging (“making law”) and separation of powers in the new era of statutes. And then:</p>
<p>But though I have no quarrel with the common law and its process, I do question whether the attitude of the common-law judge – the mindset that asks, “What is the most desirable resolution of this case, and how can any impediments to the achievement of that result be evaded?”-is appropriate for most of the work that I do, and much of the work that state judges do. We live in an age of legislation, and most new law is statutory law….This is particularly true in the federal courts, where, with a qualification so small it does not bear mentioning, there is no such thing as common law. Every issue of law I resolve as a federal judge is an interpretation of text – the text of a regulation, or of a statute, or of the Constitution.</p>
<p>He then offers&#160;his robust and deeply influential view of statutory (and constitutional) interpretation as a way to fill the “sad” void of having had “no intelligible theory of what [American judges] do most.” (“Whereas legal scholarship has been at pains to rationalize the common law – to devise the best rules governing contracts, torts, and so forth-it has been seemingly agnostic as to whether there is even any such thing as good or bad rules of statutory interpretation. There are few law school courses on the subject, and certainly no required ones; the science of interpretation (if it is a science) is left to be picked up piecemeal, by reading cases (good and bad) in substantive fields that are largely statutory, such as securities law, natural resources law, and employment law.”)</p>
<p>Glendon’s comparatist comment runs a bit deeper into&#160;the historical&#160;comparison between the training and habits of the American lawyer in common law and those trained in the civil law, describing both the greater ease with which continental lawyers and judges have taken on constitutional interpretation due to their civil law habits of mind and the way in which those legal traditions could advance&#160;our own view of statutory/constitutional interpretation.</p>
<p>When civil lawyers come to American law schools for graduate work, they often express surprise at the degree to which the case method dominates our approach to courses based on enacted law. In particular they find it hard to understand why constitutional law cases and materials typically begin not with the study of the language and design of the Constitution but with a case (usually Marbury v. Madison).</p>
<p>Her suggestion&#160;for&#160;studying the Constitution in law school, drawn from continental canons&#160;of interpretation, will now be quite familiar to anyone who has read Michael Stokes Paulsen’s superb book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Constitution-Michael-Stokes-Paulsen/dp/0465053726" type="external">&#160;The Constitution: An Introduction</a>.</p>
<p>Here’s Glendon:</p>
<p>One trait that most conspicuously differentiates the Bundesverfassungsgericht’s [German Constitutional Court] decisions from those of the American Supreme Court…is the practice of attending consistently to the language and structure of the entire Constitution–to the document as a whole, and to the relationship of particular provisions to one another as well as to the overall design for government….</p>
<p>Up to thirty years ago [now fifty years ago, as this was written in 1997], the typical constitutional law course was heavy on federalism, separation of powers, but light on the Bill of Rights. The obvious remedy would have been to teach the whole Constitution from preamble to last amendment–as a design for self-government as well as a charter of rights, and as a texts whose parts cannot be understood in isolation from one another.</p>
<p>For both Scalia and Glendon, the stakes in properly studying and interpreting both statutes and the Constitution are high: as Glendon puts it, “one of the most basic American rights is the freedom to govern ourselves and our communities by bargaining, education, persuasion, and yes, majority vote.” Coming to Scalia’s defense&#160;on this particular point&#160;(as many criticized his views as “vulgar majoritarianism”), Glendon concludes her comment:</p>
<p>[I]s tyranny of the majority really the greatest danger that faces a country when its courts foreclose ordinary politics in one area after another –and when more and more decisionmaking power over the details of everyday life is concentrated in large private and public bureaucracies? &#160;Which is more likely: that unruly majorities will have their way, or that the democratic elements in our republican experiment will wither away, while new forms of tyranny by the powerful few take rise? Whom should we fear more: an aroused populace, or the vanguard who know better than the people what the people should want?</p>
<p>Tyranny, as Tocqueville warned, need not announce itself with guns and trumpets. It may come softly–so softly that we will barely notice when we become one of those countries where there are no citizens, but only subjects. So softly that if a well-meaning foreigner should suggest, “Perhaps you could do something about your oppression,” we might look up, puzzled, and ask, “What oppression?”</p>
<p>Erika Bachiochi is a visiting fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.</p> | false | 1 | nation grieves passing great jurist suspect many us moj thinking about160the precise contours justice scalias towering contribution statutory constitutional interpretation ive found myself160 reviewing philosophical technical differences scalia thomas views been160happy see pieces like160 that160throw political categories celebrate scalias achievement rule law mary ann glendons comment scalias 1995160tanner lectures princeton published together comments gordon wood laurence tribe ronald dworkin matter interpretation160in 1997 well worth reading comparatist complement160to160scalias160foundational lectures glendon republished comment160in magnificent collection writings traditions turmoil couldnt find glendons160comment160online but160 is160scalias lecture issue hand scalias celebrated lecture two days looking american lawyers trained almost exclusively great common law tradition least first year law school would160have necessary habits mind properly interpret statutes well constitution scalia reminds us common law judges performed two functions applying law facts and160making law depending cast mind discovering law160according dictates reason course160requires160resolving particular dispute bar discerning applicable legalcommon law160principle distinguishing case prior cases applying160stare decisis different practice from160the work the160lawyer judge civil law system eg germanic160where text law rather prior judicial interpretation text authoritative prior judicial opinions consulted persuasive effect much academic commentary would binding scalia described system making law judicial opinion making law distinguishing earlier cases every american law student every newborn american lawyer first sees opens eyes impression remains life image great judge holmes cardozo man woman intelligence know best rule law govern case hand and160then skill perform brokenfield running earlier cases leaves free impose rule distinguishing one prior case left straightarming another one right highstepping away another precedent tackle rear bravo reaches goal good law image great judge remains former law student becomes judge thus commonlaw tradition passed scalia writes 160all would unqualified good trend government developed recent centuries called democracy scalia describes the160tension160between common law judging making law separation powers new era statutes though quarrel common law process question whether attitude commonlaw judge mindset asks desirable resolution case impediments achievement result evadedis appropriate work much work state judges live age legislation new law statutory lawthis particularly true federal courts qualification small bear mentioning thing common law every issue law resolve federal judge interpretation text text regulation statute constitution offers160his robust deeply influential view statutory constitutional interpretation way fill sad void intelligible theory american judges whereas legal scholarship pains rationalize common law devise best rules governing contracts torts forthit seemingly agnostic whether even thing good bad rules statutory interpretation law school courses subject certainly required ones science interpretation science left picked piecemeal reading cases good bad substantive fields largely statutory securities law natural resources law employment law glendons comparatist comment runs bit deeper into160the historical160comparison training habits american lawyer common law trained civil law describing greater ease continental lawyers judges taken constitutional interpretation due civil law habits mind way legal traditions could advance160our view statutoryconstitutional interpretation civil lawyers come american law schools graduate work often express surprise degree case method dominates approach courses based enacted law particular find hard understand constitutional law cases materials typically begin study language design constitution case usually marbury v madison suggestion160for160studying constitution law school drawn continental canons160of interpretation quite familiar anyone read michael stokes paulsens superb book 160the constitution introduction heres glendon one trait conspicuously differentiates bundesverfassungsgerichts german constitutional court decisions american supreme courtis practice attending consistently language structure entire constitutionto document whole relationship particular provisions one another well overall design government thirty years ago fifty years ago written 1997 typical constitutional law course heavy federalism separation powers light bill rights obvious remedy would teach whole constitution preamble last amendmentas design selfgovernment well charter rights texts whose parts understood isolation one another scalia glendon stakes properly studying interpreting statutes constitution high glendon puts one basic american rights freedom govern communities bargaining education persuasion yes majority vote coming scalias defense160on particular point160as many criticized views vulgar majoritarianism glendon concludes comment tyranny majority really greatest danger faces country courts foreclose ordinary politics one area another decisionmaking power details everyday life concentrated large private public bureaucracies 160which likely unruly majorities way democratic elements republican experiment wither away new forms tyranny powerful take rise fear aroused populace vanguard know better people people want tyranny tocqueville warned need announce guns trumpets may come softlyso softly barely notice become one countries citizens subjects softly wellmeaning foreigner suggest perhaps could something oppression might look puzzled ask oppression erika bachiochi visiting fellow ethics public policy center | 709 |
<p>For Delaware Democrat Chris Coons, it’s fitting that Election Day comes two days after Halloween, running as he is against that sometime dabbler in witchcraft, Christine O’Donnell. For hundreds of his partisan brothers and sisters, however, another holiday reference is more appropriate: Mexico’s Day of the Dead. Today, our neighbors to the south will begin celebrating the memories of their deceased family and friends. Tomorrow, our neighbors to the left will mourn the demise of hundreds of candidates whose careers will be consigned to the political graveyard, few of which will rise to take bodily form again.</p>
<p>How did it come to this? Just two years ago, all things seemed possible for Democrats. In possession of congressional majorities larger than any since 1980, led by a seemingly historic figure who had just won a larger share of the popular vote than any non-incumbent Democrat since FDR in 1932, Democrats forecast an American political sky that would remain endlessly blue. Today, Democrats are headed for a reversal of fortune of proportions not seen since the landslide elections of 1946 and 1948.</p>
<p>How strong will this reversal be? I predict that Republicans will gain between 55 and 72 seats in the House; my best estimate is 64. That will give the GOP 243 seats, its highest total since the election of 1946 and the second highest since the Great Depression. No living Democrat has served in a House of Representatives with as few Democrats as will inhabit that body come January.</p>
<p>Furthermore, I predict that the GOP will gain nine Senate seats, giving it 50 members. That means the Republicans will nearly capture the slate in the seats up for grabs, losing only West Virginia in a nailbiter among the close seats in the polls. I would not at all be surprised if one Democrat–perhaps Jim Webb of Virginia–subsequently switches parties or changes which party he caucuses with to give the GOP operational control of the Senate.</p>
<p>Many will blame the economy for this situation, arguing that no party in the midst of the worst economic crisis in at least 30, and perhaps 80, years could have satisfied the electorate. There is truth to this, as the party in power always suffers at the polls during a significant recession.</p>
<p>But this explanation goes only so far. The anger, disappointment, and disgust that the voters will shower on the Obama administration and the Democratic congressional leadership is unusually deep. The electorate is reacting at a much more visceral level.</p>
<p>In my private election-prediction memo two years ago, I wrote the following words: “Democrats are split between progressives, who seek a radical and swift move to the economic left, and centrists, who want to re-regulate and ‘spread the wealth around’ but nowhere near the degree of the progressives. . . . Who will win these intra-party fights? We don’t know, and which faction wins and to what extent will largely determine both the health of our nation and the possibility of a quick Republican resurgence.”</p>
<p>We now know that the progressives, despite their dissatisfaction with many elements of President Obama’s agenda, largely won those fights. The result is that large segments of the American electorate feel that the administration and Democrats in Congress don’t understand and don’t care to understand their aspirations and fears. This sentiment is most keenly and strongly felt among conservative Republicans, but it is shared–for different reasons–by many nonconservatives. This sentiment is particularly strong among the white working class and among Catholics.</p>
<p>The development of this sentiment was not inevitable. President Obama took power with the strong support of most Americans, who hoped and believed he could make America whole again. Instead, in his deeds and in his words, in what he has done and in what he has failed to do, he has alienated the vast American middle.</p>
<p>Why did he do and say what he did? Why did those words and deeds alienate the American middle and working classes? Is there something inherent in progressive politics that is out of sync with American attitudes and aspirations?</p>
<p>To understand the answers to these questions, we must understand that this election is only the latest battle in what I have called the Fifty Years’ War between progressives and conservatives for possession of America’s political soul. One can understand the president’s words and deeds only if we understand both what the war is about and how Democrats themselves differ about how to fight the war. So it is to that issue that I now turn.</p>
<p>The Fifty Years’ War</p>
<p>At the political level, the Fifty Years’ War is about what defines American freedom. Is the promise of America that everyone enjoys the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness best kept when government is minimally involved, either through regulation or taxation, in individual decision making? Or is it best kept when government removes material and immaterial obstacles to some individuals’ ability to make the decisions they would prefer to make, even if removing those obstacles places obstacles in the paths of other Americans?</p>
<p>Conservatives have a tendency to agree with the first proposition, while progressives have a tendency to agree with the second. But for progressives there is a second, pragmatic question to answer: Should necessity–in the form of voter opinion and economic factors–significantly constrain the pursuit of justice? Progressives differ among themselves on this question, and it is this difference that forms the heart of the battle between the “moderates” and “liberals” within the Democratic party.</p>
<p>Liberal progressives say necessity should have a minimal role in constraining the pursuit of progressive justice. If voters don’t agree with a progressive view of rights, recourse to the courts to overrule them is proper. Voters’ desire, and especially well-off voters’ desire, to keep taxes low and the economy growing ought not to be a significant factor in bringing medical care to poor people or saving the planet from greenhouse gasses.</p>
<p>Moderate progressives take the contrary view. Justice can be secure only if it is secure in the hearts and minds of the people, they believe. They place more faith in, and pay more deference to, voters’ desires, not because they don’t believe in progressive aspirations, but because they believe those goals can best be achieved through incremental measures that receive broad popular support.</p>
<p>We can see this clash most clearly in the reactions of both camps to the Clinton presidency and to Hillary Clinton’s once and future candidacy. To liberal progressives, the Clinton presidency is anathema. It was too timid when it had power in 1993-94, and too conciliatory when it shared power with a Republican Congress thereafter. This belief fueled the challenges to Al Gore in 2000 by Bill Bradley in the primaries and Ralph Nader in the general election. It fueled Howard Dean’s 2004 bid, and was the impetus behind much of the support for Barack Obama’s challenge to frontrunner Hillary Clinton in 2008.</p>
<p>To moderate progressives, the Clinton presidency is the model of progressive action in the modern world. Clinton’s go-slow approach, coupled with his continued pursuit of progressive spending and social policies where possible, meant that progressive policies became imbedded in the middle-class mindset, making them impervious to conservative counterattack.</p>
<p>These differences did not arise with Bill Clinton, though. The seeds for this Democratic division extend much further back in our political history, to the start of the current political era in the 1960s. Each side in this progressive civil war draws different lessons from what happened in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, lessons that carried through into their different paths in the 1990s and remain to the present day.</p>
<p>The Legacy of the Sixties</p>
<p>Today’s liberal progressives are directly descended from the “New Left” of the 1960s. By this I do not mean student radicals, SDS members, Yippies, and others of the radical fringe of this movement. Instead, I define the “New Left” as those Americans–largely bearers of college and postgraduate degrees–who sought not merely to ameliorate some of the hardest edges of American life, as FDR did with the New Deal, but rather to transform American life now. They sought to eliminate, not ameliorate, poverty now. They saw Americans’ pursuit of ever-increasing wealth as an impediment to these goals; why should already well-off families have more when some people had little? And they saw American defense spending as a crucial obstacle to these goals; if no one was attacking us directly, why shouldn’t we spend on butter rather than bombs?</p>
<p>The New Left was characterized as much by its impatience as by its lofty ambitions. Its advocates saw the non-attainment of their goals as a moral crime. As such, those who stood in the way of those goals were not merely adversaries, they were enemies: selfish, unlettered, in need of enlightenment. This sentiment is the source of the arrogant condescension that many Americans and most conservatives have felt all too frequently is a defining feature of today’s Left.</p>
<p>The New Left and today’s liberal progressives, then, interpret America’s political history very differently from the way conservatives and moderate progressives do. They see the victory of Richard Nixon in 1968 and 1972 as catastrophic. As much as conservatives see Nixon as a liberal because of his imposition of wage and price controls and his failure to even seriously try to dismantle much of the Great Society, liberal progressives see his victory as a watershed, because he stood as an impediment to the rapid attainment of their goals. If Nixon’s victory was catastrophic, Reagan’s victory was epochal. Reagan and his heirs promised not just to stand in the way of achieving liberal progressives’ deepest dreams; they stood pledged to question the very assumptions of the progressive project and roll them back if they could.</p>
<p>To reverse these trends, liberal progressives knew they had to control the Democratic party, and to do that they had to nominate and elect one of their own to the presidency. Thus was born the now endemic battles between the progressives and the old guard (unions and party bosses in the ’80s, the DLC in the ’90s and ’00s) in Democratic nomination contests. The liberal progressive candidate would win educated voters–the “wine set,” as Ron Brownstein has labeled them–while the moderate progressive candidate would win the middle and working classes–Brownstein’s “beer set.” Since beer drinkers have always outnumbered wine drinkers in Democratic primaries, the candidates who excited the most progressive elements always lost–until Barack Obama broke the mold in 2008 by attracting African-American “beer drinkers” into the progressive camp.</p>
<p>Liberal progressives view these consistent defeats as examples of justice denied. Their consistent rejection by the voters is seen not as a rejection of their impatience or lofty ambitions, but as something more sinister. The voters were bamboozled by the Teflon Great Communicator, by Willie Horton ads, by triangulating good old boys, by corporate interests, and by blockheaded Texans backed by unscrupulous Mayberry Machiavellians. Something is the matter with Kansans if they don’t back progressives; it must be devious politicians who divert middle- and working-class voters with the bread and circuses of phony social issues and unnecessary foreign wars. The solution: Organize new constituencies, particularly among the young and among ethnic minorities, through the internet (Daily Kos, MoveOn.org), local groups (ACORN), and D.C.-based interest groups (EMILY’s List, Center for American Progress), and continue to press for progressive justice in bold colors, not pale pastels.</p>
<p>Democratic Thermidor</p>
<p>As the continued failure of progressive candidates in Democratic presidential primaries shows, a majority of Democrats are not of this lineage. These moderate progressives place a very different interpretation on what went wrong in the ’60s and ’70s, and have adopted a very different view of how to engage in and shape American politics.</p>
<p>Moderate progressives view the rejections of the Democrats from 1968 to 1984 as a sober lesson delivered by a sober populace. They view Americans today as wanting the same things economically that their parents and grandparents wanted from the New Deal: an active safety net that helps them move up in American life. In this view, Americans support Democrats when they use government to support and enhance middle-class values and aspirations. Moderate progressives believe Democrats got away from that heritage when they started to be perceived as worrying more about people who did not work than about those who did, as worrying more about criminals than the victims of crime, as worrying more about American aggression than about the freedom of the West.</p>
<p>For moderate progressives, then, the very impatience and lofty ambitions that animate liberal progressives were seen to be the causes of Republican and conservative victory. Moderate progressives like Bill Clinton believed that voters would choose conservative Republicans if they were not offered a Democratic alternative that sought to modernize Roosevelt’s legacy for modern times. By pledging to “end welfare as we know it” and support the people who “work hard and play by the rules,” Clinton sought to place that alternative before Americans. He did, and he won.</p>
<p>The very victory that moderate progressives view as legitimizing their approach, though, is seen as destructive by liberal progressives. This difference is encapsulated in how each side views welfare reform, the passage of which is widely viewed as securing Clinton’s reelection. Moderate progressives are proud of that legislation, wishing that it had provided more economic support to single mothers but generally supportive of the fact that it helped move millions of people into work. Liberal progressives, though, believe that it did little or nothing to end poverty, and as such was a sell-out of the progressive commitment to the poor. The fact that the public demanded that the welfare-reform bill or something like it be passed weighs large in the calculus of the moderate progressives, but not at all in that of that liberal progressives.</p>
<p>The Progressive Civil War</p>
<p>Fast forward to the past two years, and we can see that this tension within the Democratic party is a factor in every major decision the administration and the congressional leadership has made. From the start, President Obama, with the enthusiastic backing of liberal progressives, declared that his would be a transformative presidency. This meant that his agenda would largely be that of the liberal progressives: health-care reform with a major emphasis on near-universal coverage, cap-and-trade, a large economic stimulus focused more on government projects than on tax relief, a consumer-protection agency to regulate financial instruments. Truly, this crisis would not be allowed to go to waste: Forty years of wandering in the political wilderness would finally be over.</p>
<p>were acutely aware that they had supermajorities they had not possessed since 1980. With the increase of the partisan use of the filibuster, a phenomenon not widely seen until the Clinton years, they felt they would not have this degree of power again in the near future. Many argued that the window for bold action was narrow, and it could not be let to close without fulfilling liberal-progressive dreams.</p>
<p>Any one of these measures would have defined a Congress. To push all of them simultaneously, plus a major financial-regulation bill to address what was argued to be the causes of the financial crisis, proved to be too much. Nevertheless, time after time, when political warning signals went up, the administration and the congressional leadership pushed forward.</p>
<p>The administration has been criticized by many for not engaging in Clintonian triangulation, in not bending to the political winds to pass something incremental and obtainable. Speaker Pelosi’s decision to push her caucus to a floor vote on cap-and-trade legislation that was unlikely to pass the Senate might cost dozens of Democrats their seats. The decision to push the health-care bill after Scott Brown won the Massachusetts special election to the Senate has helped to define the entire 2010 campaign. Had they not done these things, many moderate progressives argue, Democrats could have staved off the massive defeat they are now certain to suffer.</p>
<p>But this argument essentially says that Hillary Clinton should have won the presidency. The whole point of liberal progressivism is to rid the Democratic party of what it views as temporizing and lack of principle. Barack Obama won his nomination with that faction’s support; Nancy Pelosi was elevated to the speakership with their favor. To ignore the liberal progressives’ ideals in difficult times would break faith with them, guaranteeing their eternal enmity and earning the president a probable primary challenge.</p>
<p>Indeed, these fears were justified. The twin totems of liberal progressivism–lofty ambitions and impatience–have been on full display when liberal progressives discuss the administration’s decisions. Paul Krugman decries a too-small stimulus, a bill whose near-trillion-dollar price tag shocked middle-class Americans. Jon Stewart tells the president that he has been too timid. While most polls show that Americans view President Obama as too liberal, liberal progressives view him as not liberal enough.</p>
<p>None of this would have mattered if the liberal progressives had been right about the reasons they have lost in the past. If Americans genuinely wanted quick implementation of liberal-progressive economic measures, then there would have been no electoral retribution to fear. Indeed, this was the argument many liberal progressives made when the decision was made to go forward with the health-care bill.</p>
<p>Moderate progressives argued that Brown’s election was a wake-up call. Pointing to many polls showing that Americans did not want the health-care bill to pass and that independents were growing more concerned about the deficit and moving against the Democrats, men such as Mark Penn and Doug Schoen argued that electoral disaster loomed unless the administration changed course. They pointed to the landslide of 1994 as an example of what could happen if the Speaker and the president persisted. In essence, moderate progressive argued that the Democrats lost in 1994 by trying to be three steps ahead of public opinion instead of one.</p>
<p>Those in favor of pushing forward argued that the reason the Democrats lost in 1994 was not that they were too far ahead of public opinion, but that by failing to pass Clinton’s health-care bill they had not heeded public opinion enough. Democrats were punished in 1994 for not governing, not for being out of step with public opinion. Thus in March 2010, liberal progressives were saying, Pass the bill and the people will reward you for tackling a tough problem. By November, these men argued, Republicans will no longer be able to distract the voters with wild claims about “death panels,” and the president could make the case himself. The political calculus, they said, favored bold action–not triangulation.</p>
<p>Note how all the issues in the progressive civil war played out in this discussion. Should we aim for incremental amelioration or bold transformation? Should public opinion cause progressives to slow down or not? Is the public genuinely for liberal progressivism or not?</p>
<p>The progressive civil war has played out in the ensuing post-Obamacare policy and political debates as well. Moderate progressives argued for a sole preoccupation with the economy, jobs, and controlling the deficit. Polls showed that this is what independents, who still had a personal regard for President Obama, wanted addressed. Liberal progressives instead insisted on measures that would energize the despondent base. Immigration reform would attract Latinos, addressing student-loan defaults would energize the young, cap-and-trade would energize environmentalists, and so on.</p>
<p>These debates also replayed old progressive debates on how to engage in American politics. Moderate progressives, who believed that liberal progressivism was to blame for prior defeats, emphasized the role independents would play in the election and counseled ameliorative incremental measures. Liberal progressives, who believed that lack of boldness and improper campaign tactics were responsible for prior defeats, focused on policies that would energize liberal progressives–who supposedly normally do not vote–to show up at the polls.</p>
<p>We can see that the administration again largely accepted the liberal-progressive view of the world. Legislative attention was focused on financial regulation, a bill that was superficially popular but which clearly was not a priority for any segment of the electorate. Little serious attention was paid to the deficit, and the administration’s reaction to the Gulf oil spill was to shut down offshore drilling, an act that thrilled environmentalists but surely was noticed by working-class Americans already worried about their jobs. It was as if the administration felt that directing popular anger against Wall Street and big business–a staple of the Democratic party since Andrew Jackson and 1832, as progressives John Judis and Ruy Teixeira noted in their book The Emerging Democratic Majority–was sufficient to bring working-class Americans back on board.</p>
<p>The result is clear, according to moderate progressives. Once again, the Democratic party has been seduced by the siren song of immediate and comprehensive public action without regard to cost or public opinion. The cure for this disease is clear: a return to the only course of political action that has worked for Democrats since 1966, Clintonian incrementalism.</p>
<p>Liberal progressives would contest this interpretation. They place the blame for the Democratic defeat on the economy, noting that unemployment is at historically high levels, levels that have particularly affected the working class. They further note that they were unable to deliver on immigration reform, cap-and-trade, don’t-ask-don’t-tell, and other measures that would excite the base. They would argue that the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United opened the floodgate to unprecedented influence by corporations and billionaires who could now spend unlimited amounts of money on campaigns guided by clever and unscrupulous Republican operatives.</p>
<p>In short, they are repeating all of their prior explanations for 40 years of political defeat. People are voting their pocketbooks, our voters won’t vote unless they have something to vote for, and outside interests are once more conspiring to distract the voters with phony issues and slick ads. This, then, is the decisive point: Are liberal progressives right about recent American electoral history? Or do American voters fundamentally not want what liberal progressives have to offer?</p>
<p>What Do Americans Really Want?</p>
<p>Let’s start this discussion with a simple fact. Since 1960, Democrats have simultaneously controlled the White House and Congress with large supermajorities four times: 1965-66, 1977-80, 1993-94, and 2009-10. In each of the three previous instances, Democrats suffered landslide reversals in Congress within four years of obtaining their supermajorities. They will do so again this year. The only time they did not also then lose the presidency was in 1996, when the triangulator Bill Clinton was reelected. Is this a coincidence?</p>
<p>One cannot easily blame the economy for those earlier defeats. The economy was humming in the 1960s, and it was steadily recovering during the early 1990s. Nor can one easily blame political consultants and clever Republican tricks. As anyone who follows advertising and politics knows, a campaign succeeds only if it communicates messages its audience wants to hear. The only thread that runs through all four of the landslide reversals is the presence of liberal progressivism as the defining feature of the campaign.</p>
<p>One can begin to arrive at the political problem of liberal progressivism when one notes that each of those reversals saw the white working class abandon Democrats in record numbers. Nixon’s Silent Majority, Reagan Democrats, angry white males–these catchphrases from those past elections are merely euphemisms for the white working class. In each election, it was their defection that cost the Democrats their majorities and gave victory to the GOP, and polls and casual observation suggest that the white working class is in revolt against President Obama. You can read my NRO article “GOP Heaven, West Virginia?” for the full argument, but suffice it to say that President Obama’s approval rating among white working-class voters is in the neighborhood of 30 percent. By comparison, this is only a few points higher than Nixon’s approval rating on the eve of his resignation.</p>
<p>There must be something unique to the concerns of the white working class, then, that liberal progressivism rubs the wrong way. What might that be?</p>
<p>One could try to discover the answer by recourse to recent polls. If one examined the Ap-GfK poll from September 6-13, for example, one would find that working-class voters believe that government intervention in the economy is more harmful than beneficial by nearly a two-to-one margin. One would also find they are more distressed about the economy and more likely to say they have suffered financially or that a relative has lost a job. Over half say President Obama does not understand ordinary Americans’ problems. It should come as no surprise, then, to learn the same poll shows Republicans leading Democrats by 22 points on the generic congressional ballot, whereas Democrats led Republicans by 12 points two years ago.</p>
<p>But such recourse cannot account for the recurring white-working-class swings toward the GOP in prior years. Issues change, yet the same pattern has recurred for over 40 years. Something deeper must be at work, something that operates at the level of values rather than that of ideas. To discern what those values are, we must make inferences from these past elections rather than rely on contemporaneous data; we must turn off our computers and rely on the Force.</p>
<p>When I started to do this, I focused on American voters. But I soon realized that working-class voters exhibit similar traits in other countries as well. Ask an American working-class voter why he supports Democrats, and he or she is likely to say it’s because Democrats support “the little guy.” Reading about English voters in Claire Berlinski’s biography of Margaret Thatcher, There Is No Alternative, I found the exact same phrase used by English miners to describe their support for Labour. When I found the same phrase being used by Australian working-class voters to describe their attraction to the Australian Labour Party, I decided I needed to learn more.</p>
<p>So I reached out to Patrick Muttart, former chief of staff to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper. Muttart is perhaps the world’s leading expert on working-class voters in English-speaking countries, having studied their behavior and attitudes not only in Canada but also in Britain, Australia, and America. He has found that in each country, working-class voters may form the base for successful center-left governments but are crucially responsible for the rise of center-right leaders like Harper, Australia’s John Howard, and Margaret Thatcher.</p>
<p>He was kind enough to speak with me at length. He emphasized that working-class voters do not fit neatly on the traditional left-right continuum. They are fiscally conservative, wanting low rates of taxation and wanting government to live within its means, but economically populist, suspicious of trade, outsourcing, and high finance. They are culturally orthodox but morally moderate, in the sense that they don’t feel their lives will change much because of how social issues play out. They are patriotic and supportive of the military, but suspicious of foreign adventures.</p>
<p>Most importantly, they are modest in their aspirations for themselves. They do not aspire to be “type A business owners”; they want to go to work, do what’s asked of them, not have too much stress in their lives, and spend time with their families. They want structure and stability in their lives so that things are taken care of and they don’t have to worry.</p>
<p>Drawing on Muttart’s insights and my own thinking, I believe there are seven salient values or tendencies that are common to working-class voters across the decades. Call them the Seven Habits of the Working Class. They are:</p>
<p>Let me address each of them in turn.</p>
<p>Hope for the future: One of the striking facts about America is how readily we believe that we can prosper through hard work and our own efforts. Polls show that Americans overwhelmingly believe this to be true. These polls also show there is a high correlation between the belief that one is in control of one’s life and the belief that one can prosper through one’s own efforts.</p>
<p>Working-class Americans share classic American beliefs very strongly. They value economic growth because they believe they personally benefit from it. Unlike Continental Europeans, working-class voters do not envy the rich. They believe that Bill Gates has earned his billions, and while they do not believe they can become billionaires, they believe their children can.</p>
<p>Fear of the present: Working-class voters may believe that they and their children can move upward, but they are as or more motivated by their fear of moving downward. They recognize that their relative lack of education means they are at more risk of being laid off in downturns. Their relative lack of earning power means they find it harder to save for retirement, afford medical care, or pay for their children’s education. Their relative lack of specialized skills means they are more vulnerable to competition from unskilled immigrants and more likely to remain unemployed if they lose their job. This gnawing fear that everything they have built is at risk of falling apart is a central feature of their political identity.</p>
<p>Pride in their lives: Working-class voters are generally not a despondent group. Life is harder for them in many ways, but they take pride in who they are. They are not “bitter people, clinging to religion or guns”; they celebrate their lives and crave respect from the educated and wealthy classes. They flock to politicians who show genuine respect for their lives, and turn on those who display contempt or disdain.</p>
<p>Anger at being disrespected: This is the flip side of their pride. Working-class voters are very cognizant of their status in American life. They rarely occupy executive positions in their jobs and are consumers rather than producers of ideas. They feel keenly this relative lack of control over important features of their lives, and resent being ordered about as if they were merely pawns in someone else’s grand plan. They particularly dislike having their lives belittled as unsophisticated or inferior to the lives of educated or wealthy folk.</p>
<p>This anger can be expressed against big business, big government, or big anything. If working-class voters feel they are being treated as mere tools, they will react with anger whether the source of the treatment is an employer, a politician, or an academic.</p>
<p>Belief in public order: Working-class voters rely more on the public order to provide a structure in their lives than do upper-class voters. They can’t afford private security services or retreat to homes with large yards far from unruly elements. They live closer together and in closer contact with crime. Accordingly, they place a high premium on effective police and fire services and greatly respect policemen and firemen.</p>
<p>Patriotism: Working-class voters are highly patriotic. They love their country openly in ways that often seem odd and embarrassing to the educated class. They are likelier to express open support of and deference to the military (while simultaneously recognizing that “big military” is wasteful); their children volunteer for the military in much greater numbers than those of any other class. This is partly economic–learning a trade in the military is a better opportunity for them than for people who think they can graduate from college–but it is also genuinely patriotic.</p>
<p>This sentiment is particularly strong among recent immigrants. One way to show your devotion to your new country is to revere its symbols and institutions, and for the working class the military is perhaps the most accessible institution of all. Hispanics in particular enlist in the military, and it is no surprise that Republican presidential candidates who are strongly supportive of the military, like Reagan and George W. Bush, have fared best among Hispanic voters in the last 45 years.</p>
<p>Fear of rapid change: Working-class voters recognize that they are less equipped to handle sudden changes; consequently, they value stability highly. They fear sudden recessions and distrust sudden changes in government programs. Ronald Reagan, the conservative who has best understood the working class, put his finger on it in a prescient 1964 National Review article on why Goldwater lost: “Human nature resists change and goes over backward to avoid radical change.” Upper-class educated people may embrace risk and change, but working-class voters do not.</p>
<p>Now consider these values in the light of the primary features of liberal progressivism. Liberal progressives inherently crave rapid, transformational change; working-class voters abhor it. This was as true in the 1960s (the Great Society) and the early Clinton years as it is today. The impatience that characterizes liberal progressivism often leads to the impression that its apostles feel contempt and disdain for those who disagree; working-class voters sense this and react against it. Liberal progressivism requires high tax rates, not only on the rich but also on the middle and working classes (overseas, this is accomplished via the VAT); working-class voters know this will choke off economic growth and increase the financial stress in their lives. Liberal progressivism typically displays less concern with public order and the institutions that provide public order; working-class voters opposed this in the 1960s and 1980s when it appeared that crime was rampant, and they remain sensitive to it to this day.</p>
<p>Many of the Obama administration’s actions directly attack these core beliefs. Working-class Americans crave economic security, but they see an administration that talks more about health care and climate change than about jobs. The current recession exacerbates their natural fear of downward mobility, but they see an administration seemingly incapable of providing the very thing they want most from a center-left government. In the Henry Louis Gates and Ground Zero mosque controversies, liberal progressives saw an articulate leader defending individual rights; working-class voters saw someone who questioned the police, perhaps the bedrock institution that provides public order, and showed an insufficient degree of patriotism.</p>
<p>Some of President Obama’s personal habits also rub working-class voters the wrong way. The president’s urbane articulateness and emphasis on rational argumentation attracts many highly educated voters, but is offputting to the working class. His preternatural calm and seeming lack of emotion also work against him. These traits have been lampooned by Doonesbury and commented on in the recent New York Times Magazine profile, but historically, working-class voters have been drawn to politicians who connect with them on an emotional level, from FDR to Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton. They need their politicians to demonstrate warmth and humor; they respond to speakers who use example, story, and narrative as much as specific analysis to make their points. President Obama’s aloof and academic manner is the exact opposite of what working-class voters want in their leaders.</p>
<p>It is no coincidence, then, that working-class voters regularly turn from Democrats when liberal progressivism is on full display. In this election, with liberal progressivism on display as boldly as it has ever been, the reaction will be stronger than it has ever been. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Kansas; working- and middle-class voters just want something different from what liberal progressives offer.</p>
<p>The Conservative Challenge</p>
<p>Will the American middle and working classes’ turn to the GOP end the partisan and philosophical conflict of the last two years, or are there tensions between the conservative movement and those groups of Americans that remain to be worked out before a new, more stable political era is created? This is a topic well beyond the scope of this memo, but I will conclude by offering a sober, yet positive, assessment.</p>
<p>Conservatives often assume that elections like 2010 show America has a consistent conservative majority. I think it is more accurate to say that they show that America has a consistent anti-progressive majority. The task conservatives have today is to transform the anti-progressive majority into a pro-conservative one. This will be harder than it seems.</p>
<p>The American conservative movement was founded in explicit opposition to the progressive project. It was also founded on the premise that a return to the governing principles of the Founders’ Constitution was feasible and desirable. The first principle is anti-progressive; the second is pro-conservative. The dynamics of working- and middle-class attitudes I have outlined above raise the specter that these principles in their pure forms can be politically incompatible.</p>
<p>The same abhorrence of rapid change that fuels working-class fear of liberal progressivism works against rapid conservative political action. In that 1964 article, Reagan argued that conservatives lost not because of their ideas, but because liberals portrayed them “as advancing a kind of radical departure from the status quo.” Today’s Tea Party enthusiasts have displayed a desire for rapid transformation of public policy nearly as strong as that of the liberal progressives. Moving too far, too fast down this road will alienate the very voters who just came over to the GOP.</p>
<p>There are other, deeper tensions at work. Working-class voters crave order and stability. They value the degree of these things that the welfare state and public institutions have provided. They also respect entrepreneurs but have no desire to be forced to emulate them. They respect private economic activity, but fear that business will cast them aside in the pursuit of profits. A conservatism that conveys the message that we seek to abolish the welfare state or that people have value only if they enthusiastically participate as risk takers in a dynamic, turbulent economy will not appeal to them.</p>
<p>Conservatives often speak in language and propose policies that the working class perceives as threatening. Conservatives celebrate freedom, opportunity, achievement, being our own boss, entrepreneurship. Working-class voters want these things, but in moderation. They know that not everyone can graduate from college or own a business. They want a political and economic system that rewards and supports their modest vision for their own lives, rhetorically and practically. Conservatives must figure out how to reconcile their core principles with working-class desires if they are to form a lasting, stable political coalition.</p>
<p>We’ve done it before. Ronald Reagan in 1964 said “We represent the forgotten American–that simple soul who goes to work, bucks for a raise, takes out insurance, pays for his kids’ schooling, contributes to his church and charity, and knows there just ‘ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.'” He knew that to attract the working- and middle-class voter, “that simple soul,” conservatives need to express what they already believe, that the simple soul has value as a creature made in God’s image.</p>
<p>Reagan did this in both word and deed. His State of the Union addresses often featured a reference to a person in the audience. This person was invariably an ordinary man who had had a moment of extraordinary heroism, not a captain of industry or a great entrepreneur. When Reagan went to Normandy, he did not laud the genius of Eisenhower or the courage of Patton; he praised “the boys of Pointe du Hoc.” His celebration of average men and women who did their duty, and oftentimes more, reassured and inspired them.</p>
<p>His deeds also struck a balance between advancing freedom and respecting stability. Rasher conservatives often criticized him for failing to do more to reduce the size of government, but he understood, having been a supporter of FDR himself, how much the safety net meant economically and spiritually to the working and middle classes. He knew that his task was to plant the tree of liberty in the garden of Roosevelt. As he said in 1964, “time now for the soft sell to prove our radicalism was an optical illusion.”</p>
<p>His success is manifest. For nearly 30 years, politicians have labored to define themselves in the light of his legacy. Even President Obama was said he wants to be transformative like Reagan. Thanks to him, conservative sentiments are today stronger among the American people than at any time since the Great Depression.</p>
<p>Today’s conservatives have a rendezvous with destiny. The peculiar political challenge of our time–repairing our nation’s finances and avoiding national bankruptcy–requires us to reform our welfare state. This forces us to confront the tensions outlined above, and to do so in a way that reassures rather than frightens the vast American middle that has turned to us now in response to the last two years. If we seize this opportunity and act with principle and prudence, we truly can say we have met our challenge. In so doing, we truly will have “preserved for our children this, the last best hope for man on earth.”</p>
<p>Henry Olsen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.</p> | false | 1 | delaware democrat chris coons fitting election day comes two days halloween running sometime dabbler witchcraft christine odonnell hundreds partisan brothers sisters however another holiday reference appropriate mexicos day dead today neighbors south begin celebrating memories deceased family friends tomorrow neighbors left mourn demise hundreds candidates whose careers consigned political graveyard rise take bodily form come two years ago things seemed possible democrats possession congressional majorities larger since 1980 led seemingly historic figure larger share popular vote nonincumbent democrat since fdr 1932 democrats forecast american political sky would remain endlessly blue today democrats headed reversal fortune proportions seen since landslide elections 1946 1948 strong reversal predict republicans gain 55 72 seats house best estimate 64 give gop 243 seats highest total since election 1946 second highest since great depression living democrat served house representatives democrats inhabit body come january furthermore predict gop gain nine senate seats giving 50 members means republicans nearly capture slate seats grabs losing west virginia nailbiter among close seats polls would surprised one democratperhaps jim webb virginiasubsequently switches parties changes party caucuses give gop operational control senate many blame economy situation arguing party midst worst economic crisis least 30 perhaps 80 years could satisfied electorate truth party power always suffers polls significant recession explanation goes far anger disappointment disgust voters shower obama administration democratic congressional leadership unusually deep electorate reacting much visceral level private electionprediction memo two years ago wrote following words democrats split progressives seek radical swift move economic left centrists want reregulate spread wealth around nowhere near degree progressives win intraparty fights dont know faction wins extent largely determine health nation possibility quick republican resurgence know progressives despite dissatisfaction many elements president obamas agenda largely fights result large segments american electorate feel administration democrats congress dont understand dont care understand aspirations fears sentiment keenly strongly felt among conservative republicans sharedfor different reasonsby many nonconservatives sentiment particularly strong among white working class among catholics development sentiment inevitable president obama took power strong support americans hoped believed could make america whole instead deeds words done failed alienated vast american middle say words deeds alienate american middle working classes something inherent progressive politics sync american attitudes aspirations understand answers questions must understand election latest battle called fifty years war progressives conservatives possession americas political soul one understand presidents words deeds understand war democrats differ fight war issue turn fifty years war political level fifty years war defines american freedom promise america everyone enjoys right life liberty pursuit happiness best kept government minimally involved either regulation taxation individual decision making best kept government removes material immaterial obstacles individuals ability make decisions would prefer make even removing obstacles places obstacles paths americans conservatives tendency agree first proposition progressives tendency agree second progressives second pragmatic question answer necessityin form voter opinion economic factorssignificantly constrain pursuit justice progressives differ among question difference forms heart battle moderates liberals within democratic party liberal progressives say necessity minimal role constraining pursuit progressive justice voters dont agree progressive view rights recourse courts overrule proper voters desire especially welloff voters desire keep taxes low economy growing ought significant factor bringing medical care poor people saving planet greenhouse gasses moderate progressives take contrary view justice secure secure hearts minds people believe place faith pay deference voters desires dont believe progressive aspirations believe goals best achieved incremental measures receive broad popular support see clash clearly reactions camps clinton presidency hillary clintons future candidacy liberal progressives clinton presidency anathema timid power 199394 conciliatory shared power republican congress thereafter belief fueled challenges al gore 2000 bill bradley primaries ralph nader general election fueled howard deans 2004 bid impetus behind much support barack obamas challenge frontrunner hillary clinton 2008 moderate progressives clinton presidency model progressive action modern world clintons goslow approach coupled continued pursuit progressive spending social policies possible meant progressive policies became imbedded middleclass mindset making impervious conservative counterattack differences arise bill clinton though seeds democratic division extend much back political history start current political era 1960s side progressive civil war draws different lessons happened 1960s 1970s 1980s lessons carried different paths 1990s remain present day legacy sixties todays liberal progressives directly descended new left 1960s mean student radicals sds members yippies others radical fringe movement instead define new left americanslargely bearers college postgraduate degreeswho sought merely ameliorate hardest edges american life fdr new deal rather transform american life sought eliminate ameliorate poverty saw americans pursuit everincreasing wealth impediment goals already welloff families people little saw american defense spending crucial obstacle goals one attacking us directly shouldnt spend butter rather bombs new left characterized much impatience lofty ambitions advocates saw nonattainment goals moral crime stood way goals merely adversaries enemies selfish unlettered need enlightenment sentiment source arrogant condescension many americans conservatives felt frequently defining feature todays left new left todays liberal progressives interpret americas political history differently way conservatives moderate progressives see victory richard nixon 1968 1972 catastrophic much conservatives see nixon liberal imposition wage price controls failure even seriously try dismantle much great society liberal progressives see victory watershed stood impediment rapid attainment goals nixons victory catastrophic reagans victory epochal reagan heirs promised stand way achieving liberal progressives deepest dreams stood pledged question assumptions progressive project roll back could reverse trends liberal progressives knew control democratic party nominate elect one presidency thus born endemic battles progressives old guard unions party bosses 80s dlc 90s 00s democratic nomination contests liberal progressive candidate would win educated votersthe wine set ron brownstein labeled themwhile moderate progressive candidate would win middle working classesbrownsteins beer set since beer drinkers always outnumbered wine drinkers democratic primaries candidates excited progressive elements always lostuntil barack obama broke mold 2008 attracting africanamerican beer drinkers progressive camp liberal progressives view consistent defeats examples justice denied consistent rejection voters seen rejection impatience lofty ambitions something sinister voters bamboozled teflon great communicator willie horton ads triangulating good old boys corporate interests blockheaded texans backed unscrupulous mayberry machiavellians something matter kansans dont back progressives must devious politicians divert middle workingclass voters bread circuses phony social issues unnecessary foreign wars solution organize new constituencies particularly among young among ethnic minorities internet daily kos moveonorg local groups acorn dcbased interest groups emilys list center american progress continue press progressive justice bold colors pale pastels democratic thermidor continued failure progressive candidates democratic presidential primaries shows majority democrats lineage moderate progressives place different interpretation went wrong 60s 70s adopted different view engage shape american politics moderate progressives view rejections democrats 1968 1984 sober lesson delivered sober populace view americans today wanting things economically parents grandparents wanted new deal active safety net helps move american life view americans support democrats use government support enhance middleclass values aspirations moderate progressives believe democrats got away heritage started perceived worrying people work worrying criminals victims crime worrying american aggression freedom west moderate progressives impatience lofty ambitions animate liberal progressives seen causes republican conservative victory moderate progressives like bill clinton believed voters would choose conservative republicans offered democratic alternative sought modernize roosevelts legacy modern times pledging end welfare know support people work hard play rules clinton sought place alternative americans victory moderate progressives view legitimizing approach though seen destructive liberal progressives difference encapsulated side views welfare reform passage widely viewed securing clintons reelection moderate progressives proud legislation wishing provided economic support single mothers generally supportive fact helped move millions people work liberal progressives though believe little nothing end poverty sellout progressive commitment poor fact public demanded welfarereform bill something like passed weighs large calculus moderate progressives liberal progressives progressive civil war fast forward past two years see tension within democratic party factor every major decision administration congressional leadership made start president obama enthusiastic backing liberal progressives declared would transformative presidency meant agenda would largely liberal progressives healthcare reform major emphasis nearuniversal coverage capandtrade large economic stimulus focused government projects tax relief consumerprotection agency regulate financial instruments truly crisis would allowed go waste forty years wandering political wilderness would finally acutely aware supermajorities possessed since 1980 increase partisan use filibuster phenomenon widely seen clinton years felt would degree power near future many argued window bold action narrow could let close without fulfilling liberalprogressive dreams one measures would defined congress push simultaneously plus major financialregulation bill address argued causes financial crisis proved much nevertheless time time political warning signals went administration congressional leadership pushed forward administration criticized many engaging clintonian triangulation bending political winds pass something incremental obtainable speaker pelosis decision push caucus floor vote capandtrade legislation unlikely pass senate might cost dozens democrats seats decision push healthcare bill scott brown massachusetts special election senate helped define entire 2010 campaign done things many moderate progressives argue democrats could staved massive defeat certain suffer argument essentially says hillary clinton presidency whole point liberal progressivism rid democratic party views temporizing lack principle barack obama nomination factions support nancy pelosi elevated speakership favor ignore liberal progressives ideals difficult times would break faith guaranteeing eternal enmity earning president probable primary challenge indeed fears justified twin totems liberal progressivismlofty ambitions impatiencehave full display liberal progressives discuss administrations decisions paul krugman decries toosmall stimulus bill whose neartrilliondollar price tag shocked middleclass americans jon stewart tells president timid polls show americans view president obama liberal liberal progressives view liberal enough none would mattered liberal progressives right reasons lost past americans genuinely wanted quick implementation liberalprogressive economic measures would electoral retribution fear indeed argument many liberal progressives made decision made go forward healthcare bill moderate progressives argued browns election wakeup call pointing many polls showing americans want healthcare bill pass independents growing concerned deficit moving democrats men mark penn doug schoen argued electoral disaster loomed unless administration changed course pointed landslide 1994 example could happen speaker president persisted essence moderate progressive argued democrats lost 1994 trying three steps ahead public opinion instead one favor pushing forward argued reason democrats lost 1994 far ahead public opinion failing pass clintons healthcare bill heeded public opinion enough democrats punished 1994 governing step public opinion thus march 2010 liberal progressives saying pass bill people reward tackling tough problem november men argued republicans longer able distract voters wild claims death panels president could make case political calculus said favored bold actionnot triangulation note issues progressive civil war played discussion aim incremental amelioration bold transformation public opinion cause progressives slow public genuinely liberal progressivism progressive civil war played ensuing postobamacare policy political debates well moderate progressives argued sole preoccupation economy jobs controlling deficit polls showed independents still personal regard president obama wanted addressed liberal progressives instead insisted measures would energize despondent base immigration reform would attract latinos addressing studentloan defaults would energize young capandtrade would energize environmentalists debates also replayed old progressive debates engage american politics moderate progressives believed liberal progressivism blame prior defeats emphasized role independents would play election counseled ameliorative incremental measures liberal progressives believed lack boldness improper campaign tactics responsible prior defeats focused policies would energize liberal progressiveswho supposedly normally voteto show polls see administration largely accepted liberalprogressive view world legislative attention focused financial regulation bill superficially popular clearly priority segment electorate little serious attention paid deficit administrations reaction gulf oil spill shut offshore drilling act thrilled environmentalists surely noticed workingclass americans already worried jobs administration felt directing popular anger wall street big businessa staple democratic party since andrew jackson 1832 progressives john judis ruy teixeira noted book emerging democratic majoritywas sufficient bring workingclass americans back board result clear according moderate progressives democratic party seduced siren song immediate comprehensive public action without regard cost public opinion cure disease clear return course political action worked democrats since 1966 clintonian incrementalism liberal progressives would contest interpretation place blame democratic defeat economy noting unemployment historically high levels levels particularly affected working class note unable deliver immigration reform capandtrade dontaskdonttell measures would excite base would argue supreme courts decision citizens united opened floodgate unprecedented influence corporations billionaires could spend unlimited amounts money campaigns guided clever unscrupulous republican operatives short repeating prior explanations 40 years political defeat people voting pocketbooks voters wont vote unless something vote outside interests conspiring distract voters phony issues slick ads decisive point liberal progressives right recent american electoral history american voters fundamentally want liberal progressives offer americans really want lets start discussion simple fact since 1960 democrats simultaneously controlled white house congress large supermajorities four times 196566 197780 199394 200910 three previous instances democrats suffered landslide reversals congress within four years obtaining supermajorities year time also lose presidency 1996 triangulator bill clinton reelected coincidence one easily blame economy earlier defeats economy humming 1960s steadily recovering early 1990s one easily blame political consultants clever republican tricks anyone follows advertising politics knows campaign succeeds communicates messages audience wants hear thread runs four landslide reversals presence liberal progressivism defining feature campaign one begin arrive political problem liberal progressivism one notes reversals saw white working class abandon democrats record numbers nixons silent majority reagan democrats angry white malesthese catchphrases past elections merely euphemisms white working class election defection cost democrats majorities gave victory gop polls casual observation suggest white working class revolt president obama read nro article gop heaven west virginia full argument suffice say president obamas approval rating among white workingclass voters neighborhood 30 percent comparison points higher nixons approval rating eve resignation must something unique concerns white working class liberal progressivism rubs wrong way might one could try discover answer recourse recent polls one examined apgfk poll september 613 example one would find workingclass voters believe government intervention economy harmful beneficial nearly twotoone margin one would also find distressed economy likely say suffered financially relative lost job half say president obama understand ordinary americans problems come surprise learn poll shows republicans leading democrats 22 points generic congressional ballot whereas democrats led republicans 12 points two years ago recourse account recurring whiteworkingclass swings toward gop prior years issues change yet pattern recurred 40 years something deeper must work something operates level values rather ideas discern values must make inferences past elections rather rely contemporaneous data must turn computers rely force started focused american voters soon realized workingclass voters exhibit similar traits countries well ask american workingclass voter supports democrats likely say democrats support little guy reading english voters claire berlinskis biography margaret thatcher alternative found exact phrase used english miners describe support labour found phrase used australian workingclass voters describe attraction australian labour party decided needed learn reached patrick muttart former chief staff canadian prime minister stephen harper muttart perhaps worlds leading expert workingclass voters englishspeaking countries studied behavior attitudes canada also britain australia america found country workingclass voters may form base successful centerleft governments crucially responsible rise centerright leaders like harper australias john howard margaret thatcher kind enough speak length emphasized workingclass voters fit neatly traditional leftright continuum fiscally conservative wanting low rates taxation wanting government live within means economically populist suspicious trade outsourcing high finance culturally orthodox morally moderate sense dont feel lives change much social issues play patriotic supportive military suspicious foreign adventures importantly modest aspirations aspire type business owners want go work whats asked much stress lives spend time families want structure stability lives things taken care dont worry drawing muttarts insights thinking believe seven salient values tendencies common workingclass voters across decades call seven habits working class let address turn hope future one striking facts america readily believe prosper hard work efforts polls show americans overwhelmingly believe true polls also show high correlation belief one control ones life belief one prosper ones efforts workingclass americans share classic american beliefs strongly value economic growth believe personally benefit unlike continental europeans workingclass voters envy rich believe bill gates earned billions believe become billionaires believe children fear present workingclass voters may believe children move upward motivated fear moving downward recognize relative lack education means risk laid downturns relative lack earning power means find harder save retirement afford medical care pay childrens education relative lack specialized skills means vulnerable competition unskilled immigrants likely remain unemployed lose job gnawing fear everything built risk falling apart central feature political identity pride lives workingclass voters generally despondent group life harder many ways take pride bitter people clinging religion guns celebrate lives crave respect educated wealthy classes flock politicians show genuine respect lives turn display contempt disdain anger disrespected flip side pride workingclass voters cognizant status american life rarely occupy executive positions jobs consumers rather producers ideas feel keenly relative lack control important features lives resent ordered merely pawns someone elses grand plan particularly dislike lives belittled unsophisticated inferior lives educated wealthy folk anger expressed big business big government big anything workingclass voters feel treated mere tools react anger whether source treatment employer politician academic belief public order workingclass voters rely public order provide structure lives upperclass voters cant afford private security services retreat homes large yards far unruly elements live closer together closer contact crime accordingly place high premium effective police fire services greatly respect policemen firemen patriotism workingclass voters highly patriotic love country openly ways often seem odd embarrassing educated class likelier express open support deference military simultaneously recognizing big military wasteful children volunteer military much greater numbers class partly economiclearning trade military better opportunity people think graduate collegebut also genuinely patriotic sentiment particularly strong among recent immigrants one way show devotion new country revere symbols institutions working class military perhaps accessible institution hispanics particular enlist military surprise republican presidential candidates strongly supportive military like reagan george w bush fared best among hispanic voters last 45 years fear rapid change workingclass voters recognize less equipped handle sudden changes consequently value stability highly fear sudden recessions distrust sudden changes government programs ronald reagan conservative best understood working class put finger prescient 1964 national review article goldwater lost human nature resists change goes backward avoid radical change upperclass educated people may embrace risk change workingclass voters consider values light primary features liberal progressivism liberal progressives inherently crave rapid transformational change workingclass voters abhor true 1960s great society early clinton years today impatience characterizes liberal progressivism often leads impression apostles feel contempt disdain disagree workingclass voters sense react liberal progressivism requires high tax rates rich also middle working classes overseas accomplished via vat workingclass voters know choke economic growth increase financial stress lives liberal progressivism typically displays less concern public order institutions provide public order workingclass voters opposed 1960s 1980s appeared crime rampant remain sensitive day many obama administrations actions directly attack core beliefs workingclass americans crave economic security see administration talks health care climate change jobs current recession exacerbates natural fear downward mobility see administration seemingly incapable providing thing want centerleft government henry louis gates ground zero mosque controversies liberal progressives saw articulate leader defending individual rights workingclass voters saw someone questioned police perhaps bedrock institution provides public order showed insufficient degree patriotism president obamas personal habits also rub workingclass voters wrong way presidents urbane articulateness emphasis rational argumentation attracts many highly educated voters offputting working class preternatural calm seeming lack emotion also work traits lampooned doonesbury commented recent new york times magazine profile historically workingclass voters drawn politicians connect emotional level fdr ronald reagan bill clinton need politicians demonstrate warmth humor respond speakers use example story narrative much specific analysis make points president obamas aloof academic manner exact opposite workingclass voters want leaders coincidence workingclass voters regularly turn democrats liberal progressivism full display election liberal progressivism display boldly ever reaction stronger ever absolutely nothing wrong kansas working middleclass voters want something different liberal progressives offer conservative challenge american middle working classes turn gop end partisan philosophical conflict last two years tensions conservative movement groups americans remain worked new stable political era created topic well beyond scope memo conclude offering sober yet positive assessment conservatives often assume elections like 2010 show america consistent conservative majority think accurate say show america consistent antiprogressive majority task conservatives today transform antiprogressive majority proconservative one harder seems american conservative movement founded explicit opposition progressive project also founded premise return governing principles founders constitution feasible desirable first principle antiprogressive second proconservative dynamics working middleclass attitudes outlined raise specter principles pure forms politically incompatible abhorrence rapid change fuels workingclass fear liberal progressivism works rapid conservative political action 1964 article reagan argued conservatives lost ideas liberals portrayed advancing kind radical departure status quo todays tea party enthusiasts displayed desire rapid transformation public policy nearly strong liberal progressives moving far fast road alienate voters came gop deeper tensions work workingclass voters crave order stability value degree things welfare state public institutions provided also respect entrepreneurs desire forced emulate respect private economic activity fear business cast aside pursuit profits conservatism conveys message seek abolish welfare state people value enthusiastically participate risk takers dynamic turbulent economy appeal conservatives often speak language propose policies working class perceives threatening conservatives celebrate freedom opportunity achievement boss entrepreneurship workingclass voters want things moderation know everyone graduate college business want political economic system rewards supports modest vision lives rhetorically practically conservatives must figure reconcile core principles workingclass desires form lasting stable political coalition weve done ronald reagan 1964 said represent forgotten americanthat simple soul goes work bucks raise takes insurance pays kids schooling contributes church charity knows aint thing free lunch knew attract working middleclass voter simple soul conservatives need express already believe simple soul value creature made gods image reagan word deed state union addresses often featured reference person audience person invariably ordinary man moment extraordinary heroism captain industry great entrepreneur reagan went normandy laud genius eisenhower courage patton praised boys pointe du hoc celebration average men women duty oftentimes reassured inspired deeds also struck balance advancing freedom respecting stability rasher conservatives often criticized failing reduce size government understood supporter fdr much safety net meant economically spiritually working middle classes knew task plant tree liberty garden roosevelt said 1964 time soft sell prove radicalism optical illusion success manifest nearly 30 years politicians labored define light legacy even president obama said wants transformative like reagan thanks conservative sentiments today stronger among american people time since great depression todays conservatives rendezvous destiny peculiar political challenge timerepairing nations finances avoiding national bankruptcyrequires us reform welfare state forces us confront tensions outlined way reassures rather frightens vast american middle turned us response last two years seize opportunity act principle prudence truly say met challenge truly preserved children last best hope man earth henry olsen senior fellow ethics public policy center | 3,671 |
<p>By Julie Zhu and Sumeet Chatterjee</p>
<p>HONG KONG (Reuters) – China’s latest push to revive its bloated state-owned sector is set to pick up pace this year, with bankers and investors expecting possible spin-offs and asset sales to follow a key Communist Party Congress in October.</p>
<p>But the effort is likely to only involve a limited role for private money, even as Beijing has been promoting it as crucial for reforming state-owned enterprises (SOEs), according to people familiar with China’s plans.</p>
<p>Beijing would likely lean on cash-rich SOEs like China Life Insurance (SS:) and Citic Group Corporation to bail out the largest of the struggling companies, the people said.</p>
<p>They cited China Life stepping in to help China Unicom (HK:) raise $12 billion last month.</p>
<p>A limited role for private capital would raise questions about the depth of any overhaul of the SOEs. China hopes to speed up the reforms in order to meet ambitious economic growth targets and manage its corporate debt burden.</p>
<p>“The current model allows winners, companies doing better, to partially own those doing worse,” said Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief Asia Pacific economist at Natixis. “In other words, this is a&#160;reshuffling&#160;of profit, loss among SOEs to a large extent.”</p>
<p>China Life is in talks with China Three Gorges New Energy, a unit of the country’s top hydropower developer, according to sources familiar with the matter.</p>
<p>They said it could also be critical to others in line for so-called mixed ownership, the injection of private capital into state enterprises. Those companies include China Southern Power Grid, China State Shipbuilding Corp and China Nuclear Engineering &amp; Construction Corporation..</p>
<p>China Life and Citic Group did not respond to requests for comment.</p>
<p>China’s state-run companies dominate the country’s key industries, from banking to insurance, energy, and telecoms. They retain an edge over their private rivals in investing both locally and overseas, in part thanks to easier financing.</p>
<p>But they also produce lower returns than their private counterparts and account for the biggest proportion of the bad loans on the books of the country’s banks.</p>
<p>The fund raising by Unicom, a state-owned telecoms group, had sparked hopes for the mixed ownership effort, as outlined in a 2015 government plan.</p>
<p>The partial privatization of Unicom in August, involving 14 investors, including the tech giants Alibaba (N:) and Tencent (HK:), was welcomed by markets.</p>
<p>But, as Beijing balanced the need for cash with the need for control, China Life ended up with a 10.6 percent stake in the company, nearly a third of the total sold. New investors, including China Life, were given three of 15 board seats.</p>
<p>“For the SOE reforms to really take off, the ownership of these companies should be truly diversified both in terms of equity holding as well as governance,” said a Beijing-based lawyer who works with the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top economic planning body, and private companies.</p>
<p>“That will be difficult to achieve: there is no incentive for private enterprises to invest in most of these state-owned firms,” said the lawyer, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue. “So it will be basically a case of using one SOE’s cash balance to try and revive another.”</p>
<p>The NDRC and SASAC did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.</p>
<p>CAPITAL RAISING, BY INVITATION</p>
<p>Private capital is still expected to play an increasing role.</p>
<p>Responding to stagnating foreign direct investment and even a possible decline this year, China said last month that it would become more open to international investors – its latest statement about opening up to foreign cash.</p>
<p>That includes areas like banking, insurance and securities, where foreign ownership limitations have long grated on overseas companies trying to penetrate the China market.</p>
<p>And bankers – with one eye on next month’s Party Congress – expect the post-October wave of state enterprise reform to be more than just tie-ups. It could, some said, extend to smaller sales of unwanted, undervalued assets that may be more attractive to private investors, if they are allowed control.</p>
<p>The Party Congress “will be a very important inflection point,” Wei Sun Christianson, China chief executive and Asia Pacific co-chief executive for Morgan Stanley (NYSE:), said at a conference this month, referring to possible sales or spin-offs in the aftermath.</p>
<p>“All of that creates opportunities for investors.”</p>
<p>For now, the playing field is favoring the likes of China Life.</p>
<p>China Three Gorges New Energy, its next likely investment, according to the people familiar with the matter, is planning to raise about $1.5 billion from new investors.</p>
<p>Other potential investors in China Three Gorges, the next enterprise to receive outside cash, are also state-backed – and there is tepid interest from private investors in the company, said one of the people who has knowledge of the process.</p>
<p>We “will actively participate in the next round of mixed-ownership reforms,” China Life’s chairman, Yang Mingsheng, said at an earnings news conference last month.</p>
<p>But while some mixed-ownership candidates hold little appeal for private cash, some private players will be considering more than just returns when they weigh their role in China’s reform push.</p>
<p>“In China, you can’t always think about how to make money,” said one private investor who joined Unicom’s fundraising drive.</p>
<p>“You also need to take part in such reforms to show your support for the government’s policy.”</p> | false | 1 | julie zhu sumeet chatterjee hong kong reuters chinas latest push revive bloated stateowned sector set pick pace year bankers investors expecting possible spinoffs asset sales follow key communist party congress october effort likely involve limited role private money even beijing promoting crucial reforming stateowned enterprises soes according people familiar chinas plans beijing would likely lean cashrich soes like china life insurance ss citic group corporation bail largest struggling companies people said cited china life stepping help china unicom hk raise 12 billion last month limited role private capital would raise questions depth overhaul soes china hopes speed reforms order meet ambitious economic growth targets manage corporate debt burden current model allows winners companies better partially worse said alicia garciaherrero chief asia pacific economist natixis words a160reshuffling160of profit loss among soes large extent china life talks china three gorges new energy unit countrys top hydropower developer according sources familiar matter said could also critical others line socalled mixed ownership injection private capital state enterprises companies include china southern power grid china state shipbuilding corp china nuclear engineering amp construction corporation china life citic group respond requests comment chinas staterun companies dominate countrys key industries banking insurance energy telecoms retain edge private rivals investing locally overseas part thanks easier financing also produce lower returns private counterparts account biggest proportion bad loans books countrys banks fund raising unicom stateowned telecoms group sparked hopes mixed ownership effort outlined 2015 government plan partial privatization unicom august involving 14 investors including tech giants alibaba n tencent hk welcomed markets beijing balanced need cash need control china life ended 106 percent stake company nearly third total sold new investors including china life given three 15 board seats soe reforms really take ownership companies truly diversified terms equity holding well governance said beijingbased lawyer works national development reform commission chinas top economic planning body private companies difficult achieve incentive private enterprises invest stateowned firms said lawyer declined named due sensitivity issue basically case using one soes cash balance try revive another ndrc sasac respond reuters requests comment capital raising invitation private capital still expected play increasing role responding stagnating foreign direct investment even possible decline year china said last month would become open international investors latest statement opening foreign cash includes areas like banking insurance securities foreign ownership limitations long grated overseas companies trying penetrate china market bankers one eye next months party congress expect postoctober wave state enterprise reform tieups could said extend smaller sales unwanted undervalued assets may attractive private investors allowed control party congress important inflection point wei sun christianson china chief executive asia pacific cochief executive morgan stanley nyse said conference month referring possible sales spinoffs aftermath creates opportunities investors playing field favoring likes china life china three gorges new energy next likely investment according people familiar matter planning raise 15 billion new investors potential investors china three gorges next enterprise receive outside cash also statebacked tepid interest private investors company said one people knowledge process actively participate next round mixedownership reforms china lifes chairman yang mingsheng said earnings news conference last month mixedownership candidates hold little appeal private cash private players considering returns weigh role chinas reform push china cant always think make money said one private investor joined unicoms fundraising drive also need take part reforms show support governments policy | 548 |
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<p>An article in the journal, Sociological Inquiry, casts light on the effectiveness of propaganda. Researchers examined why big lies succeed where little lies fail. Governments can get away with mass deceptions, but politicians cannot get away with sexual affairs.</p>
<p>&lt;img class="size-medium wp-image-2030 alignleft" style="margin: 5px;" title="wtc-collapse" src="https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/wtc-collapse-300x168.jpg" alt="wtc-collapse" width="270" height="151" /&gt; The researchers explain why so many Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, years after it has become obvious that Iraq had nothing to do with the event. Americans developed elaborate rationalizations based on Bush administration propaganda that alleged Iraqi involvement and became deeply attached to their beliefs. Their emotional involvement became wrapped up in their personal identity and sense of morality. They looked for information that supported their beliefs and avoided information that challenged them, regardless of the facts of the matter.</p>
<p>In Mein Kampf, Hitler explained the believability of the Big Lie as compared to the small lie: “In the simplicity of their minds, people more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have such impudence. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and continue to think that there may be some other explanation.”</p>
<p>What the sociologists and Hitler are telling us is that by the time facts become clear, people are emotionally wedded to the beliefs planted by the propaganda and find it a wrenching experience to free themselves. It is more comfortable, instead, to denounce the truth-tellers than the liars whom the truth-tellers expose.</p>
<p>The psychology of belief retention even when those beliefs are wrong is a pillar of social cohesion and stability. It explains why, once change is effected, even revolutionary governments become conservative. The downside of belief retention is its prevention of the recognition of facts. Belief retention in the Soviet Union made the system unable to adjust to economic reality, and the Soviet Union collapsed. Today in the United States millions find it easier to chant “USA, USA, USA” than to accept facts that indicate the need for change.</p>
<p>The staying power of the Big Lie is the barrier through which the 9/11 Truth Movement is finding it difficult to break. The assertion that the 9/11 Truth Movement consists of conspiracy theorists and crackpots is obviously untrue. The leaders of the movement are highly qualified professionals, such as demolition experts, physicists, structural architects, engineers, pilots, and former high officials in the government. Unlike their critics parroting the government’s line, they know what they are talking about.</p>
<p><a href="http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&amp;aid=13242" type="external">Here is a link to a presentation by the architect, Richard Gage</a>, to a Canadian university audience.&#160; The video of the presentation is two hours long and seems to have been edited to shorten it down to two hours. Gage is low-key, but not a dazzling personality or a very articulate presenter. Perhaps that is because he is speaking to a university audience and takes for granted their familiarity with terms and concepts.</p>
<p>Those who believe the official 9/11 story and dismiss skeptics as kooks can test the validity of the sociologists’ findings and Hitler’s observation by watching the video and experiencing their reaction to evidence that challenges their beliefs. Are you able to watch the presentation without scoffing at someone who knows far more about it than you do? What is your response when you find that you cannot defend your beliefs against the evidence presented? Scoff some more? Become enraged?</p>
<p>Another problem that the 9/11 Truth Movement faces is that few people have the education to follow the technical and scientific aspects. The side that they believe tells them one thing; the side that they don’t believe tells them another. Most Americans have no basis to judge the relative merits of the arguments.</p>
<p>For example, consider the case of the Lockerbie bomber. One piece of “evidence” that was used to convict Magrahi was a piece of circuit board from a device that allegedly contained the Semtex that exploded the airliner. None of the people, who have very firm beliefs in Magrahi’s and Libya’s guilt and in the offense of the Scottish authorities in releasing Magrahi on allegedly humanitarian grounds, know that circuit boards of those days have very low combustion temperatures and go up in flames easily. Semtex produces very high temperatures. There would be nothing whatsoever left of a device that contained Semtex. It is obvious to an expert that the piece of circuit board was planted after the event.</p>
<p>I have asked on several occasions and have never had an answer, which does not mean that there isn’t one, how millions of pieces of unburnt, uncharred paper can be floating over lower Manhatten from the destruction of the WTC towers when the official explanation of the destruction is fires so hot and evenly distributed that they caused the massive steel structures to weaken and fail simultaneously so that the buildings fell in free fall time just as they would if they had been brought down by controlled demolition.</p>
<p>What is the explanation of fires so hot that steel fails but paper does not combust?</p>
<p>People don’t even notice the contradictions. Recently, an international team of scientists, who studied for 18 months dust samples produced by the twin towers’ destruction collected from three separate sources, reported their finding of nano-thermite in the dust. The US government had scientists dependent on the US government to debunk the finding on the grounds that the authenticity of custody of the samples could not be verified. In other words, someone had tampered with the samples and added the nano-thermite. This is all it took to discredit the finding, despite the obvious fact that access to thermite is strictly controlled and NO ONE except the US military and possibly Israel has access to nano-thermite.</p>
<p>The physicist, Steven Jones, has produced overwhelming evidence that explosives were used to bring down the buildings. His evidence is not engaged, examined, tested, and refuted. It is simply ignored.</p>
<p>Dr. Jones’ experience reminds me of that of my Oxford professor, the distinguished physical chemist and philosopher, Michael Polanyi. Polanyi was one of the 20th centuries great scientists. At one time every section chairman of the Royal Society was a Polanyi student. Many of his students won Nobel Prizes for their scientific work, such as Eugene Wigner at Princeton and Melvin Calvin at UC, Berkeley, and his son, John Polanyi, at the University of Toronto.</p>
<p>As a young man in the early years of the 20th century, Michael Polanyi discovered the explanation for chemical absorbtion. Scientific authority found the new theory too much of a challenge to existing beliefs and dismissed it. Even when Polanyi was one of the UK’s ranking scientists, he was unable to teach his theory. One half-century later his discovery was re-discovered by scientists at UC, Berkeley. The discovery was hailed, but then older scientists said that it was “Polanyi’s old error.” It turned out not to be an error. Polanyi was asked to address scientists on this half-century failure of science to recognize the truth. How had science, which is based on examining the evidence, gone so wrong. Polanyi’s answer was that science is a belief system just like everything else, and that his theory was outside the belief system.</p> | false | 1 | article journal sociological inquiry casts light effectiveness propaganda researchers examined big lies succeed little lies fail governments get away mass deceptions politicians get away sexual affairs ltimg classsizemedium wpimage2030 alignleft stylemargin 5px titlewtccollapse srchttpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads200909wtccollapse300x168jpg altwtccollapse width270 height151 gt researchers explain many americans still believe saddam hussein behind 911 years become obvious iraq nothing event americans developed elaborate rationalizations based bush administration propaganda alleged iraqi involvement became deeply attached beliefs emotional involvement became wrapped personal identity sense morality looked information supported beliefs avoided information challenged regardless facts matter mein kampf hitler explained believability big lie compared small lie simplicity minds people readily fall victims big lie small lie since often tell small lies little matters would ashamed resort largescale falsehoods would never come heads fabricate colossal untruths would believe others could impudence even though facts prove may brought clearly minds still doubt continue think may explanation sociologists hitler telling us time facts become clear people emotionally wedded beliefs planted propaganda find wrenching experience free comfortable instead denounce truthtellers liars truthtellers expose psychology belief retention even beliefs wrong pillar social cohesion stability explains change effected even revolutionary governments become conservative downside belief retention prevention recognition facts belief retention soviet union made system unable adjust economic reality soviet union collapsed today united states millions find easier chant usa usa usa accept facts indicate need change staying power big lie barrier 911 truth movement finding difficult break assertion 911 truth movement consists conspiracy theorists crackpots obviously untrue leaders movement highly qualified professionals demolition experts physicists structural architects engineers pilots former high officials government unlike critics parroting governments line know talking link presentation architect richard gage canadian university audience160 video presentation two hours long seems edited shorten two hours gage lowkey dazzling personality articulate presenter perhaps speaking university audience takes granted familiarity terms concepts believe official 911 story dismiss skeptics kooks test validity sociologists findings hitlers observation watching video experiencing reaction evidence challenges beliefs able watch presentation without scoffing someone knows far response find defend beliefs evidence presented scoff become enraged another problem 911 truth movement faces people education follow technical scientific aspects side believe tells one thing side dont believe tells another americans basis judge relative merits arguments example consider case lockerbie bomber one piece evidence used convict magrahi piece circuit board device allegedly contained semtex exploded airliner none people firm beliefs magrahis libyas guilt offense scottish authorities releasing magrahi allegedly humanitarian grounds know circuit boards days low combustion temperatures go flames easily semtex produces high temperatures would nothing whatsoever left device contained semtex obvious expert piece circuit board planted event asked several occasions never answer mean isnt one millions pieces unburnt uncharred paper floating lower manhatten destruction wtc towers official explanation destruction fires hot evenly distributed caused massive steel structures weaken fail simultaneously buildings fell free fall time would brought controlled demolition explanation fires hot steel fails paper combust people dont even notice contradictions recently international team scientists studied 18 months dust samples produced twin towers destruction collected three separate sources reported finding nanothermite dust us government scientists dependent us government debunk finding grounds authenticity custody samples could verified words someone tampered samples added nanothermite took discredit finding despite obvious fact access thermite strictly controlled one except us military possibly israel access nanothermite physicist steven jones produced overwhelming evidence explosives used bring buildings evidence engaged examined tested refuted simply ignored dr jones experience reminds oxford professor distinguished physical chemist philosopher michael polanyi polanyi one 20th centuries great scientists one time every section chairman royal society polanyi student many students nobel prizes scientific work eugene wigner princeton melvin calvin uc berkeley son john polanyi university toronto young man early years 20th century michael polanyi discovered explanation chemical absorbtion scientific authority found new theory much challenge existing beliefs dismissed even polanyi one uks ranking scientists unable teach theory one halfcentury later discovery rediscovered scientists uc berkeley discovery hailed older scientists said polanyis old error turned error polanyi asked address scientists halfcentury failure science recognize truth science based examining evidence gone wrong polanyis answer science belief system like everything else theory outside belief system | 678 |
<p>WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump pitched his new tax-reform initiative Wednesday in a speech that promised to boost the middle class by challenging a rigged system.</p>
<p>Speaking at a manufacturing company in Springfield, Missouri, Trump provided few specifics of what the tax plan should look like. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and chief economic adviser Gary Cohn have been talking with GOP congressional leaders, but the push to sell the tax-reform plan precedes a plan itself.</p>
<p>Trump told the crowd the White House chose Springfield for the address because it is considered the birthplace of the legendary Route 66, “where the Main Street of America got its start.”</p>
<p>“For many decades, Route 66 captured the American spirit” as truck drivers hauled made-in-America goods and manufacturing “gave Americans a paycheck that could support a family,” Trump said. But over time, for many families, that prosperity slipped away “in the rearview mirror,” he said.</p>
<p>A White House official told reporters during a background briefing Tuesday that Trump would focus on why America needs tax reform — with an emphasis on “ending the rigged system in closing these special interest loopholes that have only benefited the wealthy and powerful few.” In his remarks at the Loren Cook Co., a manufacturer of fans and ventilation systems, Trump repeatedly assailed loopholes that benefit the wealthy, but he did not use the word “rigged.”</p>
<p>The Springfield event was closed to the public. White House officials said they had determined it was more appropriate to announce the policy drive at a manufacturing setting, and not in a rally-type setting.</p>
<p>It turned out the less-boisterous atmosphere was fitting as Fox News and MSNBC broadcast the speech on split screens that also showed rescue efforts in flooded buildings and streets where Tropical Storm Harvey deluged parts of the Gulf Coast. It was the rare moment when Trump was not the big story.</p>
<p>The president began his address with a nod to “the deeply tragic situation in Texas and Louisiana” and a salute to the small miracles and their makers in the midst of the epic storm.</p>
<p>“We see friend helping friend, neighbor helping neighbor, and stranger helping stranger,” Trump said. “And together, we will endure and we will overcome.”</p>
<p>Wednesday dawned with good economic news. American businesses added 237,000 jobs in August, payroll firm Automatic Data Processing reported. The Commerce Department revised its estimate for the second quarter’s growth in gross domestic product to an annualized rate of 3 percent. It was the best showing since a 3.2 percent gain in the first quarter of 2015.</p>
<p>“We just announced that we hit 3 percent in GDP,” Trump crowed. “It just came out. And on a yearly basis, as you know, the last administration during an eight-year period never hit 3 percent. So we’re really on our way.”</p>
<p>It was the economy’s failure to maintain 3 percent growth under President Barack Obama that haunted an economic recovery that never quite graduated from anemic to robust.</p>
<p>Trump added, “And I happen to be one that thinks we can go much higher than 3 percent. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t.”</p>
<p>The administration’s set of goals</p>
<p>While the Springfield speech marked the beginning of Trump’s effort to pass a large tax-reform package, it was not his first word on the topic. In April, the White House released a one-page document, “2017 Tax Reform for Economic Growth and American Jobs,” which serves as a map for the administration’s goals.</p>
<p>The paper called for a 15 percent corporate tax rate that would be funded in part by eliminating loopholes, a collapse of income tax brackets from seven to three brackets of 10 percent, 15 percent and 35 percent, and a doubling of the standard deduction and increase in the child care deduction.</p>
<p>Trump argued that Washington has to reduce America’s 35 percent corporate tax rate — “the highest rate in the developed world,” according to Scott Greenberg of the right-leaning Tax Foundation — to compete with other nations in the unending international competition to attract jobs.</p>
<p>While Trump advocated for a 15 percent rate, Greenberg’s guess is that if Congress passes a bill, its corporate rate would be closer to 25 percent.</p>
<p>GOP communications strategist Kevin Madden said he’s not concerned about the lack of specifics from Trump. “There’s a reason why constitutionally all tax bills have to begin in the House,” he said. “It’s really up to the lawmakers anyway.”</p>
<p>Besides, he added, Republicans feel the pressure to deliver on this key campaign promise.</p>
<p>“We are united in our determination to get this done,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement.</p>
<p>Democrats ready for a fight</p>
<p>On a conference call, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters that tax reform will be “one of the biggest fights of the next three, four months, and Democrats are ready for it.”</p>
<p>Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., said in a statement, “The president’s so-called tax reform plan, which is full of vague promises, rigs the system to benefit the wealthy. We should know by now that ‘trickle down’ economics is a myth which allows the rich to get richer while causing middle-class families to fall further behind.”</p>
<p>“Here’s the problem,” said Chuck Marr, director of Federal Tax Policy of the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “Trump, he ran a campaign trying in part to appeal to the economic interest of working-class people. And his tax proposals do nothing for working-class people.”</p>
<p>Low-income workers would do better, Marr argued, if Trump expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit.</p>
<p>Because Senate rules require 60 votes to pass a measure that adds to the federal deficit, Republicans are looking to close loopholes in order to present a bill that a simple majority can pass. “Tackle all of them at once and then use all of them for a big rate cut so that no one is too disproportionately hurt,” Greenberg said.</p>
<p>Republicans understand that if the GOP cannot deliver tax reform while the party controls the White House, Senate and House that would speak volumes about the party’s ability to get things done.</p>
<p>“They say they need to do it. The media says they need to do it,” said Henry Olson, author of “The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism.” “They’re both right.”</p>
<p>Contact Debra J. Saunders at [email protected] or 202-662-7391. Follow <a href="http://www.twitter.com/@DebraJSaunders" type="external">@DebraJSaunders</a> on Twitter.</p> | false | 1 | washington president donald trump pitched new taxreform initiative wednesday speech promised boost middle class challenging rigged system speaking manufacturing company springfield missouri trump provided specifics tax plan look like treasury secretary steve mnuchin chief economic adviser gary cohn talking gop congressional leaders push sell taxreform plan precedes plan trump told crowd white house chose springfield address considered birthplace legendary route 66 main street america got start many decades route 66 captured american spirit truck drivers hauled madeinamerica goods manufacturing gave americans paycheck could support family trump said time many families prosperity slipped away rearview mirror said white house official told reporters background briefing tuesday trump would focus america needs tax reform emphasis ending rigged system closing special interest loopholes benefited wealthy powerful remarks loren cook co manufacturer fans ventilation systems trump repeatedly assailed loopholes benefit wealthy use word rigged springfield event closed public white house officials said determined appropriate announce policy drive manufacturing setting rallytype setting turned lessboisterous atmosphere fitting fox news msnbc broadcast speech split screens also showed rescue efforts flooded buildings streets tropical storm harvey deluged parts gulf coast rare moment trump big story president began address nod deeply tragic situation texas louisiana salute small miracles makers midst epic storm see friend helping friend neighbor helping neighbor stranger helping stranger trump said together endure overcome wednesday dawned good economic news american businesses added 237000 jobs august payroll firm automatic data processing reported commerce department revised estimate second quarters growth gross domestic product annualized rate 3 percent best showing since 32 percent gain first quarter 2015 announced hit 3 percent gdp trump crowed came yearly basis know last administration eightyear period never hit 3 percent really way economys failure maintain 3 percent growth president barack obama haunted economic recovery never quite graduated anemic robust trump added happen one thinks go much higher 3 percent theres reason shouldnt administrations set goals springfield speech marked beginning trumps effort pass large taxreform package first word topic april white house released onepage document 2017 tax reform economic growth american jobs serves map administrations goals paper called 15 percent corporate tax rate would funded part eliminating loopholes collapse income tax brackets seven three brackets 10 percent 15 percent 35 percent doubling standard deduction increase child care deduction trump argued washington reduce americas 35 percent corporate tax rate highest rate developed world according scott greenberg rightleaning tax foundation compete nations unending international competition attract jobs trump advocated 15 percent rate greenbergs guess congress passes bill corporate rate would closer 25 percent gop communications strategist kevin madden said hes concerned lack specifics trump theres reason constitutionally tax bills begin house said really lawmakers anyway besides added republicans feel pressure deliver key campaign promise united determination get done house speaker paul ryan said statement democrats ready fight conference call senate minority leader chuck schumer dny told reporters tax reform one biggest fights next three four months democrats ready rep dina titus dnev said statement presidents socalled tax reform plan full vague promises rigs system benefit wealthy know trickle economics myth allows rich get richer causing middleclass families fall behind heres problem said chuck marr director federal tax policy leftleaning center budget policy priorities trump ran campaign trying part appeal economic interest workingclass people tax proposals nothing workingclass people lowincome workers would better marr argued trump expanded earned income tax credit senate rules require 60 votes pass measure adds federal deficit republicans looking close loopholes order present bill simple majority pass tackle use big rate cut one disproportionately hurt greenberg said republicans understand gop deliver tax reform party controls white house senate house would speak volumes partys ability get things done say need media says need said henry olson author working class republican ronald reagan return bluecollar conservatism theyre right contact debra j saunders dsaundersreviewjournalcom 2026627391 follow debrajsaunders twitter | 631 |
<p>SAN FRANCISCO — President Donald Trump’s travel ban faced its toughest test yet Tuesday as a panel of appeals court judges hammered away at the administration’s claim that the ban was motivated by terrorism fears while also directing pointed questions to an attorney challenging the executive order on grounds that it unconstitutionally targeted Muslims.</p>
<p>The contentious hearing before three judges on the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals focused narrowly on whether a restraining order issued by a lower court should remain in effect while a challenge to the ban proceeds. But the judges also jumped into the larger constitutional questions surrounding Trump’s order, which temporarily suspended the nation’s refugee program and immigration from seven mostly Muslim countries that have raised terrorism concerns.</p>
<p>The hearing was conducted by phone — an unusual step — and broadcast live on cable networks, newspaper websites and various social media outlets. It attracted a huge audience, with more than 130,000 alone tuned in to the court’s YouTube site to hear audio.</p>
<p>Judge Richard Clifton, a George W. Bush nominee, asked an attorney representing Washington state and Minnesota what evidence he had that the ban was motivated by religion. The two states are suing to invalidate the ban.</p>
<p>“I have trouble understanding why we’re supposed to infer religious animus when in fact the vast majority of Muslims would not be affected.”</p>
<p>Only 15 percent of the world’s Muslims are affected, the judge said, citing his own calculations. He added that the “concern for terrorism from those connected to radical Islamic sects is hard to deny.”</p>
<p>Noah Purcell, Washington state’s solicitor general, cited public statements by Trump calling for a ban on the entry of Muslims to the U.S. He said the states did not have to show every Muslim is harmed, only that the ban was motivated by religious discrimination.</p>
<p>Clifton also went after the government’s attorney, asking whether he denied statements by Trump and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who said recently that Trump asked him to create a plan for a Muslim ban. Judge Michelle T. Friedland, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, asked why the case should not move forward to determine what motivated the ban.</p>
<p>“We’re not saying the case shouldn’t proceed, but we are saying that it is extraordinary for a court to enjoin the president’s national security decision based on some newspaper articles,” said August Flentje, who argued the case for the Justice Department.</p>
<p>Under questioning from Clifton, Flentje did not dispute that Trump and Giuliani made the statements.</p>
<p>Clifton said he understood if the government argued that statements by Trump and his advisers should not be given much weight, but he said they are potentially evidence in the case.</p>
<p>Friedland also asked whether the government has any evidence connecting the seven nations to terrorism.</p>
<p>Flentje told the judges that the case was moving fast and the government had not yet included evidence to support the ban. Flentje cited a number of Somalis in the U.S. who, he said, had been connected to the al-Shabab terrorist group.</p>
<p>The ban has upended travel to the U.S. for more than a week and tested the new administration’s use of executive power.</p>
<p>Whatever the court eventually decides, either side could ask the Supreme Court to intervene.</p>
<p>The government asked the appeals court to restore Trump’s order, saying that the president alone has the power to decide who can enter or stay in the United States. Several states insist that it is unconstitutional.</p>
<p>Flentje offered the 9th Circuit a third option, saying the court could exempt from the ban people who have previously been admitted to the U.S., but keep it in place for people who have never been to the country.</p>
<p>The judges repeatedly questioned Flentje on why the states should not be able to sue on behalf of their residents or on behalf of their universities, which have complained about students and faculty getting stranded overseas.</p>
<p>Purcell said that restraining order has not harmed the U.S. government. Instead, he told the panel, Trump’s order had harmed Washington state residents by splitting up families, holding up students trying to travel for their studies and preventing people from visiting family abroad.</p>
<p>A decision by the 9th Circuit was likely to come later this week, Madden said.</p>
<p>Trump said Tuesday that he cannot believe his administration has to fight in the courts to uphold his ban, a policy he says will protect the country.</p>
<p>“And a lot of people agree with us, believe me,” Trump said at a round table discussion with members of the National Sheriff’s Association. “If those people ever protested, you’d see a real protest. But they want to see our borders secure and our country secure.”</p>
<p>Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly told lawmakers that the order probably should have been delayed at least long enough to brief Congress about it.</p>
<p>If the case does end up before the Supreme Court, it could prove difficult to find the necessary five votes to undo a lower court order. The Supreme Court has been at less than full strength since Justice Antonin Scalia’s death a year ago. The last immigration case that reached the justices ended in a 4-4 tie.</p>
<p>How and when a case might get to the Supreme Court is unclear. The travel ban itself is to expire in 90 days, meaning it could run its course before a higher court takes up the issue. Or the administration could change it in any number of ways that would keep the issue alive.</p> | false | 1 | san francisco president donald trumps travel ban faced toughest test yet tuesday panel appeals court judges hammered away administrations claim ban motivated terrorism fears also directing pointed questions attorney challenging executive order grounds unconstitutionally targeted muslims contentious hearing three judges san franciscobased 9th circuit court appeals focused narrowly whether restraining order issued lower court remain effect challenge ban proceeds judges also jumped larger constitutional questions surrounding trumps order temporarily suspended nations refugee program immigration seven mostly muslim countries raised terrorism concerns hearing conducted phone unusual step broadcast live cable networks newspaper websites various social media outlets attracted huge audience 130000 alone tuned courts youtube site hear audio judge richard clifton george w bush nominee asked attorney representing washington state minnesota evidence ban motivated religion two states suing invalidate ban trouble understanding supposed infer religious animus fact vast majority muslims would affected 15 percent worlds muslims affected judge said citing calculations added concern terrorism connected radical islamic sects hard deny noah purcell washington states solicitor general cited public statements trump calling ban entry muslims us said states show every muslim harmed ban motivated religious discrimination clifton also went governments attorney asking whether denied statements trump former new york city mayor rudolph giuliani said recently trump asked create plan muslim ban judge michelle friedland appointed president barack obama asked case move forward determine motivated ban saying case shouldnt proceed saying extraordinary court enjoin presidents national security decision based newspaper articles said august flentje argued case justice department questioning clifton flentje dispute trump giuliani made statements clifton said understood government argued statements trump advisers given much weight said potentially evidence case friedland also asked whether government evidence connecting seven nations terrorism flentje told judges case moving fast government yet included evidence support ban flentje cited number somalis us said connected alshabab terrorist group ban upended travel us week tested new administrations use executive power whatever court eventually decides either side could ask supreme court intervene government asked appeals court restore trumps order saying president alone power decide enter stay united states several states insist unconstitutional flentje offered 9th circuit third option saying court could exempt ban people previously admitted us keep place people never country judges repeatedly questioned flentje states able sue behalf residents behalf universities complained students faculty getting stranded overseas purcell said restraining order harmed us government instead told panel trumps order harmed washington state residents splitting families holding students trying travel studies preventing people visiting family abroad decision 9th circuit likely come later week madden said trump said tuesday believe administration fight courts uphold ban policy says protect country lot people agree us believe trump said round table discussion members national sheriffs association people ever protested youd see real protest want see borders secure country secure homeland security secretary john kelly told lawmakers order probably delayed least long enough brief congress case end supreme court could prove difficult find necessary five votes undo lower court order supreme court less full strength since justice antonin scalias death year ago last immigration case reached justices ended 44 tie case might get supreme court unclear travel ban expire 90 days meaning could run course higher court takes issue administration could change number ways would keep issue alive | 534 |
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>In developing their positions on Supreme Court appointments and the Department of Justice, presidential candidates should 1) welcome the battle over the Supreme Court, 2) determine to fight hard for high-quality justices, 3) frame the argument for why abortion policy should be restored to the democratic processes, 4) support the Defense of Marriage Act, and 5) commit to select senior legal leaders who fully embrace their goals and priorities.</p>
<p>In light of the power that the modern Supreme Court wields in shaping—or misshaping—how the Constitution is interpreted, a president's Supreme Court appointments are among his most important and enduring legacies. The president elected in 2012 can reasonably be expected to have the opportunity to fill one or two vacancies on the Court. How the Republican presidential candidates would approach this opportunity therefore provides an important measure of their fitness for office.</p>
<p>The Department of Justice also plays significant roles on constitutional issues. Among other things, DOJ decides whether and how to defend federal laws against constitutional challenge, and it advises the president on constitutional issues and the selection of Supreme Court justices and lower-court nominees. A presidential candidate's vision of how DOJ would operate under his direction provides valuable insights.</p>
<p>As conservatives begin sorting through the field of Republican presidential candidates, I offer here five pieces of advice that I believe ought to guide the candidates in forming their positions on selecting Supreme Court justices and directing the Department of Justice.</p>
<p>1. Recognize that the battle over the proper role of the Supreme Court is a political winner for conservatives.</p>
<p>As this <a href="http://lawreview.wustl.edu/commentaries/elena-kagan-cant-say-that/" type="external">mock memo</a>&#160;by a former Obama DOJ judge-picker nicely <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/254465/obama-doj-official-political-triumph-conservative-constitutional-discourse-ed-whe" type="external">illustrates</a>, liberals lament that “conservatives have succeeded in defining the debate [over judges]: a judge is either a judicial activist or a conservative.” Conservative discourse about the proper role of judges has “tremendous public appeal,” whereas a nominee's candid embrace of liberal “living Constitution” rhetoric will seriously jeopardize his nomination.</p>
<p>This political triumph of judicial conservatism explains, for example, why then-Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, to the <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/49721/liberal-law-professors-against-sotomayor/ed-whelan" type="external">disgust</a>&#160;of many on the Left, <a href="" type="internal">tried to disguise herself</a>&#160;as a judicial conservative during her confirmation hearing.</p>
<p>Although the Left consoles itself with the notion that its problem lies in its messaging rather than in the substance of its positions, the reality is that conservative discourse is succeeding on its merits. As large swaths of the American public (especially those not suffering from the detriment of a modern legal miseducation) understand, the Constitution, within broad bounds, creates a system of representative government in which most issues, large and small, are left to American citizens to work out through their legislators at the state and national levels. To be sure, the judiciary has an essential role in enforcing those rights, and limits on governmental power, that are in the Constitution. But the unconstrained role of the judiciary that the Left advocates cannot be reconciled with core American principles.</p>
<p>The compelling <a href="" type="internal">common-sense appeal</a>&#160;of originalism has so devastated proponents of the “living Constitution” that they have largely abandoned the term and have tried instead to rebrand their freewheeling approach or even to recast themselves as originalists. The rhetorical triumph of judicial restraint over liberal judicial activism has likewise led many liberals to reposition themselves opportunistically as champions of judicial restraint (and to charge conservative justices with the sin of activism). And Chief Justice Roberts's <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/230755/ponnuru-versus-dionne-judges-umpires/ed-whelan" type="external">umpire analogy</a>&#160;in defense of judicial impartiality has so routed President Obama's notoriously lawless <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/50168/obamas-empathy-standard/ed-whelan" type="external">empathy standard</a>&#160;that Obama's own Supreme Court nominees have repudiated that standard.</p>
<p>Among the positions embraced by the Left that are politically toxic is its <a href="" type="internal">unprincipled resort</a>&#160;to contemporary foreign and international legal materials to redefine the meaning of provisions of our Constitution. That position is part of the Left's broader <a href="" type="internal">transnationalist project</a>&#160;to deprive American citizens of their powers of representative government by selectively imposing on them the favored policies of foreign and international elites. Sotomayor's <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/49627/sonia-sotomayors-foreign-deceptions/ed-whelan" type="external">brazenly deceptive testimony</a>&#160;is but the starkest of many efforts by Obama nominees to conceal their positions on this issue.</p>
<p>2. Make selection and confirmation of high-quality justices a top priority.</p>
<p>A Republican president elected in 2012 should be emboldened by the political triumph of judicial conservatism, especially if (as would be likely in the event of a Republican presidential victory) Republicans regain control of the Senate. Senate Democrats may well threaten to filibuster any conservative Supreme Court nominee. But if the White House genuinely has the will to wage a vigorous and extended campaign on behalf of a high-quality nominee, it should be able to defeat a filibuster.</p>
<p>Do not underestimate the danger, however, that timid political advisers to the president will try to avoid a fight in order to preserve capital for other battles. Any “compromise” candidate who would be acceptable to leading Senate Democrats would be a rank surrender. To avoid being undermined from within, the president needs to make clear from the outset that filling Supreme Court vacancies with outstanding conservative justices is one of his three or four highest priorities.</p>
<p>Methods of judicial appointment and configurations of party power vary considerably from state to state, but any Republican presidential candidate who has made judicial appointments as governor should be expected to show how his record indicates that he would fight hard as president to appoint high-quality Supreme Court justices.</p>
<p>3. Frame the argument for why the constitutional authority to make abortion policy should be restored to the democratic processes.</p>
<p>If a Republican president elected in 2012 has the opportunity to replace Justice Ginsburg (now 78), Justice Kennedy (75), or Justice Breyer (73) with an excellent conservative justice, there is a genuine prospect that the Court would have the five votes needed to overturn Roe v.Wade and restore abortion policy to its proper place in the democratic processes in the states. Given nearly four decades of pervasive media misrepresentations of what Roe held and what overturning it would mean, it is not surprising that many people initially are hostile to its being overturned. But there is <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/51628/overturning-roe/ed-whelan" type="external">ample reason</a>&#160;to believe that some elementary education on the matter would dramatically increase public support for overturning Roe.</p>
<p>This is not an issue that Republican presidential candidates can duck. Nor, given the striking increase in pro-life sentiment, should they want to. They instead need to seize the opportunity to frame the issue in a manner that has broad appeal to Americans with diverse positions on abortion policy:</p>
<p>4. Strongly support the Defense of Marriage Act and oppose same-sex marriage.</p>
<p>The Obama administration's sabotage and, more recently, formal abandonment of its duty to defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act reflects a <a href="" type="internal">sharp and shameful departure</a>&#160;from the DOJ's traditional practices. Republican presidential candidates should declare that their DOJwill vigorously defend DOMA and will intervene in other litigation to oppose the judicial invention of a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage.</p>
<p>DOMA was approved by overwhelming majorities in both Houses of Congress in 1996 and was signed into law by President Clinton. DOMA's broad bipartisan support—including from liberal Democrats like Joe Biden, Patrick Leahy, Charles Schumer, and Dick Durbin—refutes the empty revisionist claim that DOMA somehow embodies an irrational bigotry against same-sex couples.</p>
<p>DOMA does two things. First, it reaffirms thehistoric understanding of what the term “marriage” means in provisions of federal law—the legal union of a man and a woman as husband and wife. It is a profound confusion to argue, as some do, that values of federalism somehow require the federal government to accept any state's redefinition of marriage in determining what “marriage” means in provisions of federal law.</p>
<p>Second, in a genuine protection of values of federalism, DOMA safeguards the prerogatives of each state to choose not to treat as a marriage a same-sex union recognized in another state. It thus helps ensure that one state does not effectively impose same-sex marriage on another state. At the same time, it leaves the citizens of every state free to decide whether or not to redefine their marriage laws.</p>
<p>Beyond defending DOMA, a president should declare his support for a federal marriage amendment that would preserve—and, for some states, restore—the traditional definition of marriage in the states.</p>
<p>Our predecessors understood what too many Americans today have forgotten or never learned—namely, that the marriage practices a society endorses have real-world consequences that extend far beyond the individuals who seek to marry, and that strengthen or undermine the broader culture. That understanding of marriage underlay the 19th-century effort to combat polygamy, which was regarded as inimical to democracy. That is why Congress, in its separate enabling acts for the admission of several states, conditioned their admission on each state's inclusion of anti-polygamy provisions in its constitution. That history disproves the claim that how states define marriage has been a matter left entirely to the states.</p>
<p>The acceptance of same-sex marriage would permanently sever the inherent link between marriage and responsible procreation and child-rearing. The more confusion there is about the mission of marriage, the less effective marriage will be in accomplishing its mission. And the countless millions of victims of a collapsed marriage culture—children born into unstable or nonexistent families—will continue to pile up, with all the attendant disastrous social consequences.</p>
<p>5. Select White House advisers and DOJ leaders who embrace your goals and priorities.</p>
<p>Personnel is indeed policy. It is essential that a Republican president select senior White House advisers (including chief of staff and White House counsel) and leaders for the DOJ—especially for the positions of Attorney General and Solicitor General—who are deeply committed to his goals and priorities on selection of Supreme Court justices and on the operation of DOJ.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>By his oath of office, the president commits that he “will to the best of [his] Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” What a president means by this oath depends on his own understanding of what the Constitution means. In setting forth their positions on selecting Supreme Court justices and directing the DOJ, the Republican presidential candidates can offer valuable insights into how well they understand the Constitution and how well-prepared they are to exercise presidential authority.</p>
<p>Edward Whelan is president of the <a href="" type="internal">Ethics and Public Policy Center</a>&#160;and is a regular contributor to NRO's <a href="http://bench.nationalreview.com/" type="external">Bench Memos blog</a>.</p> | false | 1 | 160 developing positions supreme court appointments department justice presidential candidates 1 welcome battle supreme court 2 determine fight hard highquality justices 3 frame argument abortion policy restored democratic processes 4 support defense marriage act 5 commit select senior legal leaders fully embrace goals priorities light power modern supreme court wields shapingor misshapinghow constitution interpreted presidents supreme court appointments among important enduring legacies president elected 2012 reasonably expected opportunity fill one two vacancies court republican presidential candidates would approach opportunity therefore provides important measure fitness office department justice also plays significant roles constitutional issues among things doj decides whether defend federal laws constitutional challenge advises president constitutional issues selection supreme court justices lowercourt nominees presidential candidates vision doj would operate direction provides valuable insights conservatives begin sorting field republican presidential candidates offer five pieces advice believe ought guide candidates forming positions selecting supreme court justices directing department justice 1 recognize battle proper role supreme court political winner conservatives mock memo160by former obama doj judgepicker nicely illustrates liberals lament conservatives succeeded defining debate judges judge either judicial activist conservative conservative discourse proper role judges tremendous public appeal whereas nominees candid embrace liberal living constitution rhetoric seriously jeopardize nomination political triumph judicial conservatism explains example thensupreme court nominee sonia sotomayor disgust160of many left tried disguise herself160as judicial conservative confirmation hearing although left consoles notion problem lies messaging rather substance positions reality conservative discourse succeeding merits large swaths american public especially suffering detriment modern legal miseducation understand constitution within broad bounds creates system representative government issues large small left american citizens work legislators state national levels sure judiciary essential role enforcing rights limits governmental power constitution unconstrained role judiciary left advocates reconciled core american principles compelling commonsense appeal160of originalism devastated proponents living constitution largely abandoned term tried instead rebrand freewheeling approach even recast originalists rhetorical triumph judicial restraint liberal judicial activism likewise led many liberals reposition opportunistically champions judicial restraint charge conservative justices sin activism chief justice robertss umpire analogy160in defense judicial impartiality routed president obamas notoriously lawless empathy standard160that obamas supreme court nominees repudiated standard among positions embraced left politically toxic unprincipled resort160to contemporary foreign international legal materials redefine meaning provisions constitution position part lefts broader transnationalist project160to deprive american citizens powers representative government selectively imposing favored policies foreign international elites sotomayors brazenly deceptive testimony160is starkest many efforts obama nominees conceal positions issue 2 make selection confirmation highquality justices top priority republican president elected 2012 emboldened political triumph judicial conservatism especially would likely event republican presidential victory republicans regain control senate senate democrats may well threaten filibuster conservative supreme court nominee white house genuinely wage vigorous extended campaign behalf highquality nominee able defeat filibuster underestimate danger however timid political advisers president try avoid fight order preserve capital battles compromise candidate would acceptable leading senate democrats would rank surrender avoid undermined within president needs make clear outset filling supreme court vacancies outstanding conservative justices one three four highest priorities methods judicial appointment configurations party power vary considerably state state republican presidential candidate made judicial appointments governor expected show record indicates would fight hard president appoint highquality supreme court justices 3 frame argument constitutional authority make abortion policy restored democratic processes republican president elected 2012 opportunity replace justice ginsburg 78 justice kennedy 75 justice breyer 73 excellent conservative justice genuine prospect court would five votes needed overturn roe vwade restore abortion policy proper place democratic processes states given nearly four decades pervasive media misrepresentations roe held overturning would mean surprising many people initially hostile overturned ample reason160to believe elementary education matter would dramatically increase public support overturning roe issue republican presidential candidates duck given striking increase prolife sentiment want instead need seize opportunity frame issue manner broad appeal americans diverse positions abortion policy 4 strongly support defense marriage act oppose samesex marriage obama administrations sabotage recently formal abandonment duty defend federal defense marriage act reflects sharp shameful departure160from dojs traditional practices republican presidential candidates declare dojwill vigorously defend doma intervene litigation oppose judicial invention federal constitutional right samesex marriage doma approved overwhelming majorities houses congress 1996 signed law president clinton domas broad bipartisan supportincluding liberal democrats like joe biden patrick leahy charles schumer dick durbinrefutes empty revisionist claim doma somehow embodies irrational bigotry samesex couples doma two things first reaffirms thehistoric understanding term marriage means provisions federal lawthe legal union man woman husband wife profound confusion argue values federalism somehow require federal government accept states redefinition marriage determining marriage means provisions federal law second genuine protection values federalism doma safeguards prerogatives state choose treat marriage samesex union recognized another state thus helps ensure one state effectively impose samesex marriage another state time leaves citizens every state free decide whether redefine marriage laws beyond defending doma president declare support federal marriage amendment would preserveand states restorethe traditional definition marriage states predecessors understood many americans today forgotten never learnednamely marriage practices society endorses realworld consequences extend far beyond individuals seek marry strengthen undermine broader culture understanding marriage underlay 19thcentury effort combat polygamy regarded inimical democracy congress separate enabling acts admission several states conditioned admission states inclusion antipolygamy provisions constitution history disproves claim states define marriage matter left entirely states acceptance samesex marriage would permanently sever inherent link marriage responsible procreation childrearing confusion mission marriage less effective marriage accomplishing mission countless millions victims collapsed marriage culturechildren born unstable nonexistent familieswill continue pile attendant disastrous social consequences 5 select white house advisers doj leaders embrace goals priorities personnel indeed policy essential republican president select senior white house advisers including chief staff white house counsel leaders dojespecially positions attorney general solicitor generalwho deeply committed goals priorities selection supreme court justices operation doj oath office president commits best ability preserve protect defend constitution united states president means oath depends understanding constitution means setting forth positions selecting supreme court justices directing doj republican presidential candidates offer valuable insights well understand constitution wellprepared exercise presidential authority edward whelan president ethics public policy center160and regular contributor nros bench memos blog | 986 |
<p>LOUDON, N.H. — <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Denny_Hamlin/" type="external">Denny Hamlin</a> claimed his first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series win of 2017 and the first win of the year for <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Joe_Gibbs/" type="external">Joe Gibbs</a> Racing on Sunday with his victory in the Overton’s 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. It was Hamlin’s third win at NHMS.</p>
<p>“It’s great. Definitely a team effort,” Hamlin said. “This is a — I put us behind on Friday with the backup car getting in a wreck, but this — I really wish we would race that car that was in the hauler, but this one, they did a great job getting it as close as they could working on the balance, getting it good yesterday and team effort. This is a total team effort all around.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kyle-Larson/" type="external">Kyle Larson</a> closed on Hamlin in the closing laps but was unable to catch him. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Martin_Truex/" type="external">Martin Truex</a> Jr. finished third, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Matt_Kenseth/" type="external">Matt Kenseth</a> was fourth and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kevin_Harvick/" type="external">Kevin Harvick</a> rounded out the top five.</p>
<p>“They’ve (Larson and the No. 42 team) just been so fast this year and we, honestly, haven’t been able to keep up, and so for us to be able to get the lead there, stretch it out, I knew it was going to be important for me to stretch out the lead as far as I could,” Hamlin said. “That way I could pace myself at the end of the race and it was just enough.”</p>
<p>Hamlin took his first lead of the race by getting off pit road first during a caution at the start of stage three and the second half of the race. Previous race dominators Truex and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kyle_Busch/" type="external">Kyle Busch</a> waged a three-wide battle with Hamlin for the lead for several laps before Truex took the top spot.</p>
<p>Truex gave up the lead to pit with a flat right-front tire on lap 218 of the 301-lap race, but others followed suit, kicking off a cycle of green-flag pit stops. Busch inherited the lead with Truex pitted, but Busch was nabbed for speeding on pit road when he made his stop. Truex reclaimed the lead at the end of the cycle.</p>
<p>Kenseth, on newer tires than Truex, took the lead on lap 261, just before the yellow flag waved for the seventh and final time. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Dale_Earnhardt/" type="external">Dale Earnhardt</a> Jr. restarted with the lead after staying out, with Kenseth alongside in second with two new tires. Truex and Hamlin restarted in the second row, each with four new tires.</p>
<p>Kenseth, and later Hamlin, took the lead, but Truex dropped back several positions on the restart. Larson eventually got up to second and Truex to third, as Hamlin continued to lead late in the race.</p>
<p>After starting on the pole, Truex led the entire first 75 laps of the race and claimed his 14th stage win of the season. He gave up the lead, though, to pit during the caution between stages and, as a result, restarted 24th due to varying pit strategies.</p>
<p>In addition to the traditional caution between the first two stages, the red flag was displayed for track repair, specifically for the patching of a four-by-eight-inch hole in the track.</p>
<p>Most of the race field pitted when the yellow flag waved on lap 68 for a Cole Whitt blown engine. Truex and a few other front-runners, including Kenseth, Larson and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jamie_McMurray/" type="external">Jamie McMurray</a>, stayed out. Busch was the first off pit road among drivers who pitted and restarted in the back of the top 10.</p>
<p>Truex, Kenseth, Larson and McMurray maintained their positions for the two green-flag laps that remained in the opening stage, but they pitted when the stage ended. Those who pitted during the lap 38 caution stayed out, and Busch and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ryan-Blaney/" type="external">Ryan Blaney</a> restarted on the front row.</p>
<p>Larson was outside the top 20 again for the start of stage two as a result of his end-of-stage-one pit strategy. He had already raced from the back of the front, starting the race in the back and getting up to seventh by a lap 35 caution. He was up to fourth by lap 50.</p>
<p>“It’s a little frustrating what we have had to go through the last couple of weeks, but it’s pretty awesome to be able to run as fast as we have and finish second the last two weeks from dead last,” Larson said.</p>
<p>“I’m proud of our team, proud of everybody at our race shop. I can’t thank my sponsors Target, Credit One Bank, and all of our other supporters enough for what they do for our team. It’s been a lot of fun these last couple of weeks to be as fast as we have been, so keep working hard at it and maybe we can get some more wins.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jimmie_Johnson/" type="external">Jimmie Johnson</a> fell to the back at the start of the race when he was penalized for jumping the start. Unlike Larson, he had trouble getting up through the field. Partly through his early race pit strategy, though, Johnson began the second stage in the fourth position.</p>
<p>“I guess I just got it wrong at the start,” Johnson said. “I went off the flag and forgot that the pole-sitter has to be the first one to the stripe, so I’ll take the responsibility on that one. And then we had an OK finish. We had decent short run speed. We would just fall off too hard. I really thought we were going to be in a position for a top five, but we ended up 10th.”</p>
<p>By lap 100, Truex was back inside the top 10 and Larson inside the top 15.</p>
<p>Busch remained up front for the duration of the second stage, pulling away from the rest of the field to claim the stage two win, his fifth stage victory of the season. Truex was back inside the top 10 shortly after a lap 92 restart. He finished the second stage just outside the top five in sixth.</p>
<p>Hamlin, Busch’s Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, was second at the end of stage two, followed by Stewart-Haas Racing teammates Harvick and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kurt_Busch/" type="external">Kurt Busch</a>. Johnson was fifth.</p>
<p>NOTES: Kyle Larson was fastest in Friday’s opening practice and in qualifying on Friday, but his car failed post-qualifying inspection. As a result, he started in the back for the second race in a row, both times because of an inspection issue. … Four Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series regulars — Kyle Busch, Larson, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Brad_Keselowski/" type="external">Brad Keselowski</a> and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ty-Dillon/" type="external">Ty Dillon</a> — competed in the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on Saturday. Busch won and Keselowski led 102 of the 200-lap race. All four drivers finished in the top 10. … NHMS track personnel reapplied a traction compound to the lower portion of the racetrack on Sunday morning. The compound originally was applied to the same area of the track before the race weekend that also included NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour and Xfinity Series races. … Another JGR driver, Denny Hamlin, started the Overton’s 301 in a backup car after a practice crash. … Kevin Harvick won the most recent Cup Series race at New Hampshire last fall. … The Overton’s 301 was Aric Almirola’s first race after being sidelined for seven races because of a back injury sustained in a crash at Kansas Speedway in May. … Matt Kenseth won last year’s race at New Hampshire, his most recent win.</p> | false | 1 | loudon nh denny hamlin claimed first monster energy nascar cup series win 2017 first win year joe gibbs racing sunday victory overtons 301 new hampshire motor speedway hamlins third win nhms great definitely team effort hamlin said put us behind friday backup car getting wreck really wish would race car hauler one great job getting close could working balance getting good yesterday team effort total team effort around kyle larson closed hamlin closing laps unable catch martin truex jr finished third matt kenseth fourth kevin harvick rounded top five theyve larson 42 team fast year honestly havent able keep us able get lead stretch knew going important stretch lead far could hamlin said way could pace end race enough hamlin took first lead race getting pit road first caution start stage three second half race previous race dominators truex kyle busch waged threewide battle hamlin lead several laps truex took top spot truex gave lead pit flat rightfront tire lap 218 301lap race others followed suit kicking cycle greenflag pit stops busch inherited lead truex pitted busch nabbed speeding pit road made stop truex reclaimed lead end cycle kenseth newer tires truex took lead lap 261 yellow flag waved seventh final time dale earnhardt jr restarted lead staying kenseth alongside second two new tires truex hamlin restarted second row four new tires kenseth later hamlin took lead truex dropped back several positions restart larson eventually got second truex third hamlin continued lead late race starting pole truex led entire first 75 laps race claimed 14th stage win season gave lead though pit caution stages result restarted 24th due varying pit strategies addition traditional caution first two stages red flag displayed track repair specifically patching fourbyeightinch hole track race field pitted yellow flag waved lap 68 cole whitt blown engine truex frontrunners including kenseth larson jamie mcmurray stayed busch first pit road among drivers pitted restarted back top 10 truex kenseth larson mcmurray maintained positions two greenflag laps remained opening stage pitted stage ended pitted lap 38 caution stayed busch ryan blaney restarted front row larson outside top 20 start stage two result endofstageone pit strategy already raced back front starting race back getting seventh lap 35 caution fourth lap 50 little frustrating go last couple weeks pretty awesome able run fast finish second last two weeks dead last larson said im proud team proud everybody race shop cant thank sponsors target credit one bank supporters enough team lot fun last couple weeks fast keep working hard maybe get wins jimmie johnson fell back start race penalized jumping start unlike larson trouble getting field partly early race pit strategy though johnson began second stage fourth position guess got wrong start johnson said went flag forgot polesitter first one stripe ill take responsibility one ok finish decent short run speed would fall hard really thought going position top five ended 10th lap 100 truex back inside top 10 larson inside top 15 busch remained front duration second stage pulling away rest field claim stage two win fifth stage victory season truex back inside top 10 shortly lap 92 restart finished second stage outside top five sixth hamlin buschs joe gibbs racing teammate second end stage two followed stewarthaas racing teammates harvick kurt busch johnson fifth notes kyle larson fastest fridays opening practice qualifying friday car failed postqualifying inspection result started back second race row times inspection issue four monster energy nascar cup series regulars kyle busch larson brad keselowski ty dillon competed nascar xfinity series race new hampshire motor speedway saturday busch keselowski led 102 200lap race four drivers finished top 10 nhms track personnel reapplied traction compound lower portion racetrack sunday morning compound originally applied area track race weekend also included nascar whelen modified tour xfinity series races another jgr driver denny hamlin started overtons 301 backup car practice crash kevin harvick recent cup series race new hampshire last fall overtons 301 aric almirolas first race sidelined seven races back injury sustained crash kansas speedway may matt kenseth last years race new hampshire recent win | 674 |
<p>This article is part of a new&#160; <a href="http://educationnext.org/revisiting-moynihan-report-50th-anniversary/" type="external">Education Next&#160;series on the state of the American family</a>. The full series will appear in our Spring 2015 issue to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1965 release of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s report “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action” (generally referred to as the Moynihan Report).</p>
<p>As a general rule, assistant secretaries in the Labor Department do not produce lasting historical documents. The so-called Moynihan Report, produced by Assistant Secretary Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the winter of 1965 and published under the title “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” is surely the only exception to that rule. But it is quite an exception.</p>
<p>The Moynihan Report gained notice and notoriety almost immediately. Its statistical analysis was cited, and its call to action was repeated, by President Lyndon Johnson within a few months of its publication—again, an uncommon fate for a Labor Department report. But its analysis was just as quickly resisted and disputed in the government and in the academy. Moynihan was accused of arguing that low-income black families were simply causing their own problems and of trying to undermine the civil rights movement. The social psychologist William Ryan actually coined the now-common phrase “blaming the victim” (which he used as a title for a 1971 book) specifically to describe the Moynihan Report.</p>
<p>Of course, Moynihan did no such thing. To the extent that he attributed blame at all, it was to the long and ugly legacy of slavery and to the persistence of racism in American life. Both, he argued, had worked to undermine the standing of black men, and thereby their roles in their own families, and to deform the structure of family life in the black community.</p>
<p>But Moynihan’s aim was in any case less to assign blame than to describe a peculiar problem. The problem first presented itself to Moynihan and his team in the form of a surprising divergence in the black community between unemployment rates and welfare application rates (which coincided with rates of single motherhood, since essentially only unmarried mothers could apply for the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program). Until the late 1950s, the two indexes had risen and fallen together. But starting in the late ’50s, welfare rolls increased even when unemployment was low and the economy was strong.</p>
<p>Moynihan came to understand that he was seeing something new and deeply troubling. Most impressive in retrospect is that he understood that this emerging pattern was troubling above all not for economic reasons, but for deeper and more significant reasons—reasons that are ultimately cultural. “The fundamental problem,” he wrote, “is that of family structure. The evidence—not final, but powerfully persuasive—is that the Negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling.” Communities affected, he worried, faced “massive deterioration of the fabric of society and its institutions.” Such deterioration, should it prove in fact to be occurring, would constitute “the single most important social fact of the United States today.”</p>
<p>In the decades since Moynihan wrote those words, his work has been held up as an example of prophetic social science, and of constructive policy analysis. And his case has served as the foundation for efforts to focus attention and resources on strengthening family formation among the poor. But both the controversy surrounding the report and the continued attention devoted to it have acted to obscure somewhat the key achievement of Moynihan’s work and so, too, its foremost lesson for our own time.</p>
<p>The strength of the report was not in its analysis of the causes underlying the collapse of the family among lower-income African Americans. Moynihan was convinced that what he was witnessing was fundamentally a phenomenon of the black community, and so could be explained by the tragic history of African Americans, which rendered black families uniquely vulnerable to the kind of social and economic pressures many faced in poor urban environments.</p>
<p>There is of course no question that the savage inhumanity to which African Americans were subjected in our country for much of its history and the racism that has persisted far longer have had detrimental effects on the black community and on its families. But the particular pattern Moynihan began to observe in the 1960s has not in fact been limited to the black community. In the half century since he wrote, the pattern has shown itself in the lives of poor Americans of all races. The problems remain worst in the black community, and the history and realities of racism that Moynihan pointed to are surely important contributing factors, but the challenge of family disintegration plainly runs deeper and broader than that. Family breakdown appears to be a prevailing feature of modern American poverty. In this sense, Moynihan’s analysis of causes was not quite on target.</p>
<p>Focus on the Problem</p>
<p>The report is also notable for not proposing solutions to the disturbing set of problems it laid out, although the author did suggest policy prescriptions elsewhere. Indeed, Moynihan specifically committed the report to stick to diagnosis. “The object of this study has been to define a problem, rather than propose solutions to it,” he wrote. And the chief reason for doing so, he argued, was that “there are many persons, within and without the Government, who do not feel the problem exists, at least in any serious degree. These persons feel that, with the legal obstacles to assimilation out of the way, matters will take care of themselves in the normal course of events.”</p>
<p>And here we find the true core of Moynihan’s contribution. It was, simply put, to tell the truth, both about what emerging facts seemed to suggest about a troubling social trend and about the foreseeable implications of that trend for the lives of the people involved. The family appeared to be breaking down among lower-income black Americans, and to Moynihan broken families meant broken communities and broken lives. Both elements of that diagnosis were crucial, and both were hard pills to swallow.</p>
<p>The latter element in particular—the importance of the family to the health and flourishing of society—has been controversial in the half century that followed Moynihan’s report. Roughly halfway through that period, in 1992, Moynihan himself took up that controversy in a speech delivered at the University of Chicago (and later reprinted in the Public Interest). He was blunt. Despite President Johnson’s personal interest in his arguments, Moynihan said, the years that immediately followed his report—the era of the Great Society—brought an approach to social science and to public policy that made the problem he had diagnosed much more difficult to address effectively, and even to talk about honestly. Simply put, he said, the Great Society era “gave great influence in social policy to viewpoints that rejected the proposition that family structure might be a social issue.”</p>
<p>That was an understatement. The most striking, even shocking, feature of the sociological (and to some degree economic) literature in the several decades following Moynihan’s report is the sheer lack of interest in the question of what the breakdown of the family among the poor, which no one could deny was occurring, might mean in the lives of those involved. The few exceptions acted merely to prove the rule.</p>
<p>Those exceptions included the work of Moynihan himself during his academic career; most of the other people responsible for exceptional attention to this problem followed a path similar to his. “Think, for example, of the writing in the early editions of the Public Interest,” Moynihan noted in that 1992 lecture. “Almost without exception, the authors were political liberals who had stumbled upon things that weren’t entirely pleasing to them but which, as the song goes, could not be denied.” Many people, of course, did deny them. But ultimately, Moynihan suggested, facts were facts and their consequences could not help but follow.</p>
<p>When he delivered the lecture, reflecting on his report some 27 years after its publication, Moynihan might have had some reason to suppose that his small band of truth tellers was finally getting heard. In retrospect, those early years of the 1990s seem like they might have been the apex of that band’s influence and stature in the public square. Moynihan was chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, with jurisdiction over welfare and entitlement policy, among much else. James Q. Wilson and James S. Coleman, both members of that original Public Interest circle, were, respectively, president of the American Political Science Association and president of the American Sociological Association. The Democratic Party’s nominee for president in 1992 spoke about family breakdown and welfare in terms that even some Republicans had not always been comfortable with. And the academic wall of silence seemed to be cracking just a little, perhaps especially after William Julius Wilson’s The Truly Disadvantaged (1987) was released and sociologists Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur’s book Growing Up with a Single Parent (1994) powerfully documented the detrimental effects of family breakdown on children. It could well have appeared as though the tide was finally turning, and the vital importance of family structure would finally find its place in public policy and the public debate. Moynihan, in that moment, seemed almost optimistic.</p>
<p>But it was not to be. Family structure would remain off-limits, even as the underlying trends evolved to encompass more of the populace. Since the early 1990s, the fact that births out of wedlock are not fundamentally a matter of race has become far clearer. In 2010, 72 percent of African American births were to unwed mothers, but so were 53 percent of Hispanic births and 36 percent of white births—all far higher figures than those Moynihan saw in the black community in 1965, when he described a 25 percent rate as a social disaster. In our nation as a whole, 41 percent of children born in 2010 were born to unmarried mothers.</p>
<p>And the rate is growing faster among whites than among other groups: between 1992 (when Moynihan delivered his mildly hopeful lecture) and 2010, births to unwed black mothers rose modestly from 68 to 72 percentage points, but births to unwed white mothers saw a dramatic jump from 23 to 36 percent, an increase of more than 50 percent (see “Was Moynihan Right?” features, Spring 2015, Figure 2).</p>
<p>And what is more, the academy has not in fact grown much more hospitable to the notion that family structure is an essential social concern. Although some ground was surely gained in the 1980s and ’90s, much of it has been lost since, as taboos about studying and discussing the implications of family structure have again been hardening. Indeed, even many Republican politicians now shy away from arguments about the importance of marriage for fear of veering into the debate over same-sex marriage.</p>
<p>But as Moynihan noted half a century ago, one cannot deny either the data about family formation or the centrality of the family to the flourishing of society and its members. And today, far more than when Moynihan penned his report, the implications of these facts are grim and essential to understand.</p>
<p>Mapping the Consequences</p>
<p>It is customary to describe the consequences of social trends in economic terms, and that is surely one useful way to illustrate their costs. Some 40 percent of children raised by single mothers are living in poverty, according to the Census Bureau, while roughly 8 percent of children raised by married parents are poor (see “Was Moynihan Right?” features, Spring 2015, Figure 4).</p>
<p>Another way to think about the consequences of these trends is to look at the sociological and psychological effects. Children who grow up in single-parent families are significantly more likely to exhibit behavioral problems, to drop out of school, to experience mental-health problems, to attempt suicide, and to be out of the workforce as young adults. And as Brookings Institution scholar Ron Haskins has argued, this appears to be very much connected to the challenges that single parents face. “Married parents—in part simply because there are two of them—have an easier time being better parents,” Haskins argues. They can share the burdens and responsibilities of parenthood and can combine their efforts to set clear rules and reinforce them with consequences. Clearly, they have more time and energy.</p>
<p>None of this, of course, is to downplay the extraordinary and often heroic efforts of many single mothers to help their children avert negative consequences. On the contrary, findings like these help us see just how daunting the challenges faced by mothers raising children alone can be.</p>
<p>But describing the crisis of the family among low-income Americans in these economic and sociological terms may itself be a way of avoiding the deeper problem of which these are but symptoms. The family is the core character-forming institution of every human society. It is the source of the most basic order, structure, discipline, support, and loving guidance that every human being requires. It is essential to human flourishing, and its weakening puts at risk the very possibility of a society worthy of the name. It is hard to imagine how any of the social problems that take up the time and efforts of policymakers—problems of economic mobility, educational attainment, employment, inequality, and on and on—could be seriously mitigated without some significant reversal of the trends in family breakdown. These are ultimately human problems, problems of the soul, at least as much as they are economic and social problems. And the first step toward seriously taking them on must be a reinvigoration of our commitment to the family.</p>
<p>Exceptions to the traditional form of the family can of course be successful—guided by the traditional model. But if that norm itself is undone, if broken families become not the exception but the rule, then our society, and most especially its most vulnerable members, would be profoundly endangered. And this is precisely what is now happening across wide swaths of American society.</p>
<p>The Future of the Family</p>
<p>The facts about the collapse of the family among America’s poor are deeply discomfiting for the Left and the Right alike. They are uncomfortable for the Left because liberals don’t want to acknowledge what they show us about the importance of the family structure and about the need to reinforce it. And they are uncomfortable for the Right because conservatives don’t want to acknowledge what they show us about the destructive effects of persistent poverty, and about the difficulty of helping people rise out of it. These are facts that suggest both the importance of the family and the need for public action, and so they are perfectly suited to being ignored by everyone in our politics.</p>
<p>Moynihan could see that danger half a century ago, and his report was meant to warn of it. His concluding words, although shaped by his sense that race was at the core of the phenomena he had discerned, still ring through the decades. He wrote,</p>
<p>The policy of the United States is to bring the Negro American to full and equal sharing in the responsibilities and rewards of citizenship. To this end, the programs of the Federal government bearing on this objective shall be designed to have the effect, directly or indirectly, of enhancing the stability and resources of the Negro American family.</p>
<p>The promise of America, Moynihan understood, is unreachable in the absence of strong and stable families. That call should now be generalized into a case for making the strength of the family a key national priority. The lessons of the past half century, and especially of the Great Society’s mostly failed experiments in social policy, can help us think more clearly about the means by which this end could be pursued. But the end was well laid out by Moynihan’s prescient words. The end should be the reinforcement and recovery of the core institution of our society, and every society.</p>
<p>Putting that end at the center of our politics must begin by stating plainly that the future of the family will determine the future of the country. That may seem like a simple and straightforward fact. But as Daniel Patrick Moynihan showed half a century ago, responsible and constructive social science often consists of simply stating such facts, and making it difficult for people to deny or ignore them. His report offers a model of truth telling from which we all could stand to learn.</p>
<p>Robert George is professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University. Yuval Levin is the editor of National Affairs and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.&#160;</p> | false | 1 | article part new160 education next160series state american family full series appear spring 2015 issue mark 50th anniversary 1965 release daniel patrick moynihans report negro family case national action generally referred moynihan report general rule assistant secretaries labor department produce lasting historical documents socalled moynihan report produced assistant secretary daniel patrick moynihan winter 1965 published title negro family case national action surely exception rule quite exception moynihan report gained notice notoriety almost immediately statistical analysis cited call action repeated president lyndon johnson within months publicationagain uncommon fate labor department report analysis quickly resisted disputed government academy moynihan accused arguing lowincome black families simply causing problems trying undermine civil rights movement social psychologist william ryan actually coined nowcommon phrase blaming victim used title 1971 book specifically describe moynihan report course moynihan thing extent attributed blame long ugly legacy slavery persistence racism american life argued worked undermine standing black men thereby roles families deform structure family life black community moynihans aim case less assign blame describe peculiar problem problem first presented moynihan team form surprising divergence black community unemployment rates welfare application rates coincided rates single motherhood since essentially unmarried mothers could apply aid families dependent children program late 1950s two indexes risen fallen together starting late 50s welfare rolls increased even unemployment low economy strong moynihan came understand seeing something new deeply troubling impressive retrospect understood emerging pattern troubling economic reasons deeper significant reasonsreasons ultimately cultural fundamental problem wrote family structure evidencenot final powerfully persuasiveis negro family urban ghettos crumbling communities affected worried faced massive deterioration fabric society institutions deterioration prove fact occurring would constitute single important social fact united states today decades since moynihan wrote words work held example prophetic social science constructive policy analysis case served foundation efforts focus attention resources strengthening family formation among poor controversy surrounding report continued attention devoted acted obscure somewhat key achievement moynihans work foremost lesson time strength report analysis causes underlying collapse family among lowerincome african americans moynihan convinced witnessing fundamentally phenomenon black community could explained tragic history african americans rendered black families uniquely vulnerable kind social economic pressures many faced poor urban environments course question savage inhumanity african americans subjected country much history racism persisted far longer detrimental effects black community families particular pattern moynihan began observe 1960s fact limited black community half century since wrote pattern shown lives poor americans races problems remain worst black community history realities racism moynihan pointed surely important contributing factors challenge family disintegration plainly runs deeper broader family breakdown appears prevailing feature modern american poverty sense moynihans analysis causes quite target focus problem report also notable proposing solutions disturbing set problems laid although author suggest policy prescriptions elsewhere indeed moynihan specifically committed report stick diagnosis object study define problem rather propose solutions wrote chief reason argued many persons within without government feel problem exists least serious degree persons feel legal obstacles assimilation way matters take care normal course events find true core moynihans contribution simply put tell truth emerging facts seemed suggest troubling social trend foreseeable implications trend lives people involved family appeared breaking among lowerincome black americans moynihan broken families meant broken communities broken lives elements diagnosis crucial hard pills swallow latter element particularthe importance family health flourishing societyhas controversial half century followed moynihans report roughly halfway period 1992 moynihan took controversy speech delivered university chicago later reprinted public interest blunt despite president johnsons personal interest arguments moynihan said years immediately followed reportthe era great societybrought approach social science public policy made problem diagnosed much difficult address effectively even talk honestly simply put said great society era gave great influence social policy viewpoints rejected proposition family structure might social issue understatement striking even shocking feature sociological degree economic literature several decades following moynihans report sheer lack interest question breakdown family among poor one could deny occurring might mean lives involved exceptions acted merely prove rule exceptions included work moynihan academic career people responsible exceptional attention problem followed path similar think example writing early editions public interest moynihan noted 1992 lecture almost without exception authors political liberals stumbled upon things werent entirely pleasing song goes could denied many people course deny ultimately moynihan suggested facts facts consequences could help follow delivered lecture reflecting report 27 years publication moynihan might reason suppose small band truth tellers finally getting heard retrospect early years 1990s seem like might apex bands influence stature public square moynihan chairman powerful senate finance committee jurisdiction welfare entitlement policy among much else james q wilson james coleman members original public interest circle respectively president american political science association president american sociological association democratic partys nominee president 1992 spoke family breakdown welfare terms even republicans always comfortable academic wall silence seemed cracking little perhaps especially william julius wilsons truly disadvantaged 1987 released sociologists sara mclanahan gary sandefurs book growing single parent 1994 powerfully documented detrimental effects family breakdown children could well appeared though tide finally turning vital importance family structure would finally find place public policy public debate moynihan moment seemed almost optimistic family structure would remain offlimits even underlying trends evolved encompass populace since early 1990s fact births wedlock fundamentally matter race become far clearer 2010 72 percent african american births unwed mothers 53 percent hispanic births 36 percent white birthsall far higher figures moynihan saw black community 1965 described 25 percent rate social disaster nation whole 41 percent children born 2010 born unmarried mothers rate growing faster among whites among groups 1992 moynihan delivered mildly hopeful lecture 2010 births unwed black mothers rose modestly 68 72 percentage points births unwed white mothers saw dramatic jump 23 36 percent increase 50 percent see moynihan right features spring 2015 figure 2 academy fact grown much hospitable notion family structure essential social concern although ground surely gained 1980s 90s much lost since taboos studying discussing implications family structure hardening indeed even many republican politicians shy away arguments importance marriage fear veering debate samesex marriage moynihan noted half century ago one deny either data family formation centrality family flourishing society members today far moynihan penned report implications facts grim essential understand mapping consequences customary describe consequences social trends economic terms surely one useful way illustrate costs 40 percent children raised single mothers living poverty according census bureau roughly 8 percent children raised married parents poor see moynihan right features spring 2015 figure 4 another way think consequences trends look sociological psychological effects children grow singleparent families significantly likely exhibit behavioral problems drop school experience mentalhealth problems attempt suicide workforce young adults brookings institution scholar ron haskins argued appears much connected challenges single parents face married parentsin part simply two themhave easier time better parents haskins argues share burdens responsibilities parenthood combine efforts set clear rules reinforce consequences clearly time energy none course downplay extraordinary often heroic efforts many single mothers help children avert negative consequences contrary findings like help us see daunting challenges faced mothers raising children alone describing crisis family among lowincome americans economic sociological terms may way avoiding deeper problem symptoms family core characterforming institution every human society source basic order structure discipline support loving guidance every human requires essential human flourishing weakening puts risk possibility society worthy name hard imagine social problems take time efforts policymakersproblems economic mobility educational attainment employment inequality oncould seriously mitigated without significant reversal trends family breakdown ultimately human problems problems soul least much economic social problems first step toward seriously taking must reinvigoration commitment family exceptions traditional form family course successfulguided traditional model norm undone broken families become exception rule society especially vulnerable members would profoundly endangered precisely happening across wide swaths american society future family facts collapse family among americas poor deeply discomfiting left right alike uncomfortable left liberals dont want acknowledge show us importance family structure need reinforce uncomfortable right conservatives dont want acknowledge show us destructive effects persistent poverty difficulty helping people rise facts suggest importance family need public action perfectly suited ignored everyone politics moynihan could see danger half century ago report meant warn concluding words although shaped sense race core phenomena discerned still ring decades wrote policy united states bring negro american full equal sharing responsibilities rewards citizenship end programs federal government bearing objective shall designed effect directly indirectly enhancing stability resources negro american family promise america moynihan understood unreachable absence strong stable families call generalized case making strength family key national priority lessons past half century especially great societys mostly failed experiments social policy help us think clearly means end could pursued end well laid moynihans prescient words end reinforcement recovery core institution society every society putting end center politics must begin stating plainly future family determine future country may seem like simple straightforward fact daniel patrick moynihan showed half century ago responsible constructive social science often consists simply stating facts making difficult people deny ignore report offers model truth telling could stand learn robert george professor jurisprudence princeton university yuval levin editor national affairs fellow ethics public policy center160 | 1,476 |
<p>This week, the Obama administration finally launches a poorly designed, hastily constructed, and severely underfunded high-risk pool program across the 50 states. It's a shallow attempt to appear to be doing “something” soon to help Americans without health insurance due to pre-existing health conditions. But apart from its stumbling start, it's also the initial poster child for the core flaws of ObamaCare. It misrepresents the real problem, promises more than it can deliver, tries to hide the real costs, and gives sensible reforms a bad name — all because the administration is more committed to its long-term vision of central government control than to actually building a sustainable solution.</p>
<p>High-risk pools <a href="http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/how-to-cover-pre-existing-conditions" type="external">can address pre-existing conditions</a> without the costs and burdens of the heavy-handed federal regulation of insurance planned for 2014. In short, we can do more by doing less, in a transparent, targeted, and adequately funded manner.</p>
<p>The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PaPACA) enacted into law last March included $5 billion in federal taxpayer funds to finance a new version of state-based high-risk pools (HRPs). This provision was inserted into the broader healthcare legislation late last year to address two political needs. It provided a superficial bow toward bipartisanship (Republican presidential candidate John McCain had proposed a more robust version of HRPs in the 2008 campaign, which was promptly derided by Barack Obama's supporters). It also would offer modest transitional relief in the form of subsidized insurance to at least some Americans with pre-existing health conditions who find individual market health coverage either unavailable or unaffordable (or both).</p>
<p>ObamaCare advocates hoped that this might distract voters from the unpleasant fact that all but a tiny portion of the new law's provisions to expand health insurance coverage do not go into effect until 2014, even though the higher private insurance premiums, taxes, and regulatory burdens triggered by the new health law kick in much earlier.</p>
<p>Ironically, the Obama team has both overstated the problem and underfunded the solution. For the past year, ObamaCare advocates have led the public to believe that private insurers regularly scheme to refuse coverage to most people with higher-cost conditions. Last summer, the propaganda arm of the administration's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recycled a dubious Commonwealth Fund survey claiming that 36 percent of all people who tried to buy their own insurance plans (12.6 million non-elderly adults!) were discriminated against because of a pre-existing condition. The real dimensions of the problem of the “medically uninsurable” are a good bit smaller (because most insurers need to sell more, not fewer, policies), but it's nevertheless serious and costly to solve. Most credible estimates, by the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, place the figure closer to 2 to 4 million Americans, depending on various definitions and assumptions.</p>
<p>CBO's assessment is that the new law's funding for HRPs will only cover, on average, 200,000 enrollees a year — or no more than one in ten of the 2 to 4 million people who are likely in need of assistance. CBO acknowledged that the actual number of people who would be eligible for the program if adequately funded could be much greater — and in the millions — and conceded that if more people were allowed to sign up initially, the available funds will probably be exhausted prior to 2013.</p>
<p>Of course, the estimated cost of dealing with this problem is subject to political mood swings. For example, when Senator McCain proposed a somewhat broader high-risk pool program in 2008 and budgeted it at $7 billion to $10 billion a year, then-Georgetown University professor and HRP critic Karen Pollitz guesstimated to the New York Times that “it may cost 7 to 10 billion dollars a week” and criticized state HRPs that “leave the illusion that there's a safety net without there really being much of one.” By the fall of 2009, an administration-backed HRP proposal pegged at the ultimate $5 billion total was included in a pending Senate health reform bill. Pollitz had revised her estimates, telling the PBS NewsHour that although it probably cannot cover everybody, it's a good start and can cover “a lot more than you're covering now.” She was recently appointed director of the office of consumer support at HHS in the Obama administration.</p>
<p>In any case, the actual cost of a more extensive and robust HRP program would depend on where policy makers set such insurance benefits parameters as cost-sharing and supplemental income-based subsidies, as well as the level at which beneficiary premiums are charged. Although the risk characteristics of the population in broader HRPs could be somewhat healthier and less expensive to cover, the average cost of government subsidies (after premiums) in current state HRPs was about $4,341 per enrollee in 2008.</p>
<p>But the ObamaCare/PaPACA version of HRPs is about to operate very differently from those already established in 35 states that are designed to match more limited resources. Under federal rules, the new state pools cannot allow any exclusions or waiting periods for coverage of pre-existing conditions, age-based premium differences must be compressed, enrollees can only be charged standard rates, and cost-sharing is restricted.</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, estimated costs for these more generous and seemingly less restricted health benefits are much higher, and as many as 20 states have balked at participating directly in the new program when it formally commences this week. Many governors and state legislators fear being left holding the bag when federal funds run out ahead of schedule but political expectations of continued coverage remain. They will leave it to Washington to run new HRPs in their states, in some case redundantly parallel to existing state-run ones operating under older rules.</p>
<p>The flawed design of ObamaCare's shallow and leaky HRPs reflects the overreaching delusion that the HRPs could somehow fast-forward future assumptions of mandated coverage, standardized benefits, and risk-insensitive insurance premiums (envisioned under PaPACA for new health insurance exchanges and eventually the rest of the “private” insurance market) more than three and a half years ahead of schedule. Over-promising the deliverable benefits of HRPs was aimed at briefly allowing the Obama administration to cover itself politically while building its preferred long-term architecture of federal-directed health insurance regulation.</p>
<p>Drafters of the law authorizing the new HRPs tried to leave some budgetary wiggle room, by limiting their enrollment only to those already uninsured for at least six months and authorizing the HHS secretary to close enrollment to comply with funding limitations and make other unspecified “adjustments” as needed to eliminate any annual deficits. Enrollees already “insured” in older versions of state-based HRPs must remain in their higher-priced, less-comprehensive coverage. Other individuals already suffering from high-cost health conditions (but not yet uninsured for a full six months) must simply wait their turn. In other words, the administration would first encourage a new wave of enrollment in HRPs and boost coverage expectations through over-generous promises, but then renege on them when budget funds run short. If private insurers did this, they would be accused of illegal bait-and-switch practices. However, applying the healthcare spending accelerator and brake at the same time, which inevitably leads to violent collisions, looks like it will become standard policy for the Obama administration's broader vision of healthcare reform.</p>
<p>The lessons to be learned do not include abandoning the concept of HRPs but rather restructuring them more effectively, sustainably, and transparently. Adequately funded HRPs need to be augmented with broader remedies: supplemental income-based subsidies, stronger protection for those maintaining continuous insurance coverage against the risk of new insurance underwriting based on future changes in health status, and more effective incentives and tools for both patients and providers to make higher-value healthcare decisions.</p>
<p>High-risk pools that deliver what they can promise will be more expensive. But compared to the sweeping burdens of ObamaCare, they will cost much less and do less damage to the rest of the private healthcare market that many Americans prefer and from which they still benefit greatly. They can represent the foundation for what it means to “replace,” and not just “repeal,” its flawed prescription for health policy change.</p>
<p>Tom Miller is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and James C. Capretta is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. They recently wrote about “How to Cover Pre-Existing Conditions” in the <a href="http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/how-to-cover-pre-existing-conditions" type="external">Summer 2010 issue</a> of National Affairs.</p> | false | 1 | week obama administration finally launches poorly designed hastily constructed severely underfunded highrisk pool program across 50 states shallow attempt appear something soon help americans without health insurance due preexisting health conditions apart stumbling start also initial poster child core flaws obamacare misrepresents real problem promises deliver tries hide real costs gives sensible reforms bad name administration committed longterm vision central government control actually building sustainable solution highrisk pools address preexisting conditions without costs burdens heavyhanded federal regulation insurance planned 2014 short less transparent targeted adequately funded manner patient protection affordable care act papaca enacted law last march included 5 billion federal taxpayer funds finance new version statebased highrisk pools hrps provision inserted broader healthcare legislation late last year address two political needs provided superficial bow toward bipartisanship republican presidential candidate john mccain proposed robust version hrps 2008 campaign promptly derided barack obamas supporters also would offer modest transitional relief form subsidized insurance least americans preexisting health conditions find individual market health coverage either unavailable unaffordable obamacare advocates hoped might distract voters unpleasant fact tiny portion new laws provisions expand health insurance coverage go effect 2014 even though higher private insurance premiums taxes regulatory burdens triggered new health law kick much earlier ironically obama team overstated problem underfunded solution past year obamacare advocates led public believe private insurers regularly scheme refuse coverage people highercost conditions last summer propaganda arm administrations department health human services hhs recycled dubious commonwealth fund survey claiming 36 percent people tried buy insurance plans 126 million nonelderly adults discriminated preexisting condition real dimensions problem medically uninsurable good bit smaller insurers need sell fewer policies nevertheless serious costly solve credible estimates government accountability office congressional budget office cbo agency healthcare research quality place figure closer 2 4 million americans depending various definitions assumptions cbos assessment new laws funding hrps cover average 200000 enrollees year one ten 2 4 million people likely need assistance cbo acknowledged actual number people would eligible program adequately funded could much greater millions conceded people allowed sign initially available funds probably exhausted prior 2013 course estimated cost dealing problem subject political mood swings example senator mccain proposed somewhat broader highrisk pool program 2008 budgeted 7 billion 10 billion year thengeorgetown university professor hrp critic karen pollitz guesstimated new york times may cost 7 10 billion dollars week criticized state hrps leave illusion theres safety net without really much one fall 2009 administrationbacked hrp proposal pegged ultimate 5 billion total included pending senate health reform bill pollitz revised estimates telling pbs newshour although probably cover everybody good start cover lot youre covering recently appointed director office consumer support hhs obama administration case actual cost extensive robust hrp program would depend policy makers set insurance benefits parameters costsharing supplemental incomebased subsidies well level beneficiary premiums charged although risk characteristics population broader hrps could somewhat healthier less expensive cover average cost government subsidies premiums current state hrps 4341 per enrollee 2008 obamacarepapaca version hrps operate differently already established 35 states designed match limited resources federal rules new state pools allow exclusions waiting periods coverage preexisting conditions agebased premium differences must compressed enrollees charged standard rates costsharing restricted surprisingly estimated costs generous seemingly less restricted health benefits much higher many 20 states balked participating directly new program formally commences week many governors state legislators fear left holding bag federal funds run ahead schedule political expectations continued coverage remain leave washington run new hrps states case redundantly parallel existing staterun ones operating older rules flawed design obamacares shallow leaky hrps reflects overreaching delusion hrps could somehow fastforward future assumptions mandated coverage standardized benefits riskinsensitive insurance premiums envisioned papaca new health insurance exchanges eventually rest private insurance market three half years ahead schedule overpromising deliverable benefits hrps aimed briefly allowing obama administration cover politically building preferred longterm architecture federaldirected health insurance regulation drafters law authorizing new hrps tried leave budgetary wiggle room limiting enrollment already uninsured least six months authorizing hhs secretary close enrollment comply funding limitations make unspecified adjustments needed eliminate annual deficits enrollees already insured older versions statebased hrps must remain higherpriced lesscomprehensive coverage individuals already suffering highcost health conditions yet uninsured full six months must simply wait turn words administration would first encourage new wave enrollment hrps boost coverage expectations overgenerous promises renege budget funds run short private insurers would accused illegal baitandswitch practices however applying healthcare spending accelerator brake time inevitably leads violent collisions looks like become standard policy obama administrations broader vision healthcare reform lessons learned include abandoning concept hrps rather restructuring effectively sustainably transparently adequately funded hrps need augmented broader remedies supplemental incomebased subsidies stronger protection maintaining continuous insurance coverage risk new insurance underwriting based future changes health status effective incentives tools patients providers make highervalue healthcare decisions highrisk pools deliver promise expensive compared sweeping burdens obamacare cost much less less damage rest private healthcare market many americans prefer still benefit greatly represent foundation means replace repeal flawed prescription health policy change tom miller resident fellow american enterprise institute james c capretta fellow ethics public policy center recently wrote cover preexisting conditions summer 2010 issue national affairs | 843 |
<p>The big winners at the 75th Golden Globes were the Time's Up movement, "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri," "Lady Bird," and "Big Little Lies."</p>
<p>The only woman to ever receive a Golden Globe for directing, Barbra Streisand, presented the Golden Globe for Best Film Drama to "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri."</p>
<p>The Golden Globe for Best Film Drama Actress was awarded to Frances McDormand for her role in "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri."</p>
<p>"Thelma and Louise" actors Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon presented Gary Oldman his Golden Globe award for Best Film Drama Actor for his portrayal of Winston Churchill in "Darkest Hour." This was another of my favorite films of the year. Oldman's work in "Darkest Hour" is truly a master class.</p>
<p>Alicia Vikander and Michael Keaton presented the Golden Globe for Best Film Comedy/Musical to "Lady Bird." Greta Gerwig had to quickly thank her cast and parents as the Globes telecast is quite obviously running a bit long.</p>
<p>Jessica Chastain and Chris Hemsworth presented the Golden Globe for Best Film Comedy/Musical Actress to Saoirse Ronan for her work in "Lady Bird." I loved this film and am so pleased she was recognized. I would have been just as excited for Margo Robbie. Her portrayal of Tonya Harding is transcendent.</p>
<p>Emma Watson and Robert Pattinson presented the Golden Globe for Best TV Movie/Limited Series to HBO's "Big Little Lies."</p>
<p>Greta Gerwig introduced the film she wrote and directed, "Lady Bird." The film is nominated for Best Film Comedy/Musical.</p>
<p>After an incredibly empowering speech by Oprah Winfrey, Natalie Portman instantly put the Golden Globes on blast. While presenting the category of Best Director she said "Here are the five male nominees." The award went to Guillermo del Toro for "The Shape of Water."</p>
<p>Reese Witherspoon presented the 2018 Cecil B. deMille Award to the one and only, Oprah Winfrey. Her speech will be talked about for years. They star together in the upcoming film, "A Wrinkle in Time."</p>
<p>The audience was on their feet, nodding, and applauding nearly the entire time. Seth Meyers mentioned in his opening monologue the fact that Winfrey has mentioned running for president. If she keeps making speeches like that, she's unbeatable.</p>
<p>The Golden Globe for Best TV Comedy Actor was given to Aziz Ansari for "Master of None." He was nominated for this award last year as well.</p>
<p>Another big surprise! The Golden Globe for Best TV Comedy Series went to "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel."</p>
<p>Halle Berry introduced Best Film Comedy/Musical nominee "Get Out." Yes, we're all still wondering why on Earth this film is a Comedy/Musical.</p>
<p>The Golden Globe for Best TV Movie/Limited Series Actor went to Ewan McGregor for the FX series "Fargo."</p>
<p>The award for Best Foreign Language Film went to "In the Fade (Germany/France)." The film stars Diane Kruger.</p>
<p>Katherine Zeta-Jones and her 101-year-old father-in-law, Kirk Douglas, presented the Golden Globe for Best Screenplay to Martin McDonagh for "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri." This was a bit of a surprise, actually. I think most assumed this would go to Guillermo del Toro and Vanessa Taylor for "The Shape of Water."</p>
<p>The Best Film Supporting Actress category was insane this year. The award went to the amazing Allison Janney for playing Tonya Harding's mother in "I, Tonya." Janney pointed out that Tonya Harding was in the audience tonight and thanked her for allowing the "I, Tonya" team to tell her story. I've been an Allison Janney fan for decades. I've also been a Laurie Metcalf fan for just as long and I would have been thrilled for her to win for her great work in "Lady Bird."</p>
<p>The Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature was presented by Amy Poehler and Andy Samberg and went to "Coco." I loved this movie so, so much. I'm so happy it won.</p>
<p>Sebastian Stan and Allison Janney introduced their film, "I, Tonya." Janney walked out with a fake bird on her shoulder, eliciting a lot of laughs from the room.</p>
<p>Sharon Stone and J.K. Simmons presented the award for Best TV Supporting Actress to Laura Dern for "Big Little Lies." Laura Dern has now won four Golden Globe awards. Dern, like Golden Globe winner Nicole Kidman before her, thanked the other talented women in her cast.</p>
<p>Emma Stone and Shirley MacLaine presented the Golden Globe for Best Film Comedy/Musical Actor to James Franco for "The Disaster Artist." He, of course, brought up the man he played in the film, Tommy Wiseau. Wiseau wrote, directed and starred in the "best worst movie ever," "The Room."</p>
<p>Golden Globe winner Octavia Spencer introduced her film, "The Shape of Water," nominated for Best Film Drama and six others tonight.</p>
<p>Kelly Clarkson and Keith Urban literally sang the winner of Best Song as it was given to "This is Me" from "The Greatest Showman." I had hoped this award would go to "Remember Me" from "Coco." I didn't expect to be so moved by that film or that song as I was.</p>
<p>Alexandre Desplat was given the Golden Globe for Best Score for "The Shape of Water." Guillermo del Toro's film is the most nominated one of the night. It's definitely one of the best films of the year even though it's about human/fish love.</p>
<p>Neil Patrick Harris and Christina Hendricks just presented the award for Best TV Supporting Actor to Alexander Skarsgård for his work on "Big Little Lies." It was his first Globe nomination and first win, way to be 100%. He thanked his co-star Nicole Kidman for making his experience on "Big Little Lies" the best of his life.</p>
<p>Seth Rogen just hilariously introduced his film "The Disaster Artist," tonight a nominee for Best Film Comedy/Musical.</p>
<p>The award for Best TV Drama Series went to "The Handmaid's Tale." This category was one of the most difficult for me because every single one of the nominees is so well done. "The Handmaid's Tale" bested “The Crown,” “Game of Thrones,” “Stranger Things,” and “This is Us.” Roseanne Barr, no stranger to drama, presented the award with her back from the dead TV husband, John Goodman.</p>
<p>The award for Best TV Drama Actor went to Sterling K. Brown for his work on the series "This Is Us." Brown's first word? Oprah. I think the Cecil B. deMille winner is going to be getting a LOT of shout-outs tonight.</p>
<p>Sarah Paulson introduced her film, "The Post." It has Spielberg, Hanks, Streep and an incredible story. One of my favorites of the year. And, I predict a big winner tonight. (UPDATE: This prediction could not have been more incorrect. "The Post" went 0 for 6 tonight.)</p>
<p>Next, Winning her second Golden Globe was Best TV Drama Actress Elisabeth Moss for "The Handmaid's Tale." That series is visionary and Margaret Atwood's book is so of the time right now and is genius. That said, I was rooting for the amazing Claire Foy for her work in "The Crown." I binged the second season just recently and it's some of the best television available right now. The Jackie O episode is otherworldly good.</p>
<p>Jennifer Aniston and the legendary Carol Burnett, one of the most accomplished women in television history, and who recieved a standing ovation, presented the award for Best TV Comedy Actress to surprise winner Rachel Brosnahan for "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel." Oprah Winfrey is sitting right up front and Brosnahan couldn't help but say hello to her during her short speech.</p>
<p>Helen Mirren and Viola Davis were hilarious and gorgeous in every single way as they presented Best Film Supporting Actor to Sam Rockwell for "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri." His performance in that film was truly incredible. If you've not seen it, put it at the top of your list.</p>
<p>Great speech by Seth and now it's the first award! Best TV Movie/Limited Series Actress goes to Nicole Kidman for "Big Little Lies."Kidman gave a poignant speech honoring the other women in the cast of the HBO show: Reese Witherspoon, Shailene Woodley, Laura Dern and Zoe Kravitz. And her message to husband Keith Urban brought a tear to many eyes, including mine.</p>
<p>"Good evening ladies and remaining gentlemen," said Seth Meyers as he walked out on stage. The first words of the night set a nice tone, and let us know there will absolutely be inappropriate comedy this evening. How could there not be?</p>
<p>We're just a few minutes away from the start of the show! The red carpet pre-show was all message, very few frivolities and I'm sure the show itself will be more of the same. It's going to be very interesting to see the balance of the celebration of this last year's artistic works and of the use of the microphone and the time given to bring attention to the Time's Up movement.</p>
<p>Scroll down to see the winners as their announced.-----Seth Meyers hosts the Diamond Anniversary of the Golden Globes, the 75th. Known as one of of the boozier nights of the awards season, the Globes are typically full of laughs. However, this year may prove different. The Time's Up movement is certainly front and center this year.</p>
<p>Hollywood drama isn't just contained to awards categories at the moment.</p>
<p>There will be protests. There will be fiery speeches. We'll continually update as the evening progresses with the winners and stand out moments.</p>
<p>Take a look at this incredible list of presenters for the evening:Jennifer Aniston, Roseanne Barr. Mariah Carey, Jessica Chastain , Emilia Clarke, Common , Viola Davis, Zac Efron, John Goodman, Kit Harington, Salma Hayek ,Garrett Hedlund, Ron Howard, Kate Hudson, Allison Janney, Dakota Johnson, Dwayne Johnson, Angelina Jolie, Michael Keaton, Helen Mirren, Robert Pattinson, Sarah Paulson, Natalie Portman, Andy Samberg , Octavia Spencer, Sebastian Stan, Emma Stone, Keith Urban Reese Witherspoon, Geena Davis, Susan Sarandon, Halle Berry, Carol Burnett, Kelly Clarkson, Darren Criss, Penélope Cruz, Gal Gadot, Greta Gerwig, Hugh Grant, Neil Patrick Harris, Chris Hemsworth, Christina Hendricks, Isabelle Huppert, Shirley Maclaine, Ricky Martin, Sarah Jessica Parker, Amy Poehler, Edgar Ramírez, Seth Rogen, J.K. Simmons, Sharon Stone, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Alicia Vikander, Kerry Washington, and Emma Watson</p>
<p>We'll also see Oprah Winfrey receive the 2018 Cecil B. deMille award.</p>
<p>Below are the nominees for every category, winners in bold once announced.</p>
<p>FILM</p>
<p>Best Film Drama“Call Me by Your Name”“Dunkirk”“The Post”“The Shape of Water”“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”</p>
<p>Best Film Drama ActorTimothée Chalamet, “Call Me by Your Name”Daniel Day-Lewis, “Phantom Thread”Tom Hanks, “The Post”Gary Oldman, “Darkest Hour”Denzel Washington, “Roman J. Israel, Esq.”</p>
<p>Best Film Drama ActressJessica Chastain, “Molly’s Game”Sally Hawkins, “The Shape of Water”Frances McDormand, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”Meryl Streep, “The Post”Michelle Williams, “All the Money in the World”</p>
<p>Best Film Comedy/Musical“The Disaster Artist”“Get Out”“The Greatest Showman”“I, Tonya”“Lady Bird”</p>
<p>Best Film Comedy/Musical ActorSteve Carell, “Battle of the Sexes”Ansel Elgort, “Baby Driver”James Franco, “The Disaster Artist”Hugh Jackman, “The Greatest Showman”Daniel Kaluuya, “Get Out”</p>
<p>Best Film Comedy/Musical ActressJudi Dench, “Victoria &amp; Abdul”Margot Robbie, “I, Tonya”Saoirse Ronan, “Lady Bird”Emma Stone, “Battle of the Sexes”Helen Mirren, “The Leisure Seeker”</p>
<p>Best Film Supporting ActorWillem Dafoe, “The Florida Project”Armie Hammer, “Call Me by Your Name”Richard Jenkins, “The Shape of Water”Christopher Plummer, “All the Money in the World”Sam Rockwell, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”</p>
<p>Best Film Supporting ActressMary J. Blige, “Mudbound”Hong Chau, “Downsizing”Allison Janney, “I, Tonya”Laurie Metcalf, “Lady Bird”Octavia Spencer, “The Shape of Water”</p>
<p>Best DirectorGuillermo del Toro, “The Shape of Water”Martin McDonagh, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”Christopher Nolan, “Dunkirk”Ridley Scott, “All The Money in the World”Steven Spielberg, “The Post”</p>
<p>Best ScreenplayGreta Gerwig, “Lady Bird”Aaron Sorkin, “Molly’s Game”Liz Hannah and Josh Singer, “The Post”Guillermo Del Toro and Vanessa Taylor, “The Shape of Water”Martin McDonagh, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri”</p>
<p>Best ScoreHans Zimmer, “Dunkirk”Jonny Greenwood, “Phantom Thread”John Williams, “The Post”Alexandre Desplat, “The Shape of Water”Carter Burwell, “Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri”</p>
<p>Best Song“Home,” Ferdinand“Mighty River,” Mudbound“Remember Me,” Coco“The Star”, The Star“This Is Me,” The Greatest Showman</p>
<p>Best Animated Feature“The Boss Baby”“The Breadwinner”“Coco”“Ferdinand”“Loving Vincent“</p>
<p>Best Foreign Language Film“A Fantastic Woman” (Chile)“First They Killed My Father” (Cambodia)“In the Fade” (Germany/France)“Loveless” (Russia)“The Square” (Sweden, Germany, France)</p>
<p>TELEVISION</p>
<p>Best Comedy Series“Black-ish”“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”“Master of None”“SMILF”“Will &amp; Grace”</p>
<p>Best TV Comedy ActorAnthony Anderson, “Black-ish”Aziz Ansari “Master of None”Kevin Bacon, “I Love Dick”William H. Macy, “Shameless”Eric McCormack, “Will and Grace”</p>
<p>Best TV Comedy ActressPamela Adlon, “Better Things”Alison Brie, “GLOW”Issa Rae, “Insecure”Rachel Brosnahan, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”Frankie Shaw, “SMILF”</p>
<p>Best Drama Series“The Crown”“Game of Thrones”“The Handmaid’s Tale”“Stranger Things”“This is Us”</p>
<p>Best TV Drama ActorSterling K. Brown, “This is Us”Freddie Highmore, “The Good Doctor”Bob Odenkirk, “Better Call Saul”Liev Schreiber, “Ray Donovan”Jason Bateman, “Ozark”</p>
<p>Best TV Drama ActressCaitriona Balfe, “Outlander”Claire Foy, “The Crown”Maggie Gyllenhaal, “The Deuce”Katherine Langford, “13 Reasons Why”Elisabeth Moss, “The Handmaid’s Tale”</p>
<p>Best TV Movie/Limited Series“Big Little Lies”“Fargo”“Feud: Bette and Joan”“The Sinner”“Top of the Lake: China Girl”</p>
<p>Best TV Movie/Limited Series ActorRobert De Niro, “The Wizard of Lies”Jude Law, “The Young Pope”Kyle MacLachlan, “Twin Peaks”Ewan McGregor, “Fargo”Geoffrey Rush, “Genius”</p>
<p>Best TV Movie/Limited Series ActressJessica Biel, “The Sinner”Nicole Kidman, “Big Little Lies”Jessica Lange, “Feud: Bette and Joan”Susan Sarandon, “Feud: Bette and Joan”Reese Witherspoon, “Big Little Lies”</p>
<p>Best TV Supporting ActorAlfred Molina, “Feud”Alexander Skarsgård, “Big Little Lies”David Thewlis, “Fargo”David Harbour, “Stranger Things”Christian Slater, “Mr. Robot”</p>
<p>Best TV Supporting ActressLaura Dern, “Big Little Lies”Ann Dowd, “The Handmaid’s Tale”Chrissy Metz, “This is Us”Michelle Pfeiffer, “The Wizard of Lies”Shailene Woodley, “Big Little Lies”</p>
<p>-----</p>
<p>Below is Circa's fashion coverage of the Golden Globe Awards.</p>
<p>This year, a lot of celebrities are using their Golden Globes outfits as a form of protest, opting for black dresses to bring attention to sexual harassment and assault within the entertainment industry and beyond. The red carpet will be more about solidarity than beautiful dresses.</p>
<p>The coordinated effort is part of the <a href="https://www.timesupnow.com/" type="external">TIME'S UP</a> campaign. "The clock has run out on sexual assault, harassment and inequality in the workplace," reads the movement's website. Several stars are also bringing activists as their plus-ones to the award show.</p>
<p>We'll keep updating the slideshow as the night goes on, so check back later for more! If you want to see more red carpet fashion, have you seen our picks for the best and worst red carpet looks of 2017 yet?</p>
<p>Was 2017 the best year ever for red carpet fashion? Okay, it might be a little too bold to make that claim, but you have to admit that there were some seriously amazing looks over the course of the year. Celebs pulled out their best dresses for awards shows and premieres, and we actually had a tough time narrowing down this list. Check out the slideshow to see what made the cut! And be sure to share your own thoughts, because some of our choices might be a little controversial.</p>
<p>Celebrities have access to pretty much an endless supply of dresses. And when they're on a major red carpet, they know that people are going to be critiquing their look and scrutinizing every detail. And then on top of that, most of them are actually paying stylists to help them look good. So some of their red carpet choices can be baffling, to say the least. Now that 2017 is over, let's look back on the worst red carpet looks from the year.</p>
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stone jk simmons presented award best tv supporting actress laura dern big little lies laura dern four golden globe awards dern like golden globe winner nicole kidman thanked talented women cast emma stone shirley maclaine presented golden globe best film comedymusical actor james franco disaster artist course brought man played film tommy wiseau wiseau wrote directed starred best worst movie ever room golden globe winner octavia spencer introduced film shape water nominated best film drama six others tonight kelly clarkson keith urban literally sang winner best song given greatest showman hoped award would go remember coco didnt expect moved film song alexandre desplat given golden globe best score shape water guillermo del toros film nominated one night definitely one best films year even though humanfish love neil patrick harris christina hendricks presented award best tv supporting actor alexander skarsgård work big little lies first globe nomination first win way 100 thanked 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<p>Thank you for the invitation to participate in this 125th anniversary lecture series on “Faith, Freedom, and the Future.”</p>
<p>That strikes me as an entirely appropriate theme for your anniversary, for Grove City College has long understood that the future of freedom depends on the virtues of a free people—and that, for the overwhelming majority of Americans, the virtues essential to preserving and extending freedom are expressions in history of faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus. By holding fast to its conviction that biblical faith informs freedom and points the exercise of freedom onto its true trajectory, Grove City College has made an important contribution to the education of future citizens, to American higher education, and to the defense of American democracy.</p>
<p>We are here this evening to reflect on the historic impact of a man who also believes that faith and freedom are intimately linked. Interestingly enough, this man, who has had an immense impact on the history of our times, is neither a politician, a diplomat, or an international relations theorist. That is, he does not wield power as the world conventionally understands “power.” Rather, he is a pastor, an evangelist, and a witness to basic human rights. Like the men and women who have led Grove City College for 125 years, Pope John Paul II is convinced that ideas and moral convictions are levers with which to move the world. Ideas and values are distinctive forms of power. Reflecting on how the Pope has exercised the power of truth is not only an interesting exercise in its own right; it may help us to understand how the world really works.</p>
<p>That John Paul II has had a considerable impact on contemporary history is now widely conceded by even his most implacable critics, inside and outside the Catholic Church. Yet one may well wonder whether those who think about the dynamics of history, professionally or as an avocation, have begin to come to grips intellectually with the meaning of John Paul’s accomplishment in the world of affairs—or what that accomplishment suggests about the working-out of history and the contours of world politics in the 21st century.</p>
<p>So my plan here is to sketch, briefly, the Pope’s accomplishment as I have come to understand it as his biographer, using three examples; then I shall indicate, again briefly, some lessons from this accomplishment for the future; and finally, I shall suggest where the new intellectual terrain lies, post-John Paul II, for those interested in the impact of ideas and religiously-grounded moral values on politics, especially the politics and ethics of international relations</p>
<p>I.</p>
<p>To understand John Paul II’s concept of the dynamics of international relations—indeed, the dynamics of history itself—let’s go back in our imaginations to the small Polish town of Wadowice, about forty miles southwest of Cracow, somewhere in the late 1920s. There, we meet a young Polish boy named Karol Wojty a. Young Karol, we discover, has learned from his father (a retired military officer) and from his elementary and secondary schooling the great lesson of modern Polish history: that it was through its culture—its language, it literature, its religion—that Poland the nation survived when Poland the state was erased for 123 years from the map of Europe.</p>
<p>Between 1795—when the three great powers of east central Europe, Prussia, Austria-Hungary, and Russia, completed the third and final partition of the Polish lands—and 1918, nothing labeled “Poland” appeared on any map of Europe. It was an unprecedented act of destruction, the vivisection of a historic, living state. Yet throughout those 123 years of wandering in the wilderness of history, the Polish nation survived because the idea of “Poland” survived. Indeed, it survived with such potency that the Polish nation could give birth to a new Polish state in the aftermath of World War I.</p>
<p>History viewed from the Vistula River basin looks different; it has a tangible spiritual dimension. Looking at history from that distinctive angle-of-vision, we learn that overwhelming material force can be resisted successfully through the resources of the human spirit—through culture. And in reflecting on that, we learn that culture—not politics, not economics, and not some combination of politics-and-economics—is the most dynamic, enduring factor in human affairs, at least over the long haul.</p>
<p>Having learned these lessons as a young man, Karol Wojty a, a son of Poland whom the world would later know as Pope John Paul II, applied this concept of the priority of culture in history in resistance to the two great totalitarian powers that sought to subjugate Poland between 1939 and 1989.</p>
<p>He applied it in a variety of resistance activities against the draconian Nazi Occupation of Poland from 1939 until 1945. The Nazi’s strategic goal in Poland was to erase these Polish-Slavic untermenschen from the European New Order. One step toward achieving that goal was to decapitate the Polish nation by liquidating it intellectual, religious, and cultural leadership—thus, two months after Poland’s defeat in September 1939, 186 professors from the Jagiellonian University deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. One effective means of resistance to this tactic of decapitation was to keep Polish culture alive. Karol Wojty a was intensely involved in this, at the daily risk of his life, through his participation in a host of cultural resistance groups: the underground Jagiellonian University, clandestine literary, theatrical, and religious activities, a pioneering movement of civic renewal called UNIA which sought to lay the intellectual foundations for a post-war Christian democracy in Poland.</p>
<p>As a priest and bishop in Cracow from 1949 through 1978, Karol Wojty a applied a similar “culture-first” strategy to resistance against the communist effort to rewrite Poland’s history and redefine Poland’s culture. Wojty a had no direct “political” involvement over those three, grey decades. He could have cared less about the internal politics of the Polish communist party, who was up and who was down in the politburo, the twists and turns of the official party line. But his efforts to nurture an informed, intelligent Catholic laity were examples of what a later generation of democratic activists would call “building civil society”—and thus laying the groundwork for an active resistance movement with political traction.</p>
<p>Pope John Paul II has applied this strategy of culturally-driven change on a global stage since his election on October 16, 1978.</p>
<p>In 1992, when Oxford University Press published my study, The Final Revolution: The Resistance Church and the Collapse of Communism, there were many eyebrows raised, within the professoriate and the punditocracy, about my claim that the Church and the Pope had played pivotal roles in the collapse of European communism. When I amplified that claim in Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II, which was published seven years later, no one batted an eye. Over the course of the 1990s, John Paul’s crucial role in the collapse of European communism came to be generally recognized—even by Mikhail Gorbachev, who might have been expected to take a somewhat rueful view of the matter. But while the Pope’s pivotal role in these epic events is now recognized, it does not seem well understood.</p>
<p>John Paul II was not, pace Tad Szulc in his biography of the Pope, a wily diplomat skillfully negotiating a transition beyond one-party rule in Poland. He was not, pace Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi in their fantasy-biography, His Holiness, a co-conspirator with Ronald Reagan in a “holy alliance” to effect communism’s demise. He was not, pace the late Jonathan Kwitny in his lengthy study of Wojty a’s career, a Gandhi in a white cassock, running a non-violent resistance movement in Poland through a clandestine messenger service from the Vatican.</p>
<p>Rather, John Paul shaped the politics of east central Europe in the 1980s as a pastor, an evangelist, and a witness to basic human rights</p>
<p>Primary-source evidence for this is found in the texts of the Pope’s epic June 1979 pilgrimage to his homeland, nine days on which the history of the 20th century pivoted. In some forty sermons, addresses, lectures, and impromptu remarks, the Pope told his fellow-countrymen, in so many words: “You are not who they say you are. Let me remind you who you are.” By restoring to the Polish people their authentic history and culture—by giving back to his people their identity— John Paul created a revolution of conscience that, fourteen months later, produced the nonviolent Solidarity resistance movement, a unique hybrid of workers and intellectuals: a “forest planed by aroused consciences,” as the Pope’s friend, the philosopher Józef Tischner once put it. And by restoring to his people a form of freedom and a fearlessness that communism could not reach, John Paul II set in motion the human dynamics that eventually led, over a decade, to what we know as the Revolution of 1989.</p>
<p>Those nine days in June 1979 were not only a time of catharsis for a people long frustrated by their inability to express the truth about themselves publicly. Together, they also formed one decisive, historic moment in which convictions were crystallized, to the point where the mute acquiescence that, as Václav Havel wrote, made continuing communist rule possible was shattered. Many people had long wanted to say “No” to communism. But they could not do so, publicly, except on the basis of a higher and more compelling “Yes.” Providing that “Yes” was what John Paul II did in June 1979. Moreover, it was not simply that, as French historian Alain Besancon nicely put it, “people regained the private ownership of their tongues” during the Solidarity revolution. It was what those tongues said—their new willingness to defy what Havel called the communist “culture of the lie”—that made the crucial difference.</p>
<p>To be sure, there were other factors in creating the Revolution of 1989: the policies of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Helmut Kohl; Mikhail Gorbachev, a Soviet leader not formed in the brutalities of Stalin’s purge trials; the human rights provisions of the Helsinki Final Act and their effects throughout Europe, and in linking human rights activists in the captive nations and the old democracies. But if we ask why communism collapsed when it did—in 1989 rather than 1999 or 2009 or 2019—and how it did—without mass violence (with the sole exception of Romania)—then sufficient account has to be taken of June 1979 and the revolution of conscience it ignited. This was a different kind of revolution, because the revolutionaries were a different sort of people—people who understood, as Adam Michnik aptly put it, that “those who begin by tearing down Bastilles end up building their own.”</p>
<p>This singular contribution of the Pope in June 1979 is a point stressed by local witnesses. When I first began researching The Final Revolution in 1990, I thought that the Church and the Pope had had something to do with the Revolution of 1989. In talking with dozens, even hundreds, of the people of the revolution, however, I came to a different, more expansive view. Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks, religious and secular alike, were unanimous in their testimony about the crucial impact of June 1979, which had launched a different kind of revolution—a revolution of conscience that made a nonviolent political revolution possible. June 1979, they unanimously insisted, was when “1989″ started.</p>
<p>(Parenthetically, it’s worth noting that the West largely missed this. Thus the New York Times editorial of June 5, 1979: “As much as the visit of Pope John Paul II to Poland must reinvigorate and reinspire the Roman Catholic Church in Poland, it does not threaten the political order of the nation or of Eastern Europe.” But two other Slavic readers of the signs of the times were not at all confused: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Yuri Andropov both knew that the rise of John Paul II and the deployment of his “culture-first” strategy of social change was a profound threat to the Soviet order. The degree of seriousness with which Andropov took this threat may be inferred from the events in St. Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981, when Mehmet Ali Agca tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II.)</p>
<p>“1989” had certain unique, unrepeatable characteristics, like any great historical event. Still, John Paul applied a similar strategy—the renovation of political life through the restoration of public moral culture—when he went to Chile in 1987. Fourteen years of the Pinochet government, following the crisis of the Allende regime, had created deep divisions in Chilean society. There were raw wounds in the body politic because of human rights abuses and the recalcitrance of the Left; there was, in a phrase, no “civil society,” and that lack made a transition to a democratic future impossible.</p>
<p>Therefore, John Paul, in collaboration with the Chilean bishops, decided that the public purpose of his 1987 pilgrimage to Chile would be to help reconstitute civil society through a reclamation of Chile’s Christian culture. The great theme for the visit would be that “Chile’s vocation is for understanding, not confrontation” The papal pilgrimage would, as one of its organizers put it to me, “take back the streets,” which had been places of fear under Allende and Pinochet, and transform them, once again, into places of community. And people would be deliberately mixed together at the venues for the papal Masses: Chileans would be compelled, under the eye of their common religious “father,” to look at each other, once again, as persons rather than ideological objects. And it seems no accident that, some eighteen months after the papal visit had accelerated the process of reconstructing Chilean civil society, a national plebiscite voted to move beyond military rule and restore democracy.</p>
<p>The third example of John Paul II’s “culture first” approach to political change can be found in his pilgrimage to Cuba in January 1998. There, the Pope did not mention the current Cuban regime, once—not once, in five days. Rather, he re-read Cuban history through the lens of a Christianity that had formed a distinctively Cuban people from native peoples, Spaniards, and black African slaves. And he re-read the Cuban national liberation struggle of the 19th century through the prism of its Christian inspiration. Here, as in Poland in 1979, the Pope was restoring to a people their authentic history and culture. In doing so, he was also calling for a reinsertion of Cuba into history and into the hemisphere, asking the Cuban people to stop thinking of themselves as victims (the theme of Fidel Castro’s welcoming address), and to start thinking of themselves as the protagonists of their own destiny.</p>
<p>II.</p>
<p>Several lessons can be drawn from reflecting on the distinctive impact of Pope John Paul II on the history of our times.</p>
<p>First, the experience of John Paul II suggests that what we call “civil society” is not simply institutional: a free press, free trade unions, free business organizations, free associations, and so forth. “Civil society” has an essential moral core. Civil society is built on the foundation of common moral convictions about the nature of the human person, and the requirements of human community.</p>
<p>Secondly, John Paul’s “culture-first” strategy reminds us that “power” cannot be measured solely in terms of aggregates of military or economic capability. The “power of the powerless” is a real form of power. Moral conviction, deployed in such a way as to restore to peoples their authentic identity, can be an Archimedean lever from which to move the world.</p>
<p>In the third place, the Pope’s impact demonstrates that non-state actors count in contemporary world politics, and sometimes in decisive ways. John Paul II did not shape the history of our times as the temporal sovereign of the Vatican City micro-state, but as the Bishop of Rome and the universal pastor of the Catholic Church. At the end of a century which began with secular modernity convinced that human being would quickly “outgrow” their “need” for religion, one of the most potent actors on the world stage was the holder of the world’s oldest religious office. The world does not work the way the world sometimes thinks it works—or the way conventional academic analyses of the dynamics of history and politics tell us it works.</p>
<p>III.</p>
<p>Still, for all its “worldly” accomplishments, the pontificate of John Paul II has left some gaps in our understanding that urgently need filling in the years just ahead.</p>
<p>It is curious that this son of a soldier, who has expressed his respect for the military vocation on many occasions, has not have developed the Catholic Church’s just war doctrine. This was most evident during Gulf War, but beyond such relatively conventional conflicts, there are new issues today at the intersection of ethics and world politics—the problem of outlaw states, the morality of preemption in the face of weapons of mass destruction, the locus of “legitimate authority” in the international community—that the Pope has simply not addressed. Others must take up that task.</p>
<p>The same can be said for “humanitarian intervention,”which the Pope identified as a “moral duty” in an address to the U.N.’s Food and Agricultural Organization in 1992. But this “duty” was not defined. On whom does it fall, and why? By what means is it to be discharged? What about the claims of sovereignty? These are large questions that demand the most careful reflection.</p>
<p>IV.</p>
<p>John Paul II has been the most politically consequential pope in centuries. But his impact did not come through the normal modalities of politics. He had no army. His success did not, in the main, come through the normal instruments of diplomacy. In terms of the history of ideas, his “culture-first” reading of history is a sharp challenge to the regnant notions that politics runs history, or economics runs history. Does the fact of the Pope’s success suggest that we are moving into a period in which nation-states are of less consequence in “world affairs”? Or were the accomplishments I’ve outlined here idiosyncratic, the result of a singular personality meeting a unique set of circumstances with singular prescience and effect? There is much to chew on here, for students of history and international affairs, in the years immediately ahead. But that we have been living, in this pontificate, through the days of a giant seems clear enough.</p>
<p>George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. and holds EPPC’s William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.</p> | false | 1 | thank invitation participate 125th anniversary lecture series faith freedom future strikes entirely appropriate theme anniversary grove city college long understood future freedom depends virtues free peopleand overwhelming majority americans virtues essential preserving extending freedom expressions history faith god abraham isaac jacob jesus holding fast conviction biblical faith informs freedom points exercise freedom onto true trajectory grove city college made important contribution education future citizens american higher education defense american democracy evening reflect historic impact man also believes faith freedom intimately linked interestingly enough man immense impact history times neither politician diplomat international relations theorist wield power world conventionally understands power rather pastor evangelist witness basic human rights like men women led grove city college 125 years pope john paul ii convinced ideas moral convictions levers move world ideas values distinctive forms power reflecting pope exercised power truth interesting exercise right may help us understand world really works john paul ii considerable impact contemporary history widely conceded even implacable critics inside outside catholic church yet one may well wonder whether think dynamics history professionally avocation begin come grips intellectually meaning john pauls accomplishment world affairsor accomplishment suggests workingout history contours world politics 21st century plan sketch briefly popes accomplishment come understand biographer using three examples shall indicate briefly lessons accomplishment future finally shall suggest new intellectual terrain lies postjohn paul ii interested impact ideas religiouslygrounded moral values politics especially politics ethics international relations understand john paul iis concept dynamics international relationsindeed dynamics history itselflets go back imaginations small polish town wadowice forty miles southwest cracow somewhere late 1920s meet young polish boy named karol wojty young karol discover learned father retired military officer elementary secondary schooling great lesson modern polish history cultureits language literature religionthat poland nation survived poland state erased 123 years map europe 1795when three great powers east central europe prussia austriahungary russia completed third final partition polish landsand 1918 nothing labeled poland appeared map europe unprecedented act destruction vivisection historic living state yet throughout 123 years wandering wilderness history polish nation survived idea poland survived indeed survived potency polish nation could give birth new polish state aftermath world war history viewed vistula river basin looks different tangible spiritual dimension looking history distinctive angleofvision learn overwhelming material force resisted successfully resources human spiritthrough culture reflecting learn culturenot politics economics combination politicsandeconomicsis dynamic enduring factor human affairs least long haul learned lessons young man karol wojty son poland world would later know pope john paul ii applied concept priority culture history resistance two great totalitarian powers sought subjugate poland 1939 1989 applied variety resistance activities draconian nazi occupation poland 1939 1945 nazis strategic goal poland erase polishslavic untermenschen european new order one step toward achieving goal decapitate polish nation liquidating intellectual religious cultural leadershipthus two months polands defeat september 1939 186 professors jagiellonian university deported sachsenhausen concentration camp one effective means resistance tactic decapitation keep polish culture alive karol wojty intensely involved daily risk life participation host cultural resistance groups underground jagiellonian university clandestine literary theatrical religious activities pioneering movement civic renewal called unia sought lay intellectual foundations postwar christian democracy poland priest bishop cracow 1949 1978 karol wojty applied similar culturefirst strategy resistance communist effort rewrite polands history redefine polands culture wojty direct political involvement three grey decades could cared less internal politics polish communist party politburo twists turns official party line efforts nurture informed intelligent catholic laity examples later generation democratic activists would call building civil societyand thus laying groundwork active resistance movement political traction pope john paul ii applied strategy culturallydriven change global stage since election october 16 1978 1992 oxford university press published study final revolution resistance church collapse communism many eyebrows raised within professoriate punditocracy claim church pope played pivotal roles collapse european communism amplified claim witness hope biography pope john paul ii published seven years later one batted eye course 1990s john pauls crucial role collapse european communism came generally recognizedeven mikhail gorbachev might expected take somewhat rueful view matter popes pivotal role epic events recognized seem well understood john paul ii pace tad szulc biography pope wily diplomat skillfully negotiating transition beyond oneparty rule poland pace carl bernstein marco politi fantasybiography holiness coconspirator ronald reagan holy alliance effect communisms demise pace late jonathan kwitny lengthy study wojty career gandhi white cassock running nonviolent resistance movement poland clandestine messenger service vatican rather john paul shaped politics east central europe 1980s pastor evangelist witness basic human rights primarysource evidence found texts popes epic june 1979 pilgrimage homeland nine days history 20th century pivoted forty sermons addresses lectures impromptu remarks pope told fellowcountrymen many words say let remind restoring polish people authentic history cultureby giving back people identity john paul created revolution conscience fourteen months later produced nonviolent solidarity resistance movement unique hybrid workers intellectuals forest planed aroused consciences popes friend philosopher józef tischner put restoring people form freedom fearlessness communism could reach john paul ii set motion human dynamics eventually led decade know revolution 1989 nine days june 1979 time catharsis people long frustrated inability express truth publicly together also formed one decisive historic moment convictions crystallized point mute acquiescence václav havel wrote made continuing communist rule possible shattered many people long wanted say communism could publicly except basis higher compelling yes providing yes john paul ii june 1979 moreover simply french historian alain besancon nicely put people regained private ownership tongues solidarity revolution tongues saidtheir new willingness defy havel called communist culture liethat made crucial difference sure factors creating revolution 1989 policies ronald reagan margaret thatcher helmut kohl mikhail gorbachev soviet leader formed brutalities stalins purge trials human rights provisions helsinki final act effects throughout europe linking human rights activists captive nations old democracies ask communism collapsed didin 1989 rather 1999 2009 2019and didwithout mass violence sole exception romaniathen sufficient account taken june 1979 revolution conscience ignited different kind revolution revolutionaries different sort peoplepeople understood adam michnik aptly put begin tearing bastilles end building singular contribution pope june 1979 point stressed local witnesses first began researching final revolution 1990 thought church pope something revolution 1989 talking dozens even hundreds people revolution however came different expansive view poles czechs slovaks religious secular alike unanimous testimony crucial impact june 1979 launched different kind revolutiona revolution conscience made nonviolent political revolution possible june 1979 unanimously insisted 1989 started parenthetically worth noting west largely missed thus new york times editorial june 5 1979 much visit pope john paul ii poland must reinvigorate reinspire roman catholic church poland threaten political order nation eastern europe two slavic readers signs times confused aleksandr solzhenitsyn yuri andropov knew rise john paul ii deployment culturefirst strategy social change profound threat soviet order degree seriousness andropov took threat may inferred events st peters square may 13 1981 mehmet ali agca tried assassinate pope john paul ii 1989 certain unique unrepeatable characteristics like great historical event still john paul applied similar strategythe renovation political life restoration public moral culturewhen went chile 1987 fourteen years pinochet government following crisis allende regime created deep divisions chilean society raw wounds body politic human rights abuses recalcitrance left phrase civil society lack made transition democratic future impossible therefore john paul collaboration chilean bishops decided public purpose 1987 pilgrimage chile would help reconstitute civil society reclamation chiles christian culture great theme visit would chiles vocation understanding confrontation papal pilgrimage would one organizers put take back streets places fear allende pinochet transform places community people would deliberately mixed together venues papal masses chileans would compelled eye common religious father look persons rather ideological objects seems accident eighteen months papal visit accelerated process reconstructing chilean civil society national plebiscite voted move beyond military rule restore democracy third example john paul iis culture first approach political change found pilgrimage cuba january 1998 pope mention current cuban regime oncenot five days rather reread cuban history lens christianity formed distinctively cuban people native peoples spaniards black african slaves reread cuban national liberation struggle 19th century prism christian inspiration poland 1979 pope restoring people authentic history culture also calling reinsertion cuba history hemisphere asking cuban people stop thinking victims theme fidel castros welcoming address start thinking protagonists destiny ii several lessons drawn reflecting distinctive impact pope john paul ii history times first experience john paul ii suggests call civil society simply institutional free press free trade unions free business organizations free associations forth civil society essential moral core civil society built foundation common moral convictions nature human person requirements human community secondly john pauls culturefirst strategy reminds us power measured solely terms aggregates military economic capability power powerless real form power moral conviction deployed way restore peoples authentic identity archimedean lever move world third place popes impact demonstrates nonstate actors count contemporary world politics sometimes decisive ways john paul ii shape history times temporal sovereign vatican city microstate bishop rome universal pastor catholic church end century began secular modernity convinced human would quickly outgrow need religion one potent actors world stage holder worlds oldest religious office world work way world sometimes thinks worksor way conventional academic analyses dynamics history politics tell us works iii still worldly accomplishments pontificate john paul ii left gaps understanding urgently need filling years ahead curious son soldier expressed respect military vocation many occasions developed catholic churchs war doctrine evident gulf war beyond relatively conventional conflicts new issues today intersection ethics world politicsthe problem outlaw states morality preemption face weapons mass destruction locus legitimate authority international communitythat pope simply addressed others must take task said humanitarian interventionwhich pope identified moral duty address uns food agricultural organization 1992 duty defined fall means discharged claims sovereignty large questions demand careful reflection iv john paul ii politically consequential pope centuries impact come normal modalities politics army success main come normal instruments diplomacy terms history ideas culturefirst reading history sharp challenge regnant notions politics runs history economics runs history fact popes success suggest moving period nationstates less consequence world affairs accomplishments ive outlined idiosyncratic result singular personality meeting unique set circumstances singular prescience effect much chew students history international affairs years immediately ahead living pontificate days giant seems clear enough george weigel distinguished senior fellow ethics public policy center washington dc holds eppcs william e simon chair catholic studies | 1,683 |
<p>President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner returned to Capitol Hill Tuesday for a second day of private meetings with congressional investigators, this time for a closed-door conversation with lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee.</p>
<p>Kushner on Monday answered questions from staff on the Senate’s intelligence panel, acknowledging four meetings with Russians during and after Trump’s victorious White House bid and insisting he had “nothing to hide.” He emerged smiling to publicly declare, “All of my actions were proper.”</p>
<p>Separately, the Senate Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena Tuesday to compel the testimony of Paul Manafort, the Trump presidential campaign chairman who with Kushner attended a Trump Tower meeting last year that has invited congressional scrutiny.</p>
<p>A quiet insider who generally avoids the spotlight, Kushner is the first top Trump lieutenant to be quizzed by the congressional investigators probing Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election.</p>
<p>Hours before the Senate meeting, Kushner released an 11-page statement that was billed as his remarks to both the Senate and House committees. In it, he acknowledged his Russian contacts during the campaign and then the following weeks, in which he served as a liaison between the transition and foreign governments. He described each contact as either insignificant or routine and he said the meetings, along with several others, were omitted from his security clearance form because of an aide’s error. Kushner cast himself as a political novice learning in real time to juggle “thousands of meetings and interactions” in a fast-paced campaign.</p>
<p>“Let me be very clear,” Kushner said afterward in a rare public statement at the White House. “I did not collude with Russia, nor do I know of anyone else in the campaign who did so.”</p>
<p>Kushner’s statement was the first detailed defense from a campaign insider responding to the controversy that has all but consumed the first six months of Trump’s presidency. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia sought to tip the 2016 campaign in Trump’s favor. Congressional committees, as well as a Justice Department special counsel, are investigating whether Trump associates coordinated with Russia in that effort and whether the president has sought to hamper the investigations.</p>
<p>Kushner said he “will continue to cooperate as I have nothing to hide.”</p>
<p>Trump watched on TV as Kushner made his appearance outside the West Wing and “thought Jared did a great job,” said White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders. She said his House testimony on Tuesday would show “what a hoax this entire thing is.”</p>
<p>Trump also took aim at the top Democrat on the House intelligence panel, California Rep. Adam Schiff, calling him “sleazy” in a tweet and saying he “spends all of his time on television.” Schiff said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday that he has a “great many questions” for Kushner.</p>
<p>Schiff responded Monday by tweeting that Trump watches TV too often and his “comments and actions are beneath the dignity of the office.”</p>
<p>In issuing the subpoena for Manafort, the Senate Judiciary panel leaders said they had been unable to reach agreement with Manafort on the terms of a private and voluntary interview with staff.</p>
<p>In addition, the committee was withdrawing a separate subpoena issued for the co-founder of a research firm behind a dossier of allegations about Trump and his ties to Russia. Instead, Glenn Simpson has agreed to a private interview, according to a person familiar with the conversations who spoke on condition of anonymity</p>
<p>Kushner, in his statement for the two intelligence committees, provided for the first time his recollection of a meeting at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer who was said to have damaging information about Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.</p>
<p>Emails released this month show that the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., accepted the meeting with the idea that he would receive information as part of a Russian government effort to help Trump’s campaign. But Kushner said he hadn’t seen those emails until recently shown them by his lawyers.</p>
<p>He called the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya such a “waste of time” that he asked his assistant to call him out of the gathering. He says he arrived late and when he heard the lawyer discussing the issue of international adoptions, he texted his assistant to call him out.</p>
<p>“No part of the meeting I attended included anything about the campaign; there was no follow-up to the meeting that I am aware of; I do not recall how many people were there (or their names), and I have no knowledge of any documents being offered or accepted,” he said.</p>
<p>Kushner also confirmed earlier media reports that he had suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities to set up secure communications between Trump adviser Michael Flynn, who would become Trump’s national security adviser, and Russian officials. But he disputed that it was an effort to establish a “secret back channel.”</p>
<p>His statement describes a December meeting with Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in which Kushner and Kislyak discussed establishing a secure line for the Trump transition team and Moscow to communicate about policy in Syria.</p>
<p>Kushner said that when Kislyak asked if there was a secure way for him to provide information from his “generals,” Kushner suggested using facilities at the Russian Embassy.</p>
<p>“The ambassador said that would not be possible and so we all agreed that we would receive this information after the Inauguration. Nothing else occurred,” the statement said.</p>
<p>Kushner said he never proposed an ongoing secret form of communication.</p>
<p>As for his application for a security clearance, Kushner said his form was submitted prematurely due to a miscommunication with his assistant, who had believed the document was complete.</p>
<p>He said he mistakenly omitted all of his foreign contacts, not just his meetings with Russians, and has worked in the past six months with the FBI to correct the record.</p> | false | 1 | president donald trumps soninlaw adviser jared kushner returned capitol hill tuesday second day private meetings congressional investigators time closeddoor conversation lawmakers house intelligence committee kushner monday answered questions staff senates intelligence panel acknowledging four meetings russians trumps victorious white house bid insisting nothing hide emerged smiling publicly declare actions proper separately senate judiciary committee issued subpoena tuesday compel testimony paul manafort trump presidential campaign chairman kushner attended trump tower meeting last year invited congressional scrutiny quiet insider generally avoids spotlight kushner first top trump lieutenant quizzed congressional investigators probing russias meddling 2016 presidential election hours senate meeting kushner released 11page statement billed remarks senate house committees acknowledged russian contacts campaign following weeks served liaison transition foreign governments described contact either insignificant routine said meetings along several others omitted security clearance form aides error kushner cast political novice learning real time juggle thousands meetings interactions fastpaced campaign let clear kushner said afterward rare public statement white house collude russia know anyone else campaign kushners statement first detailed defense campaign insider responding controversy consumed first six months trumps presidency us intelligence agencies concluded russia sought tip 2016 campaign trumps favor congressional committees well justice department special counsel investigating whether trump associates coordinated russia effort whether president sought hamper investigations kushner said continue cooperate nothing hide trump watched tv kushner made appearance outside west wing thought jared great job said white house spokeswoman sarah huckabee sanders said house testimony tuesday would show hoax entire thing trump also took aim top democrat house intelligence panel california rep adam schiff calling sleazy tweet saying spends time television schiff said cbss face nation sunday great many questions kushner schiff responded monday tweeting trump watches tv often comments actions beneath dignity office issuing subpoena manafort senate judiciary panel leaders said unable reach agreement manafort terms private voluntary interview staff addition committee withdrawing separate subpoena issued cofounder research firm behind dossier allegations trump ties russia instead glenn simpson agreed private interview according person familiar conversations spoke condition anonymity kushner statement two intelligence committees provided first time recollection meeting trump tower russian lawyer said damaging information trumps democratic rival hillary clinton emails released month show presidents son donald trump jr accepted meeting idea would receive information part russian government effort help trumps campaign kushner said hadnt seen emails recently shown lawyers called june 2016 trump tower meeting russian lawyer natalia veselnitskaya waste time asked assistant call gathering says arrived late heard lawyer discussing issue international adoptions texted assistant call part meeting attended included anything campaign followup meeting aware recall many people names knowledge documents offered accepted said kushner also confirmed earlier media reports suggested using russian diplomatic facilities set secure communications trump adviser michael flynn would become trumps national security adviser russian officials disputed effort establish secret back channel statement describes december meeting flynn russian ambassador sergey kislyak kushner kislyak discussed establishing secure line trump transition team moscow communicate policy syria kushner said kislyak asked secure way provide information generals kushner suggested using facilities russian embassy ambassador said would possible agreed would receive information inauguration nothing else occurred statement said kushner said never proposed ongoing secret form communication application security clearance kushner said form submitted prematurely due miscommunication assistant believed document complete said mistakenly omitted foreign contacts meetings russians worked past six months fbi correct record | 547 |
<p>By Barbara Lewis and Maiya Keidan</p>
<p>LONDON (Reuters) – Glencore (L:) has increased production of the metals used to make electric car batteries faster than its major mining rivals, according to an industry-wide analysis that shows the scale of a strategy that has big prospective risks and rewards.</p>
<p>The Anglo-Swiss company’s output of cobalt and roughly doubled in the five years to 2016, while its production of nickel quadrupled, the research compiled for Reuters by S&amp;P Global Market Intelligence shows. (Graphic: Glencore’s mining production – http://tmsnrt.rs/2zOQTgo)</p>
<p>Electric vehicle metals account for roughly 50 percent of Glencore’s core profit, more than double the proportion of its major listed competitors – BHP (L:) (AX:), Rio Tinto (L:) (AX:) and Anglo American (L:).</p>
<p>The analysis, based on companies’ reports, supports Glencore’s assertion it is well positioned to capitalize on an anticipated surge in demand for electric cars in the coming decade.</p>
<p>However the drive also holds potential perils; most of the production has been added through acquisitions, and Glencore has racked up more debt than its competitors, according to S&amp;P Global Market Intelligence.</p>
<p>It had $28.4 billion of net debt, compared with BHP’s $16.3 billion, Rio Tinto’s $8.1 billion and Anglo American’s 5.5 billion, found the study compiled in November.</p>
<p>Concerns about the size of Glencore’s debts at a time of falling commodity prices led to its share price crashing to an all-time low in 2015, its management pumping in more money themselves and implementing a debt-reduction plan.</p>
<p>The stock has since rebounded, driven by rising commodity prices and Glencore’s efforts to strengthen its balance sheet.</p>
<p>Glencore declined to give fresh comment for this story, saying it would issue an investors’ update next week. CEO Ivan Glasenberg has said many times this year the roll-out of electric vehicles will boost demand for copper, cobalt and nickel.</p>
<p>The company calculates its debt differently from the rest of the industry, offsetting some of it with inventories of commodities that can easily be converted into cash. At the end of June it said its debt was $13.9 billion.</p>
<p>Glencore’s reliance on Democratic Republic of Congo for cobalt as well as copper presents another risk. The other majors avoid the country, which is plagued by pockets of lawlessness and conflict, political tumult, child labor and an opaque legal system.</p>
<p>Analysts and investors acknowledge the risk, but many see it as worth taking.</p>
<p>“The world needs cobalt and DRC needs foreign inflows,” said Ryan Seaborne, portfolio manager at South Africa’s 36ONE Asset Management, which holds shares in the miner. “We are still bullish Glencore as a&#160;company and like the DRC cobalt assets.”</p>
<p>DIVERGING PATHS</p>
<p>Glencore’s willingness to operate in Congo has made it the leading global producer of cobalt among the major miners. It increased its cobalt output from 12,880 tonnes in 2011 to 28,300 last year, accounting for more than a quarter of the roughly 100,000 tonne global market, according to the analysis.</p>
<p>It also raised production of copper from 700,000 to 1.4 million tonnes, while its nickel output rose from 28,500 to 115,100 tonnes and zinc from 563,100 to 1.1 million tonnes.</p>
<p>Although not widely regarded as an electric vehicle commodity, some research has found zinc, predominantly used to galvanize steel, could be used in batteries if other minerals become too rare or expensive.</p>
<p>A rapid pace of technological development means the mix of metals needed for car batteries could radically change, according to analysts, which could undermine the company’s ambitions. But this is a longer-term threat due to the long lead time carmakers need to incorporate innovations, they say.</p>
<p>Glencore’s rivals are on different strategic courses.</p>
<p>BHP, for example, says a mass move to electric cars is more than a decade away. It expects demand for oil from light vehicles to peak in 2030, with other forms of oil demand likely to be more sustained.</p>
<p>Anglo American, the world’s top platinum supplier, is looking to squeeze more profit out of its world-class reserves by betting on vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells in which platinum acts as a catalyst.</p>
<p>While Glencore’s competitors have lower outputs of cobalt, nickel and zinc, they are all interested in copper – which has many uses as one of the best electricity conductors – even while they remain more cautious about the rate at which electric vehicles will arrive.</p>
<p>Among major listed players, BHP garners the highest proportion of its profits from electric vehicle metals after Glencore – about a fifth – and this is mostly from copper.</p>
<p>Rio Tinto, the world’s biggest iron ore producer, is working on a massive underground expansion at the Oyu Tolgoi copper mine in Mongolia. It also has a lithium project in Serbia but that will not produce before the next decade.</p>
<p>Lithium is a battery metal that makes many investors nervous. Predicting future price levels is difficult as it is abundant and many new projects are under way. For Glencore, keen to have some control over pricing, that is not tempting.</p>
<p>LEAPING SHARES</p>
<p>Since its 2015 nadir, Glencore’s share price has rallied more than 400 percent. The stock is up more than 20 percent this year, more than the other three biggest publicly listed diversified miners, although off peaks hit in October.</p>
<p>Ratings agencies however cite the company’s attachment to polluting coal as a downside risk in the long term. Glencore is the world’s biggest shipper of export-quality coal.</p>
<p>Some investors have begun taking profits.</p>
<p>David Livermore, founder and managing director of asset manager Livermore Partners, told Reuters he had reduced his holding on the grounds it looks difficult, though not impossible, for the stock to maintain its momentum.</p>
<p>“I don’t see a whole lot of upside in the equity here. It’s come a long way,” he said.</p>
<p>Livermore has reduced its equity stake to $1 million, from a $2.6 million investment in September 2015 when the shares fell below 70 pence, making gains of $3.1 million.</p>
<p>Seaborne of South Africa’s 36ONE Asset Management, which holds 3 million shares in Glencore, has also cut exposure: “We had some redemptions out of our fund, so it’s been pure portfolio realignment, and also the stock has run quite hard.” But Glencore remains its largest mining holding.</p>
<p>They’re in a better position than the rest of the miners,” Seaborne added. “If you take a five to 10-year view, you probably want to be in Glencore more than you want to be in any of the other diversifieds.”</p> | false | 1 | barbara lewis maiya keidan london reuters glencore l increased production metals used make electric car batteries faster major mining rivals according industrywide analysis shows scale strategy big prospective risks rewards angloswiss companys output cobalt roughly doubled five years 2016 production nickel quadrupled research compiled reuters sampp global market intelligence shows graphic glencores mining production httptmsnrtrs2zoqtgo electric vehicle metals account roughly 50 percent glencores core profit double proportion major listed competitors bhp l ax rio tinto l ax anglo american l analysis based companies reports supports glencores assertion well positioned capitalize anticipated surge demand electric cars coming decade however drive also holds potential perils production added acquisitions glencore racked debt competitors according sampp global market intelligence 284 billion net debt compared bhps 163 billion rio tintos 81 billion anglo americans 55 billion found study compiled november concerns size glencores debts time falling commodity prices led share price crashing alltime low 2015 management pumping money implementing debtreduction plan stock since rebounded driven rising commodity prices glencores efforts strengthen balance sheet glencore declined give fresh comment story saying would issue investors update next week ceo ivan glasenberg said many times year rollout electric vehicles boost demand copper cobalt nickel company calculates debt differently rest industry offsetting inventories commodities easily converted cash end june said debt 139 billion glencores reliance democratic republic congo cobalt well copper presents another risk majors avoid country plagued pockets lawlessness conflict political tumult child labor opaque legal system analysts investors acknowledge risk many see worth taking world needs cobalt drc needs foreign inflows said ryan seaborne portfolio manager south africas 36one asset management holds shares miner still bullish glencore a160company like drc cobalt assets diverging paths glencores willingness operate congo made leading global producer cobalt among major miners increased cobalt output 12880 tonnes 2011 28300 last year accounting quarter roughly 100000 tonne global market according analysis also raised production copper 700000 14 million tonnes nickel output rose 28500 115100 tonnes zinc 563100 11 million tonnes although widely regarded electric vehicle commodity research found zinc predominantly used galvanize steel could used batteries minerals become rare expensive rapid pace technological development means mix metals needed car batteries could radically change according analysts could undermine companys ambitions longerterm threat due long lead time carmakers need incorporate innovations say glencores rivals different strategic courses bhp example says mass move electric cars decade away expects demand oil light vehicles peak 2030 forms oil demand likely sustained anglo american worlds top platinum supplier looking squeeze profit worldclass reserves betting vehicles powered hydrogen fuel cells platinum acts catalyst glencores competitors lower outputs cobalt nickel zinc interested copper many uses one best electricity conductors even remain cautious rate electric vehicles arrive among major listed players bhp garners highest proportion profits electric vehicle metals glencore fifth mostly copper rio tinto worlds biggest iron ore producer working massive underground expansion oyu tolgoi copper mine mongolia also lithium project serbia produce next decade lithium battery metal makes many investors nervous predicting future price levels difficult abundant many new projects way glencore keen control pricing tempting leaping shares since 2015 nadir glencores share price rallied 400 percent stock 20 percent year three biggest publicly listed diversified miners although peaks hit october ratings agencies however cite companys attachment polluting coal downside risk long term glencore worlds biggest shipper exportquality coal investors begun taking profits david livermore founder managing director asset manager livermore partners told reuters reduced holding grounds looks difficult though impossible stock maintain momentum dont see whole lot upside equity come long way said livermore reduced equity stake 1 million 26 million investment september 2015 shares fell 70 pence making gains 31 million seaborne south africas 36one asset management holds 3 million shares glencore also cut exposure redemptions fund pure portfolio realignment also stock run quite hard glencore remains largest mining holding theyre better position rest miners seaborne added take five 10year view probably want glencore want diversifieds | 647 |
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