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<p>Harvey has scrambled the equation for Congress as lawmakers get ready to return to Washington on Tuesday after a five-week summer recess.</p>
<p>A daunting workload awaits, including funding the government by month’s end and increasing the federal borrowing limit to head off a catastrophic first-ever default.</p>
<p>But the immediate focus will be on rushing an aid package to storm-ravaged Texas and Louisiana, and that bipartisan imperative has pushed aside talk of a government shutdown and President Donald Trump’s feuding with GOP lawmakers.</p>
<p>“Somebody who’s just been pulled off their roof doesn’t want to hear about our internecine squabbles and debates over procedure when they’ve lost their homes and are trying to figure out where they’re going to sleep the next night,” said Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa.</p>
<p>The House and Senate are expected to vote quickly on the first $7.9 billion aid installment to help with immediate recovery and rebuilding needs in Houston and beyond. Additional billions will be tucked into a catchall spending bill later in the month that will keep the lights on in government past Sept. 30, when the current budget year ends.</p>
<p>After spending the first six months of the year failing to repeal and replace the Obama-era health law and missing deadlines on other fronts, swift action on Harvey will give Congress and Trump the chance to look competent and remind voters that government can be a positive force.</p>
<p>GOP lawmakers head into the final quarter of the year desperate to notch accomplishments and make headway on a sweeping tax overhaul, and the majority party is eager for the chance to turn around their dreary track record ahead of next year’s elections.</p>
<p>“People need to know there’s some stability here,” said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla. “We’re not going to have to worry about defaults, we’re not going to have to worry about government shutdowns, these guys are all grown-up, they’re adults, and that ought to be the aim.”</p>
<p>For Republican leaders, disaster spending has the added benefit of acting as a potential sweetener as they try to get colleagues to take the perennially unpopular step of raising the United States’ $19.9 trillion debt ceiling. That has to happen by Sept. 29 at the latest, to permit the government to continue borrowing money to pay its bills, including Social Security payments. A default on obligations such as U.S. bond payments could roil financial markets.</p>
<p>GOP leaders have been making plans to pair the debt limit increase with the first batch of Harvey aid. Conservatives who oppose raising the borrowing limit without getting something in exchange are warning against the step.</p>
<p>“To attach a debt ceiling vote to increased spending is not anything that any conservative would normally support,” said Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., head of the House Freedom Caucus. Meadows said linking the two measures “puts everybody in a very difficult situation” and would not be practical.</p>
<p>Adding to the pile of work, a few important programs are expiring at the end of September and need to be renewed. They include children’s health insurance payments and a national federal flood insurance program that has bipartisan support but continually pays out more than it takes in through premiums.</p>
<p>And Trump may be poised to throw another tricky issue Congress’ way.</p>
<p>The White House says the president on Tuesday will decide the fate of the younger immigrants brought to the United States as kids and protected from deportation by former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. If Trump ends or phases out the program, there will be pressure for Congress to step in with a fix to save nearly 800,000 from the threat of deportation.</p>
<p>“I think the president as well has mentioned that he wants to have a humane solution to this problem and I think that’s something that we in Congress are working on and need to deliver,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said in an interview Friday with radio station WCLO in Wisconsin, after urging against ending the program.</p>
<p>Some Republicans have even begun to talk about the possibility of a deal to protect this group in exchange for Trump’s border wall with Mexico, even though Democrats have called the wall a nonstarter.</p>
<p>Trump, despite threatening a government shutdown over the wall if it’s not funded by Sept. 30, has pulled back. The expectation now is that the big spending fights will be delayed until later in the year, perhaps including a round of brinkmanship over the wall.</p>
<p>But for many Republicans, particularly Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., clearing the decks of the must-do items on spending and debt is all just a prelude to their work on overhauling the tax system, their holy grail for the year after the failure on health care legislation.</p>
<p>Despite Trump’s attacks on McConnell over the summer, aides to the two men believe they share the same goals on taxes. Many believe that if they succeed on reworking taxes and lowering rates voters will forgive and forget the failure on health care. Some are argue that a failure on taxes could cost the GOP its House majority because voters will question whether Republicans can accomplish anything after gaining control of Congress and the White House.</p>
<p>“It’s extremely important. The failure of health care magnifies the importance of tax reform,” Cole said. “You’ve got to get some big wins.”</p> | false | 1 | harvey scrambled equation congress lawmakers get ready return washington tuesday fiveweek summer recess daunting workload awaits including funding government months end increasing federal borrowing limit head catastrophic firstever default immediate focus rushing aid package stormravaged texas louisiana bipartisan imperative pushed aside talk government shutdown president donald trumps feuding gop lawmakers somebody whos pulled roof doesnt want hear internecine squabbles debates procedure theyve lost homes trying figure theyre going sleep next night said rep charlie dent rpa house senate expected vote quickly first 79 billion aid installment help immediate recovery rebuilding needs houston beyond additional billions tucked catchall spending bill later month keep lights government past sept 30 current budget year ends spending first six months year failing repeal replace obamaera health law missing deadlines fronts swift action harvey give congress trump chance look competent remind voters government positive force gop lawmakers head final quarter year desperate notch accomplishments make headway sweeping tax overhaul majority party eager chance turn around dreary track record ahead next years elections people need know theres stability said rep tom cole rokla going worry defaults going worry government shutdowns guys grownup theyre adults ought aim republican leaders disaster spending added benefit acting potential sweetener try get colleagues take perennially unpopular step raising united states 199 trillion debt ceiling happen sept 29 latest permit government continue borrowing money pay bills including social security payments default obligations us bond payments could roil financial markets gop leaders making plans pair debt limit increase first batch harvey aid conservatives oppose raising borrowing limit without getting something exchange warning step attach debt ceiling vote increased spending anything conservative would normally support said rep mark meadows rnc head house freedom caucus meadows said linking two measures puts everybody difficult situation would practical adding pile work important programs expiring end september need renewed include childrens health insurance payments national federal flood insurance program bipartisan support continually pays takes premiums trump may poised throw another tricky issue congress way white house says president tuesday decide fate younger immigrants brought united states kids protected deportation former president barack obamas deferred action childhood arrivals trump ends phases program pressure congress step fix save nearly 800000 threat deportation think president well mentioned wants humane solution problem think thats something congress working need deliver house speaker paul ryan rwis said interview friday radio station wclo wisconsin urging ending program republicans even begun talk possibility deal protect group exchange trumps border wall mexico even though democrats called wall nonstarter trump despite threatening government shutdown wall funded sept 30 pulled back expectation big spending fights delayed later year perhaps including round brinkmanship wall many republicans particularly ryan senate majority leader mitch mcconnell rky clearing decks mustdo items spending debt prelude work overhauling tax system holy grail year failure health care legislation despite trumps attacks mcconnell summer aides two men believe share goals taxes many believe succeed reworking taxes lowering rates voters forgive forget failure health care argue failure taxes could cost gop house majority voters question whether republicans accomplish anything gaining control congress white house extremely important failure health care magnifies importance tax reform cole said youve got get big wins | 521 |
<p>From a dramedy driven by musical numbers to a seasonal horror anthology to a revival of the miniseries with modern sensibility, Ryan Murphy’s edgy, zeitgeist-rich television career has thrived on the unexpected. Fewer things could be more unexpected than Murphy and his regular stable of co-creators and ensemble of actors taking on a procedural drama for broadcast television and that’s exactly what “ <a href="http://variety.com/t/9-1-1/" type="external">9-1-1</a>,” his latest series debuting on Fox in 2018, is.</p>
<p>The new show centers around a disparate and often disconnected series of first responders – a team of Los Angeles-based EMTs, a police patrol officer and a 9-1-1 operator – as they contend with a ceaseless string of urgent, out-of-the-blue life-and-death emergencies, and have an even more difficult time grappling with their own personal dramas away from their laser-focus at work. The cast is headlined by regular Murphy players Angela Bassett and Connie Britton, along with TV veteran but Murphyverse newcomer Peter Krause.</p>
<p>“The idea was everybody there is great at their jobs and have problems at home that they struggle with,” says executive producer and co-creator Brad Falchuk, who has collaborated with Murphy on “Glee,” “ Scream Queens” and “American Horror Story.”</p>
<p>Though the emergencies depicted on the show may often be visually and emotionally captivating scenes from a production point of view, they will also be events that further shine lights on the characters. Per Falchuk, the real focus of the show is “the difference of who they are when they can be totally in control and in uniform, and who they are when they can’t just arrest somebody, they can’t just figure the problem out.”</p>
<p>Falchuk says that the show will marry the venerable procedural genre that’s thrived over decades of television – from “Dragnet,” “Adam-12” and “Emergency” to “CSI,” “Law &amp; Order” and “Chicago Fire” – with Murphy’s penchant for “ingenious innovation,” something the producers are confident will fit as successfully on broad-appeal broadcast as his quirkier fare has thrived on cabler FX.</p>
<p>“I think audiences have become very sophisticated – the cable audience certainly have, and there’s no reason why a network audience can’t as well,” says Falchuk, who says the format of the series will occasionally bend and twist in a less linear storytelling style than what usually characterizes procedurals. He compares their format for “9-1-1,” which will “screw around with time,&#160;tell big chunks of story here and there, and make sure you have some cases thrown in the middle” to how “Glee” used to have “musical numbers somewhere in there to liven up” the rest of the story.</p>
<p>Executive producer and co-creator Tim Minear, who has worked with Murphy on “American Horror Story” and “Feud,” says the production team was energized by the opportunity to work on the more accessible canvas.</p>
<p>“Mostly we had been toiling away at FX and working on these cable shows, and Ryan wanted to do something that was fun and accessible but emotional for network television, and it’s tried and true: first responders, people who rush into danger,” Minear says. “I don’t like to call this a procedural, because I don’t think it is – it’s a first responder show, which means, bursts, vignettes, almost like one viral video after another of incidents. We’re trying not to do something completely straightforward. We want to do the fun, soapy stuff that we do, but also something in bolder, more primary colors.”</p>
<p>The pilot features a series of crises that feel both exotic and ripped from real life – including a newborn trapped in the plumbing of an apartment building and a snake fancier at the mercy of her pet python – adding to the series’ heightened tone.</p>
<p>“We really are leaning into the zeitgeist of social media,” says Minear. “I use the term ‘viral video’ – that’s what I tell my staff to think of, in terms of coming up with some of these set piece sequences. That it’s not just a rescue, or just something that you would see on TV, but it’s the kind of thing that people go to YouTube and they can’t get enough of.”</p>
<p>“You can be as shocking as you want, as long as it’s believable, and the most believable ones are ones that actually happened, obviously,” adds Falchuk. “It has to be stuff like this, where there’s stuff to do, it’s crazy, it’s unbelievable, there’s a visual part of it that’s incredible, and it actually happens.”</p>
<p>Falchuk also admits his team is flexing a set creative muscles they haven’t engaged before, which he calls the hardest part: “Telling stories is a piece of cake, but finding really cool, weird stuff, is a little trickier.”</p>
<p>But beyond these flashy, often standalone incidents are the constants of the characters the show follows. 9-1-1 operator Abby Clark (Britton) is a woman who at work often finds her telephonic life-saving efforts abruptly cut off when EMTs arrive on the scene and at home lovingly and guiltily cares for her mentally failing mother; Athena Grant (Bassett) is an intimidating patrol officer with a recently revealed secret that threatens to tear her family life apart; and EMT chief Bobby Nash (Krause) is determined to live up to the lofty demands of his job&#160;– and ensure that his occasionally undisciplined crewmembers (including Oliver Stark) do, too&#160;– after nearly derailing his life and career due to alcohol.</p>
<p>Executive producer Alexis Martin Woodall, another longtime member of the Murphy stable, says that she felt creatively engaged by the fresh simplicity of the premise, but that these characters are key, too.</p>
<p>“It is something that we all could potentially be going through. making that 911 call,” she says. “How do you make it both fun and exciting, but also authentic and honor both the victims and the first responders? I want to make sure that we can be emotionally accurate.”</p>
<p>The answer for Woodall was to spend time talking about the degrees of emergencies depicted within the show so that they lent themselves not only to plots but also character development. It is not just major, catastrophic events but daily occurrences that reflect the realism of the lives of the first responders.</p>
<p>“You have to realize that every single person that’s showing up to save our lives every day might need someone to save their life in a very different way,” Woodall says.</p>
<p>“9-1-1” premieres Jan. 3 at 9pm on Fox.</p> | false | 1 | dramedy driven musical numbers seasonal horror anthology revival miniseries modern sensibility ryan murphys edgy zeitgeistrich television career thrived unexpected fewer things could unexpected murphy regular stable cocreators ensemble actors taking procedural drama broadcast television thats exactly 911 latest series debuting fox 2018 new show centers around disparate often disconnected series first responders team los angelesbased emts police patrol officer 911 operator contend ceaseless string urgent outoftheblue lifeanddeath emergencies even difficult time grappling personal dramas away laserfocus work cast headlined regular murphy players angela bassett connie britton along tv veteran murphyverse newcomer peter krause idea everybody great jobs problems home struggle says executive producer cocreator brad falchuk collaborated murphy glee scream queens american horror story though emergencies depicted show may often visually emotionally captivating scenes production point view also events shine lights characters per falchuk real focus show difference totally control uniform cant arrest somebody cant figure problem falchuk says show marry venerable procedural genre thats thrived decades television dragnet adam12 emergency csi law amp order chicago fire murphys penchant ingenious innovation something producers confident fit successfully broadappeal broadcast quirkier fare thrived cabler fx think audiences become sophisticated cable audience certainly theres reason network audience cant well says falchuk says format series occasionally bend twist less linear storytelling style usually characterizes procedurals compares format 911 screw around time160tell big chunks story make sure cases thrown middle glee used musical numbers somewhere liven rest story executive producer cocreator tim minear worked murphy american horror story feud says production team energized opportunity work accessible canvas mostly toiling away fx working cable shows ryan wanted something fun accessible emotional network television tried true first responders people rush danger minear says dont like call procedural dont think first responder show means bursts vignettes almost like one viral video another incidents trying something completely straightforward want fun soapy stuff also something bolder primary colors pilot features series crises feel exotic ripped real life including newborn trapped plumbing apartment building snake fancier mercy pet python adding series heightened tone really leaning zeitgeist social media says minear use term viral video thats tell staff think terms coming set piece sequences rescue something would see tv kind thing people go youtube cant get enough shocking want long believable believable ones ones actually happened obviously adds falchuk stuff like theres stuff crazy unbelievable theres visual part thats incredible actually happens falchuk also admits team flexing set creative muscles havent engaged calls hardest part telling stories piece cake finding really cool weird stuff little trickier beyond flashy often standalone incidents constants characters show follows 911 operator abby clark britton woman work often finds telephonic lifesaving efforts abruptly cut emts arrive scene home lovingly guiltily cares mentally failing mother athena grant bassett intimidating patrol officer recently revealed secret threatens tear family life apart emt chief bobby nash krause determined live lofty demands job160 ensure occasionally undisciplined crewmembers including oliver stark too160 nearly derailing life career due alcohol executive producer alexis martin woodall another longtime member murphy stable says felt creatively engaged fresh simplicity premise characters key something could potentially going making 911 call says make fun exciting also authentic honor victims first responders want make sure emotionally accurate answer woodall spend time talking degrees emergencies depicted within show lent plots also character development major catastrophic events daily occurrences reflect realism lives first responders realize every single person thats showing save lives every day might need someone save life different way woodall says 911 premieres jan 3 9pm fox | 576 |
<p>Now that was a week: a new social encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (“Charity in Truth”), from Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday; a meeting between the pope and Pres. Barack Obama on Friday; heavy-duty polemics on Wednesday and Thursday, largely reflective of the determination of certain Catholic parties in the United States to turn the encyclical into a pontifical endorsement of Obamanomics, Obamacare, etc., in anticipation of the Vatican summit.</p>
<p>The high, or low, point in the exchange of counter-battery fire in the blogosphere may have come Thursday, when former Maryland lieutenant governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend issued a broadside arguing that President Obama better understood and reflected Catholic life in the United States than did the 265th Bishop of Rome — which rather took Obamaphile spin to new heights (or depths). But, then, nothing was surprising after several days of high-voltage rhetoric in defense of Caritas in Veritate from people who would rather have had a barbed-wire colonoscopy than see Joseph Ratzinger elected pope back in 2005. There are many ironies in the fire, indeed.</p>
<p>Where do things stand, after the week that was?</p>
<p>THE VATICAN SUMMIT</p>
<p>The president took some reading material on the plane from Rome to Ghana — Caritas in Veritate, and a recent Vatican instruction on bioethical issues, Dignitas Personae (“The Dignity of the Person”), both of which were given him by Benedict XVI during their meeting. The president’s remarkable speech in Ghana, doubtless prepared well in advance, nonetheless touched one theme in Caritas in Veritate — that corrupt and unresponsive governments, not a lack of foreign aid, were the cause of many Third World economic problems. One may doubt, however, whether there will by any such symmetry forthcoming from the administration on the issues discussed in Dignitas Personae, which rejects such administration trademarks as embryo-destructive stem-cell research. Obama also pledged to Benedict that he would do everything he could to lower the incidence of abortion in America (and, presumably, elsewhere); one wonders how this struck his State Department (back in the business of promoting abortion-on-demand at the U.N.) and his political ground troops at NARAL and other pro-abortion organizations across the United States.</p>
<p>The Vatican’s semi-official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, headlined the Benedict-Obama meeting as a “cordial” one. Well, of course it was. Benedict XVI is not a man naturally given to shouting, the president was clearly determined to make a good impression, and the circumstances were not quite like 1983, when Pope John Paul II began a discussion with Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski — in a Poland still under martial law — by commenting that the entire country seemed to be “one great concentration camp.” Yet the very fact that the pope decided to give Obama Dignitas Personae suggests that Benedict knows precisely where the deepest fault line between the U.S. administration and the Holy See is to be found. One hopes that the president, should he read Dignitas Personae closely, learns that the Catholic approach to these matters is not a matter of “belief” or “opinion,” as Obama persistently says, but of moral conviction based on first principles of justice that everyone can know by reason.</p>
<p>A few days before the Vatican summit, E. J. Dionne Jr. reported in his Washington Post column that the papal nuncio in Washington had warned the bishops of the United States against too much criticism of the Obama administration, lest they appear too partisan. If that was in fact said in those precise terms, then the Vatican’s mission in Obama’s Washington seems not to have grasped the central fact about the administration and the Catholic Church in the United States — that the president, in his Notre Dame commencement speech and in his interview with seven religion reporters on July 2, has subtly but unmistakably decided to wrestle with the Catholic bishops of the U.S. over the definition of the Catholic “brand” in America.</p>
<p>At Notre Dame, Obama suggested that the real Catholics, the genuine Catholics, were those Catholics who welcomed his appearance as commencement speaker at the symbolic center of U.S. Catholic intellectual life. The necessary corollary to this assertion, of course, is that the not-so-real Catholics were those like Bishop John D’Arcy of Ft. Wayne-South Bend, who opposed the university’s giving an honorary doctorate of laws to a longtime supporter of Roe v. Wade — not to mention the more than 80 bishops who publicly supported D’Arcy in his brave stand. Then, in his pre-papal summit interview with reporters largely drawn from the Catholic press, Obama spoke (as he also had at Notre Dame) of how the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago had instilled in a young South Side social worker and future president a commitment to “common ground” approaches to public policy — yet another signal that the president proposed to be a player in the internal Catholic debate over the nature of Catholic identity and what that identity requires of Catholic institutions.</p>
<p>As pointed out in this space before, this is unprecedented — a president injecting himself into a Christian community’s debate over its boundaries. One very much doubts that a burning presidential interest in theology is at work here, but a White House determination to play wedge politics with the U.S. bishops and the Catholic population of the U.S. seems not unlikely.</p>
<p>So the bishops should take little solace from the assurances of L’Osservatore Romano that the Benedict-Obama summit was a cordial one. The bishops have to regain control of the Catholic “brand.” And that will require a concerted effort to teach U.S. Catholics that what was at stake at Notre Dame was not politics, but ecclesiology — the definition of who and what is “Catholic” in America. If, as his entire public record suggests, President Obama is committed to enshrining in law the revolution of lifestyle libertinism embodied in Roe v. Wade and in the gay insurgency (which Obama fulsomely endorsed in the White House days before meeting the pope), and if he and his political people recognize that the last major institutional opposition to securing that revolution in America is the Catholic Church, then an administration winning the battle over the Catholic “brand” is an administration making a very, very clever move — and, from the point of view of anyone who cares about religious freedom in America, a very dangerous one. In the face of that danger, fears of being labeled “partisan” by people who are themselves hyper-partisans may just have to be borne.</p>
<p>THE ENCYCLICAL</p>
<p>On a second, third, and even fourth reading, Caritas in Veritate remains a complex and sometimes obscure document, in which many intellectual influences are clearly at work. As such, it seems likely to generate continued debate, which will have to address at least these questions:</p>
<p>1. Throughout his pontificate, and in Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI has been at pains to stress the continuity of Catholic life and thought before and after the Second Vatican Council: what he terms a “hermeneutics of continuity,” as distinguished from a “hermeneutics of rupture.” Or, in lay language, the claim that the Catholic Church reinvented itself at Vatican II is simply wrong. Yet the proponents of Populorum Progressio (the 1967 social encyclical of Paul VI that Caritas in Veritate commemorates) would seem to be promoting a “hermeneutics of rupture” when they claim that the tradition of Catholic social doctrine began anew with Populorum Progressio — a claim that at least some passages in Caritras in Veritate can be interpreted to support. This raises a very important question: Are there two Catholic social-doctrine traditions (one stemming from Leo XIII’s 1891 masterwork, Rerum No varum, and a post-conciliar one beginning from Populorum Progressio), or is there one? This is not a merely theoretical argument, for the implications of the “two traditions” claim are considerable, especially in light of the fact that the Populorum Progressio “tradition” is the less disciplined of the two in closely identifying specific public policy recommendations with points of theological principle. Thus Benedict XVI’s entire effort to get the Catholic Church thinking of itself as a communion of believers in essential continuity over time is now back on the table of debate, because of the suggestion that something different in kind began, at least in terms of social doctrine, with Populorum Progresio.</p>
<p>2. In the debate over Caritas in Veritate, as in all such debates, it will thus be important to distinguish between principles of Catholic social doctrine and specific prudential judgments about public policy. This is not, pace some partisans on both the Catholic left and the Catholic right, a matter of “picking and choosing” your Magisterium, but of recognizing the difference (which the social doctrine itself has always acknowledged) between those principles of justice that can be known with certainty and the available public-policy options, which involve the questions of prudence — will it work, or will it make matters worse? Caritas in Veritate repeats the teaching of John Paul II in Centesimus Annus, that the Church has no “technical solutions” to offer in public policy: a self-denying ordinance that emerges from the thick philosophical and theological structure of the Rerum Novarum tradition. Whether the Populorum Progressio “tradition” is so self-disciplined is not at all clear.</p>
<p>3. The encyclical’s teaching on the moral ecology necessary to a properly functioning free economy is entirely welcome, as it strongly reinforces points that the advocates of Centesimus Annus have been stressing for 18 years: The market is not a machine that can run by itself; it takes a certain kind of people, living certain virtues, to make free economies work such that the result is genuine human flourishing. And it is precisely in this respect that Caritas in Veritate poses the sharpest challenge for Catholic Obamaphiles.</p>
<p>For Benedict XVI insists in his encyclical that the life issues are social-justice issues, such that the “human ecology” or moral ecology necessary for make free economies work is eroded when wrongs are defined as rights (as in current U.S. abortion law). Thus the encyclical has put Catholic legislators on notice that they can’t hide behind their “social justice” commitments while taking a pass (or worse) on the life issues; but then, they were put on notice on that very point by John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae (“The Gospel of Life”) in 1995. As for “common ground” approaches to reducing the incidence of abortion, these potentially useful initiatives only get you so far here. At some point, and it’s not very far down the road, two hard questions arise for the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden: Do Roe v. Wade and its various judicial progeny violate fundamental Catholic norms of social justice, as John Paul II and Benedict XVI have taught? And if they do, what do you propose to do about that?</p>
<p>In this respect, Benedict’s insistence in Caritas in Veritate that the life issues are social-justice issues is the encyclical’s tacit response to Obama’s promotion of the late Cardinal Bernardin’s “consistent ethic of life” or “seamless garment,” which despite the cardinal’s strong personal opposition to abortion, was used by two generations of Catholic politicians as a way to avoid pro-life votes. Caritas in Veritate ought to make that sort of bobbing-and-weaving more difficult, though no doubt some Catholic legislators and their intellectual and activist supporters will continue to try.</p>
<p>4. One of the encyclical’s more obscure passages has to do with “quotas of gratuitousness and communion” being the answer to Third World underdevelopment. As it happens, there is a school of economic thought that styles itself the “Economy of Communion” and promotes free-market approaches in which profit, while a factor in business life, is not the only factor, and in which a portion of profits are shared with projects aimed at the economic empowerment of the poor. It is unclear from the text of Caritas in Veritate whether this is being recommended as a general model for 21st-century economic life, or an interesting experiment within the framework of the free economy. But given the influence of “Economy of Communion” academics on the formation of Caritas in Veritate, the idea is not going to go away and ought to be engaged and debated, both by economists committed to market principles and practices and by Catholic scholars committed to the Centesimus Annus portrait of the free economy.</p>
<p>5. Finally, and of possible concern only to those fascinated by the most inside of Catholic inside baseball, it will be interesting to see the effect of the encyclical’s strictures against too-stringent laws protecting intellectual property rights on what some would regard as the excessive claim of the Libreria Editrice Vaticana, the Holy See’s publishing house, to a property right in virtually every word spoken by this pope.</p>
<p>CHALLENGES IN ALL DIRECTIONS</p>
<p>It is certainly true that Catholic social doctrine challenges all parties in the ongoing debate over political economy in the United States. Yet if the most important development in that doctrine in Caritas in Veritate is a strong linkage of the life issues to Catholic social-justice concerns, then it is also true that the challenge of this particular encyclical falls more sharply on those who believe that Roe v. Wade was rightly decided, and remedied an injustice in prior American law. The positive commentary on the encyclical from those usually stereotyped as the defenders of “unbridled capitalism” suggest both the silliness of that label and the openness of many conservatives to the legal and cultural regulation of markets. The sounds of silence from the left, however, on the encyclical’s insistence that the defense of life from conception until natural death is a social-justice issue, and perhaps the social-justice issue of the moment because of its fundamental character, suggests that a parallel openness to challenge is not immediately self-evident among some of those now trumpeting their appreciation for Caritas in Veritate. Perhaps that will change.</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.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | false | 1 | week new social encyclical caritas veritate charity truth pope benedict xvi tuesday meeting pope pres barack obama friday heavyduty polemics wednesday thursday largely reflective determination certain catholic parties united states turn encyclical pontifical endorsement obamanomics obamacare etc anticipation vatican summit high low point exchange counterbattery fire blogosphere may come thursday former maryland lieutenant governor kathleen kennedy townsend issued broadside arguing president obama better understood reflected catholic life united states 265th bishop rome rather took obamaphile spin new heights depths nothing surprising several days highvoltage rhetoric defense caritas veritate people would rather barbedwire colonoscopy see joseph ratzinger elected pope back 2005 many ironies fire indeed things stand week vatican summit president took reading material plane rome ghana caritas veritate recent vatican instruction bioethical issues dignitas personae dignity person given benedict xvi meeting presidents remarkable speech ghana doubtless prepared well advance nonetheless touched one theme caritas veritate corrupt unresponsive governments lack foreign aid cause many third world economic problems one may doubt however whether symmetry forthcoming administration issues discussed dignitas personae rejects administration trademarks embryodestructive stemcell research obama also pledged benedict would everything could lower incidence abortion america presumably elsewhere one wonders struck state department back business promoting abortionondemand un political ground troops naral proabortion organizations across united states vaticans semiofficial newspaper losservatore romano headlined benedictobama meeting cordial one well course benedict xvi man naturally given shouting president clearly determined make good impression circumstances quite like 1983 pope john paul ii began discussion gen wojciech jaruzelski poland still martial law commenting entire country seemed one great concentration camp yet fact pope decided give obama dignitas personae suggests benedict knows precisely deepest fault line us administration holy see found one hopes president read dignitas personae closely learns catholic approach matters matter belief opinion obama persistently says moral conviction based first principles justice everyone know reason days vatican summit e j dionne jr reported washington post column papal nuncio washington warned bishops united states much criticism obama administration lest appear partisan fact said precise terms vaticans mission obamas washington seems grasped central fact administration catholic church united states president notre dame commencement speech interview seven religion reporters july 2 subtly unmistakably decided wrestle catholic bishops us definition catholic brand america notre dame obama suggested real catholics genuine catholics catholics welcomed appearance commencement speaker symbolic center us catholic intellectual life necessary corollary assertion course notsoreal catholics like bishop john darcy ft waynesouth bend opposed universitys giving honorary doctorate laws longtime supporter roe v wade mention 80 bishops publicly supported darcy brave stand prepapal summit interview reporters largely drawn catholic press obama spoke also notre dame late cardinal joseph bernardin chicago instilled young south side social worker future president commitment common ground approaches public policy yet another signal president proposed player internal catholic debate nature catholic identity identity requires catholic institutions pointed space unprecedented president injecting christian communitys debate boundaries one much doubts burning presidential interest theology work white house determination play wedge politics us bishops catholic population us seems unlikely bishops take little solace assurances losservatore romano benedictobama summit cordial one bishops regain control catholic brand require concerted effort teach us catholics stake notre dame politics ecclesiology definition catholic america entire public record suggests president obama committed enshrining law revolution lifestyle libertinism embodied roe v wade gay insurgency obama fulsomely endorsed white house days meeting pope political people recognize last major institutional opposition securing revolution america catholic church administration winning battle catholic brand administration making clever move point view anyone cares religious freedom america dangerous one face danger fears labeled partisan people hyperpartisans may borne encyclical second third even fourth reading caritas veritate remains complex sometimes obscure document many intellectual influences clearly work seems likely generate continued debate address least questions 1 throughout pontificate caritas veritate pope benedict xvi pains stress continuity catholic life thought second vatican council terms hermeneutics continuity distinguished hermeneutics rupture lay language claim catholic church reinvented vatican ii simply wrong yet proponents populorum progressio 1967 social encyclical paul vi caritas veritate commemorates would seem promoting hermeneutics rupture claim tradition catholic social doctrine began anew populorum progressio claim least passages caritras veritate interpreted support raises important question two catholic socialdoctrine traditions one stemming leo xiiis 1891 masterwork rerum varum postconciliar one beginning populorum progressio one merely theoretical argument implications two traditions claim considerable especially light fact populorum progressio tradition less disciplined two closely identifying specific public policy recommendations points theological principle thus benedict xvis entire effort get catholic church thinking communion believers essential continuity time back table debate suggestion something different kind began least terms social doctrine populorum progresio 2 debate caritas veritate debates thus important distinguish principles catholic social doctrine specific prudential judgments public policy pace partisans catholic left catholic right matter picking choosing magisterium recognizing difference social doctrine always acknowledged principles justice known certainty available publicpolicy options involve questions prudence work make matters worse caritas veritate repeats teaching john paul ii centesimus annus church technical solutions offer public policy selfdenying ordinance emerges thick philosophical theological structure rerum novarum tradition whether populorum progressio tradition selfdisciplined clear 3 encyclicals teaching moral ecology necessary properly functioning free economy entirely welcome strongly reinforces points advocates centesimus annus stressing 18 years market machine run takes certain kind people living certain virtues make free economies work result genuine human flourishing precisely respect caritas veritate poses sharpest challenge catholic obamaphiles benedict xvi insists encyclical life issues socialjustice issues human ecology moral ecology necessary make free economies work eroded wrongs defined rights current us abortion law thus encyclical put catholic legislators notice cant hide behind social justice commitments taking pass worse life issues put notice point john paul ii evangelium vitae gospel life 1995 common ground approaches reducing incidence abortion potentially useful initiatives get far point far road two hard questions arise likes nancy pelosi joe biden roe v wade various judicial progeny violate fundamental catholic norms social justice john paul ii benedict xvi taught propose respect benedicts insistence caritas veritate life issues socialjustice issues encyclicals tacit response obamas promotion late cardinal bernardins consistent ethic life seamless garment despite cardinals strong personal opposition abortion used two generations catholic politicians way avoid prolife votes caritas veritate ought make sort bobbingandweaving difficult though doubt catholic legislators intellectual activist supporters continue try 4 one encyclicals obscure passages quotas gratuitousness communion answer third world underdevelopment happens school economic thought styles economy communion promotes freemarket approaches profit factor business life factor portion profits shared projects aimed economic empowerment poor unclear text caritas veritate whether recommended general model 21stcentury economic life interesting experiment within framework free economy given influence economy communion academics formation caritas veritate idea going go away ought engaged debated economists committed market principles practices catholic scholars committed centesimus annus portrait free economy 5 finally possible concern fascinated inside catholic inside baseball interesting see effect encyclicals strictures toostringent laws protecting intellectual property rights would regard excessive claim libreria editrice vaticana holy sees publishing house property right virtually every word spoken pope challenges directions certainly true catholic social doctrine challenges parties ongoing debate political economy united states yet important development doctrine caritas veritate strong linkage life issues catholic socialjustice concerns also true challenge particular encyclical falls sharply believe roe v wade rightly decided remedied injustice prior american law positive commentary encyclical usually stereotyped defenders unbridled capitalism suggest silliness label openness many conservatives legal cultural regulation markets sounds silence left however encyclicals insistence defense life conception natural death socialjustice issue perhaps socialjustice issue moment fundamental character suggests parallel openness challenge immediately selfevident among trumpeting appreciation caritas veritate perhaps change george weigel distinguished senior fellow washingtons ethics public policy center holds william e simon chair catholic studies 160 | 1,263 |
<p>WASHINGTON — Bring on the turkey — but maybe hold the politics.</p>
<p>Thanksgiving is Glenn Rogers’ favorite holiday, when people gather around the table and talk about things to celebrate from the past year. But Donald Trump’s presidency isn’t something everyone in the Rogers family is toasting.</p>
<p>“For the most part, we get to the point where we know that we’re not going to agree with each other and it gets dropped,” says the 67-year-old manufacturing consultant, who says he voted less for Trump than against Democrat Hillary Clinton.</p>
<p>With a cascade of sexual misconduct scandals now echoing similar allegations against Trump during the campaign, tempers on the subject of Trump may not have cooled, says Rogers. “When you start talking about it now, there’s still some, I think, real animosity when you start talking about character.”</p>
<p>Rogers is among more than a third of Americans who say they dread the prospect of politics coming up over Thanksgiving, compared with just 2 in 10 who say they’re eager to talk politics, according to a new poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Four in 10 don’t feel strongly either way.</p>
<p>Democrats are slightly more likely than Republicans to say they’re uneasy about political discussions at the table, 39 percent to 33 percent. And women are more likely than men to say they dread the thought of talking politics, 41 percent to 31 percent.</p>
<p>Those who do think there’s at least some possibility of politics coming up are somewhat more likely to feel optimistic about it than Americans as a whole. Among this group, 30 percent say they’d be eager to talk politics and 34 percent would dread it.</p>
<p>The debate over whether to talk politics at Thanksgiving — or not — is about as American as the traditional feast itself. By Christmas 2016, 39 percent of U.S. adults said their families avoided conversations about politics, according to the Pew Research Center.</p>
<p>But Americans are still trying to figure out how to talk about the subject in the age of Trump, and amid the sexual misconduct allegations that have ignited a new debate over standards for conduct between men and women. The conversation, some analysts and respondents say, touches on identity among people who group themselves by other factors, such as family, friendship or geography.</p>
<p>Ten months into Trump’s difficult presidency, he remains a historically unpopular president and a deeply polarizing force in the United States. His drives to crack down on immigration in the name of national security and the economy cut right to the question of who is an American. And his defense on Tuesday of Republican <a href="" type="internal">U.S. Senate candidate Roy</a> <a href="" type="internal">Moore</a>, the former Alabama judge accused by six women of pursuing romantic relationships with them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s, comes amid a wider deluge of sexual misconduct scandals. Those engulfed include an array of politicians and policymakers — past, present, aspiring and presidential — of all partisan stripes.</p>
<p>For any mention of Moore, who denies the accusations against him, there’s Democratic <a href="" type="internal">Sen. Al Franken of</a> <a href="" type="internal">Minnesota</a>, who has apologized for the accusations against him. For every mention of the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump could be heard bragging about touching women without their consent, there are allegations that Democratic President Bill Clinton assaulted women. Both men deny the accusations.</p>
<p>Trump won the 2016 election, even though more than a dozen women accused him of sexual misconduct, and roughly half of all voters said they were bothered by his treatment of women, according to exit polls. Trump called the allegations false and said he would sue the women, but that hasn’t happened.</p>
<p>Then there’s the broader national conversation about what to do with the art, public policy work and legacies of public figures accused of sexual harassment or assault.</p>
<p>In the past, the Emily Post Institute Inc. received Thanksgiving etiquette questions that were typically about how to handle difficult relatives, says author Daniel Post Senning.</p>
<p>“Now, I am hearing questions like, ‘I don’t want to go,’ or ‘I can’t imagine sitting at a table with someone who has this perspective and staying through the meal,’” he says. “My impression is that it’s still out there. … The shock of that election is a little further in the rearview mirror, but I think people still have strong feelings about it.”</p>
<p>Fort Worth, Texas, resident Greg McCulley saw that firsthand last year. He recalls that of a dozen adults gathered around the Thanksgiving table, all but one was celebrating Trump’s election. That was his sister-in-law, who fumed about Trump and the “Access Hollywood” tape. Tension seethed.</p>
<p>“It was like, you say Donald Trump was bad, then someone says Bill Clinton was bad, so that extended to Hillary Clinton,” says McCulley, 43, an Air Force retiree who voted for Trump but doesn’t dispute that Trump’s recorded remarks were troubling. He does expect politics to come up this year, probably about sexual assault.</p>
<p>“The conservatives have more of a bigger bone. They’ll say look at Al Franken,” says McCully, who nonetheless looks forward to the conversation. “But it may be that my sister-in-law keeps her mouth zipped and says, ‘I don’t want to wade into those waters again like last year.’”</p>
<p>The AP-NORC poll of 1,070 adults was conducted Nov. 15-19 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.</p>
<p>Respondents were first selected randomly using address-based sampling methods and later interviewed online or by phone.</p> | false | 1 | washington bring turkey maybe hold politics thanksgiving glenn rogers favorite holiday people gather around table talk things celebrate past year donald trumps presidency isnt something everyone rogers family toasting part get point know going agree gets dropped says 67yearold manufacturing consultant says voted less trump democrat hillary clinton cascade sexual misconduct scandals echoing similar allegations trump campaign tempers subject trump may cooled says rogers start talking theres still think real animosity start talking character rogers among third americans say dread prospect politics coming thanksgiving compared 2 10 say theyre eager talk politics according new poll associated pressnorc center public affairs research four 10 dont feel strongly either way democrats slightly likely republicans say theyre uneasy political discussions table 39 percent 33 percent women likely men say dread thought talking politics 41 percent 31 percent think theres least possibility politics coming somewhat likely feel optimistic americans whole among group 30 percent say theyd eager talk politics 34 percent would dread debate whether talk politics thanksgiving american traditional feast christmas 2016 39 percent us adults said families avoided conversations politics according pew research center americans still trying figure talk subject age trump amid sexual misconduct allegations ignited new debate standards conduct men women conversation analysts respondents say touches identity among people group factors family friendship geography ten months trumps difficult presidency remains historically unpopular president deeply polarizing force united states drives crack immigration name national security economy cut right question american defense tuesday republican us senate candidate roy moore former alabama judge accused six women pursuing romantic relationships teenagers 30s comes amid wider deluge sexual misconduct scandals engulfed include array politicians policymakers past present aspiring presidential partisan stripes mention moore denies accusations theres democratic sen al franken minnesota apologized accusations every mention access hollywood tape trump could heard bragging touching women without consent allegations democratic president bill clinton assaulted women men deny accusations trump 2016 election even though dozen women accused sexual misconduct roughly half voters said bothered treatment women according exit polls trump called allegations false said would sue women hasnt happened theres broader national conversation art public policy work legacies public figures accused sexual harassment assault past emily post institute inc received thanksgiving etiquette questions typically handle difficult relatives says author daniel post senning hearing questions like dont want go cant imagine sitting table someone perspective staying meal says impression still shock election little rearview mirror think people still strong feelings fort worth texas resident greg mcculley saw firsthand last year recalls dozen adults gathered around thanksgiving table one celebrating trumps election sisterinlaw fumed trump access hollywood tape tension seethed like say donald trump bad someone says bill clinton bad extended hillary clinton says mcculley 43 air force retiree voted trump doesnt dispute trumps recorded remarks troubling expect politics come year probably sexual assault conservatives bigger bone theyll say look al franken says mccully nonetheless looks forward conversation may sisterinlaw keeps mouth zipped says dont want wade waters like last year apnorc poll 1070 adults conducted nov 1519 using sample drawn norcs probabilitybased amerispeak panel designed representative us population margin sampling error respondents plus minus 42 percentage points respondents first selected randomly using addressbased sampling methods later interviewed online phone | 530 |
<p>If you could legitimately take, as some reviewers seem illegitimately to have done, the final words of the Pakistani convenience store clerk, Nazir Chowdray (Ajay Naidu), in SubUrbia as the real direction in which the film is heading, it would not have been at all a bad picture — though written by Eric Bogosian (from his play) and directed by that champion of Slackers, Richard Linklater. Having watched for nearly two hours another collection of slackers hanging out at the convenience store and generally advertising their fecklessness, their uselessness and their charmlessness, we are more than well-disposed to Nazir’s disgusted dismissal of them: “You people are so stupid. What’s wrong with you? You throw it all away, huh? You throw it all away.”</p>
<p>Just so. Nazir is not likely to make the same mistake. Sober and hard-working, he is a part-time engineering student who expects to get a good job and a house with a swimming pool when he finishes his course in two years. When he sees the drunken louts who “hang out” at his family’s store and mock and yell racist taunts at him for lack of anything better to do, he is naturally contemptuous of them. And so, perhaps, will you be if you make the mistake of watching this rubbish. But this is not how we are meant to feel. Bogosian and Linklater are themselves too much enamored of the slacker “lifestyle” (as they would no doubt call it) not to present their characters more or less sympathetically, in spite of their moral and intellectual nullity.</p>
<p>Nazir’s words are only meant to give us pause for a moment in what is otherwise a wallow in adolescent self-importance and self-pity. Or if a more comprehensive judgment against these kids is intended, it is overwhelmed by the seriousness with which the film has taken them and their deep, deep silliness through the tedium of its previous 110 minutes. So tedious are they, in fact, that I can hardly bear to go back over the ground. The kids who hang out at the “Circle A” (little joke there, since the character intended to be taken most seriously professes to be an anarchist) include the Air Force dropout and former high school quarterback, Tim (Nicky Katt), and his two buddies Jeff (Giovanni Ribisi), a would-be intellectual who lives in a pup tent in his parents’ garage, and Buff (Steve Zahn), who works in a pizza parlor and is the most spectacularly useless slacker of them all, a deeply repellent character who lives only for his piggish appetites.</p>
<p>But grossness and stupidity is apparently supposed to make him funny. There is also Jeff’s girlfriend, Suze (Amie Carey), a deeply untalented performance artist who seems to dream of being the next Karen Finley, and her high strung and apparently suicidal friend, Phoebe (Dina Spybey), who is just out of drug rehab. They all hang out and engage in the sort of adolescent philosophizing that Linklater has made is trademark. “When Hitler was greasing the Jews,” says Jeff, “people were saying ‘I don’t want to know about it, don’t bum me out’.” It’s my duty as a human being to be pissed off.” But quite what it is he’s pissed off about, and why and from what he is, as he claims, “alienated” — apart from decency and discipline — is never made clear. He never seems to get any further in his diagnosis of the social ills that alienated him than that “things are f***ed up beyond belief.”</p>
<p>What is really beyond belief is that either Bogosian or Linklater can suppose that that kind of vague expression of discontent is the kind of sentiment to which every bosom must return an echo. But its vagueness is also designed to mask the film’s own inability to decide between Tim’s xenophobic know-nothingism and Jeff’s obscurely well-intentioned left-wingery. But the general ambiance of indiscipline and self-indulgence makes it unreasonable to expect intellectual discipline or even fully formed ideas. Suze spouts feminist jargon which is not even partially digested and seems to think it a powerful ending to her dreary little political skit simply to repeat “F*** you” several times.</p>
<p>As they are hanging out, who should come along in a stretch limousine but their former classmate (they all seem to be a year or two out of high school), Pony (Jayce Bartok), who has since gone on to fame and fortune as a rock star. With him is his publicist, Erica (Parker Posey).</p>
<p>He seems to want to be taken by the others as still a regular guy, and tells them that “I forgot what it was like to just hang out. You guys are so real!” Yes, he really says that. But in the filmmakers’ defense, it is apparently meant to make him seem a bit of a jerk. Success, as we also see from the upwardly mobile Nazir, is a primal sin against the slacker code.</p>
<p>As the night wears on, Pony steals Suze away from Jeff with the promise of having her design his next album cover, Jeff and Phoebe have a bit of a heart-to-heart, Tim guesses Erika’s life story, she throws herself at him, and, after Tim’s “attitude” is taken to the extreme of its inherent ludicrousness and he pretends to have killed her, she turns up again in the limo, having hopped into the sack with the almost-as-repellent Buff. Buff believes that his own future is assured as Pony’s group’s director of music videos. Tim gets arrested for drunken misbehavior and then comes back with a gun for another display of attitude, facing off with Nazir. Then he finds Phoebe passed out, maybe dead, from booze and pills on the roof of the convenience store. We don’t find out what happens to her.</p>
<p>The one funny moment in the film, to my mind, is when Jeff is having his deeply meaningful discussion with Phoebe about how f***ed up everything is and confesses to her, what he obviously considers a shameful thing, that “I was jealous of Pony.”</p>
<p>Phoebe replies: “Well, yeah. He’s rich. He’s famous. He’s got everything. You’ve got nothing.”</p>
<p>But Bogosian/Linklater cannot exploit the comedy of the moment. Instead they have to indulge Jeff in yet another of his juvenile conceits about how Pony is really a prisoner of his limousine and his wealth and his fame while he, Jeff, is free — and to prove it takes off all his clothes.</p>
<p>Abby Hoffman, thou shouldst be living at this hour!</p> | false | 1 | could legitimately take reviewers seem illegitimately done final words pakistani convenience store clerk nazir chowdray ajay naidu suburbia real direction film heading would bad picture though written eric bogosian play directed champion slackers richard linklater watched nearly two hours another collection slackers hanging convenience store generally advertising fecklessness uselessness charmlessness welldisposed nazirs disgusted dismissal people stupid whats wrong throw away huh throw away nazir likely make mistake sober hardworking parttime engineering student expects get good job house swimming pool finishes course two years sees drunken louts hang familys store mock yell racist taunts lack anything better naturally contemptuous perhaps make mistake watching rubbish meant feel bogosian linklater much enamored slacker lifestyle would doubt call present characters less sympathetically spite moral intellectual nullity nazirs words meant give us pause moment otherwise wallow adolescent selfimportance selfpity comprehensive judgment kids intended overwhelmed seriousness film taken deep deep silliness tedium previous 110 minutes tedious fact hardly bear go back ground kids hang circle little joke since character intended taken seriously professes anarchist include air force dropout former high school quarterback tim nicky katt two buddies jeff giovanni ribisi wouldbe intellectual lives pup tent parents garage buff steve zahn works pizza parlor spectacularly useless slacker deeply repellent character lives piggish appetites grossness stupidity apparently supposed make funny also jeffs girlfriend suze amie carey deeply untalented performance artist seems dream next karen finley high strung apparently suicidal friend phoebe dina spybey drug rehab hang engage sort adolescent philosophizing linklater made trademark hitler greasing jews says jeff people saying dont want know dont bum duty human pissed quite hes pissed claims alienated apart decency discipline never made clear never seems get diagnosis social ills alienated things fed beyond belief really beyond belief either bogosian linklater suppose kind vague expression discontent kind sentiment every bosom must return echo vagueness also designed mask films inability decide tims xenophobic knownothingism jeffs obscurely wellintentioned leftwingery general ambiance indiscipline selfindulgence makes unreasonable expect intellectual discipline even fully formed ideas suze spouts feminist jargon even partially digested seems think powerful ending dreary little political skit simply repeat f several times hanging come along stretch limousine former classmate seem year two high school pony jayce bartok since gone fame fortune rock star publicist erica parker posey seems want taken others still regular guy tells forgot like hang guys real yes really says filmmakers defense apparently meant make seem bit jerk success also see upwardly mobile nazir primal sin slacker code night wears pony steals suze away jeff promise design next album cover jeff phoebe bit hearttoheart tim guesses erikas life story throws tims attitude taken extreme inherent ludicrousness pretends killed turns limo hopped sack almostasrepellent buff buff believes future assured ponys groups director music videos tim gets arrested drunken misbehavior comes back gun another display attitude facing nazir finds phoebe passed maybe dead booze pills roof convenience store dont find happens one funny moment film mind jeff deeply meaningful discussion phoebe fed everything confesses obviously considers shameful thing jealous pony phoebe replies well yeah hes rich hes famous hes got everything youve got nothing bogosianlinklater exploit comedy moment instead indulge jeff yet another juvenile conceits pony really prisoner limousine wealth fame jeff free prove takes clothes abby hoffman thou shouldst living hour | 538 |
<p>Bob Woodward has written his fourth book in six years on the Bush presidency. They have ranged from fairly glowing (Bush at War) to excoriating (State of Denial). The latest, The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008, while less harsh on Bush than State of Denial, is still plenty critical.</p>
<p>Based on interviews with more than 150 people, including nearly three hours of interviews with the president himself, the book features details from key meetings and secret memoranda, the sometimes candid and often self-flattering thoughts of many of the key actors in the Iraq war, and describes the heated debates and dissents within the administration during the period when President Bush embraced a new strategy in Iraq, “the surge.”</p>
<p>The picture Woodward paints isn't pretty, and his judgment is harsh. In his epilogue, for example, Woodward writes that too often Bush “failed to lead” and states, “The president rarely was the voice of realism on the Iraq War.” In his promotional interviews, Woodward is at least as critical of Bush as he is in his book, portraying him as detached and out of touch, his administration as dysfunctional, and his presidency as essentially a failure.</p>
<p>Students of the Iraq war will find this book well worth reading, but for reasons Woodward probably didn't intend. The War Within reveals something important about key figures in the Washington drama of the past two years.</p>
<p>BOB WOODWARD: In making his judgment about the president during this period, Woodward has focused almost exclusively on the process rather than the outcome of Bush's decision. The author himself admits that the book is “really about a second front in Washington, where the military, the State Department, intelligence people and the White House could not reach agreement.”</p>
<p>In an hour-long interview with Larry King, Woodward uttered only a single (and somewhat peculiar) sentence on the subject of the surge and its success:</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>[Bush] made a decision that has led us to a much better condition, and if you are of the Karl Rove view of politics and life in America, which is everything gets measured by outcomes, you could look at this and say it's a positive.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>I'm not sure what the Karl Rove reference means. I think it would strike millions of Americans, including those who disagree with Rove politically, as right and appropriate to measure decisions by their outcome. We do that when it comes to judging presidents, generals, doctors, coaches, and almost everyone else in life. It is, for most of us, the acid test of a leader.</p>
<p>That appears not to be the case for Woodward. He is overwhelmingly, almost obsessively, concerned about process. Who was driving it (Bush or his national security adviser, Stephen Hadley)? Which meetings did or did not the president attend? Did the “right” amount of communication take place between the civilian leadership and the military?</p>
<p>Process matters and it can influence outcomes, but results matter much more. One cannot help feeling that Woodward would have been more favorably disposed toward the president if a tidy, consensus-driven, bipartisan process had led to a bad outcome (hasty withdrawal from Iraq) rather than a messy process and an unpopular decision leading to a good outcome (the quelling of violence in Iraq).</p>
<p>On the matter of the surge, Woodward downplays its importance. He argues that the enormous drop in violence in Iraq is owed mainly to other factors (the Sunni uprising against Al Qaeda in Iraq and the ceasefire with Moktada al-Sadr), and even to luck (a top-secret operation targeting terrorist leaders came online, he claims, at the same time the surge was being executed).</p>
<p>What Woodward misses, I think, is that the surge reinforced every good thing that has happened in Iraq. All the other actors-the Sunnis in Anbar, Al Qaeda in Iraq, Sadr and his minions, the government in Baghdad, Iraq's neighbors-had to factor the staying power and reinforcment of the U.S.-led coalition into their calculations. It enabled everything else to take place. Yet you would never figure that out reading The War Within.</p>
<p>PRESIDENT BUSH: One comes away from Woodward's account reminded of the phalanx of opposition the president faced in pushing for the surge- from his secretaries of defense and state, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq (General George W. Casey Jr.), the commander of U.S. Central Command (John P. Abizaid), the Iraq Study Group, and almost the entire political and foreign policy establishment.</p>
<p>Bush was close to alone in his advocacy of the surge, which testifies both to his strategic insight and to his political courage. It's revealing that NBC host Matt Lauer, in interviewing the author, took exception to Woodward's claim that Bush failed to lead. “Some advisers are saying don't go with the surge. Military people are saying two brigades, not five. And [Bush] said, 'No, I'm going to go all in on this. I'm doubling down' .  .  . that is leadership, like it or not, isn't it?”</p>
<p>Woodward responded, “Well, of course, but this is a very complicated process.” And then he spent the rest of his answer talking about .  .  . process.</p>
<p>There is no question that changes in our Iraq strategy should have been made much sooner than they were; if anything, the president can be faulted for being too deferential to the top military brass and to his cabinet prior to the surge. That's why some of us are delighted Bush eventually paid such close attention to outside voices like retired General Jack Keane, a strong proponent of the surge.</p>
<p>By late 2006, the president came to embrace a fundamentally different counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq. With his popularity low and with only a handful of people standing at his side, he made what was manifestly the right decision. Bush's decision has, by any objective measure, been vindicated. And that, more than anything else, is the significance of the period Woodward covers.</p>
<p>THE MILITARY BRASS: Woodward's book is not quite the “untold” story of the surge its publishers claim. In fact, it has already been told by others, including Michael Gordon at the New York Times, Peter Feaver in Commentary, and Fred Barnes in these pages. Thanks to its much greater length and detail, The War Within is able to drive home with almost jackhammer-like repetition the degree of opposition the president faced from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as from Generals Abizaid and Casey.</p>
<p>“To win, we have to draw down,” Casey told the president in June 2006. In a conversation later that year, Abizaid told the president he was against the surge, arguing that U.S. forces needed to get out of Iraq in order to win. According to Woodward, the Joint Chiefs had “all but dismissed the surge option” and in a series of meetings in November 2006, their “frustrations burst into the open.” So intense was their opposition that Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, recommended that Bush sit down with them, allowing them to hear the pro-surge case in person. In that meeting, held in December, General Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, told the president, “I don't think that you have the time to surge and generate enough forces for this thing to continue to go.” He and others were more concerned about waging a hypothetical future war than about winning the ongoing one in Iraq.</p>
<p>Virtually the entire top Pentagon brass, as well as Bush's key generals, were opposed to the surge. They were wrong on almost every count. Yet Woodward does nothing to highlight this overwhelmingly important fact.</p>
<p>Beyond that, Woodward's book captures the bitterness of the Joint Chiefs at having their advice overridden. General Casey found it “demeaning” to have to answer a series of 50 probing (and necessary) questions posed by Hadley, the national security adviser. When the president reminded Casey and others, via videoconference, that “we're not playing for a tie,” we learn that Casey considered it an “affront to his dignity,” a statement “just short of an outright provocation.”</p>
<p>It got so bad that Admiral Michael Mullen, who also opposed the surge and replaced Peter Pace as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, attempted to keep General Keane from traveling to Iraq, because Keane allowed for a line of communication straight from Bush to General David Petraeus. “You've diminished the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs,” Mullen reportedly told Keane. (The White House interceded and saw to it that Keane could travel to Iraq.)</p>
<p>One comes away from Woodward's book with an even greater respect for Petraeus, who, along with General Raymond Odierno, resisted enormous pressure from those higher up in the chain of command and executed the surge with brilliant efficiency.</p>
<p>Woodward's book reports all of these episodes, many vividly. He allows the key actors to have their say. And yet he seems unable to give the president the credit he deserves. (Woodward even asserts that the surge strategy was “crippled” by dissension within the administration, when that is clearly not so.)</p>
<p>What President Bush did in advocating the surge was an extraordinary act of presidential leadership, with few precedents in American history. It doesn't erase the many mistakes and missteps that were made along the way. It doesn't mean the process of decision making was tidy. The human and financial cost of the war has been higher than it should have been. But to have put us in position to redeem a war that was widely considered to be lost is an impressive and honorable achievement. History will deem it such, even if Bob Woodward won't.</p>
<p>— Peter Wehner, former deputy assistant to President Bush, is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.</p> | false | 1 | bob woodward written fourth book six years bush presidency ranged fairly glowing bush war excoriating state denial latest war within secret white house history 20062008 less harsh bush state denial still plenty critical based interviews 150 people including nearly three hours interviews president book features details key meetings secret memoranda sometimes candid often selfflattering thoughts many key actors iraq war describes heated debates dissents within administration period president bush embraced new strategy iraq surge picture woodward paints isnt pretty judgment harsh epilogue example woodward writes often bush failed lead states president rarely voice realism iraq war promotional interviews woodward least critical bush book portraying detached touch administration dysfunctional presidency essentially failure students iraq war find book well worth reading reasons woodward probably didnt intend war within reveals something important key figures washington drama past two years bob woodward making judgment president period woodward focused almost exclusively process rather outcome bushs decision author admits book really second front washington military state department intelligence people white house could reach agreement hourlong interview larry king woodward uttered single somewhat peculiar sentence subject surge success 160 bush made decision led us much better condition karl rove view politics life america everything gets measured outcomes could look say positive 160 im sure karl rove reference means think would strike millions americans including disagree rove politically right appropriate measure decisions outcome comes judging presidents generals doctors coaches almost everyone else life us acid test leader appears case woodward overwhelmingly almost obsessively concerned process driving bush national security adviser stephen hadley meetings president attend right amount communication take place civilian leadership military process matters influence outcomes results matter much one help feeling woodward would favorably disposed toward president tidy consensusdriven bipartisan process led bad outcome hasty withdrawal iraq rather messy process unpopular decision leading good outcome quelling violence iraq matter surge woodward downplays importance argues enormous drop violence iraq owed mainly factors sunni uprising al qaeda iraq ceasefire moktada alsadr even luck topsecret operation targeting terrorist leaders came online claims time surge executed woodward misses think surge reinforced every good thing happened iraq actorsthe sunnis anbar al qaeda iraq sadr minions government baghdad iraqs neighborshad factor staying power reinforcment usled coalition calculations enabled everything else take place yet would never figure reading war within president bush one comes away woodwards account reminded phalanx opposition president faced pushing surge secretaries defense state joint chiefs staff commander us forces iraq general george w casey jr commander us central command john p abizaid iraq study group almost entire political foreign policy establishment bush close alone advocacy surge testifies strategic insight political courage revealing nbc host matt lauer interviewing author took exception woodwards claim bush failed lead advisers saying dont go surge military people saying two brigades five bush said im going go im doubling leadership like isnt woodward responded well course complicated process spent rest answer talking process question changes iraq strategy made much sooner anything president faulted deferential top military brass cabinet prior surge thats us delighted bush eventually paid close attention outside voices like retired general jack keane strong proponent surge late 2006 president came embrace fundamentally different counterinsurgency strategy iraq popularity low handful people standing side made manifestly right decision bushs decision objective measure vindicated anything else significance period woodward covers military brass woodwards book quite untold story surge publishers claim fact already told others including michael gordon new york times peter feaver commentary fred barnes pages thanks much greater length detail war within able drive home almost jackhammerlike repetition degree opposition president faced joint chiefs staff well generals abizaid casey win draw casey told president june 2006 conversation later year abizaid told president surge arguing us forces needed get iraq order win according woodward joint chiefs dismissed surge option series meetings november 2006 frustrations burst open intense opposition peter pace chairman joint chiefs recommended bush sit allowing hear prosurge case person meeting held december general peter schoomaker army chief staff told president dont think time surge generate enough forces thing continue go others concerned waging hypothetical future war winning ongoing one iraq virtually entire top pentagon brass well bushs key generals opposed surge wrong almost every count yet woodward nothing highlight overwhelmingly important fact beyond woodwards book captures bitterness joint chiefs advice overridden general casey found demeaning answer series 50 probing necessary questions posed hadley national security adviser president reminded casey others via videoconference playing tie learn casey considered affront dignity statement short outright provocation got bad admiral michael mullen also opposed surge replaced peter pace chairman joint chiefs attempted keep general keane traveling iraq keane allowed line communication straight bush general david petraeus youve diminished office chairman joint chiefs mullen reportedly told keane white house interceded saw keane could travel iraq one comes away woodwards book even greater respect petraeus along general raymond odierno resisted enormous pressure higher chain command executed surge brilliant efficiency woodwards book reports episodes many vividly allows key actors say yet seems unable give president credit deserves woodward even asserts surge strategy crippled dissension within administration clearly president bush advocating surge extraordinary act presidential leadership precedents american history doesnt erase many mistakes missteps made along way doesnt mean process decision making tidy human financial cost war higher put us position redeem war widely considered lost impressive honorable achievement history deem even bob woodward wont peter wehner former deputy assistant president bush senior fellow ethics public policy center | 896 |
<p>Last year, in an otherwise dispiriting opinion, the Supreme Court handed the nation’s governors an important victory in NFIB v. Sebelius. The Court ruled that the Medicaid expansion mandated in the law was an unconstitutional infringement on state prerogatives. Specifically, the federal government does not have the authority to impose coercive penalties—by withdrawing existing Medicaid funds—on states that refuse to enact Obamacare’s Medicaid expansions.</p>
<p>This is no small matter. The law won’t come close to reaching “universal coverage” if the nation’s governors refuse to expand their Medicaid programs. Which is why these governors, and most especially the 30 Republicans among them, have substantial power and leverage to bend national health-care policy in their direction—if they play their strong hand correctly.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, many of the GOP governors are acting otherwise. Seven Republican governors—including Chris Christie, John Kasich, and Rick Scott—have announced their intention to essentially go along with the Medicaid expansion, and several others are thinking about following their lead.</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, the White House and HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius are doing all they can to pick off one GOP governor at a time. When Governor Kasich <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/04/ohio-medicaid-expansion_n_2615091.html" type="external">announced</a>&#160;his support for the Medicaid expansion a month ago, he said he had been in touch with top White House aide Valerie Jarrett, who had assured him the administration would be open to making special concessions for Ohio. In Florida, Governor Scott’s announcement was accompanied by HHS’s approval of a broader Medicaid waiver program for the state that doesn’t fundamentally alter the nature of Obamacare’s government-centric approach to health-care reform. And news stories <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/02/28/arkansass-different-plan-to-expand-medicaid/" type="external">now indicate</a>&#160;that Governor Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania is planning to meet with Sebelius within the month, no doubt to see what kind of special deal he can secure for his state.</p>
<p>The latest <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/02/28/arkansass-different-plan-to-expand-medicaid/" type="external">Medicaid frenzy</a>&#160;involves a Democratic governor from a red state, Mike Beebe of Arkansas. There was no prospect of securing approval for a straight Medicaid expansion from the state’s Republican-dominated legislature, so Beebe came to Washington recently with what he expected to be a long-shot request: Would HHS allow Arkansas to use the federal money from the Medicaid expansion to purchase private insurance for those who would otherwise have qualified for Medicaid?</p>
<p>In another indication of how desperate the White House is to get red-state America to buy into Obamacare, HHS officials have told Beebe they are open to the idea. Predictably, now more Republicans are interested in getting the same “deal” as Arkansas, even though no one in HHS or Arkansas has yet fully explained what the deal would entail.</p>
<p>The GOP governors engaged in these direct negotiations with the White House are playing a loser’s game, and throwing away a historic opportunity to secure fundamental and lasting reform of the Medicaid program. Even if individual states are able to secure concessions from HHS and the White House, the “deals” they strike will be in the form of temporary and inconsequential “waivers” (the terms of which will always be subject to administration amendment and revision, too). What’s worse, these deals are no way to run a national program. Why should one state receive more favorable treatment than others? And why should the administration be allowed to “buy off” states with federal taxpayer funds in the first place?</p>
<p>Instead, GOP governors should withdraw from this White House game of “let’s make a deal” and instead decide, as a group, what kind of Medicaid reform to demand in return for considering broader insurance coverage. Importantly, the reforms they seek should be in the form of legislative revisions of Medicaid, not temporary “waivers.” By pursuing a legislative approach, the GOP governors could join forces with House speaker John Boehner and Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Fred Upton, who have made serious Medicaid reform one of their top priorities this year.</p>
<p>The right principles for such a reform are clear. The federal government should move toward a fixed and predictable level of support for Medicaid insurance coverage, and states should be given near-total authority to manage their Medicaid budgets without federal interference. States can and should be held accountable for how well they provide safety-net insurance protection and for the quality of the health services they deliver to the program’s participants, but there’s no need for the countless federal mandates and restrictions. It is especially important that states be allowed to convert their Medicaid programs into a version of “premium support” through which the program’s enrollees would choose their insurance plans from competing offerings.</p>
<p>This vision for Medicaid could be achieved by providing federal block grants to the states. But it could also be achieved by converting a portion of Medicaid funding into a “per capita” program (Senator Orrin Hatch <a href="http://www.finance.senate.gov/newsroom/ranking/release/?id=b9f2e6eb-658a-4014-8a18-5c93d995e60e" type="external">has proposed</a>&#160;per capita caps for all of Medicaid). Under this reform, the Medicaid program would provide to the states a fixed amount of funding for each person who falls within certain income categories that make them eligible for Medicaid. Unlike a block grant, this approach would allow the federal contribution to Medicaid to adjust with changes in the eligible population due to recessions or other factors.</p>
<p>Even though some GOP governors have already announced their Medicaid intentions, it is still not too late for the broader group to adjust their tactics and use effectively the leverage the Supreme Court handed to them. In criticizing Obamacare, Republicans often say that it makes no sense to add 15 million people to an unreformed and unstable Medicaid program. They are right, and they should take the opportunity that now presents itself to secure permanent, statutory reform of Medicaid, not special side deals.</p>
<p>James C. Capretta is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.</p> | false | 1 | last year otherwise dispiriting opinion supreme court handed nations governors important victory nfib v sebelius court ruled medicaid expansion mandated law unconstitutional infringement state prerogatives specifically federal government authority impose coercive penaltiesby withdrawing existing medicaid fundson states refuse enact obamacares medicaid expansions small matter law wont come close reaching universal coverage nations governors refuse expand medicaid programs governors especially 30 republicans among substantial power leverage bend national healthcare policy directionif play strong hand correctly unfortunately many gop governors acting otherwise seven republican governorsincluding chris christie john kasich rick scotthave announced intention essentially go along medicaid expansion several others thinking following lead surprisingly white house hhs secretary kathleen sebelius pick one gop governor time governor kasich announced160his support medicaid expansion month ago said touch top white house aide valerie jarrett assured administration would open making special concessions ohio florida governor scotts announcement accompanied hhss approval broader medicaid waiver program state doesnt fundamentally alter nature obamacares governmentcentric approach healthcare reform news stories indicate160that governor tom corbett pennsylvania planning meet sebelius within month doubt see kind special deal secure state latest medicaid frenzy160involves democratic governor red state mike beebe arkansas prospect securing approval straight medicaid expansion states republicandominated legislature beebe came washington recently expected longshot request would hhs allow arkansas use federal money medicaid expansion purchase private insurance would otherwise qualified medicaid another indication desperate white house get redstate america buy obamacare hhs officials told beebe open idea predictably republicans interested getting deal arkansas even though one hhs arkansas yet fully explained deal would entail gop governors engaged direct negotiations white house playing losers game throwing away historic opportunity secure fundamental lasting reform medicaid program even individual states able secure concessions hhs white house deals strike form temporary inconsequential waivers terms always subject administration amendment revision whats worse deals way run national program one state receive favorable treatment others administration allowed buy states federal taxpayer funds first place instead gop governors withdraw white house game lets make deal instead decide group kind medicaid reform demand return considering broader insurance coverage importantly reforms seek form legislative revisions medicaid temporary waivers pursuing legislative approach gop governors could join forces house speaker john boehner energy commerce committee chairman fred upton made serious medicaid reform one top priorities year right principles reform clear federal government move toward fixed predictable level support medicaid insurance coverage states given neartotal authority manage medicaid budgets without federal interference states held accountable well provide safetynet insurance protection quality health services deliver programs participants theres need countless federal mandates restrictions especially important states allowed convert medicaid programs version premium support programs enrollees would choose insurance plans competing offerings vision medicaid could achieved providing federal block grants states could also achieved converting portion medicaid funding per capita program senator orrin hatch proposed160per capita caps medicaid reform medicaid program would provide states fixed amount funding person falls within certain income categories make eligible medicaid unlike block grant approach would allow federal contribution medicaid adjust changes eligible population due recessions factors even though gop governors already announced medicaid intentions still late broader group adjust tactics use effectively leverage supreme court handed criticizing obamacare republicans often say makes sense add 15 million people unreformed unstable medicaid program right take opportunity presents secure permanent statutory reform medicaid special side deals james c capretta senior fellow ethics public policy center visiting fellow american enterprise institute | 556 |
<p>Like all the GOP presidential contenders, Scott Walker is being advised by economists and editorial writers to adopt a “cut the top rate first” tax policy. It would be a shame if he followed their advice, which would mean abandoning the approach that he has employed in Wisconsin to such political and economic success.</p>
<p>Standard “supply side” tax policy argues that the inventions and advances of the economy’s most active participants drive most growth. Thus, tax policy’s priority should be to encourage more of that activity by lowering the marginal rate on those participants’ income. Since the most economically active people tend to earn the most, supply-siders inevitably focus on cutting the top tax rate — which, at the federal level, currently starts at $457,601 for couples — as much as possible, even at the expense of tax cuts for earners in other income brackets. They vociferously oppose adding new tax credits or deductions to the code, and often even argue for the repeal of credits and deductions already on the books in order to “broaden the base” and finance further cuts to the top rate.</p>
<p>This theory has become Republican orthodoxy over the past two decades. It is, however, the exact opposite of what Governor Walker has pursued.</p>
<p>Walker has lowered Wisconsin’s rates on the personal incomes of all taxpayers, but he has done so more for those in the bottom tax bracket than for those in the top. On his watch, the marginal rate for families earning no more than $32,000 in gross income per year dropped from 4.6 percent to 4.0 percent. He cut the marginal tax rate for all income-tax brackets, but cut the rate for those in the top bracket (which for families starts at $320,000 in taxable yearly income) only a smidgen, from 7.75 percent to 7.65 percent. Moreover, Governor Walker approved two new deductions, one for contributions to health savings accounts and another for private K–12 tuition payments. These policies fly in the face of standard supply-side doctrine.</p>
<p>Walker has followed the same approach with his other tax-policy changes. Supply-siders strongly favor reducing corporate-tax rates, but Governor Walker has not lowered them at all. Instead, he has secured the passage of two large corporate-tax credits. One is available to individuals or corporations that derive income from manufacturing or agricultural activities in Wisconsin. The other allows a business to deduct up to $4,000 per new full-time-equivalent employee working in Wisconsin. Walker’s corporate-tax policy directly rewards in-state economic activity rather than cutting marginal rates.</p>
<p>Walker’s other major tax-policy change is an across-the-board reduction in property-tax rates. It applies to all owners of property and thus counts as a tax cut for both people and businesses. It does not, however, conform to supply-side theory, since the rate of property taxation has no bearing on the marginal incentive to work.</p>
<p>These supply-side heresies have not hurt Wisconsin’s economy. Unemployment has dropped from 7.9 percent to 4.6 percent since 2011. Wisconsin’s labor-force-participation rate has dropped by much less than the national average, and has even increased slightly in the past year. While Wisconsin’s economy has not performed significantly better under Walker than those of other midwestern states with Republican governors and legislatures, his policies have allowed middle- and working-class families to keep more of their income.</p>
<p>Walker has ridden these populist tax cuts to great political success. Wisconsin has not voted for a Republican for president since 1984, yet Walker has now carried the state three times in the last five years, with at least 52 percent of the vote each time. That is six percentage points better than Mitt Romney did in Wisconsin in 2012, and it’s been fueled by Walker’s strong support among Wisconsin’s working- and middle-class whites. Whites with a college degree constitute nearly half of Wisconsin’s electorate even in presidential years, and Walker carried them by a margin of 58 percent to 42 percent last year, doing significantly better than Romney did running on a tax plan that was a mild version of supply-side orthodoxy.</p>
<p>Walker’s tax policy helps address the GOP’s biggest weakness, the perception that it is the party of the rich and doesn’t “care about people like me.” Polls since 2012 have consistently shown that Americans think the economy is unfairly tilted toward the rich and that the Republicans are the party of the rich. A tax policy that essentially says America isn’t doing enough for rich people is unlikely to help the GOP nominee in 2016.</p>
<p>Romney lost because Obama beat him by 63 points among the fifth of Americans who thought the most important characteristic in a president was that he “cares about people like me.” Romney’s problem was even greater in Wisconsin. He lost by 74 points the nearly one-quarter of Wisconsinites who held that belief. Given this, why would Walker even think about changing his tax policies?</p>
<p>The example of Kansas governor Sam Brownback should cure Walker of any lingering desire to embrace the GOP’s conventional tax wisdom. Brownback has adopted a state version of the orthodox playbook. Kansas couples making $30,000 or less per year have seen their rates cut from 3.5 percent to only 2.7 percent on his watch, but top-bracket earners have seen a larger drop, from 6.45 percent to 4.6 percent. Brownback has also completely eliminated the state income tax for any individual filing as a “pass-through entity,” as most small-business owners do. In essence, Brownback reduced the tax rate on a large number of top-bracket earners from 6.45 percent to zero, theoretically removing any state-tax disincentive for job creators to generate wealth.</p>
<p>This supply-side approach has yet to significantly increase employment or economic growth in Kansas. Kansas’s unemployment rate is only slightly lower than Wisconsin’s, and it has declined by less since both governors took office in 2011. The labor-force-participation rate is also nearly the same in the two states.</p>
<p>Brownback’s tax policies have dramatically cut Kansas’s revenues. The governor has been forced to propose cutbacks or freezes in funding for a variety of programs, especially education, as a result. He has also proposed cutting the state’s payments into its employees’ pension plan, exactly the sort of underfunding that Republicans loudly criticize elsewhere. Fiscally, Kansas’s supply-side experiment has been a lot of pain with little to no gain.</p>
<p>There has been political pain, too, and it has been severe. Brownback was barely reelected in deep-red Kansas, winning by only a 50–46 margin in a GOP wave year. He ran ten points behind Mitt Romney’s 2012 showing in Kansas — even as Walker ran six points ahead of him in a much less Republican state. The 2014 exit poll also found that 53 percent of Kansas voters thought Brownback’s tax cuts were “bad for Kansas.”</p>
<p>None of this would have come as any surprise to the biggest tax innovator of them all, Ronald Reagan. Many claim him today as the political father of supply-side tax policy, but his words and deeds show that it was not quite so.</p>
<p>Reagan’s two major tax cuts included many provisions that supply-side advocates would criticize today. By indexing standard deductions and tax brackets for inflation, he steered hundreds of millions of dollars to middle- and working-class families, money that theoretically could have been used to cut top rates even more. And his 1981 tax cut allowed all workers to contribute to tax-deductible IRAs, exactly the sort of middle-class tax cut that today’s supply-siders deride.</p>
<p>Reagan’s break with supply-side theology seems even more pronounced when one examines his rhetoric. Supply-side theory lionizes the entrepreneur; it holds that certain people are “job creators” and that society benefits only by letting those people lead. But one will look in vain to find even a semblance of that sentiment in Reagan’s speeches.</p>
<p>I’ve read all of the major speeches Reagan gave on the economy or taxes between 1979 and his signing of the tax-cut bill in 1981. In these speeches, he never argues that economic growth is due to the very few. He is always adamant that we all contribute, that we are all “makers.”</p>
<p>Indeed, he used the word “entrepreneur” only once during this period. It was in his first inaugural address, and the manner in which he used it speaks volumes about the gulf between supply-side orthodoxy and Reagan’s actual thinking:</p>
<p>We have every right to dream heroic dreams. Those who say that we’re in a time when there are not heroes, they just don’t know where to look. You can see heroes every day going in and out of factory gates. Others, a handful in number, produce enough food to feed all of us and then the world beyond. You meet heroes across a counter, and they’re on both sides of that counter. There are entrepreneurs with faith in themselves and faith in an idea who create new jobs, new wealth, and opportunity. They’re individuals and families whose taxes support the government and whose voluntary gifts support church, charity, culture, art, and education. Their patriotism is quiet, but deep. Their values sustain our national life.</p>
<p>Now, I have used the words “they” and “their” in speaking of these heroes. I could say “you” and “your,” because I’m addressing the heroes of whom I speak — you, the citizens of this blessed land.</p>
<p>For Reagan, the entrepreneur is not someone who is better than we are. His or her contributions are no less, and no more, important to American prosperity than those of the worker, the farmer, or the shopper. To say anything else is not only anti-Reaganite; it runs afoul of Americans’ deep belief in equality. If Scott Walker wants to win the GOP nomination, and the presidency, he should resist the supply-side temptation and rekindle Reagan’s magic.</p>
<p>– Mr. Olsen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.</p> | false | 1 | like gop presidential contenders scott walker advised economists editorial writers adopt cut top rate first tax policy would shame followed advice would mean abandoning approach employed wisconsin political economic success standard supply side tax policy argues inventions advances economys active participants drive growth thus tax policys priority encourage activity lowering marginal rate participants income since economically active people tend earn supplysiders inevitably focus cutting top tax rate federal level currently starts 457601 couples much possible even expense tax cuts earners income brackets vociferously oppose adding new tax credits deductions code often even argue repeal credits deductions already books order broaden base finance cuts top rate theory become republican orthodoxy past two decades however exact opposite governor walker pursued walker lowered wisconsins rates personal incomes taxpayers done bottom tax bracket top watch marginal rate families earning 32000 gross income per year dropped 46 percent 40 percent cut marginal tax rate incometax brackets cut rate top bracket families starts 320000 taxable yearly income smidgen 775 percent 765 percent moreover governor walker approved two new deductions one contributions health savings accounts another private k12 tuition payments policies fly face standard supplyside doctrine walker followed approach taxpolicy changes supplysiders strongly favor reducing corporatetax rates governor walker lowered instead secured passage two large corporatetax credits one available individuals corporations derive income manufacturing agricultural activities wisconsin allows business deduct 4000 per new fulltimeequivalent employee working wisconsin walkers corporatetax policy directly rewards instate economic activity rather cutting marginal rates walkers major taxpolicy change acrosstheboard reduction propertytax rates applies owners property thus counts tax cut people businesses however conform supplyside theory since rate property taxation bearing marginal incentive work supplyside heresies hurt wisconsins economy unemployment dropped 79 percent 46 percent since 2011 wisconsins laborforceparticipation rate dropped much less national average even increased slightly past year wisconsins economy performed significantly better walker midwestern states republican governors legislatures policies allowed middle workingclass families keep income walker ridden populist tax cuts great political success wisconsin voted republican president since 1984 yet walker carried state three times last five years least 52 percent vote time six percentage points better mitt romney wisconsin 2012 fueled walkers strong support among wisconsins working middleclass whites whites college degree constitute nearly half wisconsins electorate even presidential years walker carried margin 58 percent 42 percent last year significantly better romney running tax plan mild version supplyside orthodoxy walkers tax policy helps address gops biggest weakness perception party rich doesnt care people like polls since 2012 consistently shown americans think economy unfairly tilted toward rich republicans party rich tax policy essentially says america isnt enough rich people unlikely help gop nominee 2016 romney lost obama beat 63 points among fifth americans thought important characteristic president cares people like romneys problem even greater wisconsin lost 74 points nearly onequarter wisconsinites held belief given would walker even think changing tax policies example kansas governor sam brownback cure walker lingering desire embrace gops conventional tax wisdom brownback adopted state version orthodox playbook kansas couples making 30000 less per year seen rates cut 35 percent 27 percent watch topbracket earners seen larger drop 645 percent 46 percent brownback also completely eliminated state income tax individual filing passthrough entity smallbusiness owners essence brownback reduced tax rate large number topbracket earners 645 percent zero theoretically removing statetax disincentive job creators generate wealth supplyside approach yet significantly increase employment economic growth kansas kansass unemployment rate slightly lower wisconsins declined less since governors took office 2011 laborforceparticipation rate also nearly two states brownbacks tax policies dramatically cut kansass revenues governor forced propose cutbacks freezes funding variety programs especially education result also proposed cutting states payments employees pension plan exactly sort underfunding republicans loudly criticize elsewhere fiscally kansass supplyside experiment lot pain little gain political pain severe brownback barely reelected deepred kansas winning 5046 margin gop wave year ran ten points behind mitt romneys 2012 showing kansas even walker ran six points ahead much less republican state 2014 exit poll also found 53 percent kansas voters thought brownbacks tax cuts bad kansas none would come surprise biggest tax innovator ronald reagan many claim today political father supplyside tax policy words deeds show quite reagans two major tax cuts included many provisions supplyside advocates would criticize today indexing standard deductions tax brackets inflation steered hundreds millions dollars middle workingclass families money theoretically could used cut top rates even 1981 tax cut allowed workers contribute taxdeductible iras exactly sort middleclass tax cut todays supplysiders deride reagans break supplyside theology seems even pronounced one examines rhetoric supplyside theory lionizes entrepreneur holds certain people job creators society benefits letting people lead one look vain find even semblance sentiment reagans speeches ive read major speeches reagan gave economy taxes 1979 signing taxcut bill 1981 speeches never argues economic growth due always adamant contribute makers indeed used word entrepreneur period first inaugural address manner used speaks volumes gulf supplyside orthodoxy reagans actual thinking every right dream heroic dreams say time heroes dont know look see heroes every day going factory gates others handful number produce enough food feed us world beyond meet heroes across counter theyre sides counter entrepreneurs faith faith idea create new jobs new wealth opportunity theyre individuals families whose taxes support government whose voluntary gifts support church charity culture art education patriotism quiet deep values sustain national life used words speaking heroes could say im addressing heroes speak citizens blessed land reagan entrepreneur someone better contributions less important american prosperity worker farmer shopper say anything else antireaganite runs afoul americans deep belief equality scott walker wants win gop nomination presidency resist supplyside temptation rekindle reagans magic mr olsen senior fellow ethics public policy center | 934 |
<p>The <a href="http://variety.com/t/emmys/" type="external">Emmys</a> are upon us, and it wouldn’t be an awards show if our critics didn’t have strong and possibly arbitrary opinions about who should take home a gold statue or two this year. Here’s where they duke it out. Are you — and Emmy voters — on Team Ryan or Team Saraiya? (Play along: The full list of nominees is <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/2017-emmy-nominees-list-nominations-1202494465/" type="external">here</a>.)</p>
<p>SEE MORE: <a href="https://variety.com/access-digital/" type="external">From the September 12, 2017, issue of Variety</a></p>
<p>COMEDY SERIES</p>
<p>Saraiya: I will brook absolutely no contenders besides FX’s “ <a href="http://variety.com/t/atlanta/" type="external">Atlanta</a>,” which was my No.1 show of 2016. And it’s not like I don’t like other shows. But none of them even come close — except, possibly, for HBO’s non-nominated “Insecure.”</p>
<p>Ryan: No disagreement here. The second season of “Master of None” certainly had some strong moments, and I’m a fan of some of the other shows on the list. But this award has to go to “Atlanta.” It just has to.</p>
<p>DRAMA SERIES</p>
<p>Saraiya: This is such an interesting category. Five new series, three genre shows — uncharted territory for the Academy.</p>
<p>Ryan: I agree, I think the winner of the category will serve as something of a litmus test, revealing a lot about the thinking of the Academy’s membership. Do they want to cheerlead a popular hit like “This Is Us” or “Stranger Things,” shows that are very accessible and have a big pop-culture footprint? To be clear, I don’t actually have a problem with that tendency — in this world of micro-niches, sometimes it’s nice to have a show that connects in a big, broad way. The other option is for the Academy to reward shows that display the usual trappings of well-appointed prestige drama, and then the Emmy would go to either “The Handmaid’s Tale” or “The Crown,” which in my mind are the other leading contenders. Personally, I’d be fine with either “Stranger Things” or “Handmaid’s” winning — they’re tonal opposites but so well-grounded in emotionally resonant performances.</p>
<p>Saraiya: I’d be disappointed if “Stranger Things” won. It’s an interesting show, but ultimately didn’t really break through the noise for me the way that it did for many others. My bitterest critic within feels that the best dramas of the year were overlooked, but if I’m picking favorites, I’m most partial to the inspiring dystopia of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which prompted some of my most aghast viewing of the year.</p>
<p>Ryan: I hear you. “Handmaid’s” is my pick as well.</p>
<p>LIMITED SERIES</p>
<p>Saraiya: There’s only one choice, in my mind.</p>
<p>Ryan: You do mean “ <a href="http://variety.com/t/big-little-lies/" type="external">Big Little Lies</a>,” ground zero for the Kidman-aissance, right?</p>
<p>Saraiya: I do. I think “Big Little Lies” broke into the mainstream, with its phenomenal central performances, in a way that the other limited series never quite managed. Part of my adoration of the series is that it took what is essentially a women’s beach read and found the rich interplay of personalities underneath. To my mind, Kidman didn’t go anywhere long enough to require a renaissance — call me old-fashioned, but she’s a star that doesn’t fade — but as her debut to the small screen, opposite fellow Academy Award winner Reese Witherspoon, “Big Little Lies” makes for especially wonderful watching.</p>
<p>Ryan: I agree. The whole thing hit that sweet spot between commercial and contemplative, and though every performer did great work, many of “Lies” more serious themes hinged on Kidman’s nuanced, powerful performance.</p>
<p>TV MOVIE</p>
<p>Saraiya: I was so prepared to dismiss this category entirely, but then they nominated one of my favorite episodes of 2016.</p>
<p>Ryan: And I do hope “ <a href="http://variety.com/t/black-mirror/" type="external">Black Mirror</a>” wins, because the other entries in this category aren’t nearly as strong overall.</p>
<p>Saraiya: Agreed. “San Junipero” has the advantage of having two incredible leads in Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Mackenzie Davis — and one of “Black Mirror’s” rarest gifts: A happy ending.</p>
<p>Ryan: And to that I merely add, “Yay!”</p>
<p>LEAD ACTOR, COMEDY</p>
<p>Ryan: I’ve already written that I think Anthony Anderson should win. He’s doing extremely varied work as Dre Johnson on “Black-ish,” and it’s time the Academy voters recognized his versatility. But I would also be OK if the award goes to the creator and star of “Atlanta.” The understatement of Donald Glover’s performance is impressive — and it’s worth noting that quite often, he played the straight man brilliantly and frequently made space for his co-stars to have big moments.</p>
<p>Saraiya: Both Glover and Aziz Ansari impressed me more as writers than performers, and though I think Anderson is great on “Black-ish,” I think like Ansari he’s playing a version of himself that doesn’t seem like a breakthrough. My pick is, unexpectedly, Zach Galifianakis: “Baskets” is a really weird show, and not for everyone, but Galifianakis’ immersion in his sad-clown role is kind of uncanny.</p>
<p>Ryan: I enjoy a delightful left-field pick! But I’m sticking with my choices. &#160;</p>
<p>LEAD ACTOR, DRAMA</p>
<p>Saraiya: It’s Bob Odenkirk’s year. IT’S BOB ODENKIRK’S YEAR, MO.</p>
<p>Ryan: YOU ARE HAVING A LOT OF EMOTIONS ABOUT THIS! Which is understandable. This was definitely my favorite season of “Better Call Saul” — for my money, it was the most compassionate and painful season, but in good ways. So it would be fine with me if Odenkirk brought home the statue, but Sterling K. Brown is the leading contender here, in my view. How does he bring me inside his character’s psychological state so masterfully, every single time? I have no idea, but it’s truly a gift.</p>
<p>Saraiya: I like Sterling K. Brown a lot. But Odenkirk’s still my pick. He’s been delivering such fantastic complexity as Jimmy McGill, and this season he was heartbreaking. “Better Call Saul” — even more than “Breaking Bad” — is about making choices in a morass of moral relativity. And Odenkirk, as a comic actor now doing drama, is somehow perfectly suited to the challenges of playing that.</p>
<p>LEAD ACTOR, MINISERIES OR MOVIE</p>
<p>Saraiya: Given how stacked this category is for the actresses, it’s a little embarrassing how the men measure up by comparison. Some great performers here, but most I’ll forget about in a few years. The only exception for me is Riz Ahmed, who came out of nowhere (for me) to steal every frame in HBO’s “The Night Of.” Watching him interpret Nas — and convincingly play him both as naive kid and as hardened criminal — was absolutely chilling. I love that this performance put him on the radar for mainstream audiences, and I hope to see a lot more of him.</p>
<p>Ryan: Completely agreed. Naz’s transformation — internal and external — was fascinating to witness. Ahmed’s performance was certainly the most memorable thing about “The Night Of.”</p>
<p>LEAD ACTRESS, COMEDY</p>
<p>Ryan: “Black-ish” continued to offer very strong episodes this past season, many of them highlighting the work of Tracee Ellis Ross as Rainbow. She was phenomenal — her gift for physical comedy continues to amaze, but Rainbow’s also fast with a quip and believably compassionate and down to earth. It’s a lot to tie together, but she does it so gracefully. The other real contender for me is Pamela Adlon, who was a revelation in “Better Things,” which emerged as one of my favorite shows of last year. I can’t choose, please help!</p>
<p>Saraiya: Ross all the way. Which is not to say I do not really admire Pamela Adlon, but I have a feeling next year we’ll be pushing for Adlon to win based off her stronger performances in “Better Things,” season two.</p>
<p>Ryan: Absolutely.</p>
<p>LEAD ACTRESS, DRAMA</p>
<p>Saraiya: Honestly, Claire Foy deserves this award. I bet it’ll go to Elisabeth Moss — who is incredible, don’t get me wrong. But Foy is just magnificent.</p>
<p>Ryan: It’s a tough choice: Foy definitely did very good work in a role that could have seemed like a cardboard cut-out, but was not, thanks to her charisma and intense dedication. That said, I have to go with Moss here. The way she was able to convey Offred’s fear, yearning, anger and grit was simply incredible. Put simply, “The Handmaid’s Tale” just does not work with anyone but Moss in that role, while I think that a number of skilled British actresses could have turned in the kind of crisply intelligent work that Foy did. &#160;</p>
<p>LEAD ACTRESS, MINISERIES OR MOVIE</p>
<p>Saraiya: And here it is: The most ridiculously stacked, brilliantly talented category in television history. I feel sorry for Emmy voters who have to make a choice here; it feels like anyone you choose, it’s a crime.</p>
<p>Ryan: Having to choose here is just not OK. It’s too difficult. Having said that, I’ve got to go with Nicole Kidman, who was revelatory in “Big Little Lies.” Every single second she was on the screen, her character was transfixing. Fight me!</p>
<p>Saraiya: Kidman is magical, so there’s not a lot to fight. Those therapy scenes alone are just shattering. But this all being said, allow me to express my sincerest admiration for her co-star, Reese Witherspoon, who I think takes on a trickier and more socially reviled role: The aggressive, performatively parenting stay-at-home mom.</p>
<p>Ryan: Either woman winning would work, but honestly, the ideal solution is a tie. Then we all go to the beach!</p> | false | 1 | emmys upon us wouldnt awards show critics didnt strong possibly arbitrary opinions take home gold statue two year heres duke emmy voters team ryan team saraiya play along full list nominees see september 12 2017 issue variety comedy series saraiya brook absolutely contenders besides fxs atlanta no1 show 2016 like dont like shows none even come close except possibly hbos nonnominated insecure ryan disagreement second season master none certainly strong moments im fan shows list award go atlanta drama series saraiya interesting category five new series three genre shows uncharted territory academy ryan agree think winner category serve something litmus test revealing lot thinking academys membership want cheerlead popular hit like us stranger things shows accessible big popculture footprint clear dont actually problem tendency world microniches sometimes nice show connects big broad way option academy reward shows display usual trappings wellappointed prestige drama emmy would go either handmaids tale crown mind leading contenders personally id fine either stranger things handmaids winning theyre tonal opposites wellgrounded emotionally resonant performances saraiya id disappointed stranger things interesting show ultimately didnt really break noise way many others bitterest critic within feels best dramas year overlooked im picking favorites im partial inspiring dystopia handmaids tale prompted aghast viewing year ryan hear handmaids pick well limited series saraiya theres one choice mind ryan mean big little lies ground zero kidmanaissance right saraiya think big little lies broke mainstream phenomenal central performances way limited series never quite managed part adoration series took essentially womens beach read found rich interplay personalities underneath mind kidman didnt go anywhere long enough require renaissance call oldfashioned shes star doesnt fade debut small screen opposite fellow academy award winner reese witherspoon big little lies makes especially wonderful watching ryan agree whole thing hit sweet spot commercial contemplative though every performer great work many lies serious themes hinged kidmans nuanced powerful performance tv movie saraiya prepared dismiss category entirely nominated one favorite episodes 2016 ryan hope black mirror wins entries category arent nearly strong overall saraiya agreed san junipero advantage two incredible leads gugu mbatharaw mackenzie davis one black mirrors rarest gifts happy ending ryan merely add yay lead actor comedy ryan ive already written think anthony anderson win hes extremely varied work dre johnson blackish time academy voters recognized versatility would also ok award goes creator star atlanta understatement donald glovers performance impressive worth noting quite often played straight man brilliantly frequently made space costars big moments saraiya glover aziz ansari impressed writers performers though think anderson great blackish think like ansari hes playing version doesnt seem like breakthrough pick unexpectedly zach galifianakis baskets really weird show everyone galifianakis immersion sadclown role kind uncanny ryan enjoy delightful leftfield pick im sticking choices 160 lead actor drama saraiya bob odenkirks year bob odenkirks year mo ryan lot emotions understandable definitely favorite season better call saul money compassionate painful season good ways would fine odenkirk brought home statue sterling k brown leading contender view bring inside characters psychological state masterfully every single time idea truly gift saraiya like sterling k brown lot odenkirks still pick hes delivering fantastic complexity jimmy mcgill season heartbreaking better call saul even breaking bad making choices morass moral relativity odenkirk comic actor drama somehow perfectly suited challenges playing lead actor miniseries movie saraiya given stacked category actresses little embarrassing men measure comparison great performers ill forget years exception riz ahmed came nowhere steal every frame hbos night watching interpret nas convincingly play naive kid hardened criminal absolutely chilling love performance put radar mainstream audiences hope see lot ryan completely agreed nazs transformation internal external fascinating witness ahmeds performance certainly memorable thing night lead actress comedy ryan blackish continued offer strong episodes past season many highlighting work tracee ellis ross rainbow phenomenal gift physical comedy continues amaze rainbows also fast quip believably compassionate earth lot tie together gracefully real contender pamela adlon revelation better things emerged one favorite shows last year cant choose please help saraiya ross way say really admire pamela adlon feeling next year well pushing adlon win based stronger performances better things season two ryan absolutely lead actress drama saraiya honestly claire foy deserves award bet itll go elisabeth moss incredible dont get wrong foy magnificent ryan tough choice foy definitely good work role could seemed like cardboard cutout thanks charisma intense dedication said go moss way able convey offreds fear yearning anger grit simply incredible put simply handmaids tale work anyone moss role think number skilled british actresses could turned kind crisply intelligent work foy 160 lead actress miniseries movie saraiya ridiculously stacked brilliantly talented category television history feel sorry emmy voters make choice feels like anyone choose crime ryan choose ok difficult said ive got go nicole kidman revelatory big little lies every single second screen character transfixing fight saraiya kidman magical theres lot fight therapy scenes alone shattering said allow express sincerest admiration costar reese witherspoon think takes trickier socially reviled role aggressive performatively parenting stayathome mom ryan either woman winning would work honestly ideal solution tie go beach | 835 |
<p>WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Thursday he has no immediate plans to resign after President Donald Trump excoriated the nation’s top prosecutor for recusing himself from the probe of suspected Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. political campaign.</p>
<p>“We love this job, we love this department and I plan to continue to do so as long as that is appropriate,” Sessions said.</p>
<p>A former senator from Alabama, Sessions was one of Trump’s earliest and ardent supporters and became attorney general in February. A month later, he took himself out of a Justice Department-led inquiry into the election following revelations he’d failed to disclose his own meetings with the Russian ambassador to the U.S.</p>
<p>At a news conference Thursday on an unrelated matter, Sessions was asked how he could continue to serve as attorney general without the confidence of the president. His response: “We’re serving right now. The work we’re doing today is the kind of work we intend to continue.”</p>
<p>But in a sign of his challenges, Sessions was unable to focus public attention on the case he wanted to talk about — an international takedown of a hidden Internet marketplace that officials said was 10 times larger than the Silk Road bazaar. The news conference on that case was ended once it was clear reporters had no questions on the investigation.</p>
<p>Trump on Wednesday told The New York Times he never would have tapped Sessions for the job had he known a recusal was coming.</p>
<p>“Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself, which frankly I think is very unfair to the president,” Trump told the newspaper. “How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, ‘Thanks, Jeff, but I’m not going to take you.’ It’s extremely unfair — and that’s a mild word — to the president.”</p>
<p>Trump’s blistering rebuke underscored his continuing fury with Sessions more than four months after the recusal and came during an interview in which he also lashed out at Robert Mueller, the special counsel now leading the federal probe; James Comey, the FBI director Trump fired; Andrew McCabe, the acting FBI director who replaced Comey; and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed the special counsel.</p>
<p>Trump seethes</p>
<p>Trump’s denouncement reflected a long-simmering frustration with one of his staunchest allies, but was not a calculated attempt to force Sessions from the Cabinet, according to two Trump advisers. For weeks, the president has seethed about Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the federal investigation into whether Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia during last year’s election.</p>
<p>The White House notably made no effort to walk back Trump’s comments in the interview or display confidence in the attorney general. Instead, the two Trump advisers acknowledged that the president’s public comments largely reflected what they have heard him say about Sessions privately.</p>
<p>The advisers spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the president’s thinking. The Justice Department declined to comment on the president’s remarks.</p>
<p>Sessions, one of Trump’s earliest supporters, stepped away from the Russia probe following revelations that he had failed to disclose meetings with the Kremlin’s ambassador to the U.S. His decision was made without consulting with the president and essentially paved the way for the appointment of Mueller as special counsel. Mueller’s investigation, along with separate congressional probes, has overshadowed much of Trump’s agenda and ensnared several of his associates, including son Donald Trump Jr. and his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner.</p>
<p>Despite his protest to the contrary, Trump continues to heavily watch cable news coverage of the Russia investigations. At times he has told allies he’s convinced that the White House has turned the corner and the controversy will soon be behind him. But at other points, he has expressed fears that it will dog him for his entire time in office.</p>
<p>Few developments in the snowballing controversy have irked Trump more than Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the investigations. The advisers said the president viewed the move as an act of disloyalty — arguably the most grievous offense in the president’s mind — and was angry that Sessions did not consult with him ahead of time.</p>
<p>At one point, Sessions privately told Trump he was willing to resign his post, but the president did not accept the offer. One adviser said the president’s comments to the Times did not reflect any new desire by Trump to fire Sessions, though they acknowledged that the attorney general’s response to the public denigration was less certain.</p>
<p>First to endorse Trump</p>
<p>Sessions was the first U.S. senator to endorse Trump during the presidential campaign, and the two bonded over their hard-line immigration views. Some of Sessions’ long-serving advisers are now working alongside the president in the West Wing, including senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, who was one of the architects of Trump’s controversial travel ban.</p>
<p>A potential Sessions resignation could throw Mueller’s investigation into a state of uncertainty. Trump would nominate a replacement and could seek assurances that his pick would not recuse himself from the investigations.</p>
<p>Trump raised the prospect of firing Mueller in his interview with the Times, suggesting he had damaging information on the former FBI director. The president said Mueller’s selection for the job was a conflict of interest because Trump had spoken with him about returning to the FBI after the firing of James Comey in May.</p>
<p>“There were many other conflicts that I haven’t said, but I will at some point,” Trump said.</p>
<p>He lobbed similar conflict of interest charges at acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. He also accused Comey of briefing him on a dossier of unverified, incriminating information in an effort to gain leverage over the soon-to-be president.</p>
<p>The president has repeatedly told those close to him that he fears there is a movement underway, fueled in part by Comey, Rosenstein and potentially Mueller, to discredit his presidency. He has denied that his campaign had any contacts with Russia during the election, though that assertion has been challenged by his son’s acknowledgment that he accepted a meeting that was billed as part of the Russian government’s efforts to help the Republican win the election.</p> | false | 1 | washington attorney general jeff sessions said thursday immediate plans resign president donald trump excoriated nations top prosecutor recusing probe suspected russian meddling 2016 us political campaign love job love department plan continue long appropriate sessions said former senator alabama sessions one trumps earliest ardent supporters became attorney general february month later took justice departmentled inquiry election following revelations hed failed disclose meetings russian ambassador us news conference thursday unrelated matter sessions asked could continue serve attorney general without confidence president response serving right work today kind work intend continue sign challenges sessions unable focus public attention case wanted talk international takedown hidden internet marketplace officials said 10 times larger silk road bazaar news conference case ended clear reporters questions investigation trump wednesday told new york times never would tapped sessions job known recusal coming jeff sessions takes job gets job recuses frankly think unfair president trump told newspaper take job recuse would recused job would said thanks jeff im going take extremely unfair thats mild word president trumps blistering rebuke underscored continuing fury sessions four months recusal came interview also lashed robert mueller special counsel leading federal probe james comey fbi director trump fired andrew mccabe acting fbi director replaced comey deputy attorney general rod rosenstein appointed special counsel trump seethes trumps denouncement reflected longsimmering frustration one staunchest allies calculated attempt force sessions cabinet according two trump advisers weeks president seethed sessions decision recuse federal investigation whether trumps campaign coordinated russia last years election white house notably made effort walk back trumps comments interview display confidence attorney general instead two trump advisers acknowledged presidents public comments largely reflected heard say sessions privately advisers spoke condition anonymity authorized publicly discuss presidents thinking justice department declined comment presidents remarks sessions one trumps earliest supporters stepped away russia probe following revelations failed disclose meetings kremlins ambassador us decision made without consulting president essentially paved way appointment mueller special counsel muellers investigation along separate congressional probes overshadowed much trumps agenda ensnared several associates including son donald trump jr soninlaw senior adviser jared kushner despite protest contrary trump continues heavily watch cable news coverage russia investigations times told allies hes convinced white house turned corner controversy soon behind points expressed fears dog entire time office developments snowballing controversy irked trump sessions decision recuse investigations advisers said president viewed move act disloyalty arguably grievous offense presidents mind angry sessions consult ahead time one point sessions privately told trump willing resign post president accept offer one adviser said presidents comments times reflect new desire trump fire sessions though acknowledged attorney generals response public denigration less certain first endorse trump sessions first us senator endorse trump presidential campaign two bonded hardline immigration views sessions longserving advisers working alongside president west wing including senior policy adviser stephen miller one architects trumps controversial travel ban potential sessions resignation could throw muellers investigation state uncertainty trump would nominate replacement could seek assurances pick would recuse investigations trump raised prospect firing mueller interview times suggesting damaging information former fbi director president said muellers selection job conflict interest trump spoken returning fbi firing james comey may many conflicts havent said point trump said lobbed similar conflict interest charges acting fbi director andrew mccabe deputy attorney general rod rosenstein also accused comey briefing dossier unverified incriminating information effort gain leverage soontobe president president repeatedly told close fears movement underway fueled part comey rosenstein potentially mueller discredit presidency denied campaign contacts russia election though assertion challenged sons acknowledgment accepted meeting billed part russian governments efforts help republican win election | 584 |
<p>The names Joel and Ethan Coen pop up on a lot of screenplays these days (“Bridge of Spies,” “Unbroken”), now that they’re getting credit for the kind of script-polishing they used to do anonymously. But “ <a href="http://variety.com/t/suburbicon/" type="external">Suburbicon</a>” marks the first time a script that could have been a full-blown Coen brothers film has been brought to the screen by someone else. The movie, directed by <a href="http://variety.com/t/george-clooney/" type="external">George Clooney</a>, who along with his partner Grant Heslov re-wrote an old unproduced Coen brothers project (all four are now credited), stars <a href="http://variety.com/t/matt-damon/" type="external">Matt Damon</a> as a dour, weaselly, amateur family-man criminal in the U.S. suburbs of 1959, and it’s clearly a close cousin to “Fargo.”</p>
<p>There are moments when you can taste the heightened comic spin that the Coens, as filmmakers, would have brought to the material. They would surely have made a bigger fetish of the Atomic Age trappings and decor (the way they did with the mid-’60s Midwestern Jewish visual detail of “A Serious Man”), and each time the blustery vulgarian Uncle Mitch (Gary Basaraba) showed up on screen, I couldn’t help but imagine him played by an actor like Michael Lerner or the late Jon Polito.</p>
<p>Yet Clooney, in taking over what might once have been a signature Coen project, was right to make the material his own. The movie opens with a cheeky satirical prologue that presents Suburbicon, a community of 60,000 that has drawn people from assorted regions of the country (all of whom look like they stepped out of the same white-bread Norman Rockwell painting), as a cookie-cutter late-’50s American paradise. But once the movie settles down, it becomes a straight-faced, rather grubby film noir — and taken on those terms, as a period-piece “Fargo” with more sleaze and less irony, it’s a lightly sneaky and entertaining movie.</p>
<p>From the moment he began directing, George Clooney has been a stylish, visually rhythmic, avidly engrossing yarn-spinner (the one exception, speaking of irony, is his biggest hit to date, the dud World War art thriller “The Monuments Men”), and so it is with “Suburbicon.” It’s a movie that reels the audience in and keeps it hooked: with smart little kicks of surprise, with a sidelong but still highly charged social theme (the perilous cataclysm of integration), and, of course, with the squalid bad behavior of ordinary people who think that they can wriggle out of their unhappiness through furtive, cut-rate schemes. “Suburbicon” is probably too much of a compact, no-frills genre exercise to have much traction at awards time, but it’s enough of a plucky, well-made lark to find an audience.</p>
<p>The movie gets rolling with a crime that plays very oddly, and before long we learn why: Gardner Lodge (Damon), a local financial VP in button-down white shirts and tortoise-shell glasses, wakes up his son, Nicky (Noah Jupe), and brings him downstairs, saying, “There are men in the house.” The men turn out to be a couple of menacing sadistic robbers (Glenn Flesher and Michael D. Cohen). Instead of looking for cash, they tie up the whole family and berate them, chloroforming everyone into unconsciousness. (We keep thinking: Why doesn’t Gardner look more scared?)</p>
<p>It’s a rather eccentric family, because it includes Gardner’s wife, Rose, a saintly wholesome fuddy-duddy blonde in a wheelchair (she was the victim of a car accident), and Rose’s far saucier brunette identical twin sister, Margaret — both of whom are played by <a href="http://variety.com/t/julianne-moore/" type="external">Julianne Moore</a>. The incident turns into a tragedy when Rose, due to her frail nature, fails to wake up from the chloroform; instead, she lies in a coma in a hospital bed, then dies. That’s the film’s set-up — but, of course, the whole lurid event we have just witnessed is a set-up. Gardner goes back to work, stolid and shaken and crying a few crocodile tears, but when he’s called in to identify the two crooks in a police line-up, and deliberately fails to do so, we know that something is up.</p>
<p>In “Fargo,” which is still the Coen brothers’ greatest film, the William H. Macy character was such a bumbling, underhanded jerk of quiet desperation that we rooted for him to succeed and, at the same time, were only too happy to see the law close in on him, especially once the film invited our identification to shift over to the now-classic character of Frances McDormand’s quippy detective Marge Gunderson. In “Suburbicon,” we identify with Damon’s Gardner up to a point, but the actor has created another fascinatingly dark scuzzball scoundrel to add to his gallery of quiet sociopaths.</p>
<p>Gardner might be described as an untalented Mr. Ripley. He’s a morose and smoldering nerd bulldog who appears, for a while, to have thought everything out, but not really. He’s a drone who fits right into the plastic homogenized landscape of Suburbicon, but he still wants out. There’s a hidden kinkiness to the proceedings, expressed in a brief scene of late-’50s S&amp;M (with a Ping-Pong paddle used in place of the whip that would probably be there 10 years later), that’s funny and startling but also speaks to everything that the 1950s were repressing.</p>
<p>In “Suburbicon,” there’s no Marge Gunderson to take over the movie, but there is a kind of detective: <a href="http://variety.com/t/oscar-isaac/" type="external">Oscar Isaac</a>, geekishly dapper in a tan suit and pencil mustache, as Roger, an insurance-company claims investigator who knows all the angles because his mind is working a mile a minute. In an enjoyably charged scene, he sits down in the kitchen with Moore’s Margaret — willowy, slightly spaced, not too good liar — and blitzes her with so much information that he susses out what’s going on in about five minutes. Isaac makes Roger’s very flippancy electrifying; he knows he’s just dealing with two more losers, but he’s alive with his mission.</p>
<p>As Gardner’s scheme begins to come apart, the movie turns bloody, but it never loses its petty-scam logic or its driving, if rather familiar, pulp-noir urgency. Clooney keeps it all nice and tight. He also — eventually — makes the film’s racial theme pay off, though for a good while what happens to the Meyers (Karimah Westbrook and Leith M. Burke), the first Negro family to move into Suburbicon, almost seems to be taking place in a different film.</p>
<p>The couple have purchased the house next door to Gardner’s, and in their adjoining fenced-in backyards, their son, Andy (Tony Espinosa), strikes up a tentative acquaintance with Gardner’s son Nicky. But to put it as simply as the movie does, the Meyers are tormented and terrorized: by a smug mailman, by the manager of a supermarket who basically tells Mrs. Meyers she can’t shop there, and by a vast group of “concerned citizens” who rise up against them in full, ugly, white-supremacist fervor.</p>
<p>Clooney, who added much of this to the script, includes period newsreel footage on television of suburban whites “rationalizing” the separateness of their neighborhoods, and what he captures, with stark (and, at moments, rather overstated) force, is that even the suburbs could act as their own version of the KKK. You might ask: What does all this have to do with the tawdry crime of passion “Suburbicon” is about? But by the end, we see just how much it has to do with it. The thing that drives Gardner to crime —&#160;the airlessness of his existence — is the very premise of white homogenized suburban life. That’s why he does anything he can to escape it. And why it had to change.</p>
<p>Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (competition), September 2, 2017. Running time: 105 MIN.</p>
<p>A Paramount Pictures release of a Paramount Pictures, Black Bear Pictures, Silver Pictures, Smoke House Pictures production. Producers: Grant Heslov, George Clooney, Teddy Schwarzman. Executive producers: Ethan Erwin, Barbara A. Hall, Joel Silver, Daniel Steinman.</p>
<p>Director: George Clooney. Screenplay: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, George Clooney, Grant Heslov. Camera (color, widescreen): Robert Elswit. Editor: Stephen Mirrione.</p>
<p>Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, Oscar Isaac, Glenn Fleshler, Marah Fairclough, Megan Ferguson, Noah Jupe, Michael D. Cohen, Jack Conley, Diane Dehn, Tim Neff, Gary Basaraba, Emily Goss.</p> | false | 1 | names joel ethan coen pop lot screenplays days bridge spies unbroken theyre getting credit kind scriptpolishing used anonymously suburbicon marks first time script could fullblown coen brothers film brought screen someone else movie directed george clooney along partner grant heslov rewrote old unproduced coen brothers project four credited stars matt damon dour weaselly amateur familyman criminal us suburbs 1959 clearly close cousin fargo moments taste heightened comic spin coens filmmakers would brought material would surely made bigger fetish atomic age trappings decor way mid60s midwestern jewish visual detail serious man time blustery vulgarian uncle mitch gary basaraba showed screen couldnt help imagine played actor like michael lerner late jon polito yet clooney taking might signature coen project right make material movie opens cheeky satirical prologue presents suburbicon community 60000 drawn people assorted regions country look like stepped whitebread norman rockwell painting cookiecutter late50s american paradise movie settles becomes straightfaced rather grubby film noir taken terms periodpiece fargo sleaze less irony lightly sneaky entertaining movie moment began directing george clooney stylish visually rhythmic avidly engrossing yarnspinner one exception speaking irony biggest hit date dud world war art thriller monuments men suburbicon movie reels audience keeps hooked smart little kicks surprise sidelong still highly charged social theme perilous cataclysm integration course squalid bad behavior ordinary people think wriggle unhappiness furtive cutrate schemes suburbicon probably much compact nofrills genre exercise much traction awards time enough plucky wellmade lark find audience movie gets rolling crime plays oddly long learn gardner lodge damon local financial vp buttondown white shirts tortoiseshell glasses wakes son nicky noah jupe brings downstairs saying men house men turn couple menacing sadistic robbers glenn flesher michael cohen instead looking cash tie whole family berate chloroforming everyone unconsciousness keep thinking doesnt gardner look scared rather eccentric family includes gardners wife rose saintly wholesome fuddyduddy blonde wheelchair victim car accident roses far saucier brunette identical twin sister margaret played julianne moore incident turns tragedy rose due frail nature fails wake chloroform instead lies coma hospital bed dies thats films setup course whole lurid event witnessed setup gardner goes back work stolid shaken crying crocodile tears hes called identify two crooks police lineup deliberately fails know something fargo still coen brothers greatest film william h macy character bumbling underhanded jerk quiet desperation rooted succeed time happy see law close especially film invited identification shift nowclassic character frances mcdormands quippy detective marge gunderson suburbicon identify damons gardner point actor created another fascinatingly dark scuzzball scoundrel add gallery quiet sociopaths gardner might described untalented mr ripley hes morose smoldering nerd bulldog appears thought everything really hes drone fits right plastic homogenized landscape suburbicon still wants theres hidden kinkiness proceedings expressed brief scene late50s sampm pingpong paddle used place whip would probably 10 years later thats funny startling also speaks everything 1950s repressing suburbicon theres marge gunderson take movie kind detective oscar isaac geekishly dapper tan suit pencil mustache roger insurancecompany claims investigator knows angles mind working mile minute enjoyably charged scene sits kitchen moores margaret willowy slightly spaced good liar blitzes much information susses whats going five minutes isaac makes rogers flippancy electrifying knows hes dealing two losers hes alive mission gardners scheme begins come apart movie turns bloody never loses pettyscam logic driving rather familiar pulpnoir urgency clooney keeps nice tight also eventually makes films racial theme pay though good happens meyers karimah westbrook leith burke first negro family move suburbicon almost seems taking place different film couple purchased house next door gardners adjoining fencedin backyards son andy tony espinosa strikes tentative acquaintance gardners son nicky put simply movie meyers tormented terrorized smug mailman manager supermarket basically tells mrs meyers cant shop vast group concerned citizens rise full ugly whitesupremacist fervor clooney added much script includes period newsreel footage television suburban whites rationalizing separateness neighborhoods captures stark moments rather overstated force even suburbs could act version kkk might ask tawdry crime passion suburbicon end see much thing drives gardner crime 160the airlessness existence premise white homogenized suburban life thats anything escape change reviewed venice film festival competition september 2 2017 running time 105 min paramount pictures release paramount pictures black bear pictures silver pictures smoke house pictures production producers grant heslov george clooney teddy schwarzman executive producers ethan erwin barbara hall joel silver daniel steinman director george clooney screenplay joel coen ethan coen george clooney grant heslov camera color widescreen robert elswit editor stephen mirrione matt damon julianne moore oscar isaac glenn fleshler marah fairclough megan ferguson noah jupe michael cohen jack conley diane dehn tim neff gary basaraba emily goss | 756 |
<p />
<p>The tragedy at the World Trade Center (WTC) on September 11th, 2001 continues to affect many thousands of first responders who sacrificed their own health while restoring lower Manhattan and attempting to recover survivors and victims’ remains.&#160; Recently, H.R. 847, otherwise known as the James Zadroga Bill, was signed by President Obama in an effort to provide services and compensation for those whose health was compromised through exposure to the toxic dust and gases at Ground Zero.&#160; However, these first responders also need help to understand how their illnesses originated so that improvements in treatment can be made.&#160; In response to this need, concerned citizens should consider the possible correlation between evidence for energetic materials at the WTC and the environmental exposures which appear to have caused so many illnesses in the first responders.</p>
<p>The 9/11 first responders suffer from a range of different illnesses, some of which are rare in the general population.&#160; Some of the illnesses can be attributed to the high pH of the WTC dust.&#160; We know the extent of the pH problem thanks to EPA whistleblower, Dr. Cate Jenkins.[1] The very high pH of the dust inhaled by 9/11 first responders is a probable cause for the general deterioration of lungs and their function, due to the dust’s corrosive state.&#160; As Dr. Jenkins wrote, “Corrosivity would have acted directly to cause respiratory chemical burns, and also would have increased the toxic properties of other pollutants from the WTC by facilitating their entry into the body through the respiratory system.”</p>
<p>Commonly observed conditions among first responders include reactive airways dysfunction syndrome (RADS), caused by exposure to high concentrations of irritants such as caustic and metallic dusts; upper respiratory illnesses such as sinusitis and laryngitis; and lower respiratory disorders such as asthma and what is known as World Trade Center cough.</p>
<p>Less understood, and requiring further study, are unusual illnesses of the immune system commonly observed in the WTC first responders.&#160; These include various types of interstitial lung disease, such as eosinophilic pneumonia, granulomatous pneumonitis, and bronchial obliterans.&#160; Environmental triggers for these illnesses include aluminum silicates, which have been found in the lungs of WTC first responders at high levels in “unusual platy configurations.” [2]</p>
<p>Other common WTC lung ailments include sarcoidosis, which is known to be caused by aluminum dust[3], and pulmonary fibrosis, which can be caused by aluminum oxide.[4]</p>
<p>These findings have, until now, lacked an adequate scientific explanation.&#160; But recent research suggests a correlation with the causes of the destruction of WTC buildings 1, 2 and 7.&#160; Aluminum oxide – a potential cause of the observed pulmonary fibrosis – is a product of the thermite reaction, and there is now considerable evidence for the use of thermite in the destruction of WTC buildings 1, 2 and 7.[5] Additionally, aluminum and silicates – potential causes of the observed illnesses of the immune system – are components of nanothermite formulations.</p>
<p>Thermite is a mixture of aluminum powder and a metal oxide that, when ignited, exhibits an extremely exothermic reaction producing aluminum oxide and the metal in molten form.&#160; The thermite reaction has been utilized for welding railroads rails and for cutting metal as with anti-tank grenades.&#160; Thermite has also been used to develop patented devices for the demolition of structures.&#160; One such device allows for demolition of a concrete structure “at a high efficiency, while preventing a secondary problem due to noise, flying dust and chips, and the like.”[6] A recent experiment shows that thermite can cut structural steel efficiently.[7]</p>
<p>Sulfur is often added to thermite mixtures to improve the burn qualities and it is then called thermate.&#160; Nanothermite, or superthermite, is a more recently developed variation on thermite in which the aluminum and metal oxide are mixed on the nanometer scale, allowing for more rapid energy release.&#160; Nanothermite can be a simple mixture of nanometer-scale powders or it can be made in a silicon matrix, through a solution-based technique, resulting in “sol-gel” nanothermite.&#160; The sol-gel process allows for the use of organic materials which expand during the reaction, providing more explosive power.</p>
<p>In 2009, an international team of researchers discovered what appear to be sol-gel nanothermite formulations in every WTC dust sample tested.[8] Additionally, similar to the findings of aluminum silicates in the lungs of first responders, the aluminum found in the nanothermite of WTC dust samples was present, along with silicon, in plate-like (platy) configurations.[9] Whether or not the platy configurations of aluminum silicates in the lungs of WTC workers are related to the platy configurations of aluminum and silicon in WTC dust samples is a question that should be answered through further investigation.</p>
<p>Environmental factors</p>
<p>A review of WTC environmental testing results produced by EPA and the University of California was published in 2008.[10] That review showed that air and aerosol emissions of sulfur and silicon compounds at Ground Zero provided evidence that energetic materials such as thermite and nanothermite were present. &#160;The silicon compounds (i.e. silicates) were indicative of the sol-gel variety of nanothermites, and the sulfur compounds suggested the presence of thermate, a sulfur containing derivative of thermite.</p>
<p>EPA also found very high levels of volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) that, like the aluminum, sulfur and silicon compounds, were discovered to be present in unusual spiking patterns.&#160; These spiking patterns suggest that extremely violent, explosive or incendiary events were occurring within the pile at Ground Zero over a period of months.&#160; If fires were the cause of these events, they would have had to have been fires that were driven by an agent that contained its own oxidant, as a thermite or nanothermite mixture does.&#160; This is because extensive efforts were made to put out the fires at the WTC site, including the use of millions of gallons of water and chemical fire suppressants, with little or no effect.&#160; In addition to the tons of dust from the buildings’ destruction and the rainfall events that occurred, these firefighting efforts ensured that normal fires would not have continued.</p>
<p>The presence of thermitic materials explains why the fires lasted for so many months, deep within the oxygen-poor pile, and why the fires were resistant to the extensive, but ineffective, efforts to extinguish them.&#160; In this scenario, the extreme levels of VOCs would be the result of the complete thermal degradation of all plastic materials in the thermitic (incendiary) fires.&#160; In normal structural fires with limited ventilation, plastic materials often burn incompletely.</p>
<p>The pattern of energetic events at Ground Zero, indicated by the spikes in emissions, was different than the expected trend of emissions from a typical structure fire.&#160; As was the case for other structure fires, particulate matter (PM) emissions at Ground Zero were high at first and then died down completely. &#160;However, VOC emissions occurred for a longer duration, and the extreme, spiking emissions of VOCs, and components typical of thermitic mixtures, continued for many months after the particulate matter had died down.</p>
<p>Other unusual results from EPA monitoring included a compound called 1,3-diphenylpropane (1,3-DPP), which had never been seen before in any EPA studies yet was said to be abundant and pervasive at the WTC.&#160; Further investigation is called for due to the fact that 1,3-DPP is used to functionalize nanostructured silicas that are similar to nanothermite materials.[11]</p>
<p>Related to these environmental findings is the fact that first responders have been getting cancers at elevated rates.&#160; Many types of cancers have been reported including leukemia and the rare disease called multiple myeloma.&#160; The most prominent environmental cause of leukemia is benzene, which is one of the VOCs seen prominently in energetic spikes of emissions at Ground Zero.&#160; Benzene was detected at the WTC at levels that were dramatically higher than ever seen before in structure fires; even higher than what was seen at a large fire in a plastics factory.[12]</p>
<p>As for multiple myeloma, researchers associated with the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine examined many sick first responders.&#160; One result was that they found eight times the expected level of multiple myeloma in people below the age of 45.[13]</p>
<p>Environmental factors that cause multiple myeloma include phenoxyacetic acids, which are compounds that are structurally similar to 1,3-DPP.&#160; Another causal factor is DDT, a highly chlorinated diphenylethane.[14] Diphenylethane is structurally very similar to diphenylpropane (DPP).&#160; This suggests that the observed presence of 1,3-DPP could be a causal factor of the multiple myeloma seen in WTC first responders, in that derivatives of 1,3-DPP might be responsible for the illnesses.</p>
<p />
<p /> | false | 1 | tragedy world trade center wtc september 11th 2001 continues affect many thousands first responders sacrificed health restoring lower manhattan attempting recover survivors victims remains160 recently hr 847 otherwise known james zadroga bill signed president obama effort provide services compensation whose health compromised exposure toxic dust gases ground zero160 however first responders also need help understand illnesses originated improvements treatment made160 response need concerned citizens consider possible correlation evidence energetic materials wtc environmental exposures appear caused many illnesses first responders 911 first responders suffer range different illnesses rare general population160 illnesses attributed high ph wtc dust160 know extent ph problem thanks epa whistleblower dr cate jenkins1 high ph dust inhaled 911 first responders probable cause general deterioration lungs function due dusts corrosive state160 dr jenkins wrote corrosivity would acted directly cause respiratory chemical burns also would increased toxic properties pollutants wtc facilitating entry body respiratory system commonly observed conditions among first responders include reactive airways dysfunction syndrome rads caused exposure high concentrations irritants caustic metallic dusts upper respiratory illnesses sinusitis laryngitis lower respiratory disorders asthma known world trade center cough less understood requiring study unusual illnesses immune system commonly observed wtc first responders160 include various types interstitial lung disease eosinophilic pneumonia granulomatous pneumonitis bronchial obliterans160 environmental triggers illnesses include aluminum silicates found lungs wtc first responders high levels unusual platy configurations 2 common wtc lung ailments include sarcoidosis known caused aluminum dust3 pulmonary fibrosis caused aluminum oxide4 findings lacked adequate scientific explanation160 recent research suggests correlation causes destruction wtc buildings 1 2 7160 aluminum oxide potential cause observed pulmonary fibrosis product thermite reaction considerable evidence use thermite destruction wtc buildings 1 2 75 additionally aluminum silicates potential causes observed illnesses immune system components nanothermite formulations thermite mixture aluminum powder metal oxide ignited exhibits extremely exothermic reaction producing aluminum oxide metal molten form160 thermite reaction utilized welding railroads rails cutting metal antitank grenades160 thermite also used develop patented devices demolition structures160 one device allows demolition concrete structure high efficiency preventing secondary problem due noise flying dust chips like6 recent experiment shows thermite cut structural steel efficiently7 sulfur often added thermite mixtures improve burn qualities called thermate160 nanothermite superthermite recently developed variation thermite aluminum metal oxide mixed nanometer scale allowing rapid energy release160 nanothermite simple mixture nanometerscale powders made silicon matrix solutionbased technique resulting solgel nanothermite160 solgel process allows use organic materials expand reaction providing explosive power 2009 international team researchers discovered appear solgel nanothermite formulations every wtc dust sample tested8 additionally similar findings aluminum silicates lungs first responders aluminum found nanothermite wtc dust samples present along silicon platelike platy configurations9 whether platy configurations aluminum silicates lungs wtc workers related platy configurations aluminum silicon wtc dust samples question answered investigation environmental factors review wtc environmental testing results produced epa university california published 200810 review showed air aerosol emissions sulfur silicon compounds ground zero provided evidence energetic materials thermite nanothermite present 160the silicon compounds ie silicates indicative solgel variety nanothermites sulfur compounds suggested presence thermate sulfur containing derivative thermite epa also found high levels volatile organic chemicals vocs like aluminum sulfur silicon compounds discovered present unusual spiking patterns160 spiking patterns suggest extremely violent explosive incendiary events occurring within pile ground zero period months160 fires cause events would fires driven agent contained oxidant thermite nanothermite mixture does160 extensive efforts made put fires wtc site including use millions gallons water chemical fire suppressants little effect160 addition tons dust buildings destruction rainfall events occurred firefighting efforts ensured normal fires would continued presence thermitic materials explains fires lasted many months deep within oxygenpoor pile fires resistant extensive ineffective efforts extinguish them160 scenario extreme levels vocs would result complete thermal degradation plastic materials thermitic incendiary fires160 normal structural fires limited ventilation plastic materials often burn incompletely pattern energetic events ground zero indicated spikes emissions different expected trend emissions typical structure fire160 case structure fires particulate matter pm emissions ground zero high first died completely 160however voc emissions occurred longer duration extreme spiking emissions vocs components typical thermitic mixtures continued many months particulate matter died unusual results epa monitoring included compound called 13diphenylpropane 13dpp never seen epa studies yet said abundant pervasive wtc160 investigation called due fact 13dpp used functionalize nanostructured silicas similar nanothermite materials11 related environmental findings fact first responders getting cancers elevated rates160 many types cancers reported including leukemia rare disease called multiple myeloma160 prominent environmental cause leukemia benzene one vocs seen prominently energetic spikes emissions ground zero160 benzene detected wtc levels dramatically higher ever seen structure fires even higher seen large fire plastics factory12 multiple myeloma researchers associated world trade center medical monitoring treatment program mount sinai school medicine examined many sick first responders160 one result found eight times expected level multiple myeloma people age 4513 environmental factors cause multiple myeloma include phenoxyacetic acids compounds structurally similar 13dpp160 another causal factor ddt highly chlorinated diphenylethane14 diphenylethane structurally similar diphenylpropane dpp160 suggests observed presence 13dpp could causal factor multiple myeloma seen wtc first responders derivatives 13dpp might responsible illnesses | 821 |
<p>The Honor CodeHow Moral Revolutions Happenby Kwame Anthony AppiahNorton, 264 pp., $25.95</p>
<p>When President Obama excused his failure to help the abortive Iranian revolution in 2009 by saying that the protestors were “on the right side of history,” or when Harry Reid (himself “always on the right side of history,” according to the president) attempted to stigmatize Republicans as being like slaveowners for opposing the president's health care bill because they were not (like the Democrats) “on the right side of history,” or when the late Edward Kennedy used to fulminate about “reactionary” Republicans — all were implicitly appealing to historicist assumptions inherited by the progressive left from Marxism.</p>
<p>So far, at least, if no farther, those on the right who identify Obamaism with socialism are right: “History” to Marx was a god-substitute whose will not only should be done but would be done, since we were all helpless to resist its predetermined course. As the name they have chosen for themselves suggests, American progressives, even when they have not been seduced into actual Marxism as many were in the 1920s and '30s and then again in the 1960s, have always had something of a fascination with such historically determinist thinking. That's why, I take it, they continue to use the language which presupposes it. They may not look forward anymore to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, but they still find it easy to assume that history has a “side” — and that they themselves must be on it.</p>
<p>Though he is Ghanaian by birth, Kwame Anthony Appiah, professor of philosophy at Princeton, has presumably been part of American academe long enough to have picked up the habit, and in his new book, it has led him seriously astray. For “honor” to Professor Appiah remains a vague concept and, though taxonomized, it is never properly defined. As he uses the term, it almost always refers simply to the sum of the things that, in different times and places, honor required of people who, for some reason he doesn't feel it necessary to go into, considered themselves to be bound by its requirements — until they didn't anymore. Most of the time, that is, “honor” is a near-synonym for public opinion, and public opinion, as we all know, changes. As with morality, moreover, everybody nowadays assumes he has a right to make up his own honor.</p>
<p>It should not be necessary to point out that this has not always been the case. I think that what Appiah is really writing about is decency. Honor and decency have this in common: that they are not, primarily, absolute values but socially contingent ones. This makes it particularly important to study them in their social and historical context and not in the abstract. But where almost anything can be decent, depending on the society, honor also has an absolute dimension. Historically, in every actually existing honor system we know of, honor is inseparable from shame, is fundamentally and inevitably different for men and women (for men it involves strength and fighting prowess, for women it involves sexual continence), and it routinely inspires acts of violence.</p>
<p>Yet these elements, so Appiah assumes, can be silently subtracted from the honor formula without changing anything important about it. Honor, he writes, “especially when purged of its prejudices of caste and gender and the like, is peculiarly well suited to turn private moral sentiments into public norms” and so “can help us make a better world.” But what if honor, “purged of its prejudices of caste and gender and the like,” isn't honor anymore? What if the utopian effort to “make a better world” requires that we first get rid of honor — always assuming this is possible? For honor and utopianism are antithetical. Honor, when it was important to us, was important not because it was a way to make a better world but because it guided us in our interactions with the world as it is, and especially in regard to its two most salient and dangerous features of sex and violence.</p>
<p>Honor, Appiah notices, used to uphold the custom of dueling in Britain, female footbinding in China, and the slave trade pretty much everywhere. Then it didn't anymore. These changes in public opinion took place mostly in the 19th century, and Appiah has lots of ideas about why they happened, most of them to do with social snobbery in highly class-based societies. But when he attempts to lump these all together under the concept of “honor” he is handicapped by having little or no historical understanding of what the term honor meant to the people who believed in it and why they considered themselves bound by it — and no sense, even, that it would matter if he did. It's enough for him to describe what honor once demanded of these benighted souls — in, for example, the duel fought between the Duke of Wellington and the Earl of Winchelsea in 1829 — and then to show how those demands continued to weaken until duels became as unfashionable as they had once been fashionable.</p>
<p>Likewise with slavery and footbinding. His view turns out to be that the special form of public opinion he chooses to call “honor” eventually put a stop to dueling, foot-binding, and slavery because public opinion turned against these things. To call this process honor is to add no explanatory element but simply to put a label on it, and an inaccurate label at that.</p>
<p>Honor was the thing that was changing (and degrading), not the agent of change. That was something else: namely, a widening of the moral sense as a result of Enlightenment thinking, and of the individual's obligation to abstract principle instead of to his family, tribe, nation, or other honor group. The triumph of morality over honor may or may not be something to celebrate — most people today would probably say that it is, whether they believed it or not — but to suppose that morality became honor, or honorable, is to be guilty of a basic confusion of thought.</p>
<p>If so, however, it has become a common one. As someone who has himself written a book about honor, I don't mind saying that what puzzles me about Appiah, as about so many others who are eager to pronounce on the subject, is his assumption that what honor ought to be (in his view) is of more interest to the reader than what it actually is — or, for the most part, was, since in all but a lingering reflexive sense it has gone badly out of fashion. It is as if he were writing a book about insects or sailing ships or gardening that described these things in ideal and even fantastical terms with only incidental reference to existing insects, sailing ships, or gardening practices.</p>
<p>Like most people who use the term at all these days, Appiah uses “honor” to mean nothing more than some mode of behavior of which he (and others of the progressive persuasion) approves. As a result, the philosopher's attempt to dabble in history is essentially an extended tautology: To say that changes in “honor” resulted in changes in certain common social practices is, in the absence of any very clear idea of what honor is apart from those changes, simply to say that change produced change.</p>
<p>What, then, is the point of making this argument? Why drag “honor” into it at all? The answer is that it amounts to an apologia for our old friend history, busily converting darkness into light, ignorance into knowledge, bad into good, without our having to do anything but keep the reactionaries from standing in its way. After his chapters on the duel, foot-binding, and slavery, Appiah's fourth chapter on “Wars Against Women” — a politically tendentious title that betrays his lack of understanding of the concept — is an account of the (mainly South Asian) phenomenon of honor killing, and his fifth, “Lessons and Legacies,” sketches in what he thinks honor ought to be. Not surprisingly, you couldn't slide the sharp end of the blade of a dueling sword between that and the most advanced progressive opinion.</p>
<p>What I take to be the impulse behind this curious s ort of scholarship is, in some ways, a laudable one. It is an attempt to rescue what is supposed to be something useful and desirable in itself, namely the concept of honor, from its own shocking political incorrectness. Real honor, its new advocates want desperately to believe, is not violent or misogynistic — even though every kind of actually existing honor known to history is (in contemporary terms) both violent and misogynistic. They devoutly believe in an ideal of reformed honor that lives up to contemporary ideas of proper politics and morals and then, reading backwards, find that existing codes of honor must be merely corrupted and unpurified versions of this ideal.</p>
<p>The idea is absurd and absurdly unhistorical, but it does suggest how much of contemporary scholarship is devoted to advocacy of one sort or another of utopian fantasy under the color of social science. If honor really does have its uses — and many would argue that it doesn't — we shall remain blind to them so long as we study it not as it was, and is, but as we wish it to be.</p>
<p>James Bowman, the author of Honor: A History and Media Madness, is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.</p> | false | 1 | honor codehow moral revolutions happenby kwame anthony appiahnorton 264 pp 2595 president obama excused failure help abortive iranian revolution 2009 saying protestors right side history harry reid always right side history according president attempted stigmatize republicans like slaveowners opposing presidents health care bill like democrats right side history late edward kennedy used fulminate reactionary republicans implicitly appealing historicist assumptions inherited progressive left marxism far least farther right identify obamaism socialism right history marx godsubstitute whose done would done since helpless resist predetermined course name chosen suggests american progressives even seduced actual marxism many 1920s 30s 1960s always something fascination historically determinist thinking thats take continue use language presupposes may look forward anymore dictatorship proletariat still find easy assume history side must though ghanaian birth kwame anthony appiah professor philosophy princeton presumably part american academe long enough picked habit new book led seriously astray honor professor appiah remains vague concept though taxonomized never properly defined uses term almost always refers simply sum things different times places honor required people reason doesnt feel necessary go considered bound requirements didnt anymore time honor nearsynonym public opinion public opinion know changes morality moreover everybody nowadays assumes right make honor necessary point always case think appiah really writing decency honor decency common primarily absolute values socially contingent ones makes particularly important study social historical context abstract almost anything decent depending society honor also absolute dimension historically every actually existing honor system know honor inseparable shame fundamentally inevitably different men women men involves strength fighting prowess women involves sexual continence routinely inspires acts violence yet elements appiah assumes silently subtracted honor formula without changing anything important honor writes especially purged prejudices caste gender like peculiarly well suited turn private moral sentiments public norms help us make better world honor purged prejudices caste gender like isnt honor anymore utopian effort make better world requires first get rid honor always assuming possible honor utopianism antithetical honor important us important way make better world guided us interactions world especially regard two salient dangerous features sex violence honor appiah notices used uphold custom dueling britain female footbinding china slave trade pretty much everywhere didnt anymore changes public opinion took place mostly 19th century appiah lots ideas happened social snobbery highly classbased societies attempts lump together concept honor handicapped little historical understanding term honor meant people believed considered bound sense even would matter enough describe honor demanded benighted souls example duel fought duke wellington earl winchelsea 1829 show demands continued weaken duels became unfashionable fashionable likewise slavery footbinding view turns special form public opinion chooses call honor eventually put stop dueling footbinding slavery public opinion turned things call process honor add explanatory element simply put label inaccurate label honor thing changing degrading agent change something else namely widening moral sense result enlightenment thinking individuals obligation abstract principle instead family tribe nation honor group triumph morality honor may may something celebrate people today would probably say whether believed suppose morality became honor honorable guilty basic confusion thought however become common one someone written book honor dont mind saying puzzles appiah many others eager pronounce subject assumption honor ought view interest reader actually part since lingering reflexive sense gone badly fashion writing book insects sailing ships gardening described things ideal even fantastical terms incidental reference existing insects sailing ships gardening practices like people use term days appiah uses honor mean nothing mode behavior others progressive persuasion approves result philosophers attempt dabble history essentially extended tautology say changes honor resulted changes certain common social practices absence clear idea honor apart changes simply say change produced change point making argument drag honor answer amounts apologia old friend history busily converting darkness light ignorance knowledge bad good without anything keep reactionaries standing way chapters duel footbinding slavery appiahs fourth chapter wars women politically tendentious title betrays lack understanding concept account mainly south asian phenomenon honor killing fifth lessons legacies sketches thinks honor ought surprisingly couldnt slide sharp end blade dueling sword advanced progressive opinion take impulse behind curious ort scholarship ways laudable one attempt rescue supposed something useful desirable namely concept honor shocking political incorrectness real honor new advocates want desperately believe violent misogynistic even though every kind actually existing honor known history contemporary terms violent misogynistic devoutly believe ideal reformed honor lives contemporary ideas proper politics morals reading backwards find existing codes honor must merely corrupted unpurified versions ideal idea absurd absurdly unhistorical suggest much contemporary scholarship devoted advocacy one sort another utopian fantasy color social science honor really uses many would argue doesnt shall remain blind long study wish james bowman author honor history media madness resident scholar ethics public policy center | 768 |
<p>BDS has grown to be a major platform to facilitate solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle against Israel's oppressive occupation regime.</p>
<p>BDS stands for ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions’. The BDS Movement was the outcome of several events that shaped the Palestinian national struggle and international solidarity with the Palestinian people following the Second Uprising (Intifada) in 2000.</p>
<p>Building on a decades-long tradition of civil disobedience and popular resistance, and invigorated by growing international solidarity with the Palestinian struggle as exhibited in the World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa in 2001, Palestinians moved into action.</p>
<p>In 2004, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) called for the boycott of Israeli government and academic institutions for their direct contributions to the military occupation and subjugation of the Palestinian people. This was followed in 2005 by a sweeping <a href="https://bdsmovement.net/call" type="external">call for boycott</a> made by 170 Palestinian civil society organizations.</p>
<p><a href="https://bdsmovement.net/academic-boycott" type="external">PACBI</a> has served as a medium through which the Palestinian point of view is articulated and presented to international audiences through the use of media, academic and cultural platforms. Because of its continued efforts and mobilization since 2004, many <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20150804-293-us-universities-and-a-church-to-join-bds/" type="external">universities</a>, teachers’ unions, student groups and <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0ahUKEwistJLD8sHWAhUL6GMKHZXdDy8QFggoMAA&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.democracynow.org%2F2017%2F9%2F14%2Fpink_floyd_founder_roger_waters_bds&amp;usg=AFQjCNFLHu_3V4d2icm7BrzGFbHBPlARsw" type="external">artists</a> around the world have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/08/stephen-hawking-israel-academic-boycott" type="external">endorsed BDS</a> and <a href="http://mondoweiss.net/2016/03/open-letter-to-mcgill-universitys-suzanne-fortier-rectify-your-misrepresentation-of-bds/" type="external">spoken out</a> in support of the movement.</p>
<p>In the absence of any international mechanism to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, and the lack of international law being enforced, as expressed in dozens of un-implemented United Nations resolutions, BDS has grown to become a major platform to facilitate solidarity with the Palestinian people, apply pressure on and <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/under-israeli-gag-order-omar-barghouti-urges-more-bds" type="external">demand accountability</a> from Israel and those who are funding, or in any way enabling, Israel’s occupation of Palestine.</p>
<p>The call for BDS is made by Palestinian society. This is important, for no one has the right to represent the Palestinian struggle but Palestinians themselves.</p>
<p>However, the BDS movement itself—although centred on Palestinian priorities—is an inclusive global platform. Grounded in humanistic values, BDS aims to court world public opinion and appeals to international and humanitarian law to bring peace and justice in Palestine and Israel.</p>
<p>The boycott movement was at the heart of the South African struggle that ultimately defeated Apartheid in that country. Roots of that movement in South Africa go back to the 1950s and 60s, and even before. However, it was accelerated during the 1980s, which, ultimately, led to the collapse of the Apartheid regime in 1991.</p>
<p>There are many other precedents in history. Notable amongst them is the Boston Tea Party, protesting unfair taxation by the British Parliament; the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 (which ushered in the rise of the Civil Rights Movement led by Martin Luther King. Jr.) and the Salt March led by Mohandas Gandhi in 1930 (which initiated the civil disobedience campaign that was a major factor leading to India’s independence in 1947.)</p>
<p>All of these are stark examples of popular movements using economic pressure to end the subjugation of one group by another. BDS is no different.</p>
<p>The BDS movement has <a href="https://bdsmovement.net/what-is-bds" type="external">three main demands</a>. They are:</p>
<p>– Ending Israel’s illegal occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Apartheid Wall.</p>
<p>– Recognizing the fundamental rights, including that of full equality, of Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel.</p>
<p>– Respecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.</p>
<p>The BDS movement is the collective expression of the will and aspirations of the Palestinian people, who serve as the backbone of the popular, de-centralized movement.</p>
<p>Additionally, BDS is supported by conscientious people throughout the world, whether in their capacity as individuals, or as representatives of <a href="http://www.jns.org/news-briefs/2016/6/27/presbyterian-church-passes-resolutions-supporting-bds-slamming-israeli-settlements" type="external">religious institutions</a>, academic institutions, labour and professional unions, student groups and other organizations.</p>
<p>By equating any criticism of Israel and its right-wing government with anti-Semitism, Israeli supporters readily <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/Students-Supporting-Israel-SSI-blog/Bully-Deceive-Smear-10-Reasons-Why-BDS-is-Bad-for-Everyone-444257" type="external">accuse BDS</a> of being an anti-Semitic movement.</p>
<p>For example, the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League (ADL) bases such an <a href="https://www.adl.org/education/resources/backgrounders/bds-the-global-campaign-to-delegitimize-israel" type="external">accusation</a> on the premise that “many individuals involved in BDS campaigns are driven by opposition to Israel’s very existence as a Jewish state.”</p>
<p>The above is one of many such claims aimed at <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2013/11/15/3891979.htm" type="external">mispresenting</a> the BDS Movement. These claims are also meant to confuse and distract from the discussion at hand. Instead of engaging with internationally-supported Palestinian demands for justice and freedom, the anti-BDS campaigners disengage from the conversation altogether by levying the accusation of anti-Semitism against their detractors.</p>
<p>Not in the least. In fact, <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/01/boycott-divestment-sanctions-bds-170110165203991.html" type="external">quite the opposite</a>. BDS opposes the supremacy of any racial group or the dominance of any religion over others. As such, BDS challenges the Israeli legal system that privileges Jewish citizens and discriminates against Palestinian Muslims and Christians.</p>
<p>The ‘peace process’, which operated largely outside the framework of international law, has proven to be a <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.762347" type="external">splendid failure</a>. Talks that began in Madrid in 1991, followed by the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993, the Paris Protocol in 1994, Hebron Protocol in 1997, Wye River 1998, Camp David 2002, and other agreements and understandings only led to the cementing of Israeli occupation, tripling the number of illegal Jewish settlers and vastly expanding the illegal Israeli settlement network in the Occupied Territories.</p>
<p>Since then, several wars have been waged against Palestinians, especially in Gaza, killing thousands and maiming thousands more. With no serious pressure on Israel, thanks to US backing of Israel at the UN, not a single Israeli was ever held accountable for what was repeatedly recognized by UN investigators as war crimes against Palestinians.</p>
<p>In the early months of his first term in office, former US President Barack Obama attempted to breathe life in the defunct ‘peace process’, only to be met with Israeli refusal to freeze the construction of illegal settlements. Eventually, talks ended and they are yet to resume.</p>
<p>The suffering of Palestinians is now at its worst since the Israeli occupation in 1967. Gaza is under a decade-long, suffocating siege; occupied East Jerusalem is completely cut off from the rest of Palestinian towns and the West Bank is divided into various zones – Area A, B and C—all under various forms of control by the Israeli army.</p>
<p>The Israeli government has sponsored several <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/03/israel-blasts-bds-movement-summit-170330042408157.html" type="external">conferences</a> aimed at developing a strategy to discredit BDS and to slow down its growth. It has also worked with its supporters across North America and Europe to lobby governments to condemn and to outlaw BDS activities and the boycott of Israel in general.</p>
<p>These efforts culminated on March 23, 2017 with <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/senate-bill-720-making-it-a-crime-to-support-palestinian_us_598efd20e4b063e2ae057fcc" type="external">Senate bill S720</a> which, if passed in its current form, will make the boycott of Israel an illegal act punishable by imprisonment and a heavy fine.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Israel has already enacted laws that <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/08/israel-challenges-bds-home-170803044045108.html" type="external">ban foreign BDS supporters</a> from entering the country. This also applies to Jewish BDS supporters.</p>
<p>Top Israeli government officials perceive BDS as their greatest threat. It is the first time in many years that this form of non-violent civil rights action has registered so profoundly on the agenda of Israel’s political elite.</p>
<p>The massive campaign underway to fight and discredit BDS is a testament to the power and resolve of the civil-society centred Movement. Palestinians are determined to, someday, achieve their own ‘South Africa moment’, when <a href="https://bdsmovement.net/colonialism-and-apartheid/summary" type="external">Apartheid</a> was vanquished under the dual pressure of resistance at home and the global boycott campaign.</p>
<p>Moreover, BDS is successfully <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/11/essay-bds-feminist-issue-151124063536327.html" type="external">pushing the conversation</a> on Palestine away from the margins to the centre. It seems that, the more Israel attempts to thwart boycott efforts, the more opportunities BDS supporters have to engage the media and general public. The accessibility of social media has proven fundamental to that strategy.</p>
<p>BDS is growing because it is both a moral and legal obligation to support oppressed people and pressure those who violate international law to end their unwarranted practices.</p>
<p>Writing from his cell in Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”</p>
<p>Guided by such moralistic principles, BDS offers a platform for anyone who wants to demonstrate solidarity with the Palestinian people in their 70-year-long struggle for freedom, justice and human rights.</p> | false | 1 | bds grown major platform facilitate solidarity palestinian people struggle israels oppressive occupation regime bds stands boycott divestment sanctions bds movement outcome several events shaped palestinian national struggle international solidarity palestinian people following second uprising intifada 2000 building decadeslong tradition civil disobedience popular resistance invigorated growing international solidarity palestinian struggle exhibited world conference racism durban south africa 2001 palestinians moved action 2004 palestinian campaign academic cultural boycott israel pacbi called boycott israeli government academic institutions direct contributions military occupation subjugation palestinian people followed 2005 sweeping call boycott made 170 palestinian civil society organizations pacbi served medium palestinian point view articulated presented international audiences use media academic cultural platforms continued efforts mobilization since 2004 many universities teachers unions student groups artists around world endorsed bds spoken support movement absence international mechanism end israeli occupation palestinian land lack international law enforced expressed dozens unimplemented united nations resolutions bds grown become major platform facilitate solidarity palestinian people apply pressure demand accountability israel funding way enabling israels occupation palestine call bds made palestinian society important one right represent palestinian struggle palestinians however bds movement itselfalthough centred palestinian prioritiesis inclusive global platform grounded humanistic values bds aims court world public opinion appeals international humanitarian law bring peace justice palestine israel boycott movement heart south african struggle ultimately defeated apartheid country roots movement south africa go back 1950s 60s even however accelerated 1980s ultimately led collapse apartheid regime 1991 many precedents history notable amongst boston tea party protesting unfair taxation british parliament montgomery bus boycott 1955 ushered rise civil rights movement led martin luther king jr salt march led mohandas gandhi 1930 initiated civil disobedience campaign major factor leading indias independence 1947 stark examples popular movements using economic pressure end subjugation one group another bds different bds movement three main demands ending israels illegal occupation colonization arab lands dismantling apartheid wall recognizing fundamental rights including full equality arabpalestinian citizens israel respecting promoting rights palestinian refugees return homes properties stipulated un resolution 194 bds movement collective expression aspirations palestinian people serve backbone popular decentralized movement additionally bds supported conscientious people throughout world whether capacity individuals representatives religious institutions academic institutions labour professional unions student groups organizations equating criticism israel rightwing government antisemitism israeli supporters readily accuse bds antisemitic movement example proisrael antidefamation league adl bases accusation premise many individuals involved bds campaigns driven opposition israels existence jewish state one many claims aimed mispresenting bds movement claims also meant confuse distract discussion hand instead engaging internationallysupported palestinian demands justice freedom antibds campaigners disengage conversation altogether levying accusation antisemitism detractors least fact quite opposite bds opposes supremacy racial group dominance religion others bds challenges israeli legal system privileges jewish citizens discriminates palestinian muslims christians peace process operated largely outside framework international law proven splendid failure talks began madrid 1991 followed oslo peace accords 1993 paris protocol 1994 hebron protocol 1997 wye river 1998 camp david 2002 agreements understandings led cementing israeli occupation tripling number illegal jewish settlers vastly expanding illegal israeli settlement network occupied territories since several wars waged palestinians especially gaza killing thousands maiming thousands serious pressure israel thanks us backing israel un single israeli ever held accountable repeatedly recognized un investigators war crimes palestinians early months first term office former us president barack obama attempted breathe life defunct peace process met israeli refusal freeze construction illegal settlements eventually talks ended yet resume suffering palestinians worst since israeli occupation 1967 gaza decadelong suffocating siege occupied east jerusalem completely cut rest palestinian towns west bank divided various zones area b call various forms control israeli army israeli government sponsored several conferences aimed developing strategy discredit bds slow growth also worked supporters across north america europe lobby governments condemn outlaw bds activities boycott israel general efforts culminated march 23 2017 senate bill s720 passed current form make boycott israel illegal act punishable imprisonment heavy fine meanwhile israel already enacted laws ban foreign bds supporters entering country also applies jewish bds supporters top israeli government officials perceive bds greatest threat first time many years form nonviolent civil rights action registered profoundly agenda israels political elite massive campaign underway fight discredit bds testament power resolve civilsociety centred movement palestinians determined someday achieve south africa moment apartheid vanquished dual pressure resistance home global boycott campaign moreover bds successfully pushing conversation palestine away margins centre seems israel attempts thwart boycott efforts opportunities bds supporters engage media general public accessibility social media proven fundamental strategy bds growing moral legal obligation support oppressed people pressure violate international law end unwarranted practices writing cell birmingham jail martin luther king jr wrote injustice anywhere threat justice everywhere guided moralistic principles bds offers platform anyone wants demonstrate solidarity palestinian people 70yearlong struggle freedom justice human rights | 776 |
<p>BEREA, Ohio — If the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Cleveland-Browns/" type="external">Cleveland Browns</a> need any new inspiration to finish the season strong, they have it in the form of a new boss.</p>
<p>Browns owner Jimmy Haslam fired executive vice president of football operations <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Sashi-Brown/" type="external">Sashi Brown</a> last week and hired John Dorsey as general manager to replace him.</p>
<p>Dorsey took mental notes while watching the Browns lose to the Packers and he will be doing the same this Sunday when they host the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Baltimore-Ravens/" type="external">Baltimore Ravens</a> in their final home game of 2017.</p>
<p>“Anytime there’s a change up top, I think guys think about it,” left guard Joel Bitonio said. “It’s the National Football League. There are only 53 spots on a roster and there’s a new decision-maker making those moves.</p>
<p>“I would say any time you change management, there’s always a thought of, ‘What does he think about us? What’s his game plan going to be about the 53-man roster?’ It’s something that we can’t worry about, but I think the thought crosses players’ heads. As players, we’re focused on the last three games and doing everything we can to try and get a win any way we can.”</p>
<p>The Browns are 0-13. They were beaten 24-10 in Baltimore in the second week of the season in rookie quarterback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/DeShone-Kizer/" type="external">DeShone Kizer</a>‘s second start. Kizer threw three interceptions in that game. The Browns scored their only touchdown with <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kevin-Hogan/" type="external">Kevin Hogan</a> at quarterback when Kizer was on the sideline nursing a migraine headache.</p>
<p>Kizer is healthy and will be making his 13th start. He has thrown 17 interceptions. He has thrown multiple interceptions in five games and is coming off a two-interception game against the Packers.</p>
<p>Kizer is one of the players Dorsey will be watching closely as the season winds down. The Browns are in position to have the first pick in the draft for the second straight year. Dorsey wasn’t putting down Kizer when he made the remark, but he said the Browns won’t win regularly until they find their quarterback. Kizer could be the answer, but it could also be a veteran destined for free agency in March or a 2018 draft pick.</p>
<p>“This is a quarterback-driven league,” Dorsey said. “We all know that, and we all know to succeed and go a little bit further and further and further that you need one of those guys.</p>
<p>“I think it’s an evaluation period that’s going to take a little bit of a while to put a plan together. The draft is four and a half months away and free agency is like three months away. We have ample time to make a plan here.”</p>
<p>Running back is another area of the offense Dorsey will be scrutinizing. Browns starter <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Isaiah-Crowell/" type="external">Isaiah Crowell</a> rushed for 37 yards on 10 carries in the first meeting with the Ravens.</p>
<p>The Browns’ run offense has improved since then because the offensive line has learned to work in sync despite losing All-Pro left tackle <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Joe_Thomas/" type="external">Joe Thomas</a> in the seventh game with a torn left triceps.</p>
<p>Crowell will be an unrestricted free agent in March without a new contract. Crowell will follow the money. If he finishes strong, starting Sunday against the Ravens, Dorsey might decide trying to re-sign Crowell is better than targeting another running back with a draft pick.</p>
<p>SERIES HISTORY: 38th regular-season meeting. Ravens lead series, 28-9. Home field does not translate into an advantage for the Browns when it comes to playing the Ravens. The only time the Browns beat the Ravens in Cleveland in the last 10 years was in 2013 when they won 24-18.</p>
<p>–Rookie defensive end <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Myles-Garrett/" type="external">Myles Garrett</a> is not having the season he hoped to have. Part of it is because he missed four games with an ankle injury and one with a concussion, but another factor is teams are countering the Browns’ pass rush with quick passes.</p>
<p>“You can’t do anything when the quarterback is getting in (shot)gun (formation) and having a no-back, empty (set) and getting the ball out fast,” linebacker Christian Kirksey said. “By the time our blitz is getting to him, he’s getting the ball out fast.”</p>
<p>Opponents are completing 68.8 percent of their passes against the Browns and have a 103.9 passer rating against them.</p>
<p>–The Ravens’ last visit to FirstEnergy Stadium in the second game of 2016 is a game the Browns would love to avenge this week. The Browns led, 20-0, in the second quarter, but then the Ravens returned a blocked extra-point attempt to the opposite end zone for two points. They scored 23 more unanswered points for a 25-20 victory. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Josh_McCown/" type="external">Josh McCown</a>, the Browns’ starting quarterback, completed 20 of 33 passes for 260 yards with two touchdowns and two interceptions.</p>
<p>–The Browns have found a new way to celebrate touchdowns. The receivers wore sunglasses on the sideline in the moments after scoring a passing touchdown against the Packers last week. They might do the same this Sunday if they score against the Ravens.</p>
<p>Some might say a winless team has no business with such a celebration. It didn’t draw a penalty flag. Head coach <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Hue-Jackson/" type="external">Hue Jackson</a> has no problem with it.</p>
<p>“Honestly, football is supposed to be fun,” Jackson said. “I know it’s fun when you’re winning games and we all want more touchdowns and more celebrations, but I didn’t (have an issue with it). Hey look, if that means those guys are going to keep scoring touchdowns, I will buy them some Ray-Ban glasses.”</p>
<p>–Opponents are possessing the ball nearly four minutes a game longer (31:59 compared to 28:01), yet they have run only five more plays all season – 835 compared to 830 for the Browns.</p>
<p>–Defensive tackle Danny Shelton is expected to be back in the starting lineup after missing the game with the Packers because of a chest/ribs injury. He is a critical part of the run defense and could be a busy man Sunday clearing out blockers so the linebackers can get a clean shot at running back Alex Collins. Collins leads the Ravens with 825 yards on 162 carries.</p>
<p>NOTES: CB Jamar Taylor (foot) did not practice Wednesday. Head coach Hue Jackson said resting Taylor was “precautionary.” … CB Briean Boddy-Calhoun (knee) did not practice. He was inactive last week against the Packers because of the injury. … S Jabrill Peppers (knee) was limited Wednesday. The injury prevented him from playing against the Packers. … DT Danny Shelton (chest/ribs) was limited after being inactive against the Packers. … DE T.Y. McGill, WR Bryce Treggs and DL Tyrone Holmes were waived. … WR Matt Hazel was signed off the Colts practice squad. He was limited in practice Wednesday because of a hamstring injury. … OL Geoff Gray was signed off the Jets’ practice squad.</p> | false | 1 | berea ohio cleveland browns need new inspiration finish season strong form new boss browns owner jimmy haslam fired executive vice president football operations sashi brown last week hired john dorsey general manager replace dorsey took mental notes watching browns lose packers sunday host baltimore ravens final home game 2017 anytime theres change top think guys think left guard joel bitonio said national football league 53 spots roster theres new decisionmaker making moves would say time change management theres always thought think us whats game plan going 53man roster something cant worry think thought crosses players heads players focused last three games everything try get win way browns 013 beaten 2410 baltimore second week season rookie quarterback deshone kizers second start kizer threw three interceptions game browns scored touchdown kevin hogan quarterback kizer sideline nursing migraine headache kizer healthy making 13th start thrown 17 interceptions thrown multiple interceptions five games coming twointerception game packers kizer one players dorsey watching closely season winds browns position first pick draft second straight year dorsey wasnt putting kizer made remark said browns wont win regularly find quarterback kizer could answer could also veteran destined free agency march 2018 draft pick quarterbackdriven league dorsey said know know succeed go little bit need one guys think evaluation period thats going take little bit put plan together draft four half months away free agency like three months away ample time make plan running back another area offense dorsey scrutinizing browns starter isaiah crowell rushed 37 yards 10 carries first meeting ravens browns run offense improved since offensive line learned work sync despite losing allpro left tackle joe thomas seventh game torn left triceps crowell unrestricted free agent march without new contract crowell follow money finishes strong starting sunday ravens dorsey might decide trying resign crowell better targeting another running back draft pick series history 38th regularseason meeting ravens lead series 289 home field translate advantage browns comes playing ravens time browns beat ravens cleveland last 10 years 2013 2418 rookie defensive end myles garrett season hoped part missed four games ankle injury one concussion another factor teams countering browns pass rush quick passes cant anything quarterback getting shotgun formation noback empty set getting ball fast linebacker christian kirksey said time blitz getting hes getting ball fast opponents completing 688 percent passes browns 1039 passer rating ravens last visit firstenergy stadium second game 2016 game browns would love avenge week browns led 200 second quarter ravens returned blocked extrapoint attempt opposite end zone two points scored 23 unanswered points 2520 victory josh mccown browns starting quarterback completed 20 33 passes 260 yards two touchdowns two interceptions browns found new way celebrate touchdowns receivers wore sunglasses sideline moments scoring passing touchdown packers last week might sunday score ravens might say winless team business celebration didnt draw penalty flag head coach hue jackson problem honestly football supposed fun jackson said know fun youre winning games want touchdowns celebrations didnt issue hey look means guys going keep scoring touchdowns buy rayban glasses opponents possessing ball nearly four minutes game longer 3159 compared 2801 yet run five plays season 835 compared 830 browns defensive tackle danny shelton expected back starting lineup missing game packers chestribs injury critical part run defense could busy man sunday clearing blockers linebackers get clean shot running back alex collins collins leads ravens 825 yards 162 carries notes cb jamar taylor foot practice wednesday head coach hue jackson said resting taylor precautionary cb briean boddycalhoun knee practice inactive last week packers injury jabrill peppers knee limited wednesday injury prevented playing packers dt danny shelton chestribs limited inactive packers de ty mcgill wr bryce treggs dl tyrone holmes waived wr matt hazel signed colts practice squad limited practice wednesday hamstring injury ol geoff gray signed jets practice squad | 628 |
<p>FRISCO, Texas — Two separate generations have differing impressions of Texas football — one built on a tradition of winning and another that has seen the Longhorns go to just one bowl game in the past three seasons and post three consecutive losing campaigns.</p>
<p>It’s up to Texas’ new coach, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tom-Herman/" type="external">Tom Herman</a>, and his staff to make sure that the recent downswing in Longhorns football is not the only thing that’s in the minds of the players he’s working to bring to Austin to turn that tide.</p>
<p>Herman spoke on Tuesday at Day 2 of the Big 12 Media Days about the expectations for his team and the perceptions he and his assistant coaches are working against to reboot the Longhorns.</p>
<p>It seems like it’s been eons since Texas, which went 16-21 in three seasons under <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Charlie-Strong/" type="external">Charlie Strong</a>, was among college football’s elite teams.</p>
<p>Herman mentioned the not-that-long-ago string of campaigns from 2001-09 in which the Longhorns produced at least 10 victories per season, two appearances in the national championship game, and a title in 2005, but understands that today’s players barely remember those successes. Only three current Longhorns have even been on a winning team in Austin.</p>
<p>“These 16-year-old kids that we’re recruiting, since they were 2 years old, they’ve seen four losing Texas football seasons,” Herman said. “So, the Texas that they know is a lot different than the Texas that people in my generation know. So, it’s our job to show them what Texas is capable of, what Texas has been in the past, and what we’re planning on being again in the future.”</p>
<p>Herman, who joined the Longhorns after two successful seasons at Houston, made “rebranding Texas football” one of his top priorities in his first season.</p>
<p>And while his players have bought in to the changes he and his staff have brought to Austin, Herman said it’s too early to heap huge expectations on a team that hasn’t enjoyed a winning season since 2013 and has posted only three since the 2009 campaign.</p>
<p>“All of you are going to ask me about expectations,” Herman said. “I don’t know. I know that these guys are going to be trained as well as anybody in the country, and we’re going to play to our maximum potential. What that is, I don’t know right now.</p>
<p>“I feel good that these guys are willing to do whatever we ask them to coming off the three-year stretch that this program has had,” Herman added. “They don’t want that to be their legacy. They want to be remembered as the team and the group that turned this thing around. I think we’re well on our way.”</p>
<p>Texas, which was picked fourth in the Big 12’s preseason media poll behind Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Kansas State, will be tested by the tough and balanced league and by a non-conference schedule that includes a road game at USC on Sept. 16.</p>
<p>WASHINGTON LAUDED BY GUNDY</p>
<p>Oklahoma State wide receiver James Washington, who, along with teammate Jalen McCleskey, was named to the Biletnikoff Award watch list, was lauded Tuesday by Cowboys coach Mike Gundy and included in group of the greatest receivers in team history.</p>
<p>Washington led Oklahoma State with 1,380 receiving yards last season and hauled in 10 touchdowns. He announced before the Alamo Bowl he would forgo the NFL draft and stay at OSU for his senior season alongside quarterback Mason Rudolph.</p>
<p>“James Washington is up there with the Dez Bryants and the (Justin) Blackmons and the Rashaun Woods — the guys that have been terrific football players,” Gundy said. “I think James is just scratching the surface.</p>
<p>“James came from a terrific community out in west Texas, a small community. When he got to our place, it was dramatically different than what he’d ever been exposed to. So, he’s had three years and I think the next 10 years for him, really the sky’s the limit, for two reasons. One, because he’s just starting to develop. Two, he’s got a terrific attitude, and he’s unselfish, he loves to play the game of football, and he’s tough.”</p>
<p>TRANSFERS PLAY HUGE ROLE FOR MOUNTAINEERS</p>
<p>West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen has made a living and built some success in the Big 12 by utilizing transfers to their fullest potential.</p>
<p>Junior college transfers, graduate transfers who could play right away or players who came from another FBS school and sat out a year before becoming eligible have filled big roles for the Mountaineers and will again in 2017.</p>
<p>“The first year in the (Big 12) we had some top-end talent, but our depth wasn’t very good, so we started doing a lot of transfers and they’ve worked out,” Holgorsen said Tuesday. “It’s just kind of been what our niche has been. They’ve just worked out for us.”</p>
<p>Since National Signing Day in February, the Mountaineers have brought in six transfers — including one graduate transfer, two junior college players and three transfers from FBS schools who will have to sit out the 2017 season.</p>
<p>The Mountaineers will rely on junior college transfers Justin Crawford, the Big 12’s leading returning rusher after running for 1,184 yards in his first season at West Virginia, and Bednarik Award watch list safety Kyzir White. WVU will also look to receiver Ka’Raun White, who played alongside his brother Kyzir at Lackawanna College before the two came to West Virginia, as one of its top targets in the passing game.</p>
<p>Then there’s quarterback Will Grier, who transferred to Morgantown from Florida. Grier went 6-0 as a freshman with the Gators before he was suspended for testing positive for a performance-enhancing substance. He’s been sitting out since October 2015, but Holgorsen said he’s shown very little rust from the layoff.</p>
<p>“It didn’t take long for us to figure out Grier’s a really good player,” Holgorsen said. “He’s got that starting quarterback trait and he’s got the locker room ready to roll. He gets them out there and watches film with them, throws a lot with them. He controls the huddle. He does everything right.”</p>
<p>SNYDER READY FOR HIS 27TH SEASON</p>
<p>Kansas State coach Bill Snyder said Tuesday that he’s “doing fine” while battling throat cancer and that’s he’s completed treatment and back to full duty after being limited in the spring.</p>
<p>“The recovery is ongoing, quite obviously, but I’m doing fine, getting around fine,” the 77-year-old Snyder said. “I don’t have any issues right now other than trying to prepare for the season. That’s always an ongoing issue. That’s 365 a year.”</p>
<p>The upcoming season will be Snyder’s 27th at the Kansas State helm. His team, buoyed by quarterback Jesse Ertz, running back Alex Barnes and a tough, no-name defense, has been picked third in the Big 12’s preseason media poll and is a dark horse to win the conference.</p>
<p>“We really share one same thing and that’s the fact that we want to win,” Ertz said. “It doesn’t matter how much we communicate or laugh together. At the end of the day we want to win and play football.”</p>
<p>RUHLE’S RULE IS THE WORD AT BAYLOR</p>
<p>Baylor coach Matt Ruhle said Tuesday that the Bears will not run from the past but learn from it as a new regime takes hold in Waco after two seasons of strife surrounding a sexual-assault scandal at the university and investigations that continue into the school’s football program.</p>
<p>“At the end of the day, I don’t know everything that happened, but I just know something happened that was wrong,” said Ruhle, who was hired away from Temple to replace interim coach Jim Grobe in December after the May 2016 firing of Art Briles.</p>
<p>“We’re truly committed to getting the wrongs of the past corrected and to a bright new future,” Ruhle added. “Together, we are committed to our continued cooperation with external and internal reviews of past conduct.”</p>
<p>The Bears were 7-6 in 2016 and will be without key players from a year ago, including at quarterback, wide receiver, running back, the secondary and the offensive line. He does not come from an Air Raid background and will face a transition year not only in players but in offensive attack.</p> | false | 1 | frisco texas two separate generations differing impressions texas football one built tradition winning another seen longhorns go one bowl game past three seasons post three consecutive losing campaigns texas new coach tom herman staff make sure recent downswing longhorns football thing thats minds players hes working bring austin turn tide herman spoke tuesday day 2 big 12 media days expectations team perceptions assistant coaches working reboot longhorns seems like eons since texas went 1621 three seasons charlie strong among college footballs elite teams herman mentioned notthatlongago string campaigns 200109 longhorns produced least 10 victories per season two appearances national championship game title 2005 understands todays players barely remember successes three current longhorns even winning team austin 16yearold kids recruiting since 2 years old theyve seen four losing texas football seasons herman said texas know lot different texas people generation know job show texas capable texas past planning future herman joined longhorns two successful seasons houston made rebranding texas football one top priorities first season players bought changes staff brought austin herman said early heap huge expectations team hasnt enjoyed winning season since 2013 posted three since 2009 campaign going ask expectations herman said dont know know guys going trained well anybody country going play maximum potential dont know right feel good guys willing whatever ask coming threeyear stretch program herman added dont want legacy want remembered team group turned thing around think well way texas picked fourth big 12s preseason media poll behind oklahoma oklahoma state kansas state tested tough balanced league nonconference schedule includes road game usc sept 16 washington lauded gundy oklahoma state wide receiver james washington along teammate jalen mccleskey named biletnikoff award watch list lauded tuesday cowboys coach mike gundy included group greatest receivers team history washington led oklahoma state 1380 receiving yards last season hauled 10 touchdowns announced alamo bowl would forgo nfl draft stay osu senior season alongside quarterback mason rudolph james washington dez bryants justin blackmons rashaun woods guys terrific football players gundy said think james scratching surface james came terrific community west texas small community got place dramatically different hed ever exposed hes three years think next 10 years really skys limit two reasons one hes starting develop two hes got terrific attitude hes unselfish loves play game football hes tough transfers play huge role mountaineers west virginia coach dana holgorsen made living built success big 12 utilizing transfers fullest potential junior college transfers graduate transfers could play right away players came another fbs school sat year becoming eligible filled big roles mountaineers 2017 first year big 12 topend talent depth wasnt good started lot transfers theyve worked holgorsen said tuesday kind niche theyve worked us since national signing day february mountaineers brought six transfers including one graduate transfer two junior college players three transfers fbs schools sit 2017 season mountaineers rely junior college transfers justin crawford big 12s leading returning rusher running 1184 yards first season west virginia bednarik award watch list safety kyzir white wvu also look receiver karaun white played alongside brother kyzir lackawanna college two came west virginia one top targets passing game theres quarterback grier transferred morgantown florida grier went 60 freshman gators suspended testing positive performanceenhancing substance hes sitting since october 2015 holgorsen said hes shown little rust layoff didnt take long us figure griers really good player holgorsen said hes got starting quarterback trait hes got locker room ready roll gets watches film throws lot controls huddle everything right snyder ready 27th season kansas state coach bill snyder said tuesday hes fine battling throat cancer thats hes completed treatment back full duty limited spring recovery ongoing quite obviously im fine getting around fine 77yearold snyder said dont issues right trying prepare season thats always ongoing issue thats 365 year upcoming season snyders 27th kansas state helm team buoyed quarterback jesse ertz running back alex barnes tough noname defense picked third big 12s preseason media poll dark horse win conference really share one thing thats fact want win ertz said doesnt matter much communicate laugh together end day want win play football ruhles rule word baylor baylor coach matt ruhle said tuesday bears run past learn new regime takes hold waco two seasons strife surrounding sexualassault scandal university investigations continue schools football program end day dont know everything happened know something happened wrong said ruhle hired away temple replace interim coach jim grobe december may 2016 firing art briles truly committed getting wrongs past corrected bright new future ruhle added together committed continued cooperation external internal reviews past conduct bears 76 2016 without key players year ago including quarterback wide receiver running back secondary offensive line come air raid background face transition year players offensive attack | 780 |
<p>Sept. 3 (UPI) — <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/North_Korea/" type="external">North Korea</a> announced Sunday it successfully tested a hydrogen nuclear bomb that can be loaded onto an intercontinental ballistic missile, is 10 times stronger than its previous detonation and is capable of reaching the U.S. mainland.</p>
<p>After North Korea’s sixth underground bomb test since 2006, the United States is considering a “massive military response,” Defense Secretary <a href="https://twitter.com/markknoller?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor" type="external">Mattis said in a statement</a>. “We are not looking to the total annihilation of a country, namely North Korea, but as I said, we have many options to do so.”</p>
<p>Leaders worldwide condemned the detonation, including U.S. President <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Donald_Trump/" type="external">Donald Trump</a>, who <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor" type="external">posted on Twitter</a> the regime’s “words and actions continue to be very hostile and dangerous to the United States. He also posted on Twitter the United States is considering “stopping all trade with any country doing business with North Korea.”</p>
<p>The U.N. Security Council, which has already sanctioned North Korean and banned its nuclear tests, will conduct an <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/03/asia/north-korea-nuclear-test/index.html" type="external">emergency meeting Monday</a> in New York. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Nikki_Haley/" type="external">Nikki Haley</a> and her counterparts from Japan, France, Great Britain and South Korea called for the meeting.</p>
<p>U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres in a <a href="http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=57456#.WaxcVsiGOUk" type="external">statement</a> called the test “profoundly destabilizing for regional security.”</p>
<p>China, which is North Korea’s closest big ally, and Russia also condemned the detonation.</p>
<p>The state-run Korean Central News Agency announced the completion of the test at noon Pyongyang Time, calling it a <a href="http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/northkorea/2017/09/03/0401000000AEN20170903003153315.html" type="external">“perfect”</a> success.</p>
<p>North Korean leader <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kim_Jong_Un/" type="external">Kim Jong Un</a> reportedly inspected a “super explosive” hydrogen bomb for its intercontinental ballistic missiles and “guided the work for nuclear weaponization.” Pyongyang said it had miniaturized a hydrogen bomb for use on a long-range missile.</p>
<p>“The H-bomb test was carried out to examine and confirm the accuracy and credibility of the power control technology, and internal structural design newly introduced into manufacturing the H-bomb to be placed as the payload of the ICBM,” the Korean Central News Agency said.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us2000aert#executive" type="external">U.S Geological Survey</a> said a 6.3 magnitude earthquake was detected near North Korea’s known nuclear test site in Punggye-ri, in the county’s northeast region.</p>
<p>The “artificial quake” was 9.8 times as powerful as the the last test in September 2016, South Korea’s <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41139445" type="external">state weather agency said</a>. The 5.3-magnitude earthquake then was about as powerful as the bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945, that was 15,000 tons of TNT.</p>
<p>The earthquake was felt in northern China in Yanji, near the North Korean border, according to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/north-korea-apparently-conducts-another-nuclear-test-south-korea-says/2017/09/03/7bce3ff6-905b-11e7-8df5-c2e5cf46c1e2_story.html?utm_term=.0e34586f4878" type="external">local media</a>.</p>
<p>China’s Earthquake Administration said it had detected a second tremor, just after the first, of 4.6 magnitude which it termed as <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41139445" type="external">“a collapse”</a>.</p>
<p>The foreign ministry of China <a href="http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/china-strongly-condemns-north-korean-nuclear-test-foreign-9181562" type="external">said in a statement</a> that North Korea “has ignored the international community’s widespread opposition, again carrying out a nuclear test. China’s government expresses resolute opposition and strong condemnation toward this.”</p>
<p>Russia said the test defied international law and that the only way to resolve the Korean peninsula’s problems, “including the nuclear one,” was for all sides involved to hold talks.</p>
<p>South Korean President <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Moon-Jae/" type="external">Moon Jae</a>-in and Japanese Prime Minister <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Shinzo_Abe/" type="external">Shinzo Abe</a> called emergency meetings of their national security councils after the test.</p>
<p>South Korea’s presidential chief security adviser said: “During the meeting, we decided to discuss measures to deploy the strongest U.S. military assets that the U.S. military has in line with the U.S.-South Korea alliance and to show off our military’s strike capabilities to neutralize North Korea’s nuclear facilities and missiles.</p>
<p>Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said the ministry began flying “sniffer” planes capable of detecting radioactive fallout.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2017/08/29/Trump-All-options-are-on-the-table-after-latest-North-Korea-missile-launch/2561504009264/" type="external">On Tuesday</a>, North Korea launched a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile over Japan.</p>
<p>“The fact that North Korea forced through a nuclear test this time is absolutely unacceptable to our country,” Abe <a href="http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/north-korea-nuclear-test-would-be-absolutely-unacceptable-shinzo-abe-1745408" type="external">said in a statement</a>. “North Korea’s nuclear and missile development programm is a threat that is more grave and urgent to the safety of our country and has entered a new stage. It is significantly hurting regional and international peace and stability.”</p>
<p>Abe said he spoke with Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday. He plans to meet with Putin in Vladivostok, Russia, next week.</p>
<p>Trump reacted strongly in a <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/904305644651634688" type="external">series of tweets</a> on Sunday morning from the White House: “North Korea has conducted a major Nuclear Test. Their words and actions continue to be very hostile and dangerous to the United States. North Korea is a rogue nation which has become a great threat and embarrassment to China, which is trying to help but with little success.”</p>
<p>He added: “South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!”</p>
<p>Trump later posted on Twitter: “The United States is considering, in addition to other options, stopping all trade with any country doing business with North Korea.”</p>
<p>U.S. trade with China totaled an estimated $648.2 billion in 2016, according to the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-mnuchin-north-korea-sanctions-hydrogen-bomb-2017-9" type="external">U.S. Trade Representative</a>. India, Thailand, and the Philippines also maintain economic ties with North Korea.</p>
<p>Trump met with Vice President Mike, White House chief of staff, Gen. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/John_Kelly/" type="external">John Kelly</a>, Defense Secretary <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/James_Mattis/" type="external">James Mattis</a> and top national security advisers.</p>
<p>“Our commitment among the allies are ironclad,” Mattis said in a statement outside the White House after the meeting. “Any threat to the United States or its territories, including Guam, or our allies will be met with a massive military response, a response both effective and overwhelming.”</p>
<p>U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said additional sanctions are planned.</p>
<p>“We’ve already started with sanctions against North Korea, but I’m going to draft a sanctions package to send to the president for his strong consideration,” Mnuchin <a href="http://video.foxnews.com/v/5563489201001/#sp=show-clips" type="external">said in an interview</a> on Fox News Sunday.</p>
<p>Trump has warned he would unleash “fire and fury” against North Korea if it continued to threaten the United States with nuclear missiles. North Korea has threatened to launch a missile near Guam, a U.S. territory.</p>
<p>After Tuesday’s missile test, Trump said “all options are on the table” in response to the regime’s “threatening and destabilizing actions.”</p>
<p>North Korea launched two intercontinental missiles on <a href="https://www.upi.com/US-tests-missile-defense-after-North-Korean-ballistic-launch/6701501427318/" type="external">July 4 and 28</a>. In the latest test, North Korea said it launched its Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile than can reach most of the United States.</p>
<p>North Korea first claimed to have tested a hydrogen bomb in January 2016, during its fourth nuclear test. Other countries doubted the claim for lack of evidence. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/02/world/asia/north-korea-tremor-possible-6th-nuclear-test.html" type="external">Experts said</a> North Korea may have tested a “boosted” atomic bomb.</p>
<p>In hydrogen bombs, fusion — the merging of atoms — is used to unleash energy, whereas atomic bombs use nuclear fission, or the splitting of atoms.</p> | false | 1 | sept 3 upi north korea announced sunday successfully tested hydrogen nuclear bomb loaded onto intercontinental ballistic missile 10 times stronger previous detonation capable reaching us mainland north koreas sixth underground bomb test since 2006 united states considering massive military response defense secretary mattis said statement looking total annihilation country namely north korea said many options leaders worldwide condemned detonation including us president donald trump posted twitter regimes words actions continue hostile dangerous united states also posted twitter united states considering stopping trade country business north korea un security council already sanctioned north korean banned nuclear tests conduct emergency meeting monday new york us ambassador united nations nikki haley counterparts japan france great britain south korea called meeting un secretarygeneral antónio guterres statement called test profoundly destabilizing regional security china north koreas closest big ally russia also condemned detonation staterun korean central news agency announced completion test noon pyongyang time calling perfect success north korean leader kim jong un reportedly inspected super explosive hydrogen bomb intercontinental ballistic missiles guided work nuclear weaponization pyongyang said miniaturized hydrogen bomb use longrange missile hbomb test carried examine confirm accuracy credibility power control technology internal structural design newly introduced manufacturing hbomb placed payload icbm korean central news agency said us geological survey said 63 magnitude earthquake detected near north koreas known nuclear test site punggyeri countys northeast region artificial quake 98 times powerful last test september 2016 south koreas state weather agency said 53magnitude earthquake powerful bomb united states dropped hiroshima japan 1945 15000 tons tnt earthquake felt northern china yanji near north korean border according local media chinas earthquake administration said detected second tremor first 46 magnitude termed collapse foreign ministry china said statement north korea ignored international communitys widespread opposition carrying nuclear test chinas government expresses resolute opposition strong condemnation toward russia said test defied international law way resolve korean peninsulas problems including nuclear one sides involved hold talks south korean president moon jaein japanese prime minister shinzo abe called emergency meetings national security councils test south koreas presidential chief security adviser said meeting decided discuss measures deploy strongest us military assets us military line ussouth korea alliance show militarys strike capabilities neutralize north koreas nuclear facilities missiles defense minister itsunori onodera said ministry began flying sniffer planes capable detecting radioactive fallout tuesday north korea launched longrange intercontinental ballistic missile japan fact north korea forced nuclear test time absolutely unacceptable country abe said statement north koreas nuclear missile development programm threat grave urgent safety country entered new stage significantly hurting regional international peace stability abe said spoke trump russian president vladimir putin sunday plans meet putin vladivostok russia next week trump reacted strongly series tweets sunday morning white house north korea conducted major nuclear test words actions continue hostile dangerous united states north korea rogue nation become great threat embarrassment china trying help little success added south korea finding told talk appeasement north korea work understand one thing trump later posted twitter united states considering addition options stopping trade country business north korea us trade china totaled estimated 6482 billion 2016 according us trade representative india thailand philippines also maintain economic ties north korea trump met vice president mike white house chief staff gen john kelly defense secretary james mattis top national security advisers commitment among allies ironclad mattis said statement outside white house meeting threat united states territories including guam allies met massive military response response effective overwhelming us treasury secretary steve mnuchin said additional sanctions planned weve already started sanctions north korea im going draft sanctions package send president strong consideration mnuchin said interview fox news sunday trump warned would unleash fire fury north korea continued threaten united states nuclear missiles north korea threatened launch missile near guam us territory tuesdays missile test trump said options table response regimes threatening destabilizing actions north korea launched two intercontinental missiles july 4 28 latest test north korea said launched hwasong14 intercontinental ballistic missile reach united states north korea first claimed tested hydrogen bomb january 2016 fourth nuclear test countries doubted claim lack evidence experts said north korea may tested boosted atomic bomb hydrogen bombs fusion merging atoms used unleash energy whereas atomic bombs use nuclear fission splitting atoms | 695 |
<p />
<p>Alan Wolfe is professor of political science and director of the Boisi Center for Religion and Public Life at Boston College. He is the author most recently of An Intellectual in Public (Univ. of Michigan Press), a collection of his essays and reviews from The New Republic and elsewhere, and The Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Live Our Faith (Free Press). Many readers of Books &amp; Culture will have seen his October 2000 Atlantic Monthly cover story, “The Opening of the Evangelical Mind.” Michael Cromartie spoke with Wolfe in Washington, D.C, last November; John Wilson joined the conversation.</p>
<p>Alan, you say that “in the United States culture has transformed Christ, as well as all other religions found within these shores. In every aspect of the religious life, American faith has met American culture—and American culture has triumphed.” Why is this?</p>
<p>Religion is an enormously overpowering force that influences how people think and how they act, what they do, what they think is ethically right and wrong, and so on. But culture has very much the same kind of impact as well. It also shapes who we are and how we act. The question that preoccupies me is what happens when these two gigantic forces clash, as they do in the United States. And I argue in the book that culture tends to win in most such clashes. And so religion finds itself adapting to some characteristic features of American culture that are antithetical to what, for lack of a better term, we call “the old-time religion.”</p>
<p>What would be some examples of those adaptations?</p>
<p>The individualism of our culture, the populist quality of our culture, its short attention span, and its anti-intellectualism. All those things influence all the other kinds of institutions we have: they influence sports, they influence politics. Politics today doesn’t resemble what it was 50 or 70 years ago; the same is true of sports. How could religion be immune to these cultural forces? It too will take new forms—what some people might call “mutations.” I was looking for neutral terms, so I called them “transformations.”</p>
<p>I wonder if someone from a megachurch might say in response to your book, “Well, it’s true that our services have been influenced by trends in secular entertainment, but look what we’ve done: we’ve grown, many people have had their lives transformed by Christ. There are former alcoholics attending our AA groups. People with broken marriages are now healing their lives.”</p>
<p>I am very sympathetic to that. I’m not sitting here saying these changes are horrible things. First, I am in no position to do that; I’m not religious myself. I see it more as a dilemma, and I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of the person who has to respond to that dilemma. What do you do if you’re strongly convinced that the truth you want to communicate should be expressed in a certain way, yet you recognize that this approach simply isn’t drawing many people to it? I’m enormously impressed by Rick Warren at Saddleback and his homiletic style, which I think is extraordinary. I describe him not only as the best preacher, but as simply the best public speaker I have ever heard. As I was sitting there listening to him say, “Avoid sin,” and making jokes, the question that occurred to me was this: are these people better off here, or are they better off watching television or a football game? And they are definitely better off in Saddleback. On the other hand, conservative critics of Rick Warren would propose a third alternative: a more old-fashioned church.</p>
<p>You say, “More Americans than ever proclaim themselves born again in Christ, but the lord to whom they turn rarely gets angry and frequently strengthens self-esteem.”</p>
<p>I find that a lot. And again, I think there’s both a positive and a negative side to that. The positive side is that this self-esteem, the sense of empowerment that so many people talk about, shows a dimension of evangelical religion that my secular friends are completely unaware of. My secular friends will tell me that evangelical Christianity is patriarchal to the core—it’s all about men oppressing women, going back to the most traditional kinds of gender roles and so on. And I see something entirely different. I see people being encouraged to develop as individuals, truly experiencing a sense of empowerment. In that sense, I think it’s an enormously positive transformation of traditional evangelical religion.</p>
<p>Were you surprised when you found that?</p>
<p>That was one of the biggest surprises. But there’s also a dangerous side to this change. There’s something wrong with too much self-confidence. I would have expected a little more doubt. Now, I’m married to a Dane, and there’s a Kierkegaardian culture in my family. Kierkegaard is largely missing in American religion. I don’t think there’s enough brooding going on.</p>
<p>You say: “In no other area of religious practice, especially for evangelicals, is the gap between the religion as it is supposed to be and religion as it actually is as great as it is in the area of sin. … Somehow I am not pleased with this retreat from sin.” Why is that?</p>
<p>I’m not a great phrasemaker, but there is one phrase in the book I like—Salvation Inflation, which I compare to grade inflation. I define grade inflation by the fact that over the 30 years I’ve been teaching, every year I assign less and less, and every year the grades get higher and higher. It’s a two-stage process. To some degree, we’ve seen that with salvation as well. People confess fewer and fewer sins, and are rewarded with more and more.</p>
<p>Doesn’t your book leave readers with the impression that the trend you are tracking is more pervasive than it actually is?</p>
<p>I do say at various times that what I’m describing has various counters to it. On the question of sin, for example, I do say that the Southern Baptist Convention—which is after all the largest of the Protestant denominations—is one church that has not given up sin. But I think in spite of those caveats, the other impression does come across, and I think that’s probably because I didn’t pay as much attention to the South as I probably should have. And of course there are seriously committed Orthodox Jews who run against much of what I’m saying.</p>
<p>But the logic of your argument suggests that there’s a certain inevitability to the direction of this transformation, that this is the train of American history and if you get in its way you’ll be flattened.</p>
<p>In the book, it’s true, that would be the main argument. But who can tell for sure? I would put my bets on “probably.” “Inevitably” is a strong word. What is inevitable, I believe, is the process by which culture shapes other forces, including religion. It’s possible that the culture could change, and in that way, we could go back to an older form of religion. But I admit that it’s hard for me to imagine how that would take place.</p>
<p>In some ways your book goes against the grain of what Dean Kelly wrote many years ago about why conservative churches are growing. Those churches were growing, Kelly argued, because they were committed to Christian orthodoxy and to strong doctrine. And you are finding that those same churches have capitulated to the culture.</p>
<p>I believe what’s going on in my re-interpretation of the Kelly thesis really has to do with the difference between quantitative and qualitative social science. If you simply look at the numbers, as Kelly did, and find that conservative churches are the ones that are growing, it’s easy to conclude that their strict teaching is the critical factor. But when you look at what’s happening qualitatively through ethnographic research, and what those churches are really doing, they don’t look so strict. They look more and more as if they are fitting the kind of patterns I’ve described.</p>
<p>In the book, I tell the story of one particular believer who quit her Baptist church because it was so strong on divorce and joined a Pentecostal church, which was much more welcoming. Baptists and Pentecostals are both called conservative Christians; they would not be sharply differentiated in the Kelly thesis. But for this woman, strict teaching was not the attraction. She chose the warmth and acceptance of a more “Spirit-filled” church. Pentecostalism, as you know, is growing rapidly, and yet I wouldn’t even know how to classify a Pentecostal church on the “strict vs. non-strict” dimension. Those aren’t the crucial categories.</p>
<p>You note that evangelicals have become theologically less combative. Let me quote you again: “Conflict over doctrine is fast becoming a phenomenon of church history. Evangelicals have exchanged orthodoxy for popularity.”</p>
<p>My focus is not on denominational leadership but on the ordinary churchgoer. When you see how much switching goes on, you have to wonder: how much does this have to do with doctrine? People are in a different church from the one of their birth, different from the church of their parents, even different from the one they were in five years ago. There is one person in the book who was raised Catholic but then became Baptist. The differences between Catholics and Baptists are things that people used to die for. So what does that history mean when people switch? Do they really know what John Wesley stood for and what Methodism is all about if they drop out so readily for a church with an entirely different tradition?</p>
<p>You comment in your book about the religious origins of non-judgmentalism. What are those?</p>
<p>I was fascinated by that. Again, my secular friends think the United States is filled with fundamentalist Christians who believe that the Bible contains the literal word of God and therefore know the Bible inside out. But what most people know from the Bible is “Judge not lest you be judged.” People come away with that lesson and this one: Do not throw the first stone. Especially Christians.</p>
<p>You’ve written that “liberals threaten to undermine their own liberalism when they write about religion. A liberal temperament ought to be disposed to respect as many points of view as possible, including those that in turn had little respect for liberalism.” How do you think this will be perceived among your liberal friends?</p>
<p>One of the examples I cited is actually a good friend of mine, a scholar named Stephen Macedo, who essentially says that religious believers just don’t have the right kind of qualities of mind to be good citizens in a liberal democratic society. I’m trying to say that this is not the case. How will such friends receive the book? Well, it has been better received in religious communities than in secular communities. I thought that I would be writing to both. For many secular people, religion remains terra incognita, and I can say, “It’s not what you think.”</p>
<p>You say “believers are full citizens of the United States, and it is time to make peace between them and the rest of America.” Why do you say that?</p>
<p>The “full citizens” comment grows out of a kind of anger that I feel at Stanley Hauerwas, whom I have learned from, and admire in many ways as a person. I’ve been interacting with him for a long time. But I really was offended by his concept of a resident alien. First, it’s very hard for someone who’s not a Christian to listen to a kind of Christian victimology that you sometimes get. Even people I respect enormously—George Marsden—can fall into that, or at least it sounds like that to me. I also think that when I’m not writing about religion, I write about citizenship. I am a very strong believer in the idea of citizenship. There’s a sense of mutual duty, that societies have to take citizenship very seriously. The notion of a resident alien disturbs me, because it suggests that people really aren’t being full citizens, and really shouldn’t be. What I want to say to Stanley Hauerwas is: What are you talking about? But I also want to say it to my liberal friends: you also can’t go around and talk about these people as not having the right qualities of mind. So, all the energy is focused on that conclusion.</p>
<p>You say, “America’s God has been domesticated, there to offer solace and to engage in dialogue with the understanding that, except under the most unusual circumstances, he will listen and commiserate.” Again, you notice a theological dilution of firmly held beliefs from the past. But you also seem to find some assurance in this domestication of belief and are not happy with those who hold to the absolute truth claims of historic Christianity. Is that right?</p>
<p>That’s right. These things are such a mixed bag. It’s not like I’ve gone religious. Probably some of my friends think that I’ve gone soft on religion. In fact, Judith Shulevitz wrote a piece about me: Has Alan Wolfe gone evangelical? I still retain a secular edge looking at the history of doctrinal conflict and religious sectarianism.</p>
<p>You know Albert Mohler. There’s a quote I’ve saved from a letter he wrote to The New York Times, where he says that Christians have one idea of the truth and Muslims have another, and the two are not reconcilable. That kind of language bothers me a lot. I prefer the religion of a pastor in Cincinnati, Steve Shogran, mentioned in the book, whose motto is “Love, love, love, truth.” I would take that. I think the single most important advantage of the softer kind of religion I found is that it has created much greater religious tolerance. Basically, I think that development is enormously positive, given the history of sectarianism and violence.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Michael Cromartie</a>&#160;directs the Evangelical Studies Project at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.</p>
<p>You may find this original article at&#160; <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2004/002/4.18.html" type="external">Books &amp; Culture</a>.</p>
<p>Source NotesCopyright - 2004 by the author or Christianity Today International/Books &amp; Culture magazine.</p>
<p>Click here for reprint information on Books &amp; Culture.</p>
<p>March/April 2004, Vol. 10, No. 2, Page 18</p> | false | 1 | alan wolfe professor political science director boisi center religion public life boston college author recently intellectual public univ michigan press collection essays reviews new republic elsewhere transformation american religion actually live faith free press many readers books amp culture seen october 2000 atlantic monthly cover story opening evangelical mind michael cromartie spoke wolfe washington dc last november john wilson joined conversation alan say united states culture transformed christ well religions found within shores every aspect religious life american faith met american cultureand american culture triumphed religion enormously overpowering force influences people think act think ethically right wrong culture much kind impact well also shapes act question preoccupies happens two gigantic forces clash united states argue book culture tends win clashes religion finds adapting characteristic features american culture antithetical lack better term call oldtime religion would examples adaptations individualism culture populist quality culture short attention span antiintellectualism things influence kinds institutions influence sports influence politics politics today doesnt resemble 50 70 years ago true sports could religion immune cultural forces take new formswhat people might call mutations looking neutral terms called transformations wonder someone megachurch might say response book well true services influenced trends secular entertainment look weve done weve grown many people lives transformed christ former alcoholics attending aa groups people broken marriages healing lives sympathetic im sitting saying changes horrible things first position im religious see dilemma wouldnt want shoes person respond dilemma youre strongly convinced truth want communicate expressed certain way yet recognize approach simply isnt drawing many people im enormously impressed rick warren saddleback homiletic style think extraordinary describe best preacher simply best public speaker ever heard sitting listening say avoid sin making jokes question occurred people better better watching television football game definitely better saddleback hand conservative critics rick warren would propose third alternative oldfashioned church say americans ever proclaim born christ lord turn rarely gets angry frequently strengthens selfesteem find lot think theres positive negative side positive side selfesteem sense empowerment many people talk shows dimension evangelical religion secular friends completely unaware secular friends tell evangelical christianity patriarchal coreits men oppressing women going back traditional kinds gender roles see something entirely different see people encouraged develop individuals truly experiencing sense empowerment sense think enormously positive transformation traditional evangelical religion surprised found one biggest surprises theres also dangerous side change theres something wrong much selfconfidence would expected little doubt im married dane theres kierkegaardian culture family kierkegaard largely missing american religion dont think theres enough brooding going say area religious practice especially evangelicals gap religion supposed religion actually great area sin somehow pleased retreat sin im great phrasemaker one phrase book likesalvation inflation compare grade inflation define grade inflation fact 30 years ive teaching every year assign less less every year grades get higher higher twostage process degree weve seen salvation well people confess fewer fewer sins rewarded doesnt book leave readers impression trend tracking pervasive actually say various times im describing various counters question sin example say southern baptist conventionwhich largest protestant denominationsis one church given sin think spite caveats impression come across think thats probably didnt pay much attention south probably course seriously committed orthodox jews run much im saying logic argument suggests theres certain inevitability direction transformation train american history get way youll flattened book true would main argument tell sure would put bets probably inevitably strong word inevitable believe process culture shapes forces including religion possible culture could change way could go back older form religion admit hard imagine would take place ways book goes grain dean kelly wrote many years ago conservative churches growing churches growing kelly argued committed christian orthodoxy strong doctrine finding churches capitulated culture believe whats going reinterpretation kelly thesis really difference quantitative qualitative social science simply look numbers kelly find conservative churches ones growing easy conclude strict teaching critical factor look whats happening qualitatively ethnographic research churches really dont look strict look fitting kind patterns ive described book tell story one particular believer quit baptist church strong divorce joined pentecostal church much welcoming baptists pentecostals called conservative christians would sharply differentiated kelly thesis woman strict teaching attraction chose warmth acceptance spiritfilled church pentecostalism know growing rapidly yet wouldnt even know classify pentecostal church strict vs nonstrict dimension arent crucial categories note evangelicals become theologically less combative let quote conflict doctrine fast becoming phenomenon church history evangelicals exchanged orthodoxy popularity focus denominational leadership ordinary churchgoer see much switching goes wonder much doctrine people different church one birth different church parents even different one five years ago one person book raised catholic became baptist differences catholics baptists things people used die history mean people switch really know john wesley stood methodism drop readily church entirely different tradition comment book religious origins nonjudgmentalism fascinated secular friends think united states filled fundamentalist christians believe bible contains literal word god therefore know bible inside people know bible judge lest judged people come away lesson one throw first stone especially christians youve written liberals threaten undermine liberalism write religion liberal temperament ought disposed respect many points view possible including turn little respect liberalism think perceived among liberal friends one examples cited actually good friend mine scholar named stephen macedo essentially says religious believers dont right kind qualities mind good citizens liberal democratic society im trying say case friends receive book well better received religious communities secular communities thought would writing many secular people religion remains terra incognita say think say believers full citizens united states time make peace rest america say full citizens comment grows kind anger feel stanley hauerwas learned admire many ways person ive interacting long time really offended concept resident alien first hard someone whos christian listen kind christian victimology sometimes get even people respect enormouslygeorge marsdencan fall least sounds like also think im writing religion write citizenship strong believer idea citizenship theres sense mutual duty societies take citizenship seriously notion resident alien disturbs suggests people really arent full citizens really shouldnt want say stanley hauerwas talking also want say liberal friends also cant go around talk people right qualities mind energy focused conclusion say americas god domesticated offer solace engage dialogue understanding except unusual circumstances listen commiserate notice theological dilution firmly held beliefs past also seem find assurance domestication belief happy hold absolute truth claims historic christianity right thats right things mixed bag like ive gone religious probably friends think ive gone soft religion fact judith shulevitz wrote piece alan wolfe gone evangelical still retain secular edge looking history doctrinal conflict religious sectarianism know albert mohler theres quote ive saved letter wrote new york times says christians one idea truth muslims another two reconcilable kind language bothers lot prefer religion pastor cincinnati steve shogran mentioned book whose motto love love love truth would take think single important advantage softer kind religion found created much greater religious tolerance basically think development enormously positive given history sectarianism violence michael cromartie160directs evangelical studies project ethics public policy center washington dc may find original article at160 books amp culture source notescopyright 2004 author christianity today internationalbooks amp culture magazine click reprint information books amp culture marchapril 2004 vol 10 2 page 18 | 1,179 |
<p>For the past week, liberals have been trying to persuade themselves that Republican Scott Brown's victory in the Massachusetts Senate race need not mean the end of Obamacare. But that is exactly what it means. The Democrats' health care agenda, in anything like the form it has taken for the past year, is now dead. The notion of a wholesale reinvention of American health care, scooping up a sixth of the economy in one fell swoop of technocratic derring-do and paving the way to a government-run system, will be put aside. Even the goal of “universal coverage” will be dropped, at least for now.</p>
<p>It is nothing short of amazing that the Democrats let things get this bad. They have spent a year trying to cram down the throat of the country an incomprehensibly convoluted, misguided, and anachronistic liberal dream, which grew increasingly unattractive (even to its advocates) with every iteration until even Massachusetts voters turned to a Republican for relief. Democrats have managed to make our existing health care arrangements look downright brilliant by comparison. They have wasted the first year of the Obama administration, and a filibuster-proof Senate majority they will likely not see again for decades. And they have achieved nothing: not on health care, and not on the rest of their agenda.</p>
<p>The Democrats' response to Brown's election so far has revealed deep differences among them — with some intent on pushing Obamacare all the more forcefully while others beg for a change of subject before they too are steamrolled by a disapproving electorate tired of being soothed with lullabies about historic moments.</p>
<p>It is impolite to stick your nose into a dysfunctional family brawl, and conservatives need not step into this breach just now. The Democrats are paying the price for a profound miscalculation, and there is nothing wrong with taking some time to enjoy the show. The public has declared that the left's approach to health care is worse than doing nothing, so why not do nothing on health care for a while and turn to other important concerns. Republicans are under no obligation to toss Democrats a life line.</p>
<p>But after a while, the time will come again to think about health care. The problems with our system, after all, are real. It is only the Democrats' solutions that were fantasies. Sooner or later, the debate will start again, and a chastened but still ambitious Democratic majority will try another approach. When that happens, Republicans would be wise to be clear about their own priorities and proposals, and to learn their own lessons from the debacle that is now completing its final chapter.</p>
<p>One crucial lesson is that large solutions are not wise solutions — politically or practically. In a huge and varied country of over 300 million people, replacing the entire system with another is not what the public wants. Instead, conservatives should offer discrete solutions that would bring about change gradually, while also setting some longer-term aims and goals.</p>
<p>In the near-term, Republicans should advance three basic concepts. First, they should seek to address the problem of insuring Americans with preexisting conditions through state-based high-risk pools, not cumbersome insurance regulations that try to outlaw basic economics. Risk pools, backed with federal money but nowhere near the scale of Obamacare's costs, would give those with preexisting conditions more options in the individual market and make a significant dent in the number of uninsured, but without overturning our health care system.</p>
<p>Second, they should propose to help doctors and patients limit some of the burden of rising costs with medical malpractice reform. Sensible caps on punitive damages would not only save money but also help address shortages of medical providers in key specialties, and allow more Americans to afford and access care.</p>
<p>Third, they should argue that the states be given the lead role in developing more detailed reforms of how and where people get their insurance-to cover more people and slow the rise of costs. The overall goal should be to build well-functioning marketplaces in which insurers and providers compete to deliver the best value to cost-conscious consumers. The federal government should remove bureaucratic obstacles to state experimentation on this front, and offer support where possible, but not design one mammoth new program. The regulation of both the practice of medicine and of insurance is done in the states, and their improvement should be too.</p>
<p>Massachusetts is not the only state that has experimented with health care reform. Utah, for instance, has launched a program whereby small-business employees get their insurance through a state-facilitated marketplace for private coverage. Employers make a fixed premium payment on behalf of their workers, and the workers pick from a number of competing options — adding money if they want a more expensive plan, and pocketing the difference if they choose a less expensive one. In Indiana, Republican governor Mitch Daniels has launched a program that provides health savings accounts to the state's Medicaid recipients and government employees, allowing them to exercise choice and so bring down costs while extending coverage to more people than ever. Other states will try other approaches to lowering costs, improving competition, and insuring more people — each in its own way and in its own time.</p>
<p>These three straightforward approaches would address a great deal of the anxiety Americans feel about health care without creating new anxiety through a massive federal redesign that increases costs and takes away options.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, for the longer term, conservatives should make a case for changes in the tax law that level the playing field between employer-provided and individually purchased health insurance, with a gradual transformation of the tax exclusion for employer-based coverage into a credit available to all. A consumer-controlled tax credit would also enhance the benefits of risk-pools, tort reform, and state-based reform efforts.</p>
<p>And they should press the case for real Medicare reform, not to use the program as a pot of cash, as the Democrats tried to do over the past year, but to put it on a sound footing by empowering enrollees rather than bureaucrats to make decisions. The Democrats wanted to use Medicare's regulatory power to change how medicine is practiced. But new ideas for delivering better care at less cost will come from those providing the services, not Washington bureaucrats. Doctors and hospitals need to be given the freedom to repackage what they offer so that it is less costly and more attractive to Medicare patients.</p>
<p>These ideas would not yield a sudden transformation of American health care, but a gradual improvement in the areas that matter most — cost-control, greater access for the uninsured, and greater fairness for those with preexisting conditions — while sustaining the quality and innovation that characterize American health care. Constructive policy reform consists not of inventing imaginary worlds, but of building on the best of what we have, offering specific concrete solutions to particular problems, and leaving some room for experimentation to see what works and what does not.</p>
<p>Whether in negotiations with a newly humbled Democratic majority, or as alternatives offered to voters in this year's elections, ideas like these would help mark out a constructive conservative health care agenda, and distinguish Republicans from an administration and a Democratic majority that have favored a political power grab over sensible progress.</p>
<p>James C. Capretta is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a health policy consultant. Yuval Levin, also a fellow at EPPC, is the editor of National Affairs.</p> | false | 1 | past week liberals trying persuade republican scott browns victory massachusetts senate race need mean end obamacare exactly means democrats health care agenda anything like form taken past year dead notion wholesale reinvention american health care scooping sixth economy one fell swoop technocratic derringdo paving way governmentrun system put aside even goal universal coverage dropped least nothing short amazing democrats let things get bad spent year trying cram throat country incomprehensibly convoluted misguided anachronistic liberal dream grew increasingly unattractive even advocates every iteration even massachusetts voters turned republican relief democrats managed make existing health care arrangements look downright brilliant comparison wasted first year obama administration filibusterproof senate majority likely see decades achieved nothing health care rest agenda democrats response browns election far revealed deep differences among intent pushing obamacare forcefully others beg change subject steamrolled disapproving electorate tired soothed lullabies historic moments impolite stick nose dysfunctional family brawl conservatives need step breach democrats paying price profound miscalculation nothing wrong taking time enjoy show public declared lefts approach health care worse nothing nothing health care turn important concerns republicans obligation toss democrats life line time come think health care problems system real democrats solutions fantasies sooner later debate start chastened still ambitious democratic majority try another approach happens republicans would wise clear priorities proposals learn lessons debacle completing final chapter one crucial lesson large solutions wise solutions politically practically huge varied country 300 million people replacing entire system another public wants instead conservatives offer discrete solutions would bring change gradually also setting longerterm aims goals nearterm republicans advance three basic concepts first seek address problem insuring americans preexisting conditions statebased highrisk pools cumbersome insurance regulations try outlaw basic economics risk pools backed federal money nowhere near scale obamacares costs would give preexisting conditions options individual market make significant dent number uninsured without overturning health care system second propose help doctors patients limit burden rising costs medical malpractice reform sensible caps punitive damages would save money also help address shortages medical providers key specialties allow americans afford access care third argue states given lead role developing detailed reforms people get insuranceto cover people slow rise costs overall goal build wellfunctioning marketplaces insurers providers compete deliver best value costconscious consumers federal government remove bureaucratic obstacles state experimentation front offer support possible design one mammoth new program regulation practice medicine insurance done states improvement massachusetts state experimented health care reform utah instance launched program whereby smallbusiness employees get insurance statefacilitated marketplace private coverage employers make fixed premium payment behalf workers workers pick number competing options adding money want expensive plan pocketing difference choose less expensive one indiana republican governor mitch daniels launched program provides health savings accounts states medicaid recipients government employees allowing exercise choice bring costs extending coverage people ever states try approaches lowering costs improving competition insuring people way time three straightforward approaches would address great deal anxiety americans feel health care without creating new anxiety massive federal redesign increases costs takes away options meanwhile longer term conservatives make case changes tax law level playing field employerprovided individually purchased health insurance gradual transformation tax exclusion employerbased coverage credit available consumercontrolled tax credit would also enhance benefits riskpools tort reform statebased reform efforts press case real medicare reform use program pot cash democrats tried past year put sound footing empowering enrollees rather bureaucrats make decisions democrats wanted use medicares regulatory power change medicine practiced new ideas delivering better care less cost come providing services washington bureaucrats doctors hospitals need given freedom repackage offer less costly attractive medicare patients ideas would yield sudden transformation american health care gradual improvement areas matter costcontrol greater access uninsured greater fairness preexisting conditions sustaining quality innovation characterize american health care constructive policy reform consists inventing imaginary worlds building best offering specific concrete solutions particular problems leaving room experimentation see works whether negotiations newly humbled democratic majority alternatives offered voters years elections ideas like would help mark constructive conservative health care agenda distinguish republicans administration democratic majority favored political power grab sensible progress james c capretta fellow ethics public policy center health policy consultant yuval levin also fellow eppc editor national affairs | 682 |
<p>President Barack Obama's <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/opinion/16obama.html?_r=1" type="external">op-ed</a> in the Sunday New York Times is a revealing indicator of the state of the health care debate. Gone is the emphasis on “health care reform” and “bending the cost-curve “and “changing the delivery system.” As polls in July began showing public support dropping for sweeping health care legislation, the Obama White House decided that those early 2009 themes just weren't working anymore, if they ever did. So now, in their place, is “health insurance reform,” “basic consumer protections” and elimination of pre-existing condition clauses.</p>
<p>No doubt the new sales pitch works much better in focus groups. But does it really describe what's under consideration in Congress?</p>
<p>At the beginning of this year, the Democratic Congress very deliberately set a course to pass the most sweeping domestic policy legislation in a generation, something akin to the next New Deal or Great Society. They weren't looking to tinker, and the legislation they have drafted reflects their ambition.</p>
<p>At their core, the bills moving through the House and Senate would use the taxing authority of the federal government to establish a uniform, federally-regulated system of insurance coverage for the entire population under the age of sixty-five. Every American would be required to sign up with a health insurance plan, or pay a penalty, enforced by tax laws, to the federal government for not doing so. The federal government would establish a process for determining what constitutes “qualified” insurance. Employers would be required to either offer qualified coverage to all or most of their workers or pay a tax to the federal government. Most workers would have no choice but to take the insurance offered at the workplace.</p>
<p>The federal government would set up a series of regional or state-based “exchanges” where people without access to employer coverage would be required to get their insurance. Private plans sold outside of the “exchanges” would be phased out over time. The government would set up a new health insurance entitlement program for households with incomes between 133 and 300 to 400 percent of the federal poverty line, but only households getting insurance through the exchanges would be eligible for it.</p>
<p>The cost of this new entitlement, plus expanded eligibility for Medicaid, would be at least $1 trillion over a decade, and possibly much more. To pay for this new spending through 2019, the bills would cut Medicare and Medicaid spending by $400 to $500 billion over ten years. The bills would also raise additional revenue by imposing either a new surtax on upper income households or one on expensive insurance plans (which would be paid mainly the plans' enrollees).</p>
<p>These are the nuts and bolts of what Congress is really working on, and they go well beyond modest consumer insurance protections. As can be readily seen in the various town hall meetings now taking place around the country, many Americans are concerned about the direction the bills are taking precisely because they have read or heard about these “details” and rightly conclude that they could have profound implications for their health-care coverage over time.</p>
<p>The president says no one will be forced out of insurance they like, but that's a questionable assertion, at best. The whole point of the “exchanges” is to establish group insurance pools outside of employment. Over time, it seems all but inevitable that there would be significant migration into them, especially so since the premiums will be more heavily subsidized there for low-wage workers than they are in the employer setting. Thus, it's entirely reasonable for people with good job-based coverage today to wonder if they will still have it in five years time if the bills under consideration pass. Moreover, millions of senior citizens now enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans could very well lose that option if the planned cuts in MA payment rates are adopted. Many beneficiaries could be forced to sign up with expensive Medigap insurance to get the same coverage they now get for free.</p>
<p>The bills now moving through Congress would also have profound economic consequences beyond the health sector. The Congressional Budget Office has said that the new federal spending contained in the House bill would very likely continue to escalate at a rate of about 8 percent per year after the first decade, while the revenue to pay for it would only grow at about 5 percent per year.</p>
<p>That's a recipe for another massive unfunded liability, on top of the existing shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare that are already threatening the nation's long-term prosperity. Further, the imposition of a costly requirement for job-based insurance during the steepest recession in a generation is raising concerns that it could impede hiring at a time when job growth is the most pressing concern for many voters.</p>
<p>For much of the year, the health care debate focused on generalities because no actual legislation was in the public domain for scrutiny. But in June and July, as the bills became available, the newspapers were filled with stories explaining what they would do and mean for average Americans as well as the country at large. It's no coincidence that momentum slowed at precisely the moment when the American people had access to what was actually being considered.</p>
<p>In recent weeks, the president and his team have tried to regain momentum by stressing to Americans with insurance that the legislation moving through Congress will add protections for them, won't disrupt their current arrangements if they are happy with their health plan and doctors, will lower their costs with painless gains in efficiency and won't burden future generations with debt. If only the bills moving through Congress actually did what the president has described, they might actually draw broad bipartisan support and public acceptance as well.</p>
<p>James C. Capretta is a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He served as an associate director at the White House Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004.</p> | false | 1 | president barack obamas oped sunday new york times revealing indicator state health care debate gone emphasis health care reform bending costcurve changing delivery system polls july began showing public support dropping sweeping health care legislation obama white house decided early 2009 themes werent working anymore ever place health insurance reform basic consumer protections elimination preexisting condition clauses doubt new sales pitch works much better focus groups really describe whats consideration congress beginning year democratic congress deliberately set course pass sweeping domestic policy legislation generation something akin next new deal great society werent looking tinker legislation drafted reflects ambition core bills moving house senate would use taxing authority federal government establish uniform federallyregulated system insurance coverage entire population age sixtyfive every american would required sign health insurance plan pay penalty enforced tax laws federal government federal government would establish process determining constitutes qualified insurance employers would required either offer qualified coverage workers pay tax federal government workers would choice take insurance offered workplace federal government would set series regional statebased exchanges people without access employer coverage would required get insurance private plans sold outside exchanges would phased time government would set new health insurance entitlement program households incomes 133 300 400 percent federal poverty line households getting insurance exchanges would eligible cost new entitlement plus expanded eligibility medicaid would least 1 trillion decade possibly much pay new spending 2019 bills would cut medicare medicaid spending 400 500 billion ten years bills would also raise additional revenue imposing either new surtax upper income households one expensive insurance plans would paid mainly plans enrollees nuts bolts congress really working go well beyond modest consumer insurance protections readily seen various town hall meetings taking place around country many americans concerned direction bills taking precisely read heard details rightly conclude could profound implications healthcare coverage time president says one forced insurance like thats questionable assertion best whole point exchanges establish group insurance pools outside employment time seems inevitable would significant migration especially since premiums heavily subsidized lowwage workers employer setting thus entirely reasonable people good jobbased coverage today wonder still five years time bills consideration pass moreover millions senior citizens enrolled medicare advantage plans could well lose option planned cuts payment rates adopted many beneficiaries could forced sign expensive medigap insurance get coverage get free bills moving congress would also profound economic consequences beyond health sector congressional budget office said new federal spending contained house bill would likely continue escalate rate 8 percent per year first decade revenue pay would grow 5 percent per year thats recipe another massive unfunded liability top existing shortfalls social security medicare already threatening nations longterm prosperity imposition costly requirement jobbased insurance steepest recession generation raising concerns could impede hiring time job growth pressing concern many voters much year health care debate focused generalities actual legislation public domain scrutiny june july bills became available newspapers filled stories explaining would mean average americans well country large coincidence momentum slowed precisely moment american people access actually considered recent weeks president team tried regain momentum stressing americans insurance legislation moving congress add protections wont disrupt current arrangements happy health plan doctors lower costs painless gains efficiency wont burden future generations debt bills moving congress actually president described might actually draw broad bipartisan support public acceptance well james c capretta fellow ethics public policy center served associate director white house office management budget 2001 2004 | 561 |
<p>CARSON CITY — Just as the Sandy Hook school shooting prompted efforts to regulate gun policies in Nevada in 2013, the mass shooting in Las Vegas on Oct. 1 will likely result in a new push when the Legislature convenes in 2019.</p>
<p>As one lawmaker described it, the gun lobby will be on steroids in the 2019 session.</p>
<p>But even in the wake of the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history, it remains to be seen whether the Oct. 1 attack that killed 58 people and wounded 489 more prompts changes in Nevada law.</p>
<p>“It is time to unite so we can get through these terrible times,” said state Sen. James Settelmeyer, R-Minden. “We need to roll up our sleeves, give blood and get to work.”</p>
<p>Ari Freilich, an attorney with the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said there is a need for laws that go well beyond background checks, which the shooter cleared to legally purchase dozens of weapons in several states.</p>
<p>“There are many policy solutions that can make a meaningful difference for many people and can make a difference between life and death,” he said.</p>
<p>The laws</p>
<p>If history is an indication, Nevada’s laws are unlikely to change. Numerous efforts have come forward in the Nevada Legislature in recent years to regulate firearms by expanding background checks on private gun sales or limiting the capacity of gun magazines, but none have survived the full legislative process.</p>
<p>Nevada’s gun laws are in line with those of most of the country, although California, its neighbor to the west, has the strictest gun laws in the nation.</p>
<p>Eight states require background checks on private gun sales, ban assault weapons and limit magazine capacity. Nevada has none of those requirements and is among the 42 states that do not have at least two of those laws, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Nevada also is one of 39 states that do not not require a permit or license to buy or own a gun.</p>
<p>State Sen. Tick Segerblom, D-Las Vegas, who proposed legislation in 2013 to limit magazine capacity and ban assault weapons, said something has to be done.</p>
<p>“We need to make sure people feel safe when they come to Nevada,” Segerblom said.</p>
<p>California, Washington and Oregon have laws that allow people to petition a court to temporarily seize a family member’s firearms. A similar bill failed in the Nevada Legislature this year, but gun control advocates want to see it revived in 2019.</p>
<p>And bump stocks, thrust into the limelight because Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock used them to essentially create a cache of fully automatic weapons, are legal in every state but California.</p>
<p>The National Rifle Association has called for a review of bump stocks to determine whether it will support changing laws, and several state lawmakers said they will propose a law to ban the devices in Nevada.</p>
<p>Chip Evans, chairman of the Nevada Gun Safety Coalition, said a combination of factors is needed to limit gun violence.</p>
<p>“Our solution is going to reside in a combination of some understanding of the human component and the machine component,” Evans said.</p>
<p>Lobbyist efforts</p>
<p>A bill to require background checks on private and gun show sales was proposed in Nevada in 2013 following the Sandy Hook massacre, and lobbyists on both sides of the Second Amendment issue ramped up their efforts here.</p>
<p>Parents of Sandy Hook victims, an anti-gun violence group headed by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former astronaut Mark Kelly, the husband of wounded former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, all came to Carson City to push for the bill’s passage.</p>
<p>The NRA led the lobbying effort against the bill, meeting with legislators before the 2013 session began in an effort to reduce support for greater gun control.</p>
<p>An expanded background check bill passed the Legislature that year but was vetoed by Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval. A similar measure was put on the ballot in 2016 and narrowly approved by voters, but it has been deemed unenforceable.</p>
<p>The NRA had five lobbyists in Nevada for the 2017 session. Another Second Amendment group, the Firearms Policy Coalition, had three lobbyists. A group seeking changes to Nevada gun laws, the Nevada Gun Safety Coalition, also had five registered lobbyists in 2017.</p>
<p>Expect more pressure from both sides of the gun issue ahead of and throughout the 2019 session.</p>
<p>Stepping back</p>
<p>Mass shootings always spark gun control debate — and sometimes result in stricter laws.</p>
<p>California voters last year passed a ballot measure to limit magazine capacity to 10 rounds, a law that came after the state grieved mass shootings in successive years. The Colorado Legislature, in the wake of the 2012 Aurora theater shooting, capped magazine limits at 15 rounds and extended its background check laws.</p>
<p>“Some of these people have an agenda, and it’s thought-out and it’s incremental,” said Don Turner of the Nevada Firearms Coalition. “Each time they do that, they make it more difficult to own a gun. The end result is gun confiscation. That’s the slope they’re working on.”</p>
<p>In many cases, the clamor for change diminishes as time passes.</p>
<p>“Too many people are suffering,” said Assemblyman John Hambrick, R-Las Vegas. “If there is a discussion, let it cool down and talk about it after the first of the year.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the friends and family of 58 victims will grieve.</p>
<p>“It’s too bad that mankind hasn’t evolved further,” Turner said. “We still have people that want to do harm to other people.”</p>
<p>Contact Ben Botkin at [email protected] or 775-461-0661. Follow @BenBotkin1 on Twitter. Contact Sean Whaley at <a href="" type="internal">[email protected]</a> or 775-461-3820. Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/seanw801" type="external">@seanw801</a> on Twitter.</p> | false | 1 | carson city sandy hook school shooting prompted efforts regulate gun policies nevada 2013 mass shooting las vegas oct 1 likely result new push legislature convenes 2019 one lawmaker described gun lobby steroids 2019 session even wake worst mass shooting modern us history remains seen whether oct 1 attack killed 58 people wounded 489 prompts changes nevada law time unite get terrible times said state sen james settelmeyer rminden need roll sleeves give blood get work ari freilich attorney law center prevent gun violence said need laws go well beyond background checks shooter cleared legally purchase dozens weapons several states many policy solutions make meaningful difference many people make difference life death said laws history indication nevadas laws unlikely change numerous efforts come forward nevada legislature recent years regulate firearms expanding background checks private gun sales limiting capacity gun magazines none survived full legislative process nevadas gun laws line country although california neighbor west strictest gun laws nation eight states require background checks private gun sales ban assault weapons limit magazine capacity nevada none requirements among 42 states least two laws according law center prevent gun violence nevada also one 39 states require permit license buy gun state sen tick segerblom dlas vegas proposed legislation 2013 limit magazine capacity ban assault weapons said something done need make sure people feel safe come nevada segerblom said california washington oregon laws allow people petition court temporarily seize family members firearms similar bill failed nevada legislature year gun control advocates want see revived 2019 bump stocks thrust limelight las vegas shooter stephen paddock used essentially create cache fully automatic weapons legal every state california national rifle association called review bump stocks determine whether support changing laws several state lawmakers said propose law ban devices nevada chip evans chairman nevada gun safety coalition said combination factors needed limit gun violence solution going reside combination understanding human component machine component evans said lobbyist efforts bill require background checks private gun show sales proposed nevada 2013 following sandy hook massacre lobbyists sides second amendment issue ramped efforts parents sandy hook victims antigun violence group headed new york city mayor michael bloomberg former astronaut mark kelly husband wounded former us rep gabby giffords came carson city push bills passage nra led lobbying effort bill meeting legislators 2013 session began effort reduce support greater gun control expanded background check bill passed legislature year vetoed republican gov brian sandoval similar measure put ballot 2016 narrowly approved voters deemed unenforceable nra five lobbyists nevada 2017 session another second amendment group firearms policy coalition three lobbyists group seeking changes nevada gun laws nevada gun safety coalition also five registered lobbyists 2017 expect pressure sides gun issue ahead throughout 2019 session stepping back mass shootings always spark gun control debate sometimes result stricter laws california voters last year passed ballot measure limit magazine capacity 10 rounds law came state grieved mass shootings successive years colorado legislature wake 2012 aurora theater shooting capped magazine limits 15 rounds extended background check laws people agenda thoughtout incremental said turner nevada firearms coalition time make difficult gun end result gun confiscation thats slope theyre working many cases clamor change diminishes time passes many people suffering said assemblyman john hambrick rlas vegas discussion let cool talk first year meanwhile friends family 58 victims grieve bad mankind hasnt evolved turner said still people want harm people contact ben botkin bbotkinreviewjournalcom 7754610661 follow benbotkin1 twitter contact sean whaley swhaleyreviewjournalcom 7754613820 follow seanw801 twitter | 573 |
<p>LOS ANGELES RAMS (1-1) AT SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS (0-2)</p>
<p>KICKOFF: Thursday, 8:25 p.m. ET, Levi’s Stadium. TV: NFL Network, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Mike_Tirico/" type="external">Mike Tirico</a>, Cris Collinsworth, Heather Cox (field reporter).</p>
<p>SERIES HISTORY: 135th regular-season meeting. 49ers lead series, 67-64-3. This game marks an intriguing, new chapter in a long NFC West rivalry. It is a generational family affair. John McVay, grandfather of new Rams coach Sean, was VP of the 49ers in the 1990s when <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Mike_Shanahan/" type="external">Mike Shanahan</a>, father of new 49ers head coach Kyle, was offensive coordinator in S.F. Earlier this year, Kyle interviewed three times for the Rams job, but bad weather canceled a fourth meeting. So, Sean took the job in L A. and Kyle in S.F. It’s almost unfathomable this series is as close as it is considering the 49ers won 17 straight against the Rams during a span from 1990 through 1998 that covered Los Angeles and St. Louis. In fact, the 49ers have won three straight against the Rams.</p>
<p>KEYS TO THE GAME: These new coaches hope to create two teams of the future, although the Rams have a head-start with <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jared-Goff/" type="external">Jared Goff</a> already in place, trying to prove he was worthy of last year’s No. 1 pick as a franchise QB. He showed vast improvement at times in the first two games this season. His favorite target is rookie Cooper Kupp, but he must avoid forcing the ball. RB <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Todd-Gurley/" type="external">Todd Gurley</a> seems to be playing back up to star status after a bad 2016.</p>
<p>The 49ers were booed off the field in their 23-3 home-opening loss to Carolina as impatient fans are paying exorbitant fees at Levi’s and still have lingering daydreams of Montana and Young, but current QB <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Brian_Hoyer/" type="external">Brian Hoyer</a>, considered a place-holder until somebody better is found next year, has yet to throw a touchdown and has a passer rating of 60.7. Meanwhile, RB <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Carlos-Hyde/" type="external">Carlos Hyde</a> is their most consistent offensive weapon. Starting rookie linebacker <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Reuben-Foster/" type="external">Reuben Foster</a> was in a walking boot Tuesday, SS Eric Reid (knee) is out and his replacement, Jaquiski Tartt (sore neck) practiced but is not 100 percent.</p>
<p>MATCHUPS TO WATCH:</p>
<p>–Rams DT <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Aaron-Donald/" type="external">Aaron Donald</a> vs. 49ers offensive line. Donald doesn’t really take on a single blocker, but challenges several with quick moves, spins and a ridiculous hyperactive demeanor. He held out of training camp seeking a huge contract and, after playing his way into shape for two weeks, could be a load for the 49ers to handle in the run and pass.</p>
<p>— Rams WR Cooper Kupp vs. 49ers pass defense. The rookie is validating stats from Eastern Washington where he became the most prolific receiver in FBS history, setting all-time records in receptions (428), receiving yards (6,464) and receiving touchdowns (73). Kupp should have ample room to operate as the 49ers defend WRs <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Sammy-Watkins/" type="external">Sammy Watkins</a> and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Robert-Woods/" type="external">Robert Woods</a>.</p>
<p>PLAYER SPOTLIGHT: 49ers MLB <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/NaVorro-Bowman/" type="external">NaVorro Bowman</a>. A combination of throwback defender and medical miracle, Bowman will be staring down Rams RB Todd Gurley on most plays. Bowman was once as good as any NFL linebacker creating sideline-to-sideline mayhem and is still remarkable after multiple horrific injuries. He must fight the fight solo with run-stopping sidekick SS Eric Reid out of action. Bowman stamped himself ready for the challenge last week at Seattle, staying on the field for 81 of the 82 defensive snaps.</p>
<p>FAST FACTS:</p>
<p>Rams QB Jared Goff has thrown for 530 yards with 2 TDs and 1 INT for a 103.2 rating this season.</p>
<p>RB Todd Gurley totaled 136 yards from scrimmage (88 rush, 48 rec.), 2 TDs (1 rush, 1 rec.) last week. In 3 career meetings, has 247 yards rushing (82.3 per game), 2 TDs.</p>
<p>WR Tavon Austin scored 3 TDs (2 rush, 1 rec.) in past 4 vs. S.F.</p>
<p>Aaron Donald, who played last week after holdout, leads all DTs with 28 sacks and 58 TFLs since entering NFL in 2014.</p>
<p>OLB <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Robert-Quinn/" type="external">Robert Quinn</a> made 3.5 sacks and FF in 4 career meetings at SF</p>
<p>49ers quarterback Brian Hoyer passed for at least 300 yards in 4 of past 7 starts.</p>
<p>RB Carlos Hyde rushed for 124 yards last week and 88 yards, 2 TDs in last meeting.</p>
<p>LB NaVorro Bowman seeks 16th consecutive division game with six-plus tackles. In last five games vs. Rams made 47 tackles, 3 sacks, 2 FF and an INT. He led team with 10 tackles last week.</p>
<p>PREDICTION:</p>
<p>The 49ers will try to control game with running game to keep pressure off Hoyer and defense, but the Rams counter with a potentially great runner in Gurley and enough weapons to pass the ball against an injury-depleted defense.</p>
<p>OUR PICK: Rams, 34-21.</p>
<p>— <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Frank-Cooney/" type="external">Frank Cooney</a></p> | false | 1 | los angeles rams 11 san francisco 49ers 02 kickoff thursday 825 pm et levis stadium tv nfl network mike tirico cris collinsworth heather cox field reporter series history 135th regularseason meeting 49ers lead series 67643 game marks intriguing new chapter long nfc west rivalry generational family affair john mcvay grandfather new rams coach sean vp 49ers 1990s mike shanahan father new 49ers head coach kyle offensive coordinator sf earlier year kyle interviewed three times rams job bad weather canceled fourth meeting sean took job l kyle sf almost unfathomable series close considering 49ers 17 straight rams span 1990 1998 covered los angeles st louis fact 49ers three straight rams keys game new coaches hope create two teams future although rams headstart jared goff already place trying prove worthy last years 1 pick franchise qb showed vast improvement times first two games season favorite target rookie cooper kupp must avoid forcing ball rb todd gurley seems playing back star status bad 2016 49ers booed field 233 homeopening loss carolina impatient fans paying exorbitant fees levis still lingering daydreams montana young current qb brian hoyer considered placeholder somebody better found next year yet throw touchdown passer rating 607 meanwhile rb carlos hyde consistent offensive weapon starting rookie linebacker reuben foster walking boot tuesday ss eric reid knee replacement jaquiski tartt sore neck practiced 100 percent matchups watch rams dt aaron donald vs 49ers offensive line donald doesnt really take single blocker challenges several quick moves spins ridiculous hyperactive demeanor held training camp seeking huge contract playing way shape two weeks could load 49ers handle run pass rams wr cooper kupp vs 49ers pass defense rookie validating stats eastern washington became prolific receiver fbs history setting alltime records receptions 428 receiving yards 6464 receiving touchdowns 73 kupp ample room operate 49ers defend wrs sammy watkins robert woods player spotlight 49ers mlb navorro bowman combination throwback defender medical miracle bowman staring rams rb todd gurley plays bowman good nfl linebacker creating sidelinetosideline mayhem still remarkable multiple horrific injuries must fight fight solo runstopping sidekick ss eric reid action bowman stamped ready challenge last week seattle staying field 81 82 defensive snaps fast facts rams qb jared goff thrown 530 yards 2 tds 1 int 1032 rating season rb todd gurley totaled 136 yards scrimmage 88 rush 48 rec 2 tds 1 rush 1 rec last week 3 career meetings 247 yards rushing 823 per game 2 tds wr tavon austin scored 3 tds 2 rush 1 rec past 4 vs sf aaron donald played last week holdout leads dts 28 sacks 58 tfls since entering nfl 2014 olb robert quinn made 35 sacks ff 4 career meetings sf 49ers quarterback brian hoyer passed least 300 yards 4 past 7 starts rb carlos hyde rushed 124 yards last week 88 yards 2 tds last meeting lb navorro bowman seeks 16th consecutive division game sixplus tackles last five games vs rams made 47 tackles 3 sacks 2 ff int led team 10 tackles last week prediction 49ers try control game running game keep pressure hoyer defense rams counter potentially great runner gurley enough weapons pass ball injurydepleted defense pick rams 3421 frank cooney | 527 |
<p>Reihan&#160;Salam is a policy fellow at the National Review Institute and a contributing editor of&#160;National Review.&#160;Yuval&#160;Levin is the&#160;Hertog&#160;Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the editor of&#160;National Affairs, and a contributing editor of&#160;National Review.&#160;This article is adapted from one that ran in the August 25, 2014 issue of&#160;National Review.</p>
<p>‘Are you for immigration reform or against it?”</p>
<p>In 2013, in the wake of President Obama’s reelection, Washington went through another round of a familiar argument. As in the past, it took the form of this yes-or-no question about a package of immigration policies calculated to please politically powerful constituencies rather than to address the problems of our immigration system.</p>
<p>The purpose of this exercise, which has recurred for a decade now, is not to achieve compromise between the two broad factions in our immigration debate: the economic and cultural cosmopolitans who want to dramatically increase immigration, and the economic and cultural populists who believe a more restrictive immigration policy better serves the national interest. The purpose, rather, is to patch together a coalition of cosmopolitan interests, from the Chamber of Commerce to La Raza, that is broad enough to roll over the populists — whose objections are dismissed as being rooted in ignorance or racial anxiety — instead of accommodating their legitimate concerns.</p>
<p>The most recent effort to achieve this purpose, like its predecessors, was supported by the elites of both political parties. It even had the backing of organized labor, which is increasingly dominated by public-sector workers with little to fear from low-wage competition. But, as ever, the effort ran into trouble with populist critics — most of them now Republicans — whose opposition was again sufficient to kill it.</p>
<p>As usual, the failure of the familiar package left its champions committed to simply trying the same thing again. House Republicans spent much of the past year fearing that their leaders would conspire with Senate Democrats to bring a version of the package to the floor, and those leaders spent much of the year promising business groups they would do just that while promising the rank-and-file they would not.</p>
<p>But, in a new twist, immigration has now returned to the front pages not because the reform package reappeared, but rather because a crisis at the border has brought some of our immigration system’s problems to light. The spring and summer saw a large surge of Central American minors reaching our southern border and seeking asylum in the United States. Their numbers overwhelmed the Border Patrol, and efforts to provide them with humane temporary shelter and to decide how to deal with them in the longer term quickly became a high-profile controversy.</p>
<p>Some politicians in both parties suggested that the influx may have stemmed from President Obama’s 2012 decision to grant “deferred action” to illegal immigrants who had come to America as minors before 2008 — that is, to allow them to stay and work without fear of legal sanction. Critics reasoned that this policy suggested to Central Americans that the U.S. was opening its doors to minors. It is impossible to say whether or to what degree the policy in fact contributed to the border crisis, but the sense that it may have, combined with the perception of disorder, caused a shift in public opinion, with support for legalization declining and frustration with our broken system growing. By the beginning of August, immigration had become the issue on which&#160; <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/07/31/immigration-is-now-president-obamas-worst-issue/" type="external">the public gave Obama his lowest marks</a>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the president has further polarized the immigration debate by hinting that he may use his executive powers to, in effect, unilaterally legalize millions of people who entered the country illegally over the last several decades. This would in essence be a vast expansion of the constitutionally dubious amnesty he already provided for minors. This possibility raised the prospect of a constitutional crisis alongside the border crisis, and made immigration all the more central in our politics.</p>
<p>In both cases, immigration has come to the fore not as an up-or-down vote on the same old ideas, but instead as a set of palpably real problems for our political system. In different ways, both crises have illuminated the shortcomings of the usual immigration debate, and seeing these shortcomings could help the country find a more constructive alternative.</p>
<p>The essential components of the recurring elite proposal are a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants; more immigration by the highly skilled; and a guest-worker program, combined with other significant increases in immigration by less-skilled workers, to help employers hold down wages. In return, this proposal offers little more than the promise of finally enforcing laws that already exist regarding border security, visa controls, and employment-status verification; no meaningful policy concessions to the populists are on the table. This combination of policies is a good way to unite the various interests that favor far more open borders, but it does not constitute a tenable response to the divisive questions of our immigration debate or to America’s needs in the 21st century. And while populist critics deserve credit for opposing ideas that a growing number of Americans reject, their own failure to offer a compelling alternative is a key part of why we find ourselves at an impasse.</p>
<p>A more coherent and plausible approach would begin by examining the problems that immigration policy should help alleviate. Here are the five most important.</p>
<p>First, we now have a large population of unauthorized immigrants, the vast majority of whom we will not (and should not) deport. In many cases they are deeply rooted in American life but living in a legal limbo that undermines both their prospects and the rule of law. Second, we confront a changing global division of labor in which America’s comparative advantage lies in highly skilled work. This has created new opportunities for skilled workers and asset owners while squeezing workers with lower literacy and numeracy. Third, we have an immigration policy that has swelled the ranks of people with lower literacy and numeracy, complicating and counteracting our efforts to fight poverty and promote mobility. Fourth, decades of large-scale immigration under these circumstances have given rise to concentrated ethnic poverty, which has tended to undermine assimilation. And fifth, ongoing immigration of the less skilled has put downward pressure on the wages of immigrants already in America — who make up over 16 percent of the work force — and thereby worsened all the other problems.</p>
<p>Most of these problems are not normally taken up in our immigration debates. The cosmopolitan consensus speaks only to the first, albeit in a way that fails to address concerns about fairness and the rule of law. It would modestly increase America’s comparative advantage in the global economy by allowing more highly skilled workers to immigrate, but would also exacerbate the domestic downside by increasing the numbers of less skilled immigrants. In every other respect, it would simply make things worse.</p>
<p>These criticisms cannot be met by pointing to America’s traditional openness to immigration and to the great benefits immigrants have offered our country. In the past, America’s immigration policies were generally well adapted to its economic needs and circumstances, and changed with the times. The nation has also generally been far more committed to assimilation than it is today, and when the pressures of mass immigration have grown too great, our immigration policies have accordingly grown more restrictive.</p>
<p>In light of these challenges, we need to think clearly about what a 21st-century immigration policy should look like. Marching blindly into a doubling of legal immigration massively weighted toward lower-skilled workers, as the 2013 bill would have had us do, or creating a class of “guest workers,” is not a way to vindicate the nation’s principles or meet its needs. And decades of polling has&#160; <a href="http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/2vo9otfcaea9yb4kyqdp7w.png" type="external">consistently found</a>&#160;that only a small minority of Americans favor increasing the overall level of immigration, a fact that the president and his allies are careful never to mention.</p>
<p>So what&#160;would&#160;a well-designed immigration policy — one geared to our actual problems, and to the practical necessity of finding middle ground — look like?</p>
<p>First, and perhaps most controversially, it would seek an enduring compromise on the question of illegal immigrants. Writing in&#160;National Affairs&#160;last year, Peter Skerry of Boston College&#160; <a href="http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/splitting-the-difference-on-illegal-immigration" type="external">persuasively sketched out</a>&#160;such a compromise. Skerry argues that both sides of the debate have painted false portraits of unauthorized immigrants — one side depicting them as victims and the other as villains. These immigrants have come to America in search of economic opportunity and have been largely welcomed, yet they have come and stayed in knowing violation of our laws. America has invited them in even as it has pushed them away, and both aspects of their situation need to be addressed.</p>
<p>Skerry says this means that both mass deportation and a path to citizenship should be regarded as untenable dead ends, and that we should instead find middle ground by offering this population permanent legal residence without citizenship. This approach acknowledges the legal, cultural, economic, and humanitarian concerns surrounding the status of illegal immigrants. It imposes a clear and permanent penalty on those who came here illegally, one that takes into account the special place of citizenship and political participation in American life. Yet it also lets unauthorized immigrants continue to work here, and gives them the chance to see their children grow up as Americans. And it has the virtue of simplicity, avoiding the intricate and administratively daunting scheme of fines and multi-step paths through various legal categories that the cosmopolitan consensus has favored.</p>
<p>Second, an immigration compromise must conduce to the integration and assimilation of immigrants. Formal civic-education requirements — such as administering a simple civics test to immigrants before they are granted green cards and requiring them to complete a civics course before they are naturalized — could help achieve those goals. But the core solution must be to deemphasize extended-family unification as an organizing principle of immigration policy, and to significantly favor higher-skilled over lower-skilled immigrants. These changes would counteract — rather than reinforce, as today’s system does — the tendency toward concentrated ethnic poverty.</p>
<p>An immigration compromise should also be designed to help address problems not directly related to immigration, such as persistent poverty and the daunting fiscal difficulties confronting our entitlement and welfare systems. This will require, again, favoring skilled immigrants — who are likely to pay more in taxes than they will receive in benefits over the course of their lives — and curtailing immigration by individuals likely to fall into our existing patterns of poverty and immobility.</p>
<p>To summarize, this package of reforms would consist of legalization without a path to citizenship for those here illegally, and a gradual rebalancing of legal immigration toward higher-skilled workers and away from extended-family unification, temporary workers, and lower-skilled immigrants. It would offer a more plausible resolution of the illegal-immigration question than the current preferences of either the cosmopolitans or the populists, and it would provide a legal-immigration system resembling those of immigration-friendly and economically developed countries such as Canada and Australia.</p>
<p>Border and visa enforcement would not be part of this compromise, but would instead have to precede it. Enforcing existing law must not be a concession one side makes to the other in negotiations; it is an absolute obligation of the executive branch, which presidents of both parties have neglected lately when it comes to immigration. A compromise such as the one we have described could be designed to take effect only when the Department of Homeland Security has submitted to Congress an enforcement plan that a majority of each house deems adequate, or else when a majority of each house deems the actual implementation of such a plan to have met key markers regarding border security, visa-expiration enforcement, and workplace verification. Such an approach could strike a reasonable balance between the necessity of enforcement and the likelihood of legislative approval, and thus help bring about the overall immigration compromise we need.</p>
<p>The policies outlined here would constitute a real middle ground between the cosmopolitans and the populists rather than an effort to roll over the opposition. It would be designed not to meet the political requirements of building an elite coalition, but to address the problems of our immigration system and the needs of the country.</p>
<p>Since the Democratic party has put itself almost uniformly behind the cosmopolitan consensus while the Republican party (like the country) is divided, this compromise would need to come first from Republicans. It would be a natural project for an ambitious Republican politician with an interest in seeing real immigration reform achieved, a sensitivity to the needs and circumstances of immigrants (legal and illegal), and a gut-level grasp of the moral, cultural, economic, and legal concerns of the populists in our immigration debate.</p> | false | 1 | reihan160salam policy fellow national review institute contributing editor of160national review160yuval160levin the160hertog160fellow ethics public policy center editor of160national affairs contributing editor of160national review160this article adapted one ran august 25 2014 issue of160national review immigration reform 2013 wake president obamas reelection washington went another round familiar argument past took form yesorno question package immigration policies calculated please politically powerful constituencies rather address problems immigration system purpose exercise recurred decade achieve compromise two broad factions immigration debate economic cultural cosmopolitans want dramatically increase immigration economic cultural populists believe restrictive immigration policy better serves national interest purpose rather patch together coalition cosmopolitan interests chamber commerce la raza broad enough roll populists whose objections dismissed rooted ignorance racial anxiety instead accommodating legitimate concerns recent effort achieve purpose like predecessors supported elites political parties even backing organized labor increasingly dominated publicsector workers little fear lowwage competition ever effort ran trouble populist critics republicans whose opposition sufficient kill usual failure familiar package left champions committed simply trying thing house republicans spent much past year fearing leaders would conspire senate democrats bring version package floor leaders spent much year promising business groups would promising rankandfile would new twist immigration returned front pages reform package reappeared rather crisis border brought immigration systems problems light spring summer saw large surge central american minors reaching southern border seeking asylum united states numbers overwhelmed border patrol efforts provide humane temporary shelter decide deal longer term quickly became highprofile controversy politicians parties suggested influx may stemmed president obamas 2012 decision grant deferred action illegal immigrants come america minors 2008 allow stay work without fear legal sanction critics reasoned policy suggested central americans us opening doors minors impossible say whether degree policy fact contributed border crisis sense may combined perception disorder caused shift public opinion support legalization declining frustration broken system growing beginning august immigration become issue which160 public gave obama lowest marks meanwhile president polarized immigration debate hinting may use executive powers effect unilaterally legalize millions people entered country illegally last several decades would essence vast expansion constitutionally dubious amnesty already provided minors possibility raised prospect constitutional crisis alongside border crisis made immigration central politics cases immigration come fore upordown vote old ideas instead set palpably real problems political system different ways crises illuminated shortcomings usual immigration debate seeing shortcomings could help country find constructive alternative essential components recurring elite proposal path citizenship unauthorized immigrants immigration highly skilled guestworker program combined significant increases immigration lessskilled workers help employers hold wages return proposal offers little promise finally enforcing laws already exist regarding border security visa controls employmentstatus verification meaningful policy concessions populists table combination policies good way unite various interests favor far open borders constitute tenable response divisive questions immigration debate americas needs 21st century populist critics deserve credit opposing ideas growing number americans reject failure offer compelling alternative key part find impasse coherent plausible approach would begin examining problems immigration policy help alleviate five important first large population unauthorized immigrants vast majority deport many cases deeply rooted american life living legal limbo undermines prospects rule law second confront changing global division labor americas comparative advantage lies highly skilled work created new opportunities skilled workers asset owners squeezing workers lower literacy numeracy third immigration policy swelled ranks people lower literacy numeracy complicating counteracting efforts fight poverty promote mobility fourth decades largescale immigration circumstances given rise concentrated ethnic poverty tended undermine assimilation fifth ongoing immigration less skilled put downward pressure wages immigrants already america make 16 percent work force thereby worsened problems problems normally taken immigration debates cosmopolitan consensus speaks first albeit way fails address concerns fairness rule law would modestly increase americas comparative advantage global economy allowing highly skilled workers immigrate would also exacerbate domestic downside increasing numbers less skilled immigrants every respect would simply make things worse criticisms met pointing americas traditional openness immigration great benefits immigrants offered country past americas immigration policies generally well adapted economic needs circumstances changed times nation also generally far committed assimilation today pressures mass immigration grown great immigration policies accordingly grown restrictive light challenges need think clearly 21stcentury immigration policy look like marching blindly doubling legal immigration massively weighted toward lowerskilled workers 2013 bill would us creating class guest workers way vindicate nations principles meet needs decades polling has160 consistently found160that small minority americans favor increasing overall level immigration fact president allies careful never mention what160would160a welldesigned immigration policy one geared actual problems practical necessity finding middle ground look like first perhaps controversially would seek enduring compromise question illegal immigrants writing in160national affairs160last year peter skerry boston college160 persuasively sketched out160such compromise skerry argues sides debate painted false portraits unauthorized immigrants one side depicting victims villains immigrants come america search economic opportunity largely welcomed yet come stayed knowing violation laws america invited even pushed away aspects situation need addressed skerry says means mass deportation path citizenship regarded untenable dead ends instead find middle ground offering population permanent legal residence without citizenship approach acknowledges legal cultural economic humanitarian concerns surrounding status illegal immigrants imposes clear permanent penalty came illegally one takes account special place citizenship political participation american life yet also lets unauthorized immigrants continue work gives chance see children grow americans virtue simplicity avoiding intricate administratively daunting scheme fines multistep paths various legal categories cosmopolitan consensus favored second immigration compromise must conduce integration assimilation immigrants formal civiceducation requirements administering simple civics test immigrants granted green cards requiring complete civics course naturalized could help achieve goals core solution must deemphasize extendedfamily unification organizing principle immigration policy significantly favor higherskilled lowerskilled immigrants changes would counteract rather reinforce todays system tendency toward concentrated ethnic poverty immigration compromise also designed help address problems directly related immigration persistent poverty daunting fiscal difficulties confronting entitlement welfare systems require favoring skilled immigrants likely pay taxes receive benefits course lives curtailing immigration individuals likely fall existing patterns poverty immobility summarize package reforms would consist legalization without path citizenship illegally gradual rebalancing legal immigration toward higherskilled workers away extendedfamily unification temporary workers lowerskilled immigrants would offer plausible resolution illegalimmigration question current preferences either cosmopolitans populists would provide legalimmigration system resembling immigrationfriendly economically developed countries canada australia border visa enforcement would part compromise would instead precede enforcing existing law must concession one side makes negotiations absolute obligation executive branch presidents parties neglected lately comes immigration compromise one described could designed take effect department homeland security submitted congress enforcement plan majority house deems adequate else majority house deems actual implementation plan met key markers regarding border security visaexpiration enforcement workplace verification approach could strike reasonable balance necessity enforcement likelihood legislative approval thus help bring overall immigration compromise need policies outlined would constitute real middle ground cosmopolitans populists rather effort roll opposition would designed meet political requirements building elite coalition address problems immigration system needs country since democratic party put almost uniformly behind cosmopolitan consensus republican party like country divided compromise would need come first republicans would natural project ambitious republican politician interest seeing real immigration reform achieved sensitivity needs circumstances immigrants legal illegal gutlevel grasp moral cultural economic legal concerns populists immigration debate | 1,165 |
<p>Am I a man or a mouse? Er, I’m not entirely sure I remember which is the socially acceptable answer and which is the funny one in the old Three Stooges routine with which I associate the question. Back in those days, everyone would have been familiar with that proverbial disjunction, along with the presumptive answer, without which the joke wouldn’t have worked. Even now I seem to recall those vague stirrings of indignation the question was meant to evoke. If you don’t stand up for yourself, if you don’t demand respect from the disrespectful, if you don’t, to take a random example, rebuke those who presume to tell you what you are allowed to think and whom you are allowed to vote for, then you will get no respect, not even from yourself. And you will have such feelings of demoralization and depression even if you agree with those who attempt to bully you into their way of thinking.</p>
<p>For that reason, you may have found as I did, during the noisy and wrangling winter’s pause before the voting began, the imp of the perverse whispering in your ear, “What if you don’t agree with much of what Donald Trump is proposing to do as president? What is that to the disgrace of submitting to being told by the smugocracy that now runs the country that you mustn’t agree with him?” What now, too, of my all-but instinctive impulse to rush to the defense of anyone whom the media are united in judging as not fit for decent society, let alone for occupying the Oval Office. I have to confess that, if it weren’t for what we might call the Smoot-Hawley factor and the spectre of world-wide depression, I might even have by God voted for the man.</p>
<p>Shameful, I know, but then that’s the point. I didn’t want to feel that I had been shamed into voting for anyone-but-Trump. Anyone who was a man and not a mouse would, I think. Indeed, it seems probable that Mr Trump was feeling the effects of a similar and related challenge to his own manhood when, at the first Republican debate last August, he was invited by Ms Megyn Kelly of Fox News to confirm what she and everybody else in the cultural elite already appeared to know, namely, that he was a low-life scoundrel and hater of women whom no decent person could possibly vote for.</p>
<p>Anyone unfamiliar with the media and their ways might have wondered how they could not have expected what would be the result of such a deliberate provocation. But Ms Kelly obviously thought herself immune, as a member of the media, from retaliation — as she no doubt would have been had she asked a similar question of some of the more murine candidates on that stage. Well, she found that in asking it of Mr Trump she was mistaken. He, at least, was decidedly not a mouse. And yet she, together with her bosses at Fox News and most of the rest of the media, affected uncomprehending innocence. What? Little old Megyn? She was just asking tough questions. What would Mr Trump do when confronted with tough questions not from some media “bimbo” (as she subsequently became, <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/trump-megyn-kelly-gq-photos-218320" type="external">according to the Trump nomenclature</a>) but from the likes of Vladimir Putin or Hassan Rouhani?</p>
<p>See, Megyn, here’s where you make your mistake. Yours was not a tough question at all but a calculated insult. Question-wise, a calculated insult is not the least bit tough, since there is only one possible answer to it. Roughly, it goes like this: Am not! To which, just in case you forget the part that comes next, your inevitable if approximate rejoinder is: Are too! A genuinely tough question might go something like this: “What would you do as President, Mr Trump, if your proposed 45 per cent tariff on imports from China set off an international trade war?” Of course, I can quite understand how the answer to that question, if any, would have played a lot less well with the TV audience than the entirely foreseeable (and no doubt foreseen) umbrage of Mr Trump, especially as this was carried over into the (God help us) seventh debate in January, also on Fox, from which her presence in the questioner’s chair caused him, shockingly, to absent himself.</p>
<p>To be sure, as he could not but have reflected, Mr Trump gained at least as much as Fox’s ratings from their joint turning of the debates into a form of bear-baiting. That, too, could have been foreseen — if not necessarily that the bear’s standing in the polls would go up rather than down because of it. What probably wasn’t foreseen was that the boorish (as well as bearish) billionaire would also gain by leaving his own place on the stage empty. The media consensus appeared to agree with Roger Ailes of Fox that, in the context of the macho posturing that they had allowed (and encouraged) the campaign to become, this was a rare misstep by Mr Trump, since it would make him look as if he were afraid of Ms Kelly and her tough questions. The polls afforded little evidence that this was true, however, and it was Fox’s ratings that suffered.</p>
<p>Perhaps there was just enough residual understanding of the man vs. mouse conundrum left over from Three Stooges days that people realized his submitting himself a second time to Ms Kelly’s insults would have been not a confession of fear or weakness but an implicit acknowledgment of her right to repeat them. But how hard it is to tell anymore! The collapse of the Western honor culture has left more than just our leading statesmen all at sea when it comes to these immemorial masculine rituals of dominance and submission which, for all our latter-day enlightenment, still seem to prevail in politics as in international relations. Half the population (at least) appears ready to take the more up-to-date approach of our current Secretary of State — who, in his younger days, did so much to bring down the old honor culture by making unsubstantiated accusations of war crimes against his former comrades in arms and being lionized for it.</p>
<p>He and those of his mind prefer to pretend that such rituals are no longer of any relevance or importance, and their ignorance of their error appears to be invincible. When, for example, in January America’s principal international antagonist over the past 40 years captured a couple of boat-loads of American sailors without a fight and photographed our gallant non-fighting men and women in humiliating positions of submission and surrender, John Kerry’s response was publicly to thank the Iranians for returning them, their purpose having been served, to the bosom of the U.S. Navy. “Iran’s Swift Release of U.S. Sailors Hailed as a Sign of Warmer Relations” headlined <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/world/middleeast/iran-navy-crew-release.html?emc=edit_th_20160114&amp;nl=todaysheadlines&amp;nlid=57259899" type="external">The New York Times</a>, always well-known for looking on the bright side things. The Times also reported Mr Kerry as saying in a phone call to Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, that “if we are able to do this in the right way, we can make this into what will be a good story for both of us.”</p>
<p>Just a wild guess here, but I’m betting that Mr Zarif was already pretty well aware how good a story it was, at least for him and the Iranian powers that be — as the latter showed when they subsequently awarded a Victory medal to the Revolutionary Guards who had effected the heroic capture of the spawn of the Great Satan. At this, Mr Kerry <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/medals-for-u-s-humiliation-1454283453" type="external">was reported</a>&#160;to have been so “furious” that, he said, “I immediately contacted my counterpart. And we indicated our disgust.” Not that there can have been anyone outside of administration circles who didn’t already know exactly how much Mr Zarif and company cared for their disgust. In relations with the Iranians, as with others, they had already provided redundant evidence of American cluelessness when it comes to dealings with that considerable part of the world wherein honor cultures still exist.</p>
<p>There may still be enough of one here, or at least the distant memory of one, to explain the Trump phenomenon as nothing more than a reaction to eight years of indignant phone calls, feckless “disgust” and “leading from behind” in response to seemingly endless derogations from American honor by pipsqueak foreign rivals. “We lose to everybody,” as Mr Trump puts it. Whatever else might be said about his highly offensive public persona, and a great deal has been said about it, it was itself a reassurance that, under a President Trump, Americans would no longer have to submit to such humiliations abroad with no more than Secretary Kerry’s feelings of “disgust” to console them for it.</p>
<p>That’s why I was just a bit troubled by <a href="http://c7.nrostatic.com/article/430126/donald-trump-conservatives-oppose-nomination" type="external">National Review’s celebrated “Against Trump” issue</a>&#160;in which a whole raft of conservatives, many of them my friends, dumped on Trump — basically for being vulgar and not being a conservative. Well, yes. I’m with you there of course. But wasn’t that slightly beside the point? Those who supported him did so not because they were under the unfortunate delusion that he was either a conservative or not vulgar but because they cared less about these things than about knowing he would do what neither conservatives nor liberals, in all their refinement, have been very good at doing since Ronald Reagan left office, which is stand for an idea of America and American honor that was once familiar to everybody but now seems almost forgotten — especially by those in the media who were falling all over each other to find still more scandals and outrages with which hopefully to de-legitimize the Trump campaign.</p>
<p>Why would conservatives, especially, want to associate themselves with a tactic so often and so successfully used against themselves? It seemed to me that they could honor the Trumpian belief in American greatnesss and defiance of the cringing pacifism that has characterized the current administration (very much including the Republican candidate’s most likely opponent in November), without recanting the conservative policies that still mark their differences from him — if only to encourage the genuine conservatives in the race to emulate his defiance of the media’s attempts to destroy him. Above all, I didn’t see why anyone would want to join in with the media in denigrating and belittling someone who stands almost alone in public life in not being afraid of them and their ever-productive (and over-productive) scandal machine.</p>
<p>The anti-Trump media, surely, are more accurately described as the “haters” they routinely accuse their targets as being. They remind one of “those that hated [J.M. Synge’s] The Playboy of the Western World” in W.B. Yeats’s poem of that title:</p>
<p>Once, when midnight smote the air, Eunuchs ran through Hell and met On every crowded street to stare Upon great Juan riding by: Even like these to rail and sweat, Staring upon his sinewy thigh.</p>
<p>But then, of course, one also has to admit that great Juan was a gentleman and Donald Trump isn’t. He has just enough of a residual sense of the old honor culture to understand the importance of the sinewy limb without enough to know when and how and for what to display it. In this, I’m afraid, he is as much adrift and disoriented as the rest of us when it comes to any cultural acquaintance with what becomes a man — a man who is a man and not a mouse — in this unhappy era of “gender fluidity.” Like most macho posturing, including the media’s unacknowledged own, his is a result of that deliberate cultural lacuna, that absence of any better idea of what manliness is or what it is for, which is the result of honor’s 20th century discredit.</p>
<p>The posturers are really in the same boat as the novelist Walter Kirn who reviewed Harvey Mansfield’s essential book <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/books/review/19kirn.html?8bu&amp;emc=bu" type="external">Manliness</a>, even though the word, for him, conjured up no more cogent or respectable an image than that of the pneumatic body-builders Hans and Franz on “Saturday Night Live” in the 1990s, a pair of chuckleheads whose use of words like “girly” or “manly,” thought Mr Kirn, bespoke only “a pair of usages that was poignantly out of date by then among even minimally hip Americans.”</p>
<p>Speaking as an even less than minimally hip American, I wonder if those of us who are lucky enough to live in a world where vulgarity is the enemy we care most about oughtn’t to have humility enough to recognize how rarefied that world is to the great mass of our fellow citizens, let alone to those in the rest of the world who look to America for protection against the evils which always breed from our absence. Vulgarity, as I had occasion to mention in this space last month (see “The King of Tastelessness” in The New Criterion of February, 2016), is simply the medium in which we live today, as fish live in water, and it seems unfair to single out Donald Trump to bear the blame for that, particularly if we do so in alliance with the media, who really do bear a significant portion of the blame.</p>
<p>For Mr Trump understands what the media and ever-increasing numbers of Americans who are influenced by them do not: namely, that statesmanship is the one area of human life where manliness can never be outmoded and where, if we have no idea of it, we are bound to pay a very heavy price as a nation. Like his many detractors, I deplore the buffoonish braggadocio which is the Trumpian idea, but I’m not surprised that it appears to him and many others the only way to by-pass the media’s filters to reach those of us who still value and seek to preserve America’s honor in a world where everybody else appears to care more about it than we ourselves do.</p>
<p>I wonder, however, if he is giving us enough credit? Back in the man vs. mouse days, when the old honor culture was still fresh in everyone’s memory and feminism had not yet pooh-poohed the whole idea as “sexist,” there was a pretty widespread recognition of something called sportsmanship — a form of honor unique to the Western and especially the Anglo-Saxon honor culture. It may even be around to this day in enough people to become a problem for Mr Trump, a very great deal of whose vulgarity comes from the absence of what sportsmanship could have taught him, which is how to lose. I don’t think it hurt him with his honor-loving supporters to skip the debate with Megyn Kelly, but they are likely to have taken much less readily to the swiftness with which he cried “fraud” when he lost out to Ted Cruz in the Iowa caucuses. Even here, however, he may be doing us a service if he teaches us once again, though only by negative example, what honor once meant, and what it might mean again.</p>
<p>James Bowman is resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.</p> | false | 1 | man mouse er im entirely sure remember socially acceptable answer funny one old three stooges routine associate question back days everyone would familiar proverbial disjunction along presumptive answer without joke wouldnt worked even seem recall vague stirrings indignation question meant evoke dont stand dont demand respect disrespectful dont take random example rebuke presume tell allowed think allowed vote get respect even feelings demoralization depression even agree attempt bully way thinking reason may found noisy wrangling winters pause voting began imp perverse whispering ear dont agree much donald trump proposing president disgrace submitting told smugocracy runs country mustnt agree allbut instinctive impulse rush defense anyone media united judging fit decent society let alone occupying oval office confess werent might call smoothawley factor spectre worldwide depression might even god voted man shameful know thats point didnt want feel shamed voting anyonebuttrump anyone man mouse would think indeed seems probable mr trump feeling effects similar related challenge manhood first republican debate last august invited ms megyn kelly fox news confirm everybody else cultural elite already appeared know namely lowlife scoundrel hater women decent person could possibly vote anyone unfamiliar media ways might wondered could expected would result deliberate provocation ms kelly obviously thought immune member media retaliation doubt would asked similar question murine candidates stage well found asking mr trump mistaken least decidedly mouse yet together bosses fox news rest media affected uncomprehending innocence little old megyn asking tough questions would mr trump confronted tough questions media bimbo subsequently became according trump nomenclature likes vladimir putin hassan rouhani see megyn heres make mistake tough question calculated insult questionwise calculated insult least bit tough since one possible answer roughly goes like case forget part comes next inevitable approximate rejoinder genuinely tough question might go something like would president mr trump proposed 45 per cent tariff imports china set international trade war course quite understand answer question would played lot less well tv audience entirely foreseeable doubt foreseen umbrage mr trump especially carried god help us seventh debate january also fox presence questioners chair caused shockingly absent sure could reflected mr trump gained least much foxs ratings joint turning debates form bearbaiting could foreseen necessarily bears standing polls would go rather probably wasnt foreseen boorish well bearish billionaire would also gain leaving place stage empty media consensus appeared agree roger ailes fox context macho posturing allowed encouraged campaign become rare misstep mr trump since would make look afraid ms kelly tough questions polls afforded little evidence true however foxs ratings suffered perhaps enough residual understanding man vs mouse conundrum left three stooges days people realized submitting second time ms kellys insults would confession fear weakness implicit acknowledgment right repeat hard tell anymore collapse western honor culture left leading statesmen sea comes immemorial masculine rituals dominance submission latterday enlightenment still seem prevail politics international relations half population least appears ready take uptodate approach current secretary state younger days much bring old honor culture making unsubstantiated accusations war crimes former comrades arms lionized mind prefer pretend rituals longer relevance importance ignorance error appears invincible example january americas principal international antagonist past 40 years captured couple boatloads american sailors without fight photographed gallant nonfighting men women humiliating positions submission surrender john kerrys response publicly thank iranians returning purpose served bosom us navy irans swift release us sailors hailed sign warmer relations headlined new york times always wellknown looking bright side things times also reported mr kerry saying phone call mohammad javad zarif iranian foreign minister able right way make good story us wild guess im betting mr zarif already pretty well aware good story least iranian powers latter showed subsequently awarded victory medal revolutionary guards effected heroic capture spawn great satan mr kerry reported160to furious said immediately contacted counterpart indicated disgust anyone outside administration circles didnt already know exactly much mr zarif company cared disgust relations iranians others already provided redundant evidence american cluelessness comes dealings considerable part world wherein honor cultures still exist may still enough one least distant memory one explain trump phenomenon nothing reaction eight years indignant phone calls feckless disgust leading behind response seemingly endless derogations american honor pipsqueak foreign rivals lose everybody mr trump puts whatever else might said highly offensive public persona great deal said reassurance president trump americans would longer submit humiliations abroad secretary kerrys feelings disgust console thats bit troubled national reviews celebrated trump issue160in whole raft conservatives many friends dumped trump basically vulgar conservative well yes im course wasnt slightly beside point supported unfortunate delusion either conservative vulgar cared less things knowing would neither conservatives liberals refinement good since ronald reagan left office stand idea america american honor familiar everybody seems almost forgotten especially media falling find still scandals outrages hopefully delegitimize trump campaign would conservatives especially want associate tactic often successfully used seemed could honor trumpian belief american greatnesss defiance cringing pacifism characterized current administration much including republican candidates likely opponent november without recanting conservative policies still mark differences encourage genuine conservatives race emulate defiance medias attempts destroy didnt see anyone would want join media denigrating belittling someone stands almost alone public life afraid everproductive overproductive scandal machine antitrump media surely accurately described haters routinely accuse targets remind one hated jm synges playboy western world wb yeatss poem title midnight smote air eunuchs ran hell met every crowded street stare upon great juan riding even like rail sweat staring upon sinewy thigh course one also admit great juan gentleman donald trump isnt enough residual sense old honor culture understand importance sinewy limb without enough know display im afraid much adrift disoriented rest us comes cultural acquaintance becomes man man man mouse unhappy era gender fluidity like macho posturing including medias unacknowledged result deliberate cultural lacuna absence better idea manliness result honors 20th century discredit posturers really boat novelist walter kirn reviewed harvey mansfields essential book manliness even though word conjured cogent respectable image pneumatic bodybuilders hans franz saturday night live 1990s pair chuckleheads whose use words like girly manly thought mr kirn bespoke pair usages poignantly date among even minimally hip americans speaking even less minimally hip american wonder us lucky enough live world vulgarity enemy care oughtnt humility enough recognize rarefied world great mass fellow citizens let alone rest world look america protection evils always breed absence vulgarity occasion mention space last month see king tastelessness new criterion february 2016 simply medium live today fish live water seems unfair single donald trump bear blame particularly alliance media really bear significant portion blame mr trump understands media everincreasing numbers americans influenced namely statesmanship one area human life manliness never outmoded idea bound pay heavy price nation like many detractors deplore buffoonish braggadocio trumpian idea im surprised appears many others way bypass medias filters reach us still value seek preserve americas honor world everybody else appears care wonder however giving us enough credit back man vs mouse days old honor culture still fresh everyones memory feminism yet poohpoohed whole idea sexist pretty widespread recognition something called sportsmanship form honor unique western especially anglosaxon honor culture may even around day enough people become problem mr trump great deal whose vulgarity comes absence sportsmanship could taught lose dont think hurt honorloving supporters skip debate megyn kelly likely taken much less readily swiftness cried fraud lost ted cruz iowa caucuses even however may us service teaches us though negative example honor meant might mean james bowman resident scholar ethics public policy center | 1,230 |
<p />
<p>Western powers are engaged in yet another military intervention, this time in Mali, a country whose troubles are in no small part a consequence of the U.S./NATO war on Libya to overthrow the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. And yet policymakers and political commentators are proving as disciplined as ever in disregarding the obvious lessons.</p>
<p>The U.S./NATO intervention in Libya served to prolong the conflict and escalate the violence on the ground. Indeed, that without such intervention loyalist forces would crush the armed rebellion within a matter of weeks was a key argument for bombing. The U.N. Security Council passed resolution 1973 on March 17, 2011, and when the bombing campaign began two days later—on the anniversary of the launch of the U.S.’s illegal war on Iraq—Western officials immediately announced their intention to exceed the mandate to enforce a no-fly zone to protect civilians on the ground by backing the armed rebels in furtherance of their policy of regime change in direct violation of the U.N. Charter under which they were ostensibly operating.</p>
<p>By the end of April, the U.S. State Department estimated that as many as 30,000 had been killed, with the Western-backed rebels, whose ranks included al-Qaeda-affiliated groups, committing some of the worst atrocities. Rebel forces targeted sub-Saharan Africans and committed massacres. Towns like Tawargha were ethnically cleansed by Western-backed forces. Hundreds of thousands became refugees. Scores of civilians were killed in the bombings. With the collapse of the regime, lawlessness prevailed throughout the country as rival militias battled for control. The British security service MI5 warned that Libya now offered “a permissive environment for al-Qaeda”, which established the country as a base of operations. The region was flooded with arms. Neighboring countries such as Algeria and Mali were destabilized.</p>
<p>And this was all hailed as a resounding success, a model for future “humanitarian” interventions.</p>
<p>On September 11, 2012, an attack in Benghazi linked to the al-Qaeda affiliated group Ansar al-Sharia resulted in the killing of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. But the blowback hasn’t seemed to prompt policymakers and the intelligentsia to reconsider what lessons should be taken away from the Libya adventure.</p>
<p>The U.S. was at the same time intervening directly in Mali, with calamitous consequences of its own. A rebellion by the ethnic Tuareg people against the government began in January 2011, and they later joined forces with jihadist groups that had emerged out of the civil war in Algeria in the 1990s. With the demise Gaddafi, battle-hardened Tuaregs who had fought with the regime fled to Mali. The U.S. spent more than $500 million in a “counterterrorism” program backing the Malian military against the insurgents, including the training of elite military units by U.S. Special Forces. U.S.-trained units under Tuareg leadership then defected, leaving the Malian forces demoralized. In March 2012, a U.S.-trained officer, Capt. Amadou Sanogo, led a coup to overthrow the government of President Amadou Toumani Touré. In the chaos that ensued, an alliance of jihadist groups including Ansar Dine, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb took over northern Mali. Some of the rebels have since rejoined forces with the government to fight the jihadists, who have been terrorizing northern Mali. The military junta has also been committing human rights abuses, including extrajudicial executions, disappearances, and torture.</p>
<p>On October 12, the U.N. Security Council adopted resolution 2071 in response to the junta’s request for an international military force to assist in fighting the jihadists, calling upon member states to provide “coordinated assistance, expertise, training and capacity-building support to the Armed and Security Forces of Mali”.</p>
<p>In December, Amnesty International, being not incapable of drawing lessons from history, sensibly warned that further military intervention by Western powers was “likely to increase the scale of human rights violations” and “risks triggering further ethnic conflict”. Such warnings about unintended but predictable consequences of the use of force, however, fall on deaf ears.</p>
<p>Earlier this month, France—a key ally in the U.S./NATO bombing in Libya—began a military campaign in Mali, with the U.S. providing logistical support. French warplanes engaged in intensive airstrikes with the stated goal of blocking the advance of the jihadists; but, as the New York Times pointed out, after the bombing, militants were “closer, in fact, than they had been before French forces entered the fight.”</p>
<p>A Times editorial wisely suggested that “The lessons of this debacle must be absorbed and perhaps applied elsewhere as well”—but the “lessons” drawn, unfortunately, were the wrong ones; the Times proceeded to declare that “this is no time to walk away from Mali”, called for the U.S. to double down on its military training programs, and opined that France’s airstrikes “make sense”. Former U.S. ambassador to Mali Vicki Huddleston similarly observed in a Times op-ed that “[y]ears of training” by U.S. Special Forces “did not stop the Malian military” from defecting and that the U.S.-backed military “exacerbated the chaos by overthrowing Mali’s democratically elected government”; yet the conclusion drawn was that the U.S. “must not dither” in helping France, which “has begun to exercise leadership”, to “Save Mali” by doing more of the same.</p>
<p>The immediate consequence of France’s military assault, the Times noted the very next day, was that it “escalated into a potentially much broader North African conflict”, with militants seizing a gas field in Algeria and taking 20 foreign hostages, including American, French, British, Japanese, and Norwegian citizens. “The attackers”, the Times observed, “seemed particularly incensed that Algeria’s government had permitted the French to use Algerian airspace to fly warplanes and military equipment into Mali”. The Algerian public was also none too pleased with their government’s decision. The situation “heightened concerns that a Western military intervention could transform militant groups that once had only a regional focus into avowed enemies of the United States—in other words, that the backlash might end up being worse than the original threat.”</p>
<p>The U.S. response was predictable, which was to escalate its own involvement, such as coordinating with the French on the deployment of American cargo planes to transport French troops and equipment into Mali. Supporting France’s military intervention was “the most prudent course” of action, Daniel Byman commented in Foreign Policy, despite the “sensible” concern that such intervention could escalate anti-American sentiment and escalate the threat of terrorist attacks against Americans.</p>
<p>The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), meanwhile, has reported that nearly 230,000 people had been forcibly displaced in Mali in the past year and warned that the escalation of the conflict could result in 700,000 additional refugees, with there already having been a noticeable increase in the number of Malians fleeing to the neighboring countries of Niger, Mauritania, and Burkina Faso since the French military campaign began.</p>
<p>The lessons from past and present experiences are difficult to ignore, but self-disciplined policymakers and pundits beholden to the state religion manage to do just that, continuing to insist that the solution is to continue the same foreign policy of military interventionism that largely contributed to creating the problem in the first place.</p> | false | 1 | western powers engaged yet another military intervention time mali country whose troubles small part consequence usnato war libya overthrow regime muammar gaddafi yet policymakers political commentators proving disciplined ever disregarding obvious lessons usnato intervention libya served prolong conflict escalate violence ground indeed without intervention loyalist forces would crush armed rebellion within matter weeks key argument bombing un security council passed resolution 1973 march 17 2011 bombing campaign began two days lateron anniversary launch uss illegal war iraqwestern officials immediately announced intention exceed mandate enforce nofly zone protect civilians ground backing armed rebels furtherance policy regime change direct violation un charter ostensibly operating end april us state department estimated many 30000 killed westernbacked rebels whose ranks included alqaedaaffiliated groups committing worst atrocities rebel forces targeted subsaharan africans committed massacres towns like tawargha ethnically cleansed westernbacked forces hundreds thousands became refugees scores civilians killed bombings collapse regime lawlessness prevailed throughout country rival militias battled control british security service mi5 warned libya offered permissive environment alqaeda established country base operations region flooded arms neighboring countries algeria mali destabilized hailed resounding success model future humanitarian interventions september 11 2012 attack benghazi linked alqaeda affiliated group ansar alsharia resulted killing ambassador chris stevens three americans blowback hasnt seemed prompt policymakers intelligentsia reconsider lessons taken away libya adventure us time intervening directly mali calamitous consequences rebellion ethnic tuareg people government began january 2011 later joined forces jihadist groups emerged civil war algeria 1990s demise gaddafi battlehardened tuaregs fought regime fled mali us spent 500 million counterterrorism program backing malian military insurgents including training elite military units us special forces ustrained units tuareg leadership defected leaving malian forces demoralized march 2012 ustrained officer capt amadou sanogo led coup overthrow government president amadou toumani touré chaos ensued alliance jihadist groups including ansar dine movement oneness jihad west africa al qaeda islamic maghreb took northern mali rebels since rejoined forces government fight jihadists terrorizing northern mali military junta also committing human rights abuses including extrajudicial executions disappearances torture october 12 un security council adopted resolution 2071 response juntas request international military force assist fighting jihadists calling upon member states provide coordinated assistance expertise training capacitybuilding support armed security forces mali december amnesty international incapable drawing lessons history sensibly warned military intervention western powers likely increase scale human rights violations risks triggering ethnic conflict warnings unintended predictable consequences use force however fall deaf ears earlier month francea key ally usnato bombing libyabegan military campaign mali us providing logistical support french warplanes engaged intensive airstrikes stated goal blocking advance jihadists new york times pointed bombing militants closer fact french forces entered fight times editorial wisely suggested lessons debacle must absorbed perhaps applied elsewhere wellbut lessons drawn unfortunately wrong ones times proceeded declare time walk away mali called us double military training programs opined frances airstrikes make sense former us ambassador mali vicki huddleston similarly observed times oped years training us special forces stop malian military defecting usbacked military exacerbated chaos overthrowing malis democratically elected government yet conclusion drawn us must dither helping france begun exercise leadership save mali immediate consequence frances military assault times noted next day escalated potentially much broader north african conflict militants seizing gas field algeria taking 20 foreign hostages including american french british japanese norwegian citizens attackers times observed seemed particularly incensed algerias government permitted french use algerian airspace fly warplanes military equipment mali algerian public also none pleased governments decision situation heightened concerns western military intervention could transform militant groups regional focus avowed enemies united statesin words backlash might end worse original threat us response predictable escalate involvement coordinating french deployment american cargo planes transport french troops equipment mali supporting frances military intervention prudent course action daniel byman commented foreign policy despite sensible concern intervention could escalate antiamerican sentiment escalate threat terrorist attacks americans un high commissioner refugees unhcr meanwhile reported nearly 230000 people forcibly displaced mali past year warned escalation conflict could result 700000 additional refugees already noticeable increase number malians fleeing neighboring countries niger mauritania burkina faso since french military campaign began lessons past present experiences difficult ignore selfdisciplined policymakers pundits beholden state religion manage continuing insist solution continue foreign policy military interventionism largely contributed creating problem first place | 695 |
<p>The 2010 midterm election was a decisive victory for Republicans. From where they now sit — with a strong majority in the House and a much-improved position in the Senate — they can finally provide an effective counter to the Obama administration. At a minimum, their increased numbers in Congress should put a stop to the hyper-activist period ushered in by President Obama’s inauguration. For that alone, many voters will be grateful that the Republicans are back in positions of power and relieved that the recent period of unchecked liberal dominance at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue is over.</p>
<p>But Republicans will need to do more than just block the never-ending Democratic quest for more government. They will need to present their own agenda, especially in the House, and especially with respect to spending — the issue that so animated their supporters throughout 2010.</p>
<p>Republicans will need to weigh the competing risks they now face. Voters returned them to power, but they cannot have forgotten that Republicans controlled Congress for a dozen years not so long ago and participated enthusiastically in several substantial spending increases along the way. The first priority for the new House majority must be to reestablish Republicans’ spending-restraint credentials. Republicans need to show the electorate that they have learned their lesson and are willing to implement real cuts in spending.</p>
<p>At the same time, they must go into the budget battles aware that some tactics are more dangerous politically than others. That shouldn’t be too hard, since many of them were in Congress the last time their party went from the minority to the majority, in 1995. At that time, Newt Gingrich and House Budget Committee chairman John Kasich pushed through an aggressive balanced-budget plan with deep cuts in domestic spending, including in Medicare and Medicaid.</p>
<p>The problem was not with the substance of their proposal. The Clinton administration launched a predictable barrage of attacks on the budget plan, arguing that devastation would follow if Gingrich got his way, but Republicans were largely able to weather that political storm. Democrats got the upper hand only after Republicans allowed the perception to harden that they were eager to shut down the government just to get their way. As the shutdown lengthened, public pressure built for the government to reopen, and the Republican ranks began to splinter. Eventually, Congress was forced to give in to many of Clinton’s spending demands.</p>
<p>Clinton carried the resulting momentum to reelection later in 1996 — and the Republican majority lost its stomach for budget fights. Instead, it overcompensated for its mistakes by avoiding any confrontation whatsoever with the president. The result was a steady stream of spending increases, all approved by a Republican Congress.</p>
<p>To win this time around, Republicans need to convince voters, especially independents, that their plan is one of sensible, pragmatic stewardship of the taxpayers’ money, and that the president and his allies in Congress instead are intent on continuing their reckless spending binge. They will have the opportunity to begin drawing that distinction with the 2011 budget. The lame-duck 111th Congress tried to pass a monstrous, bloated, earmark-laden omnibus appropriations measure, just before adjourning, to fund the government through September. Thankfully, some wavering Senate Republicans came to their senses and blocked the effort at the last minute. The result is that the government is now operating under a continuing resolution (CR), which means agencies are operating at their 2010 levels in the early months of fiscal year 2011. The current CR expires in early March.</p>
<p>Instead of writing their own version of a 2,000-page omnibus spending measure — a project that would surely take months, not weeks — House Republicans, working with their counterparts in the Senate, should focus on extending the CR (perhaps with a reduction below 2010 levels) all the way through the fiscal year. That would allow them to demonstrate their commitment to keeping the government open, even as they impose some spending discipline. Obama would be hard pressed to find a compelling rationale to block such an approach. But regardless of what the president does (by either signing or vetoing a full-year CR), House Republicans should make it clear they have no intention of shutting down the government, by passing as many CRs as necessary to keep it running.</p>
<p>True, funding government at current levels is not significant spending restraint, and would not satisfy those in the Tea Party movement who expect much more from the new House and Congress. Republicans will therefore need to assemble right away an ambitious and far-reaching rescissions package that would cut some programs and agencies far below their 2010 funding levels. Here, Republicans should be as aggressive as their numbers allow.</p>
<p>They should start with the low-hanging fruit: reducing the costs of the federal payroll (with hiring and pay freezes), eliminating earmark funding, canceling any remaining funds from the stimulus bill, and defunding public broadcasting. But the Republicans shouldn’t stop there. They need to terminate low-value programs and agencies in other parts of the government too, such as job training and education, business subsidies through the Small Business Administration, and certain welfare programs with long track records of failure or mediocrity. These cuts could be coupled with new, enforceable caps on appropriated spending that would lock in the spending cuts over a number of years.</p>
<p>The savings would not be trivial. Cuts of tens of billions of dollars in 2011 are entirely possible, especially given the large run-up in spending since 2008. Deep cuts in appropriations that were implemented this year could save taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars over the coming decade.</p>
<p>No doubt such a package would meet stiff resistance from most Democrats, and certainly from President Obama. But it would also put many Democrats from moderate districts in an uncomfortable position. Voters delivered a stinging rebuke to big-spending Democrats in November: Do those who escaped in 2010 really want to carry the big-spending label into the 2012 election? Republicans could very well find a sizable number of Democrats willing and even eager to work with them on a package of cuts. If that is the case, Republicans should welcome them — indeed they should do whatever can be done, short of abandoning principle, to bring as many as possible on board their effort. The best outcome for Republicans would be a strong bipartisan coalition in support of a significant spending-cut package, with opposition coming only from the most entrenched liberals in Washington, one of whom is Barack Obama.</p>
<p>Cutting back on domestic appropriations won’t balance the budget. That will require more far-reaching health-care and entitlement reforms. Later this spring, Rep. Paul Ryan will present a budget plan to the House Budget Committee. Inevitably, that plan will be viewed as the Republican alternative to the Obama budget, and Ryan is likely to push his colleagues to be bold in what they propose. That means repealing Obamacare and replacing it with a reformed Medicare and other measures that promote cost-conscious consumers and a functioning marketplace. It means embracing Social Security reforms that promote personal savings, longer working lives, and less reliance by high-wage workers on government pensions. Endorsing such reforms will carry substantial political risks, but it will also demonstrate that Republicans have a credible plan to bring long-term spending in line with available revenue, which is absolutely necessary to head off fiscal calamity. And there’s never been a better time to offer such ideas, since the president’s own debt commission has recently recommended Social Security and health-care-entitlement cuts.</p>
<p>First things first: Decisions need to be made about 2011 funding. That presents an opportunity for Republicans. They need to get off on the right foot, and they can do that by demonstrating their commitment to cut appropriated spending right away, even as they also recognize that the battle they are in is a long one — one they will ultimately win only if the public is on their side.</p>
<p>Mr. Capretta is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He was an associate director of the Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004.</p> | false | 1 | 2010 midterm election decisive victory republicans sit strong majority house muchimproved position senate finally provide effective counter obama administration minimum increased numbers congress put stop hyperactivist period ushered president obamas inauguration alone many voters grateful republicans back positions power relieved recent period unchecked liberal dominance ends pennsylvania avenue republicans need block neverending democratic quest government need present agenda especially house especially respect spending issue animated supporters throughout 2010 republicans need weigh competing risks face voters returned power forgotten republicans controlled congress dozen years long ago participated enthusiastically several substantial spending increases along way first priority new house majority must reestablish republicans spendingrestraint credentials republicans need show electorate learned lesson willing implement real cuts spending time must go budget battles aware tactics dangerous politically others shouldnt hard since many congress last time party went minority majority 1995 time newt gingrich house budget committee chairman john kasich pushed aggressive balancedbudget plan deep cuts domestic spending including medicare medicaid problem substance proposal clinton administration launched predictable barrage attacks budget plan arguing devastation would follow gingrich got way republicans largely able weather political storm democrats got upper hand republicans allowed perception harden eager shut government get way shutdown lengthened public pressure built government reopen republican ranks began splinter eventually congress forced give many clintons spending demands clinton carried resulting momentum reelection later 1996 republican majority lost stomach budget fights instead overcompensated mistakes avoiding confrontation whatsoever president result steady stream spending increases approved republican congress win time around republicans need convince voters especially independents plan one sensible pragmatic stewardship taxpayers money president allies congress instead intent continuing reckless spending binge opportunity begin drawing distinction 2011 budget lameduck 111th congress tried pass monstrous bloated earmarkladen omnibus appropriations measure adjourning fund government september thankfully wavering senate republicans came senses blocked effort last minute result government operating continuing resolution cr means agencies operating 2010 levels early months fiscal year 2011 current cr expires early march instead writing version 2000page omnibus spending measure project would surely take months weeks house republicans working counterparts senate focus extending cr perhaps reduction 2010 levels way fiscal year would allow demonstrate commitment keeping government open even impose spending discipline obama would hard pressed find compelling rationale block approach regardless president either signing vetoing fullyear cr house republicans make clear intention shutting government passing many crs necessary keep running true funding government current levels significant spending restraint would satisfy tea party movement expect much new house congress republicans therefore need assemble right away ambitious farreaching rescissions package would cut programs agencies far 2010 funding levels republicans aggressive numbers allow start lowhanging fruit reducing costs federal payroll hiring pay freezes eliminating earmark funding canceling remaining funds stimulus bill defunding public broadcasting republicans shouldnt stop need terminate lowvalue programs agencies parts government job training education business subsidies small business administration certain welfare programs long track records failure mediocrity cuts could coupled new enforceable caps appropriated spending would lock spending cuts number years savings would trivial cuts tens billions dollars 2011 entirely possible especially given large runup spending since 2008 deep cuts appropriations implemented year could save taxpayers hundreds billions dollars coming decade doubt package would meet stiff resistance democrats certainly president obama would also put many democrats moderate districts uncomfortable position voters delivered stinging rebuke bigspending democrats november escaped 2010 really want carry bigspending label 2012 election republicans could well find sizable number democrats willing even eager work package cuts case republicans welcome indeed whatever done short abandoning principle bring many possible board effort best outcome republicans would strong bipartisan coalition support significant spendingcut package opposition coming entrenched liberals washington one barack obama cutting back domestic appropriations wont balance budget require farreaching healthcare entitlement reforms later spring rep paul ryan present budget plan house budget committee inevitably plan viewed republican alternative obama budget ryan likely push colleagues bold propose means repealing obamacare replacing reformed medicare measures promote costconscious consumers functioning marketplace means embracing social security reforms promote personal savings longer working lives less reliance highwage workers government pensions endorsing reforms carry substantial political risks also demonstrate republicans credible plan bring longterm spending line available revenue absolutely necessary head fiscal calamity theres never better time offer ideas since presidents debt commission recently recommended social security healthcareentitlement cuts first things first decisions need made 2011 funding presents opportunity republicans need get right foot demonstrating commitment cut appropriated spending right away even also recognize battle long one one ultimately win public side mr capretta fellow ethics public policy center associate director office management budget 2001 2004 | 747 |
<p>GREEN BAY — The <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Green_Bay_Packers/" type="external">Green Bay Packers</a>‘ offensive line depth is a huge concern right now. And quarterback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Aaron_Rodgers/" type="external">Aaron Rodgers</a> admits he’s a little worried.</p>
<p>“Yeah, we need to shore that up a little bit, you know,” Rodgers said.</p>
<p>Packers starting right tackle Bryan Bulaga sprained an ankle in practice last week and it will sideline him the rest of the preseason. Kyle Murphy, Green Bay’s sixth-round draft choice in 2016, started at right tackle during the Packers’ preseason game in Denver Saturday.</p>
<p>Jason Spriggs, a second-round draft choice in 2016, was supposed to be Green Bay’s swing tackle. But Spriggs has had a brutal summer, and right now, it would be a giant leap of faith for the Packers to play him in a meaningful moment.</p>
<p>The Packers are also thin inside, where Don Barclay appeared set to be the top backup at both guard spots and at center. But Barclay suffered an ankle injury in the Packers’ first preseason game and there’s no timetable for his return.</p>
<p>Making matters worse, No. 3 center Lucas Patrick went down with a head injury in Denver.</p>
<p>“It’ll be nice to get Donnie back here pretty soon,” Rodgers said. “He was having a great camp, but we’ll look at the film and see how the guys graded out. But we need to keep getting better at those backup spots, see who the swing tackle’s going to be and who the next guard is going to be.”</p>
<p>Perhaps the greatest disappointment of the summer in Green Bay has been Spriggs.</p>
<p>Spriggs was at least partially responsible for three sacks against Washington in the Packers’ second preseason game. Then last Saturday, Denver’s <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Von-Miller/" type="external">Von Miller</a> made a nifty spin move past Spriggs and sacked Rodgers. Interestingly, Rodgers went to the ground before Miller even arrived so the Pro-Bowl defensive end couldn’t do any serious damage.</p>
<p>“You go through and you have struggles sometimes,” Packers offensive line coach James Campen said of Spriggs. “Certainly, his hit now. If there’s a place to have it, it’s better in a preseason game than a regular-season game.”</p>
<p>The Packers gave Murphy the first crack at right tackle against Denver. Murphy and Spriggs then alternated the rest of the first half.</p>
<p>In the second half, Spriggs shifted to left tackle and Murphy stayed at right tackle.</p>
<p>If either left tackle David Bakhtiari or Bulaga missed time, Murphy appears likely to get the first call.</p>
<p>Murphy’s feet are just average, although he’s always played well in space. His leg drive and pad level helped him shine as a run blocker at Stanford, although he was often overpowered by bull rushers.</p>
<p>Murphy was active for just three games last year, but improved his strength this offseason. And while Murphy still has a long way to go, he might be Green Bay’s best option at swing tackle.</p>
<p>“In the offseason, I tried to focus on strength and quickness and all that,” Murphy said. “I think my run blocking, coming from a run-heavy offense at Stanford, I would say my run blocking was always pretty up to par. I’ve been working on my pass protection, trying to stay low, trying to stay explosive. I’ve just been trying to be a better all-around player. I’m feeling good.”</p>
<p>Bulaga said last week he expects to play in Week 1, but his status may not be known until next week. Bulaga has missed 32 games in his first seven seasons, but just five in the last three years. And Bulaga is optimistic his latest injury won’t cost him any time.</p>
<p>“I don’t like to do timetable things, but I’m not too concerned about it,” Bulaga said of his availability in Week 1. “I’m able to walk and it feels better as the day goes on. But I have to see what the results say and kind of go from there.”</p>
<p>In recent seasons, Green Bay had depth the rest of the NFL would love. Today, Spriggs has flopped, Murphy remains a work in progress, Barclay is hurt and rookie sixth-round draft pick Kofi Amichia has been a disappointment.</p>
<p>“There’s a lot of competition still available,” Campen said. “It’s going to be fun to see how it plays out. There’s a lot of guys that work hard and try to do things right. We’ll see if guys respond.”</p>
<p>They’ll need to – or the offense could certainly be compromised.</p>
<p>Notes: Outside linebacker Ahmad Brooks is coming to Green Bay for a visit on Tuesday. Brooks was released by San Francisco last Friday after posting 53.5 sacks in his first 11 years in the NFL. Green Bay is paper thin at outside linebacker behind starters <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Clay-Matthews/" type="external">Clay Matthews</a> and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Nick-Perry/" type="external">Nick Perry</a>, and both of those players have been injury prone. Last season, Brooks had six sacks, 41 tackles and four pass breakups for the 49ers. … Long snapper Derek Hart was released on Monday. That means Brett Goode will be Green Bay’s long snapper for a 10th straight year. … Packers head coach <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Mike_McCarthy/" type="external">Mike McCarthy</a> is hopeful that outside linebacker Nick Perry, and offensive linemen Bryan Bulaga and Don Barclay – who are all nursing ankle injuries – and defensive end Dean Lowry (knee) will all be ready for the season opener against Seattle. “I’m hopeful. We’ll see how it works out,” McCarthy said. “They’re here every day, and, so, I’m the wrong person to ask. Seriously, I’m the wrong person to ask about injuries, because my conversations with those guys (they all say) they’re all going to be ready. So, we’ll just weigh that vs. the medical staff, but everybody’s optimistic.”</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>Rookie outside linebacker Vince Biegel underwent surgery for a broken foot in May and has been on the PUP list since the start of training camp. But McCarthy said he was hopeful Biegel might be ready for the opener. “I’m full of hope,” McCarthy said. “I’m the captain of hope.”</p> | false | 1 | green bay green bay packers offensive line depth huge concern right quarterback aaron rodgers admits hes little worried yeah need shore little bit know rodgers said packers starting right tackle bryan bulaga sprained ankle practice last week sideline rest preseason kyle murphy green bays sixthround draft choice 2016 started right tackle packers preseason game denver saturday jason spriggs secondround draft choice 2016 supposed green bays swing tackle spriggs brutal summer right would giant leap faith packers play meaningful moment packers also thin inside barclay appeared set top backup guard spots center barclay suffered ankle injury packers first preseason game theres timetable return making matters worse 3 center lucas patrick went head injury denver itll nice get donnie back pretty soon rodgers said great camp well look film see guys graded need keep getting better backup spots see swing tackles going next guard going perhaps greatest disappointment summer green bay spriggs spriggs least partially responsible three sacks washington packers second preseason game last saturday denvers von miller made nifty spin move past spriggs sacked rodgers interestingly rodgers went ground miller even arrived probowl defensive end couldnt serious damage go struggles sometimes packers offensive line coach james campen said spriggs certainly hit theres place better preseason game regularseason game packers gave murphy first crack right tackle denver murphy spriggs alternated rest first half second half spriggs shifted left tackle murphy stayed right tackle either left tackle david bakhtiari bulaga missed time murphy appears likely get first call murphys feet average although hes always played well space leg drive pad level helped shine run blocker stanford although often overpowered bull rushers murphy active three games last year improved strength offseason murphy still long way go might green bays best option swing tackle offseason tried focus strength quickness murphy said think run blocking coming runheavy offense stanford would say run blocking always pretty par ive working pass protection trying stay low trying stay explosive ive trying better allaround player im feeling good bulaga said last week expects play week 1 status may known next week bulaga missed 32 games first seven seasons five last three years bulaga optimistic latest injury wont cost time dont like timetable things im concerned bulaga said availability week 1 im able walk feels better day goes see results say kind go recent seasons green bay depth rest nfl would love today spriggs flopped murphy remains work progress barclay hurt rookie sixthround draft pick kofi amichia disappointment theres lot competition still available campen said going fun see plays theres lot guys work hard try things right well see guys respond theyll need offense could certainly compromised notes outside linebacker ahmad brooks coming green bay visit tuesday brooks released san francisco last friday posting 535 sacks first 11 years nfl green bay paper thin outside linebacker behind starters clay matthews nick perry players injury prone last season brooks six sacks 41 tackles four pass breakups 49ers long snapper derek hart released monday means brett goode green bays long snapper 10th straight year packers head coach mike mccarthy hopeful outside linebacker nick perry offensive linemen bryan bulaga barclay nursing ankle injuries defensive end dean lowry knee ready season opener seattle im hopeful well see works mccarthy said theyre every day im wrong person ask seriously im wrong person ask injuries conversations guys say theyre going ready well weigh vs medical staff everybodys optimistic rookie outside linebacker vince biegel underwent surgery broken foot may pup list since start training camp mccarthy said hopeful biegel might ready opener im full hope mccarthy said im captain hope | 592 |
<p>What we are witnessing is the irresponsibility of the human race, a Satan-cursed form of life that does not belong on the beautiful planet Earth.</p>
<p>The World Wildlife Fund tells us that there are only 3,890 tigers left in the entire world. Due to exploitative capitalism, which destroys the environment in behalf of short-term profits, the habitat for tigers is rapidly disappearing. The environmental destruction, together with hunting or poaching by those who regard it as manly or profitable to kill a magnificent animal, is leading to the rapid extermination of this beautiful animal. Soon tigers will only exist as exhibits in zoos.</p>
<p>The same is happening to lions, cheetahs, leopards, rhinos, elephants, bobcats, wolves, bears, birds, butterflies, honey bees. You name it.</p>
<p>What we are witnessing is the irresponsibility of the human race, a Satan-cursed form of life that does not belong on the beautiful planet Earth. The cursed humans are even capable of launching a nuclear war which would destroy the livability of Earth.</p>
<p>God made a mistake when he gave to humans, infected as they are with evil, jurisdiction over Earth. He should have given jurisdiction to animals. Consider what humans do to animals. For example, Defenders of Wildlife report that the corrupt state of Alaska is currently slaughtering wolves and grizzly bears so that the state can sell more hunting permits to hunters to slaughter moose. Every moose taken by a wolf pack or a grizzly is not there to be murdered by a hunter. So the state is killing off the predators that reduce its hunting license fees.</p>
<p>Quail hunters want the bobcats killed so that hunters can shoot more birds. The New Hampshire Fish and Game Department voted to establish a hunting and trapping season for bobcats but had to overturn its decision when it became clear that the endangered lynx would be caught in the same traps. Humans regard animals as worthy of protection only when they are on the verge of extinction.</p>
<p>Murder and death appeal to Americans and not only to hunters. How many Americans do you know who are distressed by their government’s murder, maiming, and dislocation of millions of Muslims in seven countries over the past 15 years?</p>
<p>A few years ago there was a scandal involving a NBA star who was a patron of dog fights in which Americans brought dogs to kill or be killed. Americans attend cock fights in which roosters kill or die. The British enjoyed fights to the death between bears and dogs and bred a special dog to fight the bears. The Spanish like to see the death of the bull or of the bullfighter. The blood sport of the Roman Colosseum is very much a part of the human race.</p>
<p>Badly raised little boys tie cans to the tails of dogs and cats and laugh as the terrified animals run, often to their death under the wheels of cars.</p>
<p>Sometimes I go to a gun club with a friend to shoot at paper targets. On one occasion our concentration was disturbed by bursts from a superweapon. I watched the person flinch each time he shot. I suggested that he needed a less powerful weapon with which to practice.</p>
<p>If only, he said. His son had gone to Africa and paid $25,000 to murder a lion. The son had pressured the father to live up to his feat, and the father was adding bruises to his shoulder every time he fired a round of the .375 H&amp;H Magnum. He began to flinch when he pulled the trigger, and his aim was worse by the shot.</p>
<p>He said that he was trying to sight-in the rifle. I offered to do that for him so that the rest of us could go about our business of eye-hand coordination. Observing our disapproving looks, he blurted out that he didn’t really want to shoot a lion, but that his friends and his son were enculturated into a hunting culture in which killing animals was proof of manhood. He felt that he had to do it in order to be accepted.</p>
<p>Then he described the process by which the great lion hunter killed the dangerous beast.</p>
<p>First, he said, you shoot a hippo. Then parts of the dead animal are hung as bait on posts a mere 60 yards from a 20-foot high platform where there are gun rests in the event you are unable to shoulder your own rifle for a shot at such a large animal as a lion a mere 60 yards away. And if you miss, the Great White Hunter guide shoots and you can claim the victory over the dangerous beast.</p>
<p>I remarked that he didn’t seem inclined to participate in this fake hunting scenario. He said that he wasn’t but that he had paid his $25,000. I suggested that he cancel the trip and consider the 25K as the cost of avoiding the shame of participating in cowardly murder.</p>
<p>Elephants are magnificent creatures. Their intelligence is higher than many humans, and their life span, if they are not murdered, can be longer than the human life span. Yet elephants are being murdered at astonishing rates. Nick Brandt documents with his photographs, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Across-Ravaged-Land-Nick-Brandt/dp/1419709453/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1471899925&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=Across+the+Ravaged+Land&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=forepolijour-20&amp;linkId=14daf5c9e7d6a34ea7c3711524ffc8d5" type="external">Across the Ravaged Land</a>, the disappearing animals of East Africa.</p>
<p>The Guardian, a once strong but today weak and Washington-intimidated UK newspaper, reports that in 2014 20,000 African Elephants were killed by poachers. Tanzania and Mozambique have lost over half of their elephant populations with the same devastation of elephants across east and central Africa.</p>
<p>Faced with the extermination of elephants, what did the corrupt European Union do? The EU <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/06/african-wildlife-officials-appalled-as-eu-opposes-a-total-ban-on-ivory-trade" type="external">refused a ban</a> on Ivory trade! The ban might interfere with capitalist profits.</p>
<p>Free market ideologues have concocted a theory that the way to save animals is to make it profitable to kill them. Therefore, people raise the animals to be killed by hunters. In other words, animals only exist for the pleasure of humans to kill them.</p>
<p>What we are left with is a “western civilization” that is no longer a civilization but an existential threat to all life on Earth. Obama has announced a one trillion dollar US <a href="http://billmoyers.com/story/the-trillion-dollar-question-the-media-have-neglected-to-ask-presidential-candidates/" type="external">nuclear modernization program</a>. This huge sum, spent for death, could instead be spent for life. It is enough money to fund many large and well protected wildlife preserves around the world.</p>
<p>The evil represented by nuclear weapons is inconsistent with the continued existence of life on Earth. Washington, crazed by desire for hegemony over others, is recklessly courting war between nuclear powers. Only Putin among world leaders warns that Washington is setting an unpromising course for everyone.</p>
<p>Yet regardless of all fact, deluded Americans still regard themselves as the salt of the earth, the “exceptional people,” the “indispensable people.” If this delusion is incurable, humans will murder Earth.</p>
<p>This article was originally published at&#160; <a href="http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/" type="external">PaulCraigRoberts.org</a>.</p> | false | 1 | witnessing irresponsibility human race satancursed form life belong beautiful planet earth world wildlife fund tells us 3890 tigers left entire world due exploitative capitalism destroys environment behalf shortterm profits habitat tigers rapidly disappearing environmental destruction together hunting poaching regard manly profitable kill magnificent animal leading rapid extermination beautiful animal soon tigers exist exhibits zoos happening lions cheetahs leopards rhinos elephants bobcats wolves bears birds butterflies honey bees name witnessing irresponsibility human race satancursed form life belong beautiful planet earth cursed humans even capable launching nuclear war would destroy livability earth god made mistake gave humans infected evil jurisdiction earth given jurisdiction animals consider humans animals example defenders wildlife report corrupt state alaska currently slaughtering wolves grizzly bears state sell hunting permits hunters slaughter moose every moose taken wolf pack grizzly murdered hunter state killing predators reduce hunting license fees quail hunters want bobcats killed hunters shoot birds new hampshire fish game department voted establish hunting trapping season bobcats overturn decision became clear endangered lynx would caught traps humans regard animals worthy protection verge extinction murder death appeal americans hunters many americans know distressed governments murder maiming dislocation millions muslims seven countries past 15 years years ago scandal involving nba star patron dog fights americans brought dogs kill killed americans attend cock fights roosters kill die british enjoyed fights death bears dogs bred special dog fight bears spanish like see death bull bullfighter blood sport roman colosseum much part human race badly raised little boys tie cans tails dogs cats laugh terrified animals run often death wheels cars sometimes go gun club friend shoot paper targets one occasion concentration disturbed bursts superweapon watched person flinch time shot suggested needed less powerful weapon practice said son gone africa paid 25000 murder lion son pressured father live feat father adding bruises shoulder every time fired round 375 hamph magnum began flinch pulled trigger aim worse shot said trying sightin rifle offered rest us could go business eyehand coordination observing disapproving looks blurted didnt really want shoot lion friends son enculturated hunting culture killing animals proof manhood felt order accepted described process great lion hunter killed dangerous beast first said shoot hippo parts dead animal hung bait posts mere 60 yards 20foot high platform gun rests event unable shoulder rifle shot large animal lion mere 60 yards away miss great white hunter guide shoots claim victory dangerous beast remarked didnt seem inclined participate fake hunting scenario said wasnt paid 25000 suggested cancel trip consider 25k cost avoiding shame participating cowardly murder elephants magnificent creatures intelligence higher many humans life span murdered longer human life span yet elephants murdered astonishing rates nick brandt documents photographs across ravaged land disappearing animals east africa guardian strong today weak washingtonintimidated uk newspaper reports 2014 20000 african elephants killed poachers tanzania mozambique lost half elephant populations devastation elephants across east central africa faced extermination elephants corrupt european union eu refused ban ivory trade ban might interfere capitalist profits free market ideologues concocted theory way save animals make profitable kill therefore people raise animals killed hunters words animals exist pleasure humans kill left western civilization longer civilization existential threat life earth obama announced one trillion dollar us nuclear modernization program huge sum spent death could instead spent life enough money fund many large well protected wildlife preserves around world evil represented nuclear weapons inconsistent continued existence life earth washington crazed desire hegemony others recklessly courting war nuclear powers putin among world leaders warns washington setting unpromising course everyone yet regardless fact deluded americans still regard salt earth exceptional people indispensable people delusion incurable humans murder earth article originally published at160 paulcraigrobertsorg | 601 |
<p />
<p>The fall of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali has resonated across the Arab world, and in particular among young Middle Easterners, the majority of whom have lived under authoritarian rule for their entire lives. Tunisian symptoms - inflation, unemployment, social injustice, and a lack of political liberty - are virtually present in all other Arab nations, and thus there is a growing concern among <a href="http://aawsat.com/leader.asp?section=3&amp;issueno=11736&amp;article=603952" type="external">Arab</a> and Western commentators alike about the possibility of another regime fall and the extent to which the current instability could be exploited by radical Islamists.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">&lt;img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-8576" style="margin: 5px;" title="kaaba" src="https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/kaaba-300x225.jpg" alt="Kaaba" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/kaaba-300x225.jpg 300w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/kaaba-533x400.jpg 533w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/kaaba-120x90.jpg 120w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/kaaba-500x375.jpg 500w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/kaaba-280x210.jpg 280w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/kaaba-638x478.jpg 638w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/kaaba-118x88.jpg 118w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/kaaba-479x359.jpg 479w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/kaaba.jpg 800w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /&gt;</a>Already, there have been demonstrations in Egypt, Algeria, and Mauritania where young men, in a replication of Mohamed Bouazizi's action in Tunisia, set themselves on fire as a way of expressing their hopelessness, frustration, and anxiety. On January 16, thousands of angry Jordanians held a gathering in Amman, while some <a href="http://en.news.maktoob.com/20090000548860/Omanis_protest_high_cost_of_living_corruption_/Article.htm" type="external">200 hundred Omanis</a> protested against high prices and corruption on January 17. Meanwhile a Saudi human rights group, certainly emboldened by events in Tunisia, has <a href="http://en.news.maktoob.com/20090000549896/Saudi_rights_group_to_protest_arbitrary_detentions/Article.htm" type="external">urged</a> activists to join a 48-hour hunger strike on February 10, and a <a href="http://en.news.maktoob.com/20090000550884/Saudi_man_sets_himself_alight_in_poor_border_region/Article.htm" type="external">Saudi man</a> is reported to have died after setting fire to himself on 22 January.</p>
<p>Although there are good reasons - dissimilar social composition and political history - to believe that these protests will not mean that various Arab Kings and Presidents will experience the same fate as President Ben Ali, there is an important lesson for western policymakers in what seems to be Arab states' appeal to Islam in order to facilitate their efforts in defusing the current social turmoil in their societies.</p>
<p>On January 19, Mohammed Rifa al-Tahtawi, spokesman of <a href="http://www.islamfortoday.com/alazhar.htm" type="external">Al-Azhar</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i746Q3fHlxmauOIvCIxKekuLjjjA?docId=CNG.3644556712427d17d7316b43638ff444.251" type="external">asserted</a> that "sharia law states that Islam categorically forbids suicide for any reason". Similarly, Saudi Arabia's top Muslim authority has branded the act of self-immolation a <a href="http://en.news.maktoob.com/20090000550664/Saudi_mufti_brands_suicide_protests_as_great_sin_/Article.htm" type="external">"great sin"</a>. Islam indeed prohibits suicide but, given the timing and wordings of these statements, it seems that these declarations are delivered at the request of Arab governments, which in turn provides one with a valuable clue on the role of Islam in Middle East politics.</p>
<p>Islam is a powerful socio-political force in the Muslim world, with an extraordinary capacity to generate a language of justice.&#160; Its capability to function as an integrative force, thereby establishing consensus on national issues in combination with deeply embedded Islamic consciousness in Arab societies, make Islam a precious political currency with which Arab regimes can convincingly justify their hold on power, resist popular calls for change, keep the society calm, and expand their influence abroad.</p>
<p>As such, the commonly held assumption in Western societies that the greater visibility of Islamic values in the public arena and Islamization in general are the works of Islamic movements is indeed misguided. Obviously, Islamic movements can play a critical role in pushing regimes in the direction of Islamic politics, but a more comprehensive understanding of the role of Islam in the politics of Arab societies requires a sharp focus on the state as an Islamic actor on its own. This is so, given that states have played a critical role in embedding Islam in politics both as a reaction to societal pressures, as well as a means to preserve their power. This is evident in construction of Islamism as both a threat and opportunity, depending on the political needs of regimes at any given time.</p>
<p>This is why Western policymakers cannot logically expect extremists to stop manipulating Islam for political gains when their own allies have been doing just that for decades. More importantly, these recent references to Islam serve as a reminder for why secularism or separation of Islam from politics is neither the solution to radicalization nor a possibility in the Arab world. Secularism can indeed further radicalize Islamic movements by providing Arab regimes with yet another excuse to limit the political space under the banners of national security and counter-terrorism. Interpretations of Islam have been disputed since the 7th Century, as epitomized in the Shia-Sunni rivalry, and hence Islam will remain a political force for as long as there is no institutionalized consensus on its relevance to the daily life of Muslims in the 21st Century.</p>
<p>Thus, governments appeal to Islam in order to calm the public anger should not be surprising. What is surprising is the rigidity of Arab governments in their adherence to the same old tactics instead of using the momentum to initiate reforms. Arab states, like states in other parts of the world, seek to establish and maintain hegemony over their societies and in the process they do not miss a chance to employ Islamic norms to their own advantage. The problem, however, is that in doing so they are rather awkwardly motivated by self and family interests, as opposed to national interests, which has led to the emergence of a great gap between their concerns and those of their citizens.</p>
<p>The loyalty and obedience that are deeply rooted in Arab nations combined with a sense of quiet entitlement has led to a situation in which economic well-being comes from social inclusion, rather than productivity. There are obviously exceptions, but those are the minority. This problem is further exacerbated by the political systems in the Arab world, which combine authoritarianism with limited, private consultation, thereby drastically reducing the channels of communication between the public and elites. Motivating people is a risky business with unpredictable results, and government officials seem uncomfortable with the possible trade off that they might have to make between their ability to hold on power and inspiring people.</p>
<p>Finally, there is the problem of corruption and a firm belief among the public that the keys to success are connections and privilege rather than creativity and competitiveness. Rules and regulations, as they appear "on paper," are not applied consistently. At the same time, many locals and foreigners complain about lack of transparency in private and public sectors, uncertainty about regulatory policies, and unfair competition practices, which collectively constrain businesses by reducing the incentive to comply with regulation and the desire to invest.</p>
<p>As such, recent comments by Hilary Clinton on lack of political and economic reforms in the Middle East are to be welcomed with a sense of optimism. However, American officials should spare a moment and reflect upon U.S. policy in the Middle East. There are always two sides to a story. U.S. backing of Arab governments through consent - the Persian Gulf subregion - or provision of financial aids - Egypt - has indeed played a role in deepening the current crisis. The U.S. is certainly in a position to use its aid packages and security guarantees as a stick to encourage Arab leaders to reform their polities and markets, not least because their stability serves as the pillar of American strength in the region.</p>
<p>U.S. officials can tour the region and deliver compelling speeches on the need for immediate political and economic reforms in various Arab countries. And the Arab public, surly the middle class, will listen to them enthusiastically. However, the question is whether the American government is ready to listen to their message: less talk, more action!</p> | false | 1 | fall zine elabidine ben ali resonated across arab world particular among young middle easterners majority lived authoritarian rule entire lives tunisian symptoms inflation unemployment social injustice lack political liberty virtually present arab nations thus growing concern among arab western commentators alike possibility another regime fall extent current instability could exploited radical islamists ltimg classalignleft sizemedium wpimage8576 stylemargin 5px titlekaaba srchttpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201101kaaba300x225jpg altkaaba width300 height225 srcsethttpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201101kaaba300x225jpg 300w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201101kaaba533x400jpg 533w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201101kaaba120x90jpg 120w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201101kaaba500x375jpg 500w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201101kaaba280x210jpg 280w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201101kaaba638x478jpg 638w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201101kaaba118x88jpg 118w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201101kaaba479x359jpg 479w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201101kaabajpg 800w sizesmaxwidth 300px 100vw 300px gtalready demonstrations egypt algeria mauritania young men replication mohamed bouazizis action tunisia set fire way expressing hopelessness frustration anxiety january 16 thousands angry jordanians held gathering amman 200 hundred omanis protested high prices corruption january 17 meanwhile saudi human rights group certainly emboldened events tunisia urged activists join 48hour hunger strike february 10 saudi man reported died setting fire 22 january although good reasons dissimilar social composition political history believe protests mean various arab kings presidents experience fate president ben ali important lesson western policymakers seems arab states appeal islam order facilitate efforts defusing current social turmoil societies january 19 mohammed rifa altahtawi spokesman alazhar asserted sharia law states islam categorically forbids suicide reason similarly saudi arabias top muslim authority branded act selfimmolation great sin islam indeed prohibits suicide given timing wordings statements seems declarations delivered request arab governments turn provides one valuable clue role islam middle east politics islam powerful sociopolitical force muslim world extraordinary capacity generate language justice160 capability function integrative force thereby establishing consensus national issues combination deeply embedded islamic consciousness arab societies make islam precious political currency arab regimes convincingly justify hold power resist popular calls change keep society calm expand influence abroad commonly held assumption western societies greater visibility islamic values public arena islamization general works islamic movements indeed misguided obviously islamic movements play critical role pushing regimes direction islamic politics comprehensive understanding role islam politics arab societies requires sharp focus state islamic actor given states played critical role embedding islam politics reaction societal pressures well means preserve power evident construction islamism threat opportunity depending political needs regimes given time western policymakers logically expect extremists stop manipulating islam political gains allies decades importantly recent references islam serve reminder secularism separation islam politics neither solution radicalization possibility arab world secularism indeed radicalize islamic movements providing arab regimes yet another excuse limit political space banners national security counterterrorism interpretations islam disputed since 7th century epitomized shiasunni rivalry hence islam remain political force long institutionalized consensus relevance daily life muslims 21st century thus governments appeal islam order calm public anger surprising surprising rigidity arab governments adherence old tactics instead using momentum initiate reforms arab states like states parts world seek establish maintain hegemony societies process miss chance employ islamic norms advantage problem however rather awkwardly motivated self family interests opposed national interests led emergence great gap concerns citizens loyalty obedience deeply rooted arab nations combined sense quiet entitlement led situation economic wellbeing comes social inclusion rather productivity obviously exceptions minority problem exacerbated political systems arab world combine authoritarianism limited private consultation thereby drastically reducing channels communication public elites motivating people risky business unpredictable results government officials seem uncomfortable possible trade might make ability hold power inspiring people finally problem corruption firm belief among public keys success connections privilege rather creativity competitiveness rules regulations appear paper applied consistently time many locals foreigners complain lack transparency private public sectors uncertainty regulatory policies unfair competition practices collectively constrain businesses reducing incentive comply regulation desire invest recent comments hilary clinton lack political economic reforms middle east welcomed sense optimism however american officials spare moment reflect upon us policy middle east always two sides story us backing arab governments consent persian gulf subregion provision financial aids egypt indeed played role deepening current crisis us certainly position use aid packages security guarantees stick encourage arab leaders reform polities markets least stability serves pillar american strength region us officials tour region deliver compelling speeches need immediate political economic reforms various arab countries arab public surly middle class listen enthusiastically however question whether american government ready listen message less talk action | 680 |
<p>ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — For four weeks, the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Buffalo-Bills/" type="external">Buffalo Bills</a> were one of the most surprising teams in the NFL, the zenith coming when they improved to 3-1 with a somewhat shocking 23-17 victory in Atlanta over the defending NFC champion Falcons.</p>
<p>But Sunday’s loss in Cincinnati was like a cold bucket of water dumped on the team’s collective head.</p>
<p>The loss to the Bengals wasn’t so much a surprise as it was a reminder of how flawed the offense is, and no matter how well the defense plays in the weeks to come, unless the Bills find a way to score touchdowns, the playoff drought will reach 18 years.</p>
<p>The passing offense is remedial with a group of receivers who, individually, probably wouldn’t be starting for three or four other teams in the league. On top of that, quarterback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tyrod_Taylor/" type="external">Tyrod Taylor</a> continues to play at a mediocre level, mainly because his ball placement and his decision making make it difficult for plays to succeed.</p>
<p>However, the Bills have grown accustomed to struggling with the passing game. It’s the running game that has everyone concerned as they head into the bye week. The league’s No. 1 rushing team two years in a row is currently 27th in average yards per attempt at 3.4, and it has been a systemic problem.</p>
<p>Defenses don’t respect the pass, so they load up to key on running back <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/LeSean_McCoy/" type="external">LeSean McCoy</a>, and the offensive line has failed to find solutions. It’s partly because left tackle <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Cordy-Glenn/" type="external">Cordy Glenn</a> has barely played, and partly because the right side of the line — guard <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/John_Miller/" type="external">John Miller</a> and tackle Jordan Mills — has underperformed. Miller was benched Sunday, replaced by Vlad Ducasse who was in no way an upgrade.</p>
<p>“We have to look at everything, and it’s never just one thing,” head coach <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Sean-McDermott/" type="external">Sean McDermott</a> said this week. “It’s never just the offensive line, never just the tight ends, never just the wide receivers, and the eight-man box, it’s all of that. It’s everything we could do better, and this week, being our bye, it’s about self-awareness, and evaluating what we’ve done well, what we haven’t done well, and also looking to evolve. That’s the important part as we look at what’s in front of us this week.”</p>
<p>That self-evaluation on defense will be much more enjoyable. The Bills slipped to 12th overall in yards allowed after the Bengals rang up 388, but they are No. 1 in points allowed per game at 14.8, and their 10 takeaways are fourth-most in the league.</p>
<p>It was expected that the defense would be improved over <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Rex_Ryan/" type="external">Rex Ryan</a>‘s two disastrous years at the helm, but the breadth of the improvement has been startling, especially given all of the turnover in the secondary. And everyone knew the defense would have to carry the burden on most days for the offense, but unless it gets a little more help, the Bills will be lucky to finish at .500.</p>
<p>–The Bills’ main passing game threat, tight end Charles Clay, underwent a knee scope on Monday and he will be out of the lineup for “multiple weeks” according to head coach Sean McDermott. Clay is second on the team behind running back LeSean McCoy in receptions with 20, but he has a team-high 258 yards and two touchdowns. Clay, in fact, has three of the Bills’ four longest pass receptions of the season. Without him, an already crippled passing game minus injured wide receiver <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jordan-Matthews/" type="external">Jordan Matthews</a> figures to struggle even more.</p>
<p>“I never want to see a guy get hurt, let alone a player of Charles’ caliber,” said McDermott, who then added when asked who will pick up the slack, “next man up, that’s what we do.”</p>
<p>For now, third-year pro Nick O’Leary is the next man up. After Clay went out in the first quarter in Cincinnati, O’Leary had his best game as a Bill as he set career highs for snaps played (59), catches (5), and yards (54). O’Leary was a 2015 sixth-round draft pick out of Florida State where he caught 114 passes for 1,591 yards and 17 touchdowns across four seasons, and as a senior he won the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/John_Mackey/" type="external">John Mackey</a> Award as the best tight end in college <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/John_Walker/" type="external">football</a>.</p>
<p>Heading into this season, O’Leary had only 10 receptions, nine coming last year for 114 yards, but those figures will be surpassed soon enough.</p>
<p>“Nick played his butt off,” quarterback Tyrod Taylor said of O’Leary’s performance Sunday. “He battled, he competed and he did what we asked him to do. I’m proud of him.”</p>
<p>–Through five games, second-round draft pick Zay Jones has been a disaster. College football’s all-time leading receiver with 399 catches has just five for the Bills for 66 yards. He has struggled to get open, especially against press coverage, and he has dropped a few passes, too. However, the Bills are happy with the way three others in their rookie class have performed.</p>
<p>First-round cornerback Tre’Davious White, despite a rough game against <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/AJ-Green/" type="external">A.J. Green</a>, has played like a veteran and leads the NFL with 12 passes defensed. The second of the team’s second-round picks, tackle Dion Dawkins, has started four games in place of injured Cordy Glenn and has held his own. And now fifth-round linebacker Matt Milano is on the board as he started Sunday in place of injured Ramon Humber and was in on three tackles while playing 62 percent of the snaps.</p>
<p>“I thought he did a good job,” McDermott said. “The first thing we look at is really the look in his eye and we talked about that. I’ve talked about that with (Bob) Babich, our linebackers coach, and he said he had the right look in his eye on the boundary and I thought he handled himself well. It wasn’t too big for him and now, knowing Matt, he’ll continue to improve. He puts a lot of time into his job and again, another young guy that was out there on the field and did good job at times for us.”</p>
<p>Of the draft class as a whole, McDermott said, “I would say great contributions early on. That said, much like our team, we’re building, and you learn from one game to the next, positives and negatives. Really, what I’m looking for is for us to continue to grow from one game to the next. You want to play your best football in November and December.”</p>
<p>NOTES: TE Charles Clay underwent arthroscopic knee surgery Monday and will miss “multiple weeks” according to head coach Sean McDermott. … CB E.J. Gaines missed Sunday’s game with a groin injury, and he will be week-to-week, though it remains possible he could return when the Bills play again Oct. 22. … CB Leonard Johnson suffered a hamstring injury in Cincinnati, but it appears he should be ready to play after the bye. … LT Cordy Glenn has essentially missed four games with foot and ankle injuries, and while he will probably be ready to play when the Bills return to action, it isn’t a certainty that he’ll be on the left side. Head coach Sean McDermott hinted that he’s still evaluating what the starting five will be, and how it will look. … SS <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Micah-Hyde/" type="external">Micah Hyde</a>, the Bills’ big-ticket free-agent acquisition, leads the NFL with four interceptions and he also has nine passes defensed. … QB Tyrod Taylor has absorbed 18 sacks, tied for second-most in the NFL. His yards per attempt average of 6.7 yards is tied for 29th in the league. … WR Jordan Matthews tops the Bills’ wideouts with 10 catches, but that figure ranks him tied for 131st among all players who have caught passes including tight ends and running backs. … RB LeSean McCoy is averaging 55.8 yards per game, far below last year’s average of 84.6 yards and less than his career average of 75.7 yards. … K Stephen Hauschka has connected on 11 of his 12 field-goal attempts and all eight of his extra points.</p> | false | 1 | orchard park ny four weeks buffalo bills one surprising teams nfl zenith coming improved 31 somewhat shocking 2317 victory atlanta defending nfc champion falcons sundays loss cincinnati like cold bucket water dumped teams collective head loss bengals wasnt much surprise reminder flawed offense matter well defense plays weeks come unless bills find way score touchdowns playoff drought reach 18 years passing offense remedial group receivers individually probably wouldnt starting three four teams league top quarterback tyrod taylor continues play mediocre level mainly ball placement decision making make difficult plays succeed however bills grown accustomed struggling passing game running game everyone concerned head bye week leagues 1 rushing team two years row currently 27th average yards per attempt 34 systemic problem defenses dont respect pass load key running back lesean mccoy offensive line failed find solutions partly left tackle cordy glenn barely played partly right side line guard john miller tackle jordan mills underperformed miller benched sunday replaced vlad ducasse way upgrade look everything never one thing head coach sean mcdermott said week never offensive line never tight ends never wide receivers eightman box everything could better week bye selfawareness evaluating weve done well havent done well also looking evolve thats important part look whats front us week selfevaluation defense much enjoyable bills slipped 12th overall yards allowed bengals rang 388 1 points allowed per game 148 10 takeaways fourthmost league expected defense would improved rex ryans two disastrous years helm breadth improvement startling especially given turnover secondary everyone knew defense would carry burden days offense unless gets little help bills lucky finish 500 bills main passing game threat tight end charles clay underwent knee scope monday lineup multiple weeks according head coach sean mcdermott clay second team behind running back lesean mccoy receptions 20 teamhigh 258 yards two touchdowns clay fact three bills four longest pass receptions season without already crippled passing game minus injured wide receiver jordan matthews figures struggle even never want see guy get hurt let alone player charles caliber said mcdermott added asked pick slack next man thats thirdyear pro nick oleary next man clay went first quarter cincinnati oleary best game bill set career highs snaps played 59 catches 5 yards 54 oleary 2015 sixthround draft pick florida state caught 114 passes 1591 yards 17 touchdowns across four seasons senior john mackey award best tight end college football heading season oleary 10 receptions nine coming last year 114 yards figures surpassed soon enough nick played butt quarterback tyrod taylor said olearys performance sunday battled competed asked im proud five games secondround draft pick zay jones disaster college footballs alltime leading receiver 399 catches five bills 66 yards struggled get open especially press coverage dropped passes however bills happy way three others rookie class performed firstround cornerback tredavious white despite rough game aj green played like veteran leads nfl 12 passes defensed second teams secondround picks tackle dion dawkins started four games place injured cordy glenn held fifthround linebacker matt milano board started sunday place injured ramon humber three tackles playing 62 percent snaps thought good job mcdermott said first thing look really look eye talked ive talked bob babich linebackers coach said right look eye boundary thought handled well wasnt big knowing matt hell continue improve puts lot time job another young guy field good job times us draft class whole mcdermott said would say great contributions early said much like team building learn one game next positives negatives really im looking us continue grow one game next want play best football november december notes te charles clay underwent arthroscopic knee surgery monday miss multiple weeks according head coach sean mcdermott cb ej gaines missed sundays game groin injury weektoweek though remains possible could return bills play oct 22 cb leonard johnson suffered hamstring injury cincinnati appears ready play bye lt cordy glenn essentially missed four games foot ankle injuries probably ready play bills return action isnt certainty hell left side head coach sean mcdermott hinted hes still evaluating starting five look ss micah hyde bills bigticket freeagent acquisition leads nfl four interceptions also nine passes defensed qb tyrod taylor absorbed 18 sacks tied secondmost nfl yards per attempt average 67 yards tied 29th league wr jordan matthews tops bills wideouts 10 catches figure ranks tied 131st among players caught passes including tight ends running backs rb lesean mccoy averaging 558 yards per game far last years average 846 yards less career average 757 yards k stephen hauschka connected 11 12 fieldgoal attempts eight extra points | 751 |
<p>MANKATO, Minn. — For the first time since 2006, this isn’t <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Adrian_Peterson/" type="external">Adrian Peterson</a>‘s offense. Nor is it any other running back’s offense.</p>
<p>It’s a pass-oriented attack with West Coast schemes.</p>
<p>But that doesn’t mean the corps of running backs on the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Minnesota-Vikings/" type="external">Minnesota Vikings</a> aren’t up to par. In fact, quarterback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Sam_Bradford/" type="external">Sam Bradford</a> sounds like he would prefer the versatility offered by rookie <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Dalvin-Cook/" type="external">Dalvin Cook</a> and veterans <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Latavius-Murray/" type="external">Latavius Murray</a> and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jerick-McKinnon/" type="external">Jerick McKinnon</a> over the more one-dimensional Peterson.</p>
<p>“I think we have got a lot of really talented guys in that position group,” Bradford said Wednesday. “Kind of like I said all spring, I think that’s a group that we really feel like is a strength. Obviously, we’ve got some guys that can do a lot of different things, both when they’re in the dot, when we’re in the gun, some different styles of running that we can use.</p>
<p>“Then also just with their ability to be useful in the pass game, to be able to spread them out and empty, create some matchups with linebackers or just use them all over the backfield in some five-man protections and get them matched up with guys. We just feel like there’s a lot of different things we can do with the guys we have in that room.”</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>The Vikings still have not lined up with the starting offensive line that they anticipate using in the regular-season opener on <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Sept._11/" type="external">Sept. 11</a>.</p>
<p>Left tackle Riley Reiff has missed most of camp and is just now starting to be worked in during team drills. And just as he returns, left guard <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Alex-Boone/" type="external">Alex Boone</a> has now missed practices this week.</p>
<p>Asked about the need for some continuity up front, Bradford gave the pros and cons of what’s been going on up front so far.</p>
<p>“I think it is fairly important,” he said. “I think it would be nice to kind of figure out who those five guys are going to be, just so I can work with them, so they can work with each other, and so the communication at the line can become better and become quicker.</p>
<p>“But, obviously though at that position, having been in the league, it seems like every year, there’s a time during the year where guys are having to move around and play different positions and you have a different group in front of you. And I think the fact we are working some different guys in right now and they’re getting used to playing with everyone, I think that can be beneficial as well. Just so if something does happen, we do have to make a change or someone has got to slide over, it’s not the first time we’ve done that.”</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>Well, well, well. Look who’s on the other side now.</p>
<p>The Vikings head to Seattle on Friday night to face the Seahawks and a kicker who infamously missed a 27-yard field goal to lose a playoff game against the Seahawks two seasons ago.</p>
<p>Former Vikings kicker <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Blair-Walsh/" type="external">Blair Walsh</a> is now current Seahawk Blair Walsh. His 27-yard duck hook in the closing seconds of a wild-card game handed Seattle a 10-9 victory on a bitterly cold day in January of 2016.</p>
<p>The Vikings tried to rebuild Walsh’s confidence in 2016, but never could get him over the hump from that playoff miscue. They cut Walsh last November after he missed four field goals and four extra points in nine games, including two instrumental misses in a Nov. 5 loss to Detroit. Walsh signed with Seattle in February.</p>
<p>“I was happy for him,” Vikings special teams coordinator Mike Priefer said Wednesday. “I’ll say hello to him (on Friday); I’ve got no ill will. I like Blair. He’s a fine young man and we had four-and-a-half years together, so I’ve known him for a long time.”</p>
<p>In his first game with the Seahawks, Walsh went 6-for-6 on PATs and hit two field-goal attempts from 42 and 28 yards. So maybe he has moved on mentally. Priefer hopes so.</p>
<p>“He did a lot of really good things here in Minnesota,” Priefer said. “I know it didn’t end well for him and for us a couple years ago, but at the end of the day, he’s a very talented young man.”</p>
<p>Notes: Left guard Alex Boone missed all three practices this week and won’t play Friday night at Seattle. Boone, who had his left knee wrapped but didn’t appear to be seriously injured, missed an opportunity to work with left tackle Riley Reiff this week. Reiff has been working back into team drills slowly as he recovers from a back injury that had sidelined him since the first day of camp. … Cornerback Trae Waynes, who injured his shoulder on the first play of the preseason opener at Buffalo, did not practice this week and will not play at Seattle. Waynes has been groomed to take over the starting left corner job this season. With him out, the Vikings have turned back to longtime veteran <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Terence_Newman/" type="external">Terence Newman</a>. Newman played well last season, but the team is trying to limit his reps as he gets set to turn 39 on Sept. 4. … Strong safety Andrew Sendejo missed practice this week and will not play at Seattle. With Sendejo out, the team has been taking rotating looks at injury-prone Antone Exum Jr., second-year pro Jayron Kearse and third-year pro Anthony Harris. Kearse is big and powerful, but still raw. Harris, who went undrafted out of Virginia, has become a leader on special teams. Exum missed all of last season because of an injury.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>Wide receiver Laquon Treadwell returned to practice after missing several days and the preseason opener because of a hamstring injury. He should be able to play Friday at Seattle. Last year’s first-round draft pick needs to start proving he can stay healthy enough to contribute. Injuries played a big role in him having only one catch as a rookie. … Defensive end Everson Griffen missed practice Tuesday, but returned Wednesday and participated. He could be rested Friday night. The Vikings know what they have in Griffen. The Pro Bowler is in peak condition and looks as fast as ever. He had a sack in the preseason opener at Buffalo.</p> | false | 1 | mankato minn first time since 2006 isnt adrian petersons offense running backs offense passoriented attack west coast schemes doesnt mean corps running backs minnesota vikings arent par fact quarterback sam bradford sounds like would prefer versatility offered rookie dalvin cook veterans latavius murray jerick mckinnon onedimensional peterson think got lot really talented guys position group bradford said wednesday kind like said spring think thats group really feel like strength obviously weve got guys lot different things theyre dot gun different styles running use also ability useful pass game able spread empty create matchups linebackers use backfield fiveman protections get matched guys feel like theres lot different things guys room vikings still lined starting offensive line anticipate using regularseason opener sept 11 left tackle riley reiff missed camp starting worked team drills returns left guard alex boone missed practices week asked need continuity front bradford gave pros cons whats going front far think fairly important said think would nice kind figure five guys going work work communication line become better become quicker obviously though position league seems like every year theres time year guys move around play different positions different group front think fact working different guys right theyre getting used playing everyone think beneficial well something happen make change someone got slide first time weve done well well well look whos side vikings head seattle friday night face seahawks kicker infamously missed 27yard field goal lose playoff game seahawks two seasons ago former vikings kicker blair walsh current seahawk blair walsh 27yard duck hook closing seconds wildcard game handed seattle 109 victory bitterly cold day january 2016 vikings tried rebuild walshs confidence 2016 never could get hump playoff miscue cut walsh last november missed four field goals four extra points nine games including two instrumental misses nov 5 loss detroit walsh signed seattle february happy vikings special teams coordinator mike priefer said wednesday ill say hello friday ive got ill like blair hes fine young man fourandahalf years together ive known long time first game seahawks walsh went 6for6 pats hit two fieldgoal attempts 42 28 yards maybe moved mentally priefer hopes lot really good things minnesota priefer said know didnt end well us couple years ago end day hes talented young man notes left guard alex boone missed three practices week wont play friday night seattle boone left knee wrapped didnt appear seriously injured missed opportunity work left tackle riley reiff week reiff working back team drills slowly recovers back injury sidelined since first day camp cornerback trae waynes injured shoulder first play preseason opener buffalo practice week play seattle waynes groomed take starting left corner job season vikings turned back longtime veteran terence newman newman played well last season team trying limit reps gets set turn 39 sept 4 strong safety andrew sendejo missed practice week play seattle sendejo team taking rotating looks injuryprone antone exum jr secondyear pro jayron kearse thirdyear pro anthony harris kearse big powerful still raw harris went undrafted virginia become leader special teams exum missed last season injury wide receiver laquon treadwell returned practice missing several days preseason opener hamstring injury able play friday seattle last years firstround draft pick needs start proving stay healthy enough contribute injuries played big role one catch rookie defensive end everson griffen missed practice tuesday returned wednesday participated could rested friday night vikings know griffen pro bowler peak condition looks fast ever sack preseason opener buffalo | 569 |
<p />
<p>On Nov. 1, 2004, Jaswant Singh, then opposition leader in the upper house of India’s parliament, shared an anecdote with the U.S. ambassador during a conversation in his official residence in the prime minister’s compound in New Delhi.</p>
<p>Singh, who previously was finance, defense, and foreign minister, told Ambassador David Mulford that Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had made three major efforts to end hostility with Pakistan: first in Lahore in 1999, then in Agra in 2001, and again in Srinagar in 2003.</p>
<p>In each instance, the only driver was the prime minister’s personal resolve “to make peace with Pakistan his lasting legacy,” although the initiative directly contradicted his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party’s avowed goal to reabsorb the Muslim nation into India.</p>
<p>Vajpayee’s efforts to advance India’s interests also took him over the Himalayas and across the Atlantic to China and America. He and his foreign minister, Singh, resolved between themselves to make relations with Washington a top priority.</p>
<p>Will India’s new prime minister, Narendra Modi, who led the BJP to win 282 of 543 parliamentary seats in the just concluded elections — and who had been barred from visiting the United States for a decade on account of human rights violations — follow Vajpayee’s footsteps?</p>
<p>In fact, Modi has already made some unexpected moves, inviting regional leaders, including Pakistan’s Prime Minister Newaz Sharif and Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa, to his swearing-in ceremony on May 26. The move has angered state leaders in India. Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister Jayalalithaa Jayaram boycotted the event over the inclusion of the Sri Lankan, who fought for two decades against rebels from his country’s Tamil minority. But Modi’s message is clear: state leaders will no longer be allowed to veto India’s foreign policy, as some of them did under the previous government.</p>
<p>Modi has no foreign policy experience. So, at least for now, India’s entrenched technocrats will shape his diplomatic agenda, but they will be driven by two overriding mantras: make India stronger, both militarily and economically, and make peace with neighbors.</p>
<p>Expect Surprises</p>
<p>No one should be surprised if Modi makes a dramatic gesture to Pakistan to resolve issues that have plagued the two nuclear-armed neighbors for decades. He may even offer a comprehensive peace deal, although he will find the Kashmir problem almost insurmountable. He certainly would seek to boost trade with China — and tackle border disputes, another arduous task that will test his nerves of steel.</p>
<p>He is, however, unlikely to show the same magnanimity toward the United States. His gesture toward Washington will depend on how much benefit he can expect to derive from an initiative. Modi, former chief minister of the Gujrat state, will not forgive America for making him persona non grata for more than a decade on account of his alleged involvement in the 2002 riots in his state that killed more than 1,000 Muslims.</p>
<p>In the aftermath, Modi heard howls not just from the U.S. government. He also had to contend with loud activists. He was scheduled to speak last year via Skype at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, but the invitation was withdrawn after student organizers and professors protested his participation.</p>
<p>The travel ban was lifted recently after Washington realized Modi was likely to become India’s prime minister, but the healing will take a long time. Unlike Americans, who tend to measure everything in terms of money, Indians are sensitive about personal and national affront. All politics is personal, so is diplomacy. All indications are Modi’s first overseas trip is likely to take him to Bangladesh, an impoverished neighbor, or China, a not-so-friendly business partner — and not to the United States, the mightiest and wealthiest nation on earth.</p>
<p>A hint of how Modi will deal with the United States came three years ago from Arun Jaitley, the new finance minister. He warned U.S. Charge d’Affaires Robert O. Blake Jr. in 2011 “that the Modi controversy continues to fester among the party rank and file, who see the chief minister’s visa revocation as a personal attack on a leader of the party that began the transformation of U.S.-India relations.”</p>
<p>Modi himself gave a piece of his mind when he talked with U.S. Consul General David S. Owen on Nov. 27, 2006, accusing the United States of interfering in Gujrat’s “internal affairs” and rebuking Washington for its own human rights violations in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo as well as attacks on Sikhs in America after Sept. 11.</p>
<p>Although Washington was slow to make amends, U.S. diplomats in India saw the potential peril coming down the pike. “We believe it would dilute our influence to avoid Modi completely. If we waited to engage Modi after he attains national stature within India’s largest and most important opposition party, many in the BJP would likely view this as an opportunistic move and only deepen the suspicions cultivated by some BJP leaders…” the U.S. Consulate General in Mumbai informed Washington in 2006.</p>
<p>Besides Modi’a personal grievances, the U.S.-India relationship faced one of its worst crises in years in 2013 when U.S. authorities arrested a New-York-based Indian diplomat on charges of lying in a visa application for her servant. Indians accused America of humiliating the diplomat through a strip-search. The row ultimately eased when the diplomat, Devyani Khobragade, was allowed to return home just as she was indicted. When Nancy Powell, U.S. ambassador in New Delhi, met with Modi earlier this year, he expressed his displeasure over the treatment given to the Indian diplomat</p>
<p>New Modi</p>
<p>Since the riots, Modi has sought to polish his image. He appears to have learned his lesson from the violence. Despite his checkered past, one thing seems almost certain: nder his watch, India is unlikely to see another major communal strife. He won’t allow it to happen again. Modi, the son of a provincial tea-seller, gained political mileage from the violence in 2002, and there is no more to be gained. Moreover, he is now well aware of its repercussions at home and abroad. The burden of leadership will discourage him to pursue a sectarian agenda.</p>
<p>Modi has so far expressed no regrets for the riots. His supporters have argued that his focus on economic development is the keystone to his image softening. Nevertheless, should Modi wish to be seen as a statesman in the vein of Vajpayee or L.K. Advani, former deputy prime minister under Vajpayee, and be more acceptable on world stage, he is likely to do more to soften his image.</p>
<p>Before Modi, other Hindu nationalist leaders — such as Singh and Advani— have changed their posture once they came to New Delhi. Advani softened his image as a Hindutva firebrand, praising Pakistan’s founder M.A. Jinnah and regretting the violence that followed the demolition of the Babri Masjid, a mosque in Ayodhya.</p>
<p>Modi, however, has more than his lasting legacy to ponder about. The 63-year-old prime minister will also seek to ensure his party’s continued grip on the Indian electorate, a consideration that could tie up his hands.</p>
<p>One issue that will give Modi a hard time is foreign direct investment in India’s retail sector. His party opposes opening up&#160;the sector to foreign direct investment (FDI), which enables global giants like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to enter the Indian market. BJP leaders figure that FDI’s economic merits will be swamped by political costs of challenging India’s trader class. Small shop holders are a backbone of Indian society, so opening the sector to foreign companies will be politically suicidal. Modi, however, intends to tell foreign investors that India is open for business, putting him at odds with his own party.</p>
<p>Since his elevation to chief minister in 2001, Modi has been admired for his commitment to economic growth in his state, although despised for his role in the 2002 riots. Hidden behind this apparent picture, Modi has a past that spans over several decades.</p>
<p>Real Modi</p>
<p>Modi began his political career in Gujarat in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a Hindu nationalist organization, as a core full-time publicity worker, taking vows of chastity and asceticism. Joining the BJP in 1987, Modi came to prominence within the party in 1991 by organizing a 1,200-mile trek to the site of a major Hindu-Muslim disputed religious site. This political pilgrimage marked the arrival of the BJP as a national party, and generated support and publicity for one of its key issues, the demolition of the Babri Masjid and building a Hindu temple on the site.</p>
<p>Business leaders in India generally praise Modi for Gujarat’s strong economic performance. He has provided a good business environment, limited corruption and introduced efficiencies, pleasing the state’s enterprising citizens. Known to be incorruptible in a country plagued by bribery, Modi once asked Baba Kalyani, chairman of Bharat Forge, who went to set up a plant in Gujarat, to notify him if any official asked for a bribe. To his credit, Modi quickly realized that “the best way to maintain power is to improve the life of the people and not make empty promises.” So, he electrified the villages and ensured adequate drinking water for all residents in Gujarat.</p>
<p>Views remain divided on whether Modi’s leadership style will help or hurt him.&#160;In public appearances, he can be charming and likeable. By all accounts, however, he is an insular, distrustful person who prefers to rule with a small group of advisers. This inner circle will act as a buffer between him and his cabinet. He will reign more by fear and intimidation than by inclusiveness and consensus; he is rude, condescending, and often derogatory to even high-level party officials. He will hoard power and often leave his ministers in the cold when making decisions that affect their portfolios.</p>
<p>His abrasive leadership style could alienate many of his comrades. He faced angry colleagues in Gujrat, but managed to quell their subsequent rebellion by branding them as corrupt opportunists who were disgruntled because he denied them the tools of political patronage and corruption.</p>
<p>The dynamics of politics and diplomacy will require a more conciliatory and consensual style in New Delhi. Implementing his vision through India’s vast and disparate bureaucracy will be a significant challenge for Modi. In other words, the skills, style and political environment that contributed to success in Gujarat may not translate automatically into success at the union government.</p>
<p>In addition to the issues related to his personal traits, Modi faces an organizational stumbling block on the domestic front. The BJP is subject to intense rivalry. Modi is a favorite of Jaitley. But he does not get along with Sushma Swaraj, his new foreign minister, Rajnath Singh, BJP chief and new home affairs minister, and Venkaiah Naidu, minister for urban development and parliamentary affairs. This acrimony will vex Modi if he deviates too much from the BJP’s charted course, as Singh discovered during Vajpayee’s rule. “I have paid a political price for my support of better relations” with Washington, he told the American envoy, joking that he had been labeled as a “CIA agent” within his own government.</p> | false | 1 | nov 1 2004 jaswant singh opposition leader upper house indias parliament shared anecdote us ambassador conversation official residence prime ministers compound new delhi singh previously finance defense foreign minister told ambassador david mulford prime minister atal behari vajpayee made three major efforts end hostility pakistan first lahore 1999 agra 2001 srinagar 2003 instance driver prime ministers personal resolve make peace pakistan lasting legacy although initiative directly contradicted hindu nationalist bharatiya janata partys avowed goal reabsorb muslim nation india vajpayees efforts advance indias interests also took himalayas across atlantic china america foreign minister singh resolved make relations washington top priority indias new prime minister narendra modi led bjp win 282 543 parliamentary seats concluded elections barred visiting united states decade account human rights violations follow vajpayees footsteps fact modi already made unexpected moves inviting regional leaders including pakistans prime minister newaz sharif sri lankas president mahinda rajapaksa swearingin ceremony may 26 move angered state leaders india tamil nadus chief minister jayalalithaa jayaram boycotted event inclusion sri lankan fought two decades rebels countrys tamil minority modis message clear state leaders longer allowed veto indias foreign policy previous government modi foreign policy experience least indias entrenched technocrats shape diplomatic agenda driven two overriding mantras make india stronger militarily economically make peace neighbors expect surprises one surprised modi makes dramatic gesture pakistan resolve issues plagued two nucleararmed neighbors decades may even offer comprehensive peace deal although find kashmir problem almost insurmountable certainly would seek boost trade china tackle border disputes another arduous task test nerves steel however unlikely show magnanimity toward united states gesture toward washington depend much benefit expect derive initiative modi former chief minister gujrat state forgive america making persona non grata decade account alleged involvement 2002 riots state killed 1000 muslims aftermath modi heard howls us government also contend loud activists scheduled speak last year via skype wharton school university pennsylvania invitation withdrawn student organizers professors protested participation travel ban lifted recently washington realized modi likely become indias prime minister healing take long time unlike americans tend measure everything terms money indians sensitive personal national affront politics personal diplomacy indications modis first overseas trip likely take bangladesh impoverished neighbor china notsofriendly business partner united states mightiest wealthiest nation earth hint modi deal united states came three years ago arun jaitley new finance minister warned us charge daffaires robert blake jr 2011 modi controversy continues fester among party rank file see chief ministers visa revocation personal attack leader party began transformation usindia relations modi gave piece mind talked us consul general david owen nov 27 2006 accusing united states interfering gujrats internal affairs rebuking washington human rights violations abu ghraib guantanamo well attacks sikhs america sept 11 although washington slow make amends us diplomats india saw potential peril coming pike believe would dilute influence avoid modi completely waited engage modi attains national stature within indias largest important opposition party many bjp would likely view opportunistic move deepen suspicions cultivated bjp leaders us consulate general mumbai informed washington 2006 besides modia personal grievances usindia relationship faced one worst crises years 2013 us authorities arrested newyorkbased indian diplomat charges lying visa application servant indians accused america humiliating diplomat stripsearch row ultimately eased diplomat devyani khobragade allowed return home indicted nancy powell us ambassador new delhi met modi earlier year expressed displeasure treatment given indian diplomat new modi since riots modi sought polish image appears learned lesson violence despite checkered past one thing seems almost certain nder watch india unlikely see another major communal strife wont allow happen modi son provincial teaseller gained political mileage violence 2002 gained moreover well aware repercussions home abroad burden leadership discourage pursue sectarian agenda modi far expressed regrets riots supporters argued focus economic development keystone image softening nevertheless modi wish seen statesman vein vajpayee lk advani former deputy prime minister vajpayee acceptable world stage likely soften image modi hindu nationalist leaders singh advani changed posture came new delhi advani softened image hindutva firebrand praising pakistans founder jinnah regretting violence followed demolition babri masjid mosque ayodhya modi however lasting legacy ponder 63yearold prime minister also seek ensure partys continued grip indian electorate consideration could tie hands one issue give modi hard time foreign direct investment indias retail sector party opposes opening up160the sector foreign direct investment fdi enables global giants like walmart stores inc enter indian market bjp leaders figure fdis economic merits swamped political costs challenging indias trader class small shop holders backbone indian society opening sector foreign companies politically suicidal modi however intends tell foreign investors india open business putting odds party since elevation chief minister 2001 modi admired commitment economic growth state although despised role 2002 riots hidden behind apparent picture modi past spans several decades real modi modi began political career gujarat rashtriya swayamsevak sangh hindu nationalist organization core fulltime publicity worker taking vows chastity asceticism joining bjp 1987 modi came prominence within party 1991 organizing 1200mile trek site major hindumuslim disputed religious site political pilgrimage marked arrival bjp national party generated support publicity one key issues demolition babri masjid building hindu temple site business leaders india generally praise modi gujarats strong economic performance provided good business environment limited corruption introduced efficiencies pleasing states enterprising citizens known incorruptible country plagued bribery modi asked baba kalyani chairman bharat forge went set plant gujarat notify official asked bribe credit modi quickly realized best way maintain power improve life people make empty promises electrified villages ensured adequate drinking water residents gujarat views remain divided whether modis leadership style help hurt him160in public appearances charming likeable accounts however insular distrustful person prefers rule small group advisers inner circle act buffer cabinet reign fear intimidation inclusiveness consensus rude condescending often derogatory even highlevel party officials hoard power often leave ministers cold making decisions affect portfolios abrasive leadership style could alienate many comrades faced angry colleagues gujrat managed quell subsequent rebellion branding corrupt opportunists disgruntled denied tools political patronage corruption dynamics politics diplomacy require conciliatory consensual style new delhi implementing vision indias vast disparate bureaucracy significant challenge modi words skills style political environment contributed success gujarat may translate automatically success union government addition issues related personal traits modi faces organizational stumbling block domestic front bjp subject intense rivalry modi favorite jaitley get along sushma swaraj new foreign minister rajnath singh bjp chief new home affairs minister venkaiah naidu minister urban development parliamentary affairs acrimony vex modi deviates much bjps charted course singh discovered vajpayees rule paid political price support better relations washington told american envoy joking labeled cia agent within government | 1,079 |
<p>The Supreme Court will hear oral argument on Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt on March 2. At issue is whether Texas regulations — requiring abortion providers to have admitting privileges in area hospitals and abortion clinics to meet higher standards — pose an “undue burden” to women seeking abortions or whether they are reasonably related to the government’s interest in protecting health and safety.</p>
<p>As usual, all eyes rest on Justice Kennedy. And, since Obergefell v. Hodges especially, Court watchers of all stripes await the next development in his “jurisprudence of dignity.” For constitutional conservatives, apprehension has only only grown with Justice Scalia’s sudden passing: The jurist known for adopting bright-line rules can no longer exert his influence on those, like Kennedy, more apt to balance “constitutional values.” Without recent precedent in their favor, the abortion clinics are eager to see some balancing.</p>
<p>And so the clinics and amici (various constitutional-law professors) on their behalf have sought to capture the imagination of the jurist who has constitutionalized a term that carries more conflicted philosophical weight than it can bear: “dignity.” In an effort to see Kennedy reshape abortion jurisprudence in their favor, the clinics and amici point to those high-court opinions that have included abortion among those decisions central to women’s “personal dignity.” But Kennedy cannot forget that in his most recent abortion opinion he upheld congressional action proscribing a particularly gruesome form of late-term abortion, to “express respect for the dignity of human life.”</p>
<p>So which is it? What does “dignity” require?</p>
<p>One would assume that “human dignity” would cut against abortion rights, and in the European context, it tends to: Abortion is much more highly restricted in Europe than in the United States (which joins China, North Korea, and Canada as the least restrictive countries). But in Supreme Court jurisprudence the term has also taken a distinctively American flavor, following Enlightenment philosophers Kant and Mill rather than the Judeo-Christian intellectual tradition: In much constitutional reasoning, dignity is simply synonymous with autonomy, that libertarian guarantee to be left alone to pursue one’s own self-definition, the right to be free from others’ claims upon us.</p>
<p>In the abortion context, dignity as autonomy is particularly troublesome. In point of scientific fact, the pregnant woman is simply not autonomous, whatever legal fictions (e.g., “potential life”) the Supreme Court may have conjured up to justify its claims. Indeed, the vulnerability and dependency of another human being weigh on her; this may well be inconvenient and even personally quite burdensome, but were we honest, we would call her to an affirmative duty of care to protect the intrinsic dignity of her developing child. Dignity as autonomy would give way, as it certainly must in this case, to dignity as solidarity, our personal and communal responsibility to care for the vulnerable persons entrusted to us. This is how dignity is best understood in international contexts, and this is how parent–child relationships are best understood in all other contexts of U.S. family law, save abortion. Vulnerability begets responsibility.</p>
<p>By granting broad constitutional protections to abortion as a means to feign personal autonomy, U.S. law encourages pregnant mothers to mimic the irresponsible acts of child-abandoning fathers, an experience of deep deprivation known by far too many children in America today.&#160;Dignity as solidarity demands that fathers embrace their duties to their children, and that they and the community at large stand with women and children, recognizing that both enjoy intrinsic dignity and that both deserve the community’s generous support.</p>
<p>Indeed, dignity for pregnant women and mothers requires just this, because in protecting and providing for dependent and vulnerable human beings, women run the risk of increased dependency and vulnerability themselves. And so the clinics and amici bring attention, as they well should, to women in poverty, with inflexible jobs, inadequate health and child care, and, I would again emphasize, an epidemic lack of paternal support.</p>
<p>We are a nation that loves “to be left alone” but often cowers at our duties to the vulnerable. Our response over the last several decades has been to “rely” on women to abort their unborn children so women can enjoy, the Supreme Court tells them, the “ability&#160;.&#160;.&#160;.&#160;to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation.” Has the culture’s reliance on abortion, the phrase employed favorably by the plurality in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, really assured equality for women? Or has reliance on abortion provided an easy deliverance for political and economic actors? Note that those same European countries that more heavily restrict abortion on the grounds of dignity as solidarity also call the community at large to greater responsibility for ensuring support for families with children: a truth inconvenient for many on both the political left and the political right in America, but a truth nonetheless.</p>
<p>Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, smitten with Justice Kennedy over the Obergefell decision, recently suggested that the Court’s jurisprudence of dignity is best understood as the weaving together of fundamental-rights due-process jurisprudence with an anti-subordination equal-protection principle — voila, “equal dignity” — ensuring, Tribe hopes, the ultimate “solicitude for vulnerable groups.” Putting aside the obvious application of this putative principle of constitutional law for the most vulnerable of vulnerable groups,&#160;unborn human beings, we can see that&#160;its alternative application in support of women as a subordinate group would vitiate against abortion as well.</p>
<p>If women with children are indeed socially subordinate, which arguably they are, the response of a civilized society ought not be to cast aside the source of the vulnerability when, as here, that source is nothing less than a developing child. It ought instead be to deliberate intelligently about how, on the one hand, to increase cultural esteem and support for care work undertaken disproportionately by women while, on the other hand, not pigeonholing women into that work, since they are capable of that and more. A delicate deliberation, to be sure, but not one facilitated by the judiciary’s dominion over abortion in the past four decades.</p>
<p>It is high time that the Court abandon the fiction that abortion serves women’s dignity and equality. It is now time that community and political leaders look anew at family policy, at ways we might achieve women’s authentic equality — and increased health and safety — in a world where their dignity and that of their children are not at odds with each other but are inextricable, inviolable, and most highly cherished.</p>
<p>— Erika Bachiochi is a visiting fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.</p> | false | 1 | supreme court hear oral argument whole womans health v hellerstedt march 2 issue whether texas regulations requiring abortion providers admitting privileges area hospitals abortion clinics meet higher standards pose undue burden women seeking abortions whether reasonably related governments interest protecting health safety usual eyes rest justice kennedy since obergefell v hodges especially court watchers stripes await next development jurisprudence dignity constitutional conservatives apprehension grown justice scalias sudden passing jurist known adopting brightline rules longer exert influence like kennedy apt balance constitutional values without recent precedent favor abortion clinics eager see balancing clinics amici various constitutionallaw professors behalf sought capture imagination jurist constitutionalized term carries conflicted philosophical weight bear dignity effort see kennedy reshape abortion jurisprudence favor clinics amici point highcourt opinions included abortion among decisions central womens personal dignity kennedy forget recent abortion opinion upheld congressional action proscribing particularly gruesome form lateterm abortion express respect dignity human life dignity require one would assume human dignity would cut abortion rights european context tends abortion much highly restricted europe united states joins china north korea canada least restrictive countries supreme court jurisprudence term also taken distinctively american flavor following enlightenment philosophers kant mill rather judeochristian intellectual tradition much constitutional reasoning dignity simply synonymous autonomy libertarian guarantee left alone pursue ones selfdefinition right free others claims upon us abortion context dignity autonomy particularly troublesome point scientific fact pregnant woman simply autonomous whatever legal fictions eg potential life supreme court may conjured justify claims indeed vulnerability dependency another human weigh may well inconvenient even personally quite burdensome honest would call affirmative duty care protect intrinsic dignity developing child dignity autonomy would give way certainly must case dignity solidarity personal communal responsibility care vulnerable persons entrusted us dignity best understood international contexts parentchild relationships best understood contexts us family law save abortion vulnerability begets responsibility granting broad constitutional protections abortion means feign personal autonomy us law encourages pregnant mothers mimic irresponsible acts childabandoning fathers experience deep deprivation known far many children america today160dignity solidarity demands fathers embrace duties children community large stand women children recognizing enjoy intrinsic dignity deserve communitys generous support indeed dignity pregnant women mothers requires protecting providing dependent vulnerable human beings women run risk increased dependency vulnerability clinics amici bring attention well women poverty inflexible jobs inadequate health child care would emphasize epidemic lack paternal support nation loves left alone often cowers duties vulnerable response last several decades rely women abort unborn children women enjoy supreme court tells ability160160160160to participate equally economic social life nation cultures reliance abortion phrase employed favorably plurality planned parenthood v casey really assured equality women reliance abortion provided easy deliverance political economic actors note european countries heavily restrict abortion grounds dignity solidarity also call community large greater responsibility ensuring support families children truth inconvenient many political left political right america truth nonetheless harvard law professor laurence tribe smitten justice kennedy obergefell decision recently suggested courts jurisprudence dignity best understood weaving together fundamentalrights dueprocess jurisprudence antisubordination equalprotection principle voila equal dignity ensuring tribe hopes ultimate solicitude vulnerable groups putting aside obvious application putative principle constitutional law vulnerable vulnerable groups160unborn human beings see that160its alternative application support women subordinate group would vitiate abortion well women children indeed socially subordinate arguably response civilized society ought cast aside source vulnerability source nothing less developing child ought instead deliberate intelligently one hand increase cultural esteem support care work undertaken disproportionately women hand pigeonholing women work since capable delicate deliberation sure one facilitated judiciarys dominion abortion past four decades high time court abandon fiction abortion serves womens dignity equality time community political leaders look anew family policy ways might achieve womens authentic equality increased health safety world dignity children odds inextricable inviolable highly cherished erika bachiochi visiting fellow ethics public policy center | 619 |
<p>According to the shared wisdom of the punditocracy and the blogosphere, former Massachusetts governor <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/related.aspx?subject=Mitt+Romney" type="external">Mitt Romney</a> badly needed a “JFK moment” when he flew into <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/related.aspx?subject=College+Station" type="external">College Station</a>, Texas, to deliver a Dec. 6 speech on religious conviction and American democracy at the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library. But what, precisely, do we mean by a “JFK moment” on matters of church and state?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.newsweek.com/related.aspx?subject=John+F.+Kennedy" type="external">John F. Kennedy’s</a> speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association was a rhetorical and political success, in that it successfully defused the “Catholic issue” in the 1960 presidential sweepstakes. Yet no serious student of the centuries-long American debate on church and state regards the Kennedy speech as a significant substantive contribution to our national reflection on the endlessly interesting, endlessly complicated question of how religious conviction can (or should) shape a politician’s public action. At <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/related.aspx?subject=Houston" type="external">Houston</a>, JFK declared his faith a private matter which had had no public consequences on his legislative career and would have no impact on his performance as president. At Houston, John F. Kennedy won by changing the subject.</p>
<p>It remains to be seen whether Mitt Romney’s speech is as politically effective as JFK’s. But at College Station, Romney displayed a greater seriousness about the questions at issue than Kennedy did at Houston. And in doing that, Romney may actually have advanced the national conversation on religious conviction and public life. In a campaign season that all too typically involves the political manipulation of consumer passions by means of sound-bites and advertising, that would be no mean accomplishment.</p>
<p>Romney got a lot of things right at College Station. He displayed an impressive sense of just how deeply religiously informed moral conviction is woven into the fabric of American life. At the same time, he suggested that he recognizes other paths to moral truth that are not religious in character.</p>
<p>He got the American Founding right, suggesting that the Framers’ prohibition of a national church–“no establishment”–was intended to foster the free exercise of religion, not to drive religion into a private sphere with no connection to public life. In doing so, Romney implicitly challenged a dominant strain in the Supreme Court’s First Amendment jurisprudence since the late 1940s, a trend that has pitted “no establishment” against “free exercise.” The result? “No establishment” becomes the overriding constitutional concern, with exceptions being carved out for certain kinds of “free exercise” from time to time.</p>
<p>Romney correctly pointed out that the alternative to today’s maddeningly diverse, but democratically vibrant, plurality of religious voices in the American public square is not a neutral or naked public square, but the de facto establishment of secularism as the official national “creed.” That process of “establishing” secularism is already well under way in Europe, at both the national and European Union levels; some would argue (not without reason) that Europe’s soul-withering secularism has at least something to do with Europe’s sclerotic democratic discourse. And Romney was very good in proposing that shared moral principles of human dignity and human equality can serve as a kind of public grammar, disciplining the public dialogue so that people of no faith and people of faith can engage in a civil conversation about the oughts of our public life.</p>
<p>The College Station speech was not without its clunkers. “Religion requires freedom” is, in one sense, true, in that coerced faith is no faith. But religious faith has flourished under harsh persecution, not least during the twentieth century (when more Christians died because of their convictions than in the previous nineteen centuries of Christian history combined). That “freedom requires religion,” the obverse Romney assertion, was another clumsy formulation. A freedom that reduces to “my way” is, of course, no freedom, but simply license. And it is certainly true that biblical convictions about human nature, human community, and human destiny have shaped the freedom project in the United States and elsewhere. Still, great champions of the politics of freedom ranging from Thomas Jefferson to Winston Churchill have been “religious” in only a generic, even deistic, sense. Here, Romney’s attempt at the kind of rhetorical parallelism that Ted Sorenson made a trademark of JFK’s speeches (“Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom.”) didn’t quite come off, at either end of the proposition. (Memo to all presidential candidates and speechwriters: trying to imitate Sorenson is like trying to imitate H.L. Mencken; it can’t be done. So don’t do it.)</p>
<p>One might also raise questions about Romney’s promise that no church “authorities,” of any faith, “will ever exert influence on [my] presidential decisions.” Well, yes, if by “exert influence” you mean “determine.” But if by “influence” you mean “persuade,” why should a President Romney, or any president, deny himself the counsel of the nation’s religious leaders? And on the flip side of the coin, do religious authorities lose their rights as citizens to “petition the government” when they assume responsibility for their congregations? The point Romney was trying to make here is a crucial one: that there is a crucial distinction between political authority and spiritual authority in a just state. But Romney’s formulation left something to be desired.</p>
<p>Another failed attempt at a Sorensonian parallelism was Romney’s assertion that “No religion should dictate to the state nor should the state interfere with the free practice of religion.” The second half of that claim is certainly true; but wasn’t the Southern Christian Leadership Conference “dictating” to the state when it declared segregation and miscegenation laws a violation of both the Constitution and the moral law? We all understand–or should–that religious organizations ranging from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to Focus on the Family to the Union of American Hebrew Congregations do not constitute a parallel government. Still, American public life would be much the poorer if religious organizations could not call the state to judgment when, in their conscientious reasoning, the state was acting unjustly.</p>
<p>These clunkers do not, however cancel or significantly detract from Romney’s accomplishment. In the midst of some very high-stakes presidential politics, Mitt Romney gave eloquent expression to the conviction that the institutional separation of church and state does not, and cannot, mean the exile of religiously informed moral conviction from the American public square. By lifting up the grammar of shared moral convictions as the means by which all Americans can engage in the public conversation that is democracy’s lifeblood, and by reminding us that the adventure of democracy involves far more than the contest of interests, Governor Romney did his country a genuine service–whatever the political consequences for his campaign.</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 | according shared wisdom punditocracy blogosphere former massachusetts governor mitt romney badly needed jfk moment flew college station texas deliver dec 6 speech religious conviction american democracy george hw bush presidential library precisely mean jfk moment matters church state john f kennedys speech greater houston ministerial association rhetorical political success successfully defused catholic issue 1960 presidential sweepstakes yet serious student centurieslong american debate church state regards kennedy speech significant substantive contribution national reflection endlessly interesting endlessly complicated question religious conviction shape politicians public action houston jfk declared faith private matter public consequences legislative career would impact performance president houston john f kennedy changing subject remains seen whether mitt romneys speech politically effective jfks college station romney displayed greater seriousness questions issue kennedy houston romney may actually advanced national conversation religious conviction public life campaign season typically involves political manipulation consumer passions means soundbites advertising would mean accomplishment romney got lot things right college station displayed impressive sense deeply religiously informed moral conviction woven fabric american life time suggested recognizes paths moral truth religious character got american founding right suggesting framers prohibition national churchno establishmentwas intended foster free exercise religion drive religion private sphere connection public life romney implicitly challenged dominant strain supreme courts first amendment jurisprudence since late 1940s trend pitted establishment free exercise result establishment becomes overriding constitutional concern exceptions carved certain kinds free exercise time time romney correctly pointed alternative todays maddeningly diverse democratically vibrant plurality religious voices american public square neutral naked public square de facto establishment secularism official national creed process establishing secularism already well way europe national european union levels would argue without reason europes soulwithering secularism least something europes sclerotic democratic discourse romney good proposing shared moral principles human dignity human equality serve kind public grammar disciplining public dialogue people faith people faith engage civil conversation oughts public life college station speech without clunkers religion requires freedom one sense true coerced faith faith religious faith flourished harsh persecution least twentieth century christians died convictions previous nineteen centuries christian history combined freedom requires religion obverse romney assertion another clumsy formulation freedom reduces way course freedom simply license certainly true biblical convictions human nature human community human destiny shaped freedom project united states elsewhere still great champions politics freedom ranging thomas jefferson winston churchill religious generic even deistic sense romneys attempt kind rhetorical parallelism ted sorenson made trademark jfks speeches freedom requires religion religion requires freedom didnt quite come either end proposition memo presidential candidates speechwriters trying imitate sorenson like trying imitate hl mencken cant done dont one might also raise questions romneys promise church authorities faith ever exert influence presidential decisions well yes exert influence mean determine influence mean persuade president romney president deny counsel nations religious leaders flip side coin religious authorities lose rights citizens petition government assume responsibility congregations point romney trying make crucial one crucial distinction political authority spiritual authority state romneys formulation left something desired another failed attempt sorensonian parallelism romneys assertion religion dictate state state interfere free practice religion second half claim certainly true wasnt southern christian leadership conference dictating state declared segregation miscegenation laws violation constitution moral law understandor shouldthat religious organizations ranging united states conference catholic bishops focus family union american hebrew congregations constitute parallel government still american public life would much poorer religious organizations could call state judgment conscientious reasoning state acting unjustly clunkers however cancel significantly detract romneys accomplishment midst highstakes presidential politics mitt romney gave eloquent expression conviction institutional separation church state mean exile religiously informed moral conviction american public square lifting grammar shared moral convictions means americans engage public conversation democracys lifeblood reminding us adventure democracy involves far contest interests governor romney country genuine servicewhatever political consequences campaign george weigel distinguished senior fellow ethics public policy center washington dc holds eppcs william e simon chair catholic studies | 632 |
<p>It’s an annual spring ritual.</p>
<p>In colleges and universities across the country, commencement speakers aim to please: they verbally stroke the new graduates, praising their brilliance, idealism, and passion. Celebrities and political notables alike take to the podium to assure students (and their tuition-poor parents) that this particular crop of graduates—whether from Princeton, Boise State, or Adelphi—is uniquely poised for success. America’s First Lady&#160; <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/commencement-speeches-2014-142822294.html" type="external">Michelle Obama</a>, for example, told the graduates of New Orleans’ Dillard University that, “No dream is too big, no vision is too bold…there is nothing, graduates, nothing, that we cannot achieve.” Almost everywhere, newly minted graduates hear that they have the ‘right stuff’ to succeed—and even to&#160; <a href="http://www.wcvb.com/news/bill-nye-urges-umass-lowell-graduates-to-change-the-world/26036220#ixzz32AP6wj1v" type="external">change the world</a>—as long as they believe in themselves and follow their dreams.</p>
<p>Nice sentiments, of course. But are they true?</p>
<p>America’s feel-good gurus appear to think so. Popularized by progressives in education, entertainment, and politics, the modern cultural script reads something like this:</p>
<p>Practically speaking, the script explains why a youth soccer team gives trophies to everyone and a middle school&#160; <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/20/ri-middle-school-cancels-honors-event-due-exclusiv/" type="external">cancels</a>&#160;‘Honors Night,’ lest low achievers feel&#160; <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/20/ri-middle-school-cancels-honors-event-due-exclusiv/" type="external">excluded</a>; why teachers strive to boost students’ self-esteem as the antidote to falling test scores; and why students, immersed in the ‘get it now’ world of smartphone apps, video-on-demand, and ‘Google’ research (generating 42,000,000 results in .33 seconds) come to expect instant gratification as they pursue knowledge, sex, wealth, and status in the adult world.</p>
<p>This is the modern promise fueling the new American dream—the belief that success comes from ‘being who you are,’ finding and pursuing your passion, and living in the moment.</p>
<p>Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld have a problem with that.</p>
<p>In their recent&#160; <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&amp;field-keywords=the%20triple%20package&amp;sprefix=the+tri%2Cstripbooks" type="external">book,</a>&#160;The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America,&#160;Chua and Rubenfeld argue that the American dream is realized not by those who follow the ‘feel good’ script, but by those who possess “the triple package.” A politically incorrect set of propositions, the ‘triple package’ is a combination of “three distinct forces” found in the culture of America’s highest-achieving groups. These cultural forces propel group members, on the whole, to achieve outsize success, at least until the strength of those cultural forces becomes diluted by assimilation, time, and the group’s own success.</p>
<p>In a nutshell, the ‘triple package’ that drives success—measured by money, achievements, and position—consists of: 1) a group superiority complex, rooted in religious belief, historical memory, or ethnic tradition; 2) personal insecurity, or the need to prove oneself in the face of high expectations; 3) impulse control, or the disciplined ability to delay immediate gratification in favor of long-term gains.</p>
<p>Some have it and some don’t. Certain groups, defined by religious or ethnic identity, “are starkly more successful than others,” say the authors. Marshaling statistics and examples to support their theory, Chua and Rubenfeld note the disproportionate success of groups like the Mormons, Jews, Chinese, Koreans, Indians, Nigerians, Iranians, Lebanese, and Cubans. Young people who belong to these groups, say the authors, are more likely to acquire the triple package, which in turn makes their eventual success more likely.</p>
<p>Theirs is a provocative argument—not surprising, given that Amy Chua has a demonstrated knack for throwing figurative hand grenades into polite company. Chua’s previous work,&#160; <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Battle-Hymn-Tiger-Mother-Chua/dp/0143120581" type="external">The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother</a>, extolled the superiority of rigid, demanding, Chinese-style parenting as the best way to produce successful children. While ‘Tiger Mom’ generated controversy (and sales), it’s debatable whether she inspired converts.</p>
<p>This time, perhaps sensitive to the&#160; <a href="http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/tiger_mother_and_her_critics_both_wrong" type="external">criticism</a>&#160;Chua received for defining “success” in narrow, material terms, Chua and Rubenfeld acknowledge early on that while&#160; <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&amp;field-keywords=the%20triple%20package&amp;sprefix=the+tri%2Cstripbooks" type="external">The Triple Package</a>&#160;defines success in economic terms, others describe success differently, according to broader visions of a meaningful life. They freely admit that triple package thinking carries its own “pathologies,” which can render a person outwardly successful—and inwardly miserable. (One wag&#160; <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117021/triple-package-amy-chua-and-jed-rubenfeld-reviewed" type="external">re-styled</a>&#160;the ‘triple package’ mindset as the “self-glorification, self-loathing, and self-effacement” often reflected in Asian stereotypes.)</p>
<p>The authors offer several important caveats: first, not all members of these cultural groups acquire the triple package; and second, individuals who don’t belong to these particular groups can acquire the triple package in other ways and become successful. “The Triple Package isn’t members-only,” they write. “The way in—not that it’s remotely easy—is through grit: by making the ability to work hard, persevere, and overcome adversity into a source of personal superiority.” Far from being an inherited guarantee of perpetual group success, the authors suggest that triple package thinking is difficult for groups to sustain over the long haul. Within two or three generations, groups become less consistent in transmitting the triple package, which leads to declining group success.&#160; Success too often breeds contentment and “people just [get] lazy.” Thus the subtitle:&#160;The Rise&#160;and Fall&#160;of Cultural Groups in America&#160;(emphasis added).</p>
<p>Caveats notwithstanding, by categorizing some groups as successful and others as not, the authors effectively struck a match and threw it on the woodpile of America’s race, class, and ethnic divides—with predictable results.</p>
<p>(Hint: Don’t expect Chua and Rubenfeld to be commencement speakers at any progressive universities any time soon.)</p>
<p>Scorching reviews by progressive critics accuse&#160;The Triple Package&#160;authors of&#160; <a href="http://thestir.cafemom.com/in_the_news/166371/tiger_mom_is_back_with" type="external">racism</a>, “ <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/khanh-ho/what-amy-chua-didnt-tell-_b_4789488.html" type="external">cherry-picked</a>” statistics, and historical&#160; <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/khanh-ho/what-amy-chua-didnt-tell-_b_4789488.html" type="external">ignorance</a>. That’s just for starters. The book’s premise—that some succeed and others don’t, by dint of hard work, self-control, and pure grit—deeply offends those whose American narrative is a woeful tale of victimization, stigma, oppression, and countless –isms.</p>
<p>On the other hand, conservatives as well as progressives have raised concerns over the authors’ “methodology, or lack thereof,” as Kay Hymowitz&#160; <a href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/battle-hymn-of-the-culture-warrior/" type="external">writes</a>&#160;in&#160;Commentary&#160;magazine.&#160;The Triple Package&#160;analysis, for example, seems to minimize the impact of radically different immigration and social histories. An African-American whose forebears stepped ashore in chains or were barred by law, for generations, from certain schools, jobs, and neighborhoods faces an arduous—and very different—trek up the mountain of success than a recent immigrant from India who deplanes with an engineering degree in his back pocket and a network of relatives ready to provide a helping hand. The book sails breezily past such concerns.</p>
<p>The book also inexplicably ignores family structure and its impact on individual success. Devoting pages and pages to ‘group culture,’ the authors barely mention (aside from anecdotes) the major institution—the family—that typically mediates group culture to the individual.</p>
<p>Surely it’s important to consider what—if any—relationship there might be between family structure, group culture, and the absorption of Triple Package characteristics. How do marriage and divorce rates, and percentages of single parent families, for example, compare between triple package and non-triple package groups? The 2014&#160; <a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/family-research-council-issues-fourth-annual-index-of-family-belonging-and-rejection-245224721.html" type="external">Index</a>&#160;of Family Belonging and Rejection, compiled by the Marriage and Religion Research&#160; <a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/family-research-council-issues-fourth-annual-index-of-family-belonging-and-rejection-245224721.html" type="external">Institute</a>, reports that, “ <a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/family-research-council-issues-fourth-annual-index-of-family-belonging-and-rejection-245224721.html" type="external">Family belonging</a>&#160;is strongest among Asians (65 percent) and weakest among Blacks (17 percent).” (Family belonging describes the situation of a child raised by both biological parents, married to each other.) Are such statistical differences relevant to the Triple Package theory?</p>
<p>Given that children of divorce or those raised by single parents are statistically more likely to experience negative outcomes in areas that impact later adult ‘success’ (high school graduation, substance use, etc.) didn’t the authors at least wonder if or how family structure might factor into Triple Package theory? For example, does family structure, as a general matter, affect the ‘take-up’ rate or the ‘stickiness’ of triple package qualities? Is there a relationship between triple package cultures and the prevalence of particular family structures? Perhaps an analysis of possible connections between family structure and Triple Package success would yield nothing useful, but it’s a serious flaw to leave the question unexamined.</p>
<p>Chua and Rubenfeld, of course, anticipated pushback from many sides. (Some&#160; <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117021/triple-package-amy-chua-and-jed-rubenfeld-reviewed" type="external">suggest</a>&#160;they&#160; <a href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/battle-hymn-of-the-culture-warrior/" type="external">banked</a>&#160;on it). They deserve credit for opening the conversation on a topic Americans generally find “uncomfortable” to discuss: the uneven records of success and upward mobility among various religious, ethnic and national-origin groups. The authors wisely refuse to play the racial or ethnic ‘blame game,’ though, and specifically reject the idea that “native-born American blacks have only themselves to blame for their economic position.” They argue instead that, “the United States did everything it could for centuries to grind the Triple Package out of African American culture—and is still doing so today.”</p>
<p>Indeed,&#160;The Triple Package’s&#160;message on the value of impulse control and hard work generally resonates well in&#160; <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117021/triple-package-amy-chua-and-jed-rubenfeld-reviewed" type="external">progressive</a>&#160;as well as&#160; <a href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/battle-hymn-of-the-culture-warrior/" type="external">conservative quarters</a>.</p>
<p>Columnist Keli Goff of&#160; <a href="http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2014/01/amy_chua_s_new_triple_package_is_obnoxious_but_not_racist.2.html" type="external">The Root</a>, for example, criticizes the authors’ “privilege,” “extremely condescending” attitudes, and criteria for success, observing that groups which don’t fit the triple package profile nevertheless have produced “artists and musicians who have forever changed the face of American culture.” And yet Goff validates the authors’ focus on impulse control. “The need for greater impulse control is certainly not a race-specific characteristic,” she&#160; <a href="http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2014/01/amy_chua_s_new_triple_package_is_obnoxious_but_not_racist.2.html" type="external">writes</a>. In fact, “poor impulse control” leading to “unhealthy food choices” contributes to many “health woes” among African-Americans.</p>
<p>Still, there’s an enemy to be named, and Chua and Rubenfeld point fingers at the soft and indulgent culture of modern America. With its vapid emphasis on self-esteem, odd obsession with youth, and destructive “live-in-the-moment” mindset, America appears to suffer from “instant gratification disorder,” say the authors. Rather than empowering our youth, our culture is crippling them, handicapping their ability to achieve success. Their conclusion: as a nation, we’ve lost our triple package, and it’s time to recover it.</p>
<p>Perhaps this book’s greatest value lies in its critique—by way of contrast with the triple package—of America’s prevailing cultural attitudes towards adolescents and young adults. The examples of hard-won immigrant success, shaped by high parental and group expectations, ought to inspire parents to raise the bar for their own children, rescuing them from the enervating climate of self-indulgence, shallow thinking, and instant gratification.</p>
<p>However, as a blueprint for ‘success,’ the book falls short on several counts.</p>
<p>First, although the authors’ delineation of triple package qualities is interesting, its prescriptive value is less clear. How exactly does a parent—or a group culture—instill a ‘superiority complex,’ along with a sense of ‘insecurity,’ unless they already belong to the Triple Package club? Even the labels—superiority and inferiority—smack of the same feeling-laden motivation that, without more, is incapable of sustaining serious pursuit of one’s goals. Scratch off the labels, however, and the authors’ triple package attributes look a lot like repackaged virtues.</p>
<p>Virtues—once identified and deliberately cultivated—do have prescriptive value. For example, the sense of ‘personal insecurity’ that the authors describe as the second element of the triple package looks, on closer examination, more like several virtues working together. Maybe the child’s sense of ‘something to prove’ grows when parents instill the virtues of humility, duty, honor, and gratitude. (Those are good things in themselves, by the way, unlike a superiority complex or a deep sense of insecurity.) Parents intent on building virtue also don’t need to shame or demean children, contrary to the practices in some triple package cultures, in order to give them a reason to work hard and pursue excellence.</p>
<p>Or consider impulse control. As the authors define it, impulse control looks more like an amalgam of perseverance, fortitude, industriousness, and self-control. The long trajectory of childhood and adolescence affords parents plenty of opportunities to cultivate those virtues, in deliberate fashion, following a logical sequence, using concrete circumstances—and for the right reason.</p>
<p>The child who works on self-control in order to “be” a certain kind of person is less vulnerable to giving up than the child whose impulse control depends on him “trust[ing] the system” to deliver the promised reward.</p>
<p>Goals matter. And perhaps that’s the take-away for graduates and strivers everywhere.</p>
<p>It makes little difference how fast we drive or how well we handle the curves, if we’re headed up the wrong mountain. And that’s the biggest flaw in&#160;The Triple Package:&#160;it’s a signpost to the wrong mountain. It promotes an unsustainable vision of ‘happiness-as-material-success,’ the accumulation of money, influence, status, and achievements. Success—in Triple Package terms—is not only a goal out of reach for those with less talent, drive, and support, it’s also a goal that’s destined to disappoint. As Chua and Rubenfeld themselves point out, the ultimate risk of the triple package is “the pathology of drive itself.”</p>
<p>Work, and work harder, but why? And for what?</p>
<p>The answers won’t be found in&#160;The Triple Package.</p>
<p>Mary Rice Hasson is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.</p> | false | 1 | annual spring ritual colleges universities across country commencement speakers aim please verbally stroke new graduates praising brilliance idealism passion celebrities political notables alike take podium assure students tuitionpoor parents particular crop graduateswhether princeton boise state adelphiis uniquely poised success americas first lady160 michelle obama example told graduates new orleans dillard university dream big vision boldthere nothing graduates nothing achieve almost everywhere newly minted graduates hear right stuff succeedand even to160 change worldas long believe follow dreams nice sentiments course true americas feelgood gurus appear think popularized progressives education entertainment politics modern cultural script reads something like practically speaking script explains youth soccer team gives trophies everyone middle school160 cancels160honors night lest low achievers feel160 excluded teachers strive boost students selfesteem antidote falling test scores students immersed get world smartphone apps videoondemand google research generating 42000000 results 33 seconds come expect instant gratification pursue knowledge sex wealth status adult world modern promise fueling new american dreamthe belief success comes finding pursuing passion living moment amy chua jed rubenfeld problem recent160 book160the triple package three unlikely traits explain rise fall cultural groups america160chua rubenfeld argue american dream realized follow feel good script possess triple package politically incorrect set propositions triple package combination three distinct forces found culture americas highestachieving groups cultural forces propel group members whole achieve outsize success least strength cultural forces becomes diluted assimilation time groups success nutshell triple package drives successmeasured money achievements positionconsists 1 group superiority complex rooted religious belief historical memory ethnic tradition 2 personal insecurity need prove oneself face high expectations 3 impulse control disciplined ability delay immediate gratification favor longterm gains dont certain groups defined religious ethnic identity starkly successful others say authors marshaling statistics examples support theory chua rubenfeld note disproportionate success groups like mormons jews chinese koreans indians nigerians iranians lebanese cubans young people belong groups say authors likely acquire triple package turn makes eventual success likely provocative argumentnot surprising given amy chua demonstrated knack throwing figurative hand grenades polite company chuas previous work160 battle hymn tiger mother extolled superiority rigid demanding chinesestyle parenting best way produce successful children tiger mom generated controversy sales debatable whether inspired converts time perhaps sensitive the160 criticism160chua received defining success narrow material terms chua rubenfeld acknowledge early while160 triple package160defines success economic terms others describe success differently according broader visions meaningful life freely admit triple package thinking carries pathologies render person outwardly successfuland inwardly miserable one wag160 restyled160the triple package mindset selfglorification selfloathing selfeffacement often reflected asian stereotypes authors offer several important caveats first members cultural groups acquire triple package second individuals dont belong particular groups acquire triple package ways become successful triple package isnt membersonly write way innot remotely easyis grit making ability work hard persevere overcome adversity source personal superiority far inherited guarantee perpetual group success authors suggest triple package thinking difficult groups sustain long haul within two three generations groups become less consistent transmitting triple package leads declining group success160 success often breeds contentment people get lazy thus subtitle160the rise160and fall160of cultural groups america160emphasis added caveats notwithstanding categorizing groups successful others authors effectively struck match threw woodpile americas race class ethnic divideswith predictable results hint dont expect chua rubenfeld commencement speakers progressive universities time soon scorching reviews progressive critics accuse160the triple package160authors of160 racism cherrypicked statistics historical160 ignorance thats starters books premisethat succeed others dont dint hard work selfcontrol pure gritdeeply offends whose american narrative woeful tale victimization stigma oppression countless isms hand conservatives well progressives raised concerns authors methodology lack thereof kay hymowitz160 writes160in160commentary160magazine160the triple package160analysis example seems minimize impact radically different immigration social histories africanamerican whose forebears stepped ashore chains barred law generations certain schools jobs neighborhoods faces arduousand differenttrek mountain success recent immigrant india deplanes engineering degree back pocket network relatives ready provide helping hand book sails breezily past concerns book also inexplicably ignores family structure impact individual success devoting pages pages group culture authors barely mention aside anecdotes major institutionthe familythat typically mediates group culture individual surely important consider whatif anyrelationship might family structure group culture absorption triple package characteristics marriage divorce rates percentages single parent families example compare triple package nontriple package groups 2014160 index160of family belonging rejection compiled marriage religion research160 institute reports family belonging160is strongest among asians 65 percent weakest among blacks 17 percent family belonging describes situation child raised biological parents married statistical differences relevant triple package theory given children divorce raised single parents statistically likely experience negative outcomes areas impact later adult success high school graduation substance use etc didnt authors least wonder family structure might factor triple package theory example family structure general matter affect takeup rate stickiness triple package qualities relationship triple package cultures prevalence particular family structures perhaps analysis possible connections family structure triple package success would yield nothing useful serious flaw leave question unexamined chua rubenfeld course anticipated pushback many sides some160 suggest160they160 banked160on deserve credit opening conversation topic americans generally find uncomfortable discuss uneven records success upward mobility among various religious ethnic nationalorigin groups authors wisely refuse play racial ethnic blame game though specifically reject idea nativeborn american blacks blame economic position argue instead united states everything could centuries grind triple package african american cultureand still today indeed160the triple packages160message value impulse control hard work generally resonates well in160 progressive160as well as160 conservative quarters columnist keli goff of160 root example criticizes authors privilege extremely condescending attitudes criteria success observing groups dont fit triple package profile nevertheless produced artists musicians forever changed face american culture yet goff validates authors focus impulse control need greater impulse control certainly racespecific characteristic she160 writes fact poor impulse control leading unhealthy food choices contributes many health woes among africanamericans still theres enemy named chua rubenfeld point fingers soft indulgent culture modern america vapid emphasis selfesteem odd obsession youth destructive liveinthemoment mindset america appears suffer instant gratification disorder say authors rather empowering youth culture crippling handicapping ability achieve success conclusion nation weve lost triple package time recover perhaps books greatest value lies critiqueby way contrast triple packageof americas prevailing cultural attitudes towards adolescents young adults examples hardwon immigrant success shaped high parental group expectations ought inspire parents raise bar children rescuing enervating climate selfindulgence shallow thinking instant gratification however blueprint success book falls short several counts first although authors delineation triple package qualities interesting prescriptive value less clear exactly parentor group cultureinstill superiority complex along sense insecurity unless already belong triple package club even labelssuperiority inferioritysmack feelingladen motivation without incapable sustaining serious pursuit ones goals scratch labels however authors triple package attributes look lot like repackaged virtues virtuesonce identified deliberately cultivateddo prescriptive value example sense personal insecurity authors describe second element triple package looks closer examination like several virtues working together maybe childs sense something prove grows parents instill virtues humility duty honor gratitude good things way unlike superiority complex deep sense insecurity parents intent building virtue also dont need shame demean children contrary practices triple package cultures order give reason work hard pursue excellence consider impulse control authors define impulse control looks like amalgam perseverance fortitude industriousness selfcontrol long trajectory childhood adolescence affords parents plenty opportunities cultivate virtues deliberate fashion following logical sequence using concrete circumstancesand right reason child works selfcontrol order certain kind person less vulnerable giving child whose impulse control depends trusting system deliver promised reward goals matter perhaps thats takeaway graduates strivers everywhere makes little difference fast drive well handle curves headed wrong mountain thats biggest flaw in160the triple package160its signpost wrong mountain promotes unsustainable vision happinessasmaterialsuccess accumulation money influence status achievements successin triple package termsis goal reach less talent drive support also goal thats destined disappoint chua rubenfeld point ultimate risk triple package pathology drive work work harder answers wont found in160the triple package mary rice hasson fellow ethics public policy center | 1,281 |
<p>WASHINGTON — A bill to restart the stalled Yucca Mountain project was approved by a full House committee on Wednesday after members tried to appease Nevada by striking a provision dealing with state water rights.</p>
<p>But the bill also increased the statutory cap on the amount of nuclear waste that could be stored at Yucca Mountain from 70,000 tons to 110,000 tons, allowing the Department of Energy more storage in Nevada until a second permanent storage repository is built.</p>
<p>The House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 49-4 to advance the bill to the full House for consideration, which could happen as early as next month.</p>
<p>The support for the legislation came after the committee approved bipartisan amendments offered by Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., that authorized more federal funds for interim storage of nuclear waste and stripped language that usurped Nevada’s water rights — an issue that resonated with lawmakers in Western states.</p>
<p>But Shimkus, the chairman of the House Energy subcommittee on environment, said the changes do not remove the federal obligation to permanently store waste and get an answer from an independent safety regulator on “whether Yucca Mountain meets all the requirements to serve as a permanent repository.”</p>
<p>Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., said that while some lawmakers were trying to paint the changes “as better for Nevada, the fact remains that this legislation is an attempt to dump even more waste into our state.</p>
<p>“They claim that the new bill addresses many of the concerns I raised during the hearing on the legislation earlier this year. In reality, it is worse than existing law.”</p>
<p>Rep. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., said “nothing about today’s bill or so-called compromise amendments appease our concerns.”</p>
<p>Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., said the bill’s advance was not surprising.</p>
<p>“The fact that the vote out of committee was 49-4, and not a party-line vote, leads me to suspect this is a sign of things to come in the House,” he said. “We will continue to direct our efforts at providing the best possible protection for Nevadans.”</p>
<p>No Nevada lawmakers sit on the energy committee.</p>
<p>Even Democrats on the panel cited the need to move a stockpile of nuclear waste out of more than 100 communities to safer interim and permanent storage sites.</p>
<p>“This was a delicate and difficult negotiation, but I believe we have arrived at a very good compromise,” said Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., the ranking Democrat on the energy committee.</p>
<p>A Shimkus amendment authorizes $150 million over three years for licensing of a pilot interim storage facility and gives the energy secretary the ability to contract with a private company to store nuclear wastes.</p>
<p>Shimkus was also co-author of a bipartisan amendment that stripped out language that would have given the the Energy Department authority to override Nevada’s authority on water rights. Nevada has denied the federal government a water permit for Yucca Mountain.</p>
<p>The water rights issue resonated with lawmakers in other Western states, as well as with conservatives who saw the original legislation as federal overreach.</p>
<p>The committee also included an amendment by Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., that said the United States and Canada should not allow permanent storage of spent nuclear fuel near the Great Lakes.</p>
<p>Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., called that a great irony in the bill. “If it is not safe for them, how can it be safe for Nevada?”</p>
<p>The Senate is expected to file bipartisan legislation that would differ from the House bill. Republicans and Democrats in the Senate say their legislation will move more aggressively on interim storage. That bill is expected to create a federal agency to identify places to accept nuclear waste.</p>
<p>President Donald Trump’s budget blueprint for fiscal year 2018 includes $110 million to restart the licensing process to build Yucca Mountain, and $10 million for interim storage.</p>
<p>Yucca Mountain, located nearly 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, was designated by Congress in 1987 as the site for permanent nuclear waste disposal.</p>
<p>Since then, the DOE has spent $15 billion to develop and study the site.</p>
<p>The DOE filed its license application on Yucca Mountain with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2008. The DOE tried to withdraw the application in 2010 and President Barack Obama defunded the program in 2012.</p>
<p>Efforts by the Trump administration and the House to restart the licensing application for Yucca Mountain have ignited a firestorm of opposition by most Nevada public officials, except in Nye County where Yucca Mountain is located.</p>
<p>“Nye County and eight other rural counties in Nevada have long supported moving the licensing process forward so the science on Yucca Mountain can be heard,” said Dan Schinhofen, the Nye County Commission chairman.</p>
<p>He applauded the House energy panel for moving the bill forward and noted that no changes in legislation take resources away from developing Yucca Mountain as a permanent repository.</p>
<p>But reaction to the House action from other Nevada elected officials was critical.</p>
<p>Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., said he will stand with the state of Nevada and fight “this reckless proposal every step of the way.”</p>
<p>And Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., a former state attorney general, said the House bill “ignores the detrimental impacts to Nevada’s communities and economy if Yucca Mountain moves forward.”</p>
<p>Contact Gary Martin at 202-662-7390 or [email protected]. Follow @garymartindc on Twitter.</p> | false | 1 | washington bill restart stalled yucca mountain project approved full house committee wednesday members tried appease nevada striking provision dealing state water rights bill also increased statutory cap amount nuclear waste could stored yucca mountain 70000 tons 110000 tons allowing department energy storage nevada second permanent storage repository built house energy commerce committee voted 494 advance bill full house consideration could happen early next month support legislation came committee approved bipartisan amendments offered rep john shimkus rill authorized federal funds interim storage nuclear waste stripped language usurped nevadas water rights issue resonated lawmakers western states shimkus chairman house energy subcommittee environment said changes remove federal obligation permanently store waste get answer independent safety regulator whether yucca mountain meets requirements serve permanent repository rep dina titus dnev said lawmakers trying paint changes better nevada fact remains legislation attempt dump even waste state claim new bill addresses many concerns raised hearing legislation earlier year reality worse existing law rep jacky rosen dnev said nothing todays bill socalled compromise amendments appease concerns rep mark amodei rnev said bills advance surprising fact vote committee 494 partyline vote leads suspect sign things come house said continue direct efforts providing best possible protection nevadans nevada lawmakers sit energy committee even democrats panel cited need move stockpile nuclear waste 100 communities safer interim permanent storage sites delicate difficult negotiation believe arrived good compromise said rep frank pallone jr dnj ranking democrat energy committee shimkus amendment authorizes 150 million three years licensing pilot interim storage facility gives energy secretary ability contract private company store nuclear wastes shimkus also coauthor bipartisan amendment stripped language would given energy department authority override nevadas authority water rights nevada denied federal government water permit yucca mountain water rights issue resonated lawmakers western states well conservatives saw original legislation federal overreach committee also included amendment rep debbie dingell dmich said united states canada allow permanent storage spent nuclear fuel near great lakes rep dina titus dnev called great irony bill safe safe nevada senate expected file bipartisan legislation would differ house bill republicans democrats senate say legislation move aggressively interim storage bill expected create federal agency identify places accept nuclear waste president donald trumps budget blueprint fiscal year 2018 includes 110 million restart licensing process build yucca mountain 10 million interim storage yucca mountain located nearly 90 miles northwest las vegas designated congress 1987 site permanent nuclear waste disposal since doe spent 15 billion develop study site doe filed license application yucca mountain nuclear regulatory commission 2008 doe tried withdraw application 2010 president barack obama defunded program 2012 efforts trump administration house restart licensing application yucca mountain ignited firestorm opposition nevada public officials except nye county yucca mountain located nye county eight rural counties nevada long supported moving licensing process forward science yucca mountain heard said dan schinhofen nye county commission chairman applauded house energy panel moving bill forward noted changes legislation take resources away developing yucca mountain permanent repository reaction house action nevada elected officials critical sen dean heller rnev said stand state nevada fight reckless proposal every step way sen catherine cortez masto dnev former state attorney general said house bill ignores detrimental impacts nevadas communities economy yucca mountain moves forward contact gary martin 2026627390 gmartinreviewjournalcom follow garymartindc twitter | 536 |
<p>Pres. Barack Obama, we are told, takes great pride in his facility with the written and spoken word, and perhaps justifiably so. He has, after all, authored two bestselling books (on himself), and is routinely praised by the media for being an exceptional orator.</p>
<p>Indeed, it is this particularly gifted way with words that seems partially to explain the ongoing confusion over his true political identity. It was well known and widely reported prior to the 2008 election that then-Senator Obama had achieved, during his brief time in national office, a more liberal voting record than any of his Democratic colleagues. Still, voters who had previously pulled the lever largely for Republican candidates cast their ballots for him in great numbers. No matter the clear record — many Americans were convinced that Obama would, if he won the presidency, govern from the center because, well, he sounded so moderate and reasonable in his speeches.</p>
<p>In the early days of the new administration, the president continued to use phrases and push themes that left conflicting impressions about the basic direction of his governing game plan. In his inaugural address, he said the question he would ask was not whether government is too big or too small, but whether it “works,” thus siding with the pragmatic over the theoretical. He also announced his intention to appoint a high-level “chief performance officer” to lead an effort to transform government into a model of efficiency, with a line-by-line review of every agency to eliminate wasteful and unnecessary spending. He even signaled, to the chagrin of liberal bloggers, a vague interest in bipartisan reform of the nation’s entitlement programs to put the country’s long-term fiscal house in order.</p>
<p>All of this reinforced the carefully cultivated persona of someone who could bridge old divides and unite the country in a post-partisan era of problem solving.</p>
<p>Then came his budget plan, which removed all doubt about where the president would like to lead the country. It seems likely that, years from now, this first budget submission will be marked as the moment when the president’s aggressively liberal governing philosophy finally came into full view. His budget would impose massive new taxes on entrepreneurs and upper-income households; redistribute much of the new revenue collected to others through scores of new government programs and special tax provisions; rapidly increase spending by nearly every agency of government; micromanage the energy and health sectors in ways never tried before in this country; and run up the public debt just as the baby-boom generation is about to swell the government’s retirement and health-care costs.</p>
<p>Though all of this is readily seen in the budget’s revenue and spending figures, the Obama administration nonetheless tried to couch it in the soothing language of fiscal conservatism. In his speech before Congress, the president said his team had found “$2 trillion in savings” over ten years with their sharp, budget-cutting pencils. But, even before the budget’s official release just two days later, it was clear that this claim was a mirage. The “savings” stemmed mainly from the assumption that, in a status quo scenario, war-fighting costs in Iraq would remain at essentially “surge” levels in perpetuity, which no one has ever thought would be the case. That false assumption alone added $1.4 trillion to the “baseline” against which the Obama team measured itself.</p>
<p>But it didn’t matter anyway. This budgetary sleight of hand couldn’t disguise what even the mainstream press recognized: The Obama budget, if adopted, would run up the nation’s debt at an unprecedented pace — some $7 trillion between 2009 and 2019. No matter what baseline it’s measured against, that’s a lot of borrowing. At the end of 2008, before the full force of the financial crisis had hit government tax collections, the entire debt, accumulated over more than two centuries, stood at only $5.8 trillion. In 2007, at the end of the government expansion that marked much of the Bush era, the federal budget deficit fell to a comparatively insignificant $161 billion, or just 1.2 percent of GDP. By contrast, the lowest annual budget deficit in the Obama plan would be $533 billion in 2013, or 3 percent of GDP.</p>
<p>This massive run-up of debt cannot be explained away with a continuing weak economy. In the run-up to the passage of the so-called stimulus bill, the president spoke incessantly of the financial crisis and the likely economic troubles that lie ahead. We won’t dig ourselves out of the problem easily or quickly, he warned. But the budget he submitted to Congress now predicts otherwise. Robust economic growth is expected to resume in 2010 for good. Indeed, in 2012, the administration projects real GDP will increase an astonishing 4.6 percent, three years into a recovery.</p>
<p>If anemic growth isn’t to blame for the Obama deficits, what is? It’s simple: spending. For all the talk of combing through the budget for savings, President Obama is planning an unprecedented expansion of government, with just about every agency and program in line for a major bump-up in funding. In 2008, total federal spending was $3 trillion. In 2013, after the financial crisis is expected to have subsided and economic growth to be in full swing, the president’s budget, including his health-care plan, forecasts spending of about $4 trillion — a $1 trillion, or 33 percent, increase in the size of government in just five years.</p>
<p>And the spending is pretty much for anything and everything. Child-nutrition programs, Pell Grants (an 80 percent increase by 2014), national-service scholarships, state welfare grants, job training, disease prevention, research, agency overhead, and on and on. The State Department (and related international funding) would nearly double in size in five years; the Education Department would grow by more than 60 percent. Overall, annual appropriations spending would increase by $780 billion over the coming decade.</p>
<p>To partially finance all of this new spending, the Obama budget would impose a massive tax hike on upper-income households. Those with incomes exceeding $250,000 per year would see their tax rate on ordinary income jump from 36 percent to 39.6 percent, and on capital gains from 15 percent to 20 percent. They would also lose some of the value of their personal exemption and itemized deductions, including charitable contributions and home-mortgage interest expenses. All in all, President Obama wants to increase taxes on the nation’s high earners and successful entrepreneurs by nearly $1 trillion over the coming decade. And that doesn’t count their share of the $645 billion ten-year tax associated with the administration’s “cap and trade” environmental program.</p>
<p>In his radio address on February 28, the president signaled that he understood his budget proposal marked a turning point in his early presidency. Gone were the soothing words of bipartisanship and moderation. He didn’t offer to negotiate or compromise. Rather, he warned his opponents that his budget submission to Congress was making good on the promise to bring about sweeping change. In effect, he was claiming an electoral mandate for the budget he proposed.</p>
<p>But did voters really have this — essentially the Great Society II — in mind when they voted last November?</p>
<p>Then, as now, the overwhelming issue was the severe economic contraction sweeping the country. The Obama campaign moved decisively ahead of Sen. John McCain in late September as it became clear that the downward spiral, which had started in the financial sector, was accelerating rapidly and threatening widespread job losses. The change a fearful public wanted then, and wants today, is whatever will break the cycle and restore private-sector growth.</p>
<p>Despite the rhetoric, the vast majority of the new spending and tax provisions in the Obama budge t plan, including provisions enacted in the stimulus bill, will have no bearing whatsoever on the prospects for reversing the current downturn. As Fed chairman Ben Bernanke recently testified, growth will resume later this year or early next if and only if the problems of toxic assets and frozen credit are resolved in the financial sector. That’s what caused the problem in the first place, and its resolution remains the complex missing ingredient for jump-starting a recovery.</p>
<p>The president has strong working majorities in both chambers of Congress, so it is entirely possible that his budget will pass largely intact, thus changing the trajectory of government for some years to come. But it is also possible that a public expecting moderation and centrism will be startled by the aggressively liberal economic agenda their new president is pushing. If that happens, the administration may come to regret its massive budgetary overreach in the same way the Clinton administration came to regret its early missteps on health care.</p>
<p>–Mr. Capretta, a fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, was an associate director of the Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004.</p> | false | 1 | pres barack obama told takes great pride facility written spoken word perhaps justifiably authored two bestselling books routinely praised media exceptional orator indeed particularly gifted way words seems partially explain ongoing confusion true political identity well known widely reported prior 2008 election thensenator obama achieved brief time national office liberal voting record democratic colleagues still voters previously pulled lever largely republican candidates cast ballots great numbers matter clear record many americans convinced obama would presidency govern center well sounded moderate reasonable speeches early days new administration president continued use phrases push themes left conflicting impressions basic direction governing game plan inaugural address said question would ask whether government big small whether works thus siding pragmatic theoretical also announced intention appoint highlevel chief performance officer lead effort transform government model efficiency linebyline review every agency eliminate wasteful unnecessary spending even signaled chagrin liberal bloggers vague interest bipartisan reform nations entitlement programs put countrys longterm fiscal house order reinforced carefully cultivated persona someone could bridge old divides unite country postpartisan era problem solving came budget plan removed doubt president would like lead country seems likely years first budget submission marked moment presidents aggressively liberal governing philosophy finally came full view budget would impose massive new taxes entrepreneurs upperincome households redistribute much new revenue collected others scores new government programs special tax provisions rapidly increase spending nearly every agency government micromanage energy health sectors ways never tried country run public debt babyboom generation swell governments retirement healthcare costs though readily seen budgets revenue spending figures obama administration nonetheless tried couch soothing language fiscal conservatism speech congress president said team found 2 trillion savings ten years sharp budgetcutting pencils even budgets official release two days later clear claim mirage savings stemmed mainly assumption status quo scenario warfighting costs iraq would remain essentially surge levels perpetuity one ever thought would case false assumption alone added 14 trillion baseline obama team measured didnt matter anyway budgetary sleight hand couldnt disguise even mainstream press recognized obama budget adopted would run nations debt unprecedented pace 7 trillion 2009 2019 matter baseline measured thats lot borrowing end 2008 full force financial crisis hit government tax collections entire debt accumulated two centuries stood 58 trillion 2007 end government expansion marked much bush era federal budget deficit fell comparatively insignificant 161 billion 12 percent gdp contrast lowest annual budget deficit obama plan would 533 billion 2013 3 percent gdp massive runup debt explained away continuing weak economy runup passage socalled stimulus bill president spoke incessantly financial crisis likely economic troubles lie ahead wont dig problem easily quickly warned budget submitted congress predicts otherwise robust economic growth expected resume 2010 good indeed 2012 administration projects real gdp increase astonishing 46 percent three years recovery anemic growth isnt blame obama deficits simple spending talk combing budget savings president obama planning unprecedented expansion government every agency program line major bumpup funding 2008 total federal spending 3 trillion 2013 financial crisis expected subsided economic growth full swing presidents budget including healthcare plan forecasts spending 4 trillion 1 trillion 33 percent increase size government five years spending pretty much anything everything childnutrition programs pell grants 80 percent increase 2014 nationalservice scholarships state welfare grants job training disease prevention research agency overhead state department related international funding would nearly double size five years education department would grow 60 percent overall annual appropriations spending would increase 780 billion coming decade partially finance new spending obama budget would impose massive tax hike upperincome households incomes exceeding 250000 per year would see tax rate ordinary income jump 36 percent 396 percent capital gains 15 percent 20 percent would also lose value personal exemption itemized deductions including charitable contributions homemortgage interest expenses president obama wants increase taxes nations high earners successful entrepreneurs nearly 1 trillion coming decade doesnt count share 645 billion tenyear tax associated administrations cap trade environmental program radio address february 28 president signaled understood budget proposal marked turning point early presidency gone soothing words bipartisanship moderation didnt offer negotiate compromise rather warned opponents budget submission congress making good promise bring sweeping change effect claiming electoral mandate budget proposed voters really essentially great society ii mind voted last november overwhelming issue severe economic contraction sweeping country obama campaign moved decisively ahead sen john mccain late september became clear downward spiral started financial sector accelerating rapidly threatening widespread job losses change fearful public wanted wants today whatever break cycle restore privatesector growth despite rhetoric vast majority new spending tax provisions obama budge plan including provisions enacted stimulus bill bearing whatsoever prospects reversing current downturn fed chairman ben bernanke recently testified growth resume later year early next problems toxic assets frozen credit resolved financial sector thats caused problem first place resolution remains complex missing ingredient jumpstarting recovery president strong working majorities chambers congress entirely possible budget pass largely intact thus changing trajectory government years come also possible public expecting moderation centrism startled aggressively liberal economic agenda new president pushing happens administration may come regret massive budgetary overreach way clinton administration came regret early missteps health care mr capretta fellow ethics public policy center associate director office management budget 2001 2004 | 849 |
<p>Since his untimely death three years ago, there have been many moments to regret the loss of Father Richard John Neuhaus, who redefined the church-state debate in America and introduced the phrase “public square” into the national vocabulary. Even now, one can imagine him hunkered down in the bunker-like basement of his East Gramercy house, pounding out his monthly commentary in First Things and “smiting them hip and thigh” (as he liked to put it privately), as the nation engaged in yet another round of not-altogether-high-minded controversy over religious freedom. Yet Neuhaus left such a voluminous body of work behind that it’s not impossible to suggest some answers to the question, “What would Father Richard say?,” were he still among us and surveying the current controversies over church and state.</p>
<p>In his seminal 1984 book,&#160; <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0802800807/ref=nosim/nationalreviewon" type="external">The Naked Public Square</a>, Neuhaus made three points that remain as salient today as they were 28 years ago.</p>
<p>The first had to do with the Constitution, whose proper interpretation has taken another battering in recent weeks. The First Amendment’s address to religion, Neuhaus insisted, was integrated and synthetic: “No establishment” was meant to serve the cause of the “free exercise of religion.” Free exercise was the end; no-establishment was the means. Thus the two parts of what Neuhaus insisted were one “religion clause” were not in tension, and the Supreme Court’s First Amendment jurisprudence that began from the premise of that tension was deeply flawed — as the historical studies of scholars like Philip Hamburger have confirmed.</p>
<p>Moreover, Neuhaus would have been among the first to point out, and demolish, the incoherence of the Obama administration’s reduction of religious freedom to a private right of worship. The free exercise of religion, he would have insisted, involved religious institutions as well as religious individuals, and any suggestion to the contrary was both constitutionally and theologically ludicrous. Thus Neuhaus would have been at the forefront of the condemnation of the administration’s HHS mandate, because it violates the religious freedom of both individual employers and institutional employers, making both into simulacra of the state for purpose of delivering “preventive health care.”</p>
<p>Neuhaus’s second point in The Naked Public Square has been just as fully vindicated in recent weeks: the claim that religious people in America have more secure and compelling arguments for tolerance than their secular counterparts. Yes, there were still a few religious wing-nuts in America, Neuhaus conceded. But as he once wrote in a brilliant article for Commentary called “What Do the Evangelicals Want?,” the vast majority of American Christians are tolerant of the religious convictions of others — and thus able to contribute to a civil public square — for the strongest of reasons: They believe that God commands that they be tolerant. Or as Neuhaus put it, the overwhelming majority of Christians believe that it is God’s will that they be tolerant of others who have different notions of God’s will. Religious tolerance, for Christians, is not a mere pragmatic accommodation to the fact of religious difference; it is a virtue, a moral good.</p>
<p>What, by contrast, could secularists say? They were left with arguments from pragmatic accommodation — let’s be tolerant because it’s, well, less messy — and those were weak arguments, likely to crumble under pressure. As indeed they have when the pressure to defend the abortion license and the sexual revolution through the use of coercive state power became irresistible.</p>
<p>Neuhaus’s third point in The Naked Public Square was closely linked to his second: The secularism of late modernity (and, now, post-modernity) would not be neutral, civil, and tolerant, but aggressive, rude, and hegemonic. It would demand, not a civil public square in which the sources of all moral convictions would be in play in a robust debate, but a naked public square — a public square in which secularism would be de facto established as the national creed (or, perhaps better, national moral grammar). The new secularism would not be content to live and let live; it was determined to push, not only religion, but religiously informed moral argument, out of public life, and to do so on the ground that religious conviction is inherently irrational. And of course it would be but a short step from there to the claim that religious conviction is irrational bigotry, a claim implied by the Obama administration’s refusal, in defiance of its constitutional responsibilities, to defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act in the federal courts.</p>
<p>All of this, it might be added, was foreshadowed by John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. And while Father Richard might have suggested to Rick Santorum that “I wanted to throw up” was perhaps not the most elegant or prudent way to describe one’s response to JFK as prophet of the naked public square, he would have agreed with Santorum’s analysis of the effects of that speech and its defense of an “absolute” separation of church and state — a notion that was quickly extended to exclude religiously informed conviction from public life, in a process of profound cultural change accelerated by the unhappy Supreme Court history noted above.</p>
<p>Moreover, Neuhaus would not have been surprised that all the controversy of recent weeks, along with the demons it has set loose, was closely linked to the ongoing debate over the abortion license and, more broadly, the sexual revolution. In 1967, more than a half-decade before Roe v. Wade turned abortion into a fevered national issue, Neuhaus took to the pages of the liberal Catholic journal Commonweal to decry the Left’s acceptance of the abortion license, which he foresaw leading inevitably to the deconstruction of American liberalism into a narrow-minded, even fanatical, authoritarianism.</p>
<p>Thus Neuhaus, however sadly, would have understood just what was going on when Planned Parenthood successfully called down the unmitigated wrath of the Government-Media Complex on the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation, for daring to suggest that Planned Parenthood should actually provide the genuine preventive health-care services — mammograms — for which Komen’s money was given. Indeed, Neuhaus, a veteran civil-rights activist, would have quickly seen the analogy between the Komen lynching and the struggle to desegregate America: Komen was condemned and threatened with shunning (and worse) by Planned Parenthood and its allies, just as men and women of conscience who defied the racial conventions of the time were shunned (and worse) in the days of rigid segregation, and for the same reason: Komen had violated a great taboo — in this case, the taboo that Planned Parenthood is without sin, being the single most important institutional embodiment of that unquestionable good, the sexual revolution. And while Neuhaus, with his Niebuhrian sense of the ironies of American history, might have made a wry comment or two on Barbara Boxer’s being cast in the role of George Wallace in this particular drama, he would have understood perfectly just what was afoot: social, political, and cultural pressures being brought to bear to sustain the irrational and immoral.</p>
<p>Richard John Neuhaus was not given to saying “I told you so”; his more characteristic comment was “We’re going to turn this around.” Yet the man who taught the country (and George W. Bush) that the America the pro-life movement seeks is an America in which every child is cherished in life and protected in law knew that the first part of the project — the conversion of America to a culture of life — was likely to be the more difficult to achieve. Thus Father Richard would likely note that “it’s no surprise, as our Marxist friends used to say,” that the culture wars — the struggle between what his hero, John Paul II, called the “culture of life” and the “culture of death” — have been reignited a month after the pro-life movement completed its most successful year in passing pro-life legislation since Roe v. Wade.</p>
<p>Yet he would also find some satisfaction in the way the current debate has been conducted. A pioneer of ecumenical dialogue between Catholics and evangelical Protestants and a long-time proponent of theological dialogue between Christians and Jews, he would have been pleased to see his work in those fields vindicated by the ecumenical and inter-religious alliance that quickly formed to challenge the HHS mandate’s assault on religious freedom. A sometimes stringent critic of the public-policy efforts of the Catholic bishops of the United States, he would have applauded the united efforts of the bishops to defend constitutional first principles for the sake of everyone, as he would doubtless have been in close contact with his old friend, now Cardinal Timothy Dolan, over rhetorical and political strategy.</p>
<p>In 1987, Neuhaus, then a Lutheran pastor, wrote that the next decades would be a “Catholic moment” in the history of American Christianity: the decades in which the Catholic Church would become the “lead Church” in proclaiming the Gospel and securing the moral-cultural foundations of American democracy. However one measures the degree to which that has happened, it’s very clear from the vocabulary, the ideas, and the cast of characters in the present debate that we are in a “Neuhaus moment.” For which we may well give thanks, again, for a life of conviction and consequence.</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.</p> | false | 1 | since untimely death three years ago many moments regret loss father richard john neuhaus redefined churchstate debate america introduced phrase public square national vocabulary even one imagine hunkered bunkerlike basement east gramercy house pounding monthly commentary first things smiting hip thigh liked put privately nation engaged yet another round notaltogetherhighminded controversy religious freedom yet neuhaus left voluminous body work behind impossible suggest answers question would father richard say still among us surveying current controversies church state seminal 1984 book160 naked public square neuhaus made three points remain salient today 28 years ago first constitution whose proper interpretation taken another battering recent weeks first amendments address religion neuhaus insisted integrated synthetic establishment meant serve cause free exercise religion free exercise end noestablishment means thus two parts neuhaus insisted one religion clause tension supreme courts first amendment jurisprudence began premise tension deeply flawed historical studies scholars like philip hamburger confirmed moreover neuhaus would among first point demolish incoherence obama administrations reduction religious freedom private right worship free exercise religion would insisted involved religious institutions well religious individuals suggestion contrary constitutionally theologically ludicrous thus neuhaus would forefront condemnation administrations hhs mandate violates religious freedom individual employers institutional employers making simulacra state purpose delivering preventive health care neuhauss second point naked public square fully vindicated recent weeks claim religious people america secure compelling arguments tolerance secular counterparts yes still religious wingnuts america neuhaus conceded wrote brilliant article commentary called evangelicals want vast majority american christians tolerant religious convictions others thus able contribute civil public square strongest reasons believe god commands tolerant neuhaus put overwhelming majority christians believe gods tolerant others different notions gods religious tolerance christians mere pragmatic accommodation fact religious difference virtue moral good contrast could secularists say left arguments pragmatic accommodation lets tolerant well less messy weak arguments likely crumble pressure indeed pressure defend abortion license sexual revolution use coercive state power became irresistible neuhauss third point naked public square closely linked second secularism late modernity postmodernity would neutral civil tolerant aggressive rude hegemonic would demand civil public square sources moral convictions would play robust debate naked public square public square secularism would de facto established national creed perhaps better national moral grammar new secularism would content live let live determined push religion religiously informed moral argument public life ground religious conviction inherently irrational course would short step claim religious conviction irrational bigotry claim implied obama administrations refusal defiance constitutional responsibilities defend federal defense marriage act federal courts might added foreshadowed john f kennedys 1960 speech greater houston ministerial association father richard might suggested rick santorum wanted throw perhaps elegant prudent way describe ones response jfk prophet naked public square would agreed santorums analysis effects speech defense absolute separation church state notion quickly extended exclude religiously informed conviction public life process profound cultural change accelerated unhappy supreme court history noted moreover neuhaus would surprised controversy recent weeks along demons set loose closely linked ongoing debate abortion license broadly sexual revolution 1967 halfdecade roe v wade turned abortion fevered national issue neuhaus took pages liberal catholic journal commonweal decry lefts acceptance abortion license foresaw leading inevitably deconstruction american liberalism narrowminded even fanatical authoritarianism thus neuhaus however sadly would understood going planned parenthood successfully called unmitigated wrath governmentmedia complex susan g komen cure foundation daring suggest planned parenthood actually provide genuine preventive healthcare services mammograms komens money given indeed neuhaus veteran civilrights activist would quickly seen analogy komen lynching struggle desegregate america komen condemned threatened shunning worse planned parenthood allies men women conscience defied racial conventions time shunned worse days rigid segregation reason komen violated great taboo case taboo planned parenthood without sin single important institutional embodiment unquestionable good sexual revolution neuhaus niebuhrian sense ironies american history might made wry comment two barbara boxers cast role george wallace particular drama would understood perfectly afoot social political cultural pressures brought bear sustain irrational immoral richard john neuhaus given saying told characteristic comment going turn around yet man taught country george w bush america prolife movement seeks america every child cherished life protected law knew first part project conversion america culture life likely difficult achieve thus father richard would likely note surprise marxist friends used say culture wars struggle hero john paul ii called culture life culture death reignited month prolife movement completed successful year passing prolife legislation since roe v wade yet would also find satisfaction way current debate conducted pioneer ecumenical dialogue catholics evangelical protestants longtime proponent theological dialogue christians jews would pleased see work fields vindicated ecumenical interreligious alliance quickly formed challenge hhs mandates assault religious freedom sometimes stringent critic publicpolicy efforts catholic bishops united states would applauded united efforts bishops defend constitutional first principles sake everyone would doubtless close contact old friend cardinal timothy dolan rhetorical political strategy 1987 neuhaus lutheran pastor wrote next decades would catholic moment history american christianity decades catholic church would become lead church proclaiming gospel securing moralcultural foundations american democracy however one measures degree happened clear vocabulary ideas cast characters present debate neuhaus moment may well give thanks life conviction consequence george weigel distinguished senior fellow washingtons ethics public policy center holds william e simon chair catholic studies | 851 |
<p>Suppose a large group of same-sex-marriage activists came together and made the following confession to a group of same-sex-marriage skeptics:</p>
<p>“Look, we’re going to level with you in a way that we haven’t up to now. We all support same-sex marriage, but for many&#160;— even most&#160;— of us, gay marriage isn’t an end in itself. It’s a way-station on the path to a post-marriage society. We want a wide range of diverse families&#160;— even ‘polyamorous’ groupings of three or more partners&#160;— to have the same recognition, rights, and benefits as heterosexual married couples. In short, your worst fears are justified. The radical redefinition of marriage you’ve been worried about for so long is exactly what we want.</p>
<p>“Oh sure, some of us are more radical than others. But even the most committed and prominent mainstream advocates of same-sex marriage largely support a radical family agenda. A few advocates who back a ‘conservative’ interpretation of same-sex marriage may regularly engage you in debate, yet their views carry relatively little weight within the gay community. Some of these ‘conservative’ supporters of same-sex marriage have claimed that there is no significant political constituency for polygamy-polyamory, or for a general legal deconstruction of marriage. That’s just wrong. As gay marriage gains acceptance, we’re going to have a polygamy-polyamory debate in this country. And among those sponsoring that debate will be many of the very same people and groups who’ve already pushed for same-sex marriage.</p>
<p>“So why haven’t we told you all this before? Simple. We’ve been censoring ourselves for fear of scaring away public support for same-sex marriage. You see, it’s all about timing. Our plan is to establish same-sex marriage first, and then, as our next step, to demand that the rights and benefits of marriage be accorded to all types of families. After all, when the call for yet another radical redefinition of marriage comes from married same-sex couples, it’s going to be that much more persuasive. Up to now, truth to tell, if any same-sex marriage backers pushed this radical agenda in public, we pressured them to keep silent. But now we’re telling you the truth.</p>
<p>“You see, despite what you’ve heard about the ‘conservative case’ for same-sex marriage, the more radical argument that ‘love makes a family’ has played a huge role in the success of the drive for same-sex marriage. And the ‘love makes a family’ idea requires recognition, not only for gay couples, but also for polygamous and polyamorous families.</p>
<p>“And consider the complex families created when three or even four gay men and lesbians combine through, say, artificial insemination, to bear and raise children. We want recognition for these sorts of unconventional families too, even&#160;— or especially&#160;— if such recognition leads to legalized polyamory. Pretending that certain aspects of the gay community don’t exist only weakens our diverse families. The way we live is the way we live. Up to now, we’ve tried to hide it. But at last we’re ready to own up to reality, and to push for legal recognition for all types of families, even if that expands the definition of marriage until the very idea of marriage itself is stripped of meaning.”</p>
<p>Beyond Same-Sex Marriage For all practical purposes, this confession has already been offered. A good part of the substance of the above message was conveyed this past July, when hundreds of self-described lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) and allied activists, scholars, educators, writers, artists, lawyers, journalists, and community organizers released a manifesto entitled, “ <a href="http://beyondmarriage.org/" type="external">Beyond Same-Sex Marriage</a>.” Among other things, that statement called for recognition of “committed, loving households in which there is more than one conjugal partner.”</p>
<p>That hundreds of gay-marriage supporters, including big names like Gloria Steinem, Cornel West, Rabbi Michael Lerner (of Tikkun Magazine), and Barbara Ehrenreich have signed onto a statement openly demanding recognition for polyamorous families is important enough. But the really big news is what’s been happening in the months since the release of the Beyond Same-Sex Marriage statement. The ongoing discussion of that manifesto on popular blogs, and particularly in the gay community’s own press, confirms that even many prominent mainstream advocates of same-sex marriage support a radical family agenda&#160;— and plan to push it when the time is right. In other words, a careful look at the Beyond Same-Sex Marriage statement&#160;— and especially at its public reception&#160;— indicates that the above “confession” does in fact represent the plans and convictions of the greater part of the movement for same-sex marriage.</p>
<p>The Beyond Same-Sex Marriage <a href="http://beyondmarriage.org/full_statement.html" type="external">statement</a> is nothing if not radical. It calls for extending government recognition beyond traditional married couples to groups of senior citizens living together, extended immigrant households, single parent households, “queer couples who decide to jointly create and raise a child with another queer person or couple in two households,” unmarried domestic partners, polygamous/polyamorous households, and many other diverse family forms.</p>
<p>And although the statement advocates moving “beyond” same-sex marriage, it also clearly endorses gay marriage itself. The argument on offer is that same-sex marriage is, and ought to be, only one part of a larger effort to redefine our idea of the family. So in contrast to the “conservative” argument, which holds that gay marriage will strengthen the unique appeal of marriage itself, the Beyond Same-Sex Marriage statement claims that gay marriage is a critical step in a larger evolution away from the preference for any specific family form. In other words, the sponsors of Beyond Same-Sex Marriage hope to dissolve marriage, not through formal abolition, but by gradually extending the hitherto unique notion of marriage to every conceivable family type.</p>
<p>The Beyond Same-Sex Marriage statement has attracted hundreds of <a href="http://beyondmarriage.org/signatories.html" type="external">signatures</a> from a wide array of prominent figures. In addition to national liberals like Steinem, West, Lerner, and Ehrenreich, over 90 professors have signed on, a great many from top schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, the University of Chicago, Columbia, Georgetown, Brown, Cornell, Williams, Smith, Bryn Mawr, Barnard, the University of Pennsylvania, NYU, Dartmouth, and U.C. Berkeley. Quite a few of these schools had more than one faculty member sign on. Popular writers like Terrence McNally, Armistead Maupin, and Susie Bright joined big-name academics like Judith Stacey and Judith Butler on the Beyond Same-Sex Marriage lists. Quite a few professors from top law schools (e.g., Yale, Columbia, Georgetown) also endorsed the statement. So we are not talking about fringe figures here. The Beyond Same-Sex Marriage manifesto was put forward by a large and prestigious slice of activists, artists, and intellectuals on the cultural Left.</p>
<p>Radical History The Beyond Same-Sex Marriage statement evoked swift and diametrically opposed responses from opponents and supporters of same-sex marriage. Princeton philosopher and social conservative Robert P. George <a href="http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=330" type="external">said</a> the statement had “let the cat out of the bag” by revealing that “what lies ‘beyond gay marriage’ are multiple sex partners.” The same day, Jonathan Rauch, the leading exponent of the “conservative case” for same-sex marriage, <a href="http://www.indegayforum.org/blog/show/31025.html" type="external">answered</a> George: “…there’s nothing new here. Left-wing family radicals have been saying all this stuff fo r years.” So which is it? Is this public endorsement of multiple-partner marriage by hundreds of prominent same-sex marriage supporters an important new revelation, or just irrelevant old hat?</p>
<p>It’s true, as Rauch claims, that left-wing family radicals have been calling for both polyamory and a broader deconstruction of marriage for years. Yet Rauch’s dismissal neatly glosses over some key historical shifts. When the same-sex-marriage issue became a topic of public debate, in the first half of the 1990s, the gay community was deeply split. Despite support for same-sex marriage from a few prominent gay conservatives, the gay community’s powerful phalanx of cultural radicals disdained same-sex marriage as a misguided attempt to ape an oppressive and outdated heterosexual institution. By the time the Defense of Marriage Act was debated by Congress in 1996, however, the mood in the gay community had shifted. Although many gays continued to view marriage itself as outmoded and patriarchal, same-sex marriage came to be seen as a pathway to public acceptance, and as the opening item on a much larger and more radical menu of family changes to come.</p>
<p>So from the mid-Nineties on, the gay community suppressed its divisions and united behind the public battle for same-sex marriage. Radicals in the academy laid their plans for both polyamory and a more general deconstruction of marriage, yet for the most part the radicals avoided floating such controversial proposals before the public. The mainstream media (itself part of the broader movement for same-sex marriage) cooperated by largely ignoring the many legal and academic advocates of polyamory and family radicalism. Instead, the media focused on gay couples who were as close to traditional heterosexual families as possible.</p>
<p>Having passed through a period of skeptical division on the marriage issue, followed by a period of unity, the gay community may now be moving into a third phase, the groundwork for which was laid by the 2004 election. With President Bush endorsing the Federal Marriage Amendment, and with local marriage amendments drawing out voters in battleground states like Ohio, the public handed Republicans a victory in 2004, while dealing the gay marriage movement a significant setback. Liberals who’d once lauded the Massachusetts supreme court for its courage now excoriated it’s justices for handing the election to the Republicans. Over the following two years, judges who had once felt free to impose same-sex marriage on an unwilling public grew hesitant. Surprise decisions against same-sex marriage by liberal state supreme courts in New York and the state of Washington in 2006 seemed to confirm that the movement for gay marriage had been stymied. (For a take on this history by a signer of Beyond Same-Sex Marriage, go <a href="http://dyneslines.blogspot.com/2006/08/same%20sex%20marriage%20atmosphere%20changes.html" type="external">here</a>.)</p>
<p>Frankly Speaking In this new atmosphere, the radicals had far less reason to hide their long-term plans behind a facade of unity. Politically, there was little left to lose. A good decade after the beginning of the movement for same-sex marriage, it was increasingly obvious that the fight could continue for yet another ten years. Rebelling against the thought of 20 years of self-censorship, the radicals began to speak up. The March, 2006, debut of HBO’s polygamy television serial, Big Love (created by a two pro-same-sex marriage radicals), was merely a sign of things to come. Meeting in April of 2006 to draw up their manifesto, just as Big Love was sparking a public debate about polygamy, the authors of the Beyond Same-Sex Marriage had reason to believe that their ship had finally come in.</p>
<p>So then, is the Beyond Same-Sex Marriage statement, as Rauch would have it, just irrelevant old hat? Not at all. Calls for polyamory and other forms of family radicalism may be nothing new to those already familiar with the history of the gay community’s internal debates, or with the quiet plans of legal academics. Yet a collective and very public declaration of the family-radical platform, endorsed by scores of prominent scholars and other nationally known figures, signals a new phase in the struggle. Once again, as in the early 1990s, the radicals are out in the open, unwilling to silence themselves for the sake of a united front.</p>
<p>Take Michael Bronski, a radical academic, popular New England columnist, and long-time proponent of same-sex marriage. Bronski favors same-sex marriage for its potential to destabilize the traditional organizing principles of Western culture. In a <a href="http://baywindows.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=&amp;nm=&amp;type=Publishing&amp;mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&amp;mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&amp;tier=4&amp;id=05DE4215966F47479ABAAE93482AA7E2" type="external">piece</a> explaining why he’d signed the Beyond Gay Marriage manifesto, Bronski said that he and his fellow family radicals were tired of being treated like “skunks at a garden party” for honestly owning up to their radical reasons for supporting gay marriage. Bronski then told the story of a radio appearance in which his conservative opponent had claimed that gay marriage would “change society as we know it.” Instead of denying it, Bronski agreed with this family traditionalist that gay marriage would indeed provoke a broader cultural transformation, adding that this was a good thing. “That afternoon,” Bronski recalled, “I received a barrage of e-mails from marriage equality supporters complaining that I had committed a major faux pas and should not do media on the issue of marriage again unless I was willing to state the ‘official’ marriage equality line, which is that gay marriage is about nothing more than equal rights for couples who love one another.”</p>
<p>In the aftermath of the Beyond Same-Sex Marriage statement, it was easy to see that the “‘official’ marriage equality line” has served to disguise the views of many same-sex marriage supporters. Numerous reports in the mainstream media, and in the gay community’s own press, described the censorship and self-censorship that has kept the reality of marriage radicalism out of the public eye. The New York Times <a href="http://homepages.gac.edu/~arosenth/285/Hartocollis_For_Some_Gays.pdf" type="external">reported</a> that gay family radicals “say they have muffled their own voice by censoring themselves.” Yet now, said the Times, these radicals “increasingly feel that they have nothing to lose [by speaking out] given ‘that there has been defeat after political defeat.'”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Geoffrey Kors, a leading California gay-marriage activist, <a href="http://www.ebar.com/news/article.php?sec=news&amp;article=1047" type="external">noted</a> that the movement’s silence on polyamory is not necessarily a matter of actual opposition to the practice, but simply about “not allowing the right wing to steer the conversation.” Molly McKay, media director of Marriage Equality USA, spoke of the need to limit some conflicts and conversations to “internal dialogue.” Otherwise, <a href="http://www.ebar.com/news/article.php?sec=news&amp;article=1047" type="external">said</a> McKay, it could be “very confusing for non-gay allies” who support gay marriage on the assumption that the gay community wants marriage for its own sake. McKay was concerned that mainstream support for same-sex marriage could suffer if the broader public began to think that “your own community [i.e. the gay community] doesn’t support this issue.”</p>
<p>Muzzled Again? Having broken the taboo against a public avowal of their radical goals, the sponsors of the Beyond Same-Sex Marriage statement were soundly <a href="http://www.washblade.com/2006/7%2027/view/editorial/crain.cfm" type="external">chastised</a> for their strategic error by Chris Crain, former executive editor of The Washington Blade. Crain blasted the manifesto’s signatories for “diverting attent ion” from the sort of fairness claims that resonate with the American public: “…[the signatories’] no doubt well-intentioned effort really is the radical redefinition of marriage and family that the conservatives have been braying about for so long. Realizing the Right’s worst fears is the last thing the movement needs to do at this critical juncture.” Then Crain added a twist: “Opening up marriage to gay couples is liberation enough for most of us, at least for now.” “At this critical juncture…At least for now”&#160;— we’ll come back to those lines in Part II of this piece. What’s notable now is that Crain’s strictly pragmatic and political objections to the idea of realizing “the Right’s worst fears” amounted to a demand for continued self-censorship on the part of family radicals.</p>
<p>With Crain and others blasting the radicals’ new-found honesty, Joseph De Filippis, of Queers for Economic Justice, chief spokesman for the Beyond Same-Sex Marriage manifesto, tried to put out the fire. De Filippis <a href="http://www.thetaskforce.org/TF_in_news/06_0810/stories/beyondmarr_nyblade.pdf" type="external">maintained</a> that the statement had actually been meant to “promote discussion within the LGBT community not mainstream America.” Yet having recruited nationally known allies like Steinem, West, Lerner, and Ehrenreich, that claim was hardly credible. As long-time critic of same-sex marriage Maggie Gallagher <a href="http://www.marriagedebate.com/2006/08/beyond%20marriage%20maggie%20gallagher%20joins.htm" type="external">remarked</a>, “This is quite new and quite extraordinary….I’ve debated marriage a long time without ever seeing one visible public defender of polygamy. Now we have a major statement, signed by mainstream liberal thinkers, suggesting that this is now the Left’s consolidated position.” The cat was out of the bag, all right, thereby revealing an ongoing pattern of censorship and self-censorship.</p>
<p>So Robert P. George was right. The Beyond Same-Sex Marriage statement means that something important and new is going on. Marriage and family radicals have cast aside years of self-censorship and are broadcasting their agenda to the world (even as an angry, strategically-based response by prominent backers of same-sex marriage has begun to put the muzzle back on). Marginal or Mainstream? Yet it isn’t just a question of openness versus secrecy. “Conservative” same-sex marriage advocate Jonathan Rauch had a second point to make to Robert George. According to Rauch, the folks who signed on to the Beyond Same-Sex Marriage manifesto are a bunch of unrepresentative radicals, few of them actual leaders in the movement for same-sex marriage. The radical signatories of Beyond Same-Sex Marriage “favor marriage, not as an end in itself,” <a href="http://www.indegayforum.org/blog/show/31036.html" type="external">said</a> Rauch, “but as a way-station toward a post-marriage society.” “There’s no denying that they speak for a prominent element of the gay rights movement…,” Rauch admitted, “but I don’t think they’ll prevail even within the gay universe, most of which is neither radical nor ‘queer.'”</p>
<p>But what if Rauch is wrong? What if the newfound openness and honesty of pro-same-sex marriage radicals is more than the revelation of a prominent faction’s existence? What if a radical view of family issues has already prevailed “within the gay universe”? What if quite a few mainstream leaders of the movement for same-sex marriage, even if they may not have personally signed onto the “Beyond Same-Sex Marriage” manifesto, have already expressed public agreement with all or most of that statement’s radical goals? What if the bulk of the gay community is already on board with the lion’s share of the Beyond Same-Sex Marriage agenda? And what if even Jonathan Rauch himself has come surprising close to acknowledging this?</p>
<p>— Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the <a href="" type="internal">Ethics and Public Policy Center.</a></p>
<p>**Part two of this essay is available <a href="" type="internal">here</a>.**</p> | false | 1 | suppose large group samesexmarriage activists came together made following confession group samesexmarriage skeptics look going level way havent support samesex marriage many160 even most160 us gay marriage isnt end waystation path postmarriage society want wide range diverse families160 even polyamorous groupings three partners160 recognition rights benefits heterosexual married couples short worst fears justified radical redefinition marriage youve worried long exactly want oh sure us radical others even committed prominent mainstream advocates samesex marriage largely support radical family agenda advocates back conservative interpretation samesex marriage may regularly engage debate yet views carry relatively little weight within gay community conservative supporters samesex marriage claimed significant political constituency polygamypolyamory general legal deconstruction marriage thats wrong gay marriage gains acceptance going polygamypolyamory debate country among sponsoring debate many people groups whove already pushed samesex marriage havent told simple weve censoring fear scaring away public support samesex marriage see timing plan establish samesex marriage first next step demand rights benefits marriage accorded types families call yet another radical redefinition marriage comes married samesex couples going much persuasive truth tell samesex marriage backers pushed radical agenda public pressured keep silent telling truth see despite youve heard conservative case samesex marriage radical argument love makes family played huge role success drive samesex marriage love makes family idea requires recognition gay couples also polygamous polyamorous families consider complex families created three even four gay men lesbians combine say artificial insemination bear raise children want recognition sorts unconventional families even160 especially160 recognition leads legalized polyamory pretending certain aspects gay community dont exist weakens diverse families way live way live weve tried hide last ready reality push legal recognition types families even expands definition marriage idea marriage stripped meaning beyond samesex marriage practical purposes confession already offered good part substance message conveyed past july hundreds selfdescribed lesbian gay bisexual transgender lgbt allied activists scholars educators writers artists lawyers journalists community organizers released manifesto entitled beyond samesex marriage among things statement called recognition committed loving households one conjugal partner hundreds gaymarriage supporters including big names like gloria steinem cornel west rabbi michael lerner tikkun magazine barbara ehrenreich signed onto statement openly demanding recognition polyamorous families important enough really big news whats happening months since release beyond samesex marriage statement ongoing discussion manifesto popular blogs particularly gay communitys press confirms even many prominent mainstream advocates samesex marriage support radical family agenda160 plan push time right words careful look beyond samesex marriage statement160 especially public reception160 indicates confession fact represent plans convictions greater part movement samesex marriage beyond samesex marriage statement nothing radical calls extending government recognition beyond traditional married couples groups senior citizens living together extended immigrant households single parent households queer couples decide jointly create raise child another queer person couple two households unmarried domestic partners polygamouspolyamorous households many diverse family forms although statement advocates moving beyond samesex marriage also clearly endorses gay marriage argument offer samesex marriage ought one part larger effort redefine idea family contrast conservative argument holds gay marriage strengthen unique appeal marriage beyond samesex marriage statement claims gay marriage critical step larger evolution away preference specific family form words sponsors beyond samesex marriage hope dissolve marriage formal abolition gradually extending hitherto unique notion marriage every conceivable family type beyond samesex marriage statement attracted hundreds signatures wide array prominent figures addition national liberals like steinem west lerner ehrenreich 90 professors signed great many top schools like harvard yale princeton university chicago columbia georgetown brown cornell williams smith bryn mawr barnard university pennsylvania nyu dartmouth uc berkeley quite schools one faculty member sign popular writers like terrence mcnally armistead maupin susie bright joined bigname academics like judith stacey judith butler beyond samesex marriage lists quite professors top law schools eg yale columbia georgetown also endorsed statement talking fringe figures beyond samesex marriage manifesto put forward large prestigious slice activists artists intellectuals cultural left radical history beyond samesex marriage statement evoked swift diametrically opposed responses opponents supporters samesex marriage princeton philosopher social conservative robert p george said statement let cat bag revealing lies beyond gay marriage multiple sex partners day jonathan rauch leading exponent conservative case samesex marriage answered george theres nothing new leftwing family radicals saying stuff fo r years public endorsement multiplepartner marriage hundreds prominent samesex marriage supporters important new revelation irrelevant old hat true rauch claims leftwing family radicals calling polyamory broader deconstruction marriage years yet rauchs dismissal neatly glosses key historical shifts samesexmarriage issue became topic public debate first half 1990s gay community deeply split despite support samesex marriage prominent gay conservatives gay communitys powerful phalanx cultural radicals disdained samesex marriage misguided attempt ape oppressive outdated heterosexual institution time defense marriage act debated congress 1996 however mood gay community shifted although many gays continued view marriage outmoded patriarchal samesex marriage came seen pathway public acceptance opening item much larger radical menu family changes come midnineties gay community suppressed divisions united behind public battle samesex marriage radicals academy laid plans polyamory general deconstruction marriage yet part radicals avoided floating controversial proposals public mainstream media part broader movement samesex marriage cooperated largely ignoring many legal academic advocates polyamory family radicalism instead media focused gay couples close traditional heterosexual families possible passed period skeptical division marriage issue followed period unity gay community may moving third phase groundwork laid 2004 election president bush endorsing federal marriage amendment local marriage amendments drawing voters battleground states like ohio public handed republicans victory 2004 dealing gay marriage movement significant setback liberals whod lauded massachusetts supreme court courage excoriated justices handing election republicans following two years judges felt free impose samesex marriage unwilling public grew hesitant surprise decisions samesex marriage liberal state supreme courts new york state washington 2006 seemed confirm movement gay marriage stymied take history signer beyond samesex marriage go frankly speaking new atmosphere radicals far less reason hide longterm plans behind facade unity politically little left lose good decade beginning movement samesex marriage increasingly obvious fight could continue yet another ten years rebelling thought 20 years selfcensorship radicals began speak march 2006 debut hbos polygamy television serial big love created two prosamesex marriage radicals merely sign things come meeting april 2006 draw manifesto big love sparking public debate polygamy authors beyond samesex marriage reason believe ship finally come beyond samesex marriage statement rauch would irrelevant old hat calls polyamory forms family radicalism may nothing new already familiar history gay communitys internal debates quiet plans legal academics yet collective public declaration familyradical platform endorsed scores prominent scholars nationally known figures signals new phase struggle early 1990s radicals open unwilling silence sake united front take michael bronski radical academic popular new england columnist longtime proponent samesex marriage bronski favors samesex marriage potential destabilize traditional organizing principles western culture piece explaining hed signed beyond gay marriage manifesto bronski said fellow family radicals tired treated like skunks garden party honestly owning radical reasons supporting gay marriage bronski told story radio appearance conservative opponent claimed gay marriage would change society know instead denying bronski agreed family traditionalist gay marriage would indeed provoke broader cultural transformation adding good thing afternoon bronski recalled received barrage emails marriage equality supporters complaining committed major faux pas media issue marriage unless willing state official marriage equality line gay marriage nothing equal rights couples love one another aftermath beyond samesex marriage statement easy see official marriage equality line served disguise views many samesex marriage supporters numerous reports mainstream media gay communitys press described censorship selfcensorship kept reality marriage radicalism public eye new york times reported gay family radicals say muffled voice censoring yet said times radicals increasingly feel nothing lose speaking given defeat political defeat meanwhile geoffrey kors leading california gaymarriage activist noted movements silence polyamory necessarily matter actual opposition practice simply allowing right wing steer conversation molly mckay media director marriage equality usa spoke need limit conflicts conversations internal dialogue otherwise said mckay could confusing nongay allies support gay marriage assumption gay community wants marriage sake mckay concerned mainstream support samesex marriage could suffer broader public began think community ie gay community doesnt support issue muzzled broken taboo public avowal radical goals sponsors beyond samesex marriage statement soundly chastised strategic error chris crain former executive editor washington blade crain blasted manifestos signatories diverting attent ion sort fairness claims resonate american public signatories doubt wellintentioned effort really radical redefinition marriage family conservatives braying long realizing rights worst fears last thing movement needs critical juncture crain added twist opening marriage gay couples liberation enough us least critical junctureat least now160 well come back lines part ii piece whats notable crains strictly pragmatic political objections idea realizing rights worst fears amounted demand continued selfcensorship part family radicals crain others blasting radicals newfound honesty joseph de filippis queers economic justice chief spokesman beyond samesex marriage manifesto tried put fire de filippis maintained statement actually meant promote discussion within lgbt community mainstream america yet recruited nationally known allies like steinem west lerner ehrenreich claim hardly credible longtime critic samesex marriage maggie gallagher remarked quite new quite extraordinaryive debated marriage long time without ever seeing one visible public defender polygamy major statement signed mainstream liberal thinkers suggesting lefts consolidated position cat bag right thereby revealing ongoing pattern censorship selfcensorship robert p george right beyond samesex marriage statement means something important new going marriage family radicals cast aside years selfcensorship broadcasting agenda world even angry strategicallybased response prominent backers samesex marriage begun put muzzle back marginal mainstream yet isnt question openness versus secrecy conservative samesex marriage advocate jonathan rauch second point make robert george according rauch folks signed beyond samesex marriage manifesto bunch unrepresentative radicals actual leaders movement samesex marriage radical signatories beyond samesex marriage favor marriage end said rauch waystation toward postmarriage society theres denying speak prominent element gay rights movement rauch admitted dont think theyll prevail even within gay universe neither radical queer rauch wrong newfound openness honesty prosamesex marriage radicals revelation prominent factions existence radical view family issues already prevailed within gay universe quite mainstream leaders movement samesex marriage even may personally signed onto beyond samesex marriage manifesto already expressed public agreement statements radical goals bulk gay community already board lions share beyond samesex marriage agenda even jonathan rauch come surprising close acknowledging stanley kurtz senior fellow ethics public policy center part two essay available | 1,690 |
<p>Goldwater and Modern Conservatism</p>
<p><a href="http://www.aei.org/article/politics-and-public-opinion/elections/the-meaning-of-the-goldwater-campaign/" type="external">David’s critique</a> of Barry Goldwater’s legacy is important and powerful. It is one that all conservatives who love their movement and believe that the Republican Party is its natural home ought to read and reread in the days ahead.</p>
<p>It reminds us that adhering to principle without respect to current context and lasting consequences can be pleasing but destructive. It reminds us that those consequences can last well beyond the current election and survive even subsequent electoral victories by people dedicated to the reversal of those consequences. It reminds us that statesmanship is hard and the course to policy and political victory is inherently uncertain and fraught with peril.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, I feel it is not complete. It ignores the context in which the 1964 election was fought, and therefore understates the importance of the 1964 defeat for the 1980 victory. It is too harsh in describing Reagan’s legacy as “temporary and provisional.” Finally and most importantly, it lends itself to a misinterpretation about its potential implications for the nature and aspirations of American conservatism.</p>
<p>The Goldwater candidacy can only be understood in the context of the times. After 1932 the Republican Party lost five consecutive Presidential elections, one of the longest losing streaks in American political history.</p>
<p>It returned to Presidential power on the back of a national hero, Dwight Eisenhower, who explicitly ran as a “Modern Republican” who accepted the legitimacy and permanence of the New Deal. Eisenhower’s Modern Republicanism was an American version of the path of the British Tories, accepting both the existence and the legitimacy of the welfare state and arguing that only the wiser heads of a moderately conservative party could be trusted with its prudent administration and expansion.</p>
<p>Modern American conservatism was explicitly founded in opposition to this idea. Buckley, Goldwater, and their associates believed that this approach merely managed the decline of the West, that short-term electoral victory would mask long-term national and civilizational decline. Only by establishing a counter-narrative based on freedom, taking the intellectual narrative back from the left and institutionalizing this narrative in a political vehicle–the Republican Party–could America and the West be saved.</p>
<p>The 1964 nomination battle was a struggle over which view would prevail. Had Goldwater failed, the modern conservative movement would probably have splintered into its component parts and the American Tory wing of the party become unchallenged in its dominance. Even so, the Tory wing reasserted itself after the Goldwater defeat and regained control of the national party in the persons of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.</p>
<p>It’s true that Carter lost the 1980 election more than Reagan won it, but it is hard to see Reagan or any freedom-focused American conservative winning but for the political cohesion obtained by the 1964 defeat. Even then, Reagan’s path to the nomination was not easy as the Modern Tory Republican establishment fought tenaciously to prevent his ascendancy. But that establishment was split among many candidates; had former President Ford run again, it is not clear than Reagan would have won the nomination.</p>
<p>Conservative Republicanism was much more politically successful than Modern Tory Republicanism. Between 1980 and 2008, the Republican Party never fell&#160;below&#160;44 Senate seats; between 1958 and 1980 it never received MORE than 44 seats. Between 1980 and 2008, the GOP ran the Senate for 16 ½ years; between 1958 and 1980 it never controlled the Senate. Between 1994 and 2008, the GOP ran the House for twelve years and never fell below 200 seats. Between 1958 and 1980, Modern Tory Republicans never ran the House and never had more than 192 seats.</p>
<p>The 1994-2006 period was the longest time the GOP held such continued Congressional dominance and representation since between 1918 and 1932.</p>
<p>Nor did this period provide merely ephemeral gains. Despite the Obama victory, the Soviet Union is no more. Would a Ford- or Bush-led nation have achieved victory in the Cold War? Would they have engaged in the sustained military buildup and rhetorical confrontation that sped the Communist behemoth into the ashcan of history? Their performance in power during the mid-1970s suggests not.</p>
<p>Even the Obama ascendancy does not promise to unravel all of Reagan’s domestic victories. When he took power in 1981, the top marginal tax rate was 70%. Obama proposes to raise it a shade under 40%. When Reagan took power, unions represented about 20% of all American workers; today it is under 10% and even card check will not reverse that quickly.</p>
<p>Still, all this does not make our path forward any easier. Republican strength is low and prospects are dim. How should conservatives think about getting out of this hole?</p>
<p>We must start by acknowledging what history teaches. The left has held the political and intellectual initiative in the developed world for at least a century. Parties of the right have held power, but largely by taking the growth and centralization of economic power in the state off the table. They win elections on one of three grounds: nationalism, faith or fear.</p>
<p>Nationalist parties, like the British Tories or French conservatives, focus on empire or national pride; faith-based parties like German and Italian Christian Democrats argue that welfare statism is a Christian duty and focus instead on preserving the traditional family and community. These parties use fear of a radical left that openly attacks private property or the family to drive the center toward them.</p>
<p>American freedom-based conservatism is the only electorally successful effort to offer a different path. American conservatism includes elements of nationalism and faith, and certainly has benefited from fear as American liberalism became too secular and redistributionist. But it gained its power from its distinctive element, a counter-narrative based on human freedom as way to interpret events and offer policy guidance.</p>
<p>This counter-narrative provides a center-right party with the ability to set the terms of the domestic debate rather than simply decide how much of the center-left agenda is passed and in what forms. The prospect of the success of this narrative as recently as four years ago is what accounts for much of the left’s anger and provoked much of their recent political activity.</p>
<p>Freedom-based conservatism has the added advantage of being in tune with our national rhetoric. Polls show that Americans use the words “freedom” and “liberty” when asked what it means to be an American, and transformational political leaders from Jefferson through Reagan have sought to define their agenda in terms of enhancing individual freedom rather than expanding national greatness or sectarian primacy.</p>
<p>The questions American conservatism faces today all derive from one basic question: can a political movement and party so founded and so dedicated long endure?</p>
<p>This single question leads to three subsidiary ones. Is it possible to devise a freedom-based political agenda that responds to today’s challenges and context? If so, can this agenda be advanced within a party whose political base is social conservatives who, while sympathetic to freedom, can use rhetoric that calls the individual exercise of freedom into question? If such an agenda is either intellectually untenable or politically impossible, what principle–nationalism, faith, or some mixture of the two–will replace freedom as the core of American conservatism?</p>
<p>David’s piece implicitly raises but does not clearly answer these questions. His analysis of the 1964 defeat can give rise to the idea that American conservatism ought to be more like British or European conservatism, focused more on preventing the predations of the left than on defining the debate. Other of his writings, such as&#160; <a href="http://www.aei.org/article/politics-and-public-opinion/elections/comeback/" type="external">Comeback</a>, suggests that he does believe in the possibility of a freedom-based agenda that will restore conservative dominance both intellectually and politically.</p>
<p>This is a distinction with a crucial difference. If conservatism must remake itself, if its Goldwaterite founding can no longer offer it guidance, then Republicans are doomed to wander in the political wilderness for at least a decade. Remaking a party takes time. It has taken the British Tories 12 years to remake themselves after their crushing 1997 defeat. The current base of the Democratic Party, socially liberal and college-educated people, started its efforts to gain control in the 1950s with their battle against unions and big-city bosses. Even now they rely on the political skills of one individual and must uneasily coexist with union advocates and moderates who remain suspicious of their agenda.</p>
<p>I suspect&#160;Comeback&#160;is more representative of David’s views, that he (like I) intends to reform rather than remake American conservatism. In which case, our task is more like Reagan’s, to build on what came before and adapt those principles to our current circumstances. If so, a full, complete and sympathetic understanding of 1964 is crucial to our endeavor.</p>
<p>Henry Olsen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.</p> | false | 1 | goldwater modern conservatism davids critique barry goldwaters legacy important powerful one conservatives love movement believe republican party natural home ought read reread days ahead reminds us adhering principle without respect current context lasting consequences pleasing destructive reminds us consequences last well beyond current election survive even subsequent electoral victories people dedicated reversal consequences reminds us statesmanship hard course policy political victory inherently uncertain fraught peril nevertheless feel complete ignores context 1964 election fought therefore understates importance 1964 defeat 1980 victory harsh describing reagans legacy temporary provisional finally importantly lends misinterpretation potential implications nature aspirations american conservatism goldwater candidacy understood context times 1932 republican party lost five consecutive presidential elections one longest losing streaks american political history returned presidential power back national hero dwight eisenhower explicitly ran modern republican accepted legitimacy permanence new deal eisenhowers modern republicanism american version path british tories accepting existence legitimacy welfare state arguing wiser heads moderately conservative party could trusted prudent administration expansion modern american conservatism explicitly founded opposition idea buckley goldwater associates believed approach merely managed decline west shortterm electoral victory would mask longterm national civilizational decline establishing counternarrative based freedom taking intellectual narrative back left institutionalizing narrative political vehiclethe republican partycould america west saved 1964 nomination battle struggle view would prevail goldwater failed modern conservative movement would probably splintered component parts american tory wing party become unchallenged dominance even tory wing reasserted goldwater defeat regained control national party persons richard nixon gerald ford true carter lost 1980 election reagan hard see reagan freedomfocused american conservative winning political cohesion obtained 1964 defeat even reagans path nomination easy modern tory republican establishment fought tenaciously prevent ascendancy establishment split among many candidates former president ford run clear reagan would nomination conservative republicanism much politically successful modern tory republicanism 1980 2008 republican party never fell160below16044 senate seats 1958 1980 never received 44 seats 1980 2008 gop ran senate 16 ½ years 1958 1980 never controlled senate 1994 2008 gop ran house twelve years never fell 200 seats 1958 1980 modern tory republicans never ran house never 192 seats 19942006 period longest time gop held continued congressional dominance representation since 1918 1932 period provide merely ephemeral gains despite obama victory soviet union would ford bushled nation achieved victory cold war would engaged sustained military buildup rhetorical confrontation sped communist behemoth ashcan history performance power mid1970s suggests even obama ascendancy promise unravel reagans domestic victories took power 1981 top marginal tax rate 70 obama proposes raise shade 40 reagan took power unions represented 20 american workers today 10 even card check reverse quickly still make path forward easier republican strength low prospects dim conservatives think getting hole must start acknowledging history teaches left held political intellectual initiative developed world least century parties right held power largely taking growth centralization economic power state table win elections one three grounds nationalism faith fear nationalist parties like british tories french conservatives focus empire national pride faithbased parties like german italian christian democrats argue welfare statism christian duty focus instead preserving traditional family community parties use fear radical left openly attacks private property family drive center toward american freedombased conservatism electorally successful effort offer different path american conservatism includes elements nationalism faith certainly benefited fear american liberalism became secular redistributionist gained power distinctive element counternarrative based human freedom way interpret events offer policy guidance counternarrative provides centerright party ability set terms domestic debate rather simply decide much centerleft agenda passed forms prospect success narrative recently four years ago accounts much lefts anger provoked much recent political activity freedombased conservatism added advantage tune national rhetoric polls show americans use words freedom liberty asked means american transformational political leaders jefferson reagan sought define agenda terms enhancing individual freedom rather expanding national greatness sectarian primacy questions american conservatism faces today derive one basic question political movement party founded dedicated long endure single question leads three subsidiary ones possible devise freedombased political agenda responds todays challenges context agenda advanced within party whose political base social conservatives sympathetic freedom use rhetoric calls individual exercise freedom question agenda either intellectually untenable politically impossible principlenationalism faith mixture twowill replace freedom core american conservatism davids piece implicitly raises clearly answer questions analysis 1964 defeat give rise idea american conservatism ought like british european conservatism focused preventing predations left defining debate writings as160 comeback suggests believe possibility freedombased agenda restore conservative dominance intellectually politically distinction crucial difference conservatism must remake goldwaterite founding longer offer guidance republicans doomed wander political wilderness least decade remaking party takes time taken british tories 12 years remake crushing 1997 defeat current base democratic party socially liberal collegeeducated people started efforts gain control 1950s battle unions bigcity bosses even rely political skills one individual must uneasily coexist union advocates moderates remain suspicious agenda suspect160comeback160is representative davids views like intends reform rather remake american conservatism case task like reagans build came adapt principles current circumstances full complete sympathetic understanding 1964 crucial endeavor henry olsen senior fellow ethics public policy center | 820 |
<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>“Believing Without Belonging: Just How Secular Is Europe?”</p>
<p>Key West, Florida</p>
<p>Speaker:</p>
<p>Dr. Grace Davie, Chair, Sociology of Religion; Director of the Centre for European Studies, University of Exeter</p>
<p>Moderator:</p>
<p>Michael Cromartie, Vice President, Ethics &amp; Public Policy Center; Senior Advisor, Pew Forum on Religion &amp; Public Life</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Michael Cromartie</p>
<p>MICHAEL CROMARTIE: When we asked Professor Peter Berger who was the best person to discuss how Europeans view American religion, he recommended our speaker, Professor Grace Davie, who luckily is in this country for six months. She’s with the Department of Sociology and Philosophy at the University of Exeter. She is one of the leading sociologists of religion in Europe, and she very graciously agreed to be with us. We’re delighted to have her in the country and even more so in Key West. Professor Davie, thank you so much for coming.</p>
<p>DR. GRACE DAVIE: I’m delighted to be here. I want to make a couple of preliminary remarks before I start. I have two papers that I use to introduce religion in Europe, one that deals with the majority churches and one that deals primarily with minorities. I think my brief was to do the majority churches this afternoon. I am, however, going to give you a trailer for the other one so that if you want to pick my brain on minorities later in the afternoon, that’s fine.</p>
<p>The trailer is essentially a comparison between Britain and France and argues that France is without a doubt a more democratic society than Britain. But Britain, in my view, is a more tolerant society than France. So the underlying question becomes: Is democracy a vector of tolerance? I would be very interested to know how you consider America in those terms.</p>
<p>Dr. Grace Davie</p>
<p>My remarks are also premised on the fact that you only really know your own society when you leave it. How America looks to a European is what I’ve been learning about this morning. I learn more about Europe the more I come away from it. One of the reasons I’m here, in fact, is to work with Peter Berger on a book that looks at the secularity of Europe through the prism of a comparison with America.</p>
<p>The last preliminary is to put a geographical limit on what I’m going to talk about because Europe is large and diverse. I’m going to talk primarily about the present definition of the European Union, not because I’m particularly wedded to the European Union as such. But the point I want to draw to your attention is that post-May 2004 the European Union is coterminous with Western Christianity, with the exception of Greece and Cyprus. That, in my view, is not a coincidence. What I’m talking about, then, is Europe of the Western Christian tradition. I’m not, for the moment, referring to the Orthodox world and the issues that raises, but by all means raise them when we get to questions.</p>
<p>The way that I want to do this — if you’ll forgive me for being a little egocentric — is to look at the books I’ve published on religion in Britain and modern Europe and show you not only how the situation itself has evolved, but also how my thinking about it has changed. Neither the situation nor the sociological interpretation of it is static. In short, we’re hitting a moving target.</p>
<p>Where we start is nearly 12 years ago, when the book called Religion in Britain since 1945 was published — an unremarkable title. But the subtitle contained this phrase, “Believing Without Belonging,” which retrospectively, was an inspirational moment for me, because it is this phrase that everybody remembers and can associate with my work.</p>
<p>The second marker is 2000, when I published Religion in Modern Europe. The crucial point here is that Britain, in terms of its patterns and structure of religious life, is essentially a European society. It is, of course, a pivot between Europe and America, and denominationally it looks west. But in terms of pattern, structure and state-church, and the legacies of a state-church, it is firmly European. The subtitle “A Memory Mutates” was chosen because the book understood religion as a form of collective memory and then asked questions about how that memory is or is not passed on. Within the book, however, is a key idea, which, retrospectively, is I think its most important contribution, and that is the notion of vicarious religion. Vicarious religion is easy to grasp for Europeans, but sometimes problematic for Americans.</p>
<p>Then just two years later, I turned the camera around the other way and looked at Europe from the outside. In the book is called Europe: The Exceptional Case, I argue that the patterns of religion in Europe are not a global prototype. They are, in fact, an exceptional case. European self-understanding is premised on the idea that modernization implies secularization. Europeans think that what Europe does today, everyone else will do tomorrow; they don’t find it easy to grasp that the European case is, perhaps, sui generic. So it’s the perspective of Europe from the outside that completes the picture — asking in particular if the mutations that are happening in Europe (the change from a culture of obligation to consumption in terms of religious life) are turning Europe toward America or whether this is a mutation that is genuinely European but indicative of different ways of doing things.</p>
<p>What the concept of “believing without belonging” effectively says is that there’s a disjunction between the hard indicators of religious life in Europe and the softer ones. In some ways I think that the phrase “believing without belonging” is a little misleading, because it isn’t that belonging is hard and belief is soft. Both of them can be hard and soft. For example, if you ask European populations — and here I’m generalizing — do you believe in God, and you’re not terribly specific about the God in question, you’ll get about 70 percent saying yes, depending where you are. If you say, do you believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God, you’ll get a much lower number. In other words, if you turn your question into a creedal statement, the percentages go down. The looser your definition of belief, the higher the percentage of believers.</p>
<p>But exactly the same is true in terms of membership or belonging. Those who attend church regularly each week are a falling percentage, probably around 10 percent in Britain. It would be higher or lower in different parts of Europe. But if you move to a much looser notion of membership — for example, and I’ve never seen this in a poll, but it would be a very interesting question — where do you expect your funeral to be held or who do you expect to conduct your funeral, not many would “contract out.” And that’s one of your keys. The historic churches are public utilities, and you expect public utilities to be there when you need them.</p>
<p>This is why the market language of American religion goes so badly wrong in Europe. Europeans don’t work in market mode. Many of my American colleagues, for example, do work on “switching,” which is a market thing to do. You change your brand if you don’t like it, including your brand of religion, but Europeans tend not to do this. Some of them, the active ones, do, but the default position in Europe is to be a passive member of the historic churches, to activate that membership only when you need it, most often at the time of a death, your own or someone else’s. And there is deep offense, of course, if that service is either denied or thought to be inadequate.</p>
<p>I think, in fact, that you have two economies of religion in Europe: the first one I would call an economy of birth, which is turning more toward a market; and the second an economy of death, which is the public utility. So if you were to compare Britain, Europe and America, it isn’t the case that all Americans are religious and no Europeans are. Europeans are differently religious from Americans. And because European forms of religion don’t look like their American equivalents, Americans very often don’t see them. Let’s try to do better this afternoon.</p>
<p>Just two or three remarks on believing without belonging, before I move on, because I really don’t want to center on this too much. It is vital to remember that the disjunction of active and inactive, of dropping in or regular commitment, is as common in secular life as it is in religious life. If you look at political parties, trade unions, attendance at football matches, cinema-going, all the graphs go in the same direction. Interestingly, if you look at football and cinema, you find J-curves; they drop very sharply in the postwar period and they turn up from the late ‘80s, and ‘90s into the 21st century. I don’t see why that is not possible for religion, but it hasn’t happened yet.</p>
<p>But the point I want you to grasp is that graphs that go down don’t always go on going down; they can turn. If you look at the statistics for cinema-going and first division football matches in the post-war period, for example, no one would have thought they would turn up, but they did. Why did they turn? Through a lot of effort and careful marketing, not least by making the venues more comfortable. It can be done. But whether it will or won’t be done in the churches is a completely different question, to which we will return.</p>
<p>The second remark is more directed to religious leadership, and concerns the question of value judgments. One reason church leaders have alighted on believing without belonging is that implies, superficially at least, that it’s not quite so bad after all.</p>
<p>But the point I would like to make is that I don’t think a half-believing society is in fact any easier or more difficult for church leaders to work in than a strictly secular society, but it is a significantly different thing. You engage in a different way with a society that half believes from one that is hostile or secular. And most European societies are not, for the most part, overtly secular or hostile toward religion, with the partial exception of France. And I do think that France is an exceptional case.</p>
<p>Predicting the future is interesting. And here I will refer you to the European Values Study, the prototype for the World Values Survey. The European Values Study has now been done three times: in 1981, 1990 and 1999-2000. Those dates slip a bit in different countries. The thing I want to draw your attention to is what came out in the 1999-2000 study, which was a pattern that nobody had predicted; it is, moreover, a very interesting finding to reflect on.</p>
<p>In 1999-2000 two indicators started to rise among younger people. One was belief in a soul and the other was belief in a “God in me.” In other words, a belief in an afterlife, but also in the notion of a personal God, my God, as opposed to a transcendent God — the notion of immanence. The rise occurred right across Europe, but is most marked in those parts of Europe where the institutional churches are at their weakest. In other words, it happens in the UK, the Netherlands, Scandinavia and France. Spain is on the cusp. It doesn’t happen in Poland, Ireland or Italy, where the church is still strong and seen as a disciplinary force and is therefore rejected by young people.</p>
<p>But where the church is no longer able to discipline belief or behavior, which is the case across most of the continent, young people do not, it seems, turn to secular rationalism; they begin to experiment. Now, whether this will be of significance in a decade or whether it will be something that grows, is too soon to say. All I will say now is that nobody predicted the shift in the mid-1990s. Something is happening; something that I need to think about as I prepare a new edition of this book for the 21st century. But so much for believing without belonging.</p>
<p>In my view, vicarious religion is a more accurate reflection of what is happening in Europe. Believing without belonging pulls apart belief and belonging. Vicarious religion draws them back together. The core of vicarious lies in the word vicar. That’s the root, and it means doing something on behalf of someone else. Hence my definition: By vicarious, I mean the notion of religion performed by an active minority — that’s the belongers — but on behalf of a much larger number — that’s the wider population, who implicitly, not only understand but quite clearly approve of what the minority is doing. In other words, there is a relationship between the nominal member and the active member.</p>
<p>I’ve given this kind of paper all over Europe, and the interesting thing is all Europeans understand the notion of vicarious very quickly because they can feel it, and they’ll start giving you examples. You get Croatian examples, Italian examples, Spanish examples; they just come back to you. In America it can be a little more difficult to convey the meaning of the word. .</p>
<p>Let me give you some examples of vicarious religion. First churches and church leaders perform rituals on behalf of others. At the time of a birth or a marriage; a divorce even, though that’s a little problematic because of the churches’ teaching about marriage; but above all, at the time of a death. And in these rituals you can see interesting changes in Europe.</p>
<p>In some parts of Europe, for example, baptism is becoming increasingly the preserve of the active minority, a shift which is closely related to changes in the theologies of baptism, about which, at one level, I am very sympathetic. But if you have lived in a society that for several hundred years has coerced its population into baptism with threats that if you do not have this child baptized, something terrible will happen (like burial in unconsecrated ground), and then suddenly you say that you can only have your child baptized if you come to church so many times, it seems to me that you are projecting the confusions of the church onto a population, which is a very unfair thing to do. In short, it is the church that’s moved, not the population.</p>
<p>In many parts of Europe there is significant change with respect to baptism, but not in the Lutheran countries of Scandinavia, which are often seen as some of the most secular in the world. It is still the case that practically every Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish child is baptized. You need to be careful about generalizations.</p>
<p>Marriage is also changing, but it is important to remember the institution itself is changing, as well as the church’s role in it. Lots of young people now live together before they get married. When they do get married, whether it’s a secular or religious ceremony, they often say, “We want to make our relationship public,” and a significant number involve a religious institution at that moment.</p>
<p>I will develop the question of death in more detail because it is here that you really see that the churches are still very crucial in the lives of Europeans. Think, for example, of President Mitterrand. If anybody in Europe should have had a secular funeral, it was President Mitterrand. He was agnostic; he was the leader of a historically anti-clerical socialist party. His lifestyle couldn’t really be considered Catholic in any conventional sense. There are, moreover, precedents for secular funerals in France — Victor Hugo had one — and yet Mitterrand didn’t. My colleague, Danièle Hervieu-Léger, who has written extensively on this episode, tells us that in his will, Mitterand left a message indicating that “a mass was possible.” (“une messe est possible”). Now what did that mean? Did it mean possible but not necessary? Or did it mean please?</p>
<p>But then you know what happened. There were two masses held simultaneously: one in Notre Dame, which was the official mass attended by Helmut Kohl with tears running down his cheeks, and at exactly the same time a private mass for the family in Jarnac in southwest France.</p>
<p>Let’s go back to vicarious religion. Church leaders and churchgoers not only perform ritual on behalf of others, they also believe on behalf of others. Here I want to draw your attention to the criticism that you will find — in Britain, for example — if a bishop, a senior representative of the church, doubts in public. He is perfectly entitled to doubt in private. The trouble arises when bishops move from the academic arena into the episcopal role because they don’t always realize what they’ve done.</p>
<p>For example, the kind of discussion that could be had around this table or in a seminar room, which might be nothing remarkable, could cause an uproar if developed in front of a microphone and then popularized by the press. The most notorious example is a former Bishop of Durham, David Jenkins, whose remarks were seriously misquoted in the press. But the point I want you to grasp is that a bishop who doubts is not doing his job, which is to “believe,” and it’s surprising how many in the population still think that, even if they don’t believe themselves. That’s the point I want you to get, not the theologies as such; it’s the fact that these are scrutinized by the wider public, not least by the tabloid press.</p>
<p>The behavior of religious professionals provokes similar reactions, both at the national and the local level. This is why it is very demanding to be a vicarage or a minister’s family. Not only are you supposed to behave properly, but so also are your teenage children. The tabloid press is very quick to notice misdemeanor among religious professionals and their families. Probably, it is much the same in the U.S.</p>
<p>Now, I know that there’s an element of hypocrisy in this, and everybody loves a hypocrite — somebody who says one thing but does something different. We all want to point that out. That’s human nature. But I think there is something more profound beneath this. In Britain, at least, but also in Scandinavia, these reactions are closely linked to the projections we place on the royal family, whose roles are all the more ambiguous when the monarch is also the head of the church. We love royal weddings, but we feel somewhat ambivalent about royal divorces. We are sorry when they happen because this is a model that we wish to have upheld. Even if most people no longer subscribe to the conventional model of family life, it’s a good thing if somebody does — on our behalf. That’s what I mean by vicarious.</p>
<p>My last example is provocative. It suggests that churches offer space for vicarious debate of unresolved issues in modern societies. This is obviously directed at the debate about homosexuality. I’m not convinced that the society in which I live is clear about homosexuality and the church is not. This is a confused church in a confused society. But I find it very hard to understand why the secular press should pay so much attention to senior appointments in the Anglican Church at home and abroad if this is simply a marginal institution that is no longer important. If it really is a marginal institution in our society, then who cares who does what? But we do seem to care. I’m sorry if I am now being critical of journalists, but there’s an important ambiguity here. More precisely, there is a lot of writing in the press that says the Church of England is now a marginal institution. Yet, on the front page of The Times, for weeks on end, I read stories about senior appointments in the church. It doesn’t stack up. The church cannot be marginal and repeatedly on the front page.</p>
<p>I don’t know whether you know my colleague Steve Bruce, who is at the University of Aberdeen and has a much stronger view of secularization than I do. With respect to vicarious religion, he will say to me: “But how do you know? Where’s your data?” This is where I invite not only you but also my students to be far more imaginative in terms of data because you can’t count vicarious religion. You can get a hint of it by looking at soft and hard statistics; you can feel a gap there. But what do I look at? Why am I convinced that this is what is happening?</p>
<p>One way of working is to look closely at a society when something has gone seriously wrong, or (occasionally) right — a disaster or a celebration. In these circumstances you see something much more reactive, much more spontaneous. And what do you see? America post-9/11 would be an excellent example, and a lot of work has been done on that. But the two examples I have in mind are, firstly, Sweden following the sinking of the Estonia ferry about 10 years ago with a huge loss of life; the other is Britain in the week following Princess Diana’s death.</p>
<p>So what happened when the Estonia sank in Sweden? The sinking of a ferry with 900 lives lost for the Swedes was an enormous shock — something almost unbelievable. And what did Swedish people do? They went straight to their churches. Nobody told them to, but the churches were open, partly because they are tax-funded churches. And religious professionals were there to meet them. They knew they had to be there. And the very next morning on the front of the main Swedish daily, there was an article by the archbishop putting the tragedy into a theological context and giving Swedish people a way of understanding what had happened.</p>
<p>The point I want you to grasp is that there was no instruction. All these assumptions were in place. The Swedish pastors knew they had to be there. The archbishop knew that he had to write the article. The churches were in place and the population came. But nothing would have happened unless there had been a disaster; all of it would have remained implicit and under the surface.</p>
<p>Hence an iceberg analogy: We do far too much work on the bit that sticks out, which is shrinking (that is beyond doubt); I’m interested in the bits under the water. The reaction to Princess Diana’s death was exactly the same. Whatever we did in that week after Diana died, it was neither secular nor rational.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>Nor was it Christian, or at least it was very imperfectly Christian. But how did we come to terms with this totally unexpected event? A whole series of things took place, some individual and improvised — flowers, playing cards, Queen of Hearts, Madonnas, prayers — all mixed up together. It was a very confused reaction. But everybody knew that was insufficient, that there had to be a funeral, and the funeral was in Westminster Abbey.</p>
<p>Here is the real point. Had the Dean of Westminster Abbey said, “I’m sorry, I don’t really think I can take this funeral” — bearing in mind that Diana was divorced; she had visited gurus; she was experimenting with different kinds of religion; she was a seeker; her mother had become a Catholic. And at the end of her life, Diana was keeping company with a prominent Muslim. Hence “I’m sorry, but I don’t think this funeral is for us,” that would have been unacceptable. He knew he had to do it. And what did he do? He did what has become in fact a very common model, which uses a Christian framework for the funeral service. It starts with the sentence, “I am the resurrection and the life,” and it ends with a committal. But inside it you have Elton John.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>Dr. Grace Davie</p>
<p>And you have a eulogy and not a homily. I call it a mixed-economy funeral. But you still frame it in the Christian liturgy. It’s perfectly possible to have a secular funeral in most parts of Europe, but it is still not very common.</p>
<p>Diana’s funeral became a prototype for all sorts of other funerals. Quite apart from that, it was a very interesting event because, by the end of the week we had almost forgotten that she’d been divorced at all. The mourners at the funeral were her ex-husband, her ex-father-in-law, her brother and her two sons. Now that’s unusual to say the least. Dodi al-Fayed, of course, was buried the day he died. One of the exercises I do with my students is a “what if” question: Had Dodi al-Fayed not died in the accident, then what would Diana’s funeral have been like? It is an interesting question. If he had been alive at the time of the funeral, what would have happened? It is not easy to answer the question except to say that the occasion would have been significantly different — you couldn’t have written him out of the script.</p>
<p>A further source of evidence for vicarious religion can be found in attitudes toward church buildings: European people get very cross if they are asked to pay to go into a building, because they think that the building belongs to them. They are equally cross if you close a building they haven’t been to for weeks or even years because, once again, they regard is as theirs. If you remove something, the implicit becomes explicit, but you don’t see it in “normal” life.</p>
<p>Church tax in Scandinavia and Germany offers a final example: Church tax is not negligible, and it’s paid by the whole population unless you contract out. The interesting thing in Scandinavia (it’s changing in Germany) is how few people contract out. You’d save money and it’s a very simple procedure to do this, but so far most people don’t do it. And I don’t think Swedish people would pay for something they fundamentally disapprove of. I conclude, therefore, that Swedish people do approve of their churches. They are certainly approved of culturally — church buildings are beautifully kept. Even in the north of Sweden for example, in a small village, the church is lovely and very well maintained. And quite apart from the question of buildings, the church maintains a whole musical tradition, which is an important part of Scandinavian life.</p>
<p>My last remark, concerns an essay title for my students. The title is this: “Is churchgoing deviant behavior in modern Britain?” It’s a profitable exercise because it requires the student to look at the patterns of religion life, which is what I want them to do. Religion, for example, is more deviant for men than women, as it is here. It is also more deviant for the young than for the old. It’s more deviant in England than Northern Ireland. It is more deviant in some parts of Scotland than other parts of Scotland. You can work over local and national patterns to put together a good body of material in order to see if your students have understood that.</p>
<p>But the best students will question the notion of deviance. If by deviance you mean flying in the face of the values of modern society, churchgoing is certainly not deviant, because in my view it upholds the values that many Europeans don’t very often live by but still would like to be there. That’s the point that I want to get across.</p>
<p>That is the current situation. What it will be like in 2050 is much harder to say, as I am much less sure that an implicit understanding of vicariousness is carried in younger generations in the way that it’s carried by older people. Quite apart from this, there is a gradual shift going on in Europe – away from something that I call a “culture of obligation,” a term with an obvious Catholic resonance. We go to church because it’s our duty, because we have to, because it’s a question of discipline. That culture of obligation is collapsing right across Europe — there is no doubt about that — with the partial exception of rural Poland and rural Ireland. It is giving way to something that I call a culture of consumption.</p>
<p>I don’t like the word consumption, but I can’t think of a better one. It really means choosing. It means we go to church if we want to. The shift from obligation to consumption is a continuing mutation. It’s not a question of one minute being in one culture and one minute in another. It’s a gradual shift to a model based on choice. There are good and bad aspects of both. It’s not good to bad or bad to good; it’s simply a question of change. Nobody wants to live in a society in which they are forced to go to church. This seems to me to be entirely wrong in a modern democracy. Europeans were coerced historically, sometimes forcibly, and much more recently by respectability. We went to church to see and be seen, and some politicians still do it. Not very regularly, but it happens before elections.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>I expect that also happens here.</p>
<p>You still see hangovers of this. People come to church in England when they want their children to get into church schools, because church schools are heavily oversubscribed and mostly they give preference to churchgoing families. So that’s the old pattern: People are coming, but for nonreligious reasons. Nowadays, people come to church for extraordinarily varied reasons, but they tend to be more rather than less religious — on the whole we would agree that this is a good thing.</p>
<p>The downside is a collapse of a common narrative. Modern students, for example, know very little about religion but are increasingly interested in the subject. Large numbers want to study the sociology of religion, but I cannot assume any knowledge. I learned this the hard way, giving a whole lecture on Pentecostalism in Latin America before I realized that most students didn’t know what Pentecost was. The knowledge they do have clearly comes from schools, not mostly from the family, though there usually one or two exceptions in a class of 40 or so.</p>
<p>Interestingly, students tend to know more about Islam than they do about Christianity, and this worries me a bit. I think the teaching of religion in schools is a very important thing, and given the circumstances teachers do very well. But I’m a little concerned about the curriculum: Are we getting the right things across to these children? Take a young person to an art gallery — to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, for example — and they’re at sea. They just cannot interpret the narrative because they don’t know it. So there is loss. I’m not saying it’s just a one-way story.</p>
<p>Another thing that I really want you to get hold of is that I don’t think a move from obligation to consumption is the same thing as privatization. In my view, seriously-made choices have public implications. The inherited model is eroding and probably privatizing, but something different is emerging. At the same time, you must keep in mind the arrival of Islam in Europe, which is making a huge difference in this debate, because Islam cannot be privatized. Privatized Islam is almost an oxymoron. The presence of Islam is reconfiguring the whole debate in a very interesting way — in some ways a slightly alarming way because Europeans are not responding well. But something is changing, without doubt. Muslims are putting religion back into the public agenda.</p>
<p>The last thing I want to do in this presentation is to point out the two most popular choices of modern Europeans. It is clear that some styles of churches are doing well and some are not — right across the denominations. This is where the statistical models are misleading because I suspect there is a fall and rise in the same denomination. It’s not a question of moving from one denomination to another. It is a shift within, as well as between, denominations. The statistical pattern doesn’t show us that.</p>
<p>There are two models that seem to do well. The first is not really the equivalent of the new Christian right, because that does not exist in Europe, but it concerns the evangelical churches. In every small town and city you will find a relatively successful evangelical church. What does this signify? It signifies the same thing as it does in America. It is a safe place, has clear boundaries, firm teaching, very effective networks, is great for kids and is family-oriented.</p>
<p>But if you look at it closely, certain types of evangelical churches are doing better than others. The ones that are doing well are the ones that have incorporated a charismatic element. Old-fashioned Biblicism is not so popular. It is the churches that include an experiential element in them. They’re much talked about. They’re much written about. Holy Trinity Brompton in London is the most well-known, but you’ll find a little Holy Trinity Brompton in most towns and cities in Britain.</p>
<p>The other example of success, which is perfectly clear in the evidence but is still much less discussed, is what I call the cathedral or city center church, which offers a completely different package. Here you have the seeker as opposed to the convert. You’ve got no boundaries. You don’t have to join. The really crucial thing for many people is that you don’t have to share “the peace.” You can just go there, you can sit behind your pillar, nobody bothers you, but while you’re there, you experience traditional liturgy — very predictable liturgy, which is clearly important (everybody knows what’s going to happen). You have world-class music, sublime architecture and very good preaching. It’s a very high standard. If you look at cathedrals, they are filling at every level. They are filling with regular members, less regular members, pilgrims and tourists.</p>
<p>This shift is very closely linked with the growth of pilgrimage all over Europe, and that’s true whether it’s medieval pilgrimage in Santiago de Compostela, the Marian shrines of Lourdes, Medjugorje, or more modern places of pilgrimage like Taize or Iona. They are all growing year after year after year, and it has something to do with the uncommitted seeker — the person who’s on the journey.</p>
<p>If you notice, both my models are mobile models. The first is the convert, someone who commits to the evangelical church; and the second is the pilgrim or the seeker. These two models have been developed, again by my French colleague (Danièle Hervieu-Léger). The thing that is very misleading, I think, is to divide Europe into people who practice and people who don’t, because most people are somewhere in the middle. It is the mobile concepts that are helping us to see what is coming out from the old model.</p>
<p>But the other thing that the two types of worship have in common is that they are both experiential. Indeed if you turn that question around the other way, the thing that is not doing well is the purely cerebral. Old-fashioned Biblicism, as well as liberal Protestantism, is in trouble at home, as it is here. The purely cognitive does not seem to appeal to today’s population. And although you have two completely different patterns, in fact they have a common element. It’s not so much what you learn when you get there; it’s the taking part that is important. It’s the fact that you’re lifted out of yourself that counts. And the big one-off occasions — candlelit carol service or evangelical conventions — are what do the trick, which of course is the same in politics. Very few people go regularly to political party meetings. What draws them are the one-off rainbow coalitions in, say, the countryside. This is not a political platform — a kind of theology, if you like — it is something that draws people together who are very different but who come together for a one-off occasion.</p>
<p>So I rest my case that if you really want to understand the patterns of religion in modern Europe, you need to look through quite sensitive glasses. And you will be badly misled if you isolate the religious factor from the changes going on in the rest of society, which I believe has happened too much in the sociology of religion. Once you begin to see that this is part of an economic and social change rather than simply indifference to religion, you begin to understand what is happening a little better.</p>
<p>JANE LITTLE, BBC: Last week the new black archbishop of York was enthroned — great ritual, historic occasion, but also very novel. And he issued a clarion call for consumers of religion — he used that phrase — to become once again Disciples of Christ. There was a lot of the Pope Benedict argument in there, this dictatorship of relativism, all of this amorphous stuff that is not Christian, and to return back to these roots, and to return Britain to being a Christian nation.</p>
<p>You talked about the J-curve, but I can’t see reversing the trend when they don’t understand this massive phenomenon you’ve just been describing at the end: these seekers who are out there. It’s very difficult reporting it because you can’t measure it, much as you were saying. But experiential religion is massive, and it’s partly about believing without belonging, but it’s also not what you believe, but how you believe it. And it’s about practice. So it’s really difficult to get a handle on this, but I don’t see how these religious leaders, who are trying to reverse this secular trend, as they see it, are going to do it when the age of deference is over and globalization is here. There is so much choice out there, and people are aware of it.</p>
<p>I was wondering, A) how you think they might address that? And, B) I think it’s hugely important to know what we mean by the term secular. Pope Benedict will use the term secular in a very different sense, as though it’s something very antagonistic to religion, but many others will just say it is not religious. So some people will describe Britain as not being a secular state because it has an established church. Others will say it’s secular because 7 percent of people go to church regularly. And then others will say, “Well, is it secular if 17 percent of young people say we’re spiritual but not religious?” So I am just wondering how you would define that.</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: Let’s start by taking apart secular, secularity, secularism and secularization. They all have different meanings. Secular is an adjective. It shouldn’t be loaded, but it often is. Secularity is a state of affairs. Secularism is an ideology, like rationalism or communism, and there’s very little of that in Britain, but much more in France. And secularization is a process.</p>
<p>Now, do the same exercise another way. America is a secular state; the First Amendment is very important to American self-understanding. There is no privileged church, no financial support for churches, but it is highly churchgoing society relatively speaking. How high we’ll leave for the moment. Britain, like Europe, has a history of a state church, which colors the present. In fact, most of Northern Europe still does have a state church. In other parts of Europe, there’s been an acrimonious rupture, the most acrimonious being the French one. So which is more secular: America, Britain or Europe? You have to define your terms. I would say Britain is a society with relatively low levels of churchgoing, high levels of implicit religiosity and a still-respected, though reduced, state church.</p>
<p>That’s where it gets tricky. I think there’s a very interesting study to be done on the advantages of a weak state church. Strong state churches are excluding and exclusive. That’s one reason why people came to America. Weak state churches can become the umbrella of faith, which is what has happened in Britain. The weak Anglican Church — nobody’s frightened of the Church of England because there’s nothing to be frightened of —</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>— now becomes the spokesperson for the “religious” minority in Britain, of whatever faith. You ask Jonathan Sacks or the Muslim leaders; on the whole they don’t want a secular state because they see what’s happened in France, where the secular state is much less tolerant than a weak state church.</p>
<p>It’s very subtle. That’s one of the things I’ve tried to convey to you this afternoon. It’s not as obvious as often appears because you’ve got to find the realities underneath the surface. And you can certainly find the person who says, “I want to go to the carol service on Christmas Eve.” You can find the person who is moved by a spiritual occasion and doesn’t see any antithesis between this and a presumably secular life.</p>
<p>One important thing to remember is that people are not consistent in their thinking. If you do any investigation into real life, in politics or religion, people believe incompatible things all the time. So in some ways I think this is a social scientific problem; our paradigms impose coherence when there is none. This is just how life is.</p>
<p>Jay Tolson</p>
<p>JAY TOLSON, U.S. News &amp; World Report: I’ve observed a more vigorous vicarious religiosity. And I quote one example: I interviewed Cardinal Martino, the head of the Pontifical Council for Justice, last year on the issue of tolerance of Muslims, among other things. And he was very straightforward and critical of most European countries saying that they wanted the Turks and North Africans to come and work in the factories but that they wanted them to check their religion at the borders, and now they’re very upset to see that these Muslims want to practice their religion.</p>
<p>It seemed clear to me, without his saying so, that he felt almost an ambivalence about the vitality of resurgent religiosity among Muslims in Europe. He thought Christianity, obviously, was going in the opposite direction and saw this as a challenge in a way. I think he saw it as an interesting moment and that he thought there should be tolerance of it, but he was clearly hoping that there would be a reaction among cultural Christians to becoming more active Christians. The other response, of course, is the one that you mentioned, which is basically to press for a more aggressive secularism.</p>
<p>Even in Britain, as in the recent controversy over Muslim faith schools, the degree of hostile reaction among the liberal elites in England to state-supported Muslim faith schools when there are so many religious schools of other faiths supported by the state is another example. There was all of a sudden this great anxiety about state support for faith schools. The Islamic challenge, it seems to me, is one of the most interesting spurs to this whole thing about vicarious religion. But I wonder whether it will also bring out a more aggressive secularism.</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: To me, the presence of Islam in Europe is not simply another religious choice; it’s a catalyst of change. And this includes both the Muslim minorities that are now settled in Europe as well as the Turkish accession. Religion is reemerging into public life in a way that is unfamiliar. This is something that we are very ill-equipped to deal with. So something is changing, and very dramatically.</p>
<p>It’s still quite early to see how it will work out. One or two bits of background are important: In France, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands we’re now in our third generation of Islam, and all the notions that Muslim populations would gradually assimilate and become much more like the host population are rapidly coming apart. That’s clearly not happening. Some of the most interesting studies are done, for example, on women in the third generation, who are now of university age. One of the things they are trying to do is to work out what it means to be a Muslim woman freed from the Pakistani patriarchal culture that came with her grandparents. The ones I meet, for example, in the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies in Exeter are struggling with this question.</p>
<p>MR. TOLSON: I’d think they would be more pushed back into that patriarchal —</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: I think it would depend on whether you are freed up to go to university. The ones who are really caught in their culture wouldn’t even get to university in the first place.</p>
<p>MR. TOLSON: Sure. No, I’m just saying that is a very unrepresentative sample of what’s really going on in these families.</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: Changing ideas come from the elite or intellectual segment of a society: this is maybe where change will come. The young Turkish women I see in a Hartford Seminary (in Connecticut) are struggling with exactly the same issues. The point I want to make is that the notion that they’re going to become more like the host population is collapsing. That’s not happening.</p>
<p>In the Nordic countries, Ireland and Southern Europe, this is a much more recent phenomenon. It has occurred only in the last decade. The interesting thing in Greece, Italy and Spain is that traditionally, countries of emigration have turned very suddenly into countries of immigration. Dublin, for example, is now a city of immigration. And that’s almost unimaginable. It’s very, very rapid change. The drivers in the 1960s and ‘70s were economic. We were looking for populations to do jobs we didn’t want to do. The drivers in the ‘90s are demographic. Europe does not have sufficient working people to pay our pensions. The Turkish issue is fascinating in this context. Is Turkey seen as a source of young, relatively well-trained labor or as a threat? It all depends on who you are. You can see this as a huge potential of labor for Europe, but it’s also seen as a threat to some Europeans.</p>
<p>In terms of public and private, probably the best example I can give you is the role Muslims played in promoting a question about religion in the British census in 2001. Britain introduced a question about ethnic origins in 1991, which was moderately controversial, and then in 2001, we introduced a question on religion, which was very controversial. The secular liberal elite felt this was inappropriate in a multicultural society. But this was a difficult position to hold because the prime movers in the debate were Muslims.</p>
<p>In any kind of statistical analysis on either nationality or ethnic origin, Muslims were almost invisible because they were so dispersed. They wanted a clear index of how many Muslims there were in Britain. All sorts of things happened because the Muslims were driving the debate. Christians thought, “what a good idea,” and joined in (well, some Christians). The discomfited were those who had to write the question, the civil servants who worked for the Census Bureau, because they had little idea what to do. The result was a wonderful British compromise: it was a voluntary question, and it was different in Scotland than in Wales and in Ireland. In many respect it’s a mess.</p>
<p>But it’s a very interesting mess because we know now that we have 1.5 million Muslims, which is about what I would have expected. No real surprises there, but more interestingly, over 70 percent of British people claimed to be Christian. What were they saying? Were they saying they were not secular or were they saying they were not Muslims? I don’t know. I suspect they were not all saying the same thing, but we have not yet done a qualitative study on a sample of people who said “Yes — Christian” to that question, in order to ask, what did you mean? And is this an index of religious commitment or religious identification, or is it really something else? We still are not clear.</p>
<p>I think the nominal Christian is somewhat threatened by Islam, though not so likely to mind about different theologies. The seriously committed Christian is in a different bind, because on the one hand he or she respects Islam and thinks, “If they can do it, we can do it,” but on the other hand, it is this kind of Christian who feels a stronger obligation to evangelize and make a claim for a one true God.</p>
<p>So I think there’s a considerable ambiguity there, but clearly the serious believer reacts in a different way from the nominal believer, and the secular civil servant had an evident problem when Muslims asked for a question on religion. It’s a good example of British compromise, and the results are very interesting. It’s a little incident, but it tells you quite a lot.</p>
<p>Clare Duffy</p>
<p>CLARE DUFFY, “NBC NIGHTLY NEWS WITH BRIAN WILLIAMS”: I was just wondering if the movement on the curve can be engineered from without. I’m thinking particularly about Pope Benedict XVI saying that one of his priorities was the re-evangelization of Europe. Can that be done? Can it be forced when at the same time you’re concerned about a dictatorship of relativism and building in, at least in the case of the Catholic Church, a smaller, more muscular faith? And if you’re kind of wishy-washy, seekers, whatever, don’t let the door hit you on the way out; they’re really not that interested. But at the same time, re-evangelization of Europe is a priority and filling those cathedral churches with something other than tourists is a priority.</p>
<p>So is it possible to force movement on that curve that you describe or does it just have to be more organic?</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: I don’t think anybody wants to force movement on any curve. I certainly wouldn’t. What I want to draw to your attention is that, at the moment, the collapse in obligation is a stronger force than any rise in consumption. Again, I don’t like that word, and I don’t think it means consumer. I think of seriously made choices. At the moment, the going down is more than the going up. What I can’t discern is when the going down stops.</p>
<p>But what I do see is within denominations or within traditions certain kinds of churches can make a visit on a Sunday worth somebody’s while. If you can do that, people will still come. That’s the point. And the two examples I gave you were the evangelical option and the cathedral option. You could find others. Some churches in London do it through art or creativity, and some, but not very many, do it through commitment to developing world issues.</p>
<p>They won’t just come because they ought to. That’s the thing that’s gone and collapsed, but different kinds of churches in different ways can still attract. I mean, far more people go to church on a Sunday than go to football. And look at the changes in football: Manchester United gets huge crowds, and so do Chelsea and Liverpool. . .</p>
<p>MR. CROMARTIE: You mean soccer.</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: Soccer, well that is football.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>I mean soccer. But look at the small clubs like Exeter City where I live. Now, you’re hardly knocked over in the rush of people going to watch Exeter City, which has therefore all the financial troubles of the average parish. No people, no money. The little clubs are feeling it all over the country. The big clubs are changing because they’re professional, and it’s even clearer to see in rugby, which has professionalized much more recently.</p>
<p>Old-fashioned rugby clubs used to look like parishes. You had first, second, third, fourth teams; the children; the teenagers and people training there every week. As soon as you become professional, you put your money in your first team and all the other parts drop out. The point is that the shifts are not only occurring in religion; the movement is across the whole voluntary sector, and that’s why you need to embed the understanding of religion in a much broader analysis of economic and social change.</p>
<p>Kathleen Parker</p>
<p>KATHLEEN PARKER, Tribune Media Services: My question is just to you as an observer and as a visitor to this country. You were saying earlier that clearly the Muslims were not being assimilated into the European culture. How do you see that process here? And do you think the U.S. is doing a better job, and if so, why or why not?</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: I think I probably misled you. Muslims are not becoming like Europeans in terms of their religious habits, but I don’t want to imply that there is no place for Muslims in Europe.</p>
<p>Here I think there is very interesting comparative work to be done on different European societies and which models work and which models don’t work. The big tension is between the communitarian model of Britain, the multicultural model, and the individual assimilationist model of France, where to have a separate group identity is very problematic. This is why you can’t count the number of Muslims in France, because that would reify the group and reify the notion of Muslim.</p>
<p>I may be biased on this, but I do think Britain has done a better job. It’s very interesting to look back to the summer at what has happened from July until now. After the London bombings, which were horrific, local Muslim leaders were immediately sought both to calm the population and identify the bombers. The British government and church officials turned to their Muslim colleagues and said, “Help us. We’ve got to work together on this.”</p>
<p>In France, the Muslim leader who says, “Can we do anything?” is often met by a response along the lines of “Public order is the responsibility of the secular state, and we deal with it, not you.” It goes back even further than that in colonial policy. Britain ruled through local elites and France ruled directly, so it’s a very deep-seated difference. And which one works and which one doesn’t work is largely a matter of opinion. Personally, I think the British model does work better. And if you speak to Muslims in Britain, they don’t want a secular state.</p>
<p>I’m not really sure that I could judge the American case. I think it’s different again. If the American Muslims are going to play a role in America, they have to learn the American rules, which is to become a denomination. If you want to purchase property or organize in America, you have to do it the American way, and I’m not quite sure what the impact of that is on Islamic communities in America. What I don’t think you can do is to say that the French or whoever does it better than us, so we’ll do it their way. You have to acknowledge your own history, acknowledge your own past and find your own solution. What you can’t do is “borrow” a solution.</p>
<p>I would say that on many issues. For example, evangelicals in England often want to borrow American solutions and to say if we deregulated — i.e. if we disestablished the church — our religious activity would rise to American levels. I don’t think it would. It’s like saying Japanese children do much better at math than European children or British children, and Japanese children are taught in classes of 70. So if European children were taught in classes of 70, they would do better in math. You can see that would be a fallacious argument. It’s like saying if we took a little bit of your system and tried to make it work in ours, we’d have your solution. It doesn’t work like that.</p>
<p>DELIA RIOS, Newhouse News Service: You had said “they” know more about Islam than Christianity. Did you mean young people? The follow-up to that is, whichever group of people you’re referring to, how is it that they know more about Islam than Christianity?</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: The point is that the major source of knowledge for young people about religion is school. And I think religious education (RE) teachers do an excellent job, but they cannot put back a lost narrative. That is a cultural not an educational thing. I suspect that they are concentrating on Islam because Islam is so topical. Sometimes you get a student who is from a committed Christian family, and he or she will have a good knowledge of Christianity. Occasionally, I teach students from the theology department, and they have a better knowledge of Christianity.</p>
<p>What you cannot assume is that most students will have picked up the narrative from their families and their churchgoing because that does not happen. So what they learn in class depends a lot on what the teacher has chosen to teach them. As I said, I suspect that there has been a lot of work on Islam because Islam is obviously an important issue both in global politics and their own society.</p>
<p>But you will always find exceptions. For example, one of the most interesting things about modern Europe in terms of the debate about secularization is the current anxiety about the relatively few students who want to do science at A-level, which is our final school exam. Instead, large numbers are opting to do religious studies. Now, how do you read that? Do you read that as an interest in religion? It tends not to be in traditional Bible teaching. Students are more interested in ethics and the philosophy of religion.</p>
<p>Numbers applying to do theology in universities are going up; numbers applying to do physics and chemistry are going disastrously down. That doesn’t fit with the traditional reading of the secularization thesis, but what does it fit with? It’s not what people thought would happen. This is why when you talk about the shift, the J-curve; it seems that what you expect may not happen.</p>
<p>I may be wrong in my anticipation that it will rise, but the idea that it’s all going to stay the same and go in the way we thought it was going to go 15 years ago doesn’t seem likely to me. There are too many things changing. The choices of young people, in terms of the subjects they study at universities, are just not what people thought they were going to be and are causing big difficulties in universities, in terms of restructuring. My own university, for example, has closed its chemistry department.</p>
<p>CARL CANNON, National Journal: You mentioned an interesting historical fact. In Great Britain after World War II, attendance at soccer matches was down and the interest in sports was down, but that changed in 1966, 1965, and why did it change? Well, to stretch this metaphor, there was a great cathedral and it was wherever that great national team that won the World Cup played and the pubs where they played the games on TV. They had a star preacher, George Best, who Pele said was the greatest player he ever saw, but they had charismatic leadership.</p>
<p>It got me to thinking, who are those people in religion in Britain now? Is it Nicky Gumbel? Who are the Billy Grahams and the Rick Warrens in England? And will that model work there anyway — the evangelical model? That’s my question.</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: I can’t think of a Billy Graham and a Rick Warren. Nicky Gumbel has it to some extent, but it’s a much smaller constituency. That’s interesting.</p>
<p>In terms of football, the rise in attendance is much later than that, of course. You have to be very careful how you read it because the big clubs are doing very, very well, and the smaller clubs are not doing so well. The whole game of football has changed. It’s Europeanized. It’s a shifting pattern all over Europe. Particular cities have their football team as an emblem, as opposed to local clubs.</p>
<p>MR. CANNON: Tell me about evangelicals there. That’s really what I want to know about.</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: The nearest you get is Holy Trinity Brompton and Nicky Gumbel and the Alpha course. Nearly a million and a half people have done Alpha, but there’s is a lot of preaching to the converted. Many of these people were in church anyway, but I would maintain that if a million and a half people went through a secular equivalent, it would have achieved much more attention in the press.</p>
<p>If you look at the reaction to Alpha, some people think it’s too conservative, and some think it’s too liberal. So it’s probably about right. My guess is that it’s a win-win for the following reasons: It’s a course in basic Christianity in a society that has lost its knowledge of basic Christianity, and because of its emphasis on the Holy Spirit, it has a strong experiential factor. It’s that combination that I think is drawing people.</p>
<p>ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE, The Economist: I’d rather jumble the questions about American exceptionalism versus European exceptionalism. It strikes me that you’ve understated, as far as I can see anyway, the extent to which you have a very aggressively anti-religious, pro-secular culture in Europe and certainly in Britain. When Tony Blair was being asked about going to meet George Bush, according to newspaper reports, they got down on their knees and prayed. His spokesman Alistair Campbell immediately left, remarking that in Britain “We don’t do God.”</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: “We don’t do God.” Yes.</p>
<p>MR. WOOLDRIDGE: And I think that that’s something a lot of British people profoundly believe. The spirit of H.L. Mencken may not suddenly be alive that much in this country, but he’s certainly alive in Britain. If you pick up Private Eye, you have Tony Blair presented as the vicar of St. Albans, and George Bush is presented as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Morons.</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: Yes.</p>
<p>MR. WOOLDRIDGE: You don’t see that sort of really aggressively secular language in this country. I think one of the reasons why the British and the Europeans in general initially, even before Iraq and the rest of that stuff, took against George Bush is because he wears religion on his sleeve. Whether it’s the wearing on the sleeve or the being religious, I don’t know, but it’s certainly something that turned them against him more I think than the death penalty.</p>
<p>But I want to make two sort of related points. One is of religion as a nationalized industry in Europe and in Britain, and that strikes me as explaining a lot of what you were talking about, partly because it is connected with the nation-state. So when you get these great national events like the royal wedding or the funeral of Diana Spencer, it’s not just about religion or God. It’s about the nation; a lot of what is important about religion is your sense of national identity, which is why the Islamic thing is so important.</p>
<p>But the second thing about a nationalized industry, as we all know, is that nationalized industries are very, very badly run, so you deal with them as little as you have to. You have to deal with them at a funeral or maybe just at birth, but you don’t that often because it’s just not very good service that’s provided, so it’s sort of a residual service.</p>
<p>The other thing I wished to ask you about was the intelligentsia. It seems to me that in this country you have a very large and significant pro-religious intelligentsia. You have evangelicals; you have the opening of the evangelical mind. You have people like Mark Noll, who are really quite serious intellectuals. I didn’t see that very much in Britain.</p>
<p>And secondly, you have intellectuals who are approaching religion from the other end, either from a sort of Straussian position that is useful to us, so let’s latch on to it, or actually because they really believe. Again, that lack of a religious bloc of intellectuals in Europe or certainly in Britain strikes me as being a big difference in the two cultures.</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: I think you’re right, but not wholly right, if you see what I mean. One of my heroes in this unlikely scenario is Ian Hislop, the editor of Private Eye, who is a very good example of a low-key (cultural) Christian. I think you can do both. In fact, I think the script for Private Eye owes a great deal to his knowledge of the Church of England. That whole parish analogy requires knowledge. I simply read that evidence differently.</p>
<p>I also think Ian Hislop was extraordinarily brave in his remarks on the Rushdie controversy. He’s an iconoclast if ever there was one, but he has said publicly, “I will never mock another person’s faith because it is not a sensible thing to do.”</p>
<p>MR. WOOLDRIDGE: Apart from George Bush.</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: I think that’s hard to say, but go back and look at his record on Rushdie, which was extremely revealing to me, as to where he drew the line. I think there’s a considerable subtlety to what Hislop will and won’t do.</p>
<p>MR. WOOLDRIDGE: “Latter-day Morons” — is that subtle?</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: Mormons might be offended by that.</p>
<p>MR. WOOLDRIDGE: Yeah.</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: I think they were —</p>
<p>MR. WOOLDRIDGE: I think it’s just safe to mock evangelical Christians in Britain, but if you mock Muslims, they kill you.</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: Well, I would give more credit to Ian Hislop for reading that really very sensitively.</p>
<p>I’ve lived a great deal of my life working in social science, and for a good 25, 30 years I have heard that religion is really something else. Now, the thing that is happening in the modern world is we’ve finally got over that and realized that it is in fact religion. This is where the European paradigm has been pervasive and intrusive. It has given us very bad guides to religion in the global context because we assume that the European case is the norm. The paradigm of secularization comes out of the European past, and we have applied it elsewhere. And the way we’ve got round the problem that some things don’t very well into the paradigm is by saying that it isn’t really religion. It’s really nationalism — it’s really identity or whatever.</p>
<p>MR. WOOLDRIDGE: But a nationalized church is doing something different from a church in a free market. It’s got two functions.</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: We have a history of a state church. We cannot get away from it. It has a good and bad aspect, and we will never shed it. That’s why the mentalities are so strong. It doesn’t necessarily take on all the attributes of a bad national industry. I rather reject that.</p>
<p>Naomi Schaefer Riley</p>
<p>NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY, The Wall Street Journal: Maybe this is the bias of being a journalist, but I’m unhappy with the attempt to describe what is or isn’t religion in the abstract. For me and for probably some other people in this room, what matters in determining whether someone is religious or not is how it affects the rest of their life.</p>
<p>So, if the determination of whether someone is religious is basically: will they go to someone’s funeral or will they have a church funeral themselves, and between marriage and death or birth and death, it has absolutely no effect in the way they act from a community perspective, from a political perspective or on their life when compared with their secular component, then — and this is sort of obnoxious — why do we care whether they’re religious in that sense or not?</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: I think there is a big difference between whether you work on a contracting-in or contracting-out model. You’re working on a contracting-in model. You sign up and it makes a difference. I think I’m implicitly working on a contracting-out model. In the European-inherited model, everybody was a member unless they said they were not. In the American model, you join. Now I see both patterns emerging. In fact, the joining pattern, I think, is becoming more and more significant in Europe. We’re losing the old model, but we haven’t lost it yet.</p>
<p>But I just want to return a minute to Adrian’s question about the elite. And related to it is a very important point, which is how the Enlightenment figures in all of this. Because in Europe, and particularly in its French versions, the Enlightenment is seen as a freedom from belief and this is what’s still playing in the French mind very clearly.</p>
<p>By the time the Enlightenment got to America, it had mutated into a freedom to believe, hence contracting in. You need to grasp that different configuration if you’re going to understand both models. Europe is a freedom-from-belief model and it’s the intellectuals who contract out and the masses that stay in. And in America it’s a freedom to believe: Everybody contracts in, including substantial numbers of intellectuals.</p>
<p>What I also think is happening — certainly in Europe and I think it’s also true in America — is that secular liberals cluster around the media and their voice is amplified. Whether the sound of the voice is representative of the size of the group is a question for empirical investigation. But I think the way in which you configure the Enlightenment is a very crucial thing in understanding the difference between Europe and America.</p>
<p>Do remember, in all sorts of ways, Europeans assume what Americans articulate. If you go to America as an academic, there is a welcome committee. You are taken here, you’re taken there, you’re given dinner parties, you’re given parties, you’re taken on excursions. It’s a wonderful experience. You are made so, so welcome.</p>
<p>The equivalent person comes to Europe and they say, “There’s your desk. We’re very pleased to see you. Now get on with it.” And that doesn’t mean to say you’re not welcome, but we don’t keep on saying so. It’s just a different way of behaving, and it figures in religion just like it does in everything else.</p>
<p>MS. RILEY: Americans think that religion is supposed to change their lives and be very involved in it, and Europeans assume it as part of their cultural baggage or not. Maybe you’d just elaborate a bit about this idea that Europeans’ churchgoing is not a deviation for them, because it upholds the values that they would like to be there, regardless of whether they go or not. And yet, in the argument and the rejection of the Christian roots in the European Constitution, we didn’t really see that upholding of those views or a desire to uphold those values. I wonder if you’d comment on that.</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: I’d say two things about the European Constitution. Go back 10 years and I don’t think you would have anticipated the debate at all. I think the fact that it occurred was significant, even though eventually it was a fudge — the term they finally chose was “spiritual” rather than Christian.</p>
<p>And, of course, we have rejected the constitution altogether, or some of us have, so it has become a very confused debate. But the thing you need to hold onto is the fact that it occurred at all. It’s one way in which Europe is reconfiguring itself, which is still not at all clear, and there are different voices in Europe. Old Europe is playing one way, and the new post-communist countries are playing another way. I still don’t think it is quite clear how it’s going to work out in the future. If we get a chance to work it out at all.</p>
<p>Then of course the Turkish issue becomes very complex indeed. If we are rejecting Turkey because Turkey is an Islamic nation, what are we? The question is driven back to what is Europe? Crucially important issues are lying underneath this discussion.</p>
<p>To go back to your first question, evangelical Christians in Britain or Europe get terribly frustrated by this. They don’t like it at all. They want to be like America. That’s for sure.</p>
<p>MS. RILEY: I was fascinated by what you were saying about the cathedrals, and people going to them because of the great music and the great architecture and being able to sit there without participating if they didn’t want to. I’ve talked to Jews my age in America about this, and some of them are trying to recapture in their synagogue life what they had when they were younger, when they went with their families and before they started thinking about whether all this was true and exactly what they believed. They really enjoy the tunes and the prayers, and they enjoy being in that communal environment. But I can’t imagine that it’s a sustainable phenomenon. I have trouble imagining that their children are going to go participate in some kind of institutionalized religious practice for the same reason. There seems to be a great element of nostalgia there, and I wonder if the same is true among these cathedral goers, and if it is, whether you see it as a sustainable movement?</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: Funnily enough, I don’t see it among cathedral goers. I see it rather in the average parish. You’ll still see it, for example, in a village church which is full at Christmas and that kind of thing. That is pure nostalgia, and I don’t think it is sustainable. When I was talking about the cathedral congregation, I’m more focused on a pattern of choice. People are definitely choosing this, and by choosing, sustaining it.</p>
<p>If they go to a cathedral service, people will experience both good liturgy and a good sermon. They will emerge instructed much more than they might in a smaller parish because the level of preaching is higher. Why do people do it? Why do people turn up for these services? They’re choosing to do it. I don’t think it is nostalgia. I think that something else is at stake, but I’m not absolutely clear what.</p>
<p>If you read the statistics of church life, cathedrals do well. It’s not huge and it’s not comparable to American numbers, but relatively speaking, they’re doing more than holding their own. In terms of tourist attractions, they’re one of the most popular attractions of all. There’s plenty for tourists to choose from in a European society, but the cathedrals draw huge numbers of visitors. There’s very interesting work to be done on that, and at the moment it’s a much understudied phenomenon.</p>
<p>DR. EDWARD J. LARSON, University of Georgia: I’m one of those tourists. I get to England at least once a year, and I always go to the local cathedral that has a boys’ choir, and I enjoy it. I find spirituality there. But is that any different from the rise in England of druidism now? I’m not trying to be baiting. There is a bigger interest in the traditional Celtic religions. Isn’t it just a general spirituality that everybody seeks, rather than a specific Christianity?</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: Not in cathedrals. But as soon as you lose the knowledge level, the whole thing becomes much more amorphous because you’re not necessarily aware that you’re mixing or matching. Druidism, as such, hits the press in terms of Stonehenge and the solstice and that kind of thing — very small numbers. Celtic Christianity more broadly, which is different, is popular. And it is, of course, experiential.</p>
<p>Can I just make one correction? I hope you don’t not go if it’s a girls’ choir in the cathedral.</p>
<p>DR. LARSON: I rarely have that option.</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: It’s becoming more and more common that the cathedrals have a girls’ choir as well as a boys’ choir, and there’s a heated debate about whether you really can hear the difference in the voices.</p>
<p>Marc Gunther</p>
<p>MARC GUNTHER, Fortune: What you’ve described in terms of vicarious religion sounds very familiar to me to something that anyone Jewish understands. The synagogues are flooded with people on the High Holidays who never show up any other time during the year. And my question is similar to the one Naomi asked: If that is religion, what impact does it have on peoples’ lives in any kind of day-to-day way? In other words, now that England is more secular, are people voting differently? Are they raising their children differently? Are their attitudes toward sexual preference different? Are they doing their jobs differently? What does a more secular society look like in respects outside of religion? Is there any content to the religion that you’ve described?</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: Just on your first question, I didn’t think I’d find the word vicarious in an analysis of American religion, but Will Herbert uses it about Jews in America.</p>
<p>MR. CROMARTIE: You mean in his book, Protestant, Catholic, Jew?</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: Yes, somebody found it for me and sent it to me. He used it in a slightly different sense because there’s no question of the state paying for religion, but there is the notion of a group doing religion on behalf of the wider community.</p>
<p>What does a more secular society look like? I’m going to answer that obliquely. The real difference between Europe and America is not so much in the existence of a state church, but in the existence of a state. Europe is different because the state does more. So the whole thing about welfare and state-based welfare is a different debate. It’s a common European assumption that the state should look after us. The state does this very imperfectly and is now struggling badly because the financial base of the welfare state is coming apart.</p>
<p>In terms of individual behavior, I would say nominal membership makes very little difference to behavior at all. But I would not draw from that conclusion that it’s meaningless. There you find the difference between Europe and America. I guess you’re familiar with Chris Smith’s work on adolescence? He says that mainstream adolescents have difficulty articulating their beliefs. I think we’re probably more like the mainstream. Does religion really make a difference to those children?</p>
<p>What I do think is significantly different is the presence of the evangelical constituency in America. Well, you tell me. Does it play out in culture? Does it play out in behavior? How does it play out? I can tell you that constituency doesn’t exist in Europe. But I don’t think Europe has an alternative secular ideology that motivates its behavior. The whole thing is just much more understated, and in Europe there are a lot of what Nancy Ammerman [of Boston University] calls “Golden Rule Christians,” [people who say that the most important aspect of being a Christian is caring for the needy.] I think Golden-Rule Christians exist in Europe. But in America they probably go to church, and in Europe they probably don’t.</p>
<p>MR. GUNTHER: I don’t know how long this situation that you describe has taken to evolve, but is it possible that these nominal or vicarious religious folks are living off the fumes or living off the legacy of their parents and grandparents, and they’re not going to leave enough legacy or fumes for their children and grandchildren to live on?</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: I think that is one of the most crucial questions. And if that were the only factor, I would say this is a very serious situation for the churches in Europe. If you were a secular person in Europe, you would say this is a very good thing. But, it is not the only factor. Think of the other things that are happening. I didn’t think in my professional life I would see a debate about religion in the Constitution of the European Union. I didn’t think I would see the arrival of Islam in such numbers. I didn’t think I would see Afro-Caribbean Christians coming in to evangelize in Europe. I didn’t think I would see Ghanaians coming in to evangelize in the Netherlands. I didn’t think I would see religion as a major factor in international relations. So your question would be entirely pertinent, and my answer would be that there would not be much of a future if all other things were equal. But I have never lived at a time when I’m more convinced that they are not.</p>
<p>John Tierney</p>
<p>JOHN TIERNEY, The New York Times: Adrian’s analysis of this as a nationalized industry resonated with me. It sounded as if this is something that doesn’t do a very good job, but it makes it hard for upstarts to start the way they do in America, where you’ve got all these churches coming along. I wonder if one possible alternative is how much is environmentalism there becoming sort of a religion? You’ve got these new groups that are starting up, and you’ve got this devout belief in it there so that the Kyoto Treaty is now probably more believed in than the Nicene Creed.</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: It’s not all that resonant. I think it’s possible to analyze environmentalism as if it were a religion. It comes in the category of secular religions. Nationalism can be analyzed as if it were a religion. So can feminism, so can a whole range of things, all these -isms. None of them address the existential question. When the chips are down, it’s not going to do what you need it to do. They can’t do a funeral for you. Well, you can have a “woodland” funeral, so in a way that’s not strictly true. But it doesn’t give you answers when you need them. It’s perfectly possible to see them as if they were a religion. All ideologies can be looked at in that way. But I simply don’t think that it works when the really big questions of life assert themselves. It’s clearly important for a considerable lobby, more important than it is in America, much more important. It’s a major player. But if you go back to the environmentalist groups that you can join — you can indeed join and pay with a credit card, but do you do anything?</p>
<p>DR. LEIGH ERIC SCHMIDT, Princeton University: But there are an awful lot of protests.</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: Protests are one-off — they’re like pilgrimages.</p>
<p>DR. SCHMIDT: I think for a lot of people it’s a way of life for them, isn’t it? I’ve heard the comparison that environmentalism has succeeded Christianity and Marxism as the great new millennialist socialist movement. And they’re all going to prelapserian conditions, trying to restore this sacred age of the past before there was sin.</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: It’s a minority issue. You could find it, but where is your evidence?</p>
<p>DR. SCHMIDT: Even in America where it’s not as intense as Europe, 90 percent of people call themselves environmentalists. This view of nature; it’s like Thoreau and transcendentalism again.</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: Where I would see the connection is with the younger generation that I talked about earlier who are seeing a “God in me” and the notion of a soul and this kind of thing. In particular, in Scandinavia you’ll find a lot of people for whom nature is the important thing. They’d much rather be on a mountain or on a beach than in church.</p>
<p>DR. SCHMIDT: That’s a daily sacrament they perform I think.</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: I don’t think we’re going to agree on that. I’d see it as a quasi or “as if” religion. I think we’ve had many quasi-religions over the years and this is the latest one.</p>
<p>Jason DeParle</p>
<p>JASON DePARLE, The New York Times: Is there any more to say about why religious conservatism hasn’t been a parallel force in British politics? Much of what you said addressed that indirectly, but can you talk about that more directly?</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: To turn it round the other way: Why is there a new religious right in America and not in Europe? It’s a very difficult question to answer. It lies in the way American society is built, which is quite different from European society. European society is a much older and more homogeneous society, though it is changing now. America has been largely built in the last 200 years. European society is horizontally patterned. The class system is very important, and religion is very much linked to that. When people begin to reject political authority, they reject religious authority at the same time, whereas America is built in slices. Each group comes with its religion historically, and religion sinks vertically and very much deeper into American society. The black churches are a very obvious example of that. But simply look at Chicago or look at an American city and the churches and the communities they represent. You have a completely different pattern, a different embedding of the religion into society.</p>
<p>David Martin is the best exponent of that. Go back to his general theory of secularization. I think it’s the way religion is embedded into society and the potential access to politics, which is very different in different societies, and has produced different outcomes. We do have conservative politics, but they don’t look anything like your conservative politics. One branch of conservatism can be found among traditionalists. Historically, it’s the closest to the Anglican Church, though that relationship is collapsing. The other branch of conservatism is a free-market right.</p>
<p>One of the things that bewilders Europeans is the dominance of moral issues in your political debate. I’ll give you a very good example. When I visited the University of North Carolina, a student said to me, “How can Sweden be a more religious society in the way that you are implying if the standards of morality are this or that?” And she meant sexual behavior. To which I replied, if you lost your wallet in Sweden, you’d be more likely to get it back than almost anywhere else in the world, and I think that’s a moral issue. She was just constructing the debate in a different way.</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: Obviously these things are relative. When I listened to the debate over Harriet Miers, for example, the moral issues were so strikingly central for a European listener. I just do not think that debate would have — well, of course it wouldn’t have happened because we don’t have a Supreme Court and we don’t have nominations and all the rest of it — but the debate itself was so strikingly different. In this respect, there is a very profound difference in the two societies. Adrian, do you think that?</p>
<p>MR. WOOLDRIDGE: The big reason is that the Supreme Court and the judicial branch in general have short-circuited a lot of debates that went on in Europe in the legislative branch or through referenda. They overreached in a sense and then created the religious right as a reaction against that. You wouldn’t have the debate about Roe v. Wade in this country if it had been decided through the legislative branch. It was because a lot of people felt disenfranchised by the process. It’s a power grab by the courts essentially, I think.</p>
<p>That’s what created a lot of the energy behind the religious right, so it’s a new development and a result of a certain overreach in the ‘60s. If it had gone down the democratic route, America would look a lot more like Europe does. These debates would have happened, they would have been played out and we would have a consensus in favor of abortion in this country, for example.</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: One of the most obvious differences again is that Americans use their courts in a very different way from Europeans. Here the debate concerns what goes on through the court, whereas we tend to go to court when the debate has failed.</p>
<p>DR. LARSON: I’m a first generation Swedish-American. I go back all the time, and I’ve taught all over Europe. Your view of what’s happening with Christianity in Europe resonates with me; that is, this combination of charismatic revival in some evangelical churches, plus this cathedral Christianity. But you were going back and forth about whether these were fumes of the parents and grandparents and would it die out, and I don’t think either of those phenomena is.</p>
<p>From my experience, the parents and grandparents were secularized as well. These aren’t the fumes coming down; this is a genuine spiritual phenomenon that is not time-limited, in the sense that the charismatic and the evangelical have no roots. As for the cathedral element, it’s the architecture, the artwork and the literature of the West that resonates and leads people to go into the cathedrals, a native spirituality that is pulling people back. It’s a Christian framework, not because their parents or grandparents were Christian, but because there is this living existing architecture, this living existing heritage. And so I don’t see it as a time-limited phenomenon at all. I can see it continuing.</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: I’m just wondering whether I’ve explained this badly or whether I’m not hearing you right. I started by explaining the vicarious model, which I think is gradually receding and shrinking. I still think it figures in a lot of issues, and I tried to give you examples of where it comes to the fore. Then, I moved from the notion of obligation, which was very dominant in the European past to this gradual shift into choosing and consumption. And the two choices were the evangelical church and the cathedral, and, of course, there are others. Now I don’t think they’re depending on the past and the old model, which is definitely shrinking.</p>
<p>Let me try another way. One of the very marked differences — in fact, it’s the crucial one between Europe and America — is that European religion was premised on territory. It was built on the parish system, which historically was civic as well as ecclesiastical, and they’re often coterminous. For centuries, that was the way European life was organized. For this reason religious life was profoundly dislocated by the Industrial Revolution because at that point large sections of the population moved to cities, which surrounded factories. So you get the growth of a Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, Birmingham, and a move away from an Exeter, Gloucester or Worcester.</p>
<p>And it’s at that moment that European religion is shaken to its core. And that’s why Europeans think that modernization, urbanization and secularization all go together. Couple that with the notion of the Enlightenment that sees religion as freedom from belief not freedom to believe, and the spiral goes downward. And you could argue that it’s still going downward. But I am beginning to think that there is some movement in a different direction.</p>
<p>In America, there was nothing before the Industrial Revolution. Chicago was built on land, not on lots of little villages that were there before for several hundred years. Each group coming to Chicago brought its own religion, so you then have an Industrial Revolution, rapid urbanization, a sense of nation-building and religious vitality — supported by a version of the Enlightenment that says freedom to believe and the spiral goes up. And so you have two very different stories.</p>
<p>In the social scientific paradigm until recently, the European story was the dominant story, and the notion that modernization implied secularization was pervasive in social science. It still is, up to a point, but challenged by America, challenged even more by the developing world. And then someone like Peter Berger goes through 180 degrees in his thinking, realizing that modernity does not imply secularization. And you have two models of modernity – one European and one American. The notion that one body of thinking can be applied to both is where the thing goes badly wrong.</p>
<p>E.J. DIONNE, The Washington Post: By the way, I think Adrian is onto something on Roe v. Wade and why there is a Christian right. I think it combines with the peculiarities of Southern culture in the United States, and those two things explain a lot about the difference between us and Europe. Europe is just a big blue state, because if you look at the similarities between the Kerry states and European attitudes, they are actually not substantial. But that’s not what I want to talk about.</p>
<p>Two questions: The first is, I wonder sometimes when we have this discussion if our notion of the past is correct. And I wanted to ask you to look back further than the last 50 years. You have two points you made about what you see as new phenomena. Yet all across Europe for hundreds of years, popular religion was experiential. And church attendance and participation, I presume, was quite low at other points in European history. So I wonder if this whole discussion (and not your discussion, but the general discussion) is informed by a view of a religious Golden Age that never existed as we now remember it, or misremember it.</p>
<p>The second question is about one of the peculiar things about this notion that secular Europe is full of Christian Democratic parties. There is this very strong Christian Democratic tradition. France used to have one, and obviously in Germany and Italy it’s weaker than it used to be. Is that tradition simply vestigial? Does that have any connection with what’s going on now or is that just something that according to your theory would just die out?</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: With regard to the first point when you were referring to Adrian’s comment, I don’t know which way we should put the question. Should we try to explain why there is a religious right in America or why there isn’t one in Europe?</p>
<p>The notion of the Golden Age is a crucial point in the secularization theory, and people have come to different conclusions. I would refer you to the sharp exchanges between Rodney Stark and Steve Bruce. Rodney Stark would say that there has always been the potential for a growth in religion. Europe really wasn’t that religious in the past, and if we stripped away all the props of the established church and all these people worked harder, then Europe, like America, would become more religiously active. Personally, I don’t think that would be the case — here I agree with Steve Bruce.</p>
<p>But where, of course, it has changed is in Latin America, where the market does seem to be opening up and where Pentecostalism has developed. There, I think, Rodney Stark may have a point — i.e. that something has to die before something else can grow. And when we all come back here in 50 years time or whatever, it will be very interesting to see who is right.</p>
<p>If I were to go back to my book on religion in Europe, the chapter that should be in there and is not is about political memory. I wish I had developed it more because Christian Democrat parties are clearly one carrier of Catholic identity. They are less important than they used to be. Indeed in some ways, you can say they’re Cold War parties, because they had to have an antithesis. And (certainly in Italy) the whole thing imploded after the collapse of communism.</p>
<p>MR. DIONNE: The whole idea.</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: Yes, I mean the two things were leaning on each other, and when one fell, the other did too. When I read about current Italian politics, it’s extraordinary. But I’m not at all sure what’s going to come out of the present debate.</p>
<p>MR. DIONNE: There’s a great Christian Democratic poster in Italy that showed a hangman — he was red — and a priest in black. And the slogan was: Better the priest today than the hangman tomorrow. And it was an anti-Communist Christian Democratic poster.</p>
<p>MS. LITTLE: If Europe really isn’t all that secular, and I agree with you, why therefore do we see so many religious leaders, both Christian and non-Christian, donning their battle armor and going into battle together to defend religious values they see as being trampled on or ignored. I’m thinking Spain, church-state, major clash there, and the Church defending its historical influence. The Buttiglione case in the European Parliament — the Pope came out in support of Rocco Buttiglione, saw it clearly as an attack on religion, and Buttiglione incidentally goes on to try and found a religious right. [Buttiglione was forced to withdraw as a candidate for commissioner in the European Union after his remarks that homosexuality is a sin.]</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: The Spanish case is difficult because it’s so colored by its history. The Catholic Church in Spain is still disentangling itself from the aftermath of the Civil War. In fact, it’s done surprisingly well in light of that history. But I think it’s going to be a little while before it can move on.</p>
<p>Buttiglione is a different matter. One of the things I like to think about is whether Buttiglione or the secular opposition represent the hard line, or, if you like to use the word, the fundamentalist position.</p>
<p>I’ve worked through this in some detail. Clearly the secular elite in Europe is disturbed by the re-emergence of religion, whether in its Christian, Catholic or Islamic forms. As a result, the secular elite is regrouping. Hence the question: Do you see Buttiglione as the conservative religious reaction, or do you see the secular opposition as the reactive force, having held the middle ground for so long and now fighting back? And I don’t think it’s clear which of those two is in the ascendant at the moment. I think it’s very confused.</p>
<p>The Buttiglione case is also interesting because nobody else was challenged on their religious belief. But I’m very two-faced on this, because I don’t think the acquis communautaire was very safe in Buttiglione’s hands, and I think he was being offered the wrong job. I do feel that he was discriminated against unfairly. So I didn’t think he ought to have the job, but I didn’t think he was fairly treated either.</p>
<p>Libby Copeland</p>
<p>LIBBY COPELAND, The Washington Post: We were talking about the lack of an equivalent of the religious right here — just to use the UK as an example — but you also spoke about the two models that are successful, the cathedral and the evangelical churches. But when I think of evangelical churches in the States, I frequently think of alliances with the religious right, and I wondered if in England that is the same or not?</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: No. It’s absolutely different, and I’m glad you asked that because it needs to be clarified. For a start, there isn’t a religious right. It just is all different. Evangelical churches in Britain have a stronger social justice agenda than their American equivalents, as far as I know. You will find them being very active in social justice issues. So the whole mapping of religion and politics is completely different. There are connections between religion and politics; they’re just different from the American ones. And here I think is one of the places where the centrality of moral issues in American life makes religious constituencies relate differently to the political agenda.</p>
<p>MR. CROMARTIE: What is the effect of Christian immigration from countries such as Africa, where Christianity is growing rapidly, to the UK and Europe?</p>
<p>DR. DAVIE: I’m glad you’ve asked that as well. Of course, when European countries looked for cheap labor, they looked to their former colonies, with the exception of Germany, which looked to Turkey. That meant Britain looked in two directions — to the subcontinent bringing Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus, and to the Caribbean. So half the British nonwhite population is Afro-Caribbean and Christian and more formed in its Christianity than the host community. This is a very interesting combination because these groups are both immigrants and in the dominant tradition.</p>
<p>It’s a strong indictment of British society and not a good chapter at all that the historic churches of Britain were distinctly unwelcoming to these communities, who reacted by setting up their own churches. So the Afro-Caribbean churches grew in some British cities — Birmingham and London, particularly — and turned into some of the most vibrant Christian communities in contemporary Britain. A very substantial proportion of London’s churchgoers are black. Some have moved into the mainstream. Bishop Sentamu, who is now Archbishop of York, is a very good example. He’s a Ugandan Christian. Most Afro-Caribbean Christians have, however, stayed in independent churches, which are role models, if you like, for the host society.</p>
<p>Much more recently, Ghanaians have arrived in the Netherlands. There are good studies of Ghanaians in Amsterdam. What would be interesting to know is whether, in the longer term, these are going to be black churches for black people around the edges of European society or whether they will infiltrate the mainstream. I have a Ph.D. student currently working on the concept of reverse mission. Do remember there are understandings of mission in other faiths that operate quite differently, but if you think in Christian terms, mission is often conceived as North to South, initially Europe to the developing world, and then America followed. Europeans are very good at taking answers to other people.</p>
<p>It is now a discredited discourse in many ways because it’s associated with colonialism and cultural imperialism and all the rest of it. What is interesting, of course, is that those who criticize Christianity don’t see that their imposition of secularism or secularization is doing the same thing. But it’s exactly the same phenomenon with a different content. Yet what we’re seeing now is not only mission from South to North, but mission from everywhere to everywhere else. The largest number of missionaries in the modern world come from South Korea.</p>
<p>Mission predates globalization and I cannot understand why people do not study mission as an absolutely central feature of it. It’s extraordinary. If you work with people in the mission field, their international connections are phenomenal. But now, of course, they are arriving in Europe, and Europeans take a somewhat negative view of this. They do not like people from the developing world telling them that they should be believers. We are not gracious receivers. That’s for sure.</p>
<p>MR. CROMARTIE: Well, on that note, you’ve been a wonderfully gracious speaker and we’re very grateful. Let’s thank Professor Davie.</p>
<p>(Applause)</p>
<p>Speakers at Pew Forum events are given an opportunity to review and approve their remarks. This transcript also has been edited for clarity, spelling and grammar.</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 believing without belonging secular europe key west florida speaker dr grace davie chair sociology religion director centre european studies university exeter moderator michael cromartie vice president ethics amp public policy center senior advisor pew forum religion amp public life 160 michael cromartie michael cromartie asked professor peter berger best person discuss europeans view american religion recommended speaker professor grace davie luckily country six months shes department sociology philosophy university exeter one leading sociologists religion europe graciously agreed us delighted country even key west professor davie thank much coming dr grace davie im delighted want make couple preliminary remarks start two papers use introduce religion europe one deals majority churches one deals primarily minorities think brief majority churches afternoon however going give trailer one want pick brain minorities later afternoon thats fine trailer essentially comparison britain france argues france without doubt democratic society britain britain view tolerant society france underlying question becomes democracy vector tolerance would interested know consider america terms dr grace davie remarks also premised fact really know society leave america looks european ive learning morning learn europe come away one reasons im fact work peter berger book looks secularity europe prism comparison america last preliminary put geographical limit im going talk europe large diverse im going talk primarily present definition european union im particularly wedded european union point want draw attention postmay 2004 european union coterminous western christianity exception greece cyprus view coincidence im talking europe western christian tradition im moment referring orthodox world issues raises means raise get questions way want youll forgive little egocentric look books ive published religion britain modern europe show situation evolved also thinking changed neither situation sociological interpretation static short hitting moving target start nearly 12 years ago book called religion britain since 1945 published unremarkable title subtitle contained phrase believing without belonging retrospectively inspirational moment phrase everybody remembers associate work second marker 2000 published religion modern europe crucial point britain terms patterns structure religious life essentially european society course pivot europe america denominationally looks west terms pattern structure statechurch legacies statechurch firmly european subtitle memory mutates chosen book understood religion form collective memory asked questions memory passed within book however key idea retrospectively think important contribution notion vicarious religion vicarious religion easy grasp europeans sometimes problematic americans two years later turned camera around way looked europe outside book called europe exceptional case argue patterns religion europe global prototype fact exceptional case european selfunderstanding premised idea modernization implies secularization europeans think europe today everyone else tomorrow dont find easy grasp european case perhaps sui generic perspective europe outside completes picture asking particular mutations happening europe change culture obligation consumption terms religious life turning europe toward america whether mutation genuinely european indicative different ways things concept believing without belonging effectively says theres disjunction hard indicators religious life europe softer ones ways think phrase believing without belonging little misleading isnt belonging hard belief soft hard soft example ask european populations im generalizing believe god youre terribly specific god question youll get 70 percent saying yes depending say believe jesus christ son god youll get much lower number words turn question creedal statement percentages go looser definition belief higher percentage believers exactly true terms membership belonging attend church regularly week falling percentage probably around 10 percent britain would higher lower different parts europe move much looser notion membership example ive never seen poll would interesting question expect funeral held expect conduct funeral many would contract thats one keys historic churches public utilities expect public utilities need market language american religion goes badly wrong europe europeans dont work market mode many american colleagues example work switching market thing change brand dont like including brand religion europeans tend active ones default position europe passive member historic churches activate membership need often time death someone elses deep offense course service either denied thought inadequate think fact two economies religion europe first one would call economy birth turning toward market second economy death public utility compare britain europe america isnt case americans religious europeans europeans differently religious americans european forms religion dont look like american equivalents americans often dont see lets try better afternoon two three remarks believing without belonging move really dont want center much vital remember disjunction active inactive dropping regular commitment common secular life religious life look political parties trade unions attendance football matches cinemagoing graphs go direction interestingly look football cinema find jcurves drop sharply postwar period turn late 80s 90s 21st century dont see possible religion hasnt happened yet point want grasp graphs go dont always go going turn look statistics cinemagoing first division football matches postwar period example one would thought would turn turn lot effort careful marketing least making venues comfortable done whether wont done churches completely different question return second remark directed religious leadership concerns question value judgments one reason church leaders alighted believing without belonging implies superficially least quite bad point would like make dont think halfbelieving society fact easier difficult church leaders work strictly secular society significantly different thing engage different way society half believes one hostile secular european societies part overtly secular hostile toward religion partial exception france think france exceptional case predicting future interesting refer european values study prototype world values survey european values study done three times 1981 1990 19992000 dates slip bit different countries thing want draw attention came 19992000 study pattern nobody predicted moreover interesting finding reflect 19992000 two indicators started rise among younger people one belief soul belief god words belief afterlife also notion personal god god opposed transcendent god notion immanence rise occurred right across europe marked parts europe institutional churches weakest words happens uk netherlands scandinavia france spain cusp doesnt happen poland ireland italy church still strong seen disciplinary force therefore rejected young people church longer able discipline belief behavior case across continent young people seems turn secular rationalism begin experiment whether significance decade whether something grows soon say say nobody predicted shift mid1990s something happening something need think prepare new edition book 21st century much believing without belonging view vicarious religion accurate reflection happening europe believing without belonging pulls apart belief belonging vicarious religion draws back together core vicarious lies word vicar thats root means something behalf someone else hence definition vicarious mean notion religion performed active minority thats belongers behalf much larger number thats wider population implicitly understand quite clearly approve minority words relationship nominal member active member ive given kind paper europe interesting thing europeans understand notion vicarious quickly feel theyll start giving examples get croatian examples italian examples spanish examples come back america little difficult convey meaning word let give examples vicarious religion first churches church leaders perform rituals behalf others time birth marriage divorce even though thats little problematic churches teaching marriage time death rituals see interesting changes europe parts europe example baptism becoming increasingly preserve active minority shift closely related changes theologies baptism one level sympathetic lived society several hundred years coerced population baptism threats child baptized something terrible happen like burial unconsecrated ground suddenly say child baptized come church many times seems projecting confusions church onto population unfair thing short church thats moved population many parts europe significant change respect baptism lutheran countries scandinavia often seen secular world still case practically every swedish norwegian finnish child baptized need careful generalizations marriage also changing important remember institution changing well churchs role lots young people live together get married get married whether secular religious ceremony often say want make relationship public significant number involve religious institution moment develop question death detail really see churches still crucial lives europeans think example president mitterrand anybody europe secular funeral president mitterrand agnostic leader historically anticlerical socialist party lifestyle couldnt really considered catholic conventional sense moreover precedents secular funerals france victor hugo one yet mitterrand didnt colleague danièle hervieuléger written extensively episode tells us mitterand left message indicating mass possible une messe est possible mean mean possible necessary mean please know happened two masses held simultaneously one notre dame official mass attended helmut kohl tears running cheeks exactly time private mass family jarnac southwest france lets go back vicarious religion church leaders churchgoers perform ritual behalf others also believe behalf others want draw attention criticism find britain example bishop senior representative church doubts public perfectly entitled doubt private trouble arises bishops move academic arena episcopal role dont always realize theyve done example kind discussion could around table seminar room might nothing remarkable could cause uproar developed front microphone popularized press notorious example former bishop durham david jenkins whose remarks seriously misquoted press point want grasp bishop doubts job believe surprising many population still think even dont believe thats point want get theologies fact scrutinized wider public least tabloid press behavior religious professionals provokes similar reactions national local level demanding vicarage ministers family supposed behave properly also teenage children tabloid press quick notice misdemeanor among religious professionals families probably much us know theres element hypocrisy everybody loves hypocrite somebody says one thing something different want point thats human nature think something profound beneath britain least also scandinavia reactions closely linked projections place royal family whose roles ambiguous monarch also head church love royal weddings feel somewhat ambivalent royal divorces sorry happen model wish upheld even people longer subscribe conventional model family life good thing somebody behalf thats mean vicarious last example provocative suggests churches offer space vicarious debate unresolved issues modern societies obviously directed debate homosexuality im convinced society live clear homosexuality church confused church confused society find hard understand secular press pay much attention senior appointments anglican church home abroad simply marginal institution longer important really marginal institution society cares seem care im sorry critical journalists theres important ambiguity precisely lot writing press says church england marginal institution yet front page times weeks end read stories senior appointments church doesnt stack church marginal repeatedly front page dont know whether know colleague steve bruce university aberdeen much stronger view secularization respect vicarious religion say know wheres data invite also students far imaginative terms data cant count vicarious religion get hint looking soft hard statistics feel gap look convinced happening one way working look closely society something gone seriously wrong occasionally right disaster celebration circumstances see something much reactive much spontaneous see america post911 would excellent example lot work done two examples mind firstly sweden following sinking estonia ferry 10 years ago huge loss life britain week following princess dianas death happened estonia sank sweden sinking ferry 900 lives lost swedes enormous shock something almost unbelievable swedish people went straight churches nobody told churches open partly taxfunded churches religious professionals meet knew next morning front main swedish daily article archbishop putting tragedy theological context giving swedish people way understanding happened point want grasp instruction assumptions place swedish pastors knew archbishop knew write article churches place population came nothing would happened unless disaster would remained implicit surface hence iceberg analogy far much work bit sticks shrinking beyond doubt im interested bits water reaction princess dianas death exactly whatever week diana died neither secular rational laughter christian least imperfectly christian come terms totally unexpected event whole series things took place individual improvised flowers playing cards queen hearts madonnas prayers mixed together confused reaction everybody knew insufficient funeral funeral westminster abbey real point dean westminster abbey said im sorry dont really think take funeral bearing mind diana divorced visited gurus experimenting different kinds religion seeker mother become catholic end life diana keeping company prominent muslim hence im sorry dont think funeral us would unacceptable knew become fact common model uses christian framework funeral service starts sentence resurrection life ends committal inside elton john laughter dr grace davie eulogy homily call mixedeconomy funeral still frame christian liturgy perfectly possible secular funeral parts europe still common dianas funeral became prototype sorts funerals quite apart interesting event end week almost forgotten shed divorced mourners funeral exhusband exfatherinlaw brother two sons thats unusual say least dodi alfayed course buried day died one exercises students question dodi alfayed died accident would dianas funeral like interesting question alive time funeral would happened easy answer question except say occasion would significantly different couldnt written script source evidence vicarious religion found attitudes toward church buildings european people get cross asked pay go building think building belongs equally cross close building havent weeks even years regard remove something implicit becomes explicit dont see normal life church tax scandinavia germany offers final example church tax negligible paid whole population unless contract interesting thing scandinavia changing germany people contract youd save money simple procedure far people dont dont think swedish people would pay something fundamentally disapprove conclude therefore swedish people approve churches certainly approved culturally church buildings beautifully kept even north sweden example small village church lovely well maintained quite apart question buildings church maintains whole musical tradition important part scandinavian life last remark concerns essay title students title churchgoing deviant behavior modern britain profitable exercise requires student look patterns religion life want religion example deviant men women also deviant young old deviant england northern ireland deviant parts scotland parts scotland work local national patterns put together good body material order see students understood best students question notion deviance deviance mean flying face values modern society churchgoing certainly deviant view upholds values many europeans dont often live still would like thats point want get across current situation like 2050 much harder say much less sure implicit understanding vicariousness carried younger generations way carried older people quite apart gradual shift going europe away something call culture obligation term obvious catholic resonance go church duty question discipline culture obligation collapsing right across europe doubt partial exception rural poland rural ireland giving way something call culture consumption dont like word consumption cant think better one really means choosing means go church want shift obligation consumption continuing mutation question one minute one culture one minute another gradual shift model based choice good bad aspects good bad bad good simply question change nobody wants live society forced go church seems entirely wrong modern democracy europeans coerced historically sometimes forcibly much recently respectability went church see seen politicians still regularly happens elections laughter expect also happens still see hangovers people come church england want children get church schools church schools heavily oversubscribed mostly give preference churchgoing families thats old pattern people coming nonreligious reasons nowadays people come church extraordinarily varied reasons tend rather less religious whole would agree good thing downside collapse common narrative modern students example know little religion increasingly interested subject large numbers want study sociology religion assume knowledge learned hard way giving whole lecture pentecostalism latin america realized students didnt know pentecost knowledge clearly comes schools mostly family though usually one two exceptions class 40 interestingly students tend know islam christianity worries bit think teaching religion schools important thing given circumstances teachers well im little concerned curriculum getting right things across children take young person art gallery uffizi gallery florence example theyre sea interpret narrative dont know loss im saying oneway story another thing really want get hold dont think move obligation consumption thing privatization view seriouslymade choices public implications inherited model eroding probably privatizing something different emerging time must keep mind arrival islam europe making huge difference debate islam privatized privatized islam almost oxymoron presence islam reconfiguring whole debate interesting way ways slightly alarming way europeans responding well something changing without doubt muslims putting religion back public agenda last thing want presentation point two popular choices modern europeans clear styles churches well right across denominations statistical models misleading suspect fall rise denomination question moving one denomination another shift within well denominations statistical pattern doesnt show us two models seem well first really equivalent new christian right exist europe concerns evangelical churches every small town city find relatively successful evangelical church signify signifies thing america safe place clear boundaries firm teaching effective networks great kids familyoriented look closely certain types evangelical churches better others ones well ones incorporated charismatic element oldfashioned biblicism popular churches include experiential element theyre much talked theyre much written holy trinity brompton london wellknown youll find little holy trinity brompton towns cities britain example success perfectly clear evidence still much less discussed call cathedral city center church offers completely different package seeker opposed convert youve got boundaries dont join really crucial thing many people dont share peace go sit behind pillar nobody bothers youre experience traditional liturgy predictable liturgy clearly important everybody knows whats going happen worldclass music sublime architecture good preaching high standard look cathedrals filling every level filling regular members less regular members pilgrims tourists shift closely linked growth pilgrimage europe thats true whether medieval pilgrimage santiago de compostela marian shrines lourdes medjugorje modern places pilgrimage like taize iona growing year year year something uncommitted seeker person whos journey notice models mobile models first convert someone commits evangelical church second pilgrim seeker two models developed french colleague danièle hervieuléger thing misleading think divide europe people practice people dont people somewhere middle mobile concepts helping us see coming old model thing two types worship common experiential indeed turn question around way thing well purely cerebral oldfashioned biblicism well liberal protestantism trouble home purely cognitive seem appeal todays population although two completely different patterns fact common element much learn get taking part important fact youre lifted counts big oneoff occasions candlelit carol service evangelical conventions trick course politics people go regularly political party meetings draws oneoff rainbow coalitions say countryside political platform kind theology like something draws people together different come together oneoff occasion rest case really want understand patterns religion modern europe need look quite sensitive glasses badly misled isolate religious factor changes going rest society believe happened much sociology religion begin see part economic social change rather simply indifference religion begin understand happening little better jane little bbc last week new black archbishop york enthroned great ritual historic occasion also novel issued clarion call consumers religion used phrase become disciples christ lot pope benedict argument dictatorship relativism amorphous stuff christian return back roots return britain christian nation talked jcurve cant see reversing trend dont understand massive phenomenon youve describing end seekers difficult reporting cant measure much saying experiential religion massive partly believing without belonging also believe believe practice really difficult get handle dont see religious leaders trying reverse secular trend see going age deference globalization much choice people aware wondering think might address b think hugely important know mean term secular pope benedict use term secular different sense though something antagonistic religion many others say religious people describe britain secular state established church others say secular 7 percent people go church regularly others say well secular 17 percent young people say spiritual religious wondering would define dr davie lets start taking apart secular secularity secularism secularization different meanings secular adjective shouldnt loaded often secularity state affairs secularism ideology like rationalism communism theres little britain much france secularization process exercise another way america secular state first amendment important american selfunderstanding privileged church financial support churches highly churchgoing society relatively speaking high well leave moment britain like europe history state church colors present fact northern europe still state church parts europe theres acrimonious rupture acrimonious french one secular america britain europe define terms would say britain society relatively low levels churchgoing high levels implicit religiosity stillrespected though reduced state church thats gets tricky think theres interesting study done advantages weak state church strong state churches excluding exclusive thats one reason people came america weak state churches become umbrella faith happened britain weak anglican church nobodys frightened church england theres nothing frightened laughter becomes spokesperson religious minority britain whatever faith ask jonathan sacks muslim leaders whole dont want secular state see whats happened france secular state much less tolerant weak state church subtle thats one things ive tried convey afternoon obvious often appears youve got find realities underneath surface certainly find person says want go carol service christmas eve find person moved spiritual occasion doesnt see antithesis presumably secular life one important thing remember people consistent thinking investigation real life politics religion people believe incompatible things time ways think social scientific problem paradigms impose coherence none life jay tolson jay tolson us news amp world report ive observed vigorous vicarious religiosity quote one example interviewed cardinal martino head pontifical council justice last year issue tolerance muslims among things straightforward critical european countries saying wanted turks north africans come work factories wanted check religion borders theyre upset see muslims want practice religion seemed clear without saying felt almost ambivalence vitality resurgent religiosity among muslims europe thought christianity obviously going opposite direction saw challenge way think saw interesting moment thought tolerance clearly hoping would reaction among cultural christians becoming active christians response course one mentioned basically press aggressive secularism even britain recent controversy muslim faith schools degree hostile reaction among liberal elites england statesupported muslim faith schools many religious schools faiths supported state another example sudden great anxiety state support faith schools islamic challenge seems one interesting spurs whole thing vicarious religion wonder whether also bring aggressive secularism dr davie presence islam europe simply another religious choice catalyst change includes muslim minorities settled europe well turkish accession religion reemerging public life way unfamiliar something illequipped deal something changing dramatically still quite early see work one two bits background important france britain germany netherlands third generation islam notions muslim populations would gradually assimilate become much like host population rapidly coming apart thats clearly happening interesting studies done example women third generation university age one things trying work means muslim woman freed pakistani patriarchal culture came grandparents ones meet example institute arab islamic studies exeter struggling question mr tolson id think would pushed back patriarchal dr davie think would depend whether freed go university ones really caught culture wouldnt even get university first place mr tolson sure im saying unrepresentative sample whats really going families dr davie changing ideas come elite intellectual segment society maybe change come young turkish women see hartford seminary connecticut struggling exactly issues point want make notion theyre going become like host population collapsing thats happening nordic countries ireland southern europe much recent phenomenon occurred last decade interesting thing greece italy spain traditionally countries emigration turned suddenly countries immigration dublin example city immigration thats almost unimaginable rapid change drivers 1960s 70s economic looking populations jobs didnt want drivers 90s demographic europe sufficient working people pay pensions turkish issue fascinating context turkey seen source young relatively welltrained labor threat depends see huge potential labor europe also seen threat europeans terms public private probably best example give role muslims played promoting question religion british census 2001 britain introduced question ethnic origins 1991 moderately controversial 2001 introduced question religion controversial secular liberal elite felt inappropriate multicultural society difficult position hold prime movers debate muslims kind statistical analysis either nationality ethnic origin muslims almost invisible dispersed wanted clear index many muslims britain sorts things happened muslims driving debate christians thought good idea joined well christians discomfited write question civil servants worked census bureau little idea result wonderful british compromise voluntary question different scotland wales ireland many respect mess interesting mess know 15 million muslims would expected real surprises interestingly 70 percent british people claimed christian saying saying secular saying muslims dont know suspect saying thing yet done qualitative study sample people said yes christian question order ask mean index religious commitment religious identification really something else still clear think nominal christian somewhat threatened islam though likely mind different theologies seriously committed christian different bind one hand respects islam thinks hand kind christian feels stronger obligation evangelize make claim one true god think theres considerable ambiguity clearly serious believer reacts different way nominal believer secular civil servant evident problem muslims asked question religion good example british compromise results interesting little incident tells quite lot clare duffy clare duffy nbc nightly news brian williams wondering movement curve engineered without im thinking particularly pope benedict xvi saying one priorities reevangelization europe done forced time youre concerned dictatorship relativism building least case catholic church smaller muscular faith youre kind wishywashy seekers whatever dont let door hit way theyre really interested time reevangelization europe priority filling cathedral churches something tourists priority possible force movement curve describe organic dr davie dont think anybody wants force movement curve certainly wouldnt want draw attention moment collapse obligation stronger force rise consumption dont like word dont think means consumer think seriously made choices moment going going cant discern going stops see within denominations within traditions certain kinds churches make visit sunday worth somebodys people still come thats point two examples gave evangelical option cathedral option could find others churches london art creativity many commitment developing world issues wont come ought thats thing thats gone collapsed different kinds churches different ways still attract mean far people go church sunday go football look changes football manchester united gets huge crowds chelsea liverpool mr cromartie mean soccer dr davie soccer well football laughter mean soccer look small clubs like exeter city live youre hardly knocked rush people going watch exeter city therefore financial troubles average parish people money little clubs feeling country big clubs changing theyre professional even clearer see rugby professionalized much recently oldfashioned rugby clubs used look like parishes first second third fourth teams children teenagers people training every week soon become professional put money first team parts drop point shifts occurring religion movement across whole voluntary sector thats need embed understanding religion much broader analysis economic social change kathleen parker kathleen parker tribune media services question observer visitor country saying earlier clearly muslims assimilated european culture see process think us better job dr davie think probably misled muslims becoming like europeans terms religious habits dont want imply place muslims europe think interesting comparative work done different european societies models work models dont work big tension communitarian model britain multicultural model individual assimilationist model france separate group identity problematic cant count number muslims france would reify group reify notion muslim may biased think britain done better job interesting look back summer happened july london bombings horrific local muslim leaders immediately sought calm population identify bombers british government church officials turned muslim colleagues said help us weve got work together france muslim leader says anything often met response along lines public order responsibility secular state deal goes back even colonial policy britain ruled local elites france ruled directly deepseated difference one works one doesnt work largely matter opinion personally think british model work better speak muslims britain dont want secular state im really sure could judge american case think different american muslims going play role america learn american rules become denomination want purchase property organize america american way im quite sure impact islamic communities america dont think say french whoever better us well way acknowledge history acknowledge past find solution cant borrow solution would say many issues example evangelicals england often want borrow american solutions say deregulated ie disestablished church religious activity would rise american levels dont think would like saying japanese children much better math european children british children japanese children taught classes 70 european children taught classes 70 would better math see would fallacious argument like saying took little bit system tried make work wed solution doesnt work like delia rios newhouse news service said know islam christianity mean young people followup whichever group people youre referring know islam christianity dr davie point major source knowledge young people religion school think religious education teachers excellent job put back lost narrative cultural educational thing suspect concentrating islam islam topical sometimes get student committed christian family good knowledge christianity occasionally teach students theology department better knowledge christianity assume students picked narrative families churchgoing happen learn class depends lot teacher chosen teach said suspect lot work islam islam obviously important issue global politics society always find exceptions example one interesting things modern europe terms debate secularization current anxiety relatively students want science alevel final school exam instead large numbers opting religious studies read read interest religion tends traditional bible teaching students interested ethics philosophy religion numbers applying theology universities going numbers applying physics chemistry going disastrously doesnt fit traditional reading secularization thesis fit people thought would happen talk shift jcurve seems expect may happen may wrong anticipation rise idea going stay go way thought going go 15 years ago doesnt seem likely many things changing choices young people terms subjects study universities people thought going causing big difficulties universities terms restructuring university example closed chemistry department carl cannon national journal mentioned interesting historical fact great britain world war ii attendance soccer matches interest sports changed 1966 1965 change well stretch metaphor great cathedral wherever great national team world cup played pubs played games tv star preacher george best pele said greatest player ever saw charismatic leadership got thinking people religion britain nicky gumbel billy grahams rick warrens england model work anyway evangelical model thats question dr davie cant think billy graham rick warren nicky gumbel extent much smaller constituency thats interesting terms football rise attendance much later course careful read big clubs well smaller clubs well whole game football changed europeanized shifting pattern europe particular cities football team emblem opposed local clubs mr cannon tell evangelicals thats really want know dr davie nearest get holy trinity brompton nicky gumbel alpha course nearly million half people done alpha theres lot preaching converted many people church anyway would maintain million half people went secular equivalent would achieved much attention press look reaction alpha people think conservative think liberal probably right guess winwin following reasons course basic christianity society lost knowledge basic christianity emphasis holy spirit strong experiential factor combination think drawing people adrian wooldridge economist id rather jumble questions american exceptionalism versus european exceptionalism strikes youve understated far see anyway extent aggressively antireligious prosecular culture europe certainly britain tony blair asked going meet george bush according newspaper reports got knees prayed spokesman alistair campbell immediately left remarking britain dont god dr davie dont god yes mr wooldridge think thats something lot british people profoundly believe spirit hl mencken may suddenly alive much country hes certainly alive britain pick private eye tony blair presented vicar st albans george bush presented member church jesus christ latterday morons dr davie yes mr wooldridge dont see sort really aggressively secular language country think one reasons british europeans general initially even iraq rest stuff took george bush wears religion sleeve whether wearing sleeve religious dont know certainly something turned think death penalty want make two sort related points one religion nationalized industry europe britain strikes explaining lot talking partly connected nationstate get great national events like royal wedding funeral diana spencer religion god nation lot important religion sense national identity islamic thing important second thing nationalized industry know nationalized industries badly run deal little deal funeral maybe birth dont often good service thats provided sort residual service thing wished ask intelligentsia seems country large significant proreligious intelligentsia evangelicals opening evangelical mind people like mark noll really quite serious intellectuals didnt see much britain secondly intellectuals approaching religion end either sort straussian position useful us lets latch actually really believe lack religious bloc intellectuals europe certainly britain strikes big difference two cultures dr davie think youre right wholly right see mean one heroes unlikely scenario ian hislop editor private eye good example lowkey cultural christian think fact think script private eye owes great deal knowledge church england whole parish analogy requires knowledge simply read evidence differently also think ian hislop extraordinarily brave remarks rushdie controversy hes iconoclast ever one said publicly never mock another persons faith sensible thing mr wooldridge apart george bush dr davie think thats hard say go back look record rushdie extremely revealing drew line think theres considerable subtlety hislop wont mr wooldridge latterday morons subtle dr davie mormons might offended mr wooldridge yeah dr davie think mr wooldridge think safe mock evangelical christians britain mock muslims kill dr davie well would give credit ian hislop reading really sensitively ive lived great deal life working social science good 25 30 years heard religion really something else thing happening modern world weve finally got realized fact religion european paradigm pervasive intrusive given us bad guides religion global context assume european case norm paradigm secularization comes european past applied elsewhere way weve got round problem things dont well paradigm saying isnt really religion really nationalism really identity whatever mr wooldridge nationalized church something different church free market got two functions dr davie history state church get away good bad aspect never shed thats mentalities strong doesnt necessarily take attributes bad national industry rather reject naomi schaefer riley naomi schaefer riley wall street journal maybe bias journalist im unhappy attempt describe isnt religion abstract probably people room matters determining whether someone religious affects rest life determination whether someone religious basically go someones funeral church funeral marriage death birth death absolutely effect way act community perspective political perspective life compared secular component sort obnoxious care whether theyre religious sense dr davie think big difference whether work contractingin contractingout model youre working contractingin model sign makes difference think im implicitly working contractingout model europeaninherited model everybody member unless said american model join see patterns emerging fact joining pattern think becoming significant europe losing old model havent lost yet want return minute adrians question elite related important point enlightenment figures europe particularly french versions enlightenment seen freedom belief whats still playing french mind clearly time enlightenment got america mutated freedom believe hence contracting need grasp different configuration youre going understand models europe freedomfrombelief model intellectuals contract masses stay america freedom believe everybody contracts including substantial numbers intellectuals also think happening certainly europe think also true america secular liberals cluster around media voice amplified whether sound voice representative size group question empirical investigation think way configure enlightenment crucial thing understanding difference europe america remember sorts ways europeans assume americans articulate go america academic welcome committee taken youre taken youre given dinner parties youre given parties youre taken excursions wonderful experience made welcome equivalent person comes europe say theres desk pleased see get doesnt mean say youre welcome dont keep saying different way behaving figures religion like everything else ms riley americans think religion supposed change lives involved europeans assume part cultural baggage maybe youd elaborate bit idea europeans churchgoing deviation upholds values would like regardless whether go yet argument rejection christian roots european constitution didnt really see upholding views desire uphold values wonder youd comment dr davie id say two things european constitution go back 10 years dont think would anticipated debate think fact occurred significant even though eventually fudge term finally chose spiritual rather christian course rejected constitution altogether us become confused debate thing need hold onto fact occurred one way europe reconfiguring still clear different voices europe old europe playing one way new postcommunist countries playing another way still dont think quite clear going work future get chance work course turkish issue becomes complex indeed rejecting turkey turkey islamic nation question driven back europe crucially important issues lying underneath discussion go back first question evangelical christians britain europe get terribly frustrated dont like want like america thats sure ms riley fascinated saying cathedrals people going great music great architecture able sit without participating didnt want ive talked jews age america trying recapture synagogue life younger went families started thinking whether true exactly believed really enjoy tunes prayers enjoy communal environment cant imagine sustainable phenomenon trouble imagining children going go participate kind institutionalized religious practice reason seems great element nostalgia wonder true among cathedral goers whether see sustainable movement dr davie funnily enough dont see among cathedral goers see rather average parish youll still see example village church full christmas kind thing pure nostalgia dont think sustainable talking cathedral congregation im focused pattern choice people definitely choosing choosing sustaining go cathedral service people experience good liturgy good sermon emerge instructed much might smaller parish level preaching higher people people turn services theyre choosing dont think nostalgia think something else stake im absolutely clear read statistics church life cathedrals well huge comparable american numbers relatively speaking theyre holding terms tourist attractions theyre one popular attractions theres plenty tourists choose european society cathedrals draw huge numbers visitors theres interesting work done moment much understudied phenomenon dr edward j larson university georgia im one tourists get england least year always go local cathedral boys choir enjoy find spirituality different rise england druidism im trying baiting bigger interest traditional celtic religions isnt general spirituality everybody seeks rather specific christianity dr davie cathedrals soon lose knowledge level whole thing becomes much amorphous youre necessarily aware youre mixing matching druidism hits press terms stonehenge solstice kind thing small numbers celtic christianity broadly different popular course experiential make one correction hope dont go girls choir cathedral dr larson rarely option dr davie becoming common cathedrals girls choir well boys choir theres heated debate whether really hear difference voices marc gunther marc gunther fortune youve described terms vicarious religion sounds familiar something anyone jewish understands synagogues flooded people high holidays never show time year question similar one naomi asked religion impact peoples lives kind daytoday way words england secular people voting differently raising children differently attitudes toward sexual preference different jobs differently secular society look like respects outside religion content religion youve described dr davie first question didnt think id find word vicarious analysis american religion herbert uses jews america mr cromartie mean book protestant catholic jew dr davie yes somebody found sent used slightly different sense theres question state paying religion notion group religion behalf wider community secular society look like im going answer obliquely real difference europe america much existence state church existence state europe different state whole thing welfare statebased welfare different debate common european assumption state look us state imperfectly struggling badly financial base welfare state coming apart terms individual behavior would say nominal membership makes little difference behavior would draw conclusion meaningless find difference europe america guess youre familiar chris smiths work adolescence says mainstream adolescents difficulty articulating beliefs think probably like mainstream religion really make difference children think significantly different presence evangelical constituency america well tell play culture play behavior play tell constituency doesnt exist europe dont think europe alternative secular ideology motivates behavior whole thing much understated europe lot nancy ammerman boston university calls golden rule christians people say important aspect christian caring needy think goldenrule christians exist europe america probably go church europe probably dont mr gunther dont know long situation describe taken evolve possible nominal vicarious religious folks living fumes living legacy parents grandparents theyre going leave enough legacy fumes children grandchildren live dr davie think one crucial questions factor would say serious situation churches europe secular person europe would say good thing factor think things happening didnt think professional life would see debate religion constitution european union didnt think would see arrival islam numbers didnt think would see afrocaribbean christians coming evangelize europe didnt think would see ghanaians coming evangelize netherlands didnt think would see religion major factor international relations question would entirely pertinent answer would would much future things equal never lived time im convinced john tierney john tierney new york times adrians analysis nationalized industry resonated sounded something doesnt good job makes hard upstarts start way america youve got churches coming along wonder one possible alternative much environmentalism becoming sort religion youve got new groups starting youve got devout belief kyoto treaty probably believed nicene creed dr davie resonant think possible analyze environmentalism religion comes category secular religions nationalism analyzed religion feminism whole range things isms none address existential question chips going need cant funeral well woodland funeral way thats strictly true doesnt give answers need perfectly possible see religion ideologies looked way simply dont think works really big questions life assert clearly important considerable lobby important america much important major player go back environmentalist groups join indeed join pay credit card anything dr leigh eric schmidt princeton university awful lot protests dr davie protests oneoff theyre like pilgrimages dr schmidt think lot people way life isnt ive heard comparison environmentalism succeeded christianity marxism great new millennialist socialist movement theyre going prelapserian conditions trying restore sacred age past sin dr davie minority issue could find evidence dr schmidt even america intense europe 90 percent people call environmentalists view nature like thoreau transcendentalism dr davie would see connection younger generation talked earlier seeing god notion soul kind thing particular scandinavia youll find lot people nature important thing theyd much rather mountain beach church dr schmidt thats daily sacrament perform think dr davie dont think going agree id see quasi religion think weve many quasireligions years latest one jason deparle jason deparle new york times say religious conservatism hasnt parallel force british politics much said addressed indirectly talk directly dr davie turn round way new religious right america europe difficult question answer lies way american society built quite different european society european society much older homogeneous society though changing america largely built last 200 years european society horizontally patterned class system important religion much linked people begin reject political authority reject religious authority time whereas america built slices group comes religion historically religion sinks vertically much deeper american society black churches obvious example simply look chicago look american city churches communities represent completely different pattern different embedding religion society david martin best exponent go back general theory secularization think way religion embedded society potential access politics different different societies produced different outcomes conservative politics dont look anything like conservative politics one branch conservatism found among traditionalists historically closest anglican church though relationship collapsing branch conservatism freemarket right one things bewilders europeans dominance moral issues political debate ill give good example visited university north carolina student said sweden religious society way implying standards morality meant sexual behavior replied lost wallet sweden youd likely get back almost anywhere else world think thats moral issue constructing debate different way dr davie obviously things relative listened debate harriet miers example moral issues strikingly central european listener think debate would well course wouldnt happened dont supreme court dont nominations rest debate strikingly different respect profound difference two societies adrian think mr wooldridge big reason supreme court judicial branch general shortcircuited lot debates went europe legislative branch referenda overreached sense created religious right reaction wouldnt debate roe v wade country decided legislative branch lot people felt disenfranchised process power grab courts essentially think thats created lot energy behind religious right new development result certain overreach 60s gone democratic route america would look lot like europe debates would happened would played would consensus favor abortion country example dr davie one obvious differences americans use courts different way europeans debate concerns goes court whereas tend go court debate failed dr larson im first generation swedishamerican go back time ive taught europe view whats happening christianity europe resonates combination charismatic revival evangelical churches plus cathedral christianity going back forth whether fumes parents grandparents would die dont think either phenomena experience parents grandparents secularized well arent fumes coming genuine spiritual phenomenon timelimited sense charismatic evangelical roots cathedral element architecture artwork literature west resonates leads people go cathedrals native spirituality pulling people back christian framework parents grandparents christian living existing architecture living existing heritage dont see timelimited phenomenon see continuing dr davie im wondering whether ive explained badly whether im hearing right started explaining vicarious model think gradually receding shrinking still think figures lot issues tried give examples comes fore moved notion obligation dominant european past gradual shift choosing consumption two choices evangelical church cathedral course others dont think theyre depending past old model definitely shrinking let try another way one marked differences fact crucial one europe america european religion premised territory built parish system historically civic well ecclesiastical theyre often coterminous centuries way european life organized reason religious life profoundly dislocated industrial revolution point large sections population moved cities surrounded factories get growth liverpool manchester sheffield leeds birmingham move away exeter gloucester worcester moment european religion shaken core thats europeans think modernization urbanization secularization go together couple notion enlightenment sees religion freedom belief freedom believe spiral goes downward could argue still going downward beginning think movement different direction america nothing industrial revolution chicago built land lots little villages several hundred years group coming chicago brought religion industrial revolution rapid urbanization sense nationbuilding religious vitality supported version enlightenment says freedom believe spiral goes two different stories social scientific paradigm recently european story dominant story notion modernization implied secularization pervasive social science still point challenged america challenged even developing world someone like peter berger goes 180 degrees thinking realizing modernity imply secularization two models modernity one european one american notion one body thinking applied thing goes badly wrong ej dionne washington post way think adrian onto something roe v wade christian right think combines peculiarities southern culture united states two things explain lot difference us europe europe big blue state look similarities kerry states european attitudes actually substantial thats want talk two questions first wonder sometimes discussion notion past correct wanted ask look back last 50 years two points made see new phenomena yet across europe hundreds years popular religion experiential church attendance participation presume quite low points european history wonder whole discussion discussion general discussion informed view religious golden age never existed remember misremember second question one peculiar things notion secular europe full christian democratic parties strong christian democratic tradition france used one obviously germany italy weaker used tradition simply vestigial connection whats going something according theory would die dr davie regard first point referring adrians comment dont know way put question try explain religious right america isnt one europe notion golden age crucial point secularization theory people come different conclusions would refer sharp exchanges rodney stark steve bruce rodney stark would say always potential growth religion europe really wasnt religious past stripped away props established church people worked harder europe like america would become religiously active personally dont think would case agree steve bruce course changed latin america market seem opening pentecostalism developed think rodney stark may point ie something die something else grow come back 50 years time whatever interesting see right go back book religion europe chapter political memory wish developed christian democrat parties clearly one carrier catholic identity less important used indeed ways say theyre cold war parties antithesis certainly italy whole thing imploded collapse communism mr dionne whole idea dr davie yes mean two things leaning one fell read current italian politics extraordinary im sure whats going come present debate mr dionne theres great christian democratic poster italy showed hangman red priest black slogan better priest today hangman tomorrow anticommunist christian democratic poster ms little europe really isnt secular agree therefore see many religious leaders christian nonchristian donning battle armor going battle together defend religious values see trampled ignored im thinking spain churchstate major clash church defending historical influence buttiglione case european parliament pope came support rocco buttiglione saw clearly attack religion buttiglione incidentally goes try found religious right buttiglione forced withdraw candidate commissioner european union remarks homosexuality sin dr davie spanish case difficult colored history catholic church spain still disentangling aftermath civil war fact done surprisingly well light history think going little move buttiglione different matter one things like think whether buttiglione secular opposition represent hard line like use word fundamentalist position ive worked detail clearly secular elite europe disturbed reemergence religion whether christian catholic islamic forms result secular elite regrouping hence question see buttiglione conservative religious reaction see secular opposition reactive force held middle ground long fighting back dont think clear two ascendant moment think confused buttiglione case also interesting nobody else challenged religious belief im twofaced dont think acquis communautaire safe buttigliones hands think offered wrong job feel discriminated unfairly didnt think ought job didnt think fairly treated either libby copeland libby copeland washington post talking lack equivalent religious right use uk example also spoke two models successful cathedral evangelical churches think evangelical churches states frequently think alliances religious right wondered england dr davie absolutely different im glad asked needs clarified start isnt religious right different evangelical churches britain stronger social justice agenda american equivalents far know find active social justice issues whole mapping religion politics completely different connections religion politics theyre different american ones think one places centrality moral issues american life makes religious constituencies relate differently political agenda mr cromartie effect christian immigration countries africa christianity growing rapidly uk europe dr davie im glad youve asked well course european countries looked cheap labor looked former colonies exception germany looked turkey meant britain looked two directions subcontinent bringing muslims sikhs hindus caribbean half british nonwhite population afrocaribbean christian formed christianity host community interesting combination groups immigrants dominant tradition strong indictment british society good chapter historic churches britain distinctly unwelcoming communities reacted setting churches afrocaribbean churches grew british cities birmingham london particularly turned vibrant christian communities contemporary britain substantial proportion londons churchgoers black moved mainstream bishop sentamu archbishop york good example hes ugandan christian afrocaribbean christians however stayed independent churches role models like host society much recently ghanaians arrived netherlands good studies ghanaians amsterdam would interesting know whether longer term going black churches black people around edges european society whether infiltrate mainstream phd student currently working concept reverse mission remember understandings mission faiths operate quite differently think christian terms mission often conceived north south initially europe developing world america followed europeans good taking answers people discredited discourse many ways associated colonialism cultural imperialism rest interesting course criticize christianity dont see imposition secularism secularization thing exactly phenomenon different content yet seeing mission south north mission everywhere everywhere else largest number missionaries modern world come south korea mission predates globalization understand people study mission absolutely central feature extraordinary work people mission field international connections phenomenal course arriving europe europeans take somewhat negative view like people developing world telling believers gracious receivers thats sure mr cromartie well note youve wonderfully gracious speaker grateful lets thank professor davie applause speakers pew forum events given opportunity review approve remarks transcript also edited clarity spelling grammar | 8,278 |
<p>JOHN KERRY’S recent assertions about stem cell research are so obviously untrue and so easily refuted that he must on some level actually believe them–as only an ideologue can. He claims repeatedly that President Bush has “enacted a far-reaching ban on stem cell research”; in fact, the Bush administration provided over $200 million for stem cell research last year, including $25 million for embryonic stem cell research. He claims that stem cells will one day cure Alzheimer’s disease, an ailment that uniquely terrifies the baby-boom generation. But leading scientists, including enthusiastic supporters of stem cell research, have made it clear that stem cells will not help treat Alzheimer’s. Kerry claims that stem cell cures are “at our fingertips” and that “help is on the way,” when in fact there has not been a single human trial of an embryonic stem cell therapy.</p>
<p>Unlike the war in Iraq, where Kerry maneuvers to play both sides, stem cells are an issue where he brooks no ambiguity. He is for progress; President Bush is against it. He will end suffering; President Bush will leave the sick to “look to the future with fear.” As William Saletan noted in a recent piece in Slate, Kerry has made biomedical advance a religion, and stem cells are his gospel. Understanding how this religion works–why it inspires so much anti-Bush ire and pro-Kerry enthusiasm, why it appeals to an aging and anxious population, and where it would lead America if it became our national faith–should be a priority as we enter the final season of the campaign.</p>
<p>The issue of stem cells is scientifically and ethically complex. Stem cells are undifferentiated and self-replicating cells with the potential to become the differentiated cells that make up the various tissues in the human body. Laboratories acquire them from many sources: bone marrow, umbilical cord blood, aborted fetuses, embryos, cloned embryos. Stem cells harvested from adults for purposes of medical research are ethically unproblematic; research on such cells garners near-universal support and receives over $180 million per year in funding from the National Institutes of Health. Embryonic stem cells, harvested from human embryos which are destroyed in the process, are fraught with ethical peril–and that is the reason we are having a far-reaching debate.</p>
<p>Most scientists believe that embryonic stem cells hold the greatest medical promise. Just as a tiny embryo can develop into a baby, with all its exquisitely specialized organs and parts, so embryonic stem cells can become virtually any type of human cell, with a facility seemingly greater than adult stem cells. But embryonic stem cell research is in its earliest stages, and no one knows whether these powerful cells can be directed in ways that are therapeutically useful. Moreover, it is hard to say whether the scientific establishment, in its political quest to secure more funding and stave off regulation, is overstating the promise of embryonic stem cells and understating the promise of non-embryonic stem cells. Nevertheless, one cannot deny the scientific potential of embryo research, or the large stake the scientific community now has in its success.</p>
<p>Nor can one deny the ethical problem this research poses. When one speaks with leading embryonic stem cell researchers, it is disarming to discover that the destruction of human embryos is already normal. An embryo is just a “clump of cells,” the scientists say, as “small as the period at the end of this sentence.” But if embryos were just clumps of cells, scientists would not want them so badly. The unique biological power of an embryo is inseparable from the kind of organism it is: an integrated, developing, genetically whole human creature in the earliest days of life. Three decades ago, scientists gained the power to initiate life in the laboratory; now they destroy it routinely, without fear and trembling.</p>
<p>The embryos needed for embryonic stem cell research can come from three sources: (1) They can be produced by in vitro fertilization (the union of egg and sperm in the laboratory) performed on behalf of infertile couples, who often produce more embryos than they actually implant to have children. (2) They can be produced by in vitro fertilization solely for the purposes of research. Or (3) they can be cloned–that is, produced using “somatic cell nuclear transfer,” in which a person’s DNA is inserted into an enucleated human egg. This is the technique that produced Dolly the sheep, and it is the first step on the way to reproductive human cloning.</p>
<p>For a while, proponents of embryo research were willing to draw certain ethical lines and respect certain ethical limits. For example, when NIH proposed funding for the creation of embryos solely for research in 1994, the Clinton administration (which supported embryo research) rejected the proposal as too radical. And when President Bush deliberated about federal funding of stem cell research in 2001, stem cell advocates called for funding within limits: They argued that thousands of embryos were already frozen in storage, and that funding research on those embryos imposed no extra moral cost.</p>
<p>Today, the debate has moved on. Leading proponents of embryo research are more radical–demanding more public funding (without which they say research is “banned”), rejecting past limits, and promising the moon. Kerry epitomizes this radicalization of the stem cell movement. At Kerry’s convention, Ron Reagan lauded “personal biological repair kits” derived from cloned embryos, and his running mate, Sen. John Edwards, endorsed “therapeutic cloning.”</p>
<p>So it seems Democrats are now poised to cross yet another ethical and political boundary: federal funding for the creation, study, and destruction of cloned human embryos. After all, if cloned embryos are necessary to provide stem cells tailor-made for the individual, and if stem cell research can succeed only with federal funding, then the day has come for a national project of cloned embryo research. The ideology of stem cells has made the Democrats the party of cloning. And like all true believers, they believe inconvenient facts can be ignored and that history is on their side.</p>
<p>“The medical discoveries that come from stem cells are crucial next steps in humanity’s uphill climb,” John Kerry declared this summer in a radio address. “The tide of history is with us,” Ron Reagan intoned at the convention. “We have a chance to take a giant stride forward for the good of all humanity. We can choose between the future and the past, between reason and ignorance, between true compassion and mere ideology.” Indeed, the stem cell issue has a visceral appeal to liberals, who construe it as a referendum on Bush’s backward-looking religiosity and a sign of their own compassionate enlightenment. If only they can sweep aside misguided leaders who mistakenly see a moral problem in embryo research, the stem cell ideology can win over a generation of aging baby-boomers–who shudder at their own mortality and count medical progress among the highest goods. Paul Ramsey, the late bioethicist, was more sensible, believing that “the moral history of mankind is more important than its medical history.” Usually the two move forward together–but not always.</p>
<p>If Kerry wins, the stem cell debate will be over, at least politically. He will reverse the three-year-old Bush policy of limiting federal funding to certain existing embryonic stem cell lines, and he will work to overturn the eight-year-old Dickey Amendment prohibiting federal funding for any research that directly involves the destruction of human embryos. He will begin a national project of embryo creation and destruction, enshrining it in American national policy.</p>
<p>And the debate about human cloning may also be over. As recently as July, John Kerry co-sponsored a bill that would allow the creation of embryos by cloning for research so long as they are destroyed after 14 days. Thus, in the name of curing disease, he would have us perfect the technology necessary to clone children. And if recent history is any guide, the taboo against cloning to produce children will erode, as the left defends it as just another reproductive choice. Even more broadly, the possibility of banning a whole range of radical new types of human procreation–producing children with genes from two men or two women, say, or producing children whose parents are dead fetuses–may disappear.</p>
<p>Perhaps this is the direction America is heading already–toward the normalization of the radical in biotechnology, and toward the loss of all qualms about using human embryos as research materials. Or perhaps, years from now, the embryo destruction project will be another embarrassing wart on American history–a moral error, corrected by those who follow us. But it is a distraction to look too far into the future, with either excessive despair or excessive optimism. Today’s election is what matters now, and John Kerry has given America a clear choice: the party of cloning or the party of moral limits.</p>
<p>– <a href="" type="internal">Eric Cohen</a>&#160;is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the editor of <a href="http://www.thenewatlantis.com" type="external">The New Atlantis</a>.</p> | false | 1 | john kerrys recent assertions stem cell research obviously untrue easily refuted must level actually believe themas ideologue claims repeatedly president bush enacted farreaching ban stem cell research fact bush administration provided 200 million stem cell research last year including 25 million embryonic stem cell research claims stem cells one day cure alzheimers disease ailment uniquely terrifies babyboom generation leading scientists including enthusiastic supporters stem cell research made clear stem cells help treat alzheimers kerry claims stem cell cures fingertips help way fact single human trial embryonic stem cell therapy unlike war iraq kerry maneuvers play sides stem cells issue brooks ambiguity progress president bush end suffering president bush leave sick look future fear william saletan noted recent piece slate kerry made biomedical advance religion stem cells gospel understanding religion workswhy inspires much antibush ire prokerry enthusiasm appeals aging anxious population would lead america became national faithshould priority enter final season campaign issue stem cells scientifically ethically complex stem cells undifferentiated selfreplicating cells potential become differentiated cells make various tissues human body laboratories acquire many sources bone marrow umbilical cord blood aborted fetuses embryos cloned embryos stem cells harvested adults purposes medical research ethically unproblematic research cells garners nearuniversal support receives 180 million per year funding national institutes health embryonic stem cells harvested human embryos destroyed process fraught ethical periland reason farreaching debate scientists believe embryonic stem cells hold greatest medical promise tiny embryo develop baby exquisitely specialized organs parts embryonic stem cells become virtually type human cell facility seemingly greater adult stem cells embryonic stem cell research earliest stages one knows whether powerful cells directed ways therapeutically useful moreover hard say whether scientific establishment political quest secure funding stave regulation overstating promise embryonic stem cells understating promise nonembryonic stem cells nevertheless one deny scientific potential embryo research large stake scientific community success one deny ethical problem research poses one speaks leading embryonic stem cell researchers disarming discover destruction human embryos already normal embryo clump cells scientists say small period end sentence embryos clumps cells scientists would want badly unique biological power embryo inseparable kind organism integrated developing genetically whole human creature earliest days life three decades ago scientists gained power initiate life laboratory destroy routinely without fear trembling embryos needed embryonic stem cell research come three sources 1 produced vitro fertilization union egg sperm laboratory performed behalf infertile couples often produce embryos actually implant children 2 produced vitro fertilization solely purposes research 3 clonedthat produced using somatic cell nuclear transfer persons dna inserted enucleated human egg technique produced dolly sheep first step way reproductive human cloning proponents embryo research willing draw certain ethical lines respect certain ethical limits example nih proposed funding creation embryos solely research 1994 clinton administration supported embryo research rejected proposal radical president bush deliberated federal funding stem cell research 2001 stem cell advocates called funding within limits argued thousands embryos already frozen storage funding research embryos imposed extra moral cost today debate moved leading proponents embryo research radicaldemanding public funding without say research banned rejecting past limits promising moon kerry epitomizes radicalization stem cell movement kerrys convention ron reagan lauded personal biological repair kits derived cloned embryos running mate sen john edwards endorsed therapeutic cloning seems democrats poised cross yet another ethical political boundary federal funding creation study destruction cloned human embryos cloned embryos necessary provide stem cells tailormade individual stem cell research succeed federal funding day come national project cloned embryo research ideology stem cells made democrats party cloning like true believers believe inconvenient facts ignored history side medical discoveries come stem cells crucial next steps humanitys uphill climb john kerry declared summer radio address tide history us ron reagan intoned convention chance take giant stride forward good humanity choose future past reason ignorance true compassion mere ideology indeed stem cell issue visceral appeal liberals construe referendum bushs backwardlooking religiosity sign compassionate enlightenment sweep aside misguided leaders mistakenly see moral problem embryo research stem cell ideology win generation aging babyboomerswho shudder mortality count medical progress among highest goods paul ramsey late bioethicist sensible believing moral history mankind important medical history usually two move forward togetherbut always kerry wins stem cell debate least politically reverse threeyearold bush policy limiting federal funding certain existing embryonic stem cell lines work overturn eightyearold dickey amendment prohibiting federal funding research directly involves destruction human embryos begin national project embryo creation destruction enshrining american national policy debate human cloning may also recently july john kerry cosponsored bill would allow creation embryos cloning research long destroyed 14 days thus name curing disease would us perfect technology necessary clone children recent history guide taboo cloning produce children erode left defends another reproductive choice even broadly possibility banning whole range radical new types human procreationproducing children genes two men two women say producing children whose parents dead fetusesmay disappear perhaps direction america heading alreadytoward normalization radical biotechnology toward loss qualms using human embryos research materials perhaps years embryo destruction project another embarrassing wart american historya moral error corrected follow us distraction look far future either excessive despair excessive optimism todays election matters john kerry given america clear choice party cloning party moral limits eric cohen160is resident scholar ethics public policy center editor new atlantis | 860 |
<p>With the excitement already building for the year-end release of the latest “ <a href="http://variety.com/t/star-wars/" type="external">Star Wars</a>” film, the new video game “ <a href="http://variety.com/t/star-wars-battlefront-ii/" type="external">Star Wars: Battlefront II</a>” was poised to capitalize on all the excitement for the vaunted Disney franchise.</p>
<p>Unfortunately for <a href="http://variety.com/t/electronic-arts/" type="external">Electronic Arts</a>, the video game studio behind “Battlefront II,” controversy and fan anger over the game’s microtransactions greatly decreased enthusiasm for its November launch, illustrating increasing consumer discontent with some current trends in the gaming industry.</p>
<p>Microtransactions refer to a business model where virtual goods, such as characters, costumes, or weapons, can be purchased online for small sums of real currency. One form of microtransactions are loot boxes, a type of unlockable in-game content that contains a randomized selection of items. These loot boxes can either be earned through normal gameplay or can also often be purchased for real money.</p>
<p>The purchasable items in “Battlefront II” are being roundly criticized for providing a dramatically different gameplay experience and provide an unfair advantage over players who do not purchase them.</p>
<p>In the week before the game’s wide release, “Battlefront II” was made available to play for subscribers to the <a href="http://variety.com/t/ea/" type="external">EA</a> Access service. But in order to unlock iconic character Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader, estimates had gamers needing to spend 60,000 in-game credits which could be earned after an estimated 40 hours of gameplay.</p>
<p>While characters like Vader could not be purchased for money, players not willing to invest that amount of time could instead purchase crystals, a separate type of in-game currency than the credits, which could be used to buy loot boxes in the hopes that the boxes would contain the items they want. Crystals ranged in price from $5 for 500 to $100 for 12,000 crystals.</p>
<p>Word quickly spread around the internet and upset many people who were anticipating the game’s release. EA responded to the situation on Reddit, saying that the high unlock requirements were meant to give players a “sense of accomplishment”; the comment quickly became the most downvoted comment in the website’s history.</p>
<p>By one estimate on the fan website SWTOR Strategies, it would take 4,528 hours of gameplay or spending $2,100 to unlock all of the game’s content. EA then cut the unlock prices by 75%, so a top-tier character like Darth Vader now cost 15,000 credits as opposed to 60,000.</p>
<p>Other gaming companies quickly got in on the joke. The Starcraft II Twitter account took aim at EA, tweeting “Number of pay-to-win mechanics in StarCraft II: 0.” Game developer CD Projekt Red tweeted that their upcoming game “Cyberpunk 2077” would have “no hidden catch, you get what you pay for — no bullshit, just honest gaming…. We leave greed to others.”</p>
<p>. <a href="https://twitter.com/PrettyBadTweets?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">@PrettyBadTweets</a> Worry not. When thinking CP2077, think nothing less than TW3 — huge single player, open world, story-driven RPG. No hidden catch, you get what you pay for — no bullshit, just honest gaming like with Wild Hunt. We leave greed to others.</p>
<p>— CD PROJEKT RED (@CDPROJEKTRED) <a href="https://twitter.com/CDPROJEKTRED/status/932224394541314055?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">November 19, 2017</a></p>
<p>The day before the game’s wide release, EA announced that while the loot boxes would remain in the game, microtransactions would temporarily be suspended. However, reports that Walt Disney consumer products and interactive media chairman Jimmy Pitaro contacted EA CEO Andrew Wilson hours before the announcement suggested the possibility that Disney strong-armed EA into suspending microtransactions in order to protect the “ <a href="http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/star-wars-tv-series-disney-streaming-service-1202611408/" type="external">Star Wars</a>” brand image.</p>
<p>But EA also signaled that microtransactions will be returned to the game after changes are made, a reflection of how crucial they are to “Battlefront II” achieving profitability.</p>
<p>EA’s big fumble illustrates the delicacy with which companies will have to approach microtransactions in the future. When it comes to popular intellectual property, the companies that own those rights will likely become more involved earlier on to ensure that fan engagement with the property remains positive, according to Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter.</p>
<p>“I do think for the next version of ‘Star Wars,’ Disney is going to get involved earlier before EA springs it on an unsuspecting consumer,” he said.</p>
<p>Following the announcement, EA released a statement to investors that the “change is not expected to have a material impact on EA’s fiscal year.” Pachter agrees, stating that most people who purchase “Star Wars” games are gift-givers who would be unaware of the controversy and doubts that after the changes, more than three percent of prospective buyers will still be angry enough not to buy the game.</p>
<p>CNBC reported that Evan Wingren, an analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets called the negativity surrounding “Battlefront II” an “overreaction,” claimed that gamers were being undercharged for games, and even that it would be a good time to purchase stock in EA.</p>
<p>However, according to Eurogamer, physical sales of the game have dropped 60% compared to EA’s previous “Battlefront” game, although this does not account for digital purchases of the game, which could have been much higher. According to CNBC, EA shares have declined 10 percent month to date through Monday.</p>
<p>This is not the first time that EA has met the ire of gamers and “Star Wars” fans. When the first game of the “Battlefront” series reboot and the third title in the franchise was released, EA also sold a $50 season pass of extra downloadable content (DLC), causing consumers to accuse EA of selling an unfinished game and finding an excuse to raise the price tag to $110. Following the fan outrage, the company announced that the DLC for “Battlefront II” would all be free.</p>
<p>A recent trend in gaming has seen game developers shift away from paid DLC content to providing free DLC but incorporating microtransactions and loot boxes into their games. While loot boxes and microtransactions initially began with cosmetic items, like outfits or character “skins” that do not affect gameplay, fans have complained that more recent titles like “Battlefront II” and Warner Bros.’s “Middle Earth: Shadow of War” have demonstrated a tendency toward a pay-to-win model, where powerful weapons, characters, or other game-changing content are available for purchase, thus making the game unfair for players who are unwilling to spend extra money.</p>
<p>Though “Shadow of War,” which is tied to the universe of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings,” initially drew the anger of consumers for its microtransactions and loot boxes, the controversy died down as players discovered that the game-changing items provided were not necessary to complete the game nor did they provide too much of an advantage.</p>
<p>Belgian and Dutch authorities are looking to regulate loot boxes, arguing that by putting loot boxes in games marketed towards children and making them available for purchase with real money without knowing what they will contain in return, games encourage gambling in children. On Tuesday, the Belgian gambling commission declared loot boxes a form of gambling and are now looking to have them banned across Europe.</p>
<p>Pachter, who is a lawyer, said that while he is unfamiliar with Dutch or Belgian law, such a suit should not have any legal basis under U.S. law since items received do not have a tangible monetary value attached.</p>
<p>However, that sentiment is not shared by Hawaiian politicians, who are making efforts to have loot boxes classified as gambling; have games containing loot boxes restricted from purchase by anyone under age 21; and restricting those types of mechanisms in games.</p>
<p>“”This game is a Star Wars-themed online casino designed to lure kids into spending money. It’s a trap,” said Hawaiian state representative Chris Lee. “This is something we need to address to ensure that particularly kids who are underage, who are not psychologically and emotionally mature enough to gamble–which is why gambling is prohibited under [the age of] 21–are protected from being trapped into these cycles which have compelled many folks to spend thousands of dollars in gaming fees online.”</p>
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<p>While this new legislative effort may have an uncertain future, industry analysts and veterans believe that microtransactions and loot boxes are not going anywhere. While the industry transitions away from paid DLC, Pachter believes that companies will follow the models of Blizzard’s “Overwatch,” whose loot box and microtransaction items are all cosmetic, and Bungie’s “Destiny 2,” which rolled out its microtransaction content in a more controlled manner and wasn’t tied to massive IP and fan expectations.</p>
<p>“You didn’t hear anybody complain about ‘Destiny’ or ‘Overwatch,’ which is ongoing and doing $100 million a quarter in microtransactions,” he said. “I think there’ll be a tilt back towards cosmetic stuff. People like to dress their characters in outfits. People will buy them.”</p> | false | 1 | excitement already building yearend release latest star wars film new video game star wars battlefront ii poised capitalize excitement vaunted disney franchise unfortunately electronic arts video game studio behind battlefront ii controversy fan anger games microtransactions greatly decreased enthusiasm november launch illustrating increasing consumer discontent current trends gaming industry microtransactions refer business model virtual goods characters costumes weapons purchased online small sums real currency one form microtransactions loot boxes type unlockable ingame content contains randomized selection items loot boxes either earned normal gameplay also often purchased real money purchasable items battlefront ii roundly criticized providing dramatically different gameplay experience provide unfair advantage players purchase week games wide release battlefront ii made available play subscribers ea access service order unlock iconic character luke skywalker darth vader estimates gamers needing spend 60000 ingame credits could earned estimated 40 hours gameplay characters like vader could purchased money players willing invest amount time could instead purchase crystals separate type ingame currency credits could used buy loot boxes hopes boxes would contain items want crystals ranged price 5 500 100 12000 crystals word quickly spread around internet upset many people anticipating games release ea responded situation reddit saying high unlock requirements meant give players sense accomplishment comment quickly became downvoted comment websites history one estimate fan website swtor strategies would take 4528 hours gameplay spending 2100 unlock games content ea cut unlock prices 75 toptier character like darth vader cost 15000 credits opposed 60000 gaming companies quickly got joke starcraft ii twitter account took aim ea tweeting number paytowin mechanics starcraft ii 0 game developer cd projekt red tweeted upcoming game cyberpunk 2077 would hidden catch get pay bullshit honest gaming leave greed others prettybadtweets worry thinking cp2077 think nothing less tw3 huge single player open world storydriven rpg hidden catch get pay bullshit honest gaming like wild hunt leave greed others cd projekt red cdprojektred november 19 2017 day games wide release ea announced loot boxes would remain game microtransactions would temporarily suspended however reports walt disney consumer products interactive media chairman jimmy pitaro contacted ea ceo andrew wilson hours announcement suggested possibility disney strongarmed ea suspending microtransactions order protect star wars brand image ea also signaled microtransactions returned game changes made reflection crucial battlefront ii achieving profitability eas big fumble illustrates delicacy companies approach microtransactions future comes popular intellectual property companies rights likely become involved earlier ensure fan engagement property remains positive according wedbush securities analyst michael pachter think next version star wars disney going get involved earlier ea springs unsuspecting consumer said following announcement ea released statement investors change expected material impact eas fiscal year pachter agrees stating people purchase star wars games giftgivers would unaware controversy doubts changes three percent prospective buyers still angry enough buy game cnbc reported evan wingren analyst keybanc capital markets called negativity surrounding battlefront ii overreaction claimed gamers undercharged games even would good time purchase stock ea however according eurogamer physical sales game dropped 60 compared eas previous battlefront game although account digital purchases game could much higher according cnbc ea shares declined 10 percent month date monday first time ea met ire gamers star wars fans first game battlefront series reboot third title franchise released ea also sold 50 season pass extra downloadable content dlc causing consumers accuse ea selling unfinished game finding excuse raise price tag 110 following fan outrage company announced dlc battlefront ii would free recent trend gaming seen game developers shift away paid dlc content providing free dlc incorporating microtransactions loot boxes games loot boxes microtransactions initially began cosmetic items like outfits character skins affect gameplay fans complained recent titles like battlefront ii warner bross middle earth shadow war demonstrated tendency toward paytowin model powerful weapons characters gamechanging content available purchase thus making game unfair players unwilling spend extra money though shadow war tied universe jrr tolkiens lord rings initially drew anger consumers microtransactions loot boxes controversy died players discovered gamechanging items provided necessary complete game provide much advantage belgian dutch authorities looking regulate loot boxes arguing putting loot boxes games marketed towards children making available purchase real money without knowing contain return games encourage gambling children tuesday belgian gambling commission declared loot boxes form gambling looking banned across europe pachter lawyer said unfamiliar dutch belgian law suit legal basis us law since items received tangible monetary value attached however sentiment shared hawaiian politicians making efforts loot boxes classified gambling games containing loot boxes restricted purchase anyone age 21 restricting types mechanisms games game star warsthemed online casino designed lure kids spending money trap said hawaiian state representative chris lee something need address ensure particularly kids underage psychologically emotionally mature enough gamblewhich gambling prohibited age 21are protected trapped cycles compelled many folks spend thousands dollars gaming fees online embedded content new legislative effort may uncertain future industry analysts veterans believe microtransactions loot boxes going anywhere industry transitions away paid dlc pachter believes companies follow models blizzards overwatch whose loot box microtransaction items cosmetic bungies destiny 2 rolled microtransaction content controlled manner wasnt tied massive ip fan expectations didnt hear anybody complain destiny overwatch ongoing 100 million quarter microtransactions said think therell tilt back towards cosmetic stuff people like dress characters outfits people buy | 862 |
<p>BALTIMORE RAVENS (4-5) AT GREEN BAY PACKERS (5-4)</p>
<p>KICKOFF: Sunday, 1 p.m. ET, Lambeau Field. TV: <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: Sixth regular-season meeting. Packers lead series, 4-1. The Packers are also 3-0 at Lambeau Field. The teams last played in 2013, when the Packers won 19-17 at M&amp;T Bank Stadium. Baltimore most previously played at Green Bay in 2009, losing 27-14 on “Monday Night Football.”</p>
<p>KEYS TO THE GAME: Both the Ravens and Packers feel like they have an opportunity this week. Baltimore is 4-5 but is only a game out of the playoffs.</p>
<p>The Ravens, coming off their bye, need to establish an offensive identity — and that means running the ball.</p>
<p>In a 23-20 loss to Tennessee, Baltimore, playing from behind for most of the game, ran the ball 22 times. A week earlier, running back Alex Collins rushed for 113 yards in 40-0 thrashing of the Dolphins.</p>
<p>Quarterback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Joe_Flacco/" type="external">Joe Flacco</a> attempted 52 passes in the loss and just 15 in the win.</p>
<p>The Packers will look for another efficient performance from quarterback Brett Hundley. And that will mean keeping him upright.</p>
<p>In Green Bay’s 23-16 win in Chicago last week, Hundley was 18-for-25 for 212 yards and a touchdown, but he was sacked five times.</p>
<p>The Packers also need to get wide receiver <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jordy_Nelson/" type="external">Jordy Nelson</a> more involved. Since <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Aaron_Rodgers/" type="external">Aaron Rodgers</a> was injured against Minnesota in Week 6, Nelson doesn’t have more than 60 yards receiving in a game and hasn’t scored. He had six touchdowns in the first five games of the season.</p>
<p>MATCHUPS TO WATCH:</p>
<p>–Packers QB Brett Hundley vs. Ravens secondary. Green Bay has gone 1-2 with Hundley as the starting quarterback. However, he led the Packers to a 23-16 victory over the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Chicago_Bears/" type="external">Chicago Bears</a> on Sunday and appears to be finding his footing. The Ravens already lost at home to Bears backup <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Mitchell-Trubisky/" type="external">Mitchell Trubisky</a>, so that could provide Hundley with some added confidence. Nonetheless, the Ravens want to force Hundley to throw the ball and potentially make mistakes. Baltimore has several playmakers in the secondary, including safety <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Eric-Weddle/" type="external">Eric Weddle</a> and cornerback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Brandon-Carr/" type="external">Brandon Carr</a>, who are tied for the team lead with three interceptions apiece. Hundley has thrown for 701 yards, with two touchdowns and four interceptions.</p>
<p>–Ravens RB Alex Collins vs. Packers LB <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Blake-Martinez/" type="external">Blake Martinez</a>. Even though the Ravens will be healthier at running back, Collins should still get most of the carries. He is ranked 13th in the NFL with 521 yards. However, he has yet to score a touchdown on 93 carries. Martinez is tied for sixth in the league with 76 tackles. The Packers will look to shut down the ground game and force the Ravens to throw because quarterback Joe Flacco is prone to mistakes. Baltimore could lean heavily on Collins to extend drives and tire Green Bay’s defense. The Packers are ranked 17th against the run.</p>
<p>PLAYER SPOTLIGHT: Ravens TE Nick Boyle. The 2015 fifth-round pick leaped to the top of the depth chart this season. He missed the previous game with a toe injury, but should be fully healthy for Green Bay. Boyle has dependable hands and exceptional blocking skills. He has played a key role in the Ravens’ 10th-ranked rushing attack. Boyle has 18 receptions for 138 yards.</p>
<p>FAST FACTS: Ravens QB Joe Flacco passed for 342 yards and two TDs in the last meeting. He hasn’t thrown an interception in three straight road games vs. NFC clubs. … RB Alex Collins has 189 scrimmage yards (94.5 per game) in the past two games. He ranks second in the NFL at 5.6 yards per carry. … WR <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jeremy_Maclin/" type="external">Jeremy Maclin</a> led the team with 98 receiving yards in Week 9. In the past two vs. Green Bay, he has 17 catches for 234 yards (117 per game) and two TDs. … TE Benjamin <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Watson/" type="external">Watson</a> scored in his only career game at Green Bay (2006 with New England). He has 38 catches, tied for sixth among AFC tight ends. … LB <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/CJ-Mosley/" type="external">C.J. Mosley</a> has 40 tackles (10 per game), four tackles for loss, a forced fumble and recovery in his past four vs. the NFC. He’s the only NFL player with 75 tackles (76), two INTs and a sack. … LB Matt Judon has seven TFL and three sacks in the past four games. … S Lardarius Webb is the only NFL safety with 15 interceptions and 85 pass breakups since 2010. … Packers QB Brett Hundley earned his first career win in Week 10. He competed 18 of 25 with a TD last week. … RB <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ty-Montgomery/" type="external">Ty Montgomery</a> had a career-long 37-yard rushing TD in Week 10, and rookie RB Jamaal Williams rushed for a career-high 67 yards. They will take over for Aaron Jones, who is out with an MCL injury. … WR <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Davante-Adams/" type="external">Davante Adams</a> led the team with 90 yards and a TD last week. He has 233 receiving yards (77.7 per game) in his past three games vs. the AFC. Since 2016, Jordy Nelson (20) and Adams (18) rank first and second in the NFL in TD catches. … LB <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Clay-Matthews/" type="external">Clay Matthews</a> had two sacks in the last home meeting. He has seven sacks and two forced fumbles in seven career meetings vs. the AFC North. … LB <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Nick-Perry/" type="external">Nick Perry</a> had a career-high three sacks in Week 10. He has 5.5 sacks, a forced fumble and recovery in his past five games. He also has five sacks in the past five home games. … CB Davon House has 23 tackles, a sack and an interception in the past three games. He has two INTs in three career meetings.</p>
<p>PREDICTION: The Packers rushed for 160 yards in their win over the Bears. If they can replicate that and limit the Baltimore pass rush, they can get another win as they await Aaron Rodgers’ return.</p>
<p>OUR PICK: Packers, 20-13.</p>
<p>–Ched Whitney</p> | false | 1 | baltimore ravens 45 green bay packers 54 kickoff sunday 1 pm et lambeau field tv kevin harlan rich gannon series history sixth regularseason meeting packers lead series 41 packers also 30 lambeau field teams last played 2013 packers 1917 mampt bank stadium baltimore previously played green bay 2009 losing 2714 monday night football keys game ravens packers feel like opportunity week baltimore 45 game playoffs ravens coming bye need establish offensive identity means running ball 2320 loss tennessee baltimore playing behind game ran ball 22 times week earlier running back alex collins rushed 113 yards 400 thrashing dolphins quarterback joe flacco attempted 52 passes loss 15 win packers look another efficient performance quarterback brett hundley mean keeping upright green bays 2316 win chicago last week hundley 18for25 212 yards touchdown sacked five times packers also need get wide receiver jordy nelson involved since aaron rodgers injured minnesota week 6 nelson doesnt 60 yards receiving game hasnt scored six touchdowns first five games season matchups watch packers qb brett hundley vs ravens secondary green bay gone 12 hundley starting quarterback however led packers 2316 victory chicago bears sunday appears finding footing ravens already lost home bears backup mitchell trubisky could provide hundley added confidence nonetheless ravens want force hundley throw ball potentially make mistakes baltimore several playmakers secondary including safety eric weddle cornerback brandon carr tied team lead three interceptions apiece hundley thrown 701 yards two touchdowns four interceptions ravens rb alex collins vs packers lb blake martinez even though ravens healthier running back collins still get carries ranked 13th nfl 521 yards however yet score touchdown 93 carries martinez tied sixth league 76 tackles packers look shut ground game force ravens throw quarterback joe flacco prone mistakes baltimore could lean heavily collins extend drives tire green bays defense packers ranked 17th run player spotlight ravens te nick boyle 2015 fifthround pick leaped top depth chart season missed previous game toe injury fully healthy green bay boyle dependable hands exceptional blocking skills played key role ravens 10thranked rushing attack boyle 18 receptions 138 yards fast facts ravens qb joe flacco passed 342 yards two tds last meeting hasnt thrown interception three straight road games vs nfc clubs rb alex collins 189 scrimmage yards 945 per game past two games ranks second nfl 56 yards per carry wr jeremy maclin led team 98 receiving yards week 9 past two vs green bay 17 catches 234 yards 117 per game two tds te benjamin watson scored career game green bay 2006 new england 38 catches tied sixth among afc tight ends lb cj mosley 40 tackles 10 per game four tackles loss forced fumble recovery past four vs nfc hes nfl player 75 tackles 76 two ints sack lb matt judon seven tfl three sacks past four games lardarius webb nfl safety 15 interceptions 85 pass breakups since 2010 packers qb brett hundley earned first career win week 10 competed 18 25 td last week rb ty montgomery careerlong 37yard rushing td week 10 rookie rb jamaal williams rushed careerhigh 67 yards take aaron jones mcl injury wr davante adams led team 90 yards td last week 233 receiving yards 777 per game past three games vs afc since 2016 jordy nelson 20 adams 18 rank first second nfl td catches lb clay matthews two sacks last home meeting seven sacks two forced fumbles seven career meetings vs afc north lb nick perry careerhigh three sacks week 10 55 sacks forced fumble recovery past five games also five sacks past five home games cb davon house 23 tackles sack interception past three games two ints three career meetings prediction packers rushed 160 yards win bears replicate limit baltimore pass rush get another win await aaron rodgers return pick packers 2013 ched whitney | 629 |
<p>This piece, co-authored with <a href="http://healthaffairs.org/blog/author/antos/" type="external">Joseph Antos</a>, <a href="http://healthaffairs.org/blog/author/chen/" type="external">Lanhee Chen</a>, <a href="http://healthaffairs.org/blog/author/miller/" type="external">Thomas Miller</a>, <a href="http://healthaffairs.org/blog/author/ponnuru/" type="external">Ramesh Ponnuru</a>,&#160; <a href="http://healthaffairs.org/blog/author/aroy/" type="external">Avik Roy</a>, <a href="http://healthaffairs.org/blog/author/gail/" type="external">Gail R. Wilensky</a>, and <a href="http://healthaffairs.org/blog/author/dwilson/" type="external">David Wilson</a>,&#160;is a condensed version of a longer paper&#160;published by AEI, which may be viewed <a href="http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/A-contingency-plan-for-King-v-Burwell.pdf" type="external">here</a>.</p>
<p>Majorities in both chambers of Congress strongly believe that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is too prescriptive and moves too much authority over the health system to the federal government. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiffs in the King v. Burwell case, Congress will have the opportunity to advance health care policies that expand consumer choice, increase coverage, deliver better value for the dollar, and allow state governments more say over health care policy.</p>
<p>Congress should do what it can to protect Americans in the affected states who signed up for coverage assuming the availability of subsidies while also making changes that would be real improvements over the ACA’s current rules and requirements.</p>
<p>An effective legislative response to a Supreme Court decision in favor of the plaintiffs in the pending cases would have four elements.</p>
<p>A legislative response should begin with a short-term replacement of current subsidies in states using the federal exchanges with equivalent amounts under revised rules. This extension, which should last through 2015 at a minimum (and no longer than mid-2016 under any circumstances), would be necessary to implement steps 2 through 4. Congress might even consider enacting a short-term extension quickly to give it time to legislate those steps. Either way, the short-term extension should not extend subsidies to new enrollees in the exchanges. A bill with this short-term authorization of existing subsidies should also specify that reinstating the subsidies does not trigger the application of the individual and employer mandates in the affected states, and therefore, no penalties will be imposed or collected. ( <a href="http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2015/06/15/a-market-based-contingency-plan-for-king-v-burwell/#one" type="external">Note 1</a>)</p>
<p>Congress should grant states an additional option to providing insurance coverage to those without employer plans, using a revised formula for federal tax credits. There are two approaches to providing these credits that merit consideration:</p>
<p>Fixed Tax Credits by Age. For reasons of administrative feasibility and simplicity, the tax credits could be set initially as fixed-dollar amounts based on age. (Older people would get larger subsidies, reflecting their tendency to use health services more.) They should be sufficiently generous to ensure that anyone receiving them could purchase an affordable health insurance policy. These subsidies should be available to people who are ineligible for employer coverage (and thus ineligible for the tax benefit already attached to such plans).</p>
<p>Many different levels of tax credits could accomplish the goals of this proposal. One option would be to set the credits at $1,200 for nondependents under age 35; $2,100 for persons between 35 and 50 years old; and $3,000 for persons over age 50. In addition, households would get $900 per dependent child. ( <a href="http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2015/06/15/a-market-based-contingency-plan-for-king-v-burwell/#two" type="external">Note 2</a>) Previous modeling indicates these credits would be sufficient to ensure a large percentage of the eligible population would be able to find and enroll in attractive insurance offerings.</p>
<p>Congress should consider whether these tax credits should be income-tested, as in the ACA. Income-testing would reduce the revenue impact of the subsidies that we estimate but also would make the credits harder to administer, make them less attractive to some consumers, and raise effective marginal tax rates.</p>
<p>Tax Credits Set as a Percentage of the Premium, Up to a Cap.&#160;If Congress is ready and able to achieve longer-lasting reform of health insurance subsidies, it should also consider matching the tax credits more closely to the varying costs of care and insurance that purchasers will face in the less-regulated markets ahead. This option would make the tax credit amounts more responsive to premiums that may vary by age and geography. Structuring the tax credits as a uniform fixed percentage of premium costs would provide all purchasers with the same subsidized discount rate in choosing insurance plans. This initial floating cost-based subsidy structure then could be adjusted in later years to set a ceiling on maximum tax benefits (to curb overspending) and add subsidies for more economically or medically vulnerable populations.</p>
<p>Under either option, the federal employer and individual mandates would remain inoperative, as should the federal definition of essential benefits and the federal age band restrictions. States electing this option would be given the authority to regulate the available insurance options according to state law and policy, but they should be encouraged to make those markets as competitive, accountable, and consumer-driven as possible.</p>
<p>Under this alternative system, states, rather than the federal government, would be in charge of regulating health insurance. There should be only one federal requirement: to qualify for the new federal tax credits, insurance policies offered in these states must be available to all who have maintained continuous insurance coverage (measured as three or fewer months without coverage over the preceding three-year period). ( <a href="http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2015/06/15/a-market-based-contingency-plan-for-king-v-burwell/#three" type="external">Note 3</a>)&#160;Insurers would not be allowed to charge a higher premium to people who have been continuously insured and come to them with a preexisting health condition. Insurers would also be prevented from charging higher premiums to customers who subsequently develop serious health conditions and from imposing coverage restrictions tied to changes in a person’s health status. States would be free to regulate insurance offerings differently for those without continuous insurance enrollment.</p>
<p>This regulation extends to individual-market consumers the same kind of protections that HIPAA rules provide to those continuously covered in the employer group market. The ACA couples a broad prohibition on the use of health status in insurance decisions with the individual mandate. The protection we favor would apply to people who maintain continuous insurance coverage. That would create a strong incentive to stay covered (and the tax credit would provide the mechanism to stay covered) obviating the need for the individual mandate.</p>
<p>State governments taking advantage of the new option should be allowed (but not required) to adopt default enrollment. If someone has not used his allotted tax credit to purchase health insurance, he would be enrolled (with advance notice) in a policy whose premium is equal to his forgone credit.</p>
<p>If the individual does not opt out upon receiving this notice, providers can use his insurance benefits to claim reimbursement for the care that they provide. This would effectively provide such a person with the benefits of catastrophic-level insurance coverage at no cost. State governments electing this option must invest in the infrastructure needed to minimize fraudulent insurance claims and ensure informed consent by default enrollees.</p>
<p>An alternative to this multipart reform program is a straightforward block grant or capped allotment to the states, with the states taking the lead on designing and implementing some kind of bridge in the aftermath of a Supreme Court decision.</p>
<p>State governments might find a capped allotment more attractive than federal tax credits because they would have even greater flexibility to implement a program of their choosing. Some members of Congress might prefer this approach because they could avoid some of the controversial or difficult policy choices that necessarily come with the design of a federal tax credit for health insurance.</p>
<p>On the other hand, it is not clear that allotment to states will necessarily result in a market-based reform plan. The Children’s Health Insurance Program is a flexible allotment program to the states, and it has not been a model of consumer-driven health care. Indeed, the program can best be described as an add-on to the traditional Medicaid structure in most states.</p>
<p>Further, individuals at risk of higher premiums or losing insurance policies in the aftermath of the Kingdecision might be more reassured by federal legislation that provides a new approach to providing assistance directly to them than by legislation that makes their continued coverage contingent on state governments’ decisions.</p>
<p>A court decision in favor of the plaintiffs in King would create an unusual budgetary situation. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects federal spending based on current law; a court decision invalidating tens of billions of dollars in federal subsidy payments for health insurance would constitute a substantial change in law and thus also a substantial change in baseline spending estimates.</p>
<p>Legislation to temporarily extend the invalidated subsidies or to provide an alternative to the ACA’s structure would increase federal spending relative to an updated current-law baseline that assumes the invalidated subsidy payments will no longer be made. The revised baseline could prove to be an obstacle to consideration of a rational legislative response by Congress.</p>
<p>The budget plan Congress adopted this year recognized this potential problem and offers a partial way around it. For purposes of evaluating a potential legislative response to the King decision, the budget resolution allows the House to use baseline spending estimates issued by CBO in January 2015. This would allow consideration of a legislative response against a baseline that assumes continuation of the subsidy payments in all 50 states.</p>
<p>The workaround would not provide an unencumbered path to enactment of a new law. Statutory pay-as-you-go provisions enacted in 2010, aimed at ensuring all tax and entitlement legislation does not add to the federal budget deficit, cannot be overridden by a budget resolution and are enforced by the Office of Management and Budget in the executive branch. It is far from certain that the Obama administration would agree with a baseline adjustment adopted in Congress for purposes of enacting a post-Kinglegislative response.</p>
<p>For this and other reasons, it would be preferable for Congress to couple legislation providing renewed assistance for coverage with restraint of other federal spending. Among other things, Congress might consider eliminating some of the other spending approved in the ACA.</p>
<p>But it is important to be realistic about the political environment that would emerge in the wake of a decision for the plaintiffs in King. It is highly unlikely that the president and the Congress would allow several million people to lose substantial subsidization of their health insurance in a matter of weeks or months. One way or another, a legislative response will be necessary, and that may mean providing temporary subsidies without the offsetting spending reductions for some period of time.</p>
<p>If the court rules for the plaintiffs in King, Congress will have the opportunity to partially address the many shortcomings of the ACA by giving states an alternative approach to providing secure and affordable insurance options. That alternative would be free of the mandates and most of the regulations that mark the ACA and would therefore result in lower premiums. But it would also be likely to yield coverage levels comparable to the ACA and offer protection for people with preexisting conditions.</p>
<p>For supporters of the ACA, congressional action along the lines advocated here ought to be more attractive than letting millions of people lose their subsides with no replacement. For ACA opponents, demonstrating that there are other ways to help people get the coverage they prefer, without the ACA’s mandates and regulations, ought to be more attractive than doing nothing because it will demonstrate that a viable alternative to the ACA is possible.</p>
<p>The broader public, we suspect, will also see this alternative as more attractive than doing nothing as well.</p>
<p>Editor’s note: This post is a modified version of <a href="http://www.aei.org/publication/a-contingency-plan-for-king-v-burwell-and-related-cases" type="external">a paper</a> published by the American Enterprise Institute, with support from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the authors.&#160;Avik Roy is a paid adviser to former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, though Roy’s contributions to this article are his alone.</p>
<p>References</p>
<p>Blumberg, Linda J., Matthew Buettgens, and John Holohan. 2015. <a href="http://www.urban.org/research/publication/implications-supreme-court-finding-plaintiff-king-vs-burwell-82-million-more-uninsured-and-35-higher-premiums" type="external">The Implications of a Supreme Court Finding for the Plaintiff in King v. Burwell: 8.2 Million Uninsured and 35% Higher Premiums</a>. Urban Institute.</p>
<p>Price, Tom. 2015. “ <a href="http://tomprice.house.gov/sites/tomprice.house.gov/files/Section%20by%20Section%20of%20HR%202300%20Empowering%20Patients%20First%20Act%202015.pdf" type="external">H.R. 2300, Empowering Patients First Act, Section-by-Section Overview</a>.”</p>
<p>Senate Republican Policy Committee. 2015. “ <a href="http://www.rpc.senate.gov/policy-papers/obamacare-scotus-ruling-looms" type="external">Obamacare SCOTUS Ruling Looms</a>.” March 10.</p>
<p>US Department of Health and Human Services. 2012. “ <a href="http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2012-03-27/html/2012-6125.htm" type="external">Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; Establishment of Exchanges and Qualified Health Plans; Exchange Standards for Employers</a>.” Federal Register 77 (59): 18394.</p>
<p>A ruling in the King case against the legality of federal tax credits for coverage in federal exchange states would create new risks for the Medicaid programs in those states that should be addressed in the same legislation providing a short-term extension of the existing subsidies. A careful reading of the ACA statute reveals that a proper definition of an “exchange established by the state” in King would also retrigger the ACA’s latent maintenance-of-effort (MOE) requirement for Medicaid programs in states without their own exchanges. State officials would be prohibited from changing the pre-March 2010 eligibility rules for Medicaid unless and until they establish a new ACA-compliant state exchange. Otherwise, they would risk forfeiture of all of their federal matching funds under Medicaid. Such a perpetual requirement is ill-advised, unilateral, coercive, and undoubtedly illegal, but overturning it in court—in line with the Supreme Court’s 2012 ruling in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius—still would take several years. Congress should step in more quickly to repeal this MOE provision as part of its first legislative response to a court ruling for the petitioners in King.</p>
<p>These are the credit amounts in Rep. Tom Price’s proposal for reform, the <a href="http://tomprice.house.gov/sites/tomprice.house.gov/files/Section%20by%20Section%20of%20HR%202300%20Empowering%20Patients%20First%20Act%202015.pdf" type="external">Empowering Patients First Act</a> (Price 2015).</p>
<p>States would be free to establish more flexible policies for providing this protection during the transition from the ACA’s structure to the new alternative regulatory approach. Additional federal funding for high-risk pools could provide some transition assistance for people who have not been in continuous coverage for a sufficient number of months at the time of the switch. States could also establish an “open season” to allow the uninsured to secure continuous coverage protection if they enroll in insurance during a specified period of time. High-risk pool funding could also be used to stabilize premiums for this population.</p> | false | 1 | piece coauthored joseph antos lanhee chen thomas miller ramesh ponnuru160 avik roy gail r wilensky david wilson160is condensed version longer paper160published aei may viewed majorities chambers congress strongly believe affordable care act aca prescriptive moves much authority health system federal government supreme court rules favor plaintiffs king v burwell case congress opportunity advance health care policies expand consumer choice increase coverage deliver better value dollar allow state governments say health care policy congress protect americans affected states signed coverage assuming availability subsidies also making changes would real improvements acas current rules requirements effective legislative response supreme court decision favor plaintiffs pending cases would four elements legislative response begin shortterm replacement current subsidies states using federal exchanges equivalent amounts revised rules extension last 2015 minimum longer mid2016 circumstances would necessary implement steps 2 4 congress might even consider enacting shortterm extension quickly give time legislate steps either way shortterm extension extend subsidies new enrollees exchanges bill shortterm authorization existing subsidies also specify reinstating subsidies trigger application individual employer mandates affected states therefore penalties imposed collected note 1 congress grant states additional option providing insurance coverage without employer plans using revised formula federal tax credits two approaches providing credits merit consideration fixed tax credits age reasons administrative feasibility simplicity tax credits could set initially fixeddollar amounts based age older people would get larger subsidies reflecting tendency use health services sufficiently generous ensure anyone receiving could purchase affordable health insurance policy subsidies available people ineligible employer coverage thus ineligible tax benefit already attached plans many different levels tax credits could accomplish goals proposal one option would set credits 1200 nondependents age 35 2100 persons 35 50 years old 3000 persons age 50 addition households would get 900 per dependent child note 2 previous modeling indicates credits would sufficient ensure large percentage eligible population would able find enroll attractive insurance offerings congress consider whether tax credits incometested aca incometesting would reduce revenue impact subsidies estimate also would make credits harder administer make less attractive consumers raise effective marginal tax rates tax credits set percentage premium cap160if congress ready able achieve longerlasting reform health insurance subsidies also consider matching tax credits closely varying costs care insurance purchasers face lessregulated markets ahead option would make tax credit amounts responsive premiums may vary age geography structuring tax credits uniform fixed percentage premium costs would provide purchasers subsidized discount rate choosing insurance plans initial floating costbased subsidy structure could adjusted later years set ceiling maximum tax benefits curb overspending add subsidies economically medically vulnerable populations either option federal employer individual mandates would remain inoperative federal definition essential benefits federal age band restrictions states electing option would given authority regulate available insurance options according state law policy encouraged make markets competitive accountable consumerdriven possible alternative system states rather federal government would charge regulating health insurance one federal requirement qualify new federal tax credits insurance policies offered states must available maintained continuous insurance coverage measured three fewer months without coverage preceding threeyear period note 3160insurers would allowed charge higher premium people continuously insured come preexisting health condition insurers would also prevented charging higher premiums customers subsequently develop serious health conditions imposing coverage restrictions tied changes persons health status states would free regulate insurance offerings differently without continuous insurance enrollment regulation extends individualmarket consumers kind protections hipaa rules provide continuously covered employer group market aca couples broad prohibition use health status insurance decisions individual mandate protection favor would apply people maintain continuous insurance coverage would create strong incentive stay covered tax credit would provide mechanism stay covered obviating need individual mandate state governments taking advantage new option allowed required adopt default enrollment someone used allotted tax credit purchase health insurance would enrolled advance notice policy whose premium equal forgone credit individual opt upon receiving notice providers use insurance benefits claim reimbursement care provide would effectively provide person benefits catastrophiclevel insurance coverage cost state governments electing option must invest infrastructure needed minimize fraudulent insurance claims ensure informed consent default enrollees alternative multipart reform program straightforward block grant capped allotment states states taking lead designing implementing kind bridge aftermath supreme court decision state governments might find capped allotment attractive federal tax credits would even greater flexibility implement program choosing members congress might prefer approach could avoid controversial difficult policy choices necessarily come design federal tax credit health insurance hand clear allotment states necessarily result marketbased reform plan childrens health insurance program flexible allotment program states model consumerdriven health care indeed program best described addon traditional medicaid structure states individuals risk higher premiums losing insurance policies aftermath kingdecision might reassured federal legislation provides new approach providing assistance directly legislation makes continued coverage contingent state governments decisions court decision favor plaintiffs king would create unusual budgetary situation congressional budget office cbo projects federal spending based current law court decision invalidating tens billions dollars federal subsidy payments health insurance would constitute substantial change law thus also substantial change baseline spending estimates legislation temporarily extend invalidated subsidies provide alternative acas structure would increase federal spending relative updated currentlaw baseline assumes invalidated subsidy payments longer made revised baseline could prove obstacle consideration rational legislative response congress budget plan congress adopted year recognized potential problem offers partial way around purposes evaluating potential legislative response king decision budget resolution allows house use baseline spending estimates issued cbo january 2015 would allow consideration legislative response baseline assumes continuation subsidy payments 50 states workaround would provide unencumbered path enactment new law statutory payasyougo provisions enacted 2010 aimed ensuring tax entitlement legislation add federal budget deficit overridden budget resolution enforced office management budget executive branch far certain obama administration would agree baseline adjustment adopted congress purposes enacting postkinglegislative response reasons would preferable congress couple legislation providing renewed assistance coverage restraint federal spending among things congress might consider eliminating spending approved aca important realistic political environment would emerge wake decision plaintiffs king highly unlikely president congress would allow several million people lose substantial subsidization health insurance matter weeks months one way another legislative response necessary may mean providing temporary subsidies without offsetting spending reductions period time court rules plaintiffs king congress opportunity partially address many shortcomings aca giving states alternative approach providing secure affordable insurance options alternative would free mandates regulations mark aca would therefore result lower premiums would also likely yield coverage levels comparable aca offer protection people preexisting conditions supporters aca congressional action along lines advocated ought attractive letting millions people lose subsides replacement aca opponents demonstrating ways help people get coverage prefer without acas mandates regulations ought attractive nothing demonstrate viable alternative aca possible broader public suspect also see alternative attractive nothing well editors note post modified version paper published american enterprise institute support peter g peterson foundation statements made views expressed solely responsibility authors160avik roy paid adviser former texas gov rick perry though roys contributions article alone references blumberg linda j matthew buettgens john holohan 2015 implications supreme court finding plaintiff king v burwell 82 million uninsured 35 higher premiums urban institute price tom 2015 hr 2300 empowering patients first act sectionbysection overview senate republican policy committee 2015 obamacare scotus ruling looms march 10 us department health human services 2012 patient protection affordable care act establishment exchanges qualified health plans exchange standards employers federal register 77 59 18394 ruling king case legality federal tax credits coverage federal exchange states would create new risks medicaid programs states addressed legislation providing shortterm extension existing subsidies careful reading aca statute reveals proper definition exchange established state king would also retrigger acas latent maintenanceofeffort moe requirement medicaid programs states without exchanges state officials would prohibited changing premarch 2010 eligibility rules medicaid unless establish new acacompliant state exchange otherwise would risk forfeiture federal matching funds medicaid perpetual requirement illadvised unilateral coercive undoubtedly illegal overturning courtin line supreme courts 2012 ruling national federation independent business v sebeliusstill would take several years congress step quickly repeal moe provision part first legislative response court ruling petitioners king credit amounts rep tom prices proposal reform empowering patients first act price 2015 states would free establish flexible policies providing protection transition acas structure new alternative regulatory approach additional federal funding highrisk pools could provide transition assistance people continuous coverage sufficient number months time switch states could also establish open season allow uninsured secure continuous coverage protection enroll insurance specified period time highrisk pool funding could also used stabilize premiums population | 1,380 |
<p>Aug. 11 (UPI) — Arizona Cardinals star <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/David_Johnson/" type="external">David Johnson</a> is our top fantasy <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/John_Walker/" type="external">football</a> running back for 2017, followed by scores of other prolific ball carriers.</p>
<p>After Johnson and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Pittsburgh_Steelers/" type="external">Pittsburgh Steelers</a> running back <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/LeVeon-Bell/" type="external">Le’Veon Bell</a> come off of the board, you’ll need to be read up on the league’s top runners in the best positions to succeed.</p>
<p>That is why, at UPI, we have ranked our top 100 running backs, in standard format, for your 2017 fantasy football draft kit.</p>
<p>SCROLL DOWN FOR TOP 100</p>
<p>For clarity, here are some of the best running backs to look out for in five separate tiers, as well as some unheralded sleepers.</p>
<p>HALL OF FAME</p>
<p>1. David Johnson, 2. Le’Veon Bell, 3. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jay-Ajayi/" type="external">Jay Ajayi</a></p>
<p>He is already our <a href="https://www.upi.com/Sports_News/NFL/2017/08/05/Fantasy-Football-2017-draft-rankings-David-Johnson-leads-UPIs-top-150/3261501932853/" type="external">No. 1 overall ranked fantasy football player</a> for 2017, making him the de facto No. 1 running back this season heading into your draft. Although anything can happen on the injury front, Johnson should be locked in your lineup for every week of the fantasy football season with confidence, regardless of matchup. Johnson is perhaps the best receiving running back in the league, meaning if he somehow gets stuffed at the line, he can also get you points catching the ball in the open field. If you are looking for a perfect balance of explosiveness and consistency, this is your guy.</p>
<p>While he’s not there yet, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Miami-Dolphins/" type="external">Miami Dolphins</a> running back Jay Ajayi wants to be spoken in the same breath as Johnson and Le’Veon Bell. Ajayi and the Dolphins coaches have talked up his improved hands all offseason. He has no competition for carries and coach <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Adam-Gase/" type="external">Adam Gase</a> has already deemed him the bell cow. With <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ryan-Tannehill/" type="external">Ryan Tannehill</a> lost for the season, expect his carries to go up even more. Ajayi should still be drafted after Bell and Johnson, but he deserves consideration for your team after that. His ability to churn up yards after contact and an outlook for a bounty of carries ahead should also provide that consistent and explosive balance.</p>
<p>ALL-PRO</p>
<p>5. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Melvin-Gordon/" type="external">Melvin Gordon</a>, 6. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Devonta-Freeman/" type="external">Devonta Freeman</a>, 7. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/DeMarco_Murray/" type="external">DeMarco Murray</a></p>
<p>Los Angeles Chargers running back Melvin Gordon should be eyed toward the end of the first round or early in the second round. Gordon had a breakout year in 2016, making the Pro Bowl. He ran for 997 yards and 10 scores on 254 carries. He also had 41 catches for 419 yards and two touchdowns. He started just 11 games. I expect that Chargers to have a fantastic offense this season, with Gordon as the centerpiece.</p>
<p>Devonta Freeman won’t be weighed down by his bulky new contact this season. The <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Atlanta-Falcons/" type="external">Atlanta Falcons</a> playmaker started all 16 games last season and piled up a career-high 1,079 rushing yards and 11 rushing scores. He also had 462 receiving yards and two scores through the air. Freeman’s value is often overlooked because of the presence of <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tevin-Coleman/" type="external">Tevin Coleman</a>, but I expect another huge year for the third-year pro. Like Gordon, he is a good second-round target after you snag that stud wide receiver.</p>
<p>Many thought last season that <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Derrick-Henry/" type="external">Derrick Henry</a> would eventually steal touches from DeMarco Murray, but it never happened. Murray returned to his Pro Bowl form for the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tennessee-Titans/" type="external">Tennessee Titans</a>, running for 1,287 yards and nine touchdowns. He also had 377 receiving yards and three receiving touchdowns. Murray is a little bit less of a receiving threat than the previous backs mentioned, but he will provide RB1 value most weeks.</p>
<p>SCROLL DOWN FOR TOP 100</p>
<p>PRO-BOWL</p>
<p>9. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Lamar-Miller/" type="external">Lamar Miller</a>, 10. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Todd-Gurley/" type="external">Todd Gurley</a>, 12. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Leonard-Fournette/" type="external">Leonard Fournette</a>, 13. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Marshawn_Lynch/" type="external">Marshawn Lynch</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jacksonville-Jaguars/" type="external">Jacksonville Jaguars</a> rookie Leonard Fournette is going to get work right away. This offseason, Jaguars coach <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Doug-Marrone/" type="external">Doug Marrone</a> said that he wants to change the game by never passing the ball.</p>
<p>“For me, I like to run the ball every play,” Marrone said. “None [passes]. Zero. I want to <a href="https://www.upi.com/Jacksonville-Jaguars-coach-Doug-Marrone-says-he-likes-to-run-the-ball-every-play/5751497037165/" type="external">go back to the old way</a>. I want to change the game.”</p>
<p>That’s great news for fantasy football owners. I expect a great rookie year for Fournette, but only if <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Blake-Bortles/" type="external">Blake Bortles</a> rebounds from a dreadful 2016. Fournette’s stock is through the roof as fantasy football drafts near, so don’t pull the trigger too early. He’s a midrange RB2 for me this season.</p>
<p>“Beast Mode” is back. This offseason, Marshawn Lynch joined the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Oakland-Raiders/" type="external">Oakland Raiders</a>. He’ll immediately take over a starting role behind a great offensive line. While I don’t expect a huge yardage year from Lynch, his touchdown total warrants consideration for Lynch as a third or fourth round selection. Before Lynch’s last season in 2015, he had a stretch of four straight seasons with at least 12 touchdowns. He led the league with 25 rushing scores from 2013 through 2014. He’s a good bet for double-digit scores.</p>
<p>JUST NAPPING [EARLY TO MID-ROUND SLEEPERS]</p>
<p>14. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Isaiah-Crowell/" type="external">Isaiah Crowell</a>, 15. Christian McCaffrey, 17. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Joe-Mixon/" type="external">Joe Mixon</a>, 20. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Frank_Gore/" type="external">Frank Gore</a></p>
<p>You typically want to stay away from players on bad teams when it comes to fantasy football, but Isaiah Crowell should be owned if you need an RB2 on a wide-receiver-heavy team. The <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Cleveland-Browns/" type="external">Cleveland Browns</a> ball carrier averaged a career-best 4.8 yards per carry and had 1,271 yards from scrimmage and seven touchdowns last season. This offseason the Browns added right guard <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kevin-Zeitler/" type="external">Kevin Zeitler</a> and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/JC-Tretter/" type="external">J.C. Tretter</a> to its offensive line. The franchise has also drafted linemen the last two offseasons. With unstable quarterback play, Crowell will be counted on every game. He can also be counted on as an RB2 most weeks.</p>
<p>Joe Mixon and Christian McCaffrey are very interesting rookie considerations this year in fantasy football circles. Mixon has a shot at being the Week 1 starter and an every down back, while McCaffrey will be used all over the field. I expect Mixon to rise to the top of the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Cincinnati-Bengals/" type="external">Cincinnati Bengals</a>‘ depth chart at some point in the season, it just might not be right away. This outlook should keep Mixon from being picked too high in your draft. He should plug in as a low-end RB2 at the start of the season, but has RB1 potential if he takes over the job. McCaffrey joins a <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Carolina_Panthers/" type="external">Carolina Panthers</a> squad that wants to get back to the run. McCaffrey has looked outstanding in practice. In the long run, he could end up being an early round selection, but for now you shouldn’t reach too far for the former Stanford star. McCaffrey will have to demonstrate an ability to maintain a workload against NFL defenses. That being said, if you really want him you’ll probably have to spring for McCaffrey around the third or fourth round. Ideally, I’d like to get him in the fifth.</p>
<p>DRIFTING OFF [MID TO LATE-ROUND SLEEPERS]</p>
<p>21. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Danny-Woodhead/" type="external">Danny Woodhead</a>, 23. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Eddie-Lacy/" type="external">Eddie Lacy</a>, 24. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Dalvin-Cook/" type="external">Dalvin Cook</a>, 25. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ameer-Abdullah/" type="external">Ameer Abdullah</a>, 28. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/LeGarrette_Blount/" type="external">LeGarrette Blount</a>, 32. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Adrian_Peterson/" type="external">Adrian Peterson</a>, 39. Robert Kelley</p> | false | 1 | aug 11 upi arizona cardinals star david johnson top fantasy football running back 2017 followed scores prolific ball carriers johnson pittsburgh steelers running back leveon bell come board youll need read leagues top runners best positions succeed upi ranked top 100 running backs standard format 2017 fantasy football draft kit scroll top 100 clarity best running backs look five separate tiers well unheralded sleepers hall fame 1 david johnson 2 leveon bell 3 jay ajayi already 1 overall ranked fantasy football player 2017 making de facto 1 running back season heading draft although anything happen injury front johnson locked lineup every week fantasy football season confidence regardless matchup johnson perhaps best receiving running back league meaning somehow gets stuffed line also get points catching ball open field looking perfect balance explosiveness consistency guy hes yet miami dolphins running back jay ajayi wants spoken breath johnson leveon bell ajayi dolphins coaches talked improved hands offseason competition carries coach adam gase already deemed bell cow ryan tannehill lost season expect carries go even ajayi still drafted bell johnson deserves consideration team ability churn yards contact outlook bounty carries ahead also provide consistent explosive balance allpro 5 melvin gordon 6 devonta freeman 7 demarco murray los angeles chargers running back melvin gordon eyed toward end first round early second round gordon breakout year 2016 making pro bowl ran 997 yards 10 scores 254 carries also 41 catches 419 yards two touchdowns started 11 games expect chargers fantastic offense season gordon centerpiece devonta freeman wont weighed bulky new contact season atlanta falcons playmaker started 16 games last season piled careerhigh 1079 rushing yards 11 rushing scores also 462 receiving yards two scores air freemans value often overlooked presence tevin coleman expect another huge year thirdyear pro like gordon good secondround target snag stud wide receiver many thought last season derrick henry would eventually steal touches demarco murray never happened murray returned pro bowl form tennessee titans running 1287 yards nine touchdowns also 377 receiving yards three receiving touchdowns murray little bit less receiving threat previous backs mentioned provide rb1 value weeks scroll top 100 probowl 9 lamar miller 10 todd gurley 12 leonard fournette 13 marshawn lynch jacksonville jaguars rookie leonard fournette going get work right away offseason jaguars coach doug marrone said wants change game never passing ball like run ball every play marrone said none passes zero want go back old way want change game thats great news fantasy football owners expect great rookie year fournette blake bortles rebounds dreadful 2016 fournettes stock roof fantasy football drafts near dont pull trigger early hes midrange rb2 season beast mode back offseason marshawn lynch joined oakland raiders hell immediately take starting role behind great offensive line dont expect huge yardage year lynch touchdown total warrants consideration lynch third fourth round selection lynchs last season 2015 stretch four straight seasons least 12 touchdowns led league 25 rushing scores 2013 2014 hes good bet doubledigit scores napping early midround sleepers 14 isaiah crowell 15 christian mccaffrey 17 joe mixon 20 frank gore typically want stay away players bad teams comes fantasy football isaiah crowell owned need rb2 widereceiverheavy team cleveland browns ball carrier averaged careerbest 48 yards per carry 1271 yards scrimmage seven touchdowns last season offseason browns added right guard kevin zeitler jc tretter offensive line franchise also drafted linemen last two offseasons unstable quarterback play crowell counted every game also counted rb2 weeks joe mixon christian mccaffrey interesting rookie considerations year fantasy football circles mixon shot week 1 starter every back mccaffrey used field expect mixon rise top cincinnati bengals depth chart point season might right away outlook keep mixon picked high draft plug lowend rb2 start season rb1 potential takes job mccaffrey joins carolina panthers squad wants get back run mccaffrey looked outstanding practice long run could end early round selection shouldnt reach far former stanford star mccaffrey demonstrate ability maintain workload nfl defenses said really want youll probably spring mccaffrey around third fourth round ideally id like get fifth drifting mid lateround sleepers 21 danny woodhead 23 eddie lacy 24 dalvin cook 25 ameer abdullah 28 legarrette blount 32 adrian peterson 39 robert kelley | 692 |
<p>He was the Pope neither the Church nor the world expected. The surprises that characterized his twenty-six year pontificate began on the very night of John Paul II’s election.</p>
<p>On October 16, 1978, the Catholic Church was in a state of spiritual shock. The fifteen-year papacy of Paul VI, whom many veteran churchmen considered the perfectly prepared pope, had concluded in division and exhaustion. The bright promise of the Second Vatican Council was a fading memory. Paul’s successor, John Paul I, seemed on the verge of revitalizing the papacy when he died after a mere thirty-three days in office. To whom would the college of cardinals turn now?</p>
<p>Few expected that they would turn to Karol Wojtyla, the 58-year-old archbishop of Kraków. But after the first day’s balloting had revealed a deadlock between the two leading Italian candidates, the cardinals made the historic decision to look beyond Italy for a pope, and Wojtyla was quickly chosen. His appearance on the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica that night was the first surprise; many in the vast crowd had never heard of “Wojtyla,” thinking the name Asian or African. But the surprises continued as John Paul II broke centuries of precedent and began his pontificate with an impromptu address in Italian, reassuring the worried Romans that, from this moment on, he, too, was a Roman. When he asked them to correct any mistakes he might make in “our Italian language,” they cheered wildly.</p>
<p>Six days later, at his papal inauguration, the surprises continued. In his homily, John Paul II challenged the Church to regain its evangelical fervor and its nerve, particularly in defending the fundamental human right of religious freedom throughout the world. After the three-hour ceremony ended, he refused to retreat into the Vatican basilica but walked toward the vast throng in the Square, waving his papal crozier as if it were a great sword of the spirit. When a small boy burst through the security cordon to present him with flowers, fussy local clergy tried to shoo him away; John Paul II swept him up in an embrace. The crowds refused to leave until John Paul told them, “It’s time for everyone to eat lunch, even the Pope!”</p>
<p>The stylistic surprises continued throughout his pontificate. John Paul acted as he thought a pastor should act, rather than according to the venerable script written by the traditional managers of popes. He invited guests to his private Mass and his meals, every day. He visited more of Italy and Rome than any of his Italian predecessors. He held seminars in his summer residence with agnostic and atheist philosophers. His world travels–wearing a tribal headdress in Kenya in 1980, holding a koala bear in Australia in 1986, gathering the largest crowd in human history in Manila in January 1995, improvising a Polish Christmas carol in New York’s Central Park nine months later, solemnly commemorating the Holocaust in Jerusalem in 2000–made him the most visible pope in history.</p>
<p>It would be a serious mistake, though, to think of this as the showmanship of an accomplished actor. John Paul II’s conduct of the papacy, however surprising it was to some, was based on a firmly held set of convictions. Bishops, he believed, were primarily evangelists and teachers, not managers. That was the way he had been the archbishop of Kraków, and that was how he thought he should be the Bishop of Rome. In doing so, John Paul II, 263rd successor to St. Peter, brought the papacy into the 21st century by retrieving the first-century model of the Office of Peter in the Church. In the New Testament, Peter is not the chief executive officer of a small niche company, “Christianity, Inc.” Peter is a witness, an evangelist, a pastor, the center of the Church’s unity. John Paul II revitalized that ancient concept of the Office of Peter for the third millennium, using all the instruments of the communications and transportation revolutions to bring Peter to the world.</p>
<p>In the course of this dramatic renovation of the world’s oldest institutional office, he continued to surprise. Throughout his pontificate, he was a magnet for the world’s young people, who flocked to him by the millions. In the early years of his papacy, some of this almost certainly reflected the contemporary cult of celebrity. But that was not all it was, and his status in the 1980s as a global superstar did not explain why John Paul II continued to attract the young when he was visibly weakened by disease and age.</p>
<p>Why did the Pope remain a compelling figure for the young? One reason was his transparent integrity. Young people have acutely sensitive hypocrisy detectors; in John Paul II, they saw a man who believed what he said and acted out his beliefs. There was no “spin” here–only integrity all the way through, the integrity of a man who committed every facet of his life to Jesus Christ. This was immensely compelling.</p>
<p>The Pope was also attractive to the young because he defied the cultural conventions of our age and didn’t pander to them. Rather, he challenged them to moral grandeur. While virtually every other authority figure in the world was lowering the bar of moral expectation, John Paul II held it high. You are capable of moral heroism, he told young people. Of course you will fail from time to time; that is human. But don’t demean yourself by holding your lives to a lower standard. Get up from your failures, seek forgiveness and reconciliation, try again. That, he insisted, is the path to the fulfillment all young people seek.</p>
<p>And they listened. Not all of them agreed. But they came, in their millions, and listened. There is little doubt that many were changed by the encounter.</p>
<p>John Paul II, the Pope from intensely Catholic Poland, also surprised many by his ecumenical initiatives and the passion of his commitment to a new relationship between Catholicism and living Judaism.</p>
<p>No Pope since the split between Rome and the Christian East in 1054 did as much to close that first massive breach in the unity of the Church. No Pope since the Reformation spent more time in dialogue with Protestant Christians. No Pope ever asked Orthodox and Protestants leaders and theologians to help him think through an exercise of the papacy that would serve their needs.</p>
<p>None of this bore immediate fruit. After an immensely difficult twentieth century, Orthodox Christianity was in no condition to respond to John Paul’s suggestion that he sought no jurisdictional role in the East and that it ought to be possible to return to the way things were before 1054. And while significant theological advances were made in the ecumenical dialogue with Protestants– notably the 1999 Joint Declaration on Justification by Faith by the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation–it became clear throughout the pontificate that new, Church-dividing issues had emerged since the sixteenth century. Yet despite these frustrations, John Paul II secured the quest for Christian unity in the heart of the Catholic Church. Seeds he has planted will germinate in the third millennium.</p>
<p>The dialogue with Judaism saw more concrete accomplishments. After John Paul’s 1986 visit to the Synagogue of Rome, his repeated condemnations of anti-Semitism, his multiple apologies for centuries of Christian prejudice and persecution of the Jews, and his Jubilee year pilgrimage to Israel, Jews and Catholics stood on the edge of a new conversation, of a depth and range unseen for more than nineteen hundred years. Jewish leaders throughout the world have testified to the fact that John Paul II has been the best Pope for Jews ever. And if this is surprising to some, it was to the Pope himself an expression of the veneration for the living Judaism he learned in his boyhood, playing goalie on the local Jewish soccer team and occasionally visiting the synagogue in his hometown, which was 20% Jewish.</p>
<p>John Paul II canonized more saints than any Pope in history and beatified hundreds of other servants of God–another surprise to some, and a practice that came under criticism. But the Pope, who thought there was sanctity all around us, believed that the “universal call to holiness” of which Vatican II had spoken was being answered on every continent and among people in every walk of life. God, he believed, is quite profligate in making saints.</p>
<p>That same conviction about the abundance of grace inspired John Paul’s enthusiastic endorsement of a host of lay renewal movements in the Church. These movements–Focolare, Regnum Christi, the Neo-Catechumenal Way, Communion and Liberation, among many others–make some bishops and Church officials nervous; where did these movements of radical discipleship “fit” in the organization chart? John Paul II was content to leave that question to the future and encouraged every new movement that committed itself to “thinking with the Church.”</p>
<p>He was a Pope of many surprises. French journalist André Frossard understood that when, shortly after John Paul’s election, he wired his French newspaper, “This is not a Pope from Poland. This is a Pope from Galilee.” And that, in retrospect, was the greatest surprise of all.</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 | pope neither church world expected surprises characterized twentysix year pontificate began night john paul iis election october 16 1978 catholic church state spiritual shock fifteenyear papacy paul vi many veteran churchmen considered perfectly prepared pope concluded division exhaustion bright promise second vatican council fading memory pauls successor john paul seemed verge revitalizing papacy died mere thirtythree days office would college cardinals turn expected would turn karol wojtyla 58yearold archbishop kraków first days balloting revealed deadlock two leading italian candidates cardinals made historic decision look beyond italy pope wojtyla quickly chosen appearance loggia st peters basilica night first surprise many vast crowd never heard wojtyla thinking name asian african surprises continued john paul ii broke centuries precedent began pontificate impromptu address italian reassuring worried romans moment roman asked correct mistakes might make italian language cheered wildly six days later papal inauguration surprises continued homily john paul ii challenged church regain evangelical fervor nerve particularly defending fundamental human right religious freedom throughout world threehour ceremony ended refused retreat vatican basilica walked toward vast throng square waving papal crozier great sword spirit small boy burst security cordon present flowers fussy local clergy tried shoo away john paul ii swept embrace crowds refused leave john paul told time everyone eat lunch even pope stylistic surprises continued throughout pontificate john paul acted thought pastor act rather according venerable script written traditional managers popes invited guests private mass meals every day visited italy rome italian predecessors held seminars summer residence agnostic atheist philosophers world travelswearing tribal headdress kenya 1980 holding koala bear australia 1986 gathering largest crowd human history manila january 1995 improvising polish christmas carol new yorks central park nine months later solemnly commemorating holocaust jerusalem 2000made visible pope history would serious mistake though think showmanship accomplished actor john paul iis conduct papacy however surprising based firmly held set convictions bishops believed primarily evangelists teachers managers way archbishop kraków thought bishop rome john paul ii 263rd successor st peter brought papacy 21st century retrieving firstcentury model office peter church new testament peter chief executive officer small niche company christianity inc peter witness evangelist pastor center churchs unity john paul ii revitalized ancient concept office peter third millennium using instruments communications transportation revolutions bring peter world course dramatic renovation worlds oldest institutional office continued surprise throughout pontificate magnet worlds young people flocked millions early years papacy almost certainly reflected contemporary cult celebrity status 1980s global superstar explain john paul ii continued attract young visibly weakened disease age pope remain compelling figure young one reason transparent integrity young people acutely sensitive hypocrisy detectors john paul ii saw man believed said acted beliefs spin hereonly integrity way integrity man committed every facet life jesus christ immensely compelling pope also attractive young defied cultural conventions age didnt pander rather challenged moral grandeur virtually every authority figure world lowering bar moral expectation john paul ii held high capable moral heroism told young people course fail time time human dont demean holding lives lower standard get failures seek forgiveness reconciliation try insisted path fulfillment young people seek listened agreed came millions listened little doubt many changed encounter john paul ii pope intensely catholic poland also surprised many ecumenical initiatives passion commitment new relationship catholicism living judaism pope since split rome christian east 1054 much close first massive breach unity church pope since reformation spent time dialogue protestant christians pope ever asked orthodox protestants leaders theologians help think exercise papacy would serve needs none bore immediate fruit immensely difficult twentieth century orthodox christianity condition respond john pauls suggestion sought jurisdictional role east ought possible return way things 1054 significant theological advances made ecumenical dialogue protestants notably 1999 joint declaration justification faith catholic church lutheran world federationit became clear throughout pontificate new churchdividing issues emerged since sixteenth century yet despite frustrations john paul ii secured quest christian unity heart catholic church seeds planted germinate third millennium dialogue judaism saw concrete accomplishments john pauls 1986 visit synagogue rome repeated condemnations antisemitism multiple apologies centuries christian prejudice persecution jews jubilee year pilgrimage israel jews catholics stood edge new conversation depth range unseen nineteen hundred years jewish leaders throughout world testified fact john paul ii best pope jews ever surprising pope expression veneration living judaism learned boyhood playing goalie local jewish soccer team occasionally visiting synagogue hometown 20 jewish john paul ii canonized saints pope history beatified hundreds servants godanother surprise practice came criticism pope thought sanctity around us believed universal call holiness vatican ii spoken answered every continent among people every walk life god believed quite profligate making saints conviction abundance grace inspired john pauls enthusiastic endorsement host lay renewal movements church movementsfocolare regnum christi neocatechumenal way communion liberation among many othersmake bishops church officials nervous movements radical discipleship fit organization chart john paul ii content leave question future encouraged every new movement committed thinking church pope many surprises french journalist andré frossard understood shortly john pauls election wired french newspaper pope poland pope galilee retrospect greatest surprise george weigel distinguished senior fellow ethics public policy center washington dc holds eppcs william e simon chair catholic studies | 842 |
<p>CARSON CITY — Sharp fault lines between Republican and Democratic leaders in the state Senate became even wider Monday as the Nevada Legislature began its 79th session.</p>
<p>Opening day is usually filled with pomp, ceremony and pledges to work together in a bipartisan spirit.</p>
<p>But that changed with the speech of Senate Majority Leader Aaron Ford, D-Las Vegas.</p>
<p>He drew the ire of Minority Leader Michael Roberson, R-Henderson by saying the body will look at “extreme and unnecessary legislation” the GOP-led Legislature passed in 2015. Roberson called it “a caustic, political speech on Day One.”</p>
<p>It was against this backdrop that legislators started their 120-day stretch of lawmaking and debate over issues like a tax on recreational marijuana and funding for public education.</p>
<p>Jason Frierson, the state’s first African-American speaker of the Assembly, was installed as leader of the 42-member chamber.</p>
<p />
<p>His speech had a much more inclusive tone.</p>
<p>The Las Vegas Democrat came to power as his party regained control of both chambers of the Nevada Legislature in the 2016 election. In the Assembly, Democrats have a 27-15 majority, and Frierson was unanimously voted its leader.</p>
<p>SENATE CONFLICT</p>
<p>Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison gaveled the Senate to order, and new state senators took the oath of office. Senate Democrats hold an 11-9-1 majority in the chamber.</p>
<p>In his opening comments, Ford urged senators to embrace the state’s diversity.</p>
<p />
<p>“Take a look around,” he said. “This is Nevada. This is America. Democrats, Republicans, an independent.”</p>
<p>Ford, the second African-American majority leader in the Nevada Senate, laid out an aggressive agenda for the Democratic caucus that includes raising the minimum wage, expanding voting opportunities, granting equal pay for women and providing affordable child care.</p>
<p>“We’ll take another look at last session’s extreme and unnecessary legislation that targeted the pocketbooks of working men and women by slashing wages for construction workers, limiting project-labor agreements and attacking collective bargaining rights,” Ford said.</p>
<p>That drew a rebuke from Roberson.</p>
<p>“I have never seen a majority leader give a caustic, political speech on Day One,” Roberson said afterward. “He is setting a very negative tone.”</p>
<p>Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval’s spokeswoman, Mari St. Martin, weighed in the prospect of rolling back legislation that passed in 2015.</p>
<p>“The governor believes it would be ill-advised to begin a new legislative session by trying to undo past progress, some of which was passed with bipartisan support,” she said in a statement. “He looks forward to watching the Legislature debate pressing issues like criminal justice reform, education funding, and workforce development and passing sound bipartisan measures aimed at improving the lives of Nevadans.”</p>
<p>Ford also said senators should respect decorum.</p>
<p>“We will not be combative. We will discuss and debate, but we will not destroy one another,” he said.</p>
<p>There were undercurrents of contention between the two parties even before the session began. Roberson last month threatened to stymie Democrats who took control in the November election and who opposed a GOP law last session establishing education savings accounts, a school voucher program.</p>
<p>Roberson said unless Democrats agree to ESAs, Republicans will vote against the state budget.</p>
<p>ASSEMBLY ACTIVITY</p>
<p>In the Asssembly, Frierson spoke of his roots growing up in a hardscrabble neighborhood in Compton, California, before making his way to Reno on a football scholarship.</p>
<p>He thanked prior speakers, including Barbara Buckley, who became the first female speaker of the Assembly a decade ago.</p>
<p />
<p>“I embrace this opportunity and responsibility with the recognition that by breaking this ceiling, there is one less ‘first’ still to be achieved in Nevada’s history,” he said. “I do not take this role in Nevada’s history lightly. I fully recognize that in selecting me as speaker, our contribution to the richness of Nevada’s history means we send a message that Nevada embraces all who are committed to serving.”</p>
<p>Frierson said work remains to improve public education, even with a tax increase passed in 2015 to better fund schools.</p>
<p>“We still have kids falling behind, test scores that need improving and accountability in the classroom that must be part of the solution,” he said. “We still have underpaid and overworked teachers dipping into their own pockets to provide supplies and resources for the classroom. We still struggle to recruit and retain the best teachers, and struggle to provide adequate incentives for teachers to take on the most challenging at-risk schools. ”</p>
<p>The newly minted speaker was congratulated by his fellow legislators, including Assembly Minority Leader Paul Anderson, R-Las Vegas.</p>
<p>“Regardless of your party affiliation, and after sometimes bruising campaigns, we are now required to put aside our partisan differences and instead to do what is best for all Nevadans,” Anderson told lawmakers.</p>
<p />
<p>About 200 prefiled bills were introduced in the Assembly or Senate on Monday.</p>
<p>The session ends at midnight June 5.</p>
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<p>Sandra Chereb contributed to this report. 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>RELATED</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Nevada Legislature ready to kick off 2017 session</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Marijuana, cybersecurity among debates to happen in Nevada Legislature</a></p>
<p /> | false | 1 | carson city sharp fault lines republican democratic leaders state senate became even wider monday nevada legislature began 79th session opening day usually filled pomp ceremony pledges work together bipartisan spirit changed speech senate majority leader aaron ford dlas vegas drew ire minority leader michael roberson rhenderson saying body look extreme unnecessary legislation gopled legislature passed 2015 roberson called caustic political speech day one backdrop legislators started 120day stretch lawmaking debate issues like tax recreational marijuana funding public education jason frierson states first africanamerican speaker assembly installed leader 42member chamber speech much inclusive tone las vegas democrat came power party regained control chambers nevada legislature 2016 election assembly democrats 2715 majority frierson unanimously voted leader senate conflict republican lt gov mark hutchison gaveled senate order new state senators took oath office senate democrats hold 1191 majority chamber opening comments ford urged senators embrace states diversity take look around said nevada america democrats republicans independent ford second africanamerican majority leader nevada senate laid aggressive agenda democratic caucus includes raising minimum wage expanding voting opportunities granting equal pay women providing affordable child care well take another look last sessions extreme unnecessary legislation targeted pocketbooks working men women slashing wages construction workers limiting projectlabor agreements attacking collective bargaining rights ford said drew rebuke roberson never seen majority leader give caustic political speech day one roberson said afterward setting negative tone republican gov brian sandovals spokeswoman mari st martin weighed prospect rolling back legislation passed 2015 governor believes would illadvised begin new legislative session trying undo past progress passed bipartisan support said statement looks forward watching legislature debate pressing issues like criminal justice reform education funding workforce development passing sound bipartisan measures aimed improving lives nevadans ford also said senators respect decorum combative discuss debate destroy one another said undercurrents contention two parties even session began roberson last month threatened stymie democrats took control november election opposed gop law last session establishing education savings accounts school voucher program roberson said unless democrats agree esas republicans vote state budget assembly activity asssembly frierson spoke roots growing hardscrabble neighborhood compton california making way reno football scholarship thanked prior speakers including barbara buckley became first female speaker assembly decade ago embrace opportunity responsibility recognition breaking ceiling one less first still achieved nevadas history said take role nevadas history lightly fully recognize selecting speaker contribution richness nevadas history means send message nevada embraces committed serving frierson said work remains improve public education even tax increase passed 2015 better fund schools still kids falling behind test scores need improving accountability classroom must part solution said still underpaid overworked teachers dipping pockets provide supplies resources classroom still struggle recruit retain best teachers struggle provide adequate incentives teachers take challenging atrisk schools newly minted speaker congratulated fellow legislators including assembly minority leader paul anderson rlas vegas regardless party affiliation sometimes bruising campaigns required put aside partisan differences instead best nevadans anderson told lawmakers 200 prefiled bills introduced assembly senate monday session ends midnight june 5 sandra chereb contributed report contact ben botkin bbotkinreviewjournalcom 7754610661 follow benbotkin1 twitter related nevada legislature ready kick 2017 session marijuana cybersecurity among debates happen nevada legislature | 519 |
<p>They say politics and religion are taboo discussion topics, but David Brody has made a career out of merging the two.</p>
<p>The chief political correspondent at the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) has spent the last 30 years in the business of political journalism, interviewing everyone from Donald Trump and Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin.</p>
<p>An Emmy Award winner, the 52-year-old is also the author of “ <a href="http://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/brody-file/blog" type="external">The Brody File</a>,” a well-respected political blog.</p>
<p>He’s got a book on President Trump’s spirituality in the works, and he recently launched a political talk show on Facebook Live called “Faith Nation.” He’s also often tapped by major networks to comment on the intersection of politics and religion in today’s society.</p>
<p>Here, Newsmax spends some time with Brody to get his take on the state of politics, the role religion plays in Trump’s life, and the inside scoop on what’s going on within the White House.</p>
<p>Newsmax: Congratulations on your new CBN political talk show on Facebook Live. How will “Faith Nation” differ from other news shows?</p>
<p>David Brody: Most of the shows on cable television today are a bunch of arguing talking heads. “Faith Nation” seeks to be different by cutting through the mainstream media clutter of chaos and delving into subjects that Americans are really interested in. In essence, the show is an intersection of faith and politics with an emphasis on interaction and engagement with people on all social media platforms.</p>
<p>NM: What is your sense of the president on a purely individual, human level?</p>
<p>DB: Donald Trump wants everyone to know he’s the “law and order” president and, indeed, he’s all that. But he’s actually very compassionate and personable when you get to know him. He has a soft side to him but, as he would say, that’s not good for the brand!</p>
<p>NM: The president doesn’t seem to fit into a typical evangelical mold. How did Trump win over that group?</p>
<p>DB: Actually, it’s pretty simple. Many evangelicals like the fact that he has no time for political correctness and also like how he sees the world in absolutes such as right and wrong, good and evil. Evangelicals see the world in much the same way. Plus, typical GOP-pandering politicians before have burned them, so many were ready to try something different. Furthermore, he said he was going to deliver on certain Judeo-Christian principles and, so far, he’s come through with flying colors.</p>
<p>NM: You’re a convert to Christianity. Can you tell us about your journey?</p>
<p>DB: I grew up in a “Jewish household” but neither one of my parents were very religious. I would go to temple and Hebrew school and I had my bar mitzvah at age 13 so I was doing all the religious stuff but I was just going through the motions. I never had any sort of understanding of God. All I knew was that I did these things because it was tradition.</p>
<p>In college, my girlfriend and future wife Lisette (who I had known since high school) started to talk to me about having a personal relationship with Jesus. I remember thinking, “What are you talking about? I don’t need a personal relationship with God. I’m Jewish.”</p>
<p>The year after college, Lisette invited me to her charismatic church in New York City, Times Square Church. Something seemed to be tugging at my heart. I think the sermons about life and death and this personal relationship with Jesus Christ interested me on some level. But, more importantly, [I] was hearing this idea that you could have a personal relationship with the God of the universe. This was very foreign to me.</p>
<p>My wife and I married in June of 1988. I had not become a Christian yet. After the honeymoon, Lisette and I moved to Colorado Springs and two months later, we were at a prayer meeting led by a man named Lorenzo who asked me to stand. He began to recite my past history like he had known me his whole life. But Lisette and I didn’t know anyone there because we had only just moved to town. He said he knew I was searching for God but that the answer was a personal one that I would have to find for myself. I was getting nervous and I could tell that a decision point was nearing. I knew that this was it. God was asking me to give my life over to him. I prayed hard and asked him, “God, is Jesus truly the way?” My heart was pounding and he spoke right into me: “Yes, believe and accept him as Lord and Savior.”</p>
<p>Well, it was there at that prayer meeting in Colorado that I gave my life to Jesus. More important than anything else, instead of feeling “no longer Jewish,” I actually felt more Jewish then I ever had before in my whole life and that was extremely important to me. I felt a sense of godly connectedness to the past and to the Jews of the bible. My blood is still Jewish blood. I’m still ethnically Jewish and I have been given an awesome gift . . . My promised “Jewish Messiah.”</p>
<p>NM: Is there any book, other than the Bible, that has had a real impact on your life?</p>
<p>DB: “The Shack” by William P. Young really struck a chord with me. It rolls tragedy, compassion, faith, and the face of Jesus all into one wild ride. It makes you really think about who God is and how He satisfies your every need.</p>
<p>NM: As both a conservative and a Christian, what is it like to rub shoulders with the Washington press corps?</p>
<p>DB: I enjoy it. People in the press are overall pretty friendly. It’s a chance to shine your light and let people in the press corps know that yes, there is something different about “us evangelicals.” Hopefully, that will speak to them in creative godly ways.</p>
<p>NM: Whom do you respect most in the mainstream media?</p>
<p>DB: There are quite a few. I think John Dickerson at CBS is very good and very fair. Willie Geist over at NBC is a pretty straight shooter. Robert Costa and Dan Balz at The Washington Post always provide fair, down-the-middle analysis.</p>
<p>NM: Everyone is talking about media bias and “fake news.” Share with us the biggest example of this you’ve seen.</p>
<p>DB: Remember, with the mainstream media, many times it’s subtle in nature. The Washington Post called President Trump’s executive order a “Muslim ban.” Actually, it wasn’t that at all. If it were, all Muslims would have been banned from entering the United States. The Washington Post also talked about how “the Trump administration — and [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions in particular — has taken a hardline stance on immigration.” Actually, the hardline stance is on ILLEGAL immigration, not immigration. The list goes on.</p>
<p>NM: You covered President Obama. What surprised you most about him?</p>
<p>DB: I wouldn’t say it surprised me but he was genuinely pretty nice. Very down to earth and you could tell he wasn’t just being a politician. He is just naturally charming in person, which is a good quality to have in politics.</p>
<p>NM: You’ve covered Congress as well. Whom in the Senate and the House do you respect most?</p>
<p>DB: Well, I respect anyone who will shoot straight and not feed you a bunch of bologna! Overall, that’s hard when it comes to politicians, but I must say Congressman Louie Gohmert always just “lets it rip” and that’s refreshing.</p>
<p>NM: You have been in D.C. for 20 years. What has changed, for better or worse?</p>
<p>DB: Things are just nastier. There was a time where the goal was to compromise on legislation. That’s not the goal anymore. Now, it’s to dig in your heels and see who will blink first.</p>
<p>NM: Pat Robertson is an icon for many Christians. What is he like?</p>
<p>DB: One of the nicest, kindest people you’ll meet. Always curious, always looking for information, always giving God the credit for everything and always saying, “God bless you brother!”</p>
<p>NM: Do you tune in to any of the political dramas like “House of Cards,” “Veep,” or “Scandal”? Are they close to reality?</p>
<p>DB: I must admit, I’ve only watched small samplings of those shows. There’s enough real-life drama going on covering D.C. everyday.</p>
<p>NM: You live in Maryland with your wife of more than 20 years and three children. What’s the secret to a long and happy marriage?</p>
<p>DB: Listen, listen, and listen. And turn talk into action!</p>
<p>NM: If you had to give some confidential advice to the new first lady Melania, what would you tell her?</p>
<p>DB: Keep on praying to Jesus and know that He is on the throne. Quite frankly, that wouldn’t be confidential. I’d be more than happy to tell that to her in public.</p> | false | 1 | say politics religion taboo discussion topics david brody made career merging two chief political correspondent christian broadcasting network cbn spent last 30 years business political journalism interviewing everyone donald trump barack obama hillary clinton sarah palin emmy award winner 52yearold also author brody file wellrespected political blog hes got book president trumps spirituality works recently launched political talk show facebook live called faith nation hes also often tapped major networks comment intersection politics religion todays society newsmax spends time brody get take state politics role religion plays trumps life inside scoop whats going within white house newsmax congratulations new cbn political talk show facebook live faith nation differ news shows david brody shows cable television today bunch arguing talking heads faith nation seeks different cutting mainstream media clutter chaos delving subjects americans really interested essence show intersection faith politics emphasis interaction engagement people social media platforms nm sense president purely individual human level db donald trump wants everyone know hes law order president indeed hes hes actually compassionate personable get know soft side would say thats good brand nm president doesnt seem fit typical evangelical mold trump win group db actually pretty simple many evangelicals like fact time political correctness also like sees world absolutes right wrong good evil evangelicals see world much way plus typical goppandering politicians burned many ready try something different furthermore said going deliver certain judeochristian principles far hes come flying colors nm youre convert christianity tell us journey db grew jewish household neither one parents religious would go temple hebrew school bar mitzvah age 13 religious stuff going motions never sort understanding god knew things tradition college girlfriend future wife lisette known since high school started talk personal relationship jesus remember thinking talking dont need personal relationship god im jewish year college lisette invited charismatic church new york city times square church something seemed tugging heart think sermons life death personal relationship jesus christ interested level importantly hearing idea could personal relationship god universe foreign wife married june 1988 become christian yet honeymoon lisette moved colorado springs two months later prayer meeting led man named lorenzo asked stand began recite past history like known whole life lisette didnt know anyone moved town said knew searching god answer personal one would find getting nervous could tell decision point nearing knew god asking give life prayed hard asked god jesus truly way heart pounding spoke right yes believe accept lord savior well prayer meeting colorado gave life jesus important anything else instead feeling longer jewish actually felt jewish ever whole life extremely important felt sense godly connectedness past jews bible blood still jewish blood im still ethnically jewish given awesome gift promised jewish messiah nm book bible real impact life db shack william p young really struck chord rolls tragedy compassion faith face jesus one wild ride makes really think god satisfies every need nm conservative christian like rub shoulders washington press corps db enjoy people press overall pretty friendly chance shine light let people press corps know yes something different us evangelicals hopefully speak creative godly ways nm respect mainstream media db quite think john dickerson cbs good fair willie geist nbc pretty straight shooter robert costa dan balz washington post always provide fair downthemiddle analysis nm everyone talking media bias fake news share us biggest example youve seen db remember mainstream media many times subtle nature washington post called president trumps executive order muslim ban actually wasnt muslims would banned entering united states washington post also talked trump administration attorney general jeff sessions particular taken hardline stance immigration actually hardline stance illegal immigration immigration list goes nm covered president obama surprised db wouldnt say surprised genuinely pretty nice earth could tell wasnt politician naturally charming person good quality politics nm youve covered congress well senate house respect db well respect anyone shoot straight feed bunch bologna overall thats hard comes politicians must say congressman louie gohmert always lets rip thats refreshing nm dc 20 years changed better worse db things nastier time goal compromise legislation thats goal anymore dig heels see blink first nm pat robertson icon many christians like db one nicest kindest people youll meet always curious always looking information always giving god credit everything always saying god bless brother nm tune political dramas like house cards veep scandal close reality db must admit ive watched small samplings shows theres enough reallife drama going covering dc everyday nm live maryland wife 20 years three children whats secret long happy marriage db listen listen listen turn talk action nm give confidential advice new first lady melania would tell db keep praying jesus know throne quite frankly wouldnt confidential id happy tell public | 778 |
<p>By Joel Schectman</p>
<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Senate Republicans say their investigation of Hillary Clinton’s role in approving a deal to sell U.S. uranium mines to a Russian company hinges in part on the testimony of a secret informant in a bribery and extortion scheme inside the same company.</p>
<p>The Senate committee searching for Clinton’s alleged wrongdoing is keeping their witness’s name cloaked. However, William D. Campbell, a lobbyist, confirmed to Reuters he is the informant who will testify and provide documents to Congress about the Obama Administration’s 2010 approval of the sale of One, a Canadian company with uranium mines in the United States, to Russia’s Rosatom.</p>
<p>At the time of the sale, Campbell was a confidential source for the FBI in a Maryland bribery and kickback investigation of the head of a U.S. unit of Rosatom, the Russian state-owned nuclear power company. Campbell was identified as an FBI informant by prosecutors in open court and by himself in a publicly available lawsuit he filed last year.</p>
<p>In a telephone interview, Campbell said he wanted to testify because of his concerns about Russia’s activities in the United States, but declined to comment further.</p>
<p>Campbell’s lawyer, Victoria Toensing, who has not previously identified her client, said despite Campbell telling the government “how corrupt the company was,” Rosatom still got permission to buy Uranium One. She did not say what Campbell would reveal regarding any alleged wrongdoing by Clinton.</p>
<p>Clinton has said the Senate probe is an attempt to shift attention away from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s alleged role in Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. As the heat from Mueller’s investigation has intensified, Trump has repeatedly called for an inquiry into Clinton and the Russian uranium deal.</p>
<p>“This latest iteration is simply more of the Right doing Trump’s bidding for him to distract from his own Russia problems,” said Nick Merrill, a Clinton spokesman.</p>
<p>Some people who know Campbell are skeptical that he can shed much light on Uranium One. Two law enforcement officials with direct involvement in the Rosatom bribery case in which Campbell was an informant said they had no recollection or record of him mentioning the deal during their repeated interviews with him.</p>
<p>Also, although both Uranium One and the bribery cases involved Rosatom, the two cases involved different business units, executives and allegations, with little other apparent overlap, Reuters found in a review of the court records of the bribery case.</p>
<p>Campbell countered those who dismiss his knowledge of the Uranium One deal. “I have worked with the Justice Department undercover for several years, and documentation relating to Uranium One and political influence does exist and I have it,” Campbell said. He declined to give details of those documents.</p>
<p>Reuters was unable to learn when the closed-door testimony has been scheduled.</p>
<p>Trump asked that a Justice Department gag order on Campbell stemming from the bribery case be lifted so that he can testify to congressional investigators, White House officials said.</p>
<p>The Justice Department has partially lifted that gag order.</p>
<p>CAMPBELL TESTIMONY ‘CRITICAL’</p>
<p>Campbell potentially now has a larger starring role in the Washington drama after the Justice Department said in a letter to Congress on Monday that it was considering appointing a special prosecutor to launch an investigation into Republican allegations of wrongdoing by Clinton, Trump’s former political rival, in the deal.</p>
<p>Under Clinton, the State Department was part of a nine-agency government Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States that approved the purchase of Uranium One. Her critics, including Trump, allege large donations by people connected to the Uranium One deal made to her family’s foundation influenced the State Department’s decision to approve it.</p>
<p>Reuters has no evidence that Clinton orchestrated the approval of Uranium One.</p>
<p>In an email, Rosatom said the company had made no donations to the Clinton Foundation and had not asked others to do so. The foundation stressed the State Department was only one member of the committee that approved the deal and said Clinton had no personal involvement in the decision.</p>
<p>Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley said in a letter to Toensing, Campbell’s lawyer, that her client appears to have information “critical to the Committee’s oversight of the Justice Department and its ongoing inquiry into the manner in which” the Uranium One sale was approved.</p>
<p>BRIBERY SCHEME</p>
<p>Campbell worked as an informant for federal authorities investigating Vadim Mikerin, a Russian official in charge of U.S. operations for Tenex, a unit of Rosatom. Authorities later accused Mikerin of taking bribes from a shipping company in exchange for contracts to transport Russian uranium into the United States. He pleaded guilty in federal court in Maryland and was sentenced to prison for four years.</p>
<p>The Justice Department had also initially charged Mikerin with extorting kickbacks from Campbell after hiring him as a $50,000-a-month lobbyist.</p>
<p>Prosecutors alleged Mikerin had demanded Campbell pay between one-third and half of that money back to him each month under threat of losing the contract and veiled warnings of violence from the Russians. The demand prompted Campbell to turn to the FBI in 2010, which gave its blessing for him to remain part of the scheme.</p>
<p>Federal prosecutors were ready to use Campbell as a star witness against Mikerin, but they backed away after defense attorneys raised questions about Campbell’s credibility and whether he was a victim or had “entered into a business arrangement with eyes wide open,” according to court records.</p>
<p>Before it was taken down last year, the website of Campbell’s company, Sigma Transnational, did not suggest his firm was a lobbying powerhouse. The website listed four other employees and advisers, although one had died years earlier. A second employee listed said in a court document that she never worked for the company but had agreed in 2014 to pay Campbell to list her as an employee and allow her to use the Sigma name in a business deal. Campbell declined to comment on the staffing or his lobbying contract with Tenex.</p>
<p>Prosecutors dropped the extortion charges against Mikerin and never mentioned Campbell again in any charging documents. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on the case. Campbell also declined to comment on the issue.</p>
<p>Reuters has been unable to learn why Tenex chose Campbell as its lobbyist. He acknowledged in lawsuit he filed in 2016 that he was hired despite the fact he “had no experience with nuclear fuel sales.”</p> | false | 1 | joel schectman washington reuters senate republicans say investigation hillary clintons role approving deal sell us uranium mines russian company hinges part testimony secret informant bribery extortion scheme inside company senate committee searching clintons alleged wrongdoing keeping witnesss name cloaked however william campbell lobbyist confirmed reuters informant testify provide documents congress obama administrations 2010 approval sale one canadian company uranium mines united states russias rosatom time sale campbell confidential source fbi maryland bribery kickback investigation head us unit rosatom russian stateowned nuclear power company campbell identified fbi informant prosecutors open court publicly available lawsuit filed last year telephone interview campbell said wanted testify concerns russias activities united states declined comment campbells lawyer victoria toensing previously identified client said despite campbell telling government corrupt company rosatom still got permission buy uranium one say campbell would reveal regarding alleged wrongdoing clinton clinton said senate probe attempt shift attention away special counsel robert muellers investigation russias alleged role donald trumps 2016 presidential campaign heat muellers investigation intensified trump repeatedly called inquiry clinton russian uranium deal latest iteration simply right trumps bidding distract russia problems said nick merrill clinton spokesman people know campbell skeptical shed much light uranium one two law enforcement officials direct involvement rosatom bribery case campbell informant said recollection record mentioning deal repeated interviews also although uranium one bribery cases involved rosatom two cases involved different business units executives allegations little apparent overlap reuters found review court records bribery case campbell countered dismiss knowledge uranium one deal worked justice department undercover several years documentation relating uranium one political influence exist campbell said declined give details documents reuters unable learn closeddoor testimony scheduled trump asked justice department gag order campbell stemming bribery case lifted testify congressional investigators white house officials said justice department partially lifted gag order campbell testimony critical campbell potentially larger starring role washington drama justice department said letter congress monday considering appointing special prosecutor launch investigation republican allegations wrongdoing clinton trumps former political rival deal clinton state department part nineagency government committee foreign investment united states approved purchase uranium one critics including trump allege large donations people connected uranium one deal made familys foundation influenced state departments decision approve reuters evidence clinton orchestrated approval uranium one email rosatom said company made donations clinton foundation asked others foundation stressed state department one member committee approved deal said clinton personal involvement decision senate judiciary committee chairman charles grassley said letter toensing campbells lawyer client appears information critical committees oversight justice department ongoing inquiry manner uranium one sale approved bribery scheme campbell worked informant federal authorities investigating vadim mikerin russian official charge us operations tenex unit rosatom authorities later accused mikerin taking bribes shipping company exchange contracts transport russian uranium united states pleaded guilty federal court maryland sentenced prison four years justice department also initially charged mikerin extorting kickbacks campbell hiring 50000amonth lobbyist prosecutors alleged mikerin demanded campbell pay onethird half money back month threat losing contract veiled warnings violence russians demand prompted campbell turn fbi 2010 gave blessing remain part scheme federal prosecutors ready use campbell star witness mikerin backed away defense attorneys raised questions campbells credibility whether victim entered business arrangement eyes wide open according court records taken last year website campbells company sigma transnational suggest firm lobbying powerhouse website listed four employees advisers although one died years earlier second employee listed said court document never worked company agreed 2014 pay campbell list employee allow use sigma name business deal campbell declined comment staffing lobbying contract tenex prosecutors dropped extortion charges mikerin never mentioned campbell charging documents justice department spokeswoman declined comment case campbell also declined comment issue reuters unable learn tenex chose campbell lobbyist acknowledged lawsuit filed 2016 hired despite fact experience nuclear fuel sales | 615 |
<p />
<p>Israel’s decision to shut down al-Aqsa Mosque on Thursday, October 30, is not just a gross violation of the religious rights of Palestinian Muslims.</p>
<p>In fact, the rights of Palestinian Muslims and Christians have been routinely violated under the Israeli occupation for decades, especially in Jerusalem, and more recently in Gaza. During the 51-day war on the Gaza Strip, a reported 73 mosques were destroyed, while 205 were partially destroyed, <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/13813-one-third-of-gazas-mosques-destroyed-by-israeli-strikes" type="external">according to a Palestinian government report</a>.</p>
<p>The Noble Sanctuary located in Jerusalem’s Old City, is known as Haram al-Sharif in Arabic and is home to the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. It serves as much more than a religious role in Palestinian society because it is a unifying national force and symbol as well. Thus, unsurprisingly, it has been a target of numerous Israeli raids, including attempts to burn it down, or conduct excavations under it to seek the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.</p>
<p>In response, “Defending al-Aqsa” has been an unswerving rallying cry for Palestinians throughout the years. Several Palestinian uprisings were unleashed as a reaction to Israeli political or military plans to alter the status quo over the mosque. The Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000 was one such uprising. It lasted for nearly five years, during which thousands of Palestinians and hundreds of Israelis were killed in clashes that were provoked by late Israeli leader, Ariel Sharon.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>That context should be remembered if the current coverage of the very worrying situation in and around Jerusalem is to be meaningful in any way. &#160;The war on the mosque, which is central to the spirituality of hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world, is not simply the work of a few Jewish extremists. It is part and parcel of an Israeli government agenda which has been crystalizing in recent years and months. Next month, for example, the Israeli Knesset will vote on a motion calling for the partitioning of <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/14775-israel-to-vote-on-partitioning-al-aqsa-mosque-between-muslims-and-jews" type="external">al-Aqsa.</a></p>
<p>One of the leading advocates of that partition, at least in terms of a first step towards a complete takeover, is the Temple Mount Faithful organization, <a href="http://forward.com/articles/208162/right-wing-jewish-activist-yehuda-glick-shot-after/" type="external">headed by Yehuda Glick</a>.</p>
<p>Founded by Gershon Salomon, Temple Mount Faithful Movement, <a href="http://templemountfaithful.org/leadership.php" type="external">according to its website</a>, is dedicated to the “the vision of consecrating the Temple Mount to the Name of G‑d, to removing the Muslim shrines placed there as a symbol of Muslim conquest, to the rebuilding of the Third Temple on the Temple Mount, and the godly redemption of the People and the Land of Israel.”</p>
<p>This messianic vision is not entirely alien to the discourse of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.&#160;His logic in defense of illegal settlements in occupied Jerusalem is such: “The French build in Paris, the English build in London and the Israelis build in Jerusalem. To come and tell Jews not to live in Jerusalem – why?”</p>
<p>Indeed, there seems to be little conflict between the vision of the Temple Mount Faithful Movement-like organizations, the political attitude of Tel Aviv or the many steps underway to terminate Palestinian properties, demolish homes, and expand Jewish settlements.</p>
<p>Yehuda Glick, the well-funded US-Israeli “activist”, whose obsession with destroying al-Aqsa knows no bounds, and who has been <a href="http://www.imemc.org/index.php/68902?redirect=article/68902" type="external">frequenting the mosque in provocative visits</a> under Israeli police cover for years, has been the face of the Israeli designs against al Aqsa.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, October 29, <a href="http://forward.com/articles/208162/right-wing-jewish-activist-yehuda-glick-shot-after/" type="external">a suspected Palestinian assailant shot and wounded him</a> as he stepped out of a Jerusalem conference focused on building the Temple Mount on the ruins of al-Aqsa. His alleged attacker, Moataz Hejazi was killed by Israeli police. His sister told Al-Jazeera on October 30 that her brother was badly beaten, then taken to the roof of a nearby building and shot.</p>
<p>The decision to shut down al-Aqsa took place after the incident. Some in the media and in Israel see Glick – who has been a notorious figure for many Palestinian Jerusalemites throughout the years – as a victim of wanton Palestinian violence. He was “part of a growing movement among religiously militant Jews demanding more prayer rights at the al-Aqsa compound,” <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/International/threat-posed-al-aqsa-mosque-closing-jerusalem/story?id=26576444" type="external">ABC News casually reported</a>.</p>
<p>But Glick demanded more. His group’s mission was to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian inhabitants of East Jerusalem. His actions testify to this.</p>
<p>The shooting of Glick is reminiscent of a similar episode in the blood stained history of the region, one that had dreadful consequences. &#160;On <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2014/02/remembering-ibrahimi-mosque-ma-2014223105915230233.html" type="external">&#160;25 February, 1994,</a>&#160;the&#160;US-born Jewish extremist Baruch Goldstein stormed into the Ibrahimi Mosque in the Palestinian city of al-Khalil (Hebron) and opened fire.</p>
<p>The aim was to kill as many people as he could, and that he did, by killing up to 30 people and wounding over 120.</p>
<p>It was not enough that Israeli soldiers within the vicinity of the Ibrahimi Mosque allowed Goldstein – armed with a Galil rifle and other weapons – access to the mosque, but they opened fire on worshipers as they tried to flee the scene. Israeli soldiers killed 24 more and injured others.</p>
<p>Goldstein was a member of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), a racist party of Jewish extremists founded by Meir Kahane. The Temple Mount Faithful, like other such extremists groups, consider Goldstein, a hero. Like Glick, Goldstein was also American and lived in an illegal al-Khalil settlement.</p>
<p>While Goldstein’s mass murder was condemned by many, including many Israelis, there is no denial that Jewish extremists, who are mostly populating the illegal settlements of the West Bank and Jerusalem, are part of a larger Israeli government plan aimed at ethnically cleansing Palestinians.</p>
<p>While Israeli bulldozers dig into Palestinian land during the day, leveling mounds of ground and destroying olive groves for settlement expansion, heavy machinery burrows beneath the Old City of al-Quds – Jerusalem – at night. The Israelis are looking for evidence of what they believe to be ancient Jewish temples, presumably destroyed in 586BC and 70AD.</p>
<p>To fulfil the “prophecy,” Jewish extremists believe that a third temple must be built. But of course, there is the inconvenient fact that on that particular spot exists one of Islam’s holiest sites: <a href="http://www.noblesanctuary.com/" type="external">The Noble Sanctuary</a>. It has been an exclusively Muslim prayer site for the last 1,300 years.</p>
<p>The combination of right-wing politicians allied with religious zealots is now defining the Israeli attitude towards Palestinians, particularly in Jerusalem. They are eyeing al-Aqsa for <a href="http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=676473" type="external">annexation</a>, the same way the Israeli government is laboring to permanently annex large swathes of the occupied West Bank.</p>
<p>In fact, last February, the Israeli Knesset chose the 20th&#160;anniversary of the Goldstein massacre of Palestinians in al-Khalil, to begin a debate concerning the status of the al-Aqsa compound. Powerful right-wingers want the government to enforce its “sovereignty” over the Muslim site, which is administered by Jordan per the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty of 1994. Israeli MP, Moshe Feiglin, is the man behind the move, but he is not alone.</p>
<p>Feiglin is a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, and has strong backing within the party, the government and the Knesset. His supporters include Yehuda Glick, the American-born fanatic.</p>
<p>It remains unclear what fate awaits al-Aqsa Mosque. Caught between Israeli annexation plans, raids of Jewish extremists, <a href="http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/jerusalem-danger-while-world-sleeps-1694782586" type="external">international silence</a> and a <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/04/timeline-al-aqsa-mosque-2014413111757867796.html" type="external">history of bloodshed</a>, al-Aqsa is facing difficult days ahead, as indeed are the people of Jerusalem, whose suffering, like their city, seems eternal.</p> | false | 1 | israels decision shut alaqsa mosque thursday october 30 gross violation religious rights palestinian muslims fact rights palestinian muslims christians routinely violated israeli occupation decades especially jerusalem recently gaza 51day war gaza strip reported 73 mosques destroyed 205 partially destroyed according palestinian government report noble sanctuary located jerusalems old city known haram alsharif arabic home alaqsa mosque dome rock serves much religious role palestinian society unifying national force symbol well thus unsurprisingly target numerous israeli raids including attempts burn conduct excavations seek fulfillment biblical prophecy response defending alaqsa unswerving rallying cry palestinians throughout years several palestinian uprisings unleashed reaction israeli political military plans alter status quo mosque alaqsa intifada 2000 one uprising lasted nearly five years thousands palestinians hundreds israelis killed clashes provoked late israeli leader ariel sharon 160 context remembered current coverage worrying situation around jerusalem meaningful way 160the war mosque central spirituality hundreds millions muslims around world simply work jewish extremists part parcel israeli government agenda crystalizing recent years months next month example israeli knesset vote motion calling partitioning alaqsa one leading advocates partition least terms first step towards complete takeover temple mount faithful organization headed yehuda glick founded gershon salomon temple mount faithful movement according website dedicated vision consecrating temple mount name gd removing muslim shrines placed symbol muslim conquest rebuilding third temple temple mount godly redemption people land israel messianic vision entirely alien discourse benjamin netanyahus government160his logic defense illegal settlements occupied jerusalem french build paris english build london israelis build jerusalem come tell jews live jerusalem indeed seems little conflict vision temple mount faithful movementlike organizations political attitude tel aviv many steps underway terminate palestinian properties demolish homes expand jewish settlements yehuda glick wellfunded usisraeli activist whose obsession destroying alaqsa knows bounds frequenting mosque provocative visits israeli police cover years face israeli designs al aqsa wednesday october 29 suspected palestinian assailant shot wounded stepped jerusalem conference focused building temple mount ruins alaqsa alleged attacker moataz hejazi killed israeli police sister told aljazeera october 30 brother badly beaten taken roof nearby building shot decision shut alaqsa took place incident media israel see glick notorious figure many palestinian jerusalemites throughout years victim wanton palestinian violence part growing movement among religiously militant jews demanding prayer rights alaqsa compound abc news casually reported glick demanded groups mission ethnically cleanse palestinian inhabitants east jerusalem actions testify shooting glick reminiscent similar episode blood stained history region one dreadful consequences 160on 16025 february 1994160the160usborn jewish extremist baruch goldstein stormed ibrahimi mosque palestinian city alkhalil hebron opened fire aim kill many people could killing 30 people wounding 120 enough israeli soldiers within vicinity ibrahimi mosque allowed goldstein armed galil rifle weapons access mosque opened fire worshipers tried flee scene israeli soldiers killed 24 injured others goldstein member jewish defense league jdl racist party jewish extremists founded meir kahane temple mount faithful like extremists groups consider goldstein hero like glick goldstein also american lived illegal alkhalil settlement goldsteins mass murder condemned many including many israelis denial jewish extremists mostly populating illegal settlements west bank jerusalem part larger israeli government plan aimed ethnically cleansing palestinians israeli bulldozers dig palestinian land day leveling mounds ground destroying olive groves settlement expansion heavy machinery burrows beneath old city alquds jerusalem night israelis looking evidence believe ancient jewish temples presumably destroyed 586bc 70ad fulfil prophecy jewish extremists believe third temple must built course inconvenient fact particular spot exists one islams holiest sites noble sanctuary exclusively muslim prayer site last 1300 years combination rightwing politicians allied religious zealots defining israeli attitude towards palestinians particularly jerusalem eyeing alaqsa annexation way israeli government laboring permanently annex large swathes occupied west bank fact last february israeli knesset chose 20th160anniversary goldstein massacre palestinians alkhalil begin debate concerning status alaqsa compound powerful rightwingers want government enforce sovereignty muslim site administered jordan per jordanianisraeli peace treaty 1994 israeli mp moshe feiglin man behind move alone feiglin member netanyahus likud party strong backing within party government knesset supporters include yehuda glick americanborn fanatic remains unclear fate awaits alaqsa mosque caught israeli annexation plans raids jewish extremists international silence history bloodshed alaqsa facing difficult days ahead indeed people jerusalem whose suffering like city seems eternal | 686 |
<p>If we’ve learned anything, it’s that there’s power in numbers. One lone voice may have gone unnoticed, but the chorus of those who have risen up to share their stories has ensured that justice has a chance to be served. Their courage has sparked a sea change.</p>
<p>“Women have had enough. We’ve been shut up and silenced for so long,” says actress Natasha Henstridge, who’s been in constant contact with other accusers, offering one another advice and support. It was one of those conversations that spurred them to agree to take part in Variety’s photo shoot. (While Al Franken has apologized, the others named here have either denied the allegations or not commented publicly.)</p>
<p>“The single biggest impact we can have on society as a whole is changing what stories we tell and who gets to tell them,” says actress Sarah Ann Masse. “Representation is so incredibly important.”</p>
<p>Katherine kendallActress <a href="http://variety.com/t/harvey-weinstein/" type="external">Harvey Weinstein</a>, sexual assault, 1993“I had lived with [my story] for a long time,&#160;and I had&#160;accepted that&#160;that was just the way things were.&#160;Knowing that telling my story helped other women helped me come forward.&#160;There was no reason to keep it a secret. That certainly had never served me personally.”</p>
<p>Louisette GeissActress and screenwriter <a href="http://variety.com/2017/biz/news/sexual-harassment-legal-consequences-column-1202638323/" type="external">Harvey Weinstein</a>, sexual assault, 2008“I decided to go public because overall I did not want Harvey Weinstein to sue The New York Times or continue to claim his encounters were consensual. I did not want to stand by idle and witness Harvey Weinstein say that Ashley Judd or any woman was lying or that our ‘story’ was so good he should buy the movie rights. My rights had been violated, and I gave up everything I dreamed of and worked so hard for to not be treated like a sex slave.&#160;I knew this had to end, and I was willing to take it on for me, my daughters and all women.”</p>
<p>Lauren SivanTV reporter and news anchorHarvey Weinstein, sexual assault, 10 years ago“In the past when women came forward, they were called liars, gold diggers or worse. They were told to stay quiet if they wanted to keep their jobs, reputation, etc. We need a system that believes women when they come forward, no matter how big or powerful the name they are accusing.”</p>
<p>Natasha HenstridgeActressHarvey Weinstein, sexual assault“For me, it was the realization that I was not the only one that changed everything. I think we have a tendency to believe that someone else’s bad behavior in some way had to do with something you did. It’s an isolated incident until you find out that it’s not an isolated incident. When I found that out, I had a much harder time sleeping every night without coming forward. Every single night, I was torn. It ripped me up for a good month. I feel like a different person now. I feel like I can hold my head higher.”</p>
<p>Jaime Ray NewmanActress <a href="http://variety.com/t/brett-ratner/" type="external">Brett Ratner</a>, sexual harassment, 2005“Sharing our experiences in brutal honesty is an essential tool. And if the people who have a larger platform can stir conversation and change, then maybe the cultural shift will spread to those men and women in the shadows, who work at jobs that don’t afford them the power we are so lucky to have. The greatest statistic I’ve heard recently is that after the [presidential] election, 19,000 women expressed serious interest in running for an elected governmental position. We have an opening right now to fill up positions of power with women and minorities who will level the playing field. That’s really all we are asking for — a meritocracy where everyone feels their worth is dependent on talent and drive, intelligence and passion, not their bra size.”</p>
<p>Kristina CohenActress, writer, producerEd Westwick, rape, 2014“I’m living my truth. I would have just felt like I wouldn’t be living my truth if I didn’t speak up. I was terrified. But every conversation I was having was about this is the time to clean the system out. This is what I’ve been writing about. I believe in cleaning out the system, and having women come into these power positions and create stories that honor women, that honor their sanctity and divinity over exploitation. It’s my nightmare to have my name out there with ‘rape’ next to it, but I just thought this is serving the greater good. This is the right thing to do.”</p>
<p>Dani AlvaradoFilmmakerJames Toback, sexual harassment, 2011“I’d always assumed that since I was young and not famous, my voice didn’t matter; if anything, it would be damaging to me. I hope this movement encourages all women and men, no matter how powerless they feel, to speak up because they will be heard.”</p>
<p>Sarah Ann MasseActress and comedianHarvey Weinstein, sexual assault, 2008“I kept silent for nine years. When I saw the bravery of the other women who had come forward, and saw that for once there were actually repercussions, I decided to speak out. I felt it was important for other survivors to hear my story, a story that may be similar to theirs, and to know that they were not alone. To know that it isn’t their fault. And to know that they shouldn’t have to live in fear. We, as a society, need to believe victims, and our voices are so much stronger when we speak together.”</p>
<p>LeeAnn TweedenRadio broadcasterAl Franken, sexual assault, 2006“The women who spoke up before me gave me the courage and strength to say something. I am proud to stand next to these women. I’m hoping we’re making a difference for my 2-year-old daughter and my 4-year-old son. I truly believe this is the tipping point. This feels like a cultural shift because, frankly, it can’t go back to being the way it’s always been.&#160;And I believe social media has played a big role in all of this. It has given people with ‘no voice’ (but with internet access) the power to add their stories and say #MeToo. I also believe a huge part of it is that men are more engaged. When #MeToo was happening on social media, I saw a lot of my male friends freaking out. Now they’re not just listening to Hollywood women talking about sexual&#160;assault, they’re hearing their wives talking about their own stories.”</p>
<p>Tony MontanaFilmmakerKevin Spacey, sexual assault, 2003“When Anthony Rapp came forward, I felt an immediate sense of both relief and responsibility to embolden others to follow suit, for their emotional and psychological well-being and to share their stories.&#160;I had to keep silent about Kevin Spacey sexually assaulting me, lest I be labeled a homophobe or liar.&#160;Fortunately the tide is turning, and the monsters are being vanquished.&#160;It is indeed a reckoning.”</p>
<p>Erika RosenbaumActressHarvey Weinstein, sexual harassment and assault“In the early days of the first story breaking, I got a sense, perhaps for the first time, that my ugly personal experience was not a dark mark on my character, but rather a common and systemic problem in our industry (and honestly, everywhere). I felt that he should be accountable for everyone of us he manipulated and abused, and this was my way of lending my voice to an overdue and much-needed conversation. I have some distance now, and I can see clearly this wasn’t my fault, and I didn’t deserve to be treated that way.”</p> | false | 1 | weve learned anything theres power numbers one lone voice may gone unnoticed chorus risen share stories ensured justice chance served courage sparked sea change women enough weve shut silenced long says actress natasha henstridge whos constant contact accusers offering one another advice support one conversations spurred agree take part varietys photo shoot al franken apologized others named either denied allegations commented publicly single biggest impact society whole changing stories tell gets tell says actress sarah ann masse representation incredibly important katherine kendallactress harvey weinstein sexual assault 1993i lived story long time160and had160accepted that160that way things were160knowing telling story helped women helped come forward160there reason keep secret certainly never served personally louisette geissactress screenwriter harvey weinstein sexual assault 2008i decided go public overall want harvey weinstein sue new york times continue claim encounters consensual want stand idle witness harvey weinstein say ashley judd woman lying story good buy movie rights rights violated gave everything dreamed worked hard treated like sex slave160i knew end willing take daughters women lauren sivantv reporter news anchorharvey weinstein sexual assault 10 years agoin past women came forward called liars gold diggers worse told stay quiet wanted keep jobs reputation etc need system believes women come forward matter big powerful name accusing natasha henstridgeactressharvey weinstein sexual assaultfor realization one changed everything think tendency believe someone elses bad behavior way something isolated incident find isolated incident found much harder time sleeping every night without coming forward every single night torn ripped good month feel like different person feel like hold head higher jaime ray newmanactress brett ratner sexual harassment 2005sharing experiences brutal honesty essential tool people larger platform stir conversation change maybe cultural shift spread men women shadows work jobs dont afford power lucky greatest statistic ive heard recently presidential election 19000 women expressed serious interest running elected governmental position opening right fill positions power women minorities level playing field thats really asking meritocracy everyone feels worth dependent talent drive intelligence passion bra size kristina cohenactress writer producered westwick rape 2014im living truth would felt like wouldnt living truth didnt speak terrified every conversation time clean system ive writing believe cleaning system women come power positions create stories honor women honor sanctity divinity exploitation nightmare name rape next thought serving greater good right thing dani alvaradofilmmakerjames toback sexual harassment 2011id always assumed since young famous voice didnt matter anything would damaging hope movement encourages women men matter powerless feel speak heard sarah ann masseactress comedianharvey weinstein sexual assault 2008i kept silent nine years saw bravery women come forward saw actually repercussions decided speak felt important survivors hear story story may similar know alone know isnt fault know shouldnt live fear society need believe victims voices much stronger speak together leeann tweedenradio broadcasteral franken sexual assault 2006the women spoke gave courage strength say something proud stand next women im hoping making difference 2yearold daughter 4yearold son truly believe tipping point feels like cultural shift frankly cant go back way always been160and believe social media played big role given people voice internet access power add stories say metoo also believe huge part men engaged metoo happening social media saw lot male friends freaking theyre listening hollywood women talking sexual160assault theyre hearing wives talking stories tony montanafilmmakerkevin spacey sexual assault 2003when anthony rapp came forward felt immediate sense relief responsibility embolden others follow suit emotional psychological wellbeing share stories160i keep silent kevin spacey sexually assaulting lest labeled homophobe liar160fortunately tide turning monsters vanquished160it indeed reckoning erika rosenbaumactressharvey weinstein sexual harassment assaultin early days first story breaking got sense perhaps first time ugly personal experience dark mark character rather common systemic problem industry honestly everywhere felt accountable everyone us manipulated abused way lending voice overdue muchneeded conversation distance see clearly wasnt fault didnt deserve treated way | 624 |
<p>According to a report by the staff of Representative Henry Waxman of California, a Democrat and frequent critic of the Bush administration, at least some high school students who have taken part in abstinence-only sex education programs funded by the federal government have been given “false, misleading, or distorted information.” Ceci Connolly of the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26623-2004Dec1.html" type="external">Washington Post</a> notes that these poor benighted children have been taught, among other things, “that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide” and that “touching a person”s genitals ‘can result in pregnancy’.” Of course one would like to see the context, but I wonder if even so ardent a pro-choice Democrat as Mr Waxman would like to take his oath that abortion can’t lead to sterility or suicide or even that the touching of genitals can’t result in pregnancy? Doesn’t it sort of depend on what it is that’s touching them — and where that touching is likely to lead?</p>
<p>Further examples of these woeful “misconceptions” in the various school curricula studied for the report included, again by Miss Connolly’s account, the claim that “a 43-day-old fetus is a ‘thinking person.’” But surely, whether it is or not depends on whether your idea of “thinking” requires actual ratiocination — in which case even some adult fetuses could not count as thinking persons — or any sort of brain function as measurable by an EEG? If thinking means conscious and capable of reasoning, even the most Neanderthal of pro-lifers is unlikely to have claimed so much on behalf of a six-week old fetus. But if there are brain waves and therefore brain activity, as there are at that stage, why should you begrudge the tiny creature the title of “thinking person” — unless you have, as Mr Waxman’s staff presumably does have, a very good reason for wishing to deny it?</p>
<p>One begins to suspect that the Waxman/Washington Post version of true sexual information could at least as easily be impugned if it were subjected to the sharp scrutiny of those who are ideologically opposed to them, but Miss Connolly appears to have a touchingly naïve faith in what she calls “nonpartisan researchers.” The claim of one of the sex-ed curricula she cites, for instance, that up to ten per cent of women who have abortions become sterile is supposedly contradicted by “the 2001 edition of a standard obstetrics textbook that says fertility is not affected by elective abortion” — as if obstetrics textbooks couldn’t have political agendas of their own. I remember hearing once of a carefully constructed scientific study which purported to demonstrate that abortions rarely if ever produced long-lasting emotional effects on the women who had had them — though the study did note as a curious by-product of its investigation the fact half the women surveyed denied that they had ever had an abortion. So, no emotional after-effects there, then!</p>
<p>I very much doubt there is any such thing as a purely scientific, “nonpartisan researcher” in the highly charged political atmosphere surrounding this whole question in America today. And the language in which the allegedly scientific facts are discussed is a product of the same moral relativism which produced abortion and no-fault sexuality in the first place. Even a supporter of teaching abstinence wrote in a letter to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56451-2004Dec10.html" type="external">the Post</a>&#160;about Miss Connolly’s article that “Although some abstinence-only education programs may misrepresent facts in an effort to promote a morally conservative agenda, several outstanding programs promote abstinence from a truthful and complete position and without a moral agenda.” Hang on a minute there! Just why is it again that supporters of abstinence have to apologize for their “moral agenda”? Don’t the supporters of sexual laissez-faire have any moral agenda of their own? Or does it only count as “moral” if it counsels restraint?</p>
<p>That would seem to be the view of a great many of those who claim that “science” is on the side of moral laxity. They may have come to it through a dim perception that to teach morality would be to teach religion and therefore amount to a violation of what everyone knows to be the very foundation-stone of our constitutional democracy, namely the separation of church and state. In fact, you’ve got to wonder how the republic survived its first 170 odd years until this principle was discovered by the Warren Court to have lurked all along, unrecognized, in the Constitution’s First Amendment. But I wonder if it is really possible to teach at all — at least in the subjects I am used to teaching, namely literature and the humanities, without at least assuming some morality, even if you decline — as, of course, nowadays one must decline — to make it explicit. Are not the compilers of the report themselves assuming a morality and not merely displaying a scientific interest if they claim that it is wrong to teach that there ought to be moral restraints on sexuality. How is it more scientific to say that there ought not to be? Or that kids ought to be left to make up their own minds?</p>
<p>In practice everyone recognizes that it is simply not possible to approach sexual matters without some sense of moral discrimination. Why not, then encourage the teaching of sexual wisdom in the young, which could very easily be done without any reference to religion? For answer, just consider this example of Representative Waxman’s alleged misinformation:</p>
<p>Some course materials cited in Waxman”s report present as scientific fact notions about a man’s need for “admiration” and “sexual fulfillment” compared with a woman”s need for “financial support.” One book in the “Choosing Best” series tells the story of a knight who married a village maiden instead of the princess because the princess offered so many tips on slaying the local dragon. “Moral of the story,” notes the popular text: “Occasional suggestions and assistance may be alright [sic], but too much of it will lessen a man’s confidence or even turn him away from his princess.”</p>
<p>Is this then, we want to ask, untrue? Well, not exactly. But it is very likely to be found offensive by those of the feminist persuasion. Not that there could be any unscientific morality there! In order avoid the question of the teaching’s truth or falsity, Miss Connolly wishes to claim only that it is not “scientific.” I very much doubt that the offending curriculum ever claimed that it was scientific, because it obviously could not be. It is a normative judgment of a kind that everybody at some time has to make, and into the realm of normative judgments about human behavior science is simply powerless to follow us. The apparent expectation that it should on the part of the critics of abstinence curricula is evidence that an altogether different part of the curriculum has been neglected in their case.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | false | 1 | according report staff representative henry waxman california democrat frequent critic bush administration least high school students taken part abstinenceonly sex education programs funded federal government given false misleading distorted information ceci connolly washington post notes poor benighted children taught among things abortion lead sterility suicide touching persons genitals result pregnancy course one would like see context wonder even ardent prochoice democrat mr waxman would like take oath abortion cant lead sterility suicide even touching genitals cant result pregnancy doesnt sort depend thats touching touching likely lead examples woeful misconceptions various school curricula studied report included miss connollys account claim 43dayold fetus thinking person surely whether depends whether idea thinking requires actual ratiocination case even adult fetuses could count thinking persons sort brain function measurable eeg thinking means conscious capable reasoning even neanderthal prolifers unlikely claimed much behalf sixweek old fetus brain waves therefore brain activity stage begrudge tiny creature title thinking person unless mr waxmans staff presumably good reason wishing deny one begins suspect waxmanwashington post version true sexual information could least easily impugned subjected sharp scrutiny ideologically opposed miss connolly appears touchingly naïve faith calls nonpartisan researchers claim one sexed curricula cites instance ten per cent women abortions become sterile supposedly contradicted 2001 edition standard obstetrics textbook says fertility affected elective abortion obstetrics textbooks couldnt political agendas remember hearing carefully constructed scientific study purported demonstrate abortions rarely ever produced longlasting emotional effects women though study note curious byproduct investigation fact half women surveyed denied ever abortion emotional aftereffects much doubt thing purely scientific nonpartisan researcher highly charged political atmosphere surrounding whole question america today language allegedly scientific facts discussed product moral relativism produced abortion nofault sexuality first place even supporter teaching abstinence wrote letter post160about miss connollys article although abstinenceonly education programs may misrepresent facts effort promote morally conservative agenda several outstanding programs promote abstinence truthful complete position without moral agenda hang minute supporters abstinence apologize moral agenda dont supporters sexual laissezfaire moral agenda count moral counsels restraint would seem view great many claim science side moral laxity may come dim perception teach morality would teach religion therefore amount violation everyone knows foundationstone constitutional democracy namely separation church state fact youve got wonder republic survived first 170 odd years principle discovered warren court lurked along unrecognized constitutions first amendment wonder really possible teach least subjects used teaching namely literature humanities without least assuming morality even decline course nowadays one must decline make explicit compilers report assuming morality merely displaying scientific interest claim wrong teach ought moral restraints sexuality scientific say ought kids ought left make minds practice everyone recognizes simply possible approach sexual matters without sense moral discrimination encourage teaching sexual wisdom young could easily done without reference religion answer consider example representative waxmans alleged misinformation course materials cited waxmans report present scientific fact notions mans need admiration sexual fulfillment compared womans need financial support one book choosing best series tells story knight married village maiden instead princess princess offered many tips slaying local dragon moral story notes popular text occasional suggestions assistance may alright sic much lessen mans confidence even turn away princess want ask untrue well exactly likely found offensive feminist persuasion could unscientific morality order avoid question teachings truth falsity miss connolly wishes claim scientific much doubt offending curriculum ever claimed scientific obviously could normative judgment kind everybody time make realm normative judgments human behavior science simply powerless follow us apparent expectation part critics abstinence curricula evidence altogether different part curriculum neglected case 160 | 578 |
<p>ROME — Benedict XVI: The name is the program, and the name is the man.</p>
<p>St. Benedict was born in 480, in a small Umbrian village. In 529, as a monastic town was being built for Benedict and his monks on the brow of Monte Cassino, Plato’s Academy closed in Athens. The timing nicely illustrated a conviction of the late John Paul II: “In the designs of Providence, there are no mere coincidences.” As a great embodiment of classical culture shut its doors, the “academy of Christianity,” as the new pope once called it, was being established.</p>
<p>And a good thing, too. The Roman empire was in rapid decline, beset by wars, economic dislocation, and social disorder. The civilizational achievement represented by Plato’s Academy could have been lost; classical culture might have gone the way of the Mayans. That it didn’t had a lot to do with Benedict. His monks not only preserved crucial elements of the civilization of Athens and Rome during the Dark Ages; they transformed that civilization by infusing a biblical understanding of the human — person, community, origins and destiny — into the classical culture they preserved for future generations in their scriptoria and libraries.</p>
<p>The result of that fusion of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome was what we know as “Europe,” or, more broadly, “the West.” It was a colossal, indeed world-historical achievement. And the achievement was entirely consistent with what Pope Benedict XVI remembered in a recent interview as “a Benedictine motto: Succisa virescit — pruned, it grows again.” Thanks to St. Benedict and Western monasticism, the demise of classical civilization was the occasion for a new beginning — and, eventually, a nobler civilizational accomplishment.</p>
<p>Benedict XVI once described that accomplishment through another Benedictine motto: Ora et labora, pray and work. “Turning the earth into a garden,” he told the German journalist Peter Seewald in 2000, “and the service of God [were] fused together and became a whole . . . Worshiping God always takes priority . . . But at the same time, it’s a matter of cultivating and renewing the earth in an ethos of worship. This also involves overcoming the ancient prejudice against manual labor . . . Manual labor now becomes something noble . . . an imitation of the Creator’s work. [And] along with the new attitude toward work comes a change in our ideas about the dignity of man.” Thus the culture of the classical world was not only preserved; it was transformed into a culture of freedom.</p>
<p>Benedict XVI has long been concerned that the West risks the possibility of a new Dark Age. What he described in a sermon on the day before his election as a new “dictatorship of relativism” is one dimension of the problem. If there is only “your truth” and “my truth” and nothing that we understand as “the truth,” then on what principled basis is the West to defend its greatest accomplishments: equality before the law, tolerance and civility, religious freedom and the rights of conscience, democratic self-governance? If the only measure of us is us, isn’t the horizon of our aspiration greatly foreshortened? (And if you want to see what that kind of metaphysical and spiritual boredom can do to a once-great civilization, look around Western Europe, where self-absorption and a stubborn resistance to saying that anything is “true” has led a continent to the brink of demographic suicide.)</p>
<p>Pope Benedict also senses that a new Dark Age may be aborning in those laboratories where human begetting is turned into human manufacture — the Dark Age of Huxley’s brave new world. So just as we can expect the new pope to champion a revitalization of Christian faith and practice in Europe as the necessary condition for the rejuvenation of the public life of the West, so we can expect him to be, like his predecessor, a global champion of the dignity and worth of human life from conception until natural death.</p>
<p>A first public test of these two thrusts of the new pontificate will come as early as mid-August, when Benedict XVI will return to his native Germany for the International World Youth Day that will be celebrated in Cologne. Can he rally the millions of young who streamed into Rome for John Paul II’s funeral Mass, determined to say goodbye to a man in whom they sensed the solidarity of true fatherhood? Can Benedict be a father who inspires his young charges to enter the lists of contemporary culture, not primarily to deplore it but to convert it? A lot of 21st-century history may ride on the answer we’ll get in four months, there along the banks of the Rhine.</p>
<p>As with the program, so with the man: He is a Benedict in the depths of his interior life and in his intellectual accomplishment. Benedict XVI has an encyclopedic knowledge of two millennia of theology, and indeed of the cultural history of the West. He is more the shy, monastic scholar than the ebullient public personality of his predecessor; yet he has shown an impressive capacity for a different type of public “presence” in his brilliantly simple homily at John Paul II’s funeral and in his first appearance as pope. He has known hardship: He knows the modern temptations of totalitarianism (paganism wedded to technology) from inside the Third Reich; he has been betrayed by former students (like the splenetic Brazilian liberation theologian Leonardo Boff) and former colleagues (like Hans Kung, a man of far less scholarly accomplishment and infinitely less charity). His critics say he is dour and pessimistic. Yet I take it as an iron law of human personality that a man is known by his musical preferences; and Benedict XVI is a Mozart man, who knows that Mozart is what the angels play when they perform for the sheer joy of it. Indeed, and notwithstanding the cartoon Joseph Ratzinger, the new pope is a man of Christian happiness who has long asked why, in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, summoned to be a “new Pentecost” for the Catholic Church, so much of the joy has gone out of Catholicism. Over some 17 years of conversation with him, I have come to know him as a man who likes to laugh, and who can laugh because he is convinced that the human drama is, in the final analysis, a divine comedy.</p>
<p>He once called himself a “donkey,” a “draft animal” who had been called to a work not of his choosing. Yet when Joseph Ratzinger stepped out onto the loggia of St. Peter’s to begin a work he never sought, I couldn’t help think of the conclusion of Alasdair MacIntyre’s penetrating study of the moral confusions of the West, “After Virtue.” In a time when willfulness and relativism had led to a frigid and joyless cultural climate, MacIntyre wrote, the world was not waiting for Godot, “but for another — doubtless very different — St. Benedict.” The world now has a new Benedict. We can be sure that he will challenge us all to the noble human adventure that has no better name than sanctity.</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 | rome benedict xvi name program name man st benedict born 480 small umbrian village 529 monastic town built benedict monks brow monte cassino platos academy closed athens timing nicely illustrated conviction late john paul ii designs providence mere coincidences great embodiment classical culture shut doors academy christianity new pope called established good thing roman empire rapid decline beset wars economic dislocation social disorder civilizational achievement represented platos academy could lost classical culture might gone way mayans didnt lot benedict monks preserved crucial elements civilization athens rome dark ages transformed civilization infusing biblical understanding human person community origins destiny classical culture preserved future generations scriptoria libraries result fusion jerusalem athens rome know europe broadly west colossal indeed worldhistorical achievement achievement entirely consistent pope benedict xvi remembered recent interview benedictine motto succisa virescit pruned grows thanks st benedict western monasticism demise classical civilization occasion new beginning eventually nobler civilizational accomplishment benedict xvi described accomplishment another benedictine motto ora et labora pray work turning earth garden told german journalist peter seewald 2000 service god fused together became whole worshiping god always takes priority time matter cultivating renewing earth ethos worship also involves overcoming ancient prejudice manual labor manual labor becomes something noble imitation creators work along new attitude toward work comes change ideas dignity man thus culture classical world preserved transformed culture freedom benedict xvi long concerned west risks possibility new dark age described sermon day election new dictatorship relativism one dimension problem truth truth nothing understand truth principled basis west defend greatest accomplishments equality law tolerance civility religious freedom rights conscience democratic selfgovernance measure us us isnt horizon aspiration greatly foreshortened want see kind metaphysical spiritual boredom oncegreat civilization look around western europe selfabsorption stubborn resistance saying anything true led continent brink demographic suicide pope benedict also senses new dark age may aborning laboratories human begetting turned human manufacture dark age huxleys brave new world expect new pope champion revitalization christian faith practice europe necessary condition rejuvenation public life west expect like predecessor global champion dignity worth human life conception natural death first public test two thrusts new pontificate come early midaugust benedict xvi return native germany international world youth day celebrated cologne rally millions young streamed rome john paul iis funeral mass determined say goodbye man sensed solidarity true fatherhood benedict father inspires young charges enter lists contemporary culture primarily deplore convert lot 21stcentury history may ride answer well get four months along banks rhine program man benedict depths interior life intellectual accomplishment benedict xvi encyclopedic knowledge two millennia theology indeed cultural history west shy monastic scholar ebullient public personality predecessor yet shown impressive capacity different type public presence brilliantly simple homily john paul iis funeral first appearance pope known hardship knows modern temptations totalitarianism paganism wedded technology inside third reich betrayed former students like splenetic brazilian liberation theologian leonardo boff former colleagues like hans kung man far less scholarly accomplishment infinitely less charity critics say dour pessimistic yet take iron law human personality man known musical preferences benedict xvi mozart man knows mozart angels play perform sheer joy indeed notwithstanding cartoon joseph ratzinger new pope man christian happiness long asked aftermath second vatican council summoned new pentecost catholic church much joy gone catholicism 17 years conversation come know man likes laugh laugh convinced human drama final analysis divine comedy called donkey draft animal called work choosing yet joseph ratzinger stepped onto loggia st peters begin work never sought couldnt help think conclusion alasdair macintyres penetrating study moral confusions west virtue time willfulness relativism led frigid joyless cultural climate macintyre wrote world waiting godot another doubtless different st benedict world new benedict sure challenge us noble human adventure better name sanctity george weigel distinguished senior fellow ethics public policy center washington dc holds eppcs william e simon chair catholic studies | 629 |
<p>This summer James Bowman is presenting on behalf of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the Hudson Institute in Washington a series of six films on the general theme of “The Pursuit of Happiness.” The films are being shown at the Hudson Institute, 1015 15th Street N.W., Suite 600, and you can go <a href="" type="internal">here</a>&#160;for details or to register to attend. The series continued on Tuesday, July 27th with About Schmidt by Alexander Payne, starring Jack Nicholson, Kathy Bates, Hope Davis and Dermot Mulroney. Before showing the film,&#160;Mr. Bowman&#160;spoke for a few minutes about it as follows.</p>
<p>To those of you who are returning after a two week hiatus to the fifth in our six movies on the theme of the Pursuit of Happiness, welcome back. To those who have missed any or all of the first four movies, I should say that they dated from the 1930s and 1940s and they showed us an America in which politically-inspired doubts during the Depression-era — doubts about individual wealth, and its acquisition, and the behavior of those who had acquired it were gradually giving way to a post-war belief in economic dynamism and individual ambition. The advertising business was prominently featured in two of those movies, Christmas in July by Preston Sturges, from 1940, and Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House, from 1948, in part because they wanted to show us how Americans had bought into the assumption behind the newly dominant advertising industry — the assumption that, as somebody pointed out in our discussion of Mr Blandings two weeks ago, money can buy happiness.</p>
<p>I said at the end of my talk on that movie that we are still living in that world, more than 60 years later, though I didn't mean by that to imply that our confidence in the felicific properties of money has remained as untroubled as it may have appeared to be in 1948. Far from it. We remain what has since come to be called a “consumerist” society and culture largely because nobody has yet thought of a persuasive way out of it, though there have been some attempts, from religious revivalism, from political radicalism and from environmental puritanism to talk us out of our addiction to consumption. None of these has made any significant political impact, although rhetorical obeisance to some of their favorite pieties, particularly those of the environmental movement, has become what has taken the place of political thought for some on the left.</p>
<p>The consumer society, that is, may be unpopular in theory but we remain unshakeably attached to it in practice. Moreover, we are also attached to its mythologies, as we saw again in the fourth season premiere of “Mad Men” on television the night before last. Chief among these mythologies, a word which I don't intend in any pejorative sense, is the idea that selling things is among the world's art forms and the one that Americans are particularly good at. Tonight's film, About Schmidt directed by Alexander Payne and co-written by him with Jim Taylor, may seem at first glance to have nothing to do with any of this. It is about a man, Warren Schmidt, played by Jack Nicholson, at the moment of his retirement from a long career with one firm, the Woodmen of the World Insurance company of Omaha, and the sudden sense of emptiness he experiences as he looks back on a life that now seems meaningless, a failure. The American Dream — if we can use that tired and problematic expression for a moment — was for him what it was already beginning to appear to be in Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House, something to be taken for granted.</p>
<p>And yet, unlike Cary Grant in the 1948 film, whom we leave at the moment of his enjoyment of the happiness he has created for himself, Jack Nicholson appears to himself to have nothing to show for having lived the dream for all those years with the Woodmen and nothing to look forward to in the life of leisure that awaits him in retirement. This is already apparent in the opening scene when we see Schmidt watching the clock in his office as five o'clock on his last day at work approaches. I'm not as a rule Jack Nicholson's biggest fan, but the amount of acting he is able to do just with his face in this movie is an achievement of the first order — and a necessary one, given the fact that he is portraying a man as emotionally bottled up as Schmidt is. This is just one of many differences between this movie and the novel by Louis Begley on which it is theoretically based.</p>
<p>Indeed, I know of no other adaptation of a novel that differs so completely from its original as About Schmidt. Almost the only thing from the novel that survives into the movie is its title. Even Schmidt, its main character, is called Al or Schmidtie in the novel and Warren in the movie. The novel's hero is a Harvard lawyer who worked for a white shoe firm in Manhattan and now lives in the Hamptons, not a fraternity man from the University of Kansas and mid-level insurance executive from Omaha like his not-quite namesake. It's true that both men are widowers who have a daughter (Charlotte in the novel, Jeannie in the movie) about to be married to men (Randall in the movie, Jon in the novel) they don't much care for, but even there the similarities are fewer than the differences. Al's prospective son-in-law is another sharp-elbowed lawyer from his old firm whose Jewishness he finds obscurely troubling, while Warren's is a thick-witted waterbed salesman from Denver whose unattractiveness as a son-in-law — together with that of his entire family as his prospective relations — is only too obvious.</p>
<p>The two men themselves are quite different as well. Louis Begley's Al Schmidt is rather a sexual adventurer and a practised seducer who has a fling with his daughter's prospective mother-in-law as well as a 20-year-old half Puerto Rican waitress who is a much more important character in the book than that Schmidt's priggish, selfish and unsympathetic daughter, Charlotte. Messrs Payne and Taylor's Warren Schmidt, by contrast, is a sexual innocent who makes an awkward and rejected pass at a woman he has just met and runs in panic from the sexual suggestiveness of his daughter's mother-in-law, Roberta, played unforgettably by Kathy Bates. His daughter Jeannie, played by Hope Davis, is not quite so unsympathetic as is Charlotte in the novel, partly because her estrangement from her father is a bit more understandable and appears to have something to do with his emotionally withholding nature.</p>
<p>Paradoxically, the novel is in some ways more cinematic, as we have come to understand the term in recent years anyway, than the movie. It has so much to do with the theme of Schmidt's self-discovery through sex that it comes perilously close to being a middle-aged male wish-fulfilment fantasy — the kind of thing we would expect more from schlocky and commercial Hollywood than a genteel lawyer-novelist and Harvard man like Louis Begley. The great, the wonderful irony of the movie, of which there is no hint in the book, is that there turns out to be more love, more truth, more self-discovery in Schmidt's emotional repression — which is presumably what has created the distance between him and his daughter — than there is in the gloriously vulgar emotional self-indulgence of the Hertzel family into which she is marrying so much against his will.</p>
<p>Warren Schmidt's speech at the wedding reception near the end of the film is to me one of the great moments in cinematic history — right up there with the laughter of Curtin and Howard at the end of Treasure of the Sierra Madre — because we know that, while every word of it is untrue to his real feelings, it is exactly the right thing for him to do. It also goes against the grain of its star, who made his reputation as an actor by being a “My Way” kind of guy. In one of the deleted scenes you can watch on the DVD, Mr Payne even included a sly allu sion to his confrontation with a waitress in one of the most famous moments of Five Easy Pieces, Mr Nicholson's breakthrough film of 1970, only this time his character has meekly to accept the waitress's dictum that there are “no substitutions” allowed. So, too, does the picture go against the grain of the whole Hollywood movie culture and its long-running romance with personal authenticity and raw feeling. For once we're not allowed the easy satisfaction of a hero who bends the world to his will and instead find one whose acceptance of his own inability to change anything is much harder to bear and maybe even more impressive because it is closer to our own experience of things.</p>
<p>At any rate, his hero's passivity is all the more impressive because Alexander Payne has led us to expect something quite different. After Schmidt's epiphany under the stars on top of his Winnebago, he says he feels like a man transformed. At last, he says, he knows what he wants, what he has to do, and he insists that nothing can stop him. The moment of emotional liberation from a lifetime of repression — the moment, in short, that we have come to expect from Hollywood movies — has finally arrived. What could possibly follow but another movie-affirmation of the great American quest for personal authenticity? Yet, instead, the movie celebrates, of all things, repression and good manners, while authenticity comes off as being cheap, self-indulgent and even (dare one say it?) inauthentic — in, for instance, the self-written and cringe-making wedding vows of Jeannie and her dull-witted, mullet-headed Randall, played by Dermot Mulroney, or of randy Roberta's unlovely and unresolved anger towards her second ex-husband, Larry, played by Howard Hesseman.</p>
<p>The wedding reception near the end of the movie acts as a bookend with Warren's retirement party near the beginning. There, the authentic-inauthentic is represented by Ray (Len Cariou), Schmidt's best friend, who gives voice to the conventional piety that we all think we subscribe to and that repudiates the shockingly cynical and subversive advertising notion that money buys happiness. Ray gives a maudlin speech about how none of the money his friend has made or can expect to spend for his own enjoyment in retirement, nor the gifts he has received in honor of it nor the celebratory dinner are of the slightest importance. “None of these superficialities mean a god damn thing,” he bellows. Then, continuing tipsily and tautologically, he pronounces:</p>
<p>What means something, what really means something, Warren, is the knowledge that you devoted your life to something — meaningful. To being productive, and working for a fine company, hell, one of the top-rated insurance carriers in the nation, to raising a fine family, to building a fine house, to being respected by your community, to having wonderful, lasting friendships. At the end of his career, if a man can look back and say: “I did it, I did my job,” then he can retire in glory and enjoy riches far beyond the monetary kind. So, all you young people here, take a good look at a very rich man.</p>
<p>Yeah, yeah. Ray's speech reminds us of Harry Bailey's calling his big brother George, played by Jimmy Stewart, “the richest man in town” in It's a Wonderful Life or Mr Waterbury's definition of “success” in Christmas in July — “if you earn your own living and pay your bills and look the world in the eye” — and it is similarly difficult to dismiss, I think, as merely sentimental humbug. Yet it does manage to strike several false notes in its context. Neither the “fine family” nor the respect of the community nor the “wonderful, lasting friendships” are what they seem to be and, although the Woodmen of the World may be a fine company, it has no further use for Warren Schmidt now that he has been turned out to pasture. His self-assessment as a failure in the final moments of the film — “there's just no getting around it,” he says, anymore than there is the death that he foresees for himself — has much more the ring of truth to it. So far, at least, as the Pursuit of Happiness is concerned, Warren Schmidt is one of those who would seem to have been left behind in the chase.</p>
<p>Another point of contact with George Bailey is that he dreams of great achievements, “I thought that I might be special, that somehow destiny had tapped me to be a great man. Not like Henry Ford or Walt Disney or somebody like that but somebody, you know, semi-important.” When he finally pronounces himself a failure it is in the context of his contrasting his life with that of the pioneers, whose museum he visits at Ft. Kearney, Nebraska, on the way back from Denver and the debacle of Jeannie's wedding. Here, however, there's no heart-warming scene under the Christmas tree to show us that he was wrong and that he was really a big success. All there is is the letter from Sister Nadine Gautier in Tanzania and the drawing from the child Ndugu that he has sponsored through ChildReach — a real charity, by the way — for a paltry $22 a month.</p>
<p>But, of course, the point is that that's not nothing, any more than Schmidt's remaining true to his stuffy, bourgeois sense of good manners and good taste at Jeannie's wedding or his self-examination on the roof of the Winnebago is nothing. Ndugu becomes the essential non-present presence in the film, the recurring reminder that Schmidt's America and its successes and failures, its joys and sorrows exist on a different plane altogether from much of the rest of the world, by whose standards success and failure must have very different meanings. Paradoxically, Ndugu reminds us of the American Dream, with which both Warren Schmidt and ourselves have such an ambivalent relationship, by being so impossibly far removed from it. Ndugu is also what keeps this movie from being like Babbitt or Death of a Salesman or any of the other less interesting works with which it has been — I think wrongly — compared, because he reminds us and eventually reminds Schmidt too of just how lucky we are.</p>
<p>I started this series by pointing out that, at least in its origins, happiness was all about luck, one old word for which was “hap.” In terms of luck, then, Schmidt is only unhappy by comparison with the “semi-important” man he once hoped to be, or perhaps those pioneers who crossed the prairies and built a nation. By comparison with Ndugu and most of his fellow Tanzanians, who remain very much off-screen, he is very happy indeed. And I don't think it is too fanciful to think of the motto he encounters at the Ft. Kearney museum about how “only the strong survived” and “they were the pioneers” — to think of that kind of strength, I mean, as analogous to his own in being able to take what life dishes out to him without crumbling under its burdens. It's certainly a more sober and sobering view of happiness than any we have considered so far, and some might even call it un-American, since it seems to refer us back to an older, European standard of honor or stoicism, rather than American-style dynamism and optimism that we saw in our last film and that we will see again in our next. But maybe the two things — both the courage to stand up to failure and the energy to push through to success — are not so far apart as we sometimes like to think they are. Anyway, I think you'll enjoy the film.</p> | false | 1 | summer james bowman presenting behalf ethics public policy center hudson institute washington series six films general theme pursuit happiness films shown hudson institute 1015 15th street nw suite 600 go here160for details register attend series continued tuesday july 27th schmidt alexander payne starring jack nicholson kathy bates hope davis dermot mulroney showing film160mr bowman160spoke minutes follows returning two week hiatus fifth six movies theme pursuit happiness welcome back missed first four movies say dated 1930s 1940s showed us america politicallyinspired doubts depressionera doubts individual wealth acquisition behavior acquired gradually giving way postwar belief economic dynamism individual ambition advertising business prominently featured two movies christmas july preston sturges 1940 mr blandings builds dream house 1948 part wanted show us americans bought assumption behind newly dominant advertising industry assumption somebody pointed discussion mr blandings two weeks ago money buy happiness said end talk movie still living world 60 years later though didnt mean imply confidence felicific properties money remained untroubled may appeared 1948 far remain since come called consumerist society culture largely nobody yet thought persuasive way though attempts religious revivalism political radicalism environmental puritanism talk us addiction consumption none made significant political impact although rhetorical obeisance favorite pieties particularly environmental movement become taken place political thought left consumer society may unpopular theory remain unshakeably attached practice moreover also attached mythologies saw fourth season premiere mad men television night last chief among mythologies word dont intend pejorative sense idea selling things among worlds art forms one americans particularly good tonights film schmidt directed alexander payne cowritten jim taylor may seem first glance nothing man warren schmidt played jack nicholson moment retirement long career one firm woodmen world insurance company omaha sudden sense emptiness experiences looks back life seems meaningless failure american dream use tired problematic expression moment already beginning appear mr blandings builds dream house something taken granted yet unlike cary grant 1948 film leave moment enjoyment happiness created jack nicholson appears nothing show lived dream years woodmen nothing look forward life leisure awaits retirement already apparent opening scene see schmidt watching clock office five oclock last day work approaches im rule jack nicholsons biggest fan amount acting able face movie achievement first order necessary one given fact portraying man emotionally bottled schmidt one many differences movie novel louis begley theoretically based indeed know adaptation novel differs completely original schmidt almost thing novel survives movie title even schmidt main character called al schmidtie novel warren movie novels hero harvard lawyer worked white shoe firm manhattan lives hamptons fraternity man university kansas midlevel insurance executive omaha like notquite namesake true men widowers daughter charlotte novel jeannie movie married men randall movie jon novel dont much care even similarities fewer differences als prospective soninlaw another sharpelbowed lawyer old firm whose jewishness finds obscurely troubling warrens thickwitted waterbed salesman denver whose unattractiveness soninlaw together entire family prospective relations obvious two men quite different well louis begleys al schmidt rather sexual adventurer practised seducer fling daughters prospective motherinlaw well 20yearold half puerto rican waitress much important character book schmidts priggish selfish unsympathetic daughter charlotte messrs payne taylors warren schmidt contrast sexual innocent makes awkward rejected pass woman met runs panic sexual suggestiveness daughters motherinlaw roberta played unforgettably kathy bates daughter jeannie played hope davis quite unsympathetic charlotte novel partly estrangement father bit understandable appears something emotionally withholding nature paradoxically novel ways cinematic come understand term recent years anyway movie much theme schmidts selfdiscovery sex comes perilously close middleaged male wishfulfilment fantasy kind thing would expect schlocky commercial hollywood genteel lawyernovelist harvard man like louis begley great wonderful irony movie hint book turns love truth selfdiscovery schmidts emotional repression presumably created distance daughter gloriously vulgar emotional selfindulgence hertzel family marrying much warren schmidts speech wedding reception near end film one great moments cinematic history right laughter curtin howard end treasure sierra madre know every word untrue real feelings exactly right thing also goes grain star made reputation actor way kind guy one deleted scenes watch dvd mr payne even included sly allu sion confrontation waitress one famous moments five easy pieces mr nicholsons breakthrough film 1970 time character meekly accept waitresss dictum substitutions allowed picture go grain whole hollywood movie culture longrunning romance personal authenticity raw feeling allowed easy satisfaction hero bends world instead find one whose acceptance inability change anything much harder bear maybe even impressive closer experience things rate heros passivity impressive alexander payne led us expect something quite different schmidts epiphany stars top winnebago says feels like man transformed last says knows wants insists nothing stop moment emotional liberation lifetime repression moment short come expect hollywood movies finally arrived could possibly follow another movieaffirmation great american quest personal authenticity yet instead movie celebrates things repression good manners authenticity comes cheap selfindulgent even dare one say inauthentic instance selfwritten cringemaking wedding vows jeannie dullwitted mulletheaded randall played dermot mulroney randy robertas unlovely unresolved anger towards second exhusband larry played howard hesseman wedding reception near end movie acts bookend warrens retirement party near beginning authenticinauthentic represented ray len cariou schmidts best friend gives voice conventional piety think subscribe repudiates shockingly cynical subversive advertising notion money buys happiness ray gives maudlin speech none money friend made expect spend enjoyment retirement gifts received honor celebratory dinner slightest importance none superficialities mean god damn thing bellows continuing tipsily tautologically pronounces means something really means something warren knowledge devoted life something meaningful productive working fine company hell one toprated insurance carriers nation raising fine family building fine house respected community wonderful lasting friendships end career man look back say job retire glory enjoy riches far beyond monetary kind young people take good look rich man yeah yeah rays speech reminds us harry baileys calling big brother george played jimmy stewart richest man town wonderful life mr waterburys definition success christmas july earn living pay bills look world eye similarly difficult dismiss think merely sentimental humbug yet manage strike several false notes context neither fine family respect community wonderful lasting friendships seem although woodmen world may fine company use warren schmidt turned pasture selfassessment failure final moments film theres getting around says anymore death foresees much ring truth far least pursuit happiness concerned warren schmidt one would seem left behind chase another point contact george bailey dreams great achievements thought might special somehow destiny tapped great man like henry ford walt disney somebody like somebody know semiimportant finally pronounces failure context contrasting life pioneers whose museum visits ft kearney nebraska way back denver debacle jeannies wedding however theres heartwarming scene christmas tree show us wrong really big success letter sister nadine gautier tanzania drawing child ndugu sponsored childreach real charity way paltry 22 month course point thats nothing schmidts remaining true stuffy bourgeois sense good manners good taste jeannies wedding selfexamination roof winnebago nothing ndugu becomes essential nonpresent presence film recurring reminder schmidts america successes failures joys sorrows exist different plane altogether much rest world whose standards success failure must different meanings paradoxically ndugu reminds us american dream warren schmidt ambivalent relationship impossibly far removed ndugu also keeps movie like babbitt death salesman less interesting works think wrongly compared reminds us eventually reminds schmidt lucky started series pointing least origins happiness luck one old word hap terms luck schmidt unhappy comparison semiimportant man hoped perhaps pioneers crossed prairies built nation comparison ndugu fellow tanzanians remain much offscreen happy indeed dont think fanciful think motto encounters ft kearney museum strong survived pioneers think kind strength mean analogous able take life dishes without crumbling burdens certainly sober sobering view happiness considered far might even call unamerican since seems refer us back older european standard honor stoicism rather americanstyle dynamism optimism saw last film see next maybe two things courage stand failure energy push success far apart sometimes like think anyway think youll enjoy film | 1,291 |
<p>President Bush recently&#160;nominated Milan D. Smith Jr. to fill a longstanding vacancy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth Circuit, which covers nine western states, is a notorious bastion of liberal judicial lawlessness. So the White House should be looking to fill the vacancy with an outstanding jurist who is learned in questions of federal constitutional and statutory law and who is prepared to dedicate two decades or more to the arduous task of helping to transform that court.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Smith hardly fits the bill. A Los Angeles-area attorney, Smith, 64, has specialized for nearly four decades in real estate transactions–a specialty that has little bearing on the questions that occupy federal courts. In his one term as a member of a state antidiscrimination commission, he “distinguished himself” by “his time-management skills,” says one of his supporters. He recently explained his decision to step down from the commission by implying disdain for his fellow party members: “I’m a Republican, but I’m a Republican with a heart.”</p>
<p>Consider also David L. Bunning, whom President Bush nominated to a federal district judgeship in 2001. Thirty-five years old when he was nominated, Bunning had been a lawyer for only ten years. Citing his “very limited and shallow” experience with civil cases, his not “particularly challenging” criminal caseload as a federal prosecutor, his unimpressive writing, and his middling academic record, the ABA rated Bunning “not qualified” for a judgeship. Whether or not one credits the ABA rating–a minority of the committee did find Bunning “qualified”–it would be difficult to argue that Bunning was prime judgeship material. But the Senate, with a Democratic majority intent on blocking many of the president’s judicial nominees, expeditiously and unanimously confirmed Bunning.</p>
<p>Smith and Bunning might buck the odds and prove to be outstanding judges, and I certainly don’t mean to suggest there is anything exceptional about their questionable qualifications. On the contrary, unpromising judicial picks have been all too common among President Bush’s lower-court nominees. But what the low caliber of these nominees helps demonstrate is the extraordinary and regrettable influence senators exercise over federal judgeships in their home states. For the key facts driving Smith’s candidacy are that Barbara Boxer, the ultraliberal senator from California, recommended his nomination and that Smith is the brother of Oregon’s Republican senator Gordon Smith. His brother and Boxer, Milan Smith says, “are very good friends.” As for Bunning, the district judgeship that he now occupies is in Kentucky, the home state of Republican senator Jim Bunning, who, not coincidentally, is his father.</p>
<p>For all the attention given to the Democratic filibuster of judicial nominees in recent years, the greater impediment to President Bush’s ability to appoint high-quality practitioners of judicial restraint to the federal district and appellate courts comes from obscure Senate practices that enjoy widespread bipartisan support from senators. These practices exist because they serve the narrow interests of individual senators. They are, in short, perquisites of membership in the club known as the United States Senate.</p>
<p>After his remarkable successes in winning the confirmations of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, President Bush must return to the less glamorous work of filling vacancies on the lower courts. This work is more difficult not only because of the large number of open seats but because of the great influence that home-state senators believe themselves entitled to exert over lower-court nominations.</p>
<p>This influence can manifest itself in two ways: first, through the Senate Judiciary Committee’s blue-slip policy, which serves primarily as a tool of senators in the party opposite the president’s; and second, through the entrenched attitude of same-party senators that they have a virtual right to designate judicial nominees in their states.</p>
<p>Let’s&#160;begin&#160;with&#160;the&#160;blue-slip policy, which is generally thought to have arisen as an informal Senate Judiciary Committee practice some 50 years ago. The “blue slip” refers to the piece of paper that the chairman of the committee sends to a senator informing him that the president has made a nomination to a position in his home state and inviting him to object or offer support. A senator who objects can express his objection on the blue slip (a “negative blue slip”).</p>
<p>The substance of the blue-slip policy, both historically and as it applies today, is murky and disputed. The policy’s contours depend primarily on four factors. First, which grounds may a senator legitimately rely on to object to a home-state nomination? May he rely simply on personal grounds, such as the fact that the nominee is the sister of his next general-election opponent? Or may he also rely on broader political or ideological differences with the nominee?</p>
<p>Second, what effect will the committee chairman afford a negative blue slip? Will it suffice to kill a nomination? Or will it merely be given the indeterminate promise of “substantial weight”? Does it matter whether the other home-state senator has also submitted a negative blue slip?</p>
<p>Third, to which judicial nominations will the blue-slip policy apply? Only to those for district judges, whose caseloads clearly relate to the home state in which the judge will sit? Or also to those for appellate judges, even though appellate judges from different states in the same circuit take part equally in the cases arising from the district courts across those various states?</p>
<p>Fourth, and oddly neglected, is whether the Senate majority (and thus the committee chairman) is of the same party as the president. If the Senate majority is of the same party as the president, then a negative blue slip by a minority senator operates to obstruct (to the extent of the effect accorded the blue slip) the presumed common will of the president and the Senate majority. By contrast, if the Senate majority is of the party opposing the president, then the obstructing effect of a negative blue slip by a majority senator is more readily justifiable as an exercise of power delegated to that senator by his colleagues in the majority.</p>
<p>How these factors interact determines how sensible any particular blue-slip policy is. If, for example, blue slips were to apply only to district-court nominees and senators were to return negative blue slips only when they had genuine personal grounds for objecting to the nominee, a committee chairman could reasonably give those negative blue slips nomination-killing effect, even where the negative blue slip came from a minority senator. After all, it should not be a difficult matter for the president to find an equally qualified nominee who does not arouse the senator’s personal opposition. Conversely, where a negative blue slip can be returned for purely ideological reasons, it would seem defensible for a committee chairman to give decisive effect to that negative blue slip when it is submitted by a member of his own party, but it would seem suicidal–or, more precisely, remarkably detrimental to the interests of his own party–to do so when it is submitted by a member of the minority party.</p>
<p>Curiously enough, there are some individuals deeply involved in the current confirmation process who believe that this absurd policy is precisely what Arlen Specter, the committee’s chairman for the past year, has adopted, both for district-court and appellate-court nominees. This belief explains why it would be helpful to Milan Smith, rather than damning, that Barbara Boxer welcomes his nomination.</p>
<p>Orrin Hatch, Specter’s predecessor as chairman, stated clearly in 2003 that he would abide by the same blue-slip policy that Teddy Kennedy and Joe Biden had adopted when they each chaired the committee. Under what Hatch labeled the “Kennedy-Biden-Hatch blue-slip policy,” the return of a negative blue slip on a nomination would be given “substantial weight,” but a committee hearing and vote on the nomination would proceed. Specter has issued no such statement, and he has not yet held a hearing on any nominee with negative or unreturned blue slips.</p>
<p>When Hatch spelled out his blue-slip policy in 2003, the left attacked him for departing from the nomination-killing policy that he had supposedly applied as chairman in the late 1990s to nominees of President Clinton. What this attack ignored, of course, is that the situation in the late 1990s, when the president was of a different party from the Senate majority, was manifestly different from the situation today, when the president and the Senate majority are of the same party. Especially when it is acceptable to return a negative blue slip on ideological grounds, it is elementary common sense, not hypocrisy, for a committee chairman to distinguish between granting his own majority colleagues the power to block a nominee of a president of the opposite party, on the one hand, and granting a member of the minority the ability to block a nominee of a president who is of the same party as the committee chairman.</p>
<p>This common sense is also supported by precedent. Since the beginning of the Nixon administration 37 years ago, there have been only two brief periods in which the president and the committee chairman were both Democrats: 1977 to 1981, with President Carter and Chairman Kennedy*, and 1993 to 1994, with President Clinton and Chairman Biden (and when I was a Senate Judiciary Committee staffer). As Hatch made clear, Kennedy and Biden adopted the same policy that Hatch adopted in 2003. In particular, it was after Carter became president that Kennedy diluted the blue-slip policy that had applied to Nixon and Ford nominees, so that a negative blue slip would be accorded only “substantial weight.”</p>
<p>A feudal lord’s supposed right–the droit du seigneur–to usurp a vassal’s marital privileges with his bride on their wedding night is apocryphal. But what might be called the droit du sénateur–a senator’s asserted right to direct the president in his constitutional authority to name judges in the senator’s home state–is very real.</p>
<p>The Constitution provides that the president “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint” federal judges. The syntax of this provision makes clear that the power to nominate lies exclusively with the president and that the constitutional role of the Senate comes into play after the president makes a nomination. As Alexander Hamilton stated in Federalist 66: “It will be the office of the President to nominate, and, with the advice and consent of the Senate, to appoint. There will, of course, be no exertion of choice on the part of the Senate. They may defeat one choice of the Executive, and oblige him to make another; but they cannot themselves choose–they can only ratify or reject the choice he may have made.”</p>
<p>But the practical reality has long been very different. Senators of the same party as the president regularly claim the right to select district-court nominees in their states, and presidents, including President Bush, largely acquiesce in these claims. Presidents are free to engage in whatever prenomination consultation they find expedient, and I am certainly not contending that the role that senators have seized is unconstitutional. But, as Hamilton explained in Federalist 76, senators’ involvement in the choice of nominees multiplies the prospect that “personal considerations” will be given undue weight at the expense of qualifications. As the Bunning nomination exemplifies, senators have undermined the advantages in quality that Hamilton recognized should flow from having “sole and undivided responsibility” for nominations vested in the president.</p>
<p>Indeed, a senator selecting judicial nominees will naturally be inclined to regard the occasion as one more opportunity to dispense patronage to supporters. Presidents, of course, are hardly immune from the same temptation. But, Hamilton argues, a president will have a “livelier sense of duty and a more exact regard to reputation.” This would seem to be especially true of a president, like Bush, who has clearly stated his commitment to a jurisprudential philosophy of judicial restraint and who has staffed his ranks of nominations-vetters with excellent lawyers who share that commitment. Thus, there should be no doubt that exercise of the droit du sénateur generally operates to degrade the quality of President Bush’s district court nominees.</p>
<p>Fortunately, the degree to which senators actually exercise this perceived right varies considerably, and there are numerous district court nominees who have been of high caliber. But this right also threatens to expand, as senators aim to increase their influence on the selection of appellate court nominees whose chambers would be in their states.</p>
<p>Even senators of the party opposite the president’s have gotten in on the act. In 2001, when Democrats controlled the Senate, California senators Boxer and Dianne Feinstein set up a commission to screen candidates for district judgeships and succeeded in coercing President Bush to select his nominees from the candidates approved by the commission. Despite the Republican takeover of the Senate in 2002 and further Republican gains in 2004, the role of that commission remains unchanged, and every nominee of President Bush to a district judgeship in California has been preapproved by the commission.</p>
<p>How&#160;adverse is the Senate’s effect on the quality of judicial nominees? As it happens, the D.C. Circuit, which is immune from any home-state senator influence, provides a sort of control group against which judges from other courts of appeals can be compared. Although only three courts of appeals have fewer seats, the D.C. Circuit over the past 25 years has featured a slew of outstanding conservative jurists–most prominently Antonin Scalia, Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, and John Roberts, but also many lesser-known stars, such as (to name just a couple) Laurence Silberman and Douglas Ginsburg. No other court of appeals comes close to matching this roster.</p>
<p>It might be thought that the D.C. Circuit’s reputation for producing Supreme Court nominees makes it especially attractive to stellar candidates. But I think it more likely that the D.C. Circuit has produced so many Supreme Court nominees because the absence of home-state senator interference makes it easier for strong candidates to be nominated and confirmed. Judge Janice Rogers Brown provides a telling case in point. Brown was a California supreme court justice when President Bush nominated her to the D.C. Circuit in 2003. The White House fully understood that it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to confirm her to the Ninth Circuit. Indeed, senators Boxer and Feinstein killed the earlier nomination of Carolyn Kuhl to a Ninth Circuit seat. Although Democrats put up a major fight, Brown was confirmed to the D.C. Circuit last year.</p>
<p>Consider also Brett Kavanaugh, President Bush’s currently pending–and superbly qualified–nominee to the D.C. Circuit. Kavanaugh is a native of Maryland, and a seat on the Fourth Circuit that Maryland’s Democratic senators regard as a “Maryland seat” has been vacant for more than five years. But these senators forced President Bush to abandon his original outstanding candidate for that slot (Maryland resident Peter Keisler) and would likewise have fought tooth-and-nail against Kavanaugh as a Fourth Circuit nominee. By contrast, Kavanaugh should be confirmed to the D.C. Circuit soon (though it shouldn’t be overlooked that his nomination has already been pending for more than two-and-a-half years).</p>
<p>There are, of course, other explanations for the quality of D.C. Circuit judges. In particular, every president undoubtedly pays special attention to D.C. Circuit nominations because that court, with its heavy administrative-law caseload, plays a major role in reviewing actions of the executive branch. But it seems clear that the much-reduced senatorial influence–resulting from the inapplicability of the blue-slip policy and the absence of any home-state senator pushing for his brother-in-law to be nominated–also contributes significantly to quality.</p>
<p>The ill effects of senatorial influence extend beyond reducing the quality of nominees. The clout of senators also operates perversely to ensure that, broadly speaking, weaker nominees are confirmed faster than stronger ones. Assume two nominees, one who has de facto been selected by a senator (and who therefore is more likely to have been selected because of his ties to the senator than because of his qualifications) and the other who is a genuine high-quality presidential pick. In an exercise of reciprocal back-scratching, the senator’s colleagues will likely put his pick on the faster track.</p>
<p>Indeed, Senate Democrats like to deflect criticism of their unprecedented filibusters of lower-court nominees by citing statistics showing how many of the president’s nominees have been confirmed. What these statistics obscure is that the Senate has disproportionately confirmed the nominees whom senators understand to be essentially senatorial selections. For very good reasons, not all nominees are of equal import in the eyes of the White House. Yet senatorial selections provide Democrats cover to use other procedural mechanisms–such as the anonymous “hold” or the withholding of unanimous consent–to stall or block the most important nominees.</p>
<p>Politics is politics, and I have no illusion that the successful career politicians who occupy Senate seats can be induced to abandon the self-serving practices that enhance their power and help advance their reelection. But there are some minimal steps that certain senators should take.</p>
<p>First, Chairman Specter should make clear that Barbara Boxer and company do not have the unprecedented power to veto President Bush’s judicial nominees. Specifically, he should expressly adopt the same blue-slip policy that former chairmen Kennedy, Biden, and Hatch applied when each was dealing with a president of his own party: The return of a negative blue slip, while accorded “substantial weight,” will not impede the committee from proceeding to a hearing and a vote on the nomination.</p>
<p>Second, Republican senators, while continuing to exert extraordinary influence on the selection of district-court nominees, should yield full nominating power to President Bush on appellate-court nominees. The work of a court of appeals judge has no particular connection to a single state, and there is no principled basis for a home-state senator to use the incidental fact of the presumed location of a vacancy to invoke any influence over the nomination to fill that vacancy. Republican senators should agree that any views they offer on appellate-court nominations are purely advisory.</p>
<p>Third, Specter and Majority Leader Bill Frist should press to make sure that longstanding nominees receive committee votes and final Senate action. It is, on balance, good that the David Bunnings and Milan Smiths, once nominated, proceed to confirmation. But their success should not come at the expense of nominees like Terry Boyle (nominated to the Fourth Circuit in May 2001) and Brett Kavanaugh.</p>
<p>–Edward Whelan is president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a contributor to National Review Online’s Bench Memos blog on judicial nominations.</p> | false | 1 | president bush recently160nominated milan smith jr fill longstanding vacancy us court appeals ninth circuit ninth circuit covers nine western states notorious bastion liberal judicial lawlessness white house looking fill vacancy outstanding jurist learned questions federal constitutional statutory law prepared dedicate two decades arduous task helping transform court unfortunately smith hardly fits bill los angelesarea attorney smith 64 specialized nearly four decades real estate transactionsa specialty little bearing questions occupy federal courts one term member state antidiscrimination commission distinguished timemanagement skills says one supporters recently explained decision step commission implying disdain fellow party members im republican im republican heart consider also david l bunning president bush nominated federal district judgeship 2001 thirtyfive years old nominated bunning lawyer ten years citing limited shallow experience civil cases particularly challenging criminal caseload federal prosecutor unimpressive writing middling academic record aba rated bunning qualified judgeship whether one credits aba ratinga minority committee find bunning qualifiedit would difficult argue bunning prime judgeship material senate democratic majority intent blocking many presidents judicial nominees expeditiously unanimously confirmed bunning smith bunning might buck odds prove outstanding judges certainly dont mean suggest anything exceptional questionable qualifications contrary unpromising judicial picks common among president bushs lowercourt nominees low caliber nominees helps demonstrate extraordinary regrettable influence senators exercise federal judgeships home states key facts driving smiths candidacy barbara boxer ultraliberal senator california recommended nomination smith brother oregons republican senator gordon smith brother boxer milan smith says good friends bunning district judgeship occupies kentucky home state republican senator jim bunning coincidentally father attention given democratic filibuster judicial nominees recent years greater impediment president bushs ability appoint highquality practitioners judicial restraint federal district appellate courts comes obscure senate practices enjoy widespread bipartisan support senators practices exist serve narrow interests individual senators short perquisites membership club known united states senate remarkable successes winning confirmations chief justice john roberts justice samuel alito president bush must return less glamorous work filling vacancies lower courts work difficult large number open seats great influence homestate senators believe entitled exert lowercourt nominations influence manifest two ways first senate judiciary committees blueslip policy serves primarily tool senators party opposite presidents second entrenched attitude sameparty senators virtual right designate judicial nominees states lets160begin160with160the160blueslip policy generally thought arisen informal senate judiciary committee practice 50 years ago blue slip refers piece paper chairman committee sends senator informing president made nomination position home state inviting object offer support senator objects express objection blue slip negative blue slip substance blueslip policy historically applies today murky disputed policys contours depend primarily four factors first grounds may senator legitimately rely object homestate nomination may rely simply personal grounds fact nominee sister next generalelection opponent may also rely broader political ideological differences nominee second effect committee chairman afford negative blue slip suffice kill nomination merely given indeterminate promise substantial weight matter whether homestate senator also submitted negative blue slip third judicial nominations blueslip policy apply district judges whose caseloads clearly relate home state judge sit also appellate judges even though appellate judges different states circuit take part equally cases arising district courts across various states fourth oddly neglected whether senate majority thus committee chairman party president senate majority party president negative blue slip minority senator operates obstruct extent effect accorded blue slip presumed common president senate majority contrast senate majority party opposing president obstructing effect negative blue slip majority senator readily justifiable exercise power delegated senator colleagues majority factors interact determines sensible particular blueslip policy example blue slips apply districtcourt nominees senators return negative blue slips genuine personal grounds objecting nominee committee chairman could reasonably give negative blue slips nominationkilling effect even negative blue slip came minority senator difficult matter president find equally qualified nominee arouse senators personal opposition conversely negative blue slip returned purely ideological reasons would seem defensible committee chairman give decisive effect negative blue slip submitted member party would seem suicidalor precisely remarkably detrimental interests partyto submitted member minority party curiously enough individuals deeply involved current confirmation process believe absurd policy precisely arlen specter committees chairman past year adopted districtcourt appellatecourt nominees belief explains would helpful milan smith rather damning barbara boxer welcomes nomination orrin hatch specters predecessor chairman stated clearly 2003 would abide blueslip policy teddy kennedy joe biden adopted chaired committee hatch labeled kennedybidenhatch blueslip policy return negative blue slip nomination would given substantial weight committee hearing vote nomination would proceed specter issued statement yet held hearing nominee negative unreturned blue slips hatch spelled blueslip policy 2003 left attacked departing nominationkilling policy supposedly applied chairman late 1990s nominees president clinton attack ignored course situation late 1990s president different party senate majority manifestly different situation today president senate majority party especially acceptable return negative blue slip ideological grounds elementary common sense hypocrisy committee chairman distinguish granting majority colleagues power block nominee president opposite party one hand granting member minority ability block nominee president party committee chairman common sense also supported precedent since beginning nixon administration 37 years ago two brief periods president committee chairman democrats 1977 1981 president carter chairman kennedy 1993 1994 president clinton chairman biden senate judiciary committee staffer hatch made clear kennedy biden adopted policy hatch adopted 2003 particular carter became president kennedy diluted blueslip policy applied nixon ford nominees negative blue slip would accorded substantial weight feudal lords supposed rightthe droit du seigneurto usurp vassals marital privileges bride wedding night apocryphal might called droit du sénateura senators asserted right direct president constitutional authority name judges senators home stateis real constitution provides president shall nominate advice consent senate shall appoint federal judges syntax provision makes clear power nominate lies exclusively president constitutional role senate comes play president makes nomination alexander hamilton stated federalist 66 office president nominate advice consent senate appoint course exertion choice part senate may defeat one choice executive oblige make another choosethey ratify reject choice may made practical reality long different senators party president regularly claim right select districtcourt nominees states presidents including president bush largely acquiesce claims presidents free engage whatever prenomination consultation find expedient certainly contending role senators seized unconstitutional hamilton explained federalist 76 senators involvement choice nominees multiplies prospect personal considerations given undue weight expense qualifications bunning nomination exemplifies senators undermined advantages quality hamilton recognized flow sole undivided responsibility nominations vested president indeed senator selecting judicial nominees naturally inclined regard occasion one opportunity dispense patronage supporters presidents course hardly immune temptation hamilton argues president livelier sense duty exact regard reputation would seem especially true president like bush clearly stated commitment jurisprudential philosophy judicial restraint staffed ranks nominationsvetters excellent lawyers share commitment thus doubt exercise droit du sénateur generally operates degrade quality president bushs district court nominees fortunately degree senators actually exercise perceived right varies considerably numerous district court nominees high caliber right also threatens expand senators aim increase influence selection appellate court nominees whose chambers would states even senators party opposite presidents gotten act 2001 democrats controlled senate california senators boxer dianne feinstein set commission screen candidates district judgeships succeeded coercing president bush select nominees candidates approved commission despite republican takeover senate 2002 republican gains 2004 role commission remains unchanged every nominee president bush district judgeship california preapproved commission how160adverse senates effect quality judicial nominees happens dc circuit immune homestate senator influence provides sort control group judges courts appeals compared although three courts appeals fewer seats dc circuit past 25 years featured slew outstanding conservative juristsmost prominently antonin scalia robert bork clarence thomas john roberts also many lesserknown stars name couple laurence silberman douglas ginsburg court appeals comes close matching roster might thought dc circuits reputation producing supreme court nominees makes especially attractive stellar candidates think likely dc circuit produced many supreme court nominees absence homestate senator interference makes easier strong candidates nominated confirmed judge janice rogers brown provides telling case point brown california supreme court justice president bush nominated dc circuit 2003 white house fully understood would difficult impossible confirm ninth circuit indeed senators boxer feinstein killed earlier nomination carolyn kuhl ninth circuit seat although democrats put major fight brown confirmed dc circuit last year consider also brett kavanaugh president bushs currently pendingand superbly qualifiednominee dc circuit kavanaugh native maryland seat fourth circuit marylands democratic senators regard maryland seat vacant five years senators forced president bush abandon original outstanding candidate slot maryland resident peter keisler would likewise fought toothandnail kavanaugh fourth circuit nominee contrast kavanaugh confirmed dc circuit soon though shouldnt overlooked nomination already pending twoandahalf years course explanations quality dc circuit judges particular every president undoubtedly pays special attention dc circuit nominations court heavy administrativelaw caseload plays major role reviewing actions executive branch seems clear muchreduced senatorial influenceresulting inapplicability blueslip policy absence homestate senator pushing brotherinlaw nominatedalso contributes significantly quality ill effects senatorial influence extend beyond reducing quality nominees clout senators also operates perversely ensure broadly speaking weaker nominees confirmed faster stronger ones assume two nominees one de facto selected senator therefore likely selected ties senator qualifications genuine highquality presidential pick exercise reciprocal backscratching senators colleagues likely put pick faster track indeed senate democrats like deflect criticism unprecedented filibusters lowercourt nominees citing statistics showing many presidents nominees confirmed statistics obscure senate disproportionately confirmed nominees senators understand essentially senatorial selections good reasons nominees equal import eyes white house yet senatorial selections provide democrats cover use procedural mechanismssuch anonymous hold withholding unanimous consentto stall block important nominees politics politics illusion successful career politicians occupy senate seats induced abandon selfserving practices enhance power help advance reelection minimal steps certain senators take first chairman specter make clear barbara boxer company unprecedented power veto president bushs judicial nominees specifically expressly adopt blueslip policy former chairmen kennedy biden hatch applied dealing president party return negative blue slip accorded substantial weight impede committee proceeding hearing vote nomination second republican senators continuing exert extraordinary influence selection districtcourt nominees yield full nominating power president bush appellatecourt nominees work court appeals judge particular connection single state principled basis homestate senator use incidental fact presumed location vacancy invoke influence nomination fill vacancy republican senators agree views offer appellatecourt nominations purely advisory third specter majority leader bill frist press make sure longstanding nominees receive committee votes final senate action balance good david bunnings milan smiths nominated proceed confirmation success come expense nominees like terry boyle nominated fourth circuit may 2001 brett kavanaugh edward whelan president ethics public policy center contributor national review onlines bench memos blog judicial nominations | 1,702 |
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<p>US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made a series of stern and fiery statements recently, giving the impression that war is somehow upon us once again. Oddly, Clinton’s sudden reappearance into the Middle East diplomacy scene was triggered by the brave attempts of peace activists to break the siege on Gaza.</p>
<p>In recent months, as Arab nations settled old scores with their insufferable dictators, US foreign policy started taking a backseat. Attempts at swaying Arab revolts teetered between bashful diplomatic efforts to sustain US interests—as was the case with Yemen—and military intervention, as in Libya, which is still being marketed to the US public as a humanitarian intervention, as opposed to the war it actually is.</p>
<p>The indecisiveness and double-standards on display are hardly new.</p>
<p>The US’s stance during the Tunisian popular revolution ranged between complete lack of interest (when the protests began brewing in December 2010), to sudden enthusiasm for freedom and democracy (when the revolts led to the ousting of longtime President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on January 14, 2011).</p>
<p>The same foreign policy pendulum repeatedly swung both ways during the Egyptian Revolution. The US political definitions of Hosni Mubarak shifted from that of a friendly leader to that of a loathsome dictator who had to go for the sake of Egyptian democracy.</p>
<p>It took Tunisians 28 days to overthrow their leader, and Egyptians 18 days to outset Mubarak. During these periods, US foreign policy in the two countries—and the Middle East as a whole—seemed impossible to delineate in any concrete statements. Hillary Clinton was an emblematic figure in this diplomatic discrepancy.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">&lt;img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-12222" style="margin: 5px;" title="clinton-obama" src="https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/clinton-obama-300x175.jpg" alt="Clinton and Obama" width="300" height="175" srcset="https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/clinton-obama-300x175.jpg 300w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/clinton-obama-150x88.jpg 150w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/clinton-obama.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /&gt;</a>Now Clinton is back, speaking in a lucid language which leaves no room for misinterpretation. When it comes to the security and interests of Israel—as opposed to those of the entire Middle East region and all its nations—Clinton, like other top American officials, leaves no room for error. Israel will always come first.</p>
<p>Clinton’s forceful language was triggered by the decision of humanitarian activists from over 20 countries to travel to Gaza in a symbolic gesture to challenge the Israeli blockade of one of the poorest regions on earth. The 500 peace activists on board ten boats will include musicians, writers, Nobel Laureates, Holocaust survivors, and members of parliament.</p>
<p>“We think that it’s not helpful for there to be flotillas that try to provoke action by entering into Israeli waters and creating a situation in which the Israelis have the right to defend themselves,” Clinton told reporters on June 23. Of course, the foreboding language offers another blank check to Israel, giving it permission to do as it pleases. If Israel repeated the same scenario it used to intercept and punish activists abroad the first flotilla on May 31, 2010—killing nine activists onboard the Mavi Marmara—then it would constitute another act of ‘self-defense’, according to Clinton’s avant-garde rationale.</p>
<p>Responding to Clinton’s comments, Irish MEP Paul Murphy told the Irish Examiner on June 24: “It is not true that we will be entering Israeli waters. We will be sailing through Gaza waters.” He added, “Ms Clinton’s comments are disgraceful. She has essentially given the green light to Israeli Defence Forces to use violence against participants in the flotilla.” Indeed, Israeli diplomats will be utilizing Clinton’s advanced verbal and political support for the Israeli action in every platform available to them.</p>
<p>According to Clinton, the entire business with the flotillas is unnecessary. “We don’t think it’s useful or helpful or productive to the people of Gaza,” she told reporters in Washington, adding that, “a far better approach is to support the work that’s being done through the United Nations.”</p>
<p>The United Nations had already declared the Gaza siege illegal. Various top UN officials have stated this fact repeatedly, and the international body had called on Israel to end the siege. Notable among the many statements was a 34-page report by UN human rights chief Navi Pillay. Published on August 14, 2009, the report “accused Israel of violating the rules of warfare with its blockade stopping people and goods from moving in or out of the Gaza Strip,” according to the Associated Press. “The Gaza blockade,” Pillay stated, “amounts to collective punishment of civilians, which is prohibited under the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of warfare and occupation.” Before the 34 pages could be thoroughly examined, both the US and Israel dismissed the findings. Now Clinton is suddenly urging all interested parties to work through the same institution that her department has repeatedly undermined.</p>
<p>Pillay’s report was issued nearly two years ago. Since then, little has been done to remedy the situation and to bring to an end the protracted Palestinian tragedy in Gaza. In fact, UNRWA has recently put Gaza’s unemployment at 45.2 percent, allegedly amongst the worst in the world. The UN report, released on June 14, claimed that unemployment in the first half of 2011 had increased by 3 percent. Monthly wages were also shown to have declined significantly. It seems the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is not only bad, it is progressively worsening.</p>
<p>This time, Clinton is speaking from a power position. As diplomatic pressure from Israel finally dissuaded Turkey from allowing the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (İHH) from joining the flotilla, it seems the Mavi Marmara won’t be setting sail to Gaza anytime soon. As if to confirm that the IHH decision was motivated by political pressure, Clinton “spoke to her Turkish counterpart, Ahmet Davutoglu to express her happiness at the announcement” (according to Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News, June 21).</p>
<p>With political victory in mind, the State Department travel warning of June 22 read like a legal disclaimer issued by the Israeli foreign ministry. It warned US citizens to avoid any attempt to reach Gaza by sea. Those who participate in a flotilla risk arrest, prosecution, deportation and a possible 10-year travel ban by Israel.</p>
<p>In a region that is rife with opportunities for political stances—or at least a measureable shift in policy—the US State Department and its chief diplomat have offered nothing but inconsistency and contradiction. Now, thanks to a group of peaceful civil society activists, including many pacifists and elders, the State Department is getting its decisive voice back. And the voice is as atrocious and unprincipled as ever.</p> | false | 1 | us secretary state hillary clinton made series stern fiery statements recently giving impression war somehow upon us oddly clintons sudden reappearance middle east diplomacy scene triggered brave attempts peace activists break siege gaza recent months arab nations settled old scores insufferable dictators us foreign policy started taking backseat attempts swaying arab revolts teetered bashful diplomatic efforts sustain us interestsas case yemenand military intervention libya still marketed us public humanitarian intervention opposed war actually indecisiveness doublestandards display hardly new uss stance tunisian popular revolution ranged complete lack interest protests began brewing december 2010 sudden enthusiasm freedom democracy revolts led ousting longtime president zine el abidine ben ali january 14 2011 foreign policy pendulum repeatedly swung ways egyptian revolution us political definitions hosni mubarak shifted friendly leader loathsome dictator go sake egyptian democracy took tunisians 28 days overthrow leader egyptians 18 days outset mubarak periods us foreign policy two countriesand middle east wholeseemed impossible delineate concrete statements hillary clinton emblematic figure diplomatic discrepancy ltimg classalignleft sizemedium wpimage12222 stylemargin 5px titleclintonobama srchttpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201107clintonobama300x175jpg altclinton obama width300 height175 srcsethttpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201107clintonobama300x175jpg 300w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201107clintonobama150x88jpg 150w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201107clintonobamajpg 600w sizesmaxwidth 300px 100vw 300px gtnow clinton back speaking lucid language leaves room misinterpretation comes security interests israelas opposed entire middle east region nationsclinton like top american officials leaves room error israel always come first clintons forceful language triggered decision humanitarian activists 20 countries travel gaza symbolic gesture challenge israeli blockade one poorest regions earth 500 peace activists board ten boats include musicians writers nobel laureates holocaust survivors members parliament think helpful flotillas try provoke action entering israeli waters creating situation israelis right defend clinton told reporters june 23 course foreboding language offers another blank check israel giving permission pleases israel repeated scenario used intercept punish activists abroad first flotilla may 31 2010killing nine activists onboard mavi marmarathen would constitute another act selfdefense according clintons avantgarde rationale responding clintons comments irish mep paul murphy told irish examiner june 24 true entering israeli waters sailing gaza waters added ms clintons comments disgraceful essentially given green light israeli defence forces use violence participants flotilla indeed israeli diplomats utilizing clintons advanced verbal political support israeli action every platform available according clinton entire business flotillas unnecessary dont think useful helpful productive people gaza told reporters washington adding far better approach support work thats done united nations united nations already declared gaza siege illegal various top un officials stated fact repeatedly international body called israel end siege notable among many statements 34page report un human rights chief navi pillay published august 14 2009 report accused israel violating rules warfare blockade stopping people goods moving gaza strip according associated press gaza blockade pillay stated amounts collective punishment civilians prohibited geneva conventions conduct warfare occupation 34 pages could thoroughly examined us israel dismissed findings clinton suddenly urging interested parties work institution department repeatedly undermined pillays report issued nearly two years ago since little done remedy situation bring end protracted palestinian tragedy gaza fact unrwa recently put gazas unemployment 452 percent allegedly amongst worst world un report released june 14 claimed unemployment first half 2011 increased 3 percent monthly wages also shown declined significantly seems humanitarian crisis gaza bad progressively worsening time clinton speaking power position diplomatic pressure israel finally dissuaded turkey allowing humanitarian relief foundation İhh joining flotilla seems mavi marmara wont setting sail gaza anytime soon confirm ihh decision motivated political pressure clinton spoke turkish counterpart ahmet davutoglu express happiness announcement according turkeys hurriyet daily news june 21 political victory mind state department travel warning june 22 read like legal disclaimer issued israeli foreign ministry warned us citizens avoid attempt reach gaza sea participate flotilla risk arrest prosecution deportation possible 10year travel ban israel region rife opportunities political stancesor least measureable shift policythe us state department chief diplomat offered nothing inconsistency contradiction thanks group peaceful civil society activists including many pacifists elders state department getting decisive voice back voice atrocious unprincipled ever | 644 |
<p>George Weigel’s two biographies of St. John Paul II—Witness to Hope&#160;and&#160;The End and the Beginning—are widely considered the authoritative volumes on the life and work of the Polish pope. Weigel has a new book out,&#160;Lessons in Hope:&#160;My Unexpected Life with St. John Paul II&#160;(Basic Books), which&#160;focuses on his decades-long friendship with St. John Paul and on the inspiring witness the pope offered the world in the face of great suffering in the last years of his life.</p>
<p>Weigel recently spoke to CWR editor Carl E. Olson about his new book.</p>
<p>Carl E. Olson, for CWR:&#160;At the start of&#160;Lessons in Hope, you note that you thought&#160;Witness to Hope&#160;and&#160;The End and the Beginning, which totaled about 1,600 pages, contained all you could or would say about St. John Paul II. Why this third book? In what ways is this “album of memories,” as you describe it, different from the two biographies?</p>
<p>George Weigel:&#160;Lessons in Hope&#160;is almost entirely anecdotal; it tells the stories that wouldn’t have “fit” into two volumes of biography, but that illuminate, in one way or another, interesting facets of John Paul II’s personality and way of conducting the papacy. I’ve discovered in recent years that this is what people want, now: not so much analysis of a remarkable personality and his accomplishment, but story-telling that brings him alive in a personal way.</p>
<p>CWR:&#160;You write that the “experience of learning John Paul II and his life taught me a new way of looking at events in my own life…” What are some examples of that? And what are some of the events that paved the way for you to become John Paul II’s biographer?</p>
<p>Weigel:&#160;At Fatima in 1983, one year after the assassination attempt that came within a few millimeters of taking his life, John Paul said, “In the designs of Providence, there are no mere coincidences.” What we think of as “coincidence,” or just happenstance or randomness, is actually a part of God’s providential guidance of history that we just don’t understand yet. That insight of his helped me to see how, for example, my philosophical and theological studies in college and graduate school, my work as a columnist and essayist, the people I met at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in 1984-85, and a week in Moscow in 1990 fomenting nonviolent revolution were all providential experiences that prepared me to take on the job of being John Paul II’s biographer.</p>
<p>CWR:&#160;One point made in several places is the importance of understanding John Paul II’s philosophical perspective and project. What are some key features of his philosophical work? And how has this been either misunderstood or even misrepresented?</p>
<p>Weigel:&#160;John Paul II is persistently misunderstood as some sort of pre-modern mind, when in fact his was a thoroughly modern mind with a distinctive critique of modernity. At the heart of that critique was the conviction that ethics had come unglued from reality; that the moral life was wasting away into subjectivism and sentimentality; and that human beings (and society) &#160;were suffering as a result. The entire philosophical project he and his colleagues at the Catholic University of Lublin launched in the 1950s was an attempt to get the moral life back on a sound footing: not from top down but from bottom up—through a rigorous and compelling theory of the human person, our capacity for responsibility, and the dynamics of our moral decision-making. That’s why his philosophical masterwork was called “Person and Act.”</p>
<p>CWR:&#160;How did you first meet John Paul II and how did your friendship develop?</p>
<p>Weigel:&#160;Our first real conversation was in September 1992, when I gave him a signed copy of&#160;The Final Revolution: The Resistance Church and the Collapse of Communism, which he had already read on galley proof. Things snowballed after that, both in terms of personal conversations and correspondence, and both conversation and correspondence continued after the publication of&#160;Witness to Hope. The details of how our relationship evolved over the course of my preparing&#160;Witness to Hope&#160;and afterwards—during the dramas of the Long Lent of 2002, the Iraq War, and his last illness—are described in detail in&#160;Lessons in Hope.</p>
<p>CWR:&#160;John Paul II strongly encouraged you to meet with many of his friends from his time in university. Why was that so significant to him? How did that period of time shape the rest of his life?</p>
<p>Weigel:&#160;It was not so much his friends from his own time in university (although I did meet with the surviving members of his underground wartime theatrical troupe, the Rhapsodic Theater), but the friends he made while he was a university chaplain in the late 1940s and early 1950s. As he was helping form them into mature Catholic adults, they were helping form him into one of the most dynamic and creative priests of his generation. He thought that story was crucial to understanding him “from the inside,” so he encouraged me to talk with these men and women, several of whom are now close friends of mine.</p>
<p>CWR:&#160;You emphasize, as you have many times over the years, that your two biographies of John Paul II were not “authorized biographies.” What does that mean and why is it so important?</p>
<p>Weigel:&#160;An “authorized biography,” in the usual sense of the term, is one that has been vetted (and perhaps edited) by the subject or the subject’s heirs, in exchange for access and documents; so an authorized biography should be read with a certain reserve, given what one has to assume was the vetting involved. At the very outset of the&#160;Witness to Hope&#160;project, I told John Paul over dinner that he couldn’t see a word of what I wrote until I gave him the finished copy of the book, and he immediately responded, “That’s obvious.” He knew, as I knew, that there could be no one looking over my shoulder as I wrote if the book was to be credible; he also thought that the book was my responsibility and he wasn’t about to change a lifelong pastoral habit of challenging others to be responsible without imposing his own judgments. So while I hope&#160;Witness to Hope&#160;and&#160;The End and the Beginning&#160;are as authoritative as possible, they are in no sense “authorized.” I also hope that&#160;Lessons in Hope&#160;ends, once and for all, the urban legend that John Paul II asked me to write his biography. He didn’t. I suggested the project and he agreed to cooperate with it.</p>
<p>CWR:&#160;What were some of the more challenging aspects of researching the life of John Paul II?</p>
<p>Weigel:&#160;There were a lot of people in the Roman Curia who weren’t as eager for me to have full access to people and documents as John Paul II was, and the stories of my adventures in getting through that Italianiate obstacle course are very much part of&#160;Lessons in Hope. Then there were the problems posed by my predecessors in the papal biographers’ guild, like Tad Szulc and Carl Bernstein: people who had spoken freely with them felt that they had been burned, in the sense that Szulc and Bernstein had slotted their reflections into what these men and women who knew John Paul II well thought were nonsensical analyses. And it took a while for me to convince some of them that I was different. There was also the challenge of inviting a man with a deep sense of privacy to talk about aspects of his life he had rarely if ever discussed before; but John Paul answered every question I posed to him and in fact pushed me into exploring areas of his life to which I might otherwise have given short shrift.</p>
<p>CWR:&#160;In discussing the “Long Lent”—the clerical sexual abuse scandal that broke in early 2002—you explain that there existed an “information gap” between Rome and the United States. Why did that gap exist? How well or poorly was John Paul II informed of what was happening?</p>
<p>Weigel:&#160;The gap existed because of curial incapacity and the general Roman sense that “things can’t be as bad as all that,” which is too often applied to crises. The story of how the Pope got more fully informed of the situation, and my role in helping facilitate that, is told in detail in&#160;Lessons in Hope.</p>
<p>CWR:&#160;What are some lessons from John Paul II that you think are especially apt now, in 2017?</p>
<p>Weigel:&#160;In this time of turbulence in the Church it’s important to remember that we’re not in 1978. The growing parts of the Church throughout the world are the parts of the Church that have embraced what I’ve come to call “all-in Catholicism” as exemplified by the teaching of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and the dying parts are those parts that continue to embrace Catholic Lite. This distinction is true of pastoral life, Catholic intellectual life, and the Church’s public witness. And that makes for a very, very different circumstance than the situation in 1978, when Catholic Lite pretty well ruled the roost. Catholic Lite is a failure and has no future; there is a compelling alternative to it, created by the Second Vatican Council as authoritatively interpreted by John Paul II; and if we all remembered that, things would be a little calmer these days.</p>
<p>George Weigel&#160;is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington, D.C.’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.</p>
<p>Carl E. Olson&#160;is editor of Catholic World Report and Ignatius Insight. He is the author of&#160;Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?,&#160;Will Catholics Be “Left Behind”, co-editor/contributor to&#160;Called To Be the Children of God, co-author of&#160;The Da Vinci Hoax&#160;(Ignatius), and author of the “Catholicism” and “Priest Prophet King” Study Guides for Word on Fire. He is also a contributor to “Our Sunday Visitor” newspaper, “The Catholic Answer” magazine, “The Catholic Herald”, “National Catholic Register”, “Chronicles”, and other publications.</p> | false | 1 | george weigels two biographies st john paul iiwitness hope160and160the end beginningare widely considered authoritative volumes life work polish pope weigel new book out160lessons hope160my unexpected life st john paul ii160basic books which160focuses decadeslong friendship st john paul inspiring witness pope offered world face great suffering last years life weigel recently spoke cwr editor carl e olson new book carl e olson cwr160at start of160lessons hope note thought160witness hope160and160the end beginning totaled 1600 pages contained could would say st john paul ii third book ways album memories describe different two biographies george weigel160lessons hope160is almost entirely anecdotal tells stories wouldnt fit two volumes biography illuminate one way another interesting facets john paul iis personality way conducting papacy ive discovered recent years people want much analysis remarkable personality accomplishment storytelling brings alive personal way cwr160you write experience learning john paul ii life taught new way looking events life examples events paved way become john paul iis biographer weigel160at fatima 1983 one year assassination attempt came within millimeters taking life john paul said designs providence mere coincidences think coincidence happenstance randomness actually part gods providential guidance history dont understand yet insight helped see example philosophical theological studies college graduate school work columnist essayist people met woodrow wilson international center scholars 198485 week moscow 1990 fomenting nonviolent revolution providential experiences prepared take job john paul iis biographer cwr160one point made several places importance understanding john paul iis philosophical perspective project key features philosophical work either misunderstood even misrepresented weigel160john paul ii persistently misunderstood sort premodern mind fact thoroughly modern mind distinctive critique modernity heart critique conviction ethics come unglued reality moral life wasting away subjectivism sentimentality human beings society 160were suffering result entire philosophical project colleagues catholic university lublin launched 1950s attempt get moral life back sound footing top bottom upthrough rigorous compelling theory human person capacity responsibility dynamics moral decisionmaking thats philosophical masterwork called person act cwr160how first meet john paul ii friendship develop weigel160our first real conversation september 1992 gave signed copy of160the final revolution resistance church collapse communism already read galley proof things snowballed terms personal conversations correspondence conversation correspondence continued publication of160witness hope details relationship evolved course preparing160witness hope160and afterwardsduring dramas long lent 2002 iraq war last illnessare described detail in160lessons hope cwr160john paul ii strongly encouraged meet many friends time university significant period time shape rest life weigel160it much friends time university although meet surviving members underground wartime theatrical troupe rhapsodic theater friends made university chaplain late 1940s early 1950s helping form mature catholic adults helping form one dynamic creative priests generation thought story crucial understanding inside encouraged talk men women several close friends mine cwr160you emphasize many times years two biographies john paul ii authorized biographies mean important weigel160an authorized biography usual sense term one vetted perhaps edited subject subjects heirs exchange access documents authorized biography read certain reserve given one assume vetting involved outset the160witness hope160project told john paul dinner couldnt see word wrote gave finished copy book immediately responded thats obvious knew knew could one looking shoulder wrote book credible also thought book responsibility wasnt change lifelong pastoral habit challenging others responsible without imposing judgments hope160witness hope160and160the end beginning160are authoritative possible sense authorized also hope that160lessons hope160ends urban legend john paul ii asked write biography didnt suggested project agreed cooperate cwr160what challenging aspects researching life john paul ii weigel160there lot people roman curia werent eager full access people documents john paul ii stories adventures getting italianiate obstacle course much part of160lessons hope problems posed predecessors papal biographers guild like tad szulc carl bernstein people spoken freely felt burned sense szulc bernstein slotted reflections men women knew john paul ii well thought nonsensical analyses took convince different also challenge inviting man deep sense privacy talk aspects life rarely ever discussed john paul answered every question posed fact pushed exploring areas life might otherwise given short shrift cwr160in discussing long lentthe clerical sexual abuse scandal broke early 2002you explain existed information gap rome united states gap exist well poorly john paul ii informed happening weigel160the gap existed curial incapacity general roman sense things cant bad often applied crises story pope got fully informed situation role helping facilitate told detail in160lessons hope cwr160what lessons john paul ii think especially apt 2017 weigel160in time turbulence church important remember 1978 growing parts church throughout world parts church embraced ive come call allin catholicism exemplified teaching john paul ii benedict xvi dying parts parts continue embrace catholic lite distinction true pastoral life catholic intellectual life churchs public witness makes different circumstance situation 1978 catholic lite pretty well ruled roost catholic lite failure future compelling alternative created second vatican council authoritatively interpreted john paul ii remembered things would little calmer days george weigel160is distinguished senior fellow washington dcs ethics public policy center holds william e simon chair catholic studies carl e olson160is editor catholic world report ignatius insight author of160did jesus really rise dead160will catholics left behind coeditorcontributor to160called children god coauthor of160the da vinci hoax160ignatius author catholicism priest prophet king study guides word fire also contributor sunday visitor newspaper catholic answer magazine catholic herald national catholic register chronicles publications | 847 |
<p>WASHINGTON — Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price resigned Friday – hours after President Donald Trump told reporters he would decide soon whether to fire the Cabinet member for using private chartered jets on some 26 flights that cost taxpayers more than $400,000.</p>
<p>Price’s departure fit a pattern familiar in the Trump White House. As Politico led reporting on Price’s high flying habit, Trump let the press know he was unhappy with the HHS secretary. On his way to Marine 1 Friday, Trump told reporters that Price was “a very fine man” – the sort of praise he bestowed on other high profile supporters just before they got the axe.</p>
<p>In a statement issued shortly afterward, the White House said “Secretary of Health and Human Services Thomas Price offered his resignation earlier today and the president accepted.”</p>
<p>Price said in his resignation letter that he regretted that “recent events have created a distraction.”</p>
<p>Trump named Don Wright to serve as acting secretary. Wright is currently the deputy assistant secretary for health and director of the office of disease prevention and health promotion.</p>
<p>September was a cruel month for Price. Politico broke the story about his use of charter flights – and then reported on overseas travel on military planes that bumped the reputed price tag over $1 million.</p>
<p>It was hard to imagine how Price could survive a narrative that clashed so loudly with Trump’s “Drain the Swamp” mantra. News reports ran an old quote of a younger Price denouncing then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “flying over our country in a luxury jet.”</p>
<p>Price tries to sell his case</p>
<p>Price told Fox News on Thursday that he believed he retained the confidence of the president. But later in that interview, when Bret Baier pressed Price for flying private charters to cities easy to reach by commercial airlines, Price failed to sell his case.</p>
<p>“There was one flight to Philadelphia. You drive 45 minutes to Dulles, you get on a private flight to fly to Philadelphia for $25,000,” Baier said. “You take Amtrak, you could be there in an hour and half for about a hundred bucks.”</p>
<p>Price responded, “We had a meeting that morning on the hurricanes that I needed to be at and then we had a meeting in the afternoon at the White House.”</p>
<p>Price also said, “These were 10 trips and with 26 different legs. But we have a very ambitious agenda and we were trying our doggone best to accomplish the mission and make certain that we did all that we could do to advance the president’s agenda.”</p>
<p>Price also pledged to take no more private air charters “going forward” and noted his decision to reimburse taxpayers nearly $52,000 for the cost of his “seat on those planes.” Price also argued that his department’s legal department approved the travel.</p>
<p>Brad Blakeman, a Republican strategist and former aide to President George W. Bush, said it was wrong for Price to pass the buck to HHS attorneys. Private charters make sense for security reasons; also time constraints or a large entourage can make private air travel acceptable.</p>
<p>“It is not the proper thing to do when there are good alternatives,” Blakeman said.</p>
<p>Several congressional Republicans praised Price on Friday. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Friday that Price had worked hard to help that chamber pass its health-care plan before the GOP effort reached an impasse in the Senate. “I will always be grateful for Tom’s service to this country,” he said.</p>
<p>Democrats took an opposing view. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., tweeted, “Tom Price’s removal is just a symptom of the unethical behavior and abuse that pervades @realDonaldTrump’s administration.”</p>
<p>In a statement, Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., called on Price, a former GOP congressman from the Atlanta suburbs, to reimburse the Treasury for the full cost of his chartered trips.</p>
<p>“For the better part of a decade Congressman Tom Price justified ending health care programs like the Affordable Care Act as a way to cut costs,” Titus said. “Well, it is clear that when it came to his own actions, he wasn’t nearly so fiscally conservative.”</p>
<p>Other travel issues</p>
<p>High-price travel will remain an issue for this administration. An Inspector General has opened a probe into the use of an Air Force jet by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Mnuchin and his wife, actress Louise Linton, flew to Fort Knox, Kentucky, for what was described as official” business – after which the two were able to view the eclipse. A Treasury official told reporters Mnuchin routinely reimbursed the government for the cost of his wife’s travel.</p>
<p>Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke also chartered a flight from Las Vegas to Kalispell, Montana, at a cost of $12,375. A spokeswoman explained that feasible commercial flights were not available, and that Zinke had arrived in Las Vegas the day before on a Southwest flight.</p>
<p>In a speech to the Heritage Foundation, Zinke called the controversy “a little B.S.”</p>
<p>In addition, the Washington Post reported that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt had taken four noncommercial and military flights at a cost to taxpayers of more than $58,000. A spokesperson told the Post that department lawyers approved the travel.</p>
<p>“There is a value to the secretaries’ time,” and that can justify charter and military flights, said Mark Harkins, senior fellow at the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University. But members of Congress are going to scrutinize Cabinet travel and compare it to their commutes to their home districts.</p>
<p>Some of these abuses could lead Congress to pass laws that limit administration travel, perhaps excessively. “Will this rise to the GSA scandal in Las Vegas?” asked Harkins, referring to a conference in 2010 where hundreds of federal workers partied for four days at taxpayer expense. The Office of the Inspector General investigated and found a “general culture of wasteful spending.”</p>
<p>Said Harkins, “You’re never quite sure what the unintended consequences will be.”</p>
<p>Contact Debra J. Saunders at [email protected] or 202-662-7391. Follow @DebraJSaunders on Twitter.</p> | false | 1 | washington health human services secretary tom price resigned friday hours president donald trump told reporters would decide soon whether fire cabinet member using private chartered jets 26 flights cost taxpayers 400000 prices departure fit pattern familiar trump white house politico led reporting prices high flying habit trump let press know unhappy hhs secretary way marine 1 friday trump told reporters price fine man sort praise bestowed high profile supporters got axe statement issued shortly afterward white house said secretary health human services thomas price offered resignation earlier today president accepted price said resignation letter regretted recent events created distraction trump named wright serve acting secretary wright currently deputy assistant secretary health director office disease prevention health promotion september cruel month price politico broke story use charter flights reported overseas travel military planes bumped reputed price tag 1 million hard imagine price could survive narrative clashed loudly trumps drain swamp mantra news reports ran old quote younger price denouncing house speaker nancy pelosi flying country luxury jet price tries sell case price told fox news thursday believed retained confidence president later interview bret baier pressed price flying private charters cities easy reach commercial airlines price failed sell case one flight philadelphia drive 45 minutes dulles get private flight fly philadelphia 25000 baier said take amtrak could hour half hundred bucks price responded meeting morning hurricanes needed meeting afternoon white house price also said 10 trips 26 different legs ambitious agenda trying doggone best accomplish mission make certain could advance presidents agenda price also pledged take private air charters going forward noted decision reimburse taxpayers nearly 52000 cost seat planes price also argued departments legal department approved travel brad blakeman republican strategist former aide president george w bush said wrong price pass buck hhs attorneys private charters make sense security reasons also time constraints large entourage make private air travel acceptable proper thing good alternatives blakeman said several congressional republicans praised price friday house speaker paul ryan rwis said friday price worked hard help chamber pass healthcare plan gop effort reached impasse senate always grateful toms service country said democrats took opposing view rep raul grijalva dariz tweeted tom prices removal symptom unethical behavior abuse pervades realdonaldtrumps administration statement rep dina titus dnev called price former gop congressman atlanta suburbs reimburse treasury full cost chartered trips better part decade congressman tom price justified ending health care programs like affordable care act way cut costs titus said well clear came actions wasnt nearly fiscally conservative travel issues highprice travel remain issue administration inspector general opened probe use air force jet treasury secretary steven mnuchin mnuchin wife actress louise linton flew fort knox kentucky described official business two able view eclipse treasury official told reporters mnuchin routinely reimbursed government cost wifes travel interior secretary ryan zinke also chartered flight las vegas kalispell montana cost 12375 spokeswoman explained feasible commercial flights available zinke arrived las vegas day southwest flight speech heritage foundation zinke called controversy little bs addition washington post reported epa administrator scott pruitt taken four noncommercial military flights cost taxpayers 58000 spokesperson told post department lawyers approved travel value secretaries time justify charter military flights said mark harkins senior fellow government affairs institute georgetown university members congress going scrutinize cabinet travel compare commutes home districts abuses could lead congress pass laws limit administration travel perhaps excessively rise gsa scandal las vegas asked harkins referring conference 2010 hundreds federal workers partied four days taxpayer expense office inspector general investigated found general culture wasteful spending said harkins youre never quite sure unintended consequences contact debra j saunders dsaundersreviewjournalcom 2026627391 follow debrajsaunders twitter | 597 |
<p>Now in his sixth year in office, President Obama has made it clear he is not interested in serious reform of the major spending programs that are causing, and will continue to cause in the future, so much fiscal distress for the federal government. He wants to retain the current welfare state as it is, and in fact expand it with the new spending enacted in Obamacare. Instead of serious entitlement reform, he would rely on three policies to close future deficits: steep and unprecedented defense cuts, lower payments for services in the Medicare program, and higher taxes.</p>
<p>Recent events and data make it clear that this approach to fiscal consolidation is, at best, a risky bet for the U.S. economy.</p>
<p>The most obvious budgetary threat at this point is in the defense budget. The recognition that ISIS poses a direct threat to U.S. security and global interests is rapidly shifting expectations about what a prudent defense posture will be in coming years. In addition, Russia’s aggressive incursions into Ukraine have also made it clear that the peace dividend from the end of the Cold War is now at least partially in jeopardy (even though it has already been spent many times over).</p>
<p>Current budget forecasts are out of sync with these realities. The most&#160; <a href="http://eppc.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=be333e74ea841be93db60da61&amp;id=2144a31d09&amp;e=4de8d3b2b6" type="external">recent projections</a>&#160;from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) show the federal deficit rising from 2.9 percent of GDP in 2014 to 3.6 percent of GDP in 2024. This forecast assumes defense spending will fall to just 2.7 percent of GDP in 2024, down from 4.6 percent of GDP in 2014. From 1974 to 2013, the nation spent an average of 4.5 percent of GDP on defense commitments. Spending on national security has not been as low as it is now projected to be in ten years since just before World War II.</p>
<p>The strategy for dealing with ISIS that the president announced last week calls for limiting the U.S. military role to airstrikes, additional advisors, special forces missions, and the training of militia willing to fight ISIS on the ground in Syria. The budgetary consequences of even this rather modest commitment are not known at this time, but it is clear there will be some additional cost. The only question is how much more will need to be added to the defense budget in fiscal year 2015. The U.S. role could very easily be expanded in coming months, depending how events unfold, thus driving up costs still more.</p>
<p>Given the realities of the global environment, it is far safer bet to assume that the U.S. will be required to spend something closer to the post-war average on national security than the historically low amounts built into Obama administration budget plans. This shift alone will add at least 1 to 2 percent of GDP to federal deficits each year over the coming decade compared to baseline estimates.</p>
<p>The administration and its allies have also been trumpeting the recent slowdown in the growth rate of health spending and in particular the slowdown in Medicare cost escalation. CBO’s most recent forecast shows Medicare spending rising at an average annual rate of 5.6 percent in the coming decade, driven heavily by the influx of millions of baby boomers into the program. This growth rate is still far below previous forecasts. In 2010, CBO projected Medicare spending would grow at an average annual rate of 7.0 percent through 2020.</p>
<p>Continued slowing of Medicare spending is almost entirely dependent on enforcement of payment rate reductions that are widely considered unrealistic. For starters, Medicare’s forecast continues to assume large reductions in physician fees from the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula. These cuts have been overturned by Congress every year going back more than a decade. CBO estimates a permanent “doc fix” would add more than $150 billion to the deficit over the coming decade.</p>
<p>Even more consequential is the SGR-like cut contained in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) for hospitals and other institutions providing services to Medicare patients. The “productivity adjustment factor” will cut what Medicare pays for services provided by these institutions by an average of about 1 percent each year based on the expectation that hospitals and other medical facilities can make up for the lost revenue with higher productivity. But the actuaries who analyze Medicare’s finances have&#160; <a href="http://eppc.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=be333e74ea841be93db60da61&amp;id=2bc3660651&amp;e=4de8d3b2b6" type="external">warned repeatedly</a>&#160;that these cuts are not likely to be sustained indefinitely because, in time, the compounding effect of a new reduction in payments every year will make it as unrealistic as the SGR.</p>
<p>Real-world consequences of this kind of blunt, across-the-board cut will be reduced access to care for seniors. Actuaries warn that many hospitals will have to stop serving Medicare patients to avoid losing so much money that they have to close altogether. And, like the SGR, a “fix” will add hundreds of billions of dollars to current Medicare budget projections.</p>
<p>The Obama administration’s last best hope for avoiding a legacy of looming fiscal catastrophe is the imposition of higher taxes. In 2010, a Democratic Congress levied new taxes totaling more than $1 trillion over a decade in the Obamacare legislation,&#160; <a href="http://eppc.us4.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=be333e74ea841be93db60da61&amp;id=15ebb78522&amp;e=4de8d3b2b6" type="external">according to CBO</a>. The president then followed that up by insisting on new taxes on upper income households as part of a deal to make permanent the bulk of the Bush-era tax policy. This tax hike was expected to raise revenue by another&#160; <a href="http://eppc.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=be333e74ea841be93db60da61&amp;id=c9d0790566&amp;e=4de8d3b2b6" type="external">$600 billion</a>&#160;over ten years.</p>
<p>However, the expected revenue from these tax hikes will only materialize if the economy performs well. Unfortunately, CBO’s most recent projections show a sharp slowing of economic activity compared to prior forecasts, and a commensurate drop in the projected tax revenue. As noted in a&#160; <a href="http://eppc.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=be333e74ea841be93db60da61&amp;id=fba67937e5&amp;e=4de8d3b2b6" type="external">report</a>&#160;from the Committee on a Responsible Federal Budget, CBO has lowered its ten-year revenue baseline by $1.8 trillion since February 2013. The lower revenue forecast is due mainly to an expectation that American workers will earn less in the future than previously expected, and thus pay less in federal taxes.</p>
<p>This is yet another reminder that the most important factor in cutting future budget deficits remains strong economic growth. Through the ACA and other regulatory policy, the Obama administration has imposed hurdles to business investment and formation, and new costs on hiring. No amount of tax hiking will ever offset the revenue losses associated with tepid economic growth.</p>
<p>The federal government has piled up massive debt during President Obama’s term in office — nearly $6.2 trillion from 2009 to 2013. Long-term forecasts show no end to the red ink, even if defense cuts, Medicare reductions, and tax hikes of the Obama years remain in place indefinitely. But it is far more likely that these policies will never produce the deficit reduction assumed in current projections. The Obama budget legacy is thus likely to be one of looming fiscal disaster.</p>
<p>James C. Capretta is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a contributor to e21.</p> | false | 1 | sixth year office president obama made clear interested serious reform major spending programs causing continue cause future much fiscal distress federal government wants retain current welfare state fact expand new spending enacted obamacare instead serious entitlement reform would rely three policies close future deficits steep unprecedented defense cuts lower payments services medicare program higher taxes recent events data make clear approach fiscal consolidation best risky bet us economy obvious budgetary threat point defense budget recognition isis poses direct threat us security global interests rapidly shifting expectations prudent defense posture coming years addition russias aggressive incursions ukraine also made clear peace dividend end cold war least partially jeopardy even though already spent many times current budget forecasts sync realities most160 recent projections160from congressional budget office cbo show federal deficit rising 29 percent gdp 2014 36 percent gdp 2024 forecast assumes defense spending fall 27 percent gdp 2024 46 percent gdp 2014 1974 2013 nation spent average 45 percent gdp defense commitments spending national security low projected ten years since world war ii strategy dealing isis president announced last week calls limiting us military role airstrikes additional advisors special forces missions training militia willing fight isis ground syria budgetary consequences even rather modest commitment known time clear additional cost question much need added defense budget fiscal year 2015 us role could easily expanded coming months depending events unfold thus driving costs still given realities global environment far safer bet assume us required spend something closer postwar average national security historically low amounts built obama administration budget plans shift alone add least 1 2 percent gdp federal deficits year coming decade compared baseline estimates administration allies also trumpeting recent slowdown growth rate health spending particular slowdown medicare cost escalation cbos recent forecast shows medicare spending rising average annual rate 56 percent coming decade driven heavily influx millions baby boomers program growth rate still far previous forecasts 2010 cbo projected medicare spending would grow average annual rate 70 percent 2020 continued slowing medicare spending almost entirely dependent enforcement payment rate reductions widely considered unrealistic starters medicares forecast continues assume large reductions physician fees sustainable growth rate sgr formula cuts overturned congress every year going back decade cbo estimates permanent doc fix would add 150 billion deficit coming decade even consequential sgrlike cut contained affordable care act aca hospitals institutions providing services medicare patients productivity adjustment factor cut medicare pays services provided institutions average 1 percent year based expectation hospitals medical facilities make lost revenue higher productivity actuaries analyze medicares finances have160 warned repeatedly160that cuts likely sustained indefinitely time compounding effect new reduction payments every year make unrealistic sgr realworld consequences kind blunt acrosstheboard cut reduced access care seniors actuaries warn many hospitals stop serving medicare patients avoid losing much money close altogether like sgr fix add hundreds billions dollars current medicare budget projections obama administrations last best hope avoiding legacy looming fiscal catastrophe imposition higher taxes 2010 democratic congress levied new taxes totaling 1 trillion decade obamacare legislation160 according cbo president followed insisting new taxes upper income households part deal make permanent bulk bushera tax policy tax hike expected raise revenue another160 600 billion160over ten years however expected revenue tax hikes materialize economy performs well unfortunately cbos recent projections show sharp slowing economic activity compared prior forecasts commensurate drop projected tax revenue noted a160 report160from committee responsible federal budget cbo lowered tenyear revenue baseline 18 trillion since february 2013 lower revenue forecast due mainly expectation american workers earn less future previously expected thus pay less federal taxes yet another reminder important factor cutting future budget deficits remains strong economic growth aca regulatory policy obama administration imposed hurdles business investment formation new costs hiring amount tax hiking ever offset revenue losses associated tepid economic growth federal government piled massive debt president obamas term office nearly 62 trillion 2009 2013 longterm forecasts show end red ink even defense cuts medicare reductions tax hikes obama years remain place indefinitely far likely policies never produce deficit reduction assumed current projections obama budget legacy thus likely one looming fiscal disaster james c capretta senior fellow ethics public policy center visiting fellow american enterprise institute contributor e21 | 687 |
<p>Ahead of the Spartak Moscow versus Liverpool Champions League match in Moscow, RT Sport spoke exclusively to the Liverpool FC Moscow supporters group The MosKopites.</p>
<p>Moscow has a total four football clubs in the country’s top flight – the Russian Premier League. Throngs of the capital’s population turn up every week to cheer on CSKA, Dynamo, Lokomotiv and current champions Spartak in stadiums scattered across Europe’s largest city.</p>
<p>But aside from those local supporters of their domestic sides, in the city’s center a group of Muscovites convene regularly to cheer on a team playing 1,610 miles away.</p>
<p>The team are Liverpool FC and the group go by the name ‘The MosKopites’. The name is a play on words and amalgamation of ‘Moscow’ and ‘Kopite’ – a slang term for a Liverpool fan.</p>
<p>The MosKopites meet for every Liverpool match without exception at John Donne, one of Moscow’s many English-imitation pubs situated about 3 miles immediately southeast of the Kremlin on Leo Tolstoy Street.</p>
<p>The location, in the group’s own words, “is the place where the ‘Moscow Reds’ get together to immerse themselves in the Liverpool atmosphere, happily pass the time with a pint of good ale, chant, supporting our team.”</p>
<p>Founded in February 2015, the MosKopites are one of two official supporters groups in the Russian capital. They were formed as a breakaway faction from Liverpool’s other official Moscow supporters group, the Russian Reds, after an acrimonious split.</p>
<p>The group are prevalent on social media, such as Facebook and the Russian version – VKontakte – where they publish information on matches.</p>
<p>“We are Moscow supporters of English football club Liverpool. We mix passion with a wish to support our favorite team, through thick and thin,” their home page description reads.</p>
<p>“We sing, talk, and gladly meet with those who have a connection with Liverpool.</p>
<p>“Travelling to Liverpool games in Russia, in Europe or at Anfield, we give the love of our Moscow heart to the team.”</p>
<p>RT Sport went to watch a the Champions League Group E opener with Sevilla with the group at their John Donne hangout.</p>
<p>The host, Viktor, is a young man “difficult to confuse with others,” and approaching the pub it is easy to see why: among the rabble of red jerseys at the pub entrance, his is the one emblazoned with ‘MosKopites 96’ on the back, a reference to the 96 Liverpool fans who were killed in the Hillsborough disaster in 1989.</p>
<p>Viktor, a Muscovite of 25, extends his hand and greets me with a sturdy handshake, revealing a Liver bird – the symbol of the city of Liverpool – etched on his inside forearm, and leads me inside to the building’s back room, where more red shirts are clustered around tables.</p>
<p>As far as the plethora of British-style bars in the Russian capital go, John Donne probably bears the closest resemblance to its inspiration. The room is only dark on account of its mahogany interior, lit by five different screens mounted on its walls, which are themselves adorned by an array of memorabilia.</p>
<p>One scarf in particular catches the eye – it bears the images of Liverpool managers past and present, from Bill Shankly through Kenny Dalglish to Jurgen Klopp, with the quote “Success has many fathers.”</p>
<p>Adjacent are portraits of players and an ‘Anfield Road L4’ street sign nailed above framed shirts from cup finals in Istanbul and in Cardiff, propped up across from Rome ‘77 and Wembley ‘78 banners – markers of two European Liverpool successes.</p>
<p>The MosKopites group are prevalent on social media, particularly on Facebook and the Russian version VKontakte – where they have over 2,000 members. Around about 30 pack the pub for the match versus Sevilla, which I’m told is quieter than usual.</p>
<p>For the group, their love for Liverpool is harbored from afar. But given the distance between the two cities, the question must be posed: why Liverpool? For Viktor, the reason is sewn around the crest on his shirt – Dortmund 2001.</p>
<p>“The UEFA Cup final Liverpool-Alaves. I myself loved Michael Owen and back then there were stars like no other in the team,” he explains.</p>
<p>“Liverpool attracted me because there are no fans that create such a rush, such an atmosphere like they do. Liverpool fight to the end, like in Istanbul, like not long ago against Dortmund. Even if they lose, the team has character.</p>
<p>“We have a beautiful anthem – You’ll Never Walk Alone,” Viktor’s voice trails off as he raises his sleeve to reveal a second tattoo: those exact words, before repeating them in Russian.</p>
<p>“We have history, a great history, including winning the European Cup five times. That’s why I chose Liverpool.”</p>
<p>Other Moscow natives tell a similar story, of supporting a team in a foreign, far-off land, but the upcoming game versus Spartak Moscow on Tuesday, September 26, throws up a chance for the group to watch their side just seven stops on the Moscow Metro from their pub – at Spartak’s Otkritie Arena, one of the 12 designated Russia 2018 World Cup stadiums.</p>
<p>Spartak and Liverpool last met in Russia in 2002, also in the Champions League group stage, with Viktor’s hero Owen netting a hattrick in Moscow as the Reds recorded a 3-1 victory, three weeks after a 5-0 demolition at Anfield.Viktor will be there, as will most of the Muscovite Liverpool following.</p>
<p>[embedded content]</p>
<p>“It turns out that there are enough fans of Liverpool, as you can see, we have a big enough community, really big in fact. I went to Kazan, for the Liverpool-Rubin match (in 2015), with a big Liverpool following from Moscow.</p>
<p>“We created this thing – the MosKopites. Everything is cool, so the more people creates a better atmosphere, like here there is a lot of Muscovites but they support Liverpool.”</p>
<p>Viktor has watched Liverpool in his native country before, but his main dream is clear and for the moment remains unfulfilled.</p>
<p>“I have one main dream, that should come to fruition this winter, or even this autumn, to go to Anfield. It’s my only dream to get to Anfield. I hope it materializes, to get to the Kop.”</p>
<p>Liverpool’s match with Spartak was under threat of being played behind closed doors after UEFA opened disciplinary proceedings when a rocket was fired from the Spartak section of the stadium towards the referee during their Champions League group game with Maribor on September 13.</p>
<p>However, UEFA decided to bar Spartak fans from buying tickets for their November 1 tie against Sevilla in Spain, as well as being fined €60,000 ($72,000). The incident created hysteria among some observers. One journalist <a href="https://twitter.com/tancredipalmeri/status/908247812948848640?lang=en" type="external">called</a> the act “attempted murder.”</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/sport/404256-spartak-fans-uefa-ban-rocket-liverpool/" type="external" /></p>
<p>The MosKopites also count an authentic Liverpudlian among their ranks in Shaun Wright, a 28-year-old English teacher from Wavertree in the city of Liverpool. It was his idea to name the group ‘MosKopites’.</p>
<p>Shaun, himself married to a Moscow native, cannot speak highly enough of the Russian fans who share the passion for his club.</p>
<p>“When the draw was announced of Liverpool versus Spartak, I was happier for the guys more than I was happier than myself,” he says.</p>
<p>“I’ve seen Liverpool on however many occasions at Anfield and I knew I would get a ticket to the Spartak game. But for these guys, to go and see Liverpool live is a dream of dreams because they’re as passionate as anyone in the world.</p>
<p>“For me, it’s good financially that Liverpool are coming to Moscow. But I was happy for these guys emotionally because they don’t have to get visas to see the game. They will have the honor of putting on the shirt and looking at the team and saying: ‘we are the MosKopites.’”</p>
<p>Since the fixture was announced, Shaun has shown his pride in Liverpool by wearing his team jersey on the city’s metro and around town without confrontation from locals.</p>
<p>“You hear these horror stories but I’ve worn my top around town about three or four times since the draw. I’m just having a bit of fun with it. I’m not anticipating getting beaten up!”</p>
<p>Viktor is one of those locals. He says that there is a deep and clear understanding held by the Liverpool-supporting Russian fans in regards to English football fandom and supporter culture, especially in regard to history and tragedies.</p>
<p>“I wear the number ‘96’ on the back of the shirt in memory of the fans who died in the Hillsborough tragedy,” he says.</p>
<p>“It means an awful lot to me, as it does to every Liverpool fan. Mothers, fathers and children died who were there that day in that stand.”</p>
<p>On Tuesday, Viktor, along with the hundreds of Russians who support Liverpool, will gain a chance to share in their passion for English football under one roof.</p>
<p>by <a href="https://twitter.com/DannyWArmstrong" type="external">Danny Armstrong</a> for RT Sport</p> | false | 1 | ahead spartak moscow versus liverpool champions league match moscow rt sport spoke exclusively liverpool fc moscow supporters group moskopites moscow total four football clubs countrys top flight russian premier league throngs capitals population turn every week cheer cska dynamo lokomotiv current champions spartak stadiums scattered across europes largest city aside local supporters domestic sides citys center group muscovites convene regularly cheer team playing 1610 miles away team liverpool fc group go name moskopites name play words amalgamation moscow kopite slang term liverpool fan moskopites meet every liverpool match without exception john donne one moscows many englishimitation pubs situated 3 miles immediately southeast kremlin leo tolstoy street location groups words place moscow reds get together immerse liverpool atmosphere happily pass time pint good ale chant supporting team founded february 2015 moskopites one two official supporters groups russian capital formed breakaway faction liverpools official moscow supporters group russian reds acrimonious split group prevalent social media facebook russian version vkontakte publish information matches moscow supporters english football club liverpool mix passion wish support favorite team thick thin home page description reads sing talk gladly meet connection liverpool travelling liverpool games russia europe anfield give love moscow heart team rt sport went watch champions league group e opener sevilla group john donne hangout host viktor young man difficult confuse others approaching pub easy see among rabble red jerseys pub entrance one emblazoned moskopites 96 back reference 96 liverpool fans killed hillsborough disaster 1989 viktor muscovite 25 extends hand greets sturdy handshake revealing liver bird symbol city liverpool etched inside forearm leads inside buildings back room red shirts clustered around tables far plethora britishstyle bars russian capital go john donne probably bears closest resemblance inspiration room dark account mahogany interior lit five different screens mounted walls adorned array memorabilia one scarf particular catches eye bears images liverpool managers past present bill shankly kenny dalglish jurgen klopp quote success many fathers adjacent portraits players anfield road l4 street sign nailed framed shirts cup finals istanbul cardiff propped across rome 77 wembley 78 banners markers two european liverpool successes moskopites group prevalent social media particularly facebook russian version vkontakte 2000 members around 30 pack pub match versus sevilla im told quieter usual group love liverpool harbored afar given distance two cities question must posed liverpool viktor reason sewn around crest shirt dortmund 2001 uefa cup final liverpoolalaves loved michael owen back stars like team explains liverpool attracted fans create rush atmosphere like liverpool fight end like istanbul like long ago dortmund even lose team character beautiful anthem youll never walk alone viktors voice trails raises sleeve reveal second tattoo exact words repeating russian history great history including winning european cup five times thats chose liverpool moscow natives tell similar story supporting team foreign faroff land upcoming game versus spartak moscow tuesday september 26 throws chance group watch side seven stops moscow metro pub spartaks otkritie arena one 12 designated russia 2018 world cup stadiums spartak liverpool last met russia 2002 also champions league group stage viktors hero owen netting hattrick moscow reds recorded 31 victory three weeks 50 demolition anfieldviktor muscovite liverpool following embedded content turns enough fans liverpool see big enough community really big fact went kazan liverpoolrubin match 2015 big liverpool following moscow created thing moskopites everything cool people creates better atmosphere like lot muscovites support liverpool viktor watched liverpool native country main dream clear moment remains unfulfilled one main dream come fruition winter even autumn go anfield dream get anfield hope materializes get kop liverpools match spartak threat played behind closed doors uefa opened disciplinary proceedings rocket fired spartak section stadium towards referee champions league group game maribor september 13 however uefa decided bar spartak fans buying tickets november 1 tie sevilla spain well fined 60000 72000 incident created hysteria among observers one journalist called act attempted murder read moskopites also count authentic liverpudlian among ranks shaun wright 28yearold english teacher wavertree city liverpool idea name group moskopites shaun married moscow native speak highly enough russian fans share passion club draw announced liverpool versus spartak happier guys happier says ive seen liverpool however many occasions anfield knew would get ticket spartak game guys go see liverpool live dream dreams theyre passionate anyone world good financially liverpool coming moscow happy guys emotionally dont get visas see game honor putting shirt looking team saying moskopites since fixture announced shaun shown pride liverpool wearing team jersey citys metro around town without confrontation locals hear horror stories ive worn top around town three four times since draw im bit fun im anticipating getting beaten viktor one locals says deep clear understanding held liverpoolsupporting russian fans regards english football fandom supporter culture especially regard history tragedies wear number 96 back shirt memory fans died hillsborough tragedy says means awful lot every liverpool fan mothers fathers children died day stand tuesday viktor along hundreds russians support liverpool gain chance share passion english football one roof danny armstrong rt sport | 819 |
<p><a href="http://variety.com/t/taylor-swift/" type="external">Taylor Swift</a>, <a href="http://variety.com/t/ed-sheeran/" type="external">Ed Sheeran</a>, Kesha, and more stars aligned Friday night at The Forum in Inglewood for 102.7 KIIS FM’s <a href="http://variety.com/t/jingle-ball/" type="external">Jingle Ball</a> 2017. The iHeartRadio event, whose lineup also included&#160;Niall Horan, The Chainsmokers, Halsey, Charlie Puth, Logic, Sam Smith, Liam Payne&#160;and Demi Lovato with special guest Cheat Codes, was the third stop along a national tour presented by Capital One and, being the Los Angeles date, drew a slew of celebrities and music executives.</p>
<p>The backstage scene was especially lively as it offered the rare opportunity for local notables to bring along their kids and celebrate the holidays early. Indeed, areas of the Forum were transformed into winter wonderlands where the only sparkles brighter than the glittered tops of Demi Lovato and <a href="http://variety.com/2017/music/news/taylor-swift-reputation-to-hit-streaming-services-friday-1202627379/" type="external">Taylor Swift</a> were the Christmas trees paving a path to the dressing rooms. Variety spent its Friday roaming the arena. Read on for highlights.</p>
<p>• Despite being surprisingly shut out of the recently announced <a href="http://variety.com/2017/music/news/2018-grammy-nominations-list-nominees-1202623881/" type="external">Grammy nominations</a>, Halsey delivered one of the fiercest performances of the evening. Lauren Jauregui of Fifth Harmony brightened the show when she joined Halsey onstage for “Stangers,” their collaboration off of “Hopeless Fountain Kingdom,” Halsey’s latest album.&#160;“I’m exhilarated right now. I love every time that I get to be on a stage with Halsey. She’s so incredible,” Jauregui told Variety after her performance. Halsey&#160;was later seen dancing to The Chainsmokers’ set backstage before joining the duo to perform “Closer.”</p>
<p />
<p>CREDIT: Buckner/Variety/REX/Shutterstock</p>
<p>Jauregui noted that, while the <a href="http://variety.com/2016/music/news/justin-bieber-ariana-grande-jingle-ball-new-york-1201938954/" type="external">Jingle Ball</a> lineup is “pretty solid” this year, “It’s maybe missing some R&amp;B artists like Khalid or <a href="http://variety.com/t/sza/" type="external">SZA</a>.” She went on to praise a couple of Grammy nominees whose success she sees as well deserved. “I’m so proud of my girl Kehlani, she said. “She and <a href="http://variety.com/2017/music/news/grammy-nominations-whos-likely-to-win-the-ever-unpredictable-best-new-artist-award-1202625032/" type="external">SZA</a> are killing it.”</p>
<p>• Singer&#160;Bebe Rexha also&#160;gushed about SZA. “I’m really proud of her,” Rexha said, referring to SZA’s status as the most nominated female artist for the upcoming Grammy Awards, with five noms. “I love her album. I’m very happy about the Best New Artist nominations — SZA as well as my friend Khalid and Alessia Cara, who absolutely deserves that. I’m really excited.” Rexha went on to declare her love of Kesha, who was joined onstage by Macklemore during her performance for “Good Old Days.” “I just saw her and told her that she slayed her performance. I’m so proud of her,” she added.</p>
<p />
<p>CREDIT: Buckner/Variety/REX/Shutterstock</p>
<p>• “ <a href="http://variety.com/t/kesha/" type="external">Kesha</a> just walked by me and was like, ‘What’s up? We’ve got friends in common. I wanted to say hello.’ And I was like, ‘This is awesome. You’re Kesha,’” said Bella Thorne, who had introduced Charlie Puth’s performance earlier in the night. “Charlie’s performance was also amazing,” she continued. “Liam Payne is performing tonight. F— yeah! I saw him walking in and was like, ‘What’s up dawg?’ I can’t wait for Taylor Swift, too. I really like her new album.” Throughout the night, Thorne was spotted backstage cozying up to her “Midnight Sun” co-star Patrick Schwarzenegger.</p>
<p>• “This Is Us” star Chrissy Metz revealed her current favorite:&#160;“I am obsessed with Sam Smith,” she professed. “These people are incredible performers who give their heart and soul to their work. I’m enjoying everyone. I think they did a great job with the lineup.”</p>
<p />
<p>CREDIT: REX/Shutterstock</p>
<p>•&#160;Sarah Hyland wished that Dua Lipa was included on the lineup, but the “Modern Family” star was stoked for Demi Lovato and Taylor Swift. “I think Taylor Swift’s new album is great. ‘Delicate,’ ‘Dress,’ ‘Call It What You Want,’ ‘King of My Heart’ — those less popular songs that aren’t on the radio are my favorite songs,” she said. Hyland added that she thought <a href="http://variety.com/2017/music/news/see-ed-sheeran-perform-castle-on-the-hill-acoustic-for-bedstock-challenge-exclusive-video-1202627676/" type="external">Ed Sheeran</a> got shafted by the Grammys. “I saw him on his tour. It was amazing. ‘Division’ was such a great album,” she said. Earlier in the day, Sheeran had <a href="http://variety.com/2017/music/news/ed-sheeran-on-grammys-snub-maybe-this-isnt-my-year-watch-1202628476/" type="external">appeared</a> on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” and took the snub in stride. “I’d rather have a lifetime of people coming up to me and saying, ‘This song is my wedding song,’ or ‘this song was my first kiss,’” Sheeran told DeGeneres.</p>
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<p>CREDIT: REX/Shutterstock</p>
<p>•&#160;Another big fan of Ed Sheeran’s is&#160;Lance Bass, who&#160;told&#160;Variety,&#160;“I’m so excited. This is my first time seeing him live.” The “Perfect” singer opened the show, but later returned to join Taylor Swift&#160;for their collaboration “End Game” off of her new album “Reputation.” Sheeran’s surprise appearance was a major highlight of the night.</p>
<p>• Elsewhere at the Forum: Talk show host James Corden was seen checking his Twitter mention while riding in the elevator; Taylor Swift enthusiastically greeted her dressing room neighbors and snapped selfies with Republic Records’ Charlie Walk and Gary Spangler and Big Machine’s Scott Borchetta, who attended with wife Sandi; Niall Horan stopped to pose for a photo with Santa Claus; and Halsey marveled upon seeing Blue Ivy Carter’s contribution to a painted canvas, one of many signed by visiting artists that adorn the dressing room hallway (an initiative launched by Shelli Azoff).</p>
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<p>CREDIT: Buckner/Variety/REX/Shutterstock</p>
<p>• Spotted backstage throughout the night were iHeartRadio syndicated personalities&#160; <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/ryan-seacrest-1202618069/" type="external">Ryan Seacrest</a>&#160;and Elvis Duran, both working overtime interviewing artists for live segments.&#160;Among the execs to make the scene were Apple’s&#160;Eddy Cue, Forum owner&#160;Irving Azoff and general manager Shelli Azoff, Grammys producer Ken Ehrlich, Dick Clark Productions’ Mark Bracco and Mark Shimmel, CAA’s&#160;Ali McGregor, and Chainsmokers manager and Disruptor Records chief Adam Alpert.</p> | false | 1 | taylor swift ed sheeran kesha stars aligned friday night forum inglewood 1027 kiis fms jingle ball 2017 iheartradio event whose lineup also included160niall horan chainsmokers halsey charlie puth logic sam smith liam payne160and demi lovato special guest cheat codes third stop along national tour presented capital one los angeles date drew slew celebrities music executives backstage scene especially lively offered rare opportunity local notables bring along kids celebrate holidays early indeed areas forum transformed winter wonderlands sparkles brighter glittered tops demi lovato taylor swift christmas trees paving path dressing rooms variety spent friday roaming arena read highlights despite surprisingly shut recently announced grammy nominations halsey delivered one fiercest performances evening lauren jauregui fifth harmony brightened show joined halsey onstage stangers collaboration hopeless fountain kingdom halseys latest album160im exhilarated right love every time get stage halsey shes incredible jauregui told variety performance halsey160was later seen dancing chainsmokers set backstage joining duo perform closer credit bucknervarietyrexshutterstock jauregui noted jingle ball lineup pretty solid year maybe missing rampb artists like khalid sza went praise couple grammy nominees whose success sees well deserved im proud girl kehlani said sza killing singer160bebe rexha also160gushed sza im really proud rexha said referring szas status nominated female artist upcoming grammy awards five noms love album im happy best new artist nominations sza well friend khalid alessia cara absolutely deserves im really excited rexha went declare love kesha joined onstage macklemore performance good old days saw told slayed performance im proud added credit bucknervarietyrexshutterstock kesha walked like whats weve got friends common wanted say hello like awesome youre kesha said bella thorne introduced charlie puths performance earlier night charlies performance also amazing continued liam payne performing tonight f yeah saw walking like whats dawg cant wait taylor swift really like new album throughout night thorne spotted backstage cozying midnight sun costar patrick schwarzenegger us star chrissy metz revealed current favorite160i obsessed sam smith professed people incredible performers give heart soul work im enjoying everyone think great job lineup credit rexshutterstock 160sarah hyland wished dua lipa included lineup modern family star stoked demi lovato taylor swift think taylor swifts new album great delicate dress call want king heart less popular songs arent radio favorite songs said hyland added thought ed sheeran got shafted grammys saw tour amazing division great album said earlier day sheeran appeared ellen degeneres show took snub stride id rather lifetime people coming saying song wedding song song first kiss sheeran told degeneres credit rexshutterstock 160another big fan ed sheerans is160lance bass who160told160variety160im excited first time seeing live perfect singer opened show later returned join taylor swift160for collaboration end game new album reputation sheerans surprise appearance major highlight night elsewhere forum talk show host james corden seen checking twitter mention riding elevator taylor swift enthusiastically greeted dressing room neighbors snapped selfies republic records charlie walk gary spangler big machines scott borchetta attended wife sandi niall horan stopped pose photo santa claus halsey marveled upon seeing blue ivy carters contribution painted canvas one many signed visiting artists adorn dressing room hallway initiative launched shelli azoff credit bucknervarietyrexshutterstock spotted backstage throughout night iheartradio syndicated personalities160 ryan seacrest160and elvis duran working overtime interviewing artists live segments160among execs make scene apples160eddy cue forum owner160irving azoff general manager shelli azoff grammys producer ken ehrlich dick clark productions mark bracco mark shimmel caas160ali mcgregor chainsmokers manager disruptor records chief adam alpert | 559 |
<p>The CIA won the fight by creating an atmosphere hostile to any thought that Russia is not a dangerous adversary and the main threat that the US faces.</p>
<p>“Change you can believe in” disappeared in the early days of the Obama regime as the same Washington insiders filled the new government’s ranks. David Brooks sung the praises of those who made change impossible: “the best of the Washington insiders, Achievetrons who got double 800s on their SATs.”</p>
<p>Eight years later Donald Trump was specific about the changes he intended, the two most important being normalized relations with Russia and the return home of the middle class jobs and associated state and local tax base that US corporations had moved offshore to foreign locations. But Trump’s government quickly became home to corporate polluters, Wall Street executives, defense contractors, and Russophobic generals.</p>
<p>Obama’s disappointed supporters held firm to their conviction that their man would set the agenda and not the Washington insiders who occupied his government. Trump’s disheartened deplorables are currently finding refuge in this same conviction. But it looks like we will not get the good part from Trump, only the bad part of more pollution and more damage to the social safety net.</p>
<p>Those who agree about this disagree over the explanation. Some insist that Trump, not Hillary, was the establishment’s choice from the beginning and that the fierce opposition to Trump played out in the press and on the airwaves was only an orchestration to convince flyover America that Trump stood for them. My view is different. Trump threatened the power and budget of the military/security complex and the profits of Wall Street before he had an organization and a team in place to impose his agenda. Unlike Michael Corleone, Trump was rash.</p>
<p>Consequently, the CIA, FBI, NSA, Democrats, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and the presstitute media boxed Trump in by portraying him in collusion with Russian President Putin to steal the election from Hillary. Marches worldwide were instantly choreographed, and there were constant and escalating accusations portraying Trump and his associates as puppets on Putin’s string. Lists were made of Internet media sites that took exception to Washington’s wars and dangerous provocations of Russia, China, and Iran.</p>
<p>The attack on Trump seems to have succeeded. Trump lost his National Security Adviser who favored normalized relations with Russia. Trump was forced to prove he was not working for Putin by appointing a Russophobe as National Security Adviser. Trump backed off from an early meeting with Putin to reduce the tensions in the relationship caused by the past three US presidents.</p>
<p>The CIA won the fight by creating an atmosphere hostile to any thought that Russia is not a dangerous adversary and the main threat that the US faces. In other words, a preference for reduced tensions between nuclear powers has become evidence that one is a Russian agent or Putin’s dupe.</p>
<p>The CIA’s victory means that the prospect of nuclear Armageddon remains on the table, but the budget of the military/security complex is safe and rising. Is this an acceptable trade-off for you?</p>
<p>I was astonished to see the liberal/progressive/left line up with the CIA against peace and with globalism and Identity Politics against the working class. The liberal/progressive/left has turned against heterosexual white males and transformed the working class from a victim group into alleged victimizers of women, blacks, homosexuals, and Muslim refugees. The American left has degenerated into the Identity Politics that originated with Zionism. (See for example <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/24/donald-trump-and-the-triumph-of-white-identity-politics/" type="external">the article by Eric Draitser</a>, the host of CounterPunch Radio.)</p>
<p>The political left, once a force for peace, has transitioned into a force for war, as war is the likely outcome of the high level of tension that now exists between the US and Russia. By helping the CIA handicap President Trump and prevent him from reducing these tensions, the liberal/progressive/left has responsibility for the impending danger.</p>
<p>These tensions are very dangerous. They have resulted in high-readiness nuclear alert postures, which together with short warning times, false signals of incoming missiles and distrust, create a dangerous strategic nuclear situation.</p>
<p>It is reckless for Washington to convince Russia (and China) that the US is preparing a pre-emptive nuclear strike against them. But that is what Washington is doing when it puts anti-ballistic missiles on Russia’s border and tells the Russians the lie that the missiles are there to protect Europe from Iranian ICBMs. The entire world knows that Iran does not have nukes or ICBMs. All Washington’s lie does is to make the purpose of the missiles obvious to the Russians.</p>
<p>The continuous anti-Russian propaganda issuing from Washington, NATO and the despicable Western presstitutes has the purpose of orchestrating a Russian Threat and preventing a reduction of tensions between the nuclear powers.</p>
<p>The demonization of Russia’s president and the clearly false charges against Russia, such as interference in the US presidential election, invasion of Ukraine, reconstruction of the Soviet empire—are understood by the Russians as a propaganda campaign to prepare Western populations for a pre-emptive nuclear attack on Russia.</p>
<p>The conventional NATO forces conducting military exercises and deployed on Russia’s border are understood by the Russians as being too small and lacking in strength to be of any consequence. They are merely an orchestration to emphasize the Russian Threat for insouciant Western populations.</p>
<p>The Russian government understands that all of this is preparation for an attack on Russia. Just as Saddam Hussein, Gadaffi, and Assad were demonized by US government officials, now it is Putin. The dangerous situation could not be more obvious.</p>
<p>Yet Hillary supporters are completely blind to what is occurring in front of their noses, as is the liberal/progressive/left, the idiot EU governments, and the Western presstitute media. As President Putin himself has stated, “no one listens to us when we point out the impending danger.”</p>
<p>As environmentally damaging as a pipeline can be, it is nothing compared to nuclear war. In the opposition to Trump, emotion has prevailed over reason and hate has prevailed over judgment. The consequences for life on earth will be dire.</p>
<p>Just as the CIA is indifferent to the threat to life on earth that the agency’s orchestration of the Russian Threat presents, and the liberal/progressive/left is too absorbed in hatred of Trump to comprehend that it is enabling the march to nuclear war, the Trump forces are enabling another catastrophic/apocalyptic threat by dismissing global warning as a hoax. That the obvious, observable melting of Arctic ice can be dismissed as a plot against capitalism by left-wing scientists demonstrates a detachment from reality that is difficult to fathom. For whatever reason the ice is melting, the consequence is the sudden enormous release of life-destroying methane into the atmosphere. As far as I am aware, the dire consequences of massive methane release are not controversial.</p>
<p>For a world that sees itself as based on science, it is amazing how uninfluential scientists are. They warn of the consequences of nuclear war, and Western governments continue escalating tensions between nuclear powers. Scientists warn of the consequences of global warming, and the polluting economic interests and their supporters cry “hoax.”</p>
<p>Read <a href="http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/39957-release-of-arctic-methane-may-be-apocalyptic-study-warns" type="external">Dahr Jamail’s report</a> on the latest published scientific report on the likelihood of a sudden and gigantic release of methane, and then go read the report itself. This is not the fake news that you get from the New York Times, BBC, CNN, Washington Post, Le Monde, MSNBC and the rest of the presstitutes. This report is peer-reviewed scientific opinion based on the known facts at hand.</p>
<p>What is known among scientists as the Artic “Methane Time Bomb” has been studied intensely. Scientists believe that a 50-gigaton “burp” of methane could be released in a brief period of time from the melting of the Arctic ice. This would be the sudden addition to the atmosphere of ten times the amount of methane currently in the atmosphere. Scientists equate this to an increase in carbon dioxide of 1,000 gigatons.</p>
<p>In other words, based on our existing scientific knowledge, life on earth depends on the Arctic ice not melting. But it is melting.</p>
<p>With the two apocalyptic scenarios described in this article both possibly close at hand, why is the liberal/progressive/left concerned with tranny toilet facilities and the freedom of Muslims to immigrate to Europe and the US? Is this the way they distract themselves from the real threatening issues?</p>
<p>Why are the timber companies cutting down forests and why are the remaining rain forests being massacred when it is trees that absorb carbon dioxide and emit oxygen?</p>
<p>Why is there intense commercial farming of beef and pork when the methane release from the vast numbers of animals is extraordinary and a factor in the rising temperatures that are melting the Arctic ice?</p>
<p>The answer is that profit-seeking has only short-term motivations, and the profits come mainly from the external costs imposed on third parties and the environment. The effort to control what economists call externalities requires thoughtful and determined regulation. Yet, the Trump administration declares regulation to be a hindrance to business. In other words, regulation interferes with the ability of capitalism to generate profits by externalizing its costs, and, thereby, regulation must be abolished.</p>
<p>We have reached the point where the externalities of economic activity and the externalities of the military/security complex’s need for a Russian threat are on the verge of bringing life on Earth to an end.</p>
<p>The idiocy of Identity Politics is that the ideology has no idea that we are all victims of the real victimizers—the US military/security complex and a carbon-based life style.</p>
<p>Considering the dire circumstances, it really doesn’t matter if more Muslim refugees, whose countries and prospects we have destroyed with our wars of hegemony and who may be seeking revenge for what they have suffered, are admitted to the West. The danger of being run over on a London bridge or at a German bus stop by a Muslim seeking revenge is miniscule compared to thermo-nuclear war and catastrophic changes in the biosphere.</p>
<p>But don’t expect any intelligent awareness from any Western government or from any member of the Western presstitute media. Truth is the last thing that interests these purveyors of fake news. They are interested in manufacturing fake threats, not confronting real ones.</p>
<p>What these hyper-criminals are doing is murdering planet Earth.</p> | false | 1 | cia fight creating atmosphere hostile thought russia dangerous adversary main threat us faces change believe disappeared early days obama regime washington insiders filled new governments ranks david brooks sung praises made change impossible best washington insiders achievetrons got double 800s sats eight years later donald trump specific changes intended two important normalized relations russia return home middle class jobs associated state local tax base us corporations moved offshore foreign locations trumps government quickly became home corporate polluters wall street executives defense contractors russophobic generals obamas disappointed supporters held firm conviction man would set agenda washington insiders occupied government trumps disheartened deplorables currently finding refuge conviction looks like get good part trump bad part pollution damage social safety net agree disagree explanation insist trump hillary establishments choice beginning fierce opposition trump played press airwaves orchestration convince flyover america trump stood view different trump threatened power budget militarysecurity complex profits wall street organization team place impose agenda unlike michael corleone trump rash consequently cia fbi nsa democrats john mccain lindsey graham presstitute media boxed trump portraying collusion russian president putin steal election hillary marches worldwide instantly choreographed constant escalating accusations portraying trump associates puppets putins string lists made internet media sites took exception washingtons wars dangerous provocations russia china iran attack trump seems succeeded trump lost national security adviser favored normalized relations russia trump forced prove working putin appointing russophobe national security adviser trump backed early meeting putin reduce tensions relationship caused past three us presidents cia fight creating atmosphere hostile thought russia dangerous adversary main threat us faces words preference reduced tensions nuclear powers become evidence one russian agent putins dupe cias victory means prospect nuclear armageddon remains table budget militarysecurity complex safe rising acceptable tradeoff astonished see liberalprogressiveleft line cia peace globalism identity politics working class liberalprogressiveleft turned heterosexual white males transformed working class victim group alleged victimizers women blacks homosexuals muslim refugees american left degenerated identity politics originated zionism see example article eric draitser host counterpunch radio political left force peace transitioned force war war likely outcome high level tension exists us russia helping cia handicap president trump prevent reducing tensions liberalprogressiveleft responsibility impending danger tensions dangerous resulted highreadiness nuclear alert postures together short warning times false signals incoming missiles distrust create dangerous strategic nuclear situation reckless washington convince russia china us preparing preemptive nuclear strike washington puts antiballistic missiles russias border tells russians lie missiles protect europe iranian icbms entire world knows iran nukes icbms washingtons lie make purpose missiles obvious russians continuous antirussian propaganda issuing washington nato despicable western presstitutes purpose orchestrating russian threat preventing reduction tensions nuclear powers demonization russias president clearly false charges russia interference us presidential election invasion ukraine reconstruction soviet empireare understood russians propaganda campaign prepare western populations preemptive nuclear attack russia conventional nato forces conducting military exercises deployed russias border understood russians small lacking strength consequence merely orchestration emphasize russian threat insouciant western populations russian government understands preparation attack russia saddam hussein gadaffi assad demonized us government officials putin dangerous situation could obvious yet hillary supporters completely blind occurring front noses liberalprogressiveleft idiot eu governments western presstitute media president putin stated one listens us point impending danger environmentally damaging pipeline nothing compared nuclear war opposition trump emotion prevailed reason hate prevailed judgment consequences life earth dire cia indifferent threat life earth agencys orchestration russian threat presents liberalprogressiveleft absorbed hatred trump comprehend enabling march nuclear war trump forces enabling another catastrophicapocalyptic threat dismissing global warning hoax obvious observable melting arctic ice dismissed plot capitalism leftwing scientists demonstrates detachment reality difficult fathom whatever reason ice melting consequence sudden enormous release lifedestroying methane atmosphere far aware dire consequences massive methane release controversial world sees based science amazing uninfluential scientists warn consequences nuclear war western governments continue escalating tensions nuclear powers scientists warn consequences global warming polluting economic interests supporters cry hoax read dahr jamails report latest published scientific report likelihood sudden gigantic release methane go read report fake news get new york times bbc cnn washington post le monde msnbc rest presstitutes report peerreviewed scientific opinion based known facts hand known among scientists artic methane time bomb studied intensely scientists believe 50gigaton burp methane could released brief period time melting arctic ice would sudden addition atmosphere ten times amount methane currently atmosphere scientists equate increase carbon dioxide 1000 gigatons words based existing scientific knowledge life earth depends arctic ice melting melting two apocalyptic scenarios described article possibly close hand liberalprogressiveleft concerned tranny toilet facilities freedom muslims immigrate europe us way distract real threatening issues timber companies cutting forests remaining rain forests massacred trees absorb carbon dioxide emit oxygen intense commercial farming beef pork methane release vast numbers animals extraordinary factor rising temperatures melting arctic ice answer profitseeking shortterm motivations profits come mainly external costs imposed third parties environment effort control economists call externalities requires thoughtful determined regulation yet trump administration declares regulation hindrance business words regulation interferes ability capitalism generate profits externalizing costs thereby regulation must abolished reached point externalities economic activity externalities militarysecurity complexs need russian threat verge bringing life earth end idiocy identity politics ideology idea victims real victimizersthe us militarysecurity complex carbonbased life style considering dire circumstances really doesnt matter muslim refugees whose countries prospects destroyed wars hegemony may seeking revenge suffered admitted west danger run london bridge german bus stop muslim seeking revenge miniscule compared thermonuclear war catastrophic changes biosphere dont expect intelligent awareness western government member western presstitute media truth last thing interests purveyors fake news interested manufacturing fake threats confronting real ones hypercriminals murdering planet earth | 917 |
<p>Clark County voters turned out in strength this election season, with 62 percent of registered voters casting ballots.</p>
<p>Clark County spokesman Dan Kulin said things were mostly normal at polling places. But reports of poll worker intimidation surfaced at four valley high schools after polls closed.</p>
<p>“We’ve worked very hard to educate voters about the issues that matter most, and now what we’re hearing is that there is poll worker intimidation happening at four locations here in Southern Nevada,” Annette Magnus, executive director of the Institute for a Progressive Nevada and Battle Born Nevada, said in an email.</p>
<p>“Del Sol High School actually had the police called,” she said.</p>
<p>In the email, she said Trump supporters demanded to see ballots and to watch them as they were taken to the election department for counting. Magnus said there were similar reports at Green Valley, Liberty and Bonanza high schools.</p>
<p>Metropolitan Police Department spokesman Michael Rodriguez confirmed that officers had been dispatched to Del Sol High School after reports of a Trump supporter attempting to tally votes, possibly intimidating poll workers.</p>
<p>Rodriguez said Metro was at the scene shortly but didn’t arrest or cite anyone because the Clark County School District Police was the primary agency on the call.</p>
<p>Lines were long in the morning, slow but steady throughout the day and heavy again in the evening, toward the 7 p.m. poll closings.</p>
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<p>More than 767,000 Nevadans — more than half of the state’s active registered voters — voted early in this year’s general election. Registered Democrats in Nevada cast 46,000 more ballots this year in early voting than Republicans, just shy of the 48,000-vote lead Democrats took into Election Day 2012, when President Barack Obama carried the state.</p>
<p>Early Tuesday afternoon, police responded to the North Las Vegas Airport polling place, where election officials reported a voter intimidation complaint against a registered observer.</p>
<p>The polling place’s team leader, Allan Gutierrez, said election observer Albert Goldberg “was getting too close” to where other observers were talking to voters in the parking lot and acting “in an intimidating fashion.”</p>
<p>“I asked him to be courteous and give them more room. I told him he was invading their personal space,” Gutierrez said.</p>
<p>Goldberg declined to be interviewed by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. He said he was “following orders” but wouldn’t say what person or organization was giving him those orders.</p>
<p>After a third North Las Vegas police patrol vehicle arrived to speak to an election official, Goldberg drove away from the polling station.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Nonpartisan and partisan poll watchers</a> were keeping a close eye on polling places <a href="" type="internal">for voter intimidation</a>, voter fraud or other nefarious activities.</p>
<p>“We’re just here to make sure everyone’s vote is counted, that no one is intimidated as they’re trying to vote and that everyone can exercise their right to vote on this very important day,” Steven Ury, an “election protection” volunteer for the American Civil Liberties Union saidat the Wendell Williams Elementary School polling place.</p>
<p>He said observers “haven’t noticed anything systemic happening in Southern Nevada today.”</p>
<p>Voters are keeping a keen eye out, too.</p>
<p>A woman at Hyde Park Middle School complained to a poll worker that the paper record of her vote had not printed. It actually had, but she couldn’t see it until the poll worker pushed aside the privacy drape at her voting station, revealing her choices.</p>
<p>PRESIDENTIAL PREFERENCES</p>
<p>The lines seemed to move fairly quickly Tuesday morning, but a few hiccups were reported.</p>
<p>At the Rainbow Library polling station at Buffalo Drive and Cheyenne Avenue, more than half the voting machines were out of commission for two hours, apparently because there weren’t enough electronic cards available to run them.</p>
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<p>A volunteer at the site said more cards were requested at 5:30 a.m. By about 9 a.m., the cards arrived, and the line was moving again.</p>
<p>Outside the theater at Desert Pines High School, just down Washington Avenue from Freedom Park, Wynn casino employee Miriam Beltran was among the first people in line. Dressed in her work uniform, she quickly submitted her vote and rushed to drop off her kids at a babysitter’s house before her shift.</p>
<p>It was 77-year-old Catalina Garcia’s first time voting. Garcia moved from Mexico to the United States 18 years ago and became a citizen in July.</p>
<p>She said she felt there were many things in jeopardy during this election season. She voted for democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.</p>
<p>“I hope that fool does not win,” she said of Republican nominee Donald Trump. “What we need is a change and an immigration reform.”</p>
<p>Tim McCracken was first in line at the Staton Elementary School polling place in the west Las Vegas Valley.</p>
<p>The Republican voting for Trump said: “People in America need to stand up and say what they believe in, and this is one way to do it.”</p>
<p>McCracken said he is concerned about the future makeup of the Supreme Court, border patrol and “most important, jobs.”</p>
<p>Democrat Ping Levitt said she thinks this is an important election with a lot of issues, but “the most important thing is that we want a president that’s fit for the position, who has the quality and integrity and decency to be a president.”</p>
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<p>Roger Giuliani wouldn’t say whether he was a Democrat or Republican but came when the polls opened to do his “civic duty and be a good American and vote. This is what makes America great,” he said.</p>
<p>An undecided voter turned up at the polling site at Shadow Hills Church, on Vegas Drive near Buffalo Drive. Joe, 29, said he had “no idea” whom he was going to vote for as of 8 a.m. Tuesday. Joe, who did not want to give his last name, said he was so unhappy with the candidates that he procrastinated doing more substantive research to help him make up his mind.</p>
<p>“I think in some ways I will feel sicker when it’s over, because there’s no going back on my decision,” he said.</p>
<p>At Brian and Teri Cram Middle School at about 2 p.m., a North Las Vegas fire engine pulled into the parking lot and dropped off a firefighter who hurried inside of the polling place to vote. A few minutes later, the man rushed back out and hopped in the truck, which had moved near a voting sign along the road, out of the way of other voters’ cars.</p>
<p>VOTERS MAKE TOUGH CHOICES</p>
<p>Eddie Solis, 38, cast his ballot at Shadow Hills Church with a sheet of paper taped to the back of his shirt that read, “Don’t vote based on emotion, vote as an American.”</p>
<p>The Costa Rican-American said people assume that he is a Democrat or that he is offended by certain rhetoric because he is Latino.</p>
<p>“The heat comes from the same Latino people,” he said. “Just because I speak Spanish, they are telling me I have do this and that. They push you to vote a way that you don’t want to.”</p>
<p>He said he felt that supporting Republican candidates would make everybody more “secure.”</p>
<p>“We all want what’s better for the country,” Solis said. “I just hope that everybody gets along after this.”</p>
<p>Voters at one polling place in the southwest valley saw the name “Tarkanian” twice: Once on their way in to vote at Tarkanian Middle School, and again on their ballot, where Danny Tarkanian was a candidate in the 3rd Congressional District. The school is named after Danny’s parents, current Las Vegas City Councilwoman Lois Tarkanian and Hall of Fame Basketball Coach Jerry Tarkanian.</p>
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<p>Electioneering or campaigning within 100 feet of a polling place entrance is prohibited. Barred activities include distributing fliers, posting signs, using loudspeakers, selling or wearing political insignia and soliciting signatures.</p>
<p>Carol Cling, Rachel Crosby, Michael Scott Davidson, Rocio Hernandez, Sandy Lopez, Jamie Munks, Nicole Raz, Jeff Scheid and Pashtana Usufzy contributed to this report. Contact Keith Rogers at [email protected] or 702-383-0308. Follow <a href="http://www.twitter.com/@KeithRogers2" type="external">@KeithRogers2</a> on Twitter. Contact Henry Brean at [email protected] or 702-383-0350. Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/RefriedBrean" type="external">@RefriedBrean</a> on Twitter.</p> | false | 1 | clark county voters turned strength election season 62 percent registered voters casting ballots clark county spokesman dan kulin said things mostly normal polling places reports poll worker intimidation surfaced four valley high schools polls closed weve worked hard educate voters issues matter hearing poll worker intimidation happening four locations southern nevada annette magnus executive director institute progressive nevada battle born nevada said email del sol high school actually police called said email said trump supporters demanded see ballots watch taken election department counting magnus said similar reports green valley liberty bonanza high schools metropolitan police department spokesman michael rodriguez confirmed officers dispatched del sol high school reports trump supporter attempting tally votes possibly intimidating poll workers rodriguez said metro scene shortly didnt arrest cite anyone clark county school district police primary agency call lines long morning slow steady throughout day heavy evening toward 7 pm poll closings 767000 nevadans half states active registered voters voted early years general election registered democrats nevada cast 46000 ballots year early voting republicans shy 48000vote lead democrats took election day 2012 president barack obama carried state early tuesday afternoon police responded north las vegas airport polling place election officials reported voter intimidation complaint registered observer polling places team leader allan gutierrez said election observer albert goldberg getting close observers talking voters parking lot acting intimidating fashion asked courteous give room told invading personal space gutierrez said goldberg declined interviewed las vegas reviewjournal said following orders wouldnt say person organization giving orders third north las vegas police patrol vehicle arrived speak election official goldberg drove away polling station nonpartisan partisan poll watchers keeping close eye polling places voter intimidation voter fraud nefarious activities make sure everyones vote counted one intimidated theyre trying vote everyone exercise right vote important day steven ury election protection volunteer american civil liberties union saidat wendell williams elementary school polling place said observers havent noticed anything systemic happening southern nevada today voters keeping keen eye woman hyde park middle school complained poll worker paper record vote printed actually couldnt see poll worker pushed aside privacy drape voting station revealing choices presidential preferences lines seemed move fairly quickly tuesday morning hiccups reported rainbow library polling station buffalo drive cheyenne avenue half voting machines commission two hours apparently werent enough electronic cards available run volunteer site said cards requested 530 9 cards arrived line moving outside theater desert pines high school washington avenue freedom park wynn casino employee miriam beltran among first people line dressed work uniform quickly submitted vote rushed drop kids babysitters house shift 77yearold catalina garcias first time voting garcia moved mexico united states 18 years ago became citizen july said felt many things jeopardy election season voted democratic candidate hillary clinton hope fool win said republican nominee donald trump need change immigration reform tim mccracken first line staton elementary school polling place west las vegas valley republican voting trump said people america need stand say believe one way mccracken said concerned future makeup supreme court border patrol important jobs democrat ping levitt said thinks important election lot issues important thing want president thats fit position quality integrity decency president roger giuliani wouldnt say whether democrat republican came polls opened civic duty good american vote makes america great said undecided voter turned polling site shadow hills church vegas drive near buffalo drive joe 29 said idea going vote 8 tuesday joe want give last name said unhappy candidates procrastinated substantive research help make mind think ways feel sicker theres going back decision said brian teri cram middle school 2 pm north las vegas fire engine pulled parking lot dropped firefighter hurried inside polling place vote minutes later man rushed back hopped truck moved near voting sign along road way voters cars voters make tough choices eddie solis 38 cast ballot shadow hills church sheet paper taped back shirt read dont vote based emotion vote american costa ricanamerican said people assume democrat offended certain rhetoric latino heat comes latino people said speak spanish telling push vote way dont want said felt supporting republican candidates would make everybody secure want whats better country solis said hope everybody gets along voters one polling place southwest valley saw name tarkanian twice way vote tarkanian middle school ballot danny tarkanian candidate 3rd congressional district school named dannys parents current las vegas city councilwoman lois tarkanian hall fame basketball coach jerry tarkanian electioneering campaigning within 100 feet polling place entrance prohibited barred activities include distributing fliers posting signs using loudspeakers selling wearing political insignia soliciting signatures carol cling rachel crosby michael scott davidson rocio hernandez sandy lopez jamie munks nicole raz jeff scheid pashtana usufzy contributed report contact keith rogers krogersreviewjournalcom 7023830308 follow keithrogers2 twitter contact henry brean hbreanreviewjournalcom 7023830350 follow refriedbrean twitter | 787 |
<p>The resolution of the current drama of Ukraine will touch both the moral and cultural future of the European project and the global strategic issue of whether something resembling the old Soviet Union will be de facto established by the Russian government of Vladimir Putin using bribes and coercion. In that unfolding drama, often referred to as EuroMaidan (a neologism that combines the aspirations of Ukraine’s democratic dissidents and the informal name of the square in Kiev where mass demonstrations continue), a leading role in the effort to reform a corrupt, post-Communist Ukraine is being played by the faculty and students of the Ukrainian Catholic University.</p>
<p>UCU is itself something of a miracle, having been born from beneath the rubble of Soviet-era religious persecution, during which the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was forcibly suppressed and was, for more than four decades, the world’s largest underground religious body. Today, UCU is providing an impressive and unique model of higher learning in the “former Soviet space,” emphasizing the development of personal character and public moral culture as well as intellectual and professional competence, to meet the challenges of a society wrecked by the hammer blows of Soviet totalitarianism. UCU has paid a price for its commitment to intellectual and moal truth, suffering continuing harassment from the government and security services of the Yanukovych regime in Ukraine. Yet the people of UCU remain unbowed, and both faculty and students have been active participants in the EuroMaidan demonstrations and in similar protests in Lviv, where the university is located.</p>
<p>The following two documents, recently sent to me from Lviv, usefully illustrate the dynamics of today’s Ukrainian drama. The first may help Western readers understand just how a corrupt, thuggish, post-Communist regime operates. The second gives a flavor of the witness that students whose teachers care about both intellectual and moral formation can offer Ukrainian society. It is instructive to note that much of the EuroMaidan protest has been led by young people who have grown up since Ukraine achieved its independence in 1991; they have no memory of the Communist regime, and they want a normal, European future, which they associate not with MTV, but with democracy, solidarity, and respect for human dignity.</p>
<p>The texts have been lightly edited for readability.</p>
<p>(1)&#160;Memorandum</p>
<p>On complications in the relations between the Ukrainian Catholic University and Ukrainian government in 2010–2013</p>
<p>Profile</p>
<p>The Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU), located in Lviv, Ukraine, was established in 1994 by the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC). The largest of the Eastern Catholic Churches, the UGCC was “dissolved” after World War II, and those who defied this ban were violently persecuted by the Soviet state. The UGCC emerged from the underground in 1989 and has rebuilt its ecclesiastical structures. According to its mission statement, UCU is an open academic community, forming leaders to serve with professional excellence in Ukraine and internationally — for the glory of God, the common good, and the dignity of the human person.</p>
<p>UCU is the only Catholic university in the territory of the former Soviet Union. UCU is a model for educational reform in post-Soviet higher education, and a living example of a corruption-free environment. It played a historical role in the state recognition of theology and in establishing high standards of theological education in Ukraine. UCU offers a quality education in theology and church history, sacred art and ecumenical studies, humanities, social sciences, bioethics, social work, journalism and social communication, innovation and nonprofit management, and business education, introducing the best approaches and methods of western European and North American universities. Fostering intercultural, cross-institutional, and interdisciplinary cooperation is both a goal and a conscious method at UCU.</p>
<p>As a non-governmental higher-education institution, UCU established the model of the independent, self-supporting university in a post-Communist setting which suffers from the Communist destruction of the culture of philanthropy; thus UCU aims to institute and enhance efficient and transparent relationships with its local and global stakeholders and donors. UCU is known for its independent public position, the scope of its international outreach, its commitment to the issues of social responsibility, and its concern for promoting a culture of academic excellence and honesty nationwide. Developing the spirit of community and service, inherited from the underground Church, is a priority in UCU’s institutional and educational strategy.</p>
<p>The harassment of the Ukrainian Catholic University by the Security Service of Ukraine, May–June 2010</p>
<p>On May 18, 2010, an agent of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) paid an unwanted visit to Father Borys Gudziak, the rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, to warn him of the possible repercussions of student participation in protest activity against growing state authoritarianism. The agent gave the rector a letter from SBU authorities and asked him to read and sign the letter, thereby acknowledging the letter’s contents. The agent stipulated that the rector could not keep nor make a copy of this letter even though it was addressed to him. Under such conditions Rector Gudziak refused to sign or even read the letter and published&#160; <a href="http://ucu.edu.ua/eng/news/549/" type="external">a memorandum</a>&#160;about the incident.</p>
<p>On June 2, 2010, Philip J. Crowley, U.S. assistant secretary of state for public affairs made a statement on the Ukrainian Catholic University and the Security Service of Ukraine concerning issues related to freedom of speech and association in Ukraine. He expressed concern about actions that could be interpreted as restricting basic freedoms.</p>
<p>On June 25, 2010, Mr. Khoroshkovsky, SBU Head, and Mrs. Herman, President Yanukovych’s spokesman, came to UCU. A non-confrontational encounter occurred during which the visitors had an opportunity to see the various aspects of UCU’s research, teaching, and social-outreach activity. Father Gudziak and Father Bohdan Prach, vice-rector for external affairs, aired the concerns of the university and its desire to work normally for a normal future of Ukraine as it emerges from a devastating totalitarian past. On July 2, 2010, Mrs. Herman made a public statement that Mr. Khoroshkovsky had&#160; <a href="http://blogs.pravda.com.ua/authors/4c03ad265db60/4c2dd3cb1b9ff/" type="external">issued an apology</a>&#160;regarding the May 18th incident</p>
<p>An attempt of the Ministry for Education, Science, Youth, and Sports of Ukraine to revoke UCU’s accreditation, December 2011–November 2012</p>
<p>Over the past years, the Ukrainian Catholic University continued to develop dynamically. In response, the Ministry for Education, Science, Youth, and Sports (MESYS) of Ukraine attempted to arrest that development through unfair and academically unjustified revocation of state accreditation for the University, based not on quality or efficiency criteria, but on purely formal, bureaucratic reasons. Its complaints with regard to UCU were the foreign citizenship of its rector and the staffing of teaching positions with faculty with international academic degrees.</p>
<p>During December 2011 through November 2012, MESYS tried to discipline UCU through its attempt to revoke UCU’s state licenses and accreditation for its programs. UCU has faced numerous difficulties in re-accrediting its existing programs and getting a license for its new programs.&#160;.&#160;.&#160;.</p>
<p>During one year UCU was rigorously inspected twice by an extraordinary Committee of the State Inspection of Higher Educational Institutions of Ukraine on its compliance with license requirements in the provision of educational services in the area of higher education, and on the quality of student education at UCU. Both times the Committee’s conclusion on UCU’s compliance with the licensing regulations was positive. Nevertheless, on the grounds that UCU rector Father Borys Gudziak (who holds a doctorate from Harvard) is not a Ukrainian citizen, and that a number of the theology faculty with doctoral degrees granted by leading Western universities did not have their Ph.D. degrees formally recognized in Ukraine (because of the lack of legal possibility to attain such a recognition for degrees in theology), MESYS tried to deny accreditation to UCU’s programs.</p>
<p>To respond to the threat of revoking accreditation, UCU professors with Ph.D.s in theology from world-renowned universities outside Ukraine were forced to get their degrees recognized in other specialties rather than theology: religious studies, philosophy, history, etc. It is scandalous that MESYS did nothing to create conditions for full recognition of theology in Ukraine and then used that failure as an instrument of discrimination against people with internationally recognized academic degrees in theology.</p>
<p>Following the intervention of the head of Lviv Region State Administration and other Ukrainian high officials who were familiar with UCU, the involvement of U.S. ambassador John Tefft, and the dedicated work of UCU administration, MESYS finally drew back and granted the accreditation to UCU programs in late 2012 and early 2013.</p>
<p>Opening of the new master program in social pedagogy, April–June 2012</p>
<p>In April 2012, UCU submitted to MESYS an application and request to issue a license for opening the new master program in social pedagogy. According to the procedure, DSWL appointed an expert committee, which visited UCU at the end of May to check the situation at the university and our compliance with the regulations for opening the new program. The final conclusion of the expert committee was completely positive.</p>
<p>But a MESYS expert, while transmitting our issue to the State Accreditation Committee, wrote a cover letter arguing that the positive conclusion of the expert committee is invalid. She appealed to the fact that the head of the department holds a Doctor of Sciences degree in general pedagogy and not in social pedagogy, which was, in her opinion, a violation of one of the licensing regulations. Given the fact that there is a general practice in Ukraine that people work in adjacent fields and are counted as fulfilling the license criteria, her reproach was outrageous, since our professor wrote a monograph and more than 40 articles in social pedagogy. Our department head was a director of one successful dissertation in social pedagogy, and she holds an official academic title of professor of social work issued by MESYS. All of this unmistakably testified to her qualifications in social pedagogy. And all of this was ignored by the MESYS expert. It took a great deal of work and argument with MESYS to finally convince the State Accreditation Committee to grant the license for opening a new UCU program.</p>
<p>EuroMaidan, November–December 2013</p>
<p>The Ukrainian government, led by President Viktor Yanukovych and Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, is facing mass nationwide protests and demonstrations, initially sparked by the president’s decision not to sign an association agreement with the European Union, that had been scheduled to take place November 29. The rallies have rapidly grown in scope because of the brutality of the special police forces, which violently attacked peaceful protesters and journalists in Kiev November 30 and again December 1. UCU issued a number of statements on the present situation, appealing to its students and faculty, &#160;and the academic community in Ukraine at large, to stand in solidarity with the non-violent public defense of their values, their civic rights, and their vision of Ukraine as a strong, prosperous, and moral nation.</p>
<p>Frightened by the solidarity, commitment, and courage of millions of its citizens, as well as the demonstration of support it has inspired worldwide, the Ukrainian government has been taking an active offensive, not merely against the political opposition, activists, and journalists reporting on the events, but also against students — the initiators of this broad protest movement.</p>
<p>UCU is clearly high on the list of institutions the police and other authorities are pressuring. Police officers have already visited UCU and interrogated the Dean of the School of Humanities and a few of his colleagues in an attempt to collect information about the students who participated in the demonstrations. We have been informed that a few criminal cases have been opened&#160;against UCU students and professors. Some of our students are put under psychological pressure, getting phone calls attempting to interrogate them about their involvement with protests, and even warning them not to continue their participation in the demonstrations while insisting that they become “Internet silent.”</p>
<p>Meeting with the first deputy minister of the Ministry of Education and Science, Yevhen Sulima, December 2013</p>
<p>On December 11, 2013, UCU senior vice-rector Dr. Taras Dobko was invited to meet with the first deputy minister of the Ministry of Education and Science, Mr. Yevhen Sulima. During the meeting Mr. Sulima demanded that UCU comply with legal regulations about the requirements for a university rector. He cautioned that he will approve no UCU accreditation application unless UCU appoints as rector a person who fully complies with the legal requirements for the position holder. This includes the requirement about Ukrainian citizenship of the rector.</p>
<p>Father Bohdan Prach, the new rector of UCU, is a Ukrainian born in Poland, a Polish citizen, and a Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest who has worked in Ukraine for more than 15 years and, legally speaking, is a permanent resident of Ukraine.</p>
<p>At the dawn of Ukraine’s independence, when the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church rose from underground life to resume legal existence, the Church’s structures needed to be rebuilt from scratch. The human and material resources of the Church had been fiercely attacked by the Soviet state and much was destroyed. It took an enormous effort of many dedicated people to restore the life of the Church. But still more time is needed to educate and train clergy of Ukrainian citizenship who could be able and legally acceptable to lead such an international institution of higher education as the Ukrainian Catholic University. The problem is that the government does not accept responsibility for the disruption of the UGCC development during Soviet time, and does not feel obliged to respond to its needs and challenges in a creative way. It is our conviction that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church should be allowed its full development without recourse to Soviet-like regulations that impinge both on common sense and the Church’s natural growth.</p>
<p>Thus, we will continue arguing with the Ukrainian government for the need to change the regulations on higher education or to approve of an exception for the Ukrainian Catholic University to permit Father Bohdan Prach to exercise fully his role as UCU rector, in spite of the ministry’s threats to block accreditation of the university’s programs.</p>
<p>(2)&#160;Appeal of Ukrainian Catholic University Students&#160;</p>
<p>December 11, 2013</p>
<p>For three weeks now the eyes of the world have been on the events unfolding in Ukraine.</p>
<p>It is Ukrainian youth and Ukrainian students who have initiated this mass protest movement against the corrupt and secretive actions of their government. It is they who have taken to the squares in Kyiv, and other cities and towns of Ukraine, in hopes that the authorities would listen to the voice of the people. A million-strong wave of peaceful protesters has received significant international support, for which the Ukrainian people are extremely grateful. This support has helped us brave the cold and the attacks by the riot police.</p>
<p>Within hours of the new attack on the Maidan on December 11, the government opened a large number of court proceedings, and took steps to block the work of Ukrainian and international journalists, and introduce anxiety and fear into people’s hearts.</p>
<p>In spite of emphatic declarations of their peaceful intentions and desires to hear the voice of the people and participate in dialogue, the Ukrainian authorities went on the offensive, not merely against opposition forces and journalists reporting on the events, but against the nation’s students — the initiators of this broad protest movement.</p>
<p>Among the methods of pressure and bullying that our university has encountered in recent days are phone calls and visits from representatives of the police, talks with our deans and vice rectors, attempts to inspect our students’ attendance records, searches for particular student activists, summons to the state’s attorney’s office, and the opening of criminal cases against students and professors.</p>
<p>We are convinced that these and similar steps will only increase in magnitude. After the new nighttime crackdown on the Maidan, we have resolved along with our professors to withdraw our moral loyalty, as citizens of Ukraine, for Ukraine’s president and government.</p>
<p>Now, more than ever, we are in need of your solidarity and support. We appeal to you and ask that you disseminate information about the shameful state of affairs in Ukraine, the pressure on institutions of higher learning and their students, the violations of constitutional rights and democratic freedoms, and the mockery of the dignity of people who are only calling for the good and prosperity of their country, and for a dignified, honest, and democratic life.</p>
<p>Please help, support and protect the students of UCU and other Ukrainian universities who stand firm for their freedom, human rights, and dignity, and the freedom, human rights, and dignity of their fellow-citizens.</p>
<p>—&#160;Students of the Ukrainian Catholic University</p>
<p>George Weigel is distinguished senior fellow of Washington’s&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Ethics and Public Policy Center</a>&#160;where he holds the William E. Simon chair in Catholic Studies. He is a member of the board of directors of the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | false | 1 | resolution current drama ukraine touch moral cultural future european project global strategic issue whether something resembling old soviet union de facto established russian government vladimir putin using bribes coercion unfolding drama often referred euromaidan neologism combines aspirations ukraines democratic dissidents informal name square kiev mass demonstrations continue leading role effort reform corrupt postcommunist ukraine played faculty students ukrainian catholic university ucu something miracle born beneath rubble sovietera religious persecution ukrainian greek catholic church forcibly suppressed four decades worlds largest underground religious body today ucu providing impressive unique model higher learning former soviet space emphasizing development personal character public moral culture well intellectual professional competence meet challenges society wrecked hammer blows soviet totalitarianism ucu paid price commitment intellectual moal truth suffering continuing harassment government security services yanukovych regime ukraine yet people ucu remain unbowed faculty students active participants euromaidan demonstrations similar protests lviv university located following two documents recently sent lviv usefully illustrate dynamics todays ukrainian drama first may help western readers understand corrupt thuggish postcommunist regime operates second gives flavor witness students whose teachers care intellectual moral formation offer ukrainian society instructive note much euromaidan protest led young people grown since ukraine achieved independence 1991 memory communist regime want normal european future associate mtv democracy solidarity respect human dignity texts lightly edited readability 1160memorandum complications relations ukrainian catholic university ukrainian government 20102013 profile ukrainian catholic university ucu located lviv ukraine established 1994 ukrainian greek catholic church ugcc largest eastern catholic churches ugcc dissolved world war ii defied ban violently persecuted soviet state ugcc emerged underground 1989 rebuilt ecclesiastical structures according mission statement ucu open academic community forming leaders serve professional excellence ukraine internationally glory god common good dignity human person ucu catholic university territory former soviet union ucu model educational reform postsoviet higher education living example corruptionfree environment played historical role state recognition theology establishing high standards theological education ukraine ucu offers quality education theology church history sacred art ecumenical studies humanities social sciences bioethics social work journalism social communication innovation nonprofit management business education introducing best approaches methods western european north american universities fostering intercultural crossinstitutional interdisciplinary cooperation goal conscious method ucu nongovernmental highereducation institution ucu established model independent selfsupporting university postcommunist setting suffers communist destruction culture philanthropy thus ucu aims institute enhance efficient transparent relationships local global stakeholders donors ucu known independent public position scope international outreach commitment issues social responsibility concern promoting culture academic excellence honesty nationwide developing spirit community service inherited underground church priority ucus institutional educational strategy harassment ukrainian catholic university security service ukraine mayjune 2010 may 18 2010 agent security service ukraine sbu paid unwanted visit father borys gudziak rector ukrainian catholic university lviv warn possible repercussions student participation protest activity growing state authoritarianism agent gave rector letter sbu authorities asked read sign letter thereby acknowledging letters contents agent stipulated rector could keep make copy letter even though addressed conditions rector gudziak refused sign even read letter published160 memorandum160about incident june 2 2010 philip j crowley us assistant secretary state public affairs made statement ukrainian catholic university security service ukraine concerning issues related freedom speech association ukraine expressed concern actions could interpreted restricting basic freedoms june 25 2010 mr khoroshkovsky sbu head mrs herman president yanukovychs spokesman came ucu nonconfrontational encounter occurred visitors opportunity see various aspects ucus research teaching socialoutreach activity father gudziak father bohdan prach vicerector external affairs aired concerns university desire work normally normal future ukraine emerges devastating totalitarian past july 2 2010 mrs herman made public statement mr khoroshkovsky had160 issued apology160regarding may 18th incident attempt ministry education science youth sports ukraine revoke ucus accreditation december 2011november 2012 past years ukrainian catholic university continued develop dynamically response ministry education science youth sports mesys ukraine attempted arrest development unfair academically unjustified revocation state accreditation university based quality efficiency criteria purely formal bureaucratic reasons complaints regard ucu foreign citizenship rector staffing teaching positions faculty international academic degrees december 2011 november 2012 mesys tried discipline ucu attempt revoke ucus state licenses accreditation programs ucu faced numerous difficulties reaccrediting existing programs getting license new programs160160160 one year ucu rigorously inspected twice extraordinary committee state inspection higher educational institutions ukraine compliance license requirements provision educational services area higher education quality student education ucu times committees conclusion ucus compliance licensing regulations positive nevertheless grounds ucu rector father borys gudziak holds doctorate harvard ukrainian citizen number theology faculty doctoral degrees granted leading western universities phd degrees formally recognized ukraine lack legal possibility attain recognition degrees theology mesys tried deny accreditation ucus programs respond threat revoking accreditation ucu professors phds theology worldrenowned universities outside ukraine forced get degrees recognized specialties rather theology religious studies philosophy history etc scandalous mesys nothing create conditions full recognition theology ukraine used failure instrument discrimination people internationally recognized academic degrees theology following intervention head lviv region state administration ukrainian high officials familiar ucu involvement us ambassador john tefft dedicated work ucu administration mesys finally drew back granted accreditation ucu programs late 2012 early 2013 opening new master program social pedagogy apriljune 2012 april 2012 ucu submitted mesys application request issue license opening new master program social pedagogy according procedure dswl appointed expert committee visited ucu end may check situation university compliance regulations opening new program final conclusion expert committee completely positive mesys expert transmitting issue state accreditation committee wrote cover letter arguing positive conclusion expert committee invalid appealed fact head department holds doctor sciences degree general pedagogy social pedagogy opinion violation one licensing regulations given fact general practice ukraine people work adjacent fields counted fulfilling license criteria reproach outrageous since professor wrote monograph 40 articles social pedagogy department head director one successful dissertation social pedagogy holds official academic title professor social work issued mesys unmistakably testified qualifications social pedagogy ignored mesys expert took great deal work argument mesys finally convince state accreditation committee grant license opening new ucu program euromaidan novemberdecember 2013 ukrainian government led president viktor yanukovych prime minister mykola azarov facing mass nationwide protests demonstrations initially sparked presidents decision sign association agreement european union scheduled take place november 29 rallies rapidly grown scope brutality special police forces violently attacked peaceful protesters journalists kiev november 30 december 1 ucu issued number statements present situation appealing students faculty 160and academic community ukraine large stand solidarity nonviolent public defense values civic rights vision ukraine strong prosperous moral nation frightened solidarity commitment courage millions citizens well demonstration support inspired worldwide ukrainian government taking active offensive merely political opposition activists journalists reporting events also students initiators broad protest movement ucu clearly high list institutions police authorities pressuring police officers already visited ucu interrogated dean school humanities colleagues attempt collect information students participated demonstrations informed criminal cases opened160against ucu students professors students put psychological pressure getting phone calls attempting interrogate involvement protests even warning continue participation demonstrations insisting become internet silent meeting first deputy minister ministry education science yevhen sulima december 2013 december 11 2013 ucu senior vicerector dr taras dobko invited meet first deputy minister ministry education science mr yevhen sulima meeting mr sulima demanded ucu comply legal regulations requirements university rector cautioned approve ucu accreditation application unless ucu appoints rector person fully complies legal requirements position holder includes requirement ukrainian citizenship rector father bohdan prach new rector ucu ukrainian born poland polish citizen ukrainian greek catholic priest worked ukraine 15 years legally speaking permanent resident ukraine dawn ukraines independence ukrainian greek catholic church rose underground life resume legal existence churchs structures needed rebuilt scratch human material resources church fiercely attacked soviet state much destroyed took enormous effort many dedicated people restore life church still time needed educate train clergy ukrainian citizenship could able legally acceptable lead international institution higher education ukrainian catholic university problem government accept responsibility disruption ugcc development soviet time feel obliged respond needs challenges creative way conviction ukrainian greek catholic church allowed full development without recourse sovietlike regulations impinge common sense churchs natural growth thus continue arguing ukrainian government need change regulations higher education approve exception ukrainian catholic university permit father bohdan prach exercise fully role ucu rector spite ministrys threats block accreditation universitys programs 2160appeal ukrainian catholic university students160 december 11 2013 three weeks eyes world events unfolding ukraine ukrainian youth ukrainian students initiated mass protest movement corrupt secretive actions government taken squares kyiv cities towns ukraine hopes authorities would listen voice people millionstrong wave peaceful protesters received significant international support ukrainian people extremely grateful support helped us brave cold attacks riot police within hours new attack maidan december 11 government opened large number court proceedings took steps block work ukrainian international journalists introduce anxiety fear peoples hearts spite emphatic declarations peaceful intentions desires hear voice people participate dialogue ukrainian authorities went offensive merely opposition forces journalists reporting events nations students initiators broad protest movement among methods pressure bullying university encountered recent days phone calls visits representatives police talks deans vice rectors attempts inspect students attendance records searches particular student activists summons states attorneys office opening criminal cases students professors convinced similar steps increase magnitude new nighttime crackdown maidan resolved along professors withdraw moral loyalty citizens ukraine ukraines president government ever need solidarity support appeal ask disseminate information shameful state affairs ukraine pressure institutions higher learning students violations constitutional rights democratic freedoms mockery dignity people calling good prosperity country dignified honest democratic life please help support protect students ucu ukrainian universities stand firm freedom human rights dignity freedom human rights dignity fellowcitizens 160students ukrainian catholic university george weigel distinguished senior fellow washingtons160 ethics public policy center160where holds william e simon chair catholic studies member board directors us national endowment democracy 160 | 1,580 |
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>The health-care debate presents us with a moral imperative to solve an economic problem, but how we solve this economic problem has moral implications: allowing individuals and families greater freedom to choose among treatment options in a market that drives down costs, or establishing centralized control that makes utilitarian calculations of the worth of different people’s lives.</p>
<p>As we consider the options before us in next year’s presidential race, it’s vital to keep in mind the stakes of our politics. We are accustomed to dividing our great policy debates into those that involve profound moral issues and those that involve complex practical problems. On the one side are matters of conscience and the social order—like our debates about abortion, marriage, civil rights, or euthanasia. On the other side are matters of accounting and efficiency—like our debates about economic policy, the deficit, transportation, or energy.</p>
<p>But in fact, the most important public questions—including all of those listed above—combine elements of the philosophical and the practical. All of public policy is about setting priorities, which must always be done with an eye to both principle and practice, and every moral choice in politics must somehow be implemented in practical terms.</p>
<p>Nowhere is this inevitable intertwining of the moral and the practical more evident than in the health-care debate that has been raging in America for the better part of two decades, and that has been especially prominent in the past two years. Simply put, the health-care debate presents us with a moral imperative to solve an economic problem. The moral character of the imperative does not negate the economic character of the problem (and therefore the need for an economically viable solution), while the economic character of the problem can never blind us to the moral weight of the matter. This combination of the moral and the economic is what makes the health-care dilemma so challenging, but awareness of the combination helps&#160;us to distinguish among the solutions offered by the left and the right.</p>
<p>The moral imperative we confront in the health-care debate presents itself in two distinct facets. First, there are the 50 million Americans who lack health insurance today, and are therefore potentially without access to routine and chronic care. To be sure, some of them have chosen not to buy insurance, though they could afford it. Some are in the United States illegally, and so do not qualify for programs that otherwise assist the poor. But several tens of millions are simply unable to afford coverage. They are not poor—the poor are insured by the Medicaid program. They are not elderly—the old are insured through Medicare. They are, for the most part, lower middle-class people who do not receive insurance through an employer (as most American families do) and cannot afford to buy it on their own. And their numbers have grown in recent years because the cost of insurance has been growing far faster than wages.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the second moral facet of the problem is the immense burden that our health-care entitlement programs present for the nation’s future. The numbers are depressing and staggering. A decade from now, our national debt will be as large as our entire economy—a level of debt we have not seen since the immediate aftermath of the Second World War—and (unlike the late 1940s) it will be on a trajectory of persistent ballooning growth. By 2035, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the debt will be twice the size of the economy and still expanding quickly. The resulting much-diminished economic growth will cast a great shadow over the prospects of the next generation, which will be unable to experience anything like the prosperity that Americans have taken for granted over the past 60 years. This is a moral problem at least as much as an economic problem—it is a failure of the present generation to meet its charge to the future.</p>
<p>Our health-care entitlement programs are by far the foremost cause of this coming explosion of debt. In its latest long-term projections, published in June, the Congressional Budget Office reported that, between now and 2050, federal spending on health-care entitlements (especially Medicare and Medicaid) will nearly triple as a percentage of the economy, while all other federal spending (including defense, discretionary spending, even Social Security—everything but interest on the debt) will actually decline as a share of the economy. Health-care entitlements are, in short, entirely responsible for our long-term debt problem.</p>
<p>These two moral facets of the health-care debate at first seem to contradict one another. More and more Americans are uninsured, even as the cost of paying for our existing health insurance programs is growing so large that it risks crushing the economy. So does the government need to do more or less to provide health insurance? Democrats in the health-care debate tend to emphasize the first of these problems, and so argue that more public spending on coverage is needed, while Republicans usually focus on the second, and so devise ways to cut health-entitlement spending. But wouldn’t focusing on one problem make the other worse? Is there a way to address both at once?</p>
<p>To answer that question, we need to grasp the underlying economic problem that explains both moral facets of the issue: the exploding costs of health coverage and care. The cost of health care has been growing far faster than the general inflation rate for decades. Last year, health-care costs grew by more than 7%, while inflation was below 2%. That means that the cost of insurance premiums is rising far faster than people’s wages, leaving more and more people unable to pay for coverage. And, combined with demographic trends that mean a greater share of the population is over 65 than ever before, it means that the costs of our health-care entitlements are growing far faster than tax revenues, leaving the government more and more in debt.</p>
<p>The health-care debate is therefore properly understood as an argument about how to restrain the growth of health-care costs. The moral dilemmas that compel us to act force upon us an economic question: what can we do to keep costs from growing so quickly without undermining the quality of care and people’s access to it?</p>
<p>The debate now being fought in the political arena does in fact arrange itself along two different sets of answers to that question—answers grounded in economic premises, but which send us back toward the realm of moral analysis and judgment. The two answers derive from two different views of what makes for economic efficiency. Clearly, the problem with our health-care system is that it is grossly inefficient. But why?</p>
<p>Liberals tend to believe that our system is inefficient because it is chaotic and unfocused—there are too many players doing too many things in too many different ways, and none is moved by a concern for the public interest, so the system is a costly mess. It would be much more efficient if it were made more orderly—a system directed to the public good, governed by a single set of rules, managed by knowledgeable experts who understand what kinds of care are cost-effective, with just a few large providers of insurance (if not one huge provider) using their weight in the market to compel lower prices and more efficient delivery of services.</p>
<p>This vision is roughly what the health-care law enacted last year aims to make a reality: to restrain the growth of health-care costs by putting the health-care sector under tighter supervision and making the government a larger buyer and provider of coverage. It involves a vast expansion of Medicaid, more price controls in Medicare, and a system of highly regulated state insurance exchanges that will gradually transform the private insurance sector into a system of public utilities.</p>
<p>Conservatives tend to believe that our system is inefficient because it is too opaque and over-managed—that the fee-for-service structure of Medicare (which pays doctors by how much they do rather than how efficiently they work), the design of Medicaid (which allows state officials to increase spending at the federal government’s expense), and the powerful tax incentive for employer-provided insurance (which prevents consumers from making purchasing decisions and so prevents the emergence of a real market) all make for a badly broken health sector incapable of finding paths to efficiency in the ways that a market economy normally does. What is needed, they say, is a real market in which insurers compete for consumers and therefore have a reason to offer an attractive product at a low price, which would cause them to work with health-care providers to find more efficient, innovative ways of organizing their work.</p>
<p>That is roughly what most conservative health-care proposals aim to do: to restrain the growth of health-care costs by giving consumers real choices and making the health sector more competitive and therefore more innovative. This change involves turning today’s health-care entitlements (including the tax preference for employer-based coverage) into a system of premium-support subsidies to be used in a highly competitive private insurance market in which insurers and health-care providers have broad latitude to experiment with different avenues to efficiency and quality.</p>
<p>In other words, the left argues that experts know how to produce efficiency and that centralized control is the best way to empower experts, while the right argues that markets best discover paths to efficiency and that consumer choice and competition offer the best operating strategies for markets. That difference is the essence of the health-care debate.</p>
<p>But that does not mean that the moral significance of the health-care debate is only apparent or relevant in defining the problem, and not in assessing solutions. The two kinds of solutions offered differ not only in their economic assumptions but also in their moral consequences.</p>
<p>Centralized management of the health-care sector inevitably invites an explicitly utilitarian approach to comparing the worth of different people’s lives as a matter of public policy. Deciding what treatments to cover for which patients involves the government’s determining whose lives are worth living and whose are not. Princeton’s Peter Singer, an unabashed advocate of such public rationing, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19healthcare-t.html?pagewanted=all" type="external">explained</a>&#160;in the New York Times a few years ago that such an approach would, for one thing, require the government to value the lives of the disabled less than those of everyone else—a quadriplegic, for instance, should be valued at roughly half the worth of a healthy active person. “Some will object that this discriminates against people with disabilities,” he wrote, but that’s only because we begin from the premise that all human beings are equally valuable. That can’t be true, Singer argued, since the very fact that we seek cures for illnesses and disabilities proves that we believe such conditions make life less worth living. He concluded: “Disability advocates, it seems, are forced to choose between insisting that extending their lives is just as important as extending the lives of people without disabilities, and seeking public support for research into a cure for their condition.”</p>
<p>This kind of embarrassing sophistry is precisely where public control of the health-care system, and the resulting public rationing of treatment, must lead—to a rejection of human equality as a principle guiding government policy. Centralized bureaucratic administration of coverage decisions leaves no room for moral diversity (so, for instance, Obamacare compels everyone to fund abortion, despite some cheap tricks employed to make it seem as though money is not fungible). It leaves no room for individual decisions, and fewer ways for families to weigh their priorities and make unavoidable but difficult judgments humanely and compassionately.</p>
<p>Of course, any system of health insurance has to involve decisions about what to cover and pay for—and, in that sense, what to ration. But an underappreciated virtue of the market is that it puts such decisions far closer to the ground, and so to the people involved. Allowing for a wide variety of insurance options means giving people more choices and more power, and therefore also allowing families far greater freedom to choose among treatment options with their doctors. Hard choices will still need to be made, but having more of them made by families and physicians with some power to choose is vastly better than having all of them made by distant bureaucrats with the power to impose.</p>
<p>Believing in equality does not mean pursuing one-size-fits-all public policies. On the contrary, central planning and command-and-control administration too often require a betrayal of equality. Public rationing is not private rationing writ large; it requires an explicit rejection of our most fundamental national premise. Enabling a private market—backed with subsidies to allow those with lesser means to choose among options for themselves—would not only avoid the economic inefficiencies of central planning; it would also reduce the moral enormities of public rationing.</p>
<p>Of course, a more market-based approach would only reduce, not eliminate, such problems. In a competitive health sector, some rationing decisions would be made by insurance companies, not by families, especially in cases where the family’s means are limited. Having insurers make such decisions is marginally better than assigning them to a panel of distant public officials—since the insurers are more directly answerable to their consumers and more directly in touch with the particular physician on the spot—but only marginally so. Well-conceived public policy could significantly constrain the problem and expand the range of options available to families and individuals, but it could never eliminate it.</p>
<p>No one could argue that the market is a perfect solution to the economic inefficiencies of the health sector or to the moral travails of medical decision-making. But in both cases, it is easy to see how a regulated but highly competitive market backed by subsidies is a far better solution than central planning.</p>
<p>It is not by coincidence that the fiscal and moral concerns that define the health-care debate are both best (if always imperfectly) addressed by market-based solutions. For all the tension between market capitalism and traditional morality, both begin from a belief in the essential equality of all and the profound freedom and dignity of the human individual. Social and fiscal conservatives hang together—and jointly oppose the technocratic collectivism of the left—for far more than pragmatic reasons.</p>
<p>Seeing that deeper case for conservatism requires not only reflection on first principles but also careful examination of the complicated questions that underlie our most divisive and prominent public-policy debates. Those debates always combine moral with practical elements, and so always require the engagement of citizens—and the guidance of leaders—armed with principle and prudence alike. That combination is just what we should put to use as we consider who our next president should be.</p>
<p>Yuval Levin is Hertog Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and editor of National Affairs.</p> | false | 1 | 160 healthcare debate presents us moral imperative solve economic problem solve economic problem moral implications allowing individuals families greater freedom choose among treatment options market drives costs establishing centralized control makes utilitarian calculations worth different peoples lives consider options us next years presidential race vital keep mind stakes politics accustomed dividing great policy debates involve profound moral issues involve complex practical problems one side matters conscience social orderlike debates abortion marriage civil rights euthanasia side matters accounting efficiencylike debates economic policy deficit transportation energy fact important public questionsincluding listed abovecombine elements philosophical practical public policy setting priorities must always done eye principle practice every moral choice politics must somehow implemented practical terms nowhere inevitable intertwining moral practical evident healthcare debate raging america better part two decades especially prominent past two years simply put healthcare debate presents us moral imperative solve economic problem moral character imperative negate economic character problem therefore need economically viable solution economic character problem never blind us moral weight matter combination moral economic makes healthcare dilemma challenging awareness combination helps160us distinguish among solutions offered left right moral imperative confront healthcare debate presents two distinct facets first 50 million americans lack health insurance today therefore potentially without access routine chronic care sure chosen buy insurance though could afford united states illegally qualify programs otherwise assist poor several tens millions simply unable afford coverage poorthe poor insured medicaid program elderlythe old insured medicare part lower middleclass people receive insurance employer american families afford buy numbers grown recent years cost insurance growing far faster wages meanwhile second moral facet problem immense burden healthcare entitlement programs present nations future numbers depressing staggering decade national debt large entire economya level debt seen since immediate aftermath second world warand unlike late 1940s trajectory persistent ballooning growth 2035 according congressional budget office debt twice size economy still expanding quickly resulting muchdiminished economic growth cast great shadow prospects next generation unable experience anything like prosperity americans taken granted past 60 years moral problem least much economic problemit failure present generation meet charge future healthcare entitlement programs far foremost cause coming explosion debt latest longterm projections published june congressional budget office reported 2050 federal spending healthcare entitlements especially medicare medicaid nearly triple percentage economy federal spending including defense discretionary spending even social securityeverything interest debt actually decline share economy healthcare entitlements short entirely responsible longterm debt problem two moral facets healthcare debate first seem contradict one another americans uninsured even cost paying existing health insurance programs growing large risks crushing economy government need less provide health insurance democrats healthcare debate tend emphasize first problems argue public spending coverage needed republicans usually focus second devise ways cut healthentitlement spending wouldnt focusing one problem make worse way address answer question need grasp underlying economic problem explains moral facets issue exploding costs health coverage care cost health care growing far faster general inflation rate decades last year healthcare costs grew 7 inflation 2 means cost insurance premiums rising far faster peoples wages leaving people unable pay coverage combined demographic trends mean greater share population 65 ever means costs healthcare entitlements growing far faster tax revenues leaving government debt healthcare debate therefore properly understood argument restrain growth healthcare costs moral dilemmas compel us act force upon us economic question keep costs growing quickly without undermining quality care peoples access debate fought political arena fact arrange along two different sets answers questionanswers grounded economic premises send us back toward realm moral analysis judgment two answers derive two different views makes economic efficiency clearly problem healthcare system grossly inefficient liberals tend believe system inefficient chaotic unfocusedthere many players many things many different ways none moved concern public interest system costly mess would much efficient made orderlya system directed public good governed single set rules managed knowledgeable experts understand kinds care costeffective large providers insurance one huge provider using weight market compel lower prices efficient delivery services vision roughly healthcare law enacted last year aims make reality restrain growth healthcare costs putting healthcare sector tighter supervision making government larger buyer provider coverage involves vast expansion medicaid price controls medicare system highly regulated state insurance exchanges gradually transform private insurance sector system public utilities conservatives tend believe system inefficient opaque overmanagedthat feeforservice structure medicare pays doctors much rather efficiently work design medicaid allows state officials increase spending federal governments expense powerful tax incentive employerprovided insurance prevents consumers making purchasing decisions prevents emergence real market make badly broken health sector incapable finding paths efficiency ways market economy normally needed say real market insurers compete consumers therefore reason offer attractive product low price would cause work healthcare providers find efficient innovative ways organizing work roughly conservative healthcare proposals aim restrain growth healthcare costs giving consumers real choices making health sector competitive therefore innovative change involves turning todays healthcare entitlements including tax preference employerbased coverage system premiumsupport subsidies used highly competitive private insurance market insurers healthcare providers broad latitude experiment different avenues efficiency quality words left argues experts know produce efficiency centralized control best way empower experts right argues markets best discover paths efficiency consumer choice competition offer best operating strategies markets difference essence healthcare debate mean moral significance healthcare debate apparent relevant defining problem assessing solutions two kinds solutions offered differ economic assumptions also moral consequences centralized management healthcare sector inevitably invites explicitly utilitarian approach comparing worth different peoples lives matter public policy deciding treatments cover patients involves governments determining whose lives worth living whose princetons peter singer unabashed advocate public rationing explained160in new york times years ago approach would one thing require government value lives disabled less everyone elsea quadriplegic instance valued roughly half worth healthy active person object discriminates people disabilities wrote thats begin premise human beings equally valuable cant true singer argued since fact seek cures illnesses disabilities proves believe conditions make life less worth living concluded disability advocates seems forced choose insisting extending lives important extending lives people without disabilities seeking public support research cure condition kind embarrassing sophistry precisely public control healthcare system resulting public rationing treatment must leadto rejection human equality principle guiding government policy centralized bureaucratic administration coverage decisions leaves room moral diversity instance obamacare compels everyone fund abortion despite cheap tricks employed make seem though money fungible leaves room individual decisions fewer ways families weigh priorities make unavoidable difficult judgments humanely compassionately course system health insurance involve decisions cover pay forand sense ration underappreciated virtue market puts decisions far closer ground people involved allowing wide variety insurance options means giving people choices power therefore also allowing families far greater freedom choose among treatment options doctors hard choices still need made made families physicians power choose vastly better made distant bureaucrats power impose believing equality mean pursuing onesizefitsall public policies contrary central planning commandandcontrol administration often require betrayal equality public rationing private rationing writ large requires explicit rejection fundamental national premise enabling private marketbacked subsidies allow lesser means choose among options themselveswould avoid economic inefficiencies central planning would also reduce moral enormities public rationing course marketbased approach would reduce eliminate problems competitive health sector rationing decisions would made insurance companies families especially cases familys means limited insurers make decisions marginally better assigning panel distant public officialssince insurers directly answerable consumers directly touch particular physician spotbut marginally wellconceived public policy could significantly constrain problem expand range options available families individuals could never eliminate one could argue market perfect solution economic inefficiencies health sector moral travails medical decisionmaking cases easy see regulated highly competitive market backed subsidies far better solution central planning coincidence fiscal moral concerns define healthcare debate best always imperfectly addressed marketbased solutions tension market capitalism traditional morality begin belief essential equality profound freedom dignity human individual social fiscal conservatives hang togetherand jointly oppose technocratic collectivism leftfor far pragmatic reasons seeing deeper case conservatism requires reflection first principles also careful examination complicated questions underlie divisive prominent publicpolicy debates debates always combine moral practical elements always require engagement citizensand guidance leadersarmed principle prudence alike combination put use consider next president yuval levin hertog fellow ethics public policy center editor national affairs | 1,331 |
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<p>When the Iraqi army fell before invading US and British troops in 2003, the latter's mission seemed to be accomplished. But nearly eight years after the start of a war intended to shock and awe a whole population into submission, the Iraqi people continue to stand tall. They have confronted and rejected foreign occupations, held their own against sectarianism, and challenged random militancy and senseless acts of terrorism.</p>
<p>For most of us, the Iraqi people's resolve cannot be witnessed, but rather deduced. Eight years of military strikes, raids, imprisonments, torture, humiliation and unimaginable suffering were still not enough to force the Iraqis into accepting injustice as a status quo.</p>
<p>In August 2010, the United States declared the end of its combat mission in Iraq, promising complete withdrawal by the end of 2011. However, US military action has continued, only under different designations. The occupation of Iraq carries on, despite the tactical shifts of commands and the rebranding effort.</p>
<p>However, were it not for the tenacity of the Iraqi people, who manage to cross sectarian, political and ideological divides, there would be no talk of withdrawals or deadlines. There would be nothing but cheap oil, which could have ushered in a new golden age of imperialism - not in Iraq, but throughout the so-called Third World. The Iraqi people have managed to stop what could have become a dangerous trend.</p>
<p>2010 was another year where Iraqis held strong, and civil societies throughout the world stood with them in solidarity; a solidarity that will continue until full sovereignty is attained.</p>
<p>Palestine provides another example of international solidarity, one that is unsurpassed in modern times. Civil society has finally crossed the line between words and sentiments of solidarity into actual and direct action. The Israeli siege on Gaza, which was supported by the United States and few other Western powers, resembled more than a humanitarian crisis. It was a moral crisis as well, especially as the besieged population of Gaza was subjected to a most brutal war at the end of 2008, followed by successive lethal military strikes. The four year long siege has devastated a population whose main crime was exercising its democratic right to vote, and refusing to submit to the military and political diktats of Israel.</p>
<p>Gaza remains a shining example of human strength in our time. This is a fact the Israeli government refuses to accept. Israeli and other media reported that the Israeli army will be deploying new tanks to quell the resistance of the strip, with the justification that Palestinians fighters managed to penetrate the supposedly impenetrable Israeli Merkava tank. Israeli military chief Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi, who made the revelation in a recent parliamentary session, may never comprehend that neither a Mekava (or whatever new model he will be shipping to Gaza soon) nor the best military hardware anywhere could penetrate the will of the unwavering Palestinians.</p>
<p>Gaza is not alone. Civil society leaders representing every religion, nationality and ideology have tirelessly led a campaign of solidarity with the Palestinian people. The breadth and magnitude of this solidarity has been unmatched in recent times, at least since the anti-fascist International Brigades units resolutely defended the Second Spanish Republic between 1936-1939.</p>
<p>The solidarity has come at a cost. Many activists from Turkey and various other countries were killed in the high seas as they attempted to extend a hand of camaraderie to the people of Gaza and Palestine. Now, knowing the dangers that await them, many activists the world over are still hoping to set sail to Gaza in 2011.</p>
<p>Indeed, 2010 was a year that human will proved more effective than military hardware. It was the year human solidarity crossed over like never before into new realms, bringing with it much hope and many new possibilities.</p>
<p>But the celebration of hope doesn't end in Palestine and Iraq. It merely begins there. Champions of human rights come from every color and creed. Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar, The Most Rev. Dr. Desmond Tutu of South Africa, former US President Jimmy Carter, and other luminaries and civil society heroes and heroines from across the world will continue their mission of peace and justice, as they have for many years.</p>
<p>These well-known names are only part of the story. There are literally millions of unsung heroes that make the hardship of the years more tolerable, and who will continue to guide us through new years and unknown challenges.</p>
<p>Haiti was one country that was hit hardest in 2010.&#160; The small nation was greeted on January 12, 2010 with a most catastrophic earthquake, followed by 52 aftershocks. Over half a million people were estimated killed and injured, and many more became homeless. The year ended on a similarly devastating note, as over 2,000 people died and 105,000 fell ill (according to estimates by the Pan American Health Organization) after a cholera outbreak ravished an already overwhelmed country.</p>
<p>It is rather strange how leading powers can be so immaculate and efficient in their preparations for war, and yet so scandalously slow in their responses to human need when there is no political or economic price to be exacted. But this discrepancy will hardly deter doctors and nurses at the St. Nicholas Hospital in Haiti, who, despite the dangerous lack of resources, managed to save 90 percent of their patients</p>
<p>Our hearts go out to Haiti and its people during these hard times. But Haiti needs more than good wishes and solemn prayers. It also needs courageous stances by civil society to offset the half-hearted commitments made by some governments and publicity-seeking leaders.</p>
<p>It must be said that hope is not a random word aimed at summoning a fuzzy, temporary feeling of positive expectations for the future. To achieve its intended meaning, it must be predicated on real, foreseeable values. It must be followed by action. Civil society needs to continue to step up and fill the gaps created or left wide open by self-seeking world powers.</p>
<p>Words don't end wars, confront greed or slow down the devastation caused by natural disasters. People do. Let 2011 be a year of action, hope, and the uninterrupted triumph of civil society.</p> | false | 1 | iraqi army fell invading us british troops 2003 latters mission seemed accomplished nearly eight years start war intended shock awe whole population submission iraqi people continue stand tall confronted rejected foreign occupations held sectarianism challenged random militancy senseless acts terrorism us iraqi peoples resolve witnessed rather deduced eight years military strikes raids imprisonments torture humiliation unimaginable suffering still enough force iraqis accepting injustice status quo august 2010 united states declared end combat mission iraq promising complete withdrawal end 2011 however us military action continued different designations occupation iraq carries despite tactical shifts commands rebranding effort however tenacity iraqi people manage cross sectarian political ideological divides would talk withdrawals deadlines would nothing cheap oil could ushered new golden age imperialism iraq throughout socalled third world iraqi people managed stop could become dangerous trend 2010 another year iraqis held strong civil societies throughout world stood solidarity solidarity continue full sovereignty attained palestine provides another example international solidarity one unsurpassed modern times civil society finally crossed line words sentiments solidarity actual direct action israeli siege gaza supported united states western powers resembled humanitarian crisis moral crisis well especially besieged population gaza subjected brutal war end 2008 followed successive lethal military strikes four year long siege devastated population whose main crime exercising democratic right vote refusing submit military political diktats israel gaza remains shining example human strength time fact israeli government refuses accept israeli media reported israeli army deploying new tanks quell resistance strip justification palestinians fighters managed penetrate supposedly impenetrable israeli merkava tank israeli military chief lieutenantgeneral gabi ashkenazi made revelation recent parliamentary session may never comprehend neither mekava whatever new model shipping gaza soon best military hardware anywhere could penetrate unwavering palestinians gaza alone civil society leaders representing every religion nationality ideology tirelessly led campaign solidarity palestinian people breadth magnitude solidarity unmatched recent times least since antifascist international brigades units resolutely defended second spanish republic 19361939 solidarity come cost many activists turkey various countries killed high seas attempted extend hand camaraderie people gaza palestine knowing dangers await many activists world still hoping set sail gaza 2011 indeed 2010 year human proved effective military hardware year human solidarity crossed like never new realms bringing much hope many new possibilities celebration hope doesnt end palestine iraq merely begins champions human rights come every color creed nobel peace prize laureate aung san suu kyi myanmar rev dr desmond tutu south africa former us president jimmy carter luminaries civil society heroes heroines across world continue mission peace justice many years wellknown names part story literally millions unsung heroes make hardship years tolerable continue guide us new years unknown challenges haiti one country hit hardest 2010160 small nation greeted january 12 2010 catastrophic earthquake followed 52 aftershocks half million people estimated killed injured many became homeless year ended similarly devastating note 2000 people died 105000 fell ill according estimates pan american health organization cholera outbreak ravished already overwhelmed country rather strange leading powers immaculate efficient preparations war yet scandalously slow responses human need political economic price exacted discrepancy hardly deter doctors nurses st nicholas hospital haiti despite dangerous lack resources managed save 90 percent patients hearts go haiti people hard times haiti needs good wishes solemn prayers also needs courageous stances civil society offset halfhearted commitments made governments publicityseeking leaders must said hope random word aimed summoning fuzzy temporary feeling positive expectations future achieve intended meaning must predicated real foreseeable values must followed action civil society needs continue step fill gaps created left wide open selfseeking world powers words dont end wars confront greed slow devastation caused natural disasters people let 2011 year action hope uninterrupted triumph civil society | 602 |
<p>In October, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics to Robert A. Mundell. The Nobel Committee cited Mundell “for his analysis of monetary and fiscal policy under different exchange rate regimes and his analysis of optimum currency areas.”</p>
<p>It may seem that the Nobel announcement, and press articles and editorials describing the award, have honored Mundell “far above our poor power to add or detract.” Nevertheless, I’d like to put in my two cents, not only to acknowledge an intellectual debt, but also because I’m not sure that even his closest friends have succeeded in conveying exactly why Mundell is regarded as a great economist, even by those who have disagreed with him.</p>
<p>In explaining the award, the Nobel committee noted that “Robert Mundell has established the foundation for the theory that dominates practical policy considerations of monetary and fiscal policy in open economies.” Practically speaking, this includes the whole range of problems that have dominated the headlines these past few years about “emerging market” countries in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. The Columbia University professor was .also cited as the theorist of “optimum currency areas,” an idea which has borne practical fruit in this past year’s institution of the Euro, of which Mundell was an advocate. Most of the articles cited in the announcement were included in Mundell’s book. International Economics, which was published in 1968.</p>
<p>The trouble, as everyone who knows Mundell recognized, is that such an explanation is far too narrow to do him justice. (It was my pleasure to get to know Mundell when I worked for then-Congressman Jack Kemp from 1979 to 1988. Mundell was the pre-eminent theorist among a high-powered bunch of supply-side economists that often met in Kemp’s Congressional office before and during the Reagan Administration.)</p>
<p>What Mundell and a handful of others did, among other things, was to rehabilitate and update a “classical” view of the economy which had been shoved aside by the dominance of Keynesian theorists. Mundell is generally credited with the idea of the “policy mix” which was the essence of Reaganomics and a sharp departure from Keynesian orthodoxy.</p>
<p>As explained by Wall Street Journal editor Robert Bartley, ‘To combat stagnation plus inflation, you needed two levers: tight money to curb inflation, and tax cuts to promote growth. … In a Keynesian world, of course, tight money would merely offset tax cuts; one would contract aggregate demand while the other expands it. The key was that supply-side tax cuts provided stimulus not by expanding aggregate demand – ‘putting money into people’s pockets’ – but by stimulating supply, by increasing incentives to work and invest.”</p>
<p>Mundell’s economic theories shade imperceptibly into a philosophical world-view, rich with millennia-spanning historical perspective. This view was popularized in The Way the World Works by Jude Wanniski (with a strong admixture of Wanniski, a political philosopher in his own right), and in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. Mundell also articulated his views in a little gem of a book called Man and Economics (McGraw-Hill, 1968). It’s one of the few books accessible to the layman that can guide him through the labyrinth of principles, problems and policies of political economy in only 200 pages — all spiced with the author’s original and whimsical poetry!</p>
<p>Since the Nobel announcement was silent on this, some of Mundell’s supply-side colleagues hastened forward with a broadening perspective. “It is a large mistake,” the Wall Street Journal editorialized, “to try to shelve Bob Mundell in the pigeonhole of ‘international economics.’. . . In terms of actual policy initiatives, Robert Mundell has been the most influential economist since John Maynard Keynes.”</p>
<p>‘The first word that came to mind when I heard that Robert A. Mundell had just won the Nobel Prize in economics was vindication,” Arthur Laffer wrote. ‘Back in the 1960s, Mr. Mundell, who then taught at the University of Chicago, was considered beyond the fringes of main-stream economics. He was the leader of a small group of economists – most of the time I thought it was just the two of us -who advocated fixed exchange rates, warned of the impending inflation if the U.S. went off gold and called for tax cuts to spur economic growth. Many in the profession called him a kook. Today they call him a Nobel laureate.” Laffer concluded: “Mr. Mundell deserves an even greater honor — to be recognized as the best economist of the century.”</p>
<p>Another supply-side friend, Larry Kudlow, who is chief economist at Schroder &amp; Co., gave a similar assessment: “Over time, I believe the new free-market technology-driven global economy will be-come more and more Mundellian. That is why I ranked Bob Mundell and Art Laffer the two most important 20th century living economic greats in my book, ‘American Abundance,’ published two years ago. (Classical Austrian technologist Joseph Schumpeter remains my favorite dead economist.)”</p>
<p>Most of the reactions to Mundell’s Nobel Prize that I’ve read have followed one of these two descriptions — pioneer in inter-national monetary economics, or pioneer in the supply-side movement. And the fact that supply-side economics has al-ways been controversial may explain, on the one hand, a certain combativeness or defensiveness in the tone of supply-siders in greeting the award; and on the other hand, a certain cattiness on the part of those who have always disliked supply-side economics (“An eccentric, white-haired figure who once bought an abandoned castle.. . “; “Ever the maverick, Mr. Mundell remains a fan of the gold standard and fixed exchange rates at a time when they’re out of favor with most other economists”; ‘Perhaps surprisingly, given Europe’s sclerotic labour markets this year’s Nobel prize winner is a strong supporter of the euro,” etc.).</p>
<p>But even by taking the two views together, and averaging them out, it doesn’t explain why Mundell is so highly respected among economists, even those who violently disagree with supply-side economics. To do so, it’s necessary to understand a couple of things.</p>
<p>First, unlike most kinds of economic theory – such as, say, the economics of the labor market, or the theory of the business firm – monetary theory is not, properly speaking, a specialty. Because money is part of every transaction in a market economy, a monetary economist is required, not just to understand the money market, but to have a theory that integrates all of the elements of the economy. Similarly, to be an international monetary economist does not mean specializing in certain kinds of economic relations between countries, but rather having a theory that embraces the whole world economy.</p>
<p>Also, trying to rank economists solely by identifying their uniquely original contributions ignores a fundamental fact about economists (which is perhaps true of experts in any field): really fruitful theorizing is essentially a collaborative effort. Ideas emerge, take shape, are developed, preserved and handed on, all within the conversation of a community – some of its participants living, but others not disqualified by the mere accident of having died. Really great economists are less interested in saying something original than in saying something true. In fact their “originality” often consists precisely in rediscovering or rehabilitating some old idea because it is true.</p>
<p>It isn’t possible to appreciate Mundell’s work without knowing that he began as a junior member in a colloquy that had been going on for decades when he arrived; but he soon established himself as an equal, or more. Mundell recognized in the early 1960s that the Keynesian revolution in economics, dominant among American and British economists after the Second World War, contained some serious shortcomings. ‘The Keynesian model is a short run model of a closed economy, dominated by pessimistic expectations and rigid wages. This model is not relevant to modern economies,” he wrote in Monetary Theory (1971).</p>
<p>In seeking an alternative to Keynesian theory, Mundell had to return to much older sources, such as the eighteenth-century ideas of David Hume and the 19th-century general-equilibrium theory of Leon Walras. ‘The object,” Mundell explained, “is to combine the essential features of the specific models of Hume, [Irving] Fisher and Keynes in a more general theory of interest, inflation, and growth of the world economy. I do not claim to have resolved all the problems associated with a new approach, but only to have helped build, with able predecessors and contemporaries, a better foundation for monetary theory.”</p>
<p>In doing so, Mundell could draw on a Continental European tradition including economists like Robert Triffin and Jacques Rueff, which had always maintained the classical teachings; but many of their writings were (and remain) unfamiliar to English-speaking economists, and were not expressed in the mathematical form that became standard at about the same time as Keynesian macroeconomic theory. (It’s interesting that the return of American and British economists to the fold of classical economics was mediated largely by Canadian-born economists like Mundell and Harry Johnson.) As Mundell noted at a 1967 international monetary conference, “I do not know why it has taken so long for Anglo-Saxon economists to admit the truth of the elementary proposition [Rueff] is making: that there is an adjustment mechanism that is automatically operative under fixed exchange rates if it is allowed to operate.” It’s fitting that in 1983 Mundell was awarded the Jacques Rueff Prize in Paris by the Jacques Rueff Foundation and the Lehrman Institute.</p>
<p>In short, Mundell did not only advance the frontiers of economic theory in an arcane specialty known as “international economics,” or give good policy advice to American presidential administrations. He also managed to synthesize a tremendous body of theoretical elements into a coherent and elegant pattern, which was itself Mundell’s original contribution. And in constructing that synthesis, Mundell was always careful and generous in acknowledging the sources of its elements: economists as diverse as Irving Fisher, Frank Knight, John Maynard Keynes, Paul Samuelson, Lloyd Metzler, Don Patinkin, Milton Friedman and James Tobin. To do this required not only tremendous competence – but also remarkable tact.</p>
<p>Characteristically, Mundell has generally won his points, not by disproving or belittling an opposing view, but rather by judiciously allowing each view its proper place – and then transcending it. I believe it was Lord Lionel Robbins, also a great economist, who once remarked, “Bob is seldom wrong; and — here I lay down some kind of law— even when you disagree, you do so with your hat in the hand.”</p> | false | 1 | october royal swedish academy sciences awarded nobel prize economics robert mundell nobel committee cited mundell analysis monetary fiscal policy different exchange rate regimes analysis optimum currency areas may seem nobel announcement press articles editorials describing award honored mundell far poor power add detract nevertheless id like put two cents acknowledge intellectual debt also im sure even closest friends succeeded conveying exactly mundell regarded great economist even disagreed explaining award nobel committee noted robert mundell established foundation theory dominates practical policy considerations monetary fiscal policy open economies practically speaking includes whole range problems dominated headlines past years emerging market countries asia latin america eastern europe columbia university professor also cited theorist optimum currency areas idea borne practical fruit past years institution euro mundell advocate articles cited announcement included mundells book international economics published 1968 trouble everyone knows mundell recognized explanation far narrow justice pleasure get know mundell worked thencongressman jack kemp 1979 1988 mundell preeminent theorist among highpowered bunch supplyside economists often met kemps congressional office reagan administration mundell handful others among things rehabilitate update classical view economy shoved aside dominance keynesian theorists mundell generally credited idea policy mix essence reaganomics sharp departure keynesian orthodoxy explained wall street journal editor robert bartley combat stagnation plus inflation needed two levers tight money curb inflation tax cuts promote growth keynesian world course tight money would merely offset tax cuts one would contract aggregate demand expands key supplyside tax cuts provided stimulus expanding aggregate demand putting money peoples pockets stimulating supply increasing incentives work invest mundells economic theories shade imperceptibly philosophical worldview rich millenniaspanning historical perspective view popularized way world works jude wanniski strong admixture wanniski political philosopher right editorial pages wall street journal mundell also articulated views little gem book called man economics mcgrawhill 1968 one books accessible layman guide labyrinth principles problems policies political economy 200 pages spiced authors original whimsical poetry since nobel announcement silent mundells supplyside colleagues hastened forward broadening perspective large mistake wall street journal editorialized try shelve bob mundell pigeonhole international economics terms actual policy initiatives robert mundell influential economist since john maynard keynes first word came mind heard robert mundell nobel prize economics vindication arthur laffer wrote back 1960s mr mundell taught university chicago considered beyond fringes mainstream economics leader small group economists time thought two us advocated fixed exchange rates warned impending inflation us went gold called tax cuts spur economic growth many profession called kook today call nobel laureate laffer concluded mr mundell deserves even greater honor recognized best economist century another supplyside friend larry kudlow chief economist schroder amp co gave similar assessment time believe new freemarket technologydriven global economy become mundellian ranked bob mundell art laffer two important 20th century living economic greats book american abundance published two years ago classical austrian technologist joseph schumpeter remains favorite dead economist reactions mundells nobel prize ive read followed one two descriptions pioneer international monetary economics pioneer supplyside movement fact supplyside economics always controversial may explain one hand certain combativeness defensiveness tone supplysiders greeting award hand certain cattiness part always disliked supplyside economics eccentric whitehaired figure bought abandoned castle ever maverick mr mundell remains fan gold standard fixed exchange rates time theyre favor economists perhaps surprisingly given europes sclerotic labour markets years nobel prize winner strong supporter euro etc even taking two views together averaging doesnt explain mundell highly respected among economists even violently disagree supplyside economics necessary understand couple things first unlike kinds economic theory say economics labor market theory business firm monetary theory properly speaking specialty money part every transaction market economy monetary economist required understand money market theory integrates elements economy similarly international monetary economist mean specializing certain kinds economic relations countries rather theory embraces whole world economy also trying rank economists solely identifying uniquely original contributions ignores fundamental fact economists perhaps true experts field really fruitful theorizing essentially collaborative effort ideas emerge take shape developed preserved handed within conversation community participants living others disqualified mere accident died really great economists less interested saying something original saying something true fact originality often consists precisely rediscovering rehabilitating old idea true isnt possible appreciate mundells work without knowing began junior member colloquy going decades arrived soon established equal mundell recognized early 1960s keynesian revolution economics dominant among american british economists second world war contained serious shortcomings keynesian model short run model closed economy dominated pessimistic expectations rigid wages model relevant modern economies wrote monetary theory 1971 seeking alternative keynesian theory mundell return much older sources eighteenthcentury ideas david hume 19thcentury generalequilibrium theory leon walras object mundell explained combine essential features specific models hume irving fisher keynes general theory interest inflation growth world economy claim resolved problems associated new approach helped build able predecessors contemporaries better foundation monetary theory mundell could draw continental european tradition including economists like robert triffin jacques rueff always maintained classical teachings many writings remain unfamiliar englishspeaking economists expressed mathematical form became standard time keynesian macroeconomic theory interesting return american british economists fold classical economics mediated largely canadianborn economists like mundell harry johnson mundell noted 1967 international monetary conference know taken long anglosaxon economists admit truth elementary proposition rueff making adjustment mechanism automatically operative fixed exchange rates allowed operate fitting 1983 mundell awarded jacques rueff prize paris jacques rueff foundation lehrman institute short mundell advance frontiers economic theory arcane specialty known international economics give good policy advice american presidential administrations also managed synthesize tremendous body theoretical elements coherent elegant pattern mundells original contribution constructing synthesis mundell always careful generous acknowledging sources elements economists diverse irving fisher frank knight john maynard keynes paul samuelson lloyd metzler patinkin milton friedman james tobin required tremendous competence also remarkable tact characteristically mundell generally points disproving belittling opposing view rather judiciously allowing view proper place transcending believe lord lionel robbins also great economist remarked bob seldom wrong lay kind law even disagree hat hand | 967 |
<p>There are a number of universal constants every awards season. There will always be at least one upset. There will always be at least one major snub. And, assuredly, there will always be a number of talented <a href="http://variety.com/t/contenders-2/" type="external">contenders</a> knocking on the door trying to break through for that first Oscar nomination.</p>
<p>This season, <a href="http://variety.com/t/sam-rockwell/" type="external">Sam Rockwell</a>, who has been awards worthy in “Moon” and “Frost/Nixon,” among other films, finds himself a frontrunner his work in “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” Armie Hammer was buzzed about for “The Social Network,” but should have better luck with “Call Me by Your Name.” Adam Sandler is best known for broad comedies, but has earned acclaim for his dramatic work in “Punch-Drunk Love” and “Funny People.” He has his best shot at a nomination in years with his role in “The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected).”</p>
<p>But they certainly aren’t alone.</p>
<p>Since first gaining serious worldwide attention in “Animal Kingdom,” <a href="http://variety.com/t/ben-mendelsohn/" type="external">Ben Mendelsohn</a> has delivered one knockout performance after another in films such as “Starred Up” and “Mississippi Grind.” In Joe Wright’s “Darkest Hour” he plays the pivotal part of King George VI, a monarch who isn’t entirely thrilled with the ascension of Winston Churchill, played by Gary Oldman, to prime minister. Mendelsohn immediately saw the potential of the role when it was offered to him.</p>
<p>“I was conscious of it when it came my way and I breathed, ‘I wasn’t going to let the opportunity go to waste,’” he says. “And look, if you’re going to make a film about Churchill and Gary Oldman’s going to be playing him, damn, I want to be there. I mean that’s pretty major. In my cultural lifetime, that’s an event. I was more motivated by that than the not playing a bad guy theme. I was very grateful. Also, playing a member of the English aristocracy? I’m a suburban Australian boy so that’s a certain delight itself.”</p>
<p>Mendelsohn has earned praise for portraying the monarch, recently portrayed in “The King’s Speech” and Netflix’s “The Crown,” as a man who confidently went toe to toe with one of the greatest political leaders of the 20th century. “Darkest Hour” is actually the beginning of a potential career turner for the Aussie actor who will be seen next year in Steven Spielberg’s “Ready Player One” and Nicole Holofcener’s “The Lady of Steady Habits.” “It’s been an intense period and for someone who was roughly getting by several years back, it’s something that makes me smile when I’m driving around,” Mendelsohn says. “I get very, very grateful about it. I think, there’s more places that I’d like to go and things that if I get the time to try, I’m going to have a tilt at.”</p>
<p>For <a href="http://variety.com/t/ray-romano/" type="external">Ray Romano</a>, being a part of Michael Showalter’s “The Big Sick,” which is based on the true story of screenwriters Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani’s romance, is simply the most “creatively fulfilling project” of his career since his Emmy-winning TV series “Everybody Loves Raymond.” He found out about the dramedy when producer Judd Apatow, whom he’d known since they appeared on a comedy special together 20 years prior, sent him the script.</p>
<p>“My first thing was I really didn’t know Kumail,” Romano says. “I kind of maybe peripherally might’ve heard of him or known him. I didn’t watch ‘Silicon Valley’ so I wasn’t really aware of him. My kids kind of give their opinion on the scripts before they even read them. When they heard Kumail was in it they told me, ‘You’ve got to do this, dad.’</p>
<p>“I read it, and I was interested right after I read it. I did not think this was going to happen,” he says. “I thought this is a nice movie,” he continues. “It’s Judd. It’s Kumail. Seems like a funny guy. It’s got some heart. Holly Hunter’s attached.”</p>
<p>“The Big Sick” focuses on an unexpected romantic relationship that is interrupted when Emily (Zoe Kazan) is struck by a serious illness. Romano and Hunter play Emily’s parents, who aren’t quite sure what to think of their daughter’s ex-boyfriend Kumail (Nanjiani) who waits by her bedside. Even though the movie was partially based on true events Gordon didn’t want either Hunter or Romano to feel as though they couldn’t come up with their own interpretations of the characters; they didn’t need to be influenced by meeting the real parents before shooting began.In fact, they never met until the New York premiere.</p>
<p>“I think in the first screening,” Romano recalls, “One of the questions was, ‘Did I ever meet them?’ Kumail says, ‘Emily, tell Ray what your mom said.’ She said her mom watched the screening of it and said, ‘You know, Holly is prettier than me, but your father is much more handsome than Raymond.’”After appearing in HBO’s “Vinyl” last summer, the New York native is reuniting with Martin Scorsese on his Netflix feature, “The Irishman.” The always-humble Romano says his chances for a nomination are not as great as some of his co-stars, but he’s rooting for them.</p>
<p>“Here’s what I’m hopeful for,” Romano says. “I think it has a chance to get nominated for screenplay and I think there’s a pretty good chance that Holly will be nominated. When people toss my name into the thing? No. You’re not going to convince me of that. … But the fact that we’re even having this conversation, you and me, is the best thing. It’s the best decision I made was to get involved with this movie, you know?”</p>
<p>Jason Mitchell has been down this road before. Two years ago his portrayal of Eazy-E was the breakout performance in “Straight Outta Compton.” As with the film itself, there was a lot of awards chatter around the film and Mitchell earned a SAG Award nomination in the ensemble category. It was Mitchell’s first major professional role and he saw the bright side of not making the Oscar cut after just stepping into the spotlight.</p>
<p>“A lot of people don’t know the business. The action of it, the grind of it,” Mitchell says. “And, I think part of not getting the Oscars sort of made me more [hungry] than getting one at the time. Because I felt like I was kind of in a safe place, because you come out and hit a home run on the first swing, they want you to hit a home run every time.”</p>
<p>In Dee Rees’ “Mudbound,” Mitchell plays a young soldier returning to his family in the Mississippi countryside after serving his during World War II. His character has seen the world and fought with honor, but finds that doesn’t matter much back home in the deeply segregated South.</p>
<p>Mitchell based his performance on his own grandfather, who served in the war, returned home to Louisiana with just a fifth-grade education, but still ran his own business for 68 years. That’s one reason the film is so special to him, no matter the awards outcome.</p>
<p>“A hundred years from now, they’re going to look back and say, ‘Wow. OK,’” Mitchell says. “We nailed something to history that’s going to be there forever. Make it that art, and express it like that, it’s going to move people forever. That’s just f—–g dope.”</p> | false | 1 | number universal constants every awards season always least one upset always least one major snub assuredly always number talented contenders knocking door trying break first oscar nomination season sam rockwell awards worthy moon frostnixon among films finds frontrunner work three billboards outside ebbing missouri armie hammer buzzed social network better luck call name adam sandler best known broad comedies earned acclaim dramatic work punchdrunk love funny people best shot nomination years role meyerowitz stories new selected certainly arent alone since first gaining serious worldwide attention animal kingdom ben mendelsohn delivered one knockout performance another films starred mississippi grind joe wrights darkest hour plays pivotal part king george vi monarch isnt entirely thrilled ascension winston churchill played gary oldman prime minister mendelsohn immediately saw potential role offered conscious came way breathed wasnt going let opportunity go waste says look youre going make film churchill gary oldmans going playing damn want mean thats pretty major cultural lifetime thats event motivated playing bad guy theme grateful also playing member english aristocracy im suburban australian boy thats certain delight mendelsohn earned praise portraying monarch recently portrayed kings speech netflixs crown man confidently went toe toe one greatest political leaders 20th century darkest hour actually beginning potential career turner aussie actor seen next year steven spielbergs ready player one nicole holofceners lady steady habits intense period someone roughly getting several years back something makes smile im driving around mendelsohn says get grateful think theres places id like go things get time try im going tilt ray romano part michael showalters big sick based true story screenwriters emily v gordon kumail nanjianis romance simply creatively fulfilling project career since emmywinning tv series everybody loves raymond found dramedy producer judd apatow hed known since appeared comedy special together 20 years prior sent script first thing really didnt know kumail romano says kind maybe peripherally mightve heard known didnt watch silicon valley wasnt really aware kids kind give opinion scripts even read heard kumail told youve got dad read interested right read think going happen says thought nice movie continues judd kumail seems like funny guy got heart holly hunters attached big sick focuses unexpected romantic relationship interrupted emily zoe kazan struck serious illness romano hunter play emilys parents arent quite sure think daughters exboyfriend kumail nanjiani waits bedside even though movie partially based true events gordon didnt want either hunter romano feel though couldnt come interpretations characters didnt need influenced meeting real parents shooting beganin fact never met new york premiere think first screening romano recalls one questions ever meet kumail says emily tell ray mom said said mom watched screening said know holly prettier father much handsome raymondafter appearing hbos vinyl last summer new york native reuniting martin scorsese netflix feature irishman alwayshumble romano says chances nomination great costars hes rooting heres im hopeful romano says think chance get nominated screenplay think theres pretty good chance holly nominated people toss name thing youre going convince fact even conversation best thing best decision made get involved movie know jason mitchell road two years ago portrayal eazye breakout performance straight outta compton film lot awards chatter around film mitchell earned sag award nomination ensemble category mitchells first major professional role saw bright side making oscar cut stepping spotlight lot people dont know business action grind mitchell says think part getting oscars sort made hungry getting one time felt like kind safe place come hit home run first swing want hit home run every time dee rees mudbound mitchell plays young soldier returning family mississippi countryside serving world war ii character seen world fought honor finds doesnt matter much back home deeply segregated south mitchell based performance grandfather served war returned home louisiana fifthgrade education still ran business 68 years thats one reason film special matter awards outcome hundred years theyre going look back say wow ok mitchell says nailed something history thats going forever make art express like going move people forever thats fg dope | 657 |
<p>Dec. 6 (UPI) — This week in Nagoya, Japan, some of the world’s top figure skaters will compete in one of the last big contests in the runup to the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea.</p>
<p>While plenty of longtime fan favorites will take the ice for the Grand Prix Finals, many more have been sidelined by injuries or other mishaps, making space on the roster for some skaters who didn’t make it last year.</p>
<p>Men’s competition</p>
<p>Some of the top names in men’s figure skating will be absent from the finals after a series of injuries and other pitfalls. This is the first year since 2009 that three American men have gone to the finals. That year, all three of those men made the Olympic team. The full roster of last year’s men’s finalists consisted of Yuzuru Hanyu, Patrick Chan, Javier Fernandez, Shoma Uno, Nathan Chen and Adam Rippon. Those first three names are missing from this year’s Grand Prix Finals line-up.</p>
<p>Here’s who’s in:</p>
<p>Nathan Chen</p>
<p>The man to beat at this year’s finals, American Nathan Chen has the largest quad arsenal of any male skater on the circuit. Earlier this year, he became the first skater in history to land all possible quadruple jumps in competition, excluding the never-before-landed quadruple axel. He’s <a href="https://www.upi.com/Sports_News/2017/10/21/US-skater-Nathan-Chen-scrapes-into-victory-at-first-Grand-Prix-event/1401508596615/" type="external">come out on top</a> of current Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu, both at last season’s Four Continents Championships and at his first Grand Prix assignment, the Rostelecom Cup in October. At last year’s finals, he took the silver. This season, Chen is upping his artistry while maintaining his athleticism. Perhaps next to Uno of Japan, he is the top contender to win.</p>
<p>Shoma Uno</p>
<p>Chen’s biggest competition is Shoma Uno, a 19-year-old skater from Japan who took bronze at last year’s finals. The Worlds silver medalist has been one of the most consistent skaters this season, winning the gold at Skate Canada and silver at the Internationaux De France. The first skater to ever land a quadruple flip, Uno has a real shot at topping the final podium with two strong classical programs set to Vivaldi’s “Winter” and the figure-skating staple Alfano and Puccini’s “Turandot.”</p>
<p>Adam Rippon</p>
<p>A fan favorite, American Adam Rippon skates to music unique from the rest of his competition with a club tune short program and a free skate set to Coldplay. While he embraces modern artistry, he’s no less of an athlete than his competitors. At late November’s Skate America, he <a href="https://www.upi.com/Sports_News/2017/11/26/Injuries-plague-top-figure-skaters-at-Skate-America/8021511734793/" type="external">dislocated his shoulder</a> after falling on a quadruple lutz. Rather than call off his free skate, he popped the shoulder back into place and continued his program to win silver overall. He is also one of few male skaters to incorporate a layback spin and is fighting for his first Olympic spot this season.</p>
<p>Mikhail Kolyada</p>
<p>In one of the many surprises of the 2017-18 season, Mikhail Kolyada of Russia took gold at the Cup of China after winning bronze at the Rostelecom. His Elvis Presley-themed free skate is reminiscent of Javier Fernandez, one of the top skaters missing this year’s finals due to a poor showing in China, where Kolyada took gold. The race for who will be Russia’s next top male skater is on after the retirement of Evgeni Plushenko. Kolyada is a serious contender.</p>
<p>Sergei Voronov</p>
<p>Another unexpected qualifier, 30-year-old Sergei Voronov is the oldest of the men’s finalists. He took gold at NHK Trophy and bronze at Skate America. Although his quad arsenal isn’t as expansive as some of his competitors in the finals, the Russian’s consistent quadruple toe loop is enough to make him competitive.</p>
<p>Jason Brown</p>
<p>Perhaps the luckiest skater participating this year, American Jason Brown was the first alternate for the finals. He took silver at Skate Canada, giving him a promising shot at qualifying for Nagoya, but mistakes in his free skate at the NHK Trophy lead to a fourth-place finish. His place as the first alternate ended up being his ticket to one of the six coveted spots after Boyang Jin of China dropped out of the competition due to injury.</p>
<p>Alternates &amp; notable absentees</p>
<p>The most conspicuous absence this year is Yuzuru Hanyu, who won the Grand Prix Finals the past four years in a row. He <a href="https://www.upi.com/Sports_News/2017/11/10/Top-figure-skater-Yuzuru-Hanyu-injures-ankle-wont-compete-at-NHK-Trophy/6901510322698/" type="external">suffered an injury</a> during practice before the NHK Trophy that lead to his withdrawal. Without completion of that second Grand Prix assignment, he was not eligible for this year’s finals.</p>
<p>Patrick Chan placed fourth after a poor free skate at Skate Canada. Knowing his chances at finals were slim after that, he decided to <a href="https://www.upi.com/Sports_News/2017/11/03/Canadian-figure-skater-Patrick-Chan-drops-out-of-NHK-Trophy-competition/1711509746063/" type="external">withdraw from the NHK Trophy,</a> forfeiting a chance at the finals, as well.</p>
<p>One of many skaters plagued by injuries this year, Boyang Jin skated on two sprained ankles at November’s Skate America. While he took fourth overall, his silver at Cup of China was enough to qualify him for finals. However, the injury <a href="https://www.upi.com/Sports_News/2017/12/01/Skaters-Medvedeva-Jin-drop-out-of-Grand-Prix-Finals-due-to-injury/8671512162117/" type="external">forced him to withdraw.</a> His place is filled by first alternate Brown.</p>
<p>Javier Fernandez is also absent from the finals due to a poor performance at Cup of China. He came back to place first at Internationaux De France, making him an alternate for the Grand Prix Finals, but he won’t be skating unless someone else withdraws.</p>
<p>Women’s competition</p>
<p>The women’s Grand Prix series has been plagued by injuries and mistakes, as well. American Gracie Gold <a href="https://www.upi.com/Sports_News/2017/10/15/Figure-skater-Gracie-Gold-withdraws-from-Grand-Prix-Series/4981508108872/" type="external">withdrew from all Grand Prix</a> assignments this season to seek treatment for anxiety and an eating disorder. Russian Yulia Lipnitskaya retired for similar reasons. Last year’s ladies’ finalists were Evgenia Medvedeva, Anna Pogorilaya, Elena Radionova, Kaetlyn Osmond, Maria Sotskova and Satoko Miyahara. Like the men’s roster, three of those names are absent from this year’s final competition, including Evgenia, the top ranked in the world, who had to withdraw from the finals due to injury.</p>
<p>Here’s who will be there:</p>
<p>Alina Zagitova</p>
<p>The new skater to beat is Evgenia’s 15-year-old teammate Alina Zagitova, who is competing in her first senior skating season. She’s taken gold at every single competition she’s entered this year. With over 150 points for her free skate at Internationaux De France, she’s a favorite for the final podium. If the young skater stays consistent, she may very well break her teammate’s two-year win streak in the future. The two Russians share a coach in Eteri Tutberidze.</p>
<p>Kaetlyn Osmond</p>
<p>A presence in the finals for the past two years, Kaetlyn Osmond is one of the strongest female skaters out of Canada. At age 21, this is her sixth competitive senior season. It’s possible her upward momentum will continue after she took sixth place in 2015 finals and fourth in 2016. With consistency, a higher placement is possible for Osmond, but the pool is competitive. She is one of many skaters who will be performing to “Swan Lake.” Presentation may be a large factor.</p>
<p>Carolina Kostner</p>
<p>A seasoned competitor, 30-year-old Carolina Kostner of Italy has competed in the Grand Prix Finals four times in her career. She’s been absent from the past three seasons’ finals, making this an important comeback. She doesn’t have the most competitive base value, but wins with her sophisticated programs’ consistency and artistry. She has earned two silver medals in this year’s Grand Prix series — the Rostelecom Cup and NHK Trophy.</p>
<p>Maria Sotskova</p>
<p>At 17, Maria Sotskova of Russia is in her second senior season and her second time qualifying for the Grand Prix Finals. She took two silver medals home this Grand Prix season, one at Skate Canada and one at Internationaux De France. She has one of three “Swan Lake” programs, next to Alina and Osmond. The Tchaikovsky inflation may make it difficult for some of their presentations to stand out, but Maria has proven to be a consistent skater this year. She started the season with a gold medal in the challenger series.</p>
<p>Wakaba Higuchi</p>
<p>With only two spots for Japanese ladies in the Olympics, the field is overflowing with competition. Wakaba Higuchi is one of two to qualify for the Grand Prix Finals, giving her a strong chance at making the Olympics if she also performs well at nationals. At 16, this is her second senior season and her first time qualifying for the Grand Prix Finals as a senior. She’s one of the most enjoyable skaters to watch with a short program set to “Gypsy Dance” and a free skate to Adele’s “Skyfall.” Should she perform well in Nagoya, she may bolster her chances for Pyeongchang.</p>
<p>Satoko Miyahara</p>
<p>The skater to take Evgenia’s place, first alternate Satoko Miyahara is coming off a slew of intense injuries. She fractured her left hip in January, injured her left foot in July, and suffered hip inflammation in September. Her coach, Mie Hamada, says she only <a href="http://web.icenetwork.com/news/2017/11/26/262415744/placid-pieces-miyahara-fights-for-stronger-bones" type="external">started to jump</a> again this October. Bone density issues have followed the skater throughout her career, but known for her work ethic, Miyahara, 19, is fighting through. Pining for one of those two coveted Olympic spots, her performance at the finals and upcoming Japanese nationals carry heavy pressure.</p>
<p>Notable absentees &amp; alternates</p>
<p>The No. 1 woman to beat was Evgenia, 17, the current world record holder for highest score in ladies’ short program, free skate and total combined score. She has not placed lower than first since 2015 where she took silver at Rostelecom Cup. Considered to be previously untouchable, Evgenia suffered a fracture in her foot. She at first insisted she would participate in finals regardless of injury, but the fracture was deemed too severe for competition and she will use the time to recover before the Olympics. However, the International Olympic Committee announced Tuesday that <a href="https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2017/12/05/IOC-bans-Russia-from-2018-Olympics-over-doping/6821512498052/?utm_source=fp&amp;utm_campaign=ls&amp;utm_medium=1" type="external">Russia is barred</a> from the 2018 Winter Games. Evgenia may still be able to participate under a neutral flag.</p>
<p>The new first alternate after Miyahara’s call to replace Evgenia is another Japanese skater, Kaori Sakamoto. The 17-year-old is in her first senior season and while she took fifth at Rostelecom Cup, she was the silver medalist at Skate America.</p>
<p>American Ashley Wagner, who has participated in the Grand Prix Finals four times, had to withdraw mid-free skate at Skate America due to an ankle infection.</p>
<p>And Russian 18-year-old Elena Radionova, who has participated in the last four Grand Prix Finals, did not qualify this year.</p>
<p>Pairs competition</p>
<p>In the pairs competition, there’s a whole new roster of finalists since last year. Aliona Savchenko and Bruno Massot of Germany withdrew last year due to injury, but they’ve qualified again for this season’s finals.</p>
<p>Here’s the roster:</p>
<p>Wenjing Sui / Cong Han</p>
<p>Skating to familiar music, “Hallelujah” and “Turandot,” Wenjing Sui and Cong Han are the top qualifiers for this year’s finals. They took the gold medal at their first Grand Prix event in their home country at the Cup of China and won again at their second assignment, the NHK Trophy in Japan. This will be the pair’s first Grand Prix Finals since 2014, when they earned a bronze medal. The pair withdrew from last year’s Grand Prix series and withdrew from the 2015 finals due to <a href="http://www.insideskating.net/2017/06/14/features/wenjing-sui-cong-han-and-a-statement-of-love" type="external">Sui’s injury</a> that required surgery on both legs. The pair returned last season and are the current world champions.</p>
<p>Evgenia Tarasova / Vladimir Morozov</p>
<p>A familiar pair of names, Evgenia Tarasova, 22, and Vladimir Morozov, 25, took gold at both of their Grand Prix assignments this season. They won in their home country of Russia at the Rostelecom Cup and again at Internationaux De France. The pair take a more traditional approach in their free skate, set to a classical piano piece, but light up the ice with a jazzy routine in their free skate set to “Candyman” by Christina Aguilera. The pair is one of few that incorporates a quadruple twist into their routines. It’s a competitive field for the Russian pairs, but Tarasova and Morozov are some of the strongest contenders.</p>
<p>Aliona Savchenko / Bruno Massot</p>
<p>It’s the comeback year for the only German pair in the finals, Aliona Savchenko, 33, and Bruno Massot, 28. The pair qualified for their first Grand Prix Finals last year, but had to withdraw due to an <a href="http://web.icenetwork.com/skaters/team/savchenko_massot" type="external">ankle injury</a> sustained by Savchenko at Tropheé De France. The two have a history of overcoming obstacles, with Massot skating through a back injury at November’s Skate America, where they won gold. Recently, Massot, who is originally from France, also had to complete the process of becoming a German citizen so the two could compete at the Olympics. He gained citizenship just before Skate America.</p>
<p>Meagan Duhamel / Eric Radford</p>
<p>The rock-‘n’-roll pair, Meagan Duhamel, 31, and Eric Radford, 32, are fan favorites. Despite an uncharacteristic seventh-place finish at last season’s World Championships, the pair has been on the final podium for the last three years and competitors there for the past six. They qualified for the finals this year with a gold medal at Skate Canada and bronze at Skate America.</p>
<p>Known for their unique music selections, this year they’re skating to a cover of U2’s “With Or Without You” for their short program and a mashup of three songs by Brit-rock band Muse in the free skate, a program they’ve used before. They’re one of the most entertaining pairs to watch with challenging jump elements, such as side-by-side triple lutzes and a quadruple throw salchow.</p>
<p>Ksenia Stolbova / Fedor Klimov</p>
<p>The second Russian pair to qualify for this year’s finals, Ksenia Stolbova, 25, and Fedor Klimov, 27, were silver medalists at the 2014 Olympics. They withdrew from last year’s Grand Prix series, but won gold at the event in 2015. The <a href="http://web.icenetwork.com/news/2017/03/27/221094958/stolbova-klimov-go-for-more-contemporary-style" type="external">first pair to ever</a> land a triple toe-triple toe-double toe combination, Stolbova and Klimov are strong contenders, having won two silver medals — at NHK Trophy and Rostelecom Cup — this Grand Prix season. While they don’t have any exceptionally difficult elements (in comparison to other finalists), the Russian pair have shown strength and consistency throughout the season.</p>
<p>Xiayu Yu / Hao Zhang</p>
<p>This season marks Xiayu Yu and Hao Zhang’s second year together as pair skaters. While discrepancies in their specified ages — she’s believed to be in her 20s and he in his 30s — have caused issues in the past, the pair is off to a strong start this season. They’ve made the podium of every event they’ve competed in with a victory at the Cup of Nice and second place in both of their Grand Prix assignments — the Cup of China and Skate America. They are among those skating to “Swan Lake.”</p>
<p>Notable absentees &amp; alternates</p>
<p>French pair and first alternates Vanessa James, 30, and Morgan Ciprés, 24, are another team known for skating to popular music. This year, their short program is set to “Make It Rain,” by Ed Sheeran and their free skate is to “Say Something,” which features Christina Aguilera.</p>
<p>Ice dance competition</p>
<p>Another field half-filled with Americans, the ice dancing roster is the most consistent of the four figure-skating disciplines in the Grand Prix Finals. Five of the qualifiers for this season qualified last season, as well. The only change is the Italian team of Anna Cappellini and Luca Lanotte, who made the final cut this year over Russians Ekaterina Bobrova and Dmitri Soloviev. At last year’s finals, Brobova and Soloviev made the finals while the Italian team sat at third alternate. This year, Cappellini and Lanotte made the finals with the Russian team barely missing out as first alternates.</p>
<p>Gabriella Papadakis / Guillaume Cizeron</p>
<p>The only athletes representing France in any discipline at the finals this season, Gabriella Papadakis, 22, and Guillaume Cizeron, 23, are this year’s top qualifiers. They’re on a straight gold medal streak this season and haven’t missed the podium at a single event since 2014. They take two different presentation approaches with both programs, skating to Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” and “Thinking Out Loud,” for their short program while their free skate is soundtracked by Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” They’re not the only ice dancers to win gold at both Grand Prix assignments, but they’re certainly a favorite for the top of the podium.</p>
<p>Tessa Virtue / Scott Moir</p>
<p>Tessa Virtue, 28, and Scott Moir, 30, are on a gold streak as well with three victories so far this season, including both Grand Prix assignments at Skate Canada and NHK Trophy. The only medals below gold earned by the team have been a silver medal at the 2014 Olympics and 2013 Grand Prix Finals. The three-time world champions have perhaps one of the most solid shots to win their fourth gold medal of the season at the finals. Their short program music incorporates the Rolling Stones and the Eagles and their free skate is set to music from “Moulin Rouge.”</p>
<p>Maia and Alex Shibutani</p>
<p>American favorites and sibling power team Maia Shibutani, 23, and Alex Shibutani, 26, also won both of their Grand Prix events, first at Rostelecom Cup and again at Skate America. The Worlds bronze medalists and 2014 Olympic participants are strong contenders with a light-hearted mambo short program and an emotional free skate set to Coldplay’s “Paradise.” The two have been skating together for about as long as an ice dance team can, giving them great chemistry on the ice and a competitive edge.</p>
<p>Madison Chock / Evan Bates</p>
<p>The second American team to qualify are the first to do so without a gold streak. Madison Chock, 25, and Evan Bates, 28, won silver medals at their Grand Prix events, the Cup of China and Internationaux De France. Their short program salsa routine may not be the most unique in the field, but their artistry is especially showcased in their free skate set to a mix including John Lennon’s “Imagine.” They also competed at the 2014 Olympics, placing just one spot above the Shibutanis. This year will be their fourth Grand Prix Final in a row and while they’ve never won, they’ve been on the podium at every final they’ve attended.</p>
<p>Madison Hubbell / Zachary Donohue</p>
<p>Americans Madison Hubbell, 26, and Zachary Donohue, 26, may have placed ninth at last year’s World Championships, but they have medaled twice in this Grand Prix series. They won silver at NHK Trophy and bronze at Skate Canada. Even with those positive results, it’s still going to be tough for them to overcome the three teams who qualified with all gold. However, with consistency, anything is possible, especially in a season so far plagued by injuries and other mishaps.</p>
<p>Anna Cappellini / Luca Lanotte</p>
<p>The only newcomers to the finals this year over last year’s roster were the final team to qualify. Cappellini, 30, and Lanotte, 32, missed out on the final competition last year and sat at third alternate, but moved up enough this season to gain that sixth spot in finals. They earned one silver and one bronze this Grand Prix series, but are seasoned competitors with two Olympics under their belt and over 10 years competing together. Their experience is an advantage.</p>
<p>Notable alternates &amp; absentees</p>
<p>The one ice dancing team missing this year from last season’s qualifiers, Russians Bobrova, 27, and Soloviev, 28 are first alternates. Their absence is a slight gap in their careers, only their second season out of eight to miss the Grand Prix Finals.</p>
<p>The finals begin Thursday and runs through Sunday.</p>
<p>The 2018 Winter Olympic Games start in February in Pyeongchang, South Korea.</p> | false | 1 | dec 6 upi week nagoya japan worlds top figure skaters compete one last big contests runup 2018 winter olympics south korea plenty longtime fan favorites take ice grand prix finals many sidelined injuries mishaps making space roster skaters didnt make last year mens competition top names mens figure skating absent finals series injuries pitfalls first year since 2009 three american men gone finals year three men made olympic team full roster last years mens finalists consisted yuzuru hanyu patrick chan javier fernandez shoma uno nathan chen adam rippon first three names missing years grand prix finals lineup heres whos nathan chen man beat years finals american nathan chen largest quad arsenal male skater circuit earlier year became first skater history land possible quadruple jumps competition excluding neverbeforelanded quadruple axel hes come top current olympic champion yuzuru hanyu last seasons four continents championships first grand prix assignment rostelecom cup october last years finals took silver season chen upping artistry maintaining athleticism perhaps next uno japan top contender win shoma uno chens biggest competition shoma uno 19yearold skater japan took bronze last years finals worlds silver medalist one consistent skaters season winning gold skate canada silver internationaux de france first skater ever land quadruple flip uno real shot topping final podium two strong classical programs set vivaldis winter figureskating staple alfano puccinis turandot adam rippon fan favorite american adam rippon skates music unique rest competition club tune short program free skate set coldplay embraces modern artistry hes less athlete competitors late novembers skate america dislocated shoulder falling quadruple lutz rather call free skate popped shoulder back place continued program win silver overall also one male skaters incorporate layback spin fighting first olympic spot season mikhail kolyada one many surprises 201718 season mikhail kolyada russia took gold cup china winning bronze rostelecom elvis presleythemed free skate reminiscent javier fernandez one top skaters missing years finals due poor showing china kolyada took gold race russias next top male skater retirement evgeni plushenko kolyada serious contender sergei voronov another unexpected qualifier 30yearold sergei voronov oldest mens finalists took gold nhk trophy bronze skate america although quad arsenal isnt expansive competitors finals russians consistent quadruple toe loop enough make competitive jason brown perhaps luckiest skater participating year american jason brown first alternate finals took silver skate canada giving promising shot qualifying nagoya mistakes free skate nhk trophy lead fourthplace finish place first alternate ended ticket one six coveted spots boyang jin china dropped competition due injury alternates amp notable absentees conspicuous absence year yuzuru hanyu grand prix finals past four years row suffered injury practice nhk trophy lead withdrawal without completion second grand prix assignment eligible years finals patrick chan placed fourth poor free skate skate canada knowing chances finals slim decided withdraw nhk trophy forfeiting chance finals well one many skaters plagued injuries year boyang jin skated two sprained ankles novembers skate america took fourth overall silver cup china enough qualify finals however injury forced withdraw place filled first alternate brown javier fernandez also absent finals due poor performance cup china came back place first internationaux de france making alternate grand prix finals wont skating unless someone else withdraws womens competition womens grand prix series plagued injuries mistakes well american gracie gold withdrew grand prix assignments season seek treatment anxiety eating disorder russian yulia lipnitskaya retired similar reasons last years ladies finalists evgenia medvedeva anna pogorilaya elena radionova kaetlyn osmond maria sotskova satoko miyahara like mens roster three names absent years final competition including evgenia top ranked world withdraw finals due injury heres alina zagitova new skater beat evgenias 15yearold teammate alina zagitova competing first senior skating season shes taken gold every single competition shes entered year 150 points free skate internationaux de france shes favorite final podium young skater stays consistent may well break teammates twoyear win streak future two russians share coach eteri tutberidze kaetlyn osmond presence finals past two years kaetlyn osmond one strongest female skaters canada age 21 sixth competitive senior season possible upward momentum continue took sixth place 2015 finals fourth 2016 consistency higher placement possible osmond pool competitive one many skaters performing swan lake presentation may large factor carolina kostner seasoned competitor 30yearold carolina kostner italy competed grand prix finals four times career shes absent past three seasons finals making important comeback doesnt competitive base value wins sophisticated programs consistency artistry earned two silver medals years grand prix series rostelecom cup nhk trophy maria sotskova 17 maria sotskova russia second senior season second time qualifying grand prix finals took two silver medals home grand prix season one skate canada one internationaux de france one three swan lake programs next alina osmond tchaikovsky inflation may make difficult presentations stand maria proven consistent skater year started season gold medal challenger series wakaba higuchi two spots japanese ladies olympics field overflowing competition wakaba higuchi one two qualify grand prix finals giving strong chance making olympics also performs well nationals 16 second senior season first time qualifying grand prix finals senior shes one enjoyable skaters watch short program set gypsy dance free skate adeles skyfall perform well nagoya may bolster chances pyeongchang satoko miyahara skater take evgenias place first alternate satoko miyahara coming slew intense injuries fractured left hip january injured left foot july suffered hip inflammation september coach mie hamada says started jump october bone density issues followed skater throughout career known work ethic miyahara 19 fighting pining one two coveted olympic spots performance finals upcoming japanese nationals carry heavy pressure notable absentees amp alternates 1 woman beat evgenia 17 current world record holder highest score ladies short program free skate total combined score placed lower first since 2015 took silver rostelecom cup considered previously untouchable evgenia suffered fracture foot first insisted would participate finals regardless injury fracture deemed severe competition use time recover olympics however international olympic committee announced tuesday russia barred 2018 winter games evgenia may still able participate neutral flag new first alternate miyaharas call replace evgenia another japanese skater kaori sakamoto 17yearold first senior season took fifth rostelecom cup silver medalist skate america american ashley wagner participated grand prix finals four times withdraw midfree skate skate america due ankle infection russian 18yearold elena radionova participated last four grand prix finals qualify year pairs competition pairs competition theres whole new roster finalists since last year aliona savchenko bruno massot germany withdrew last year due injury theyve qualified seasons finals heres roster wenjing sui cong han skating familiar music hallelujah turandot wenjing sui cong han top qualifiers years finals took gold medal first grand prix event home country cup china second assignment nhk trophy japan pairs first grand prix finals since 2014 earned bronze medal pair withdrew last years grand prix series withdrew 2015 finals due suis injury required surgery legs pair returned last season current world champions evgenia tarasova vladimir morozov familiar pair names evgenia tarasova 22 vladimir morozov 25 took gold grand prix assignments season home country russia rostelecom cup internationaux de france pair take traditional approach free skate set classical piano piece light ice jazzy routine free skate set candyman christina aguilera pair one incorporates quadruple twist routines competitive field russian pairs tarasova morozov strongest contenders aliona savchenko bruno massot comeback year german pair finals aliona savchenko 33 bruno massot 28 pair qualified first grand prix finals last year withdraw due ankle injury sustained savchenko tropheé de france two history overcoming obstacles massot skating back injury novembers skate america gold recently massot originally france also complete process becoming german citizen two could compete olympics gained citizenship skate america meagan duhamel eric radford rocknroll pair meagan duhamel 31 eric radford 32 fan favorites despite uncharacteristic seventhplace finish last seasons world championships pair final podium last three years competitors past six qualified finals year gold medal skate canada bronze skate america known unique music selections year theyre skating cover u2s without short program mashup three songs britrock band muse free skate program theyve used theyre one entertaining pairs watch challenging jump elements sidebyside triple lutzes quadruple throw salchow ksenia stolbova fedor klimov second russian pair qualify years finals ksenia stolbova 25 fedor klimov 27 silver medalists 2014 olympics withdrew last years grand prix series gold event 2015 first pair ever land triple toetriple toedouble toe combination stolbova klimov strong contenders two silver medals nhk trophy rostelecom cup grand prix season dont exceptionally difficult elements comparison finalists russian pair shown strength consistency throughout season xiayu yu hao zhang season marks xiayu yu hao zhangs second year together pair skaters discrepancies specified ages shes believed 20s 30s caused issues past pair strong start season theyve made podium every event theyve competed victory cup nice second place grand prix assignments cup china skate america among skating swan lake notable absentees amp alternates french pair first alternates vanessa james 30 morgan ciprés 24 another team known skating popular music year short program set make rain ed sheeran free skate say something features christina aguilera ice dance competition another field halffilled americans ice dancing roster consistent four figureskating disciplines grand prix finals five qualifiers season qualified last season well change italian team anna cappellini luca lanotte made final cut year russians ekaterina bobrova dmitri soloviev last years finals brobova soloviev made finals italian team sat third alternate year cappellini lanotte made finals russian team barely missing first alternates gabriella papadakis guillaume cizeron athletes representing france discipline finals season gabriella papadakis 22 guillaume cizeron 23 years top qualifiers theyre straight gold medal streak season havent missed podium single event since 2014 take two different presentation approaches programs skating ed sheerans shape thinking loud short program free skate soundtracked beethovens moonlight sonata theyre ice dancers win gold grand prix assignments theyre certainly favorite top podium tessa virtue scott moir tessa virtue 28 scott moir 30 gold streak well three victories far season including grand prix assignments skate canada nhk trophy medals gold earned team silver medal 2014 olympics 2013 grand prix finals threetime world champions perhaps one solid shots win fourth gold medal season finals short program music incorporates rolling stones eagles free skate set music moulin rouge maia alex shibutani american favorites sibling power team maia shibutani 23 alex shibutani 26 also grand prix events first rostelecom cup skate america worlds bronze medalists 2014 olympic participants strong contenders lighthearted mambo short program emotional free skate set coldplays paradise two skating together long ice dance team giving great chemistry ice competitive edge madison chock evan bates second american team qualify first without gold streak madison chock 25 evan bates 28 silver medals grand prix events cup china internationaux de france short program salsa routine may unique field artistry especially showcased free skate set mix including john lennons imagine also competed 2014 olympics placing one spot shibutanis year fourth grand prix final row theyve never theyve podium every final theyve attended madison hubbell zachary donohue americans madison hubbell 26 zachary donohue 26 may placed ninth last years world championships medaled twice grand prix series silver nhk trophy bronze skate canada even positive results still going tough overcome three teams qualified gold however consistency anything possible especially season far plagued injuries mishaps anna cappellini luca lanotte newcomers finals year last years roster final team qualify cappellini 30 lanotte 32 missed final competition last year sat third alternate moved enough season gain sixth spot finals earned one silver one bronze grand prix series seasoned competitors two olympics belt 10 years competing together experience advantage notable alternates amp absentees one ice dancing team missing year last seasons qualifiers russians bobrova 27 soloviev 28 first alternates absence slight gap careers second season eight miss grand prix finals finals begin thursday runs sunday 2018 winter olympic games start february pyeongchang south korea | 1,940 |
<p>Saturday morning’s Washington Post headline and first sub-headline, page one and above-the-fold, nicely captured the confusions that prevailed as of 6 p.m. Friday, in the matter of tweaks to the “contraceptive mandate” issued by the Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services: “Obama shifts on birth control / Catholic leaders open to plan.”</p>
<p>Well, no, and no.</p>
<p>The administration “shifted” on nothing. It simply decreed that insurers, not employers, must provide “preventive services” (including sterilization and abortifacient drugs), a shell game that has been variously and accurately described as a “fraud” ( <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/290822/compromise-justice-department-used-call-sort-thing-fraud-andrew-c-mccarthy" type="external">Andrew McCarthy</a>, in the Corner) and an “absurdity” ( <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203646004577215150068215494.html" type="external">the Wall Street Journal</a>). More to the point, as Yuval Levin <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/290763/compromise-yuval-levin" type="external">pointed out</a> shortly after President Obama and HHS Secretary Sebelius announced their “accommodation,” the newly tweaked regulations “would not actually change the moral circumstances at issue in any way.”</p>
<p>Later in the day, on the PBS News Hour, Ray Suarez confronted Secretary Sebelius with the obvious: Someone was going to pay for the contraceptives provided, and who, if not those who purchased the insurance that had to include these “preventive services?” The secretary then took the absurdity to a new level by claiming that none of this would cost anyone anything, as there was empirical evidence showing that readily available contraception lowered the overall costs to the health-care system by reducing the rate of pregnancy. All of which was, on a much graver matter, reminiscent of an old WPA poster-turned-postcard that I recently saw at the Grand Canyon, which extolled Grand Canyon National Park as “A Free Government Service.” Right.</p>
<p>The question on some minds as of 6 p.m. Friday night, though, was whether the <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/290871" type="external">Catholic bishops</a>, who had taken the point in opposing the HHS mandate since its announcement on January 20, grasped that they had been played for fools by the administration. A rather anodyne initial reaction from the United States <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/290871" type="external">Conference of Catholic Bishops</a> to the Obama/Sebelius “accommodation” had sent the blogosphere into turmoil Friday afternoon. Charges that <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/290871" type="external">the bishops</a> were “caving” were soon flying all over cyberspace, charges that seemed to accept at face value the administration’s self-satisfaction over the “accommodation,” in which Obama and Sebelius had been reinforced by the likes of Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, and <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/290871" type="external">Father John Jenkins</a>, C.S.C., president of Notre Dame, both of whom were quick out of the blocks to praise the administration’s moves.</p>
<p>But the bishops hadn’t caved, and even if they had lost the first battle of the spin-cycle, they certainly hadn’t lost the war. It’s a war they are determined to fight and win, legislatively and/or judicially, and they will do so with the solidarity of allies across the American religious spectrum.</p>
<p>The USCCB’s developed <a href="http://www.usccb.org/news/2012/12-026.cfm" type="external">statement</a> on the administration’s “accommodation” came late on Friday, about 6:30 p.m. EST, but irrespective of the timing, the statement made several things abundantly clear:</p>
<p>1) There was no “deal” with the administration and no “deal” was possible under the terms laid out in Friday’s “accommodation.”</p>
<p>2) The “accommodation” failed to address the legitimate concerns of key actors in the heath-care system, including “self-insured religious employers,” “religious and secular for-profit employers,” “secular non-profit employers,” and individuals, such that the proposed new regulations were, simply, “unacceptable.”</p>
<p>3) The “accommodation” continued the disturbing process of “needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions” and threatened “government coercion of religious people and groups . . .”</p>
<p>4) Thus the religious freedom of institutions and men and women of conscience remained gravely imperiled by the tweaked HHS mandate and “the only solution to this . . . problem is for HHS to rescind the mandate of these objectionable services.”</p>
<p>Now there is the sound-bite for anyone wishing to explain the opinion of real “Catholic leaders” on the Sunday talk shows and during the coming weeks: “Don’t revise, rescind.”</p>
<p>This is not, in other words, a situation analogous to conscription laws, where a humane society makes provision for the pacifist’s conscientious objection to a just law. In the case of the HHS mandate, tweaked or untweaked, the law itself is unjust, and must be fought until it is undone.</p>
<p>This USCCB critique of the tweaked mandate was spelled out further in a letter to the entire body of American bishops signed by Cardinal-designate Timothy M. Dolan and the four other bishops with lead responsibility for the Catholic response to HHS. The letter was originally sent Friday night to a closed website that only bishops can access, but it promptly leaked (and may well have been deliberately leaked). The letter bluntly stated that the administration’s new policy “does not meet our standard of respecting the religious liberty and moral convictions of all stakeholders in the health coverage transaction.”</p>
<p>Then came the commitment to pursue the war against the mandate on all fronts:</p>
<p>“We remain fully committed to the defense of our religious liberty and we strongly protest the violation of our freedom of religion that has not been addressed. We continue to work for the repeal of the mandate. We have grave reservations that the government is intruding in the definition of who is and who is not a religious employer . . .”</p>
<p>The media spin notwithstanding, this is not a matter of “shifts” on “birth control” by the administration; it’s a matter of a grotesque overreach by state power, one that threatens the entire fabric of civil society as well as the first of American liberties, religious freedom. That is why the judicial challenge to the HHS mandate will be mounted on an ecumenical and inter-religious basis, as the protest against the mandate has been. And that is why legislative attempts to reverse what Obama and Sebelius have wrought have drawn bipartisan support.</p>
<p>Perhaps, one day, Sister Carol Keehan and Father John Jenkins will grasp this. But the bishops have, and they’re ultimately the Catholic leaders who count. Whatever the defects in the bishops’ ability to play the spin-cycle game with dexterity, what counts here is the substance, and on the substance there is solid and durable agreement among the bishops. And that, too, counts, for it is on the substance that the war will be fought, and won.</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.</p> | false | 1 | saturday mornings washington post headline first subheadline page one abovethefold nicely captured confusions prevailed 6 pm friday matter tweaks contraceptive mandate issued obama administrations department health human services obama shifts birth control catholic leaders open plan well administration shifted nothing simply decreed insurers employers must provide preventive services including sterilization abortifacient drugs shell game variously accurately described fraud andrew mccarthy corner absurdity wall street journal point yuval levin pointed shortly president obama hhs secretary sebelius announced accommodation newly tweaked regulations would actually change moral circumstances issue way later day pbs news hour ray suarez confronted secretary sebelius obvious someone going pay contraceptives provided purchased insurance include preventive services secretary took absurdity new level claiming none would cost anyone anything empirical evidence showing readily available contraception lowered overall costs healthcare system reducing rate pregnancy much graver matter reminiscent old wpa posterturnedpostcard recently saw grand canyon extolled grand canyon national park free government service right question minds 6 pm friday night though whether catholic bishops taken point opposing hhs mandate since announcement january 20 grasped played fools administration rather anodyne initial reaction united states conference catholic bishops obamasebelius accommodation sent blogosphere turmoil friday afternoon charges bishops caving soon flying cyberspace charges seemed accept face value administrations selfsatisfaction accommodation obama sebelius reinforced likes sister carol keehan president catholic health association father john jenkins csc president notre dame quick blocks praise administrations moves bishops hadnt caved even lost first battle spincycle certainly hadnt lost war war determined fight win legislatively andor judicially solidarity allies across american religious spectrum usccbs developed statement administrations accommodation came late friday 630 pm est irrespective timing statement made several things abundantly clear 1 deal administration deal possible terms laid fridays accommodation 2 accommodation failed address legitimate concerns key actors heathcare system including selfinsured religious employers religious secular forprofit employers secular nonprofit employers individuals proposed new regulations simply unacceptable 3 accommodation continued disturbing process needless government intrusion internal governance religious institutions threatened government coercion religious people groups 4 thus religious freedom institutions men women conscience remained gravely imperiled tweaked hhs mandate solution problem hhs rescind mandate objectionable services soundbite anyone wishing explain opinion real catholic leaders sunday talk shows coming weeks dont revise rescind words situation analogous conscription laws humane society makes provision pacifists conscientious objection law case hhs mandate tweaked untweaked law unjust must fought undone usccb critique tweaked mandate spelled letter entire body american bishops signed cardinaldesignate timothy dolan four bishops lead responsibility catholic response hhs letter originally sent friday night closed website bishops access promptly leaked may well deliberately leaked letter bluntly stated administrations new policy meet standard respecting religious liberty moral convictions stakeholders health coverage transaction came commitment pursue war mandate fronts remain fully committed defense religious liberty strongly protest violation freedom religion addressed continue work repeal mandate grave reservations government intruding definition religious employer media spin notwithstanding matter shifts birth control administration matter grotesque overreach state power one threatens entire fabric civil society well first american liberties religious freedom judicial challenge hhs mandate mounted ecumenical interreligious basis protest mandate legislative attempts reverse obama sebelius wrought drawn bipartisan support perhaps one day sister carol keehan father john jenkins grasp bishops theyre ultimately catholic leaders count whatever defects bishops ability play spincycle game dexterity counts substance substance solid durable agreement among bishops counts substance war fought george weigel distinguished senior fellow washingtons ethics public policy center holds william e simon chair catholic studies | 566 |
<p>LOS ANGELES — Nothing seems to be slowing down <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Los-Angeles-Dodgers/" type="external">Los Angeles Dodgers</a> left fielder <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Chris_Taylor/" type="external">Chris Taylor</a> this month. Not even an 18-minute delay during the sixth inning on Tuesday night.</p>
<p>Taylor doubled twice for his seventh multi-hit performance in his past eight games, and he drove in three runs as the Dodgers defeated the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Minnesota-Twins/" type="external">Minnesota Twins</a> 6-2 at Dodger Stadium to improve to 35-6 since June 6.</p>
<p>Los Angeles won its fourth game in a row, and Taylor raised his July batting average to .447 (34-for-76).</p>
<p>“We don’t know what this young man’s ceiling is,” Dodgers manager <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Dave_Roberts/" type="external">Dave Roberts</a> said. “I think the beautiful thing is, he just continues to go up there and tries to compete and perform, and he keeps getting big hits. He’s also making great defensive plays out there and saving runs, scoring runs, driving in runs. He’s a winning player.”</p>
<p>Yasiel Puig went 3-for-4 with an RBI and a run, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Chase_Utley/" type="external">Chase Utley</a> had two hits, and Joc Pederson scored two runs.</p>
<p>Roberts met with plate umpire Lance Barrett one pitch after Twins manager <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Paul-Molitor/" type="external">Paul Molitor</a> made a double switch with one out in the sixth inning, bringing in relief pitcher Ryan Pressly and shortstop Ehire Adrianza while taking out reliever Trevor Hildenberger and starting shortstop Jorge Polanco.</p>
<p>After a long discussion with Molitor and another with Major League Baseball officials in New York, adding up to a long delay, Polanco returned to the game and Adrianza went to left field, replacing Eddie Rosario.</p>
<p>Pinch hitter <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Logan-Forsythe/" type="external">Logan Forsythe</a> then delivered a two-out single to center to score Pederson, and Taylor followed with his second double of the game to plate Forsythe for a 6-2 lead.</p>
<p>Molitor said the delay was caused by a miscommunication with Barrett, who put Pressly in Rosario’s spot in the lineup on the double switch.</p>
<p>“What I think I said and what (Barrett) thought he heard were two different things and, so, after the first pitch was thrown, Dave came out and obviously was told something differently than what we were doing, and that’s where everything broke loose,” Molitor said. “I probably should have watched to make sure (Barrett) marked his card correctly.”</p>
<p>Dodgers starter <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Kenta-Maeda/" type="external">Kenta Maeda</a> (9-4) limited Minnesota to two runs (one earned) in five innings. Luis Avilan (one inning) and Josh Ravin (three innings) pitched no-hit ball the rest of the way, with Ravin earning his first career save.</p>
<p>The Dodgers put their leadoff batter on base in the second, third and fourth innings against right-hander Jose Berrios but didn’t capitalize until the fourth.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Cody-Bellinger/" type="external">Cody Bellinger</a> lined a single through the shift on the right side, stole second and scored on Pederson’s one-out double off the center field wall. The run tied the game 1-1.</p>
<p>Utley then singled to put runners on second and third, and Puig followed with his second base hit of the game, a single to right-center that drove in Pederson for a 2-1 lead.</p>
<p>After Maeda laid down a sacrifice to put runners on second and third, Taylor lined a double into the left field corner, stretching the advantage to 4-1.</p>
<p>“I went to (Maeda) and told him how important that (sacrifice) was,” Roberts said. “Kenta’s a baseball player. He’s gotten big base hits for us. He’s out there every day bunting with our bench coach and working on his skill.”</p>
<p>The Twins scored first for the second straight game in the series.</p>
<p>Maeda walked Polanco to start the third inning, and Jason Castro grounded the first hit of the game through the right side. The strong throwing arm of Puig in right field kept Polanco from advancing to third, but Polanco later came home on a two-out single by Zack Granite for a 1-0 lead.</p>
<p>Twins All-Star third baseman <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Miguel-Sano/" type="external">Miguel Sano</a> was scratched from the starting lineup about a half-hour before the first pitch, although he did pinch-hit in the eighth, striking out.</p>
<p>Sano, who was hit on the left wrist by a pitch from <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Josh_Fields/" type="external">Josh Fields</a> on Monday night, took two rounds of batting practice before he was replaced in the starting lineup by Polanco. Eduardo Escobar moved from shortstop to third base and into Sano’s No. 4 spot in the batting order.</p>
<p>The Dodgers benefited from some exceptional defense in the middle innings. Pederson made a diving catch in center to end the fourth with a runner on. Bellinger robbed pinch hitter Robbie Grossman of extra bases to start the fifth as the rookie first baseman dived to his left to backhand a hard grounder headed for the corner.</p>
<p>Bellinger’s play proved especially big as shortstop <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Corey-Seager/" type="external">Corey Seager</a> followed with a throwing error and Minnesota added two singles to cut the deficit to 4-2.</p>
<p>Berrios had his second shortest outing of the season, allowing four runs and seven hits in four innings.</p>
<p>Maeda allowed five hits and two walks while striking out in a 91-pitch outing.</p>
<p>NOTES: Twins LHP <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jaime_Garcia/" type="external">Jaime Garcia</a> arrived following his trade from the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Atlanta-Braves/" type="external">Atlanta Braves</a> on Monday and threw a bullpen session in preparation for his first start Friday at the Oakland A’s. … Minnesota CF <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Byron-Buxton/" type="external">Byron Buxton</a> was eligible to come off the disabled list on Tuesday after sitting out the past 10 days with a groin injury, but a migraine headache on Monday sidelined him for another day. … Dodgers RHP Brock Stewart is scheduled to make his first start of the season on Wednesday in the series finale. Stewart has combined for 13 innings of shutout relief in six appearances since June 20. RHP <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ervin_Santana/" type="external">Ervin Santana</a> will start for Minnesota.</p> | false | 1 | los angeles nothing seems slowing los angeles dodgers left fielder chris taylor month even 18minute delay sixth inning tuesday night taylor doubled twice seventh multihit performance past eight games drove three runs dodgers defeated minnesota twins 62 dodger stadium improve 356 since june 6 los angeles fourth game row taylor raised july batting average 447 34for76 dont know young mans ceiling dodgers manager dave roberts said think beautiful thing continues go tries compete perform keeps getting big hits hes also making great defensive plays saving runs scoring runs driving runs hes winning player yasiel puig went 3for4 rbi run chase utley two hits joc pederson scored two runs roberts met plate umpire lance barrett one pitch twins manager paul molitor made double switch one sixth inning bringing relief pitcher ryan pressly shortstop ehire adrianza taking reliever trevor hildenberger starting shortstop jorge polanco long discussion molitor another major league baseball officials new york adding long delay polanco returned game adrianza went left field replacing eddie rosario pinch hitter logan forsythe delivered twoout single center score pederson taylor followed second double game plate forsythe 62 lead molitor said delay caused miscommunication barrett put pressly rosarios spot lineup double switch think said barrett thought heard two different things first pitch thrown dave came obviously told something differently thats everything broke loose molitor said probably watched make sure barrett marked card correctly dodgers starter kenta maeda 94 limited minnesota two runs one earned five innings luis avilan one inning josh ravin three innings pitched nohit ball rest way ravin earning first career save dodgers put leadoff batter base second third fourth innings righthander jose berrios didnt capitalize fourth cody bellinger lined single shift right side stole second scored pedersons oneout double center field wall run tied game 11 utley singled put runners second third puig followed second base hit game single rightcenter drove pederson 21 lead maeda laid sacrifice put runners second third taylor lined double left field corner stretching advantage 41 went maeda told important sacrifice roberts said kentas baseball player hes gotten big base hits us hes every day bunting bench coach working skill twins scored first second straight game series maeda walked polanco start third inning jason castro grounded first hit game right side strong throwing arm puig right field kept polanco advancing third polanco later came home twoout single zack granite 10 lead twins allstar third baseman miguel sano scratched starting lineup halfhour first pitch although pinchhit eighth striking sano hit left wrist pitch josh fields monday night took two rounds batting practice replaced starting lineup polanco eduardo escobar moved shortstop third base sanos 4 spot batting order dodgers benefited exceptional defense middle innings pederson made diving catch center end fourth runner bellinger robbed pinch hitter robbie grossman extra bases start fifth rookie first baseman dived left backhand hard grounder headed corner bellingers play proved especially big shortstop corey seager followed throwing error minnesota added two singles cut deficit 42 berrios second shortest outing season allowing four runs seven hits four innings maeda allowed five hits two walks striking 91pitch outing notes twins lhp jaime garcia arrived following trade atlanta braves monday threw bullpen session preparation first start friday oakland minnesota cf byron buxton eligible come disabled list tuesday sitting past 10 days groin injury migraine headache monday sidelined another day dodgers rhp brock stewart scheduled make first start season wednesday series finale stewart combined 13 innings shutout relief six appearances since june 20 rhp ervin santana start minnesota | 579 |
<p>What happened over the last two millennia to change the face of the Middle East and reduce it to the sorry state it is in today?</p>
<p>In 1500 AD, the two greatest military powers in Europe were the Spanish and the Ottoman Empires, while in Asia it was the Mogul and the Chinese Empires. If they had united, the Italian city states of Venice, Florence, and Genoa could also have become a great power. Nevertheless, each was a major economic power in its own right. Just 350 years later, in 1850 AD, the tottering Ottoman Empire was labeled the Sick Man of Europe and the Spanish Empire had shriveled to a third rate European power and had lost most of its Latin American colonies to native revolutionary movements. In the East, both the Mogul and the Chinese Empires had been defeated by a new world power, the British Empire, with the former completely eliminated. Meanwhile, the formerly wealthy Italian city states had been reduced to poverty and had fallen under the rule of France and Austria.</p>
<p>What happened in 350 years to change the world balance of power? Was it pure coincidence that the new world powers in 1850, Great Britain, France, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Prussia and Russia all arose in cooler wetter latitudes north of the military powers that ruled in 1500?</p>
<p>The scientific evidence that has accumulated over the last 40 years indicates that the fate of many once prosperous regions around the world was tied closely to major changes in their climates, and man’s response to climate changes with technological innovation. In fact, we may very well be on the verge of a Copernican revolution, in the way historians study and analyze the rise and fall of civilizations. In an article written for the New Yorker dated April 25, 2005, “THE CLIMATE OF MAN-II”, Elizabeth Kolbert lists four different civilizations, from the 4,300 year old Akkadian Empire of modern Iraq to the 750 AD Mayan civilization of Central America, whose collapse has been firmly tied by scientific evidence to climate changes that led to prolonged droughts. Anthropologists like Brian Fagan and Jared Diamond, with support from Climatologists like Hubert Lamb, have been at the forefront of this movement to reinterpret human history through the lens of climate history.</p>
<p>Going beyond Europe, and looking out at the economic and political wasteland we call today the Middle East, it is hard to imagine that this was once not only the cradle of human civilization, but for 90% of recorded history, the most economically, culturally, scientifically and militarily advanced part of the world. It was only in the last 800 years that the Middle East lost its dominance and only in the last 300 years that the last great Middle Eastern power, the Ottoman Empire, was eclipsed as a great power by more powerful opponents to its north. In fact, if we expand the definition of the Middle East to include the entire Mediterranean Basin, we will note that just 2,000 years ago, the south European countries from Greece and Italy to Spain were, not including China, the epic center of human achievement in the arts and sciences. Today, they are third rate economic and military powers whose condition would be no better off than their Arab neighbors to the south, were it not for a strategic decision after World War II by their richer, more advanced neighbors to the north to support them through favorable trading terms and direct economic subsidies to their farming sectors.</p>
<p>What happened, then, over the last two millennia to change the face of the Middle East and reduce it to the sorry state it is in today? Was it an unchanging Islamic ideology and the Arabs or the Ottoman Turks, as a handful of politically motivated Western Orientalists would have us believe? Or maybe it was the distortion of the original Islamic religion and its pollution by alien ideas, as Muslim Puritans would have us believe. For the former, the answer to the contemporary Middle East’s ills is to accelerate the reformation of Islam by ripping it out of the fabric of the societies in which it resides, by foreign violent force if necessary. For the latter, the opposite remedy has been prescribed, and that is to return to a 7th century unadulterated version of Islam and embedding it even deeper into the societies in which it resides, by native violent force if necessary.</p>
<p>The problem with these remedies is that they both depend on the limited understanding which classical historical studies give us about the real versus apparent forces that have moved human history from the dawn of humanity to the present day. Classical historians have tended to study the rise and fall of civilizations almost purely through the written and oral record that have been bequeathed to us by previous generations. While this approach gives us a fairly accurate picture of events as they happened in different periods, it does not explain why they happened. In particular, classical historical studies have not provided general answers to the question of why certain civilizations rose, while others fell, which can be applied to all civilizations. In other words, the answer to the question of what went wrong with the Muslim Middle East must be comprehensive enough to answer what went wrong with Plato’s Greece, Cicero’s Rome, the Mayan civilization of Central America, and even sub-Saharan Africa; and in all these cases, climate change clearly played a leading role.</p>
<p>Given this knowledge that we have today about the role of climate in human development, why have classical historians been reluctant to factor climate change in their study of human history? In actual fact, there was a general trend among some European historians in the early part of the 20th century to acknowledge the role of climate change in the rise and fall of previous civilizations. However, after the study of environmental factors in human development was abused by the Nazis in World War II to justify the classification of people into different races, there was an overly severe reaction in the scientific and social studies communities to any discussion of human development from an environmental point of view. Therefore, the trend was reversed after World War II and historians, anthropologists, and archeologists, each in their own fields began to overemphasize the role of culture and ideology in the fate of civilizations.</p>
<p>Then beginning in the 1970s, new scientific data from Greenland ice cores and geochemical analysis of ancient lake soils, which was not available early in the century, revealed that indeed the climate of the earth during human written history has witnessed dramatic changes in temperature and precipitation in different parts of the world, at roughly the same time periods. Since the 1970s, much research has gone into deciphering past climate changes led not by climatologists, who are mainly focused on current weather patterns, but by hydro-geologists, hydro-chemists, and biologists.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, one of the first books published on this subject, in 1982, “Climate, History and the Modern World”, was actually written by the late British climatologist Hubert Lamb. Using what little hard data was available at the time from ancient pollen analyses and tree ring studies, and combining it with historical accounts of unusual weather patterns in Europe, he was one of the first to identify the Medieval Warm Period from 800 to 1200 AD and the Little Ice Age from 1300 to 1850 AD.</p>
<p>Following in Hubert Lamb’s footsteps, Brian Fagan, an archeologist from the University of California, Santa Barbara, brought climate change in human history front and center with his seminal book in 2002, “The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History”. Then in 2007, the Israeli scholars Arie Issar and Mattanyah Zohar published a very well researched book, “Climate Change Impacts on the Environment and Civilization in the Near East”, in which they demonstrated using climate proxy data from isotopic analysis of wood and soil samples stretching back more than 4,000 years that the Levant experienced several cycles of cool humid weather followed by warm dry weather, which coincided almost exactly with the rise and fall of various civilizations from the Bronze age Akkadian to the Greco-Roman and the Byzantine-Arab periods. Issar even comments that prior to their acquisition of significant evidence of cyclical climate change in the 1990s, he had bought into the classical anthropogenic argument for desertification of the Levant, which argued that the Arab-Islamic invasion of the Levant with their sheep and camel herds in the 7th century was responsible for its desertification. In fact, it was the drying out of the Levant beginning in the 6th century and continuing to the present day that weakened the Byzantine Empire’s agricultural base and opened the way for the Arab-Islamic invasions in the 7th century.</p>
<p>Under any circumstance, the role of climate change and man’s technological reaction to climate change has become almost main stream in academia. Therefore, it is highly likely that in the next few years the study of human history will undergo a Copernican revolution, with climate change and technological response to it being acknowledged as its primary movers, rather than political or religious ideologies.</p>
<p>It is also worth mentioning that technological innovations do not always benefit the people who invent them as much as they may benefit other people thousands of kilometers away, whose climatic or geographic situation allows them to put an innovation to better use. For example the astrolabe, which originated in China was perfected by the Arabs to navigate the relatively short distances of the Arabian Sea in their trade with India. However, once it reached Europe in the 14th century, it allowed the Spanish and the Portuguese, who were the geographically closest Europeans to the Arabs, to navigate the huge expanses of the Atlantic ocean and eventually break the Arab-Turkish monopoly on trade with the Far East and even discover the greater prize of the Americas. Today, it would be equivalent to the Germans developing a low energy method for desalinating seawater. While it would have a minor impact on the water rich Germans, its main impact would be a huge increase in the economic prosperity of the Arabs and other peoples whose bone dry lands border seas and oceans.</p>
<p>Another example of technology transfer’s effect on economic development is the introduction of the <a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2267/is_1_66/ai_54668867/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1" type="external">South American potato</a> around 450 years ago into Northern Europe. This fertile area of the world always had plenty of precipitation, however, until the introduction of the potato, its agriculture remained at a subsistence level. The introduction of the potato transformed North European agriculture from a subsistence to a surplus tradable goods agriculture, not because the potato itself was tradable (it was easy to store but spoiled when transported), but because its relatively large caloric content and ability to survive the coldest wettest winters, meant that it prevented widespread famine in most of Northern Europe and freed up grain output for export to distant lands.</p>
<p>Therefore, as the Irish anthropologist William McNeill has argued, the head start Northwest Europe had on the rest of the world in its population explosion and industrialization after 1700 AD, was due to the spread of the South American potato (a major technological transfer) into Europe after 1550. Brian Fagan, William McNeill, and Jared Diamond have all pointed out that prior to the arrival of the potato, North Europeans often faced famines due to the spoiling of their wheat harvests by late September rains. Unlike wheat, the potato thrived in the cold wet soil of Northern Europe and became a staple food for the peasants. Healthier, wealthier peasants after 1650 then became a source of labor and a market for the Industrial Revolution’s manufactured goods just 100 years later.</p>
<p>As an aside, we should mention that the potato, which <a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2267/is_1_66/ai_54668867/?tag=content;col1" type="external">according to William McNeil</a> was the greatest technological innovation that propelled northern Europe forward after 1650, was of no use to the Muslim East because <a href="http://www.ikisan.com/links/ap_potatosoilandclimate.shtml" type="external">at soil temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius, tuber formation stops completely</a>. This fact also explains why the once mighty Spanish and Ottoman Empires and the formerly powerful city states of Italy could not take advantage of the potato’s huge nutritional advantage to the extent the colder northern European states could. In other words, the further south people were, the less effect the potato had on their population growth. While European historians often focus on the decline of the Ottoman Empire after 1650 and mistakenly tie this decline to Islam’s supposed fatalism, they rarely note the coincident decline during the same period of other north Mediterranean powers, like the Spanish Empire.</p>
<p>In fact, an argument can even be made that the transfer of the potato around 450 years ago from its narrow South American high Andes Mountains native habitat to the much larger habitat of cold and wet Northern Europe, had as big an impact on human history as the transfer of grain agriculture around 10,000 years ago from the narrow confines of its native Southeast Anatolia birthplace to the vast fertile plains of the Nile and Mesopotamian river valleys. Both transfers of agricultural technology had a huge history-transforming effect on mankind.</p>
<p>Returning to the Ottoman Empire and its decline from being the most powerful empire in the Middle East and Europe in the 16th century to becoming the “sick man of Europe” in the 19th century, up until very recently, classical historians have tended to denigrate the Ottoman Empire’s accomplishments and blame its decline on the influence of its Muslim Ulema, who prevented the import of technologies which could have transformed its largely agricultural economy into an industrial economy similar to the North Europeans. Some scholars like Timur Kuran have even argued that a specific (ideological) aspect of the Ottoman legal system, its Vakif or Islamic charity foundation laws, prevented the accumulation of capital over several generations and thus prevented the rise of a bourgeoisie who could finance an industrial revolution in Ottoman lands.</p>
<p>On the other hand, Oberlin College Professor of History, Sam White recently published a brilliant analysis of the effect of little ice age climate change on the Ottoman Empire’s fate after the 16th century. In his 2011 book, “The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire”, White makes a powerful argument for the role of little ice age induced desiccation of central Anatolia and Syria, which led to famines, disease pandemics and the Celali Peasant Rebellions of the 17th century. Taken together, these events led to a rapid drop in the population of the Empire at the same time as the South American potato was initiating a population explosion in the North European states.</p>
<p>Perhaps if the Ottomans had access to modern cement and tractors in the 17th century, they could have alleviated the effect of reduced rainfall by building dams and canals that would have allowed their Anatolian farmers to continue to prosper, even after rainfall declined all along the Northern Mediterranean. However, these technologies were not available till after the Turkish Republic was founded in the early 20th century. It was these technologies and others like asphalt roads and railroads, which allowed Anatolia’s farmers to export their produce for cash, import industrial machinery with that cash, and led to Turkey’s current prosperity versus the Ottoman Empire’s climate induced poverty. This is another example of how technologies that were developed thousands of miles away in America had a huge impact on an East Mediterranean region that had been in relative decline, due to climatic factors, over the last few hundred years.</p>
<p>Therefore, the lesson we have learned from history is that changing our culture and/or ideological beliefs will not make us richer or help us overcome the challenge of surviving and prospering in the hottest, driest climate on earth. However, investing in research and adopting new and innovative technologies could allow us to thrive by improving our utilization of existing resources and discovering new ones.</p>
<p>This article was originally published in the <a href="http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&amp;contentid=20140319199103" type="external">Saudi Gazette</a> and has been used here with permission from the author.</p> | false | 1 | happened last two millennia change face middle east reduce sorry state today 1500 ad two greatest military powers europe spanish ottoman empires asia mogul chinese empires united italian city states venice florence genoa could also become great power nevertheless major economic power right 350 years later 1850 ad tottering ottoman empire labeled sick man europe spanish empire shriveled third rate european power lost latin american colonies native revolutionary movements east mogul chinese empires defeated new world power british empire former completely eliminated meanwhile formerly wealthy italian city states reduced poverty fallen rule france austria happened 350 years change world balance power pure coincidence new world powers 1850 great britain france austrohungarian empire prussia russia arose cooler wetter latitudes north military powers ruled 1500 scientific evidence accumulated last 40 years indicates fate many prosperous regions around world tied closely major changes climates mans response climate changes technological innovation fact may well verge copernican revolution way historians study analyze rise fall civilizations article written new yorker dated april 25 2005 climate manii elizabeth kolbert lists four different civilizations 4300 year old akkadian empire modern iraq 750 ad mayan civilization central america whose collapse firmly tied scientific evidence climate changes led prolonged droughts anthropologists like brian fagan jared diamond support climatologists like hubert lamb forefront movement reinterpret human history lens climate history going beyond europe looking economic political wasteland call today middle east hard imagine cradle human civilization 90 recorded history economically culturally scientifically militarily advanced part world last 800 years middle east lost dominance last 300 years last great middle eastern power ottoman empire eclipsed great power powerful opponents north fact expand definition middle east include entire mediterranean basin note 2000 years ago south european countries greece italy spain including china epic center human achievement arts sciences today third rate economic military powers whose condition would better arab neighbors south strategic decision world war ii richer advanced neighbors north support favorable trading terms direct economic subsidies farming sectors happened last two millennia change face middle east reduce sorry state today unchanging islamic ideology arabs ottoman turks handful politically motivated western orientalists would us believe maybe distortion original islamic religion pollution alien ideas muslim puritans would us believe former answer contemporary middle easts ills accelerate reformation islam ripping fabric societies resides foreign violent force necessary latter opposite remedy prescribed return 7th century unadulterated version islam embedding even deeper societies resides native violent force necessary problem remedies depend limited understanding classical historical studies give us real versus apparent forces moved human history dawn humanity present day classical historians tended study rise fall civilizations almost purely written oral record bequeathed us previous generations approach gives us fairly accurate picture events happened different periods explain happened particular classical historical studies provided general answers question certain civilizations rose others fell applied civilizations words answer question went wrong muslim middle east must comprehensive enough answer went wrong platos greece ciceros rome mayan civilization central america even subsaharan africa cases climate change clearly played leading role given knowledge today role climate human development classical historians reluctant factor climate change study human history actual fact general trend among european historians early part 20th century acknowledge role climate change rise fall previous civilizations however study environmental factors human development abused nazis world war ii justify classification people different races overly severe reaction scientific social studies communities discussion human development environmental point view therefore trend reversed world war ii historians anthropologists archeologists fields began overemphasize role culture ideology fate civilizations beginning 1970s new scientific data greenland ice cores geochemical analysis ancient lake soils available early century revealed indeed climate earth human written history witnessed dramatic changes temperature precipitation different parts world roughly time periods since 1970s much research gone deciphering past climate changes led climatologists mainly focused current weather patterns hydrogeologists hydrochemists biologists nevertheless one first books published subject 1982 climate history modern world actually written late british climatologist hubert lamb using little hard data available time ancient pollen analyses tree ring studies combining historical accounts unusual weather patterns europe one first identify medieval warm period 800 1200 ad little ice age 1300 1850 ad following hubert lambs footsteps brian fagan archeologist university california santa barbara brought climate change human history front center seminal book 2002 little ice age climate made history 2007 israeli scholars arie issar mattanyah zohar published well researched book climate change impacts environment civilization near east demonstrated using climate proxy data isotopic analysis wood soil samples stretching back 4000 years levant experienced several cycles cool humid weather followed warm dry weather coincided almost exactly rise fall various civilizations bronze age akkadian grecoroman byzantinearab periods issar even comments prior acquisition significant evidence cyclical climate change 1990s bought classical anthropogenic argument desertification levant argued arabislamic invasion levant sheep camel herds 7th century responsible desertification fact drying levant beginning 6th century continuing present day weakened byzantine empires agricultural base opened way arabislamic invasions 7th century circumstance role climate change mans technological reaction climate change become almost main stream academia therefore highly likely next years study human history undergo copernican revolution climate change technological response acknowledged primary movers rather political religious ideologies also worth mentioning technological innovations always benefit people invent much may benefit people thousands kilometers away whose climatic geographic situation allows put innovation better use example astrolabe originated china perfected arabs navigate relatively short distances arabian sea trade india however reached europe 14th century allowed spanish portuguese geographically closest europeans arabs navigate huge expanses atlantic ocean eventually break arabturkish monopoly trade far east even discover greater prize americas today would equivalent germans developing low energy method desalinating seawater would minor impact water rich germans main impact would huge increase economic prosperity arabs peoples whose bone dry lands border seas oceans another example technology transfers effect economic development introduction south american potato around 450 years ago northern europe fertile area world always plenty precipitation however introduction potato agriculture remained subsistence level introduction potato transformed north european agriculture subsistence surplus tradable goods agriculture potato tradable easy store spoiled transported relatively large caloric content ability survive coldest wettest winters meant prevented widespread famine northern europe freed grain output export distant lands therefore irish anthropologist william mcneill argued head start northwest europe rest world population explosion industrialization 1700 ad due spread south american potato major technological transfer europe 1550 brian fagan william mcneill jared diamond pointed prior arrival potato north europeans often faced famines due spoiling wheat harvests late september rains unlike wheat potato thrived cold wet soil northern europe became staple food peasants healthier wealthier peasants 1650 became source labor market industrial revolutions manufactured goods 100 years later aside mention potato according william mcneil greatest technological innovation propelled northern europe forward 1650 use muslim east soil temperatures 30 degrees celsius tuber formation stops completely fact also explains mighty spanish ottoman empires formerly powerful city states italy could take advantage potatos huge nutritional advantage extent colder northern european states could words south people less effect potato population growth european historians often focus decline ottoman empire 1650 mistakenly tie decline islams supposed fatalism rarely note coincident decline period north mediterranean powers like spanish empire fact argument even made transfer potato around 450 years ago narrow south american high andes mountains native habitat much larger habitat cold wet northern europe big impact human history transfer grain agriculture around 10000 years ago narrow confines native southeast anatolia birthplace vast fertile plains nile mesopotamian river valleys transfers agricultural technology huge historytransforming effect mankind returning ottoman empire decline powerful empire middle east europe 16th century becoming sick man europe 19th century recently classical historians tended denigrate ottoman empires accomplishments blame decline influence muslim ulema prevented import technologies could transformed largely agricultural economy industrial economy similar north europeans scholars like timur kuran even argued specific ideological aspect ottoman legal system vakif islamic charity foundation laws prevented accumulation capital several generations thus prevented rise bourgeoisie could finance industrial revolution ottoman lands hand oberlin college professor history sam white recently published brilliant analysis effect little ice age climate change ottoman empires fate 16th century 2011 book climate rebellion early modern ottoman empire white makes powerful argument role little ice age induced desiccation central anatolia syria led famines disease pandemics celali peasant rebellions 17th century taken together events led rapid drop population empire time south american potato initiating population explosion north european states perhaps ottomans access modern cement tractors 17th century could alleviated effect reduced rainfall building dams canals would allowed anatolian farmers continue prosper even rainfall declined along northern mediterranean however technologies available till turkish republic founded early 20th century technologies others like asphalt roads railroads allowed anatolias farmers export produce cash import industrial machinery cash led turkeys current prosperity versus ottoman empires climate induced poverty another example technologies developed thousands miles away america huge impact east mediterranean region relative decline due climatic factors last hundred years therefore lesson learned history changing culture andor ideological beliefs make us richer help us overcome challenge surviving prospering hottest driest climate earth however investing research adopting new innovative technologies could allow us thrive improving utilization existing resources discovering new ones article originally published saudi gazette used permission author | 1,513 |
<p>Scores of House and Senate candidates are campaigning on a platform of reestablishing limited government. There could hardly be a more encouraging development for our republic. After decades of legislators' piling countless new programs on top of old ones, and two years of the most intense tax-and-spend binge ever conducted by an administration, government finances have reached the breaking point. Something is going to give, and probably sooner rather than later. Voters know this, which is why they are ready to take matters into their own hands and send a brigade of genuine change agents to the House and Senate on November 2. And these new members will come with clear marching orders: Cut government spending, hold the line on taxes, and shake up Washington in ways not seen in many years.</p>
<p>The crusade will no doubt start where it should, by reining in the obvious excesses of the sprawling and bureaucratic federal enterprise. Wasteful stimulus projects should be terminated immediately. Earmarking and pork projects should be banned from future appropriations measures. The federal workforce should be downsized, and government pay held in check until commensurate with wages in the private economy. Whole departments should be targeted for restructuring and elimination, and others scaled back dramatically. Obama's massive increases to appropriations should be reversed, and funding restored to its pre-2009 level. All of this, and much more, should be pursued with vigor, and without delay, come January.</p>
<p>But Washington's newcomers must not lose sight of the big enchilada on the government-reform menu: the repeal and replacement of Obamacare.</p>
<p>Because the hard truth is that the proponents of a supersized welfare state believe they have already won the fight. Their vision is now the law, with the government on course to control the flow of resources in the entire health sector. Even if every other idea to downsize the government is enacted, Obamacare as passed has us on the road to unlimited government — with America's middle class increasingly dependent on the benefits they receive from elected political leaders.</p>
<p>The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) <a href="http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/113xx/doc11379/AmendReconProp.pdf" type="external">estimates</a> that Obamacare will add 35 million new people to the federal health-entitlement rolls by 2019, at a cost of $214 billion in that year alone. And that's almost certainly a vast underestimate of the true costs. Douglas Holtz-Eakin — a former director of CBO and now president of the American Action Forum — and Cameron Smith have <a href="http://americanactionforum.org/files/LaborMktsHCRAAF5-27-10.pdf" type="external">estimated</a> that Obamacare will lead to much more migration out of employer-sponsored plans than assumed by CBO: Tens of millions of workers — and the firms that employ them — will figure out that all involved will be far better off with the workers getting the massive subsidies provided by the federal government in the so-called “insurance exchanges,” rather than with the much smaller tax break they receive for getting job-based insurance. According to Holtz-Eakin and Smith, an additional 35 million people are therefore likely to end up in the government's new subsidized insurance system, on top of the 35 million already assumed by CBO in its cost estimate, putting the total entitlement expansion at 70 million, or more than Medicare's total enrollment today. The additional enrollees will drive up the costs of Obamacare's new premium subsidy program to $1.4 trillion over the first decade, or about $1 trillion more than CBO estimated.</p>
<p>And that would be just the beginning of it. Both CBO and the chief actuary of the Medicare program expect that once Obamacare is in place, the cost of providing benefits to tens of millions of new enrollees will grow just as rapidly in future years as Medicare and Medicaid have in the past. <a href="http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/115xx/doc11579/LTBO-2010data.xls" type="external">CBO forecasts</a> that total federal health-entitlement spending will increase from 5.5 percent of GDP today to 10.9 percent of GDP in just 25 years. (This estimate uses different, but more realistic, estimates of future Medicare payment rates than Obamacare prescribes.)</p>
<p>What's needed to head off fiscal calamity is a market-based health reform that puts cost-conscious consumers, not the government, in charge. It's the opposite of the Obamacare prescription, and it starts with converting today's existing federal support for health-insurance coverage — Medicare, Medicaid, and the tax preference for employer-paid insurance premiums — into fixed-dollar contributions for the cost of coverage instead of open-ended programs that encourage and underwrite rising costs and inefficiency.</p>
<p>It's the kind of reform that Congressman Paul Ryan has proposed in his <a href="http://www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/UploadedFiles/Roadmap2Final2.pdf" type="external">Roadmap</a>. Indeed, it's the essential centerpiece of any serious conservative effort to reform the nation's entitlement programs and bring federal commitments over the long run in line with a rate of taxation that promotes strong economic growth.</p>
<p>Fortunately, and to their everlasting credit, most of today's fiscally conservative candidates are campaigning hard on repealing Obamacare, and many have also taken the courageous step of endorsing, in broad terms, the need for fundamental reform of both Social Security and the health-entitlement programs. They aren't shying away from the challenge, at least not yet.</p>
<p>But the climb will get much steeper once they get to Washington. For starters, the president wields a veto pen, which means repeal and replacement is likely to be a multi-year endeavor, not a short-term fix. Moreover, the entire Washington establishment, including the national media, will be lined up against them. When things look hopeless, it will be tempting to turn full attention and energy to lower hanging fruit.</p>
<p>But that would be a mistake. Yes, it's crucial to rein in government excesses wherever they exist. But if Obamacare is allowed to stand, the fight over the size and reach of the federal government will have been lost. Repeal and replacement is a must, no matter how hard or long the journey. The new troops coming to Washington must see it that way, and see themselves as laying the crucial foundation for a final victory when the time is ripe.</p>
<p>James C. Capretta is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He was an associate director of the Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004.</p> | false | 1 | scores house senate candidates campaigning platform reestablishing limited government could hardly encouraging development republic decades legislators piling countless new programs top old ones two years intense taxandspend binge ever conducted administration government finances reached breaking point something going give probably sooner rather later voters know ready take matters hands send brigade genuine change agents house senate november 2 new members come clear marching orders cut government spending hold line taxes shake washington ways seen many years crusade doubt start reining obvious excesses sprawling bureaucratic federal enterprise wasteful stimulus projects terminated immediately earmarking pork projects banned future appropriations measures federal workforce downsized government pay held check commensurate wages private economy whole departments targeted restructuring elimination others scaled back dramatically obamas massive increases appropriations reversed funding restored pre2009 level much pursued vigor without delay come january washingtons newcomers must lose sight big enchilada governmentreform menu repeal replacement obamacare hard truth proponents supersized welfare state believe already fight vision law government course control flow resources entire health sector even every idea downsize government enacted obamacare passed us road unlimited government americas middle class increasingly dependent benefits receive elected political leaders congressional budget office cbo estimates obamacare add 35 million new people federal healthentitlement rolls 2019 cost 214 billion year alone thats almost certainly vast underestimate true costs douglas holtzeakin former director cbo president american action forum cameron smith estimated obamacare lead much migration employersponsored plans assumed cbo tens millions workers firms employ figure involved far better workers getting massive subsidies provided federal government socalled insurance exchanges rather much smaller tax break receive getting jobbased insurance according holtzeakin smith additional 35 million people therefore likely end governments new subsidized insurance system top 35 million already assumed cbo cost estimate putting total entitlement expansion 70 million medicares total enrollment today additional enrollees drive costs obamacares new premium subsidy program 14 trillion first decade 1 trillion cbo estimated would beginning cbo chief actuary medicare program expect obamacare place cost providing benefits tens millions new enrollees grow rapidly future years medicare medicaid past cbo forecasts total federal healthentitlement spending increase 55 percent gdp today 109 percent gdp 25 years estimate uses different realistic estimates future medicare payment rates obamacare prescribes whats needed head fiscal calamity marketbased health reform puts costconscious consumers government charge opposite obamacare prescription starts converting todays existing federal support healthinsurance coverage medicare medicaid tax preference employerpaid insurance premiums fixeddollar contributions cost coverage instead openended programs encourage underwrite rising costs inefficiency kind reform congressman paul ryan proposed roadmap indeed essential centerpiece serious conservative effort reform nations entitlement programs bring federal commitments long run line rate taxation promotes strong economic growth fortunately everlasting credit todays fiscally conservative candidates campaigning hard repealing obamacare many also taken courageous step endorsing broad terms need fundamental reform social security healthentitlement programs arent shying away challenge least yet climb get much steeper get washington starters president wields veto pen means repeal replacement likely multiyear endeavor shortterm fix moreover entire washington establishment including national media lined things look hopeless tempting turn full attention energy lower hanging fruit would mistake yes crucial rein government excesses wherever exist obamacare allowed stand fight size reach federal government lost repeal replacement must matter hard long journey new troops coming washington must see way see laying crucial foundation final victory time ripe james c capretta fellow ethics public policy center associate director office management budget 2001 2004 | 560 |
<p>ST. LOUIS (Missouri Valley Football Conference) – North Dakota State led all schools with 11 players named to the All-Missouri Valley Football Conference team by a vote of the league's media, head coaches and sports information directors announced Monday, Nov. 27.</p>
<p>NDSU had six first team picks: fullback Connor Wentz, right guard Austin Kuhnert, long snapper James Fisher, linebacker Nick DeLuca, and safeties Tre Dempsey and Robbie Grimsley.</p>
<p>Second team selections from NDSU were running back Bruce Anderson, wide receiver RJ Urzendowski, center Tanner Volson, defensive tackle Aaron Steidl and linebacker Jabril Cox.</p>
<p>Right tackle Zack Johnson, kicker Cam Pedersen, quarterback Easton Stick and defensive tackle Nate Tanguay earned honorable mention.</p>
<p>The 11 honorees are NDSU's third most in 10 years of conference membership behind only the 15-0 team of 2013 that landed 14 players between the All-MVFC first and second teams, and the 12 players selected to the 2016 all-conference team.</p>
<p>Last week, NDSU head coach Chris Klieman was named Bruce Craddock Valley Football Coach of the Year for the first time in his career. Linebacker Jabril Cox was named Newcomer of the Year and Freshman of the Year, becoming the first NDSU player to win either award and the third in league history to sweep both of the awards.</p>
<p>North Dakota State finished the regular season 10-1 overall and won its seventh straight Missouri Valley Football Conference championship with a 7-1 league record.</p>
<p>2017 All-Missouri Valley Football Conference TeamOffensive Player of the Year: QB Chris Streveler, South DakotaDefensive Player of the Year: LB Brett Taylor, Western IllinoisNewcomer of the Year: LB Jabril Cox, North Dakota State (full All-Newcomer Team announced Tuesday, Nov. 28)Freshman of the Year: LB Jabril Cox, North Dakota StateBruce Craddock Valley Football Coach of the Year: Chris Klieman, North Dakota State</p>
<p>First TeamQB – Chris Streveler, South DakotaRB – Tevin McCaster, Youngstown StateRB – James Robinson, Illinois StateFB – Connor Wentz, North Dakota StateWR – Jaelon Acklin, Western IllinoisWR – Daurice Fountain, Northern IowaWR – Jake Wieneke, South Dakota StateTE – Dallas Goedert, South Dakota StateOL – Stetson Dagel, South DakotaOL – Jacob Judd, Western IllinoisOL – Austin Kuhnert, North Dakota StateOL – Jacob Ohnesorge, South Dakota StateOL – Justin Spencer, Youngstown StateK – Sean Slattery, Illinois StateLS – James Fisher, North Dakota StateDL – Darin Greenfield, South DakotaDL – Dalton Keene, Illinois StateDL – Adam Reth, Northern IowaDL – Khalen Saunders, Western IllinoisLB – Nick DeLuca, North Dakota StateLB – Jared Farley, Northern IowaLB – Christian Rozeboom, South Dakota StateLB – Brett Taylor, Western IllinoisDB – Jordan Brown, South Dakota StateDB – Elijah Campbell, Northern IowaDB – Tre Dempsey, North Dakota StateDB – Robbie Grimsley, North Dakota StateDB – Davontae Harris, Illinois StateP – Lane Reazin, Southern IllinoisRS – Deion Holliman, Missouri State</p>
<p>Second TeamQB – Taryn Christion, South Dakota StateRB – Bruce Anderson, North Dakota StateRB – Steve McShane, Western IllinoisFB – Kane Louscher, South Dakota StateWR – Malik Earl, Missouri StateWR – Spencer Schnell, Illinois StateWR – RJ Urzendowski, North Dakota StateTE – Jacquet McClendon, Indiana StateOL – Lee Carhart, Northern IowaOL – Vitas Hrynkiewicz, Youngstown StateOL – Austin Olsen, Southern IllinoisOL – Tanner Volson, North Dakota StateOL – Gavin Wiggins, Youngstown StateK – Chase Vinatieri, South Dakota StateLS – Brandon Godsey, South DakotaDL – Colby Isbell, Missouri StateDL – Rickey Neal, Northern IowaDL – Kellen Soulek, South Dakota StateDL – Aaron Steidl, North Dakota StateLB – Jabril Cox, South Dakota StateLB – Armand Dellovade, Youngstown StateLB – Angelo Garbutt, Missouri StateLB – Jonas Griffith, Indiana StateDB – Jeremy Chinn, Southern IllinoisDB – Justin Fitzpatrick, Western IllinoisDB – Andrew Gray, South DakotaDB – Billy Nicoe Hurst, Youngstown StateDB – Alec Kocour, Illinois StateP – Sam Kuhter, Northern IowaRS – Steve McShane, Western Illinois</p>
<p>Honorable MentionIllinois State: DL Adam Conley, OL Dean Helt, TE Tylor Petkovich; Indiana State: RB LeMonte Booker, P Thomas Bouldin, LB Katrell Moss; Missouri State: QB Peyton Huslig, DB Darius Joseph, OL Marquis Prophete; North Dakota State: OL Zack Johnson, PK Cam Pedersen, QB Easton Stick, DL Nate Tanguay; Northern Iowa: TE Briley Moore, DB Malcolm Washington, RB Marcus Weymiller; South Dakota: WR Shamar Jackson, LB Jim Litrenta, WR Brandt Van Roekel; South Dakota State: DB Chris Balster, OL Charlie Harmon, RB Brady Mengarelli; Southern Illinois: FB Hans Carmien, RS D.J. Davis, WR Darrell James, DL Anthony Knighton, DB Ryan Neal; Western Illinois: LT Josh Baldus, QB Sean McGuire, LB Quentin Moon, RB Max Norris; Youngstown State: DB Jalyn Powell, TE Kevin Rader, LS Steven Wethli, LB Lee Wright.</p> | false | 1 | st louis missouri valley football conference north dakota state led schools 11 players named allmissouri valley football conference team vote leagues media head coaches sports information directors announced monday nov 27 ndsu six first team picks fullback connor wentz right guard austin kuhnert long snapper james fisher linebacker nick deluca safeties tre dempsey robbie grimsley second team selections ndsu running back bruce anderson wide receiver rj urzendowski center tanner volson defensive tackle aaron steidl linebacker jabril cox right tackle zack johnson kicker cam pedersen quarterback easton stick defensive tackle nate tanguay earned honorable mention 11 honorees ndsus third 10 years conference membership behind 150 team 2013 landed 14 players allmvfc first second teams 12 players selected 2016 allconference team last week ndsu head coach chris klieman named bruce craddock valley football coach year first time career linebacker jabril cox named newcomer year freshman year becoming first ndsu player win either award third league history sweep awards north dakota state finished regular season 101 overall seventh straight missouri valley football conference championship 71 league record 2017 allmissouri valley football conference teamoffensive player year qb chris streveler south dakotadefensive player year lb brett taylor western illinoisnewcomer year lb jabril cox north dakota state full allnewcomer team announced tuesday nov 28freshman year lb jabril cox north dakota statebruce craddock valley football coach year chris klieman north dakota state first teamqb chris streveler south dakotarb tevin mccaster youngstown staterb james robinson illinois statefb connor wentz north dakota statewr jaelon acklin western illinoiswr daurice fountain northern iowawr jake wieneke south dakota statete dallas goedert south dakota stateol stetson dagel south dakotaol jacob judd western illinoisol austin kuhnert north dakota stateol jacob ohnesorge south dakota stateol justin spencer youngstown statek sean slattery illinois statels james fisher north dakota statedl darin greenfield south dakotadl dalton keene illinois statedl adam reth northern iowadl khalen saunders western illinoislb nick deluca north dakota statelb jared farley northern iowalb christian rozeboom south dakota statelb brett taylor western illinoisdb jordan brown south dakota statedb elijah campbell northern iowadb tre dempsey north dakota statedb robbie grimsley north dakota statedb davontae harris illinois statep lane reazin southern illinoisrs deion holliman missouri state second teamqb taryn christion south dakota staterb bruce anderson north dakota staterb steve mcshane western illinoisfb kane louscher south dakota statewr malik earl missouri statewr spencer schnell illinois statewr rj urzendowski north dakota statete jacquet mcclendon indiana stateol lee carhart northern iowaol vitas hrynkiewicz youngstown stateol austin olsen southern illinoisol tanner volson north dakota stateol gavin wiggins youngstown statek chase vinatieri south dakota statels brandon godsey south dakotadl colby isbell missouri statedl rickey neal northern iowadl kellen soulek south dakota statedl aaron steidl north dakota statelb jabril cox south dakota statelb armand dellovade youngstown statelb angelo garbutt missouri statelb jonas griffith indiana statedb jeremy chinn southern illinoisdb justin fitzpatrick western illinoisdb andrew gray south dakotadb billy nicoe hurst youngstown statedb alec kocour illinois statep sam kuhter northern iowars steve mcshane western illinois honorable mentionillinois state dl adam conley ol dean helt te tylor petkovich indiana state rb lemonte booker p thomas bouldin lb katrell moss missouri state qb peyton huslig db darius joseph ol marquis prophete north dakota state ol zack johnson pk cam pedersen qb easton stick dl nate tanguay northern iowa te briley moore db malcolm washington rb marcus weymiller south dakota wr shamar jackson lb jim litrenta wr brandt van roekel south dakota state db chris balster ol charlie harmon rb brady mengarelli southern illinois fb hans carmien rs dj davis wr darrell james dl anthony knighton db ryan neal western illinois lt josh baldus qb sean mcguire lb quentin moon rb max norris youngstown state db jalyn powell te kevin rader ls steven wethli lb lee wright | 619 |
<p>California Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez sent more than 200,000 pieces of mail to constituents last winter. One letter invited women to self-defense classes, another highlighted a bird-watching event, and a third promoted a tree adoption day.</p>
<p>The mailings, all sent in a two-week period, cost $62,000, and taxpayers foot the bill, according to data obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request.</p>
<p>Last year, California Assembly members spent $3.2 million sending mail to their constituents, taking advantage of a legislative perk that allows them to use tax dollars to cover the costs. Senators spent $230,000.</p>
<p>The correspondence is supposed to be “non-campaign,” but Assembly spending data show members spent more during recent election years, and those with the highest tabs usually are in the most competitive races. In Gomez’s case, the letters went out as he was ramping up his campaign for an open U.S. House seat that attracted 23 candidates.</p>
<p>Paul Seamus Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation at Common Cause, said periodic mailings touting a lawmaker’s efforts or highlighting a local event benefit incumbents.</p>
<p>“When the spending is being done principally or disproportionately by legislators who are running for office, it certainly seems to be an abuse of taxpayer dollars,” said Ryan, whose Washington, D.C., organization advocates government transparency. “You don’t have to say ‘Vote for me’ in order to effectively encourage someone to vote for you.”</p>
<p>All 80 Assembly seats were on the ballot in 2016, while only 20 of 40 Senate seats were.</p>
<p>Such mail is prohibited within 60 days of an election, which helps explain why Gomez’s flurry — he sent more taxpayer-funded mail in two weeks than the entire previous year — ended two months before the primary election for the Los Angeles congressional seat Xavier Becerra vacated when he was appointed state attorney general.</p>
<p>Once Gomez was within two months of the election, his congressional campaign logged its first mailing expense, according to Federal Election Commission records.</p>
<p>Gomez, a Democrat, won that election and the June runoff to become California’s newest congressman.</p>
<p>Voters passed a law in 1988 prohibiting the use of public money for mass mailings to prevent lawmakers from spending tax dollars for political and campaign purposes. But the Fair Political Practices Commission, a California board that enforces campaign finance laws, has since written rules outlining exemptions that allow lawmakers to send non-campaign mail.</p>
<p>“It may not be a campaign piece, but it can be made to make the candidate or officeholder look as good as possible,” commission spokesman Jay Wierenga said.</p>
<p>Each chamber’s leadership establishes members’ operating budgets, which include money for mailings. There’s no cap on how much a lawmaker can spend on mailings.</p>
<p>In response to the AP’s records request, the Assembly provided a breakdown on the number, cost and content of mailings sent by the chamber’s top spenders.</p>
<p>During the first six months of this year, Assembly members spent more than $600,000 on mailings. Republican Catharine Baker was tops with more than $70,000, followed by Gomez, then Democrat Rudy Salas, who spent more than $50,000, according to the Assembly’s latest expenditures report.</p>
<p>Baker, whose office did not respond to a request for comment, represents a predominantly Democratic district in the San Francisco Bay Area. She sent mailings outlining her positions on innovation, California’s bullet train project and small businesses.</p>
<p>Salas, who represents a competitive Central Valley district, issued a statement saying the mailings are an “excellent tool that constituents have told me they appreciate.”</p>
<p>Bob Stern, a former Fair Political Practices Commission general counsel, said lawmakers should communicate with their constituents, and spending on mail in nonelection years generally doesn’t bother him. But he said the commission should impose greater restrictions during election years.</p>
<p>“It gives incumbents an unfair advantage,” he said, noting Gomez’s example is a “perfect case of where it shouldn’t be allowed.”</p>
<p>Gomez spokeswoman Bertha Guerrero defended the mailings but did not answer questions about whether he used them to further his campaign. “During his entire time in the California Assembly, Congressman Jimmy Gomez put a priority on being accessible, responsive and engaging with constituents,” she said in a statement.</p>
<p>Assembly members spent nearly $300,000 more in 2016 than in 2015, even though blackout periods for mail leading up to last year’s elections gave them less time to spend. The previous election cycle, they spent nearly $500,000 more.</p>
<p>In 2016, Assemblyman Marc Steinorth spent the most — nearly $270,000. He narrowly won re-election in a Southern California district where Democrats outnumber Republicans.</p>
<p>Former Assemblywoman Young Kim spent the second-highest amount — more than $220,000 — leading up to an election in Orange County where she was defeated by Sharon Quirk-Silva, a Democrat Kim unseated in 2014.</p>
<p>Baker was next, spending roughly $220,000, followed by David Hadley, who spent more than $195,000. Like Kim, Hadley was defeated by a Democratic challenger he had unseated the previous election: Al Muratsuchi.</p>
<p>Spokespeople for Steinorth and Kim did not comment on their spending.</p>
<p>Hadley said he consulted with GOP leaders and decided to spend on mailings, adding his seat was a priority for the party because it’s a swing district.</p>
<p>He said he often sent mail to invite constituents to town halls or to request feedback. When part of his district faced water-quality issues, he said he gleaned valuable information about the scope of the problem through a mailed survey.</p>
<p>“In general, people really appreciated having been contacted,” Hadley said.</p> | false | 1 | california assemblyman jimmy gomez sent 200000 pieces mail constituents last winter one letter invited women selfdefense classes another highlighted birdwatching event third promoted tree adoption day mailings sent twoweek period cost 62000 taxpayers foot bill according data obtained associated press public records request last year california assembly members spent 32 million sending mail constituents taking advantage legislative perk allows use tax dollars cover costs senators spent 230000 correspondence supposed noncampaign assembly spending data show members spent recent election years highest tabs usually competitive races gomezs case letters went ramping campaign open us house seat attracted 23 candidates paul seamus ryan vice president policy litigation common cause said periodic mailings touting lawmakers efforts highlighting local event benefit incumbents spending done principally disproportionately legislators running office certainly seems abuse taxpayer dollars said ryan whose washington dc organization advocates government transparency dont say vote order effectively encourage someone vote 80 assembly seats ballot 2016 20 40 senate seats mail prohibited within 60 days election helps explain gomezs flurry sent taxpayerfunded mail two weeks entire previous year ended two months primary election los angeles congressional seat xavier becerra vacated appointed state attorney general gomez within two months election congressional campaign logged first mailing expense according federal election commission records gomez democrat election june runoff become californias newest congressman voters passed law 1988 prohibiting use public money mass mailings prevent lawmakers spending tax dollars political campaign purposes fair political practices commission california board enforces campaign finance laws since written rules outlining exemptions allow lawmakers send noncampaign mail may campaign piece made make candidate officeholder look good possible commission spokesman jay wierenga said chambers leadership establishes members operating budgets include money mailings theres cap much lawmaker spend mailings response aps records request assembly provided breakdown number cost content mailings sent chambers top spenders first six months year assembly members spent 600000 mailings republican catharine baker tops 70000 followed gomez democrat rudy salas spent 50000 according assemblys latest expenditures report baker whose office respond request comment represents predominantly democratic district san francisco bay area sent mailings outlining positions innovation californias bullet train project small businesses salas represents competitive central valley district issued statement saying mailings excellent tool constituents told appreciate bob stern former fair political practices commission general counsel said lawmakers communicate constituents spending mail nonelection years generally doesnt bother said commission impose greater restrictions election years gives incumbents unfair advantage said noting gomezs example perfect case shouldnt allowed gomez spokeswoman bertha guerrero defended mailings answer questions whether used campaign entire time california assembly congressman jimmy gomez put priority accessible responsive engaging constituents said statement assembly members spent nearly 300000 2016 2015 even though blackout periods mail leading last years elections gave less time spend previous election cycle spent nearly 500000 2016 assemblyman marc steinorth spent nearly 270000 narrowly reelection southern california district democrats outnumber republicans former assemblywoman young kim spent secondhighest amount 220000 leading election orange county defeated sharon quirksilva democrat kim unseated 2014 baker next spending roughly 220000 followed david hadley spent 195000 like kim hadley defeated democratic challenger unseated previous election al muratsuchi spokespeople steinorth kim comment spending hadley said consulted gop leaders decided spend mailings adding seat priority party swing district said often sent mail invite constituents town halls request feedback part district faced waterquality issues said gleaned valuable information scope problem mailed survey general people really appreciated contacted hadley said | 558 |
<p>NEW YORK — President-elect Donald Trump’s influential son-in-law Jared Kushner will join him in the White House as a senior adviser, transition officials said Monday, putting the young real estate executive in position to exert broad sway over both domestic and foreign policy, particularly Middle East issues and trade negotiations.</p>
<p>Trump has come to rely heavily on Kushner, who is married to the president-elect’s daughter Ivanka. Since the election, Kushner has been one of the transition team’s main liaisons to foreign governments, communicating with Israeli officials and meeting last week with Britain’s foreign minister. He’s also huddled with congressional leaders and helped interview Cabinet candidates.</p>
<p>His eligibility could be challenged. But Kushner lawyer Jamie Gorelick argued Monday that a 1967 law meant to bar government officials from hiring relatives does not apply to the West Wing. She cited a later congressional measure to allow the president “unfettered” and “sweeping” authority in hiring staff.</p>
<p>Kushner, who will not be taking a salary, will resign as CEO of his family’s real estate company and as publisher of the New York Observer, as well as divest “substantial assets,” Gorelick said. She said Kushner will recuse himself “from particular matters that would have a direct and predictable effect on his remaining financial interests.”</p>
<p>Ivanka Trump, who also played a significant role advising her father during the presidential campaign, will not be taking a formal White House position, transition officials said. She is the mother of three young children, and her immediate plans are focusing on her family’s move from New York to Washington, though officials said her role could change in the future.</p>
<p>Officials also said Ivanka Trump would be leaving her executive roles at the Trump Organization — her father’s real estate company — and her own fashion brands.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>The anti-nepotism law has appeared to be the main obstacle to both Kushner and Ivanka Trump joining the White House. In arguing that the measure did not apply to the West Wing, Kushner’s lawyer cited an opinion from two federal court judges in a 1993 case involving Hillary Clinton’s work on her husband’s health care law.</p>
<p>Norman Eisen, who served as President Barack Obama’s government ethics lawyer, said there is a “murky legal landscape” regarding the anti-nepotism law. But he said Kushner appeared to be taking the proper steps regarding the ethics and disclosure requirements for federal employees.</p>
<p>Kushner, who turns 36 on Tuesday, emerged as one of Trump’s most powerful campaign advisers during his father-in-law’s often unorthodox presidential bid — a calming presence in an otherwise chaotic campaign. Soft-spoken and press shy, he was deeply involved in the campaign’s digital efforts and was usually at Trump’s side during the election’s closing weeks.</p>
<p>He has continued to be a commanding presence during the transition, working alongside incoming White House chief of staff Reince Priebus and senior adviser Steve Bannon. He’s played a key role in coordinating Trump’s contacts with foreign leaders and has been talking with foreign government officials himself, according to a person with knowledge of the conversations.</p>
<p>Last week, Kushner and Bannon — the controversial conservative media executive who will also be a White House senior adviser — met with British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson.</p>
<p>Kushner and Bannon have also worked closely on issues related to Israel, including discussions over moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, which could inflame tensions in the Middle East, and on the Trump administration’s response to a United Nations Security Council measure condemning Israeli settlements.</p>
<p>Kushner is also weighing in on domestic policy, joining other Trump advisers Monday night for a meeting with House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., on tax reform. He championed the pick of his friend Gary Cohn, the president of Goldman Sachs, for a top White House economic post, though Cohn’s influence within Trump’s team is also said to be expanding.</p>
<p>Those with knowledge of Kushner’s role spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss internal matters.</p>
<p>Like his father-in-law, Kushner pushed a mid-sized real estate company into the high-stakes battlefield of Manhattan. Though he is often viewed as more moderate than Trump, people close to him say he fully bought in to the Trump campaign’s fiery populist message that resonated with white working class voters. He never publicly distanced himself from Trump’s more provocative stances, including the candidate’s call for a Muslim-immigration ban and his doubts about President Barack Obama’s birthplace.</p>
<p>Kushner’s place in Trump’s orbit — vital but often discreet — was vividly on display last month, when the president-elect toured the Carrier plant in Indiana to tout the jobs he says he saved.</p>
<p>Trump marched around the plant with Vice President-elect Mike Pence, shaking hands with workers, posing for photos and flashing his thumbs-up to the traveling press. Kushner stayed away from the cameras, lingering a deferential 10 or 20 feet from Trump while marveling at the scene.</p>
<p>“Look at these people,” Kushner was overheard saying as he watched dozens of workers cheer. “This is why he won.”</p> | false | 1 | new york presidentelect donald trumps influential soninlaw jared kushner join white house senior adviser transition officials said monday putting young real estate executive position exert broad sway domestic foreign policy particularly middle east issues trade negotiations trump come rely heavily kushner married presidentelects daughter ivanka since election kushner one transition teams main liaisons foreign governments communicating israeli officials meeting last week britains foreign minister hes also huddled congressional leaders helped interview cabinet candidates eligibility could challenged kushner lawyer jamie gorelick argued monday 1967 law meant bar government officials hiring relatives apply west wing cited later congressional measure allow president unfettered sweeping authority hiring staff kushner taking salary resign ceo familys real estate company publisher new york observer well divest substantial assets gorelick said said kushner recuse particular matters would direct predictable effect remaining financial interests ivanka trump also played significant role advising father presidential campaign taking formal white house position transition officials said mother three young children immediate plans focusing familys move new york washington though officials said role could change future officials also said ivanka trump would leaving executive roles trump organization fathers real estate company fashion brands antinepotism law appeared main obstacle kushner ivanka trump joining white house arguing measure apply west wing kushners lawyer cited opinion two federal court judges 1993 case involving hillary clintons work husbands health care law norman eisen served president barack obamas government ethics lawyer said murky legal landscape regarding antinepotism law said kushner appeared taking proper steps regarding ethics disclosure requirements federal employees kushner turns 36 tuesday emerged one trumps powerful campaign advisers fatherinlaws often unorthodox presidential bid calming presence otherwise chaotic campaign softspoken press shy deeply involved campaigns digital efforts usually trumps side elections closing weeks continued commanding presence transition working alongside incoming white house chief staff reince priebus senior adviser steve bannon hes played key role coordinating trumps contacts foreign leaders talking foreign government officials according person knowledge conversations last week kushner bannon controversial conservative media executive also white house senior adviser met british foreign minister boris johnson kushner bannon also worked closely issues related israel including discussions moving us embassy jerusalem could inflame tensions middle east trump administrations response united nations security council measure condemning israeli settlements kushner also weighing domestic policy joining trump advisers monday night meeting house speaker paul ryan rwis tax reform championed pick friend gary cohn president goldman sachs top white house economic post though cohns influence within trumps team also said expanding knowledge kushners role spoke condition anonymity authorized publicly discuss internal matters like fatherinlaw kushner pushed midsized real estate company highstakes battlefield manhattan though often viewed moderate trump people close say fully bought trump campaigns fiery populist message resonated white working class voters never publicly distanced trumps provocative stances including candidates call muslimimmigration ban doubts president barack obamas birthplace kushners place trumps orbit vital often discreet vividly display last month presidentelect toured carrier plant indiana tout jobs says saved trump marched around plant vice presidentelect mike pence shaking hands workers posing photos flashing thumbsup traveling press kushner stayed away cameras lingering deferential 10 20 feet trump marveling scene look people kushner overheard saying watched dozens workers cheer | 524 |
<p>The flurry of budget deals struck by congressional Republicans with President Obama in the final months of 2015 will increase the federal debt by hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming decade. They also make it clear that the true state of U.S. fiscal policy is far worse than shown in official projections — which are based on policies that are not going to survive over the long run.</p>
<p>The deal-making got underway in October, when outgoing House speaker John Boehner negotiated <a href="https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/costestimate/hr1314.pdf" type="external">a two-year agreement</a> to increase discretionary spending on defense and non-defense accounts. The deal calls for an increase of $50 billion in appropriated spending in 2016 and $30 billion in 2017 over the levels that had been agreed to by the speaker and president when they last came to an agreement, in 2011. At that time, they had wanted to strike a long-term deal on taxes and entitlements, but when that proved impossible, they chose the path of least resistance and imposed caps on discretionary appropriations without specifying where the cuts would come from.</p>
<p>Predictably, those caps have proven to be impossible to meet politically. Some House conservatives were outraged that Boehner, on his way out the door, would cut a deal with the president to undo the caps he had agreed to in 2011, but those caps were pushing defense spending down to unsustainably low levels. In 2015, defense spending was 3.3 percent of GDP, well below the average of 4.0 percent since 1990, even as the military is facing a staggering series of national-security threats.</p>
<p>There was little prospect of sustaining the low cap on domestic appropriations either. For all of the enthusiasm for downsizing government among conservatives, there have been precious few tangible ideas for real, permanent spending cuts emanating from Republicans on Capitol Hill. Instead, there has been a general retreat to support of across-the-board cuts on domestic appropriations that hit every agency and program equally. This makes little sense, as it penalizes programs that work and should be funded just as much as programs that should be discarded.</p>
<p>The reality is that there is very little prospect for deep, permanent cuts among domestic appropriations because most of the spending is for agencies and programs with bipartisan support.</p>
<p>So, despite being criticized by some House conservatives, Boehner’s deal to raise the caps for 2016 and 2017 was really just a reflection of political and budgetary reality. There never was much hope of sustaining spending levels far below the amounts he agreed to.</p>
<p>The main problem with the October deal was that the new spending was not fully offset with other spending cuts. The former speaker was able to secure some changes in Social Security disability insurance that generally move in the right direction, but otherwise the deal was full of gimmicks and back-loaded savings intended to create the illusion of fiscal discipline. Overall, <a href="http://crfb.org/blogs/budget-deal-truly-offsets-only-half-its-cost" type="external">the deal will add about $76 billion to the debt over the coming decade</a>.</p>
<p>Moreover, while the deal provided only two years of discretionary appropriations increases, the reality is that there will be no going back to the previous level of baseline spending. In other words, appropriations spending in 2018 and beyond will need to be adjusted upward too. If that spending is not offset, or is offset with gimmicks and shell games, it will add about $50 billion each year to the deficit, or $500 billion over a decade.</p>
<p>Congressional Republicans followed up the October deal with one in December that filled in the details of the added appropriations spending for 2016 and then also added to the mix a smorgasbord of tax and entitlement spending changes that <a href="https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/costestimate/cboestimateofhr2029asclearedforthepresidentssignatureondecember182015.pdf" type="external">will increase federal budget deficits by $680 billion over the coming decade</a>.</p>
<p>Most of that increase is due to the permanent extension of tax provisions that were scheduled to expire, such as the R&amp;D tax credit. These provisions have been around for decades, and Congress has never had any intention of letting them lapse. Rather, Congress has passed a long series of temporary extensions of these provisions so that there would always be a reason for taking up another tax bill to extend them, which could then also carry other, more recently discovered priorities. The permanent extension of these types of provisions was long overdue.</p>
<p>But Congress added to these permanent “extenders” a new series of adjustments, most notably the delay of three tax hikes included in the Affordable Care Act. The tax on medical-device manufacturers and the so-called Cadillac tax on high-cost insurance plans were pushed back two years, and the excise tax on health insurers was delayed by one year.</p>
<p>There’s no reason Republican opponents of the ACA should lament the demise of the health industry excise taxes. After all, they were used to finance Obamacare (the “Cadillac” tax is a different story; the GOP would have been better off leaving it in place and replacing it when they get the chance to do so). But there’s no getting around the fiscal consequences of delaying these taxes either, especially if the rest of Obamacare remains in place. And now that these provisions have been delayed once, they will almost certainly be delayed again. If each of these revenue provisions is ultimately repealed, the revenue loss would be about $250 billion over a decade.</p>
<p>This flurry of bipartisan, deficit-increasing legislation comes as the federal government is swimming in red ink. Just eight years ago, in 2008, federal debt stood at 39 percent of GDP. From 1965 through 2008, the average level of federal debt was 35 percent of GDP. Today, federal debt has reached 74 percent of GDP. The government’s fiscal position had already deteriorated in a significant way during the Obama years, and that’s before this latest round of tax cuts and spending increases were enacted and before the bulk of the Baby Boom generation has signed up for Social Security and Medicare benefits.</p>
<p>Last summer, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued <a href="https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/reports/50250-LongTermBudgetOutlook-4.pdf" type="external">long-term budget projections</a> that showed spending on Social Security and the big health entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid, and the subsidies paid under the ACA) rising from 10.1 percent of GDP today to 14.2 percent in 2040. But the agency also projected that this large increase in entitlement spending would be partially offset with a rise in federal revenues and a deep cut in defense and domestic appropriations. CBO’s baseline forecast showed revenue rising from 17.7 percent of GDP today to 19.4 percent in 2040, and total discretionary spending falling from 6.5 percent of GDP today to just 5.1 percent in 2040.</p>
<p>The bipartisan deals struck in 2015 make it abundantly clear that both the revenue and discretionary spending estimates from this forecast are far too optimistic. The United States has not spent less than 6 percent of GDP on discretionary appropriations in any year since 1965, and the average level of spending over the past four decades has been 9 percent of GDP. During that same period, the federal government has collected an average of 17.7 percent of GDP in revenue.</p>
<p>If in 2040 federal revenue comes in at the historical rate, and discretionary spending is held to 7 percent of GDP, the projected deficit in that year would be 9.5 percent of GDP, far above the level that would be sustainable.</p>
<p>The nation’s fiscal problems cannot be solved with tax hikes that will not endure, or with irresponsible cuts to defense spending, or with illusory savings in domestic discretionary programs. The only answer is fundamental entitlement reform. Unfortunately, that’s not the answer President Obama wants to hear, so he has spent his time in office avoiding the subject.</p>
<p>But the clock is ticking. Mounting debt and a widening gap between spending commitments and the amount of money the government can reasonably expect to collect to pay for them will eventually precipitate a fiscal and economic crisis of some sort. It would be far better for the country if political leaders took steps to head off such a crisis before it occurs. That way the policy adjustments can be implemented in a gradual way, with less burden and disruption for voters. Procrastination and problem avoidance will only make the corrective steps more painful and abrupt when, inevitably, they must be imposed.</p>
<p>James C. Capretta is a <a href="" type="internal">senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center</a> and a <a href="http://www.aei.org/scholar/james-c-capretta/" type="external">visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute</a>.</p> | false | 1 | flurry budget deals struck congressional republicans president obama final months 2015 increase federal debt hundreds billions dollars coming decade also make clear true state us fiscal policy far worse shown official projections based policies going survive long run dealmaking got underway october outgoing house speaker john boehner negotiated twoyear agreement increase discretionary spending defense nondefense accounts deal calls increase 50 billion appropriated spending 2016 30 billion 2017 levels agreed speaker president last came agreement 2011 time wanted strike longterm deal taxes entitlements proved impossible chose path least resistance imposed caps discretionary appropriations without specifying cuts would come predictably caps proven impossible meet politically house conservatives outraged boehner way door would cut deal president undo caps agreed 2011 caps pushing defense spending unsustainably low levels 2015 defense spending 33 percent gdp well average 40 percent since 1990 even military facing staggering series nationalsecurity threats little prospect sustaining low cap domestic appropriations either enthusiasm downsizing government among conservatives precious tangible ideas real permanent spending cuts emanating republicans capitol hill instead general retreat support acrosstheboard cuts domestic appropriations hit every agency program equally makes little sense penalizes programs work funded much programs discarded reality little prospect deep permanent cuts among domestic appropriations spending agencies programs bipartisan support despite criticized house conservatives boehners deal raise caps 2016 2017 really reflection political budgetary reality never much hope sustaining spending levels far amounts agreed main problem october deal new spending fully offset spending cuts former speaker able secure changes social security disability insurance generally move right direction otherwise deal full gimmicks backloaded savings intended create illusion fiscal discipline overall deal add 76 billion debt coming decade moreover deal provided two years discretionary appropriations increases reality going back previous level baseline spending words appropriations spending 2018 beyond need adjusted upward spending offset offset gimmicks shell games add 50 billion year deficit 500 billion decade congressional republicans followed october deal one december filled details added appropriations spending 2016 also added mix smorgasbord tax entitlement spending changes increase federal budget deficits 680 billion coming decade increase due permanent extension tax provisions scheduled expire rampd tax credit provisions around decades congress never intention letting lapse rather congress passed long series temporary extensions provisions would always reason taking another tax bill extend could also carry recently discovered priorities permanent extension types provisions long overdue congress added permanent extenders new series adjustments notably delay three tax hikes included affordable care act tax medicaldevice manufacturers socalled cadillac tax highcost insurance plans pushed back two years excise tax health insurers delayed one year theres reason republican opponents aca lament demise health industry excise taxes used finance obamacare cadillac tax different story gop would better leaving place replacing get chance theres getting around fiscal consequences delaying taxes either especially rest obamacare remains place provisions delayed almost certainly delayed revenue provisions ultimately repealed revenue loss would 250 billion decade flurry bipartisan deficitincreasing legislation comes federal government swimming red ink eight years ago 2008 federal debt stood 39 percent gdp 1965 2008 average level federal debt 35 percent gdp today federal debt reached 74 percent gdp governments fiscal position already deteriorated significant way obama years thats latest round tax cuts spending increases enacted bulk baby boom generation signed social security medicare benefits last summer congressional budget office cbo issued longterm budget projections showed spending social security big health entitlement programs medicare medicaid subsidies paid aca rising 101 percent gdp today 142 percent 2040 agency also projected large increase entitlement spending would partially offset rise federal revenues deep cut defense domestic appropriations cbos baseline forecast showed revenue rising 177 percent gdp today 194 percent 2040 total discretionary spending falling 65 percent gdp today 51 percent 2040 bipartisan deals struck 2015 make abundantly clear revenue discretionary spending estimates forecast far optimistic united states spent less 6 percent gdp discretionary appropriations year since 1965 average level spending past four decades 9 percent gdp period federal government collected average 177 percent gdp revenue 2040 federal revenue comes historical rate discretionary spending held 7 percent gdp projected deficit year would 95 percent gdp far level would sustainable nations fiscal problems solved tax hikes endure irresponsible cuts defense spending illusory savings domestic discretionary programs answer fundamental entitlement reform unfortunately thats answer president obama wants hear spent time office avoiding subject clock ticking mounting debt widening gap spending commitments amount money government reasonably expect collect pay eventually precipitate fiscal economic crisis sort would far better country political leaders took steps head crisis occurs way policy adjustments implemented gradual way less burden disruption voters procrastination problem avoidance make corrective steps painful abrupt inevitably must imposed james c capretta senior fellow ethics public policy center visiting fellow american enterprise institute | 774 |
<p>By Cynthia Kim and Adam Jourdan</p>
<p>SEOUL/JIAXING, China (Reuters) – On a faded notice pasted to the padlocked doors of the Lotte Mart superstore in China’s Jiaxing, a date can still be read: March 6, 2017 – when the store was ordered to “temporarily” close over alleged fire safety issues.</p>
<p>The shuttered entrance and flapping notices are a blunt reminder of how South Korean businesses have become unwitting victims in a year-long diplomatic stand-off between Beijing and Seoul.</p>
<p>Last September, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned his South Korean counterpart that bilateral ties would suffer if Seoul did not properly handle China’s opposition to the planned deployment of a U.S. anti-missile defense system in South Korea.</p>
<p>Now – with the system’s installation mostly complete amid growing threats from North Korea – the fallout is evident in both the shuttered Chinese stores of Lotte and the empty Seoul shopping districts once jammed with Chinese tourists.</p>
<p>The Jiaxing outlet, southwest of Shanghai – along with around 90 other Lotte Mart stores in China – remains shut over its supposed fire safety violations. No inspectors have turned up despite what Lotte says were repeated entreaties to rectify the problems.</p>
<p>A skeleton staff say they are being paid minimum required wages, but Lotte is now considering selling up.</p>
<p>NEVER WORSE</p>
<p>Upset over Seoul’s decision to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, tour operators say China has quietly banned groups traveling to South Korea, once one of the most popular destinations for Chinese tourists. Cruises have erased Korean ports from their trips and some flights have been cut.</p>
<p>“Things have never been worse since formal diplomatic relations were established between the two in 1992,” said Han Jae-jin, an economist at the Hyundai Research Institute.</p>
<p>Seoul and Washington say THAAD is purely a deterrent to nuclear-armed North Korea, but Beijing worries the system’s radar can penetrate its territory and will upset the regional security balance.</p>
<p>Publicly, Beijing has maintained it supports “normal business” and other exchanges with South Korea has not commented on the situation with Lotte or tour groups.</p>
<p>Near Dongdaemun in Seoul, a major shopping district, an outdoor wear popup store had signs reading “Thaad retaliation shock! Going out of business sale!”. Dozens of similar signs were seen across the 24-hour shopping precinct.</p>
<p>Cho Kyung-suk, who has been selling women’s bags for 15 years in Dongdaemun, closed one of his three stores in February.</p>
<p>“Without the Chinese tour groups and buyers, I was making only about one fifth of what I used to,” Cho said. If big companies are doing badly, imagine us.”</p>
<p>VANISHING SHOPPERS</p>
<p>The number of Chinese tourists, which used to account for about half of all visitors to South Korea, halved in the first seven months of 2017 compared to a year ago. That meant $5.1 billion in lost business for South Korea, based on the average spending of Chinese visitors in 2015, data from the Korea Tourism Organization shows.</p>
<p>About 90 percent of the nation’s 160 tour agencies specializing in inbound Chinese tourism have closed, South Korea’s travel agent industry body estimates.</p>
<p>Without the THAAD backlash, Asia’s fourth-largest economy was expected to grow more than 3 percent this year. The current forecast is 2.8 percent, according to the Bank of Korea.</p>
<p>In China, Lotte has been at the center of the storm, thanks to a land swap deal it agreed with Seoul so THAAD could be installed.</p>
<p>Half a dozen Lotte Mart workers around China who spoke to Reuters said there was no sign stores were going to reopen. Lotte employs around 13,000 Chinese workers across the country.</p>
<p>“Closing down our China business is one option we consider in the long-run as we can’t leave the stores closed like that for years,” an official at Lotte Mart’s Seoul office said, declining to be named.</p>
<p>Some local Jiaxing residents said China’s response was warranted, even if it meant some other stores and restaurants nearby also closed or suffered.</p>
<p>“The shutdown is all linked to THAAD,” said Gao Yunfei, 22, an e-commerce worker from Anhui province outside the closed Lotte Mart store in Jiaxing. “It’s as it should be, it’s just a reflection of people’s love for their country.”</p>
<p>K-POP TO DUTY FREE</p>
<p>Back in South Korea, the country’s $8 billion duty-free market, the world’s largest, is also struggling.</p>
<p>In wealthy neighborhoods of Sinsa and Apgujeong in southern Seoul, where posh boulevards are packed with flagship stores and celebrity hair salons, retail rent prices have dropped to the lowest since 2013, according to the Korea Appraisal Board and local realtors.</p>
<p>The Korea Duty Free Shops Association has asked regional airports across the country for rent discounts. Lotte Duty Free – the country’s biggest duty free operator – is even considering closing its flagship store in Incheon International Airport, after incurring its first quarterly loss since the 1980s this year.</p>
<p>“We don’t think the THAAD issue will be resolved anytime soon, and there is nothing we can do to help,” an official at the Lotte Duty Free said, asking not to be named.</p>
<p>With hopes of better ties, Lotte is still keeping its Chinese supermarkets, while big exporters like Hyundai Motor (KS:) are muddling through even after its China car sales tumbled over 60 percent in the second quarter.</p>
<p>But small shops don’t have that luxury, said a children’s wear stall owner surnamed Shin in Dongdaemun.</p>
<p>Chinese buyers were impossible to replace, even though vendors were trying to target visitors from Japan and Thailand.</p>
<p>“This whole area was just (driven by) China, and look at it now,” 53 year-old Shin said, pointing to empty neighboring stalls selling hot-dogs and facial masks.</p>
<p>“Everyone here lived off Chinese money.”</p>
<p>($1 = 1,129.3400 won)</p> | false | 1 | cynthia kim adam jourdan seouljiaxing china reuters faded notice pasted padlocked doors lotte mart superstore chinas jiaxing date still read march 6 2017 store ordered temporarily close alleged fire safety issues shuttered entrance flapping notices blunt reminder south korean businesses become unwitting victims yearlong diplomatic standoff beijing seoul last september chinese president xi jinping warned south korean counterpart bilateral ties would suffer seoul properly handle chinas opposition planned deployment us antimissile defense system south korea systems installation mostly complete amid growing threats north korea fallout evident shuttered chinese stores lotte empty seoul shopping districts jammed chinese tourists jiaxing outlet southwest shanghai along around 90 lotte mart stores china remains shut supposed fire safety violations inspectors turned despite lotte says repeated entreaties rectify problems skeleton staff say paid minimum required wages lotte considering selling never worse upset seouls decision deploy terminal high altitude area defense thaad system tour operators say china quietly banned groups traveling south korea one popular destinations chinese tourists cruises erased korean ports trips flights cut things never worse since formal diplomatic relations established two 1992 said han jaejin economist hyundai research institute seoul washington say thaad purely deterrent nucleararmed north korea beijing worries systems radar penetrate territory upset regional security balance publicly beijing maintained supports normal business exchanges south korea commented situation lotte tour groups near dongdaemun seoul major shopping district outdoor wear popup store signs reading thaad retaliation shock going business sale dozens similar signs seen across 24hour shopping precinct cho kyungsuk selling womens bags 15 years dongdaemun closed one three stores february without chinese tour groups buyers making one fifth used cho said big companies badly imagine us vanishing shoppers number chinese tourists used account half visitors south korea halved first seven months 2017 compared year ago meant 51 billion lost business south korea based average spending chinese visitors 2015 data korea tourism organization shows 90 percent nations 160 tour agencies specializing inbound chinese tourism closed south koreas travel agent industry body estimates without thaad backlash asias fourthlargest economy expected grow 3 percent year current forecast 28 percent according bank korea china lotte center storm thanks land swap deal agreed seoul thaad could installed half dozen lotte mart workers around china spoke reuters said sign stores going reopen lotte employs around 13000 chinese workers across country closing china business one option consider longrun cant leave stores closed like years official lotte marts seoul office said declining named local jiaxing residents said chinas response warranted even meant stores restaurants nearby also closed suffered shutdown linked thaad said gao yunfei 22 ecommerce worker anhui province outside closed lotte mart store jiaxing reflection peoples love country kpop duty free back south korea countrys 8 billion dutyfree market worlds largest also struggling wealthy neighborhoods sinsa apgujeong southern seoul posh boulevards packed flagship stores celebrity hair salons retail rent prices dropped lowest since 2013 according korea appraisal board local realtors korea duty free shops association asked regional airports across country rent discounts lotte duty free countrys biggest duty free operator even considering closing flagship store incheon international airport incurring first quarterly loss since 1980s year dont think thaad issue resolved anytime soon nothing help official lotte duty free said asking named hopes better ties lotte still keeping chinese supermarkets big exporters like hyundai motor ks muddling even china car sales tumbled 60 percent second quarter small shops dont luxury said childrens wear stall owner surnamed shin dongdaemun chinese buyers impossible replace even though vendors trying target visitors japan thailand whole area driven china look 53 yearold shin said pointing empty neighboring stalls selling hotdogs facial masks everyone lived chinese money 1 11293400 | 602 |
<p>By Andreas Cremer</p>
<p>BERLIN (Reuters) – Volkswagen managers and unions are seeking to curb competition from lower-cost stablemate Skoda, move some of its production to Germany and make the Czech brand pay more for shared technology, company sources told Reuters.</p>
<p>As VW struggles to cut jobs and spending at German factories and turn the page on dieselgate, Skoda’s superior car reviews and profitability have intensified the brands’ rivalry within the Volkswagen (DE:) empire.</p>
<p>VW now wants to curb what it sees as Skoda’s unfair advantages – combining German technology with cheaper labor – and reaffirm the top-selling brand’s primacy ahead of a wave of new electric car launches, the sources said.</p>
<p>The tussle between VW and Skoda is reviving tensions at the heart of the Volkswagen group between profits and jobs, and between central control and autonomy for its 12 vehicle brands.</p>
<p>“Instead of devoting our efforts to beating Tesla (O:), we may just be setting up a futile internal conflict,” said one manager.</p>
<p>Once the butt of jokes, Skoda has blossomed under 26 years of VW group ownership into a successful mid-market carmaker, steadily winning business from rivals – including VW – and surpassing even Audi’s operating profit margin last year.</p>
<p>At the same time, VW is facing thousands of job cuts as management moves to trim excess capacity at German factories. Its powerful domestic unions see Skoda’s success as both a threat and a potential lifeline.</p>
<p>VW workers’ representatives are now demanding the transfer of some Skoda production to their underused German plants, a source close to the supervisory board told Reuters. The proposal aims to offset declining output of the VW Passat and ageing Golf that could otherwise threaten more jobs.</p>
<p>They are also making the case that Skoda should pay higher royalties to use VW’s main common vehicle platform. The so-called MQB architecture also underpins mid-sized models from the group’s Audi and SEAT brands.</p>
<p>VW’s works council declined to comment.</p>
<p>VW brand Chief Executive Herbert Diess is leading a parallel management effort to shield future VW models from direct competition with cheaper Skodas.</p>
<p>At a recent group executive committee meeting, Diess called for greater differentiation between VW and Skoda target markets and clientele, particularly for future electric models, three managers with knowledge of the matter said.</p>
<p>“The future positioning of brands is being looked at, but discussions are still ongoing,” a VW group spokesman said, declining further comment.</p>
<p>Tension is expected to rise ahead of a Nov. 17 supervisory board session due to approve annual investment budgets across the world’s biggest carmaker.</p>
<p>LABOR ADVANTAGE</p>
<p>Skoda’s operating profit more than doubled over three years to 1.2 billion euros ($1.4 billion) in 2016, lifting its profit margin to 8.7 percent – second only to Porsche within the Volkswagen stable.</p>
<p>The VW brand, whose margin dipped to 1.8 percent after earnings fell by a third, still outsells Skoda globally but is growing more slowly in Europe.</p>
<p>Skoda’s healthy profits partly reflect the shared car platform’s economies of scale. Designed by VW engineers in Germany, MQB has been rolled out progressively since 2012.</p>
<p>But Skoda gets a further boost from cheaper labor. Manufacturing wages average 10.10 euros per hour in the Czech Republic, where most of its European cars are assembled, compared with 38.70 euros in German industry, according to Berlin’s official statistics office.</p>
<p>How VW group CEO Matthias Mueller might resolve the dispute remains unclear. The clout of the German unions, which hold half of the company’s 20 board seats, means Skoda’s success may be viewed more as a problem than a model to emulate.</p>
<p>The German state of Lower Saxony, which occupies another two board seats, is also preoccupied with preserving VW jobs.</p>
<p>Unease at VW’s Wolfsburg headquarters has been compounded by car reviews in which its models have sometimes lost face to cheaper Skoda cousins sharing the MQB platform.</p>
<p>The new Skoda Kodiaq sports-utility vehicle (SUV) is priced 1,500 euros ($1,765) below the VW Tiguan yet trumped the German brand in a quality survey by Auto Motor und Sport magazine. Skoda’s Superb also drew favorable comparisons with the Passat.</p>
<p>Skoda denies any deliberate encroachment on VW’s turf.</p>
<p>“We mainly attract customers from outside the VW group and that is also our mission,” brand CEO Bernhard Maier told Reuters in a interview.</p>
<p>ELECTRIC FUTURE</p>
<p>Competition for resources among VW brands is nothing new. Unions lobbied for VW to lead development of emerging-market cars, but Skoda was allowed to take charge.</p>
<p>Now the group’s 20 billion euro push to launch 50 electric cars by 2025 has brought tensions to a head as VW managers fear their battery-powered models may also be undercut, people with knowledge of the discussions said.</p>
<p>“The electric vehicle market is a new ball game where you cannot simply maintain the brands’ positioning,” said one. “Customers need to see that you are making changes.”</p>
<p>VW and Skoda both plan to introduce coupe-styled electric SUVs in 2020 boasting the same 500 km (300 mile) range.</p>
<p>Any renegotiation of platform cost-sharing could also affect each brand’s contribution to the new MEB platform being developed for electric cars.</p>
<p>In public, however, VW has played down the rivalry. With a combined lineup approaching 100 vehicles, brand CEO Diess said, there is always some risk of stepping on toes.</p>
<p>“There will always be some substitution,” he told Reuters. “But some internal competition is also helpful.”</p>
<p>($1 = 0.8491 euros)</p> | false | 1 | andreas cremer berlin reuters volkswagen managers unions seeking curb competition lowercost stablemate skoda move production germany make czech brand pay shared technology company sources told reuters vw struggles cut jobs spending german factories turn page dieselgate skodas superior car reviews profitability intensified brands rivalry within volkswagen de empire vw wants curb sees skodas unfair advantages combining german technology cheaper labor reaffirm topselling brands primacy ahead wave new electric car launches sources said tussle vw skoda reviving tensions heart volkswagen group profits jobs central control autonomy 12 vehicle brands instead devoting efforts beating tesla may setting futile internal conflict said one manager butt jokes skoda blossomed 26 years vw group ownership successful midmarket carmaker steadily winning business rivals including vw surpassing even audis operating profit margin last year time vw facing thousands job cuts management moves trim excess capacity german factories powerful domestic unions see skodas success threat potential lifeline vw workers representatives demanding transfer skoda production underused german plants source close supervisory board told reuters proposal aims offset declining output vw passat ageing golf could otherwise threaten jobs also making case skoda pay higher royalties use vws main common vehicle platform socalled mqb architecture also underpins midsized models groups audi seat brands vws works council declined comment vw brand chief executive herbert diess leading parallel management effort shield future vw models direct competition cheaper skodas recent group executive committee meeting diess called greater differentiation vw skoda target markets clientele particularly future electric models three managers knowledge matter said future positioning brands looked discussions still ongoing vw group spokesman said declining comment tension expected rise ahead nov 17 supervisory board session due approve annual investment budgets across worlds biggest carmaker labor advantage skodas operating profit doubled three years 12 billion euros 14 billion 2016 lifting profit margin 87 percent second porsche within volkswagen stable vw brand whose margin dipped 18 percent earnings fell third still outsells skoda globally growing slowly europe skodas healthy profits partly reflect shared car platforms economies scale designed vw engineers germany mqb rolled progressively since 2012 skoda gets boost cheaper labor manufacturing wages average 1010 euros per hour czech republic european cars assembled compared 3870 euros german industry according berlins official statistics office vw group ceo matthias mueller might resolve dispute remains unclear clout german unions hold half companys 20 board seats means skodas success may viewed problem model emulate german state lower saxony occupies another two board seats also preoccupied preserving vw jobs unease vws wolfsburg headquarters compounded car reviews models sometimes lost face cheaper skoda cousins sharing mqb platform new skoda kodiaq sportsutility vehicle suv priced 1500 euros 1765 vw tiguan yet trumped german brand quality survey auto motor und sport magazine skodas superb also drew favorable comparisons passat skoda denies deliberate encroachment vws turf mainly attract customers outside vw group also mission brand ceo bernhard maier told reuters interview electric future competition resources among vw brands nothing new unions lobbied vw lead development emergingmarket cars skoda allowed take charge groups 20 billion euro push launch 50 electric cars 2025 brought tensions head vw managers fear batterypowered models may also undercut people knowledge discussions said electric vehicle market new ball game simply maintain brands positioning said one customers need see making changes vw skoda plan introduce coupestyled electric suvs 2020 boasting 500 km 300 mile range renegotiation platform costsharing could also affect brands contribution new meb platform developed electric cars public however vw played rivalry combined lineup approaching 100 vehicles brand ceo diess said always risk stepping toes always substitution told reuters internal competition also helpful 1 08491 euros | 594 |
<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — 3:05 p.m.</p>
<p>The White House will be releasing a legislative framework on immigration Monday.</p>
<p>That's according to White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders.</p>
<p>Sanders won't say whether that framework will include a pathway to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of young immigrants brought to the country as children and living here illegally.</p>
<p>But she says that it will include specifics on border security and limiting immigrants from sponsoring family members, among other measures,</p>
<p>She says the White House will encourage the Senate to bring the proposal "to the floor."</p>
<p>She adds that: "The president wants to lead on this issue."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>12:40 p.m.</p>
<p>Senators from both parties started a fresh search Wednesday for compromise immigration legislation, but leaders conceded that the effort won't be easy and were already accusing each other of blame should the effort falter.</p>
<p>Around three dozen senators, evenly divided among Republicans and Democrats, planned to meet late Wednesday in what No. 2 Senate GOP leader John Cornyn of Texas said he hoped would "get people thinking about a framework that might actually work." Their goal is to produce a bipartisan package to protect from deportation the "Dreamers" — hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the U.S. illegally after being brought here as children — and to provide billions to toughen border security.</p>
<p>"We cannot let those who are anti-immigrant, who call giving the Dreamers hope 'amnesty,' block us. Because then we will fail, and it will be on the other side of the aisle that made that happen," said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.</p>
<p>Schumer spoke about 12 hours after President Donald Trump put the onus on Schumer.</p>
<p>"Cryin' Chuck Schumer fully understands, especially after his humiliating defeat, that if there is no Wall, there is no DACA," the president tweeted late Tuesday, using the acronym for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has allowed the roughly 700,000 immigrants to remain in the country. "We must have safety and security, together with a strong Military, for our great people!"</p>
<p>Schumer said Tuesday that he'd pulled back an offer of $25 billion for Trump's long-promised border wall with Mexico. An aide said Schumer had actually withdrawn the offer Sunday night after it became clear that there would be no quick compromise on protecting the Dreamers.</p>
<p>Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said if senators cannot produce a compromise plan by Feb. 8 — which both sides' leaders have said will be difficult — he will begin debating immigration legislation in a debate that will be "fair to all sides." That suggests that both parties would be allowed to offer amendments.</p>
<p>While Cornyn said he hoped the bipartisan group of senators will produce a measure that can pass the Senate, he said, "It would also have to get the president's support eventually. Because without his support, I don't think it would pass the House of Representatives," which has more conservative views on the topic.</p>
<p>Feb. 8 is the date legislation expires that reopened the government after a three-day shutdown, which began after Democrats demanded movement toward an immigration deal as the price for financing federal agencies.</p>
<p>That has made Feb. 8 the next pressure point for reaching an immigration deal.</p>
<p>But Republicans say a resolution to the issue can wait until March 5. Trump last year announced that he was ending the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, but gave Congress until March 5 to come up with a legislative fix.</p>
<p>The shutdown battle — settled mostly on Trump's terms — complicated the already difficult search for an immigration pact: GOP hard-liners appeared emboldened, while Democrats absorbed withering criticism from progressives. Neither development seemed likely to push the combatants toward the compromises needed to produce a bill that can pass both the tea party-driven House and the more pragmatic Senate.</p>
<p>Even if the Senate can come up with the votes to pass a plan, Democrats fear there is little chance such a bill would gain the support of House Republicans.</p>
<p>"There were no commitments made in the House" as legislators worked to end the government shutdown, House GOP Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana said Monday, warning against any "amnesty" measure.</p>
<p>Trump weighed in earlier Tuesday via Twitter: "Nobody knows for sure that the Republicans &amp; Democrats will be able to reach a deal on DACA by February 8, but everyone will be trying....with a big additional focus put on Military Strength and Border Security. The Dems have just learned that a Shutdown is not the answer!"</p>
<p>Cornyn said Schumer had promised $25 billion for the wall and other border security measures, though not all of that would have been immediate funding. He called Schumer's withdrawal of the offer "a step backward."</p>
<p>It remained unclear precisely who was taking the lead in the negotiating.</p>
<p>"If you had a tattoo for every group that's forming, you'd have an arm full of them," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who was working to bring together a new bipartisan group of senators to reach an agreement.</p>
<p>On the House side, the Republican Study Committee, a group of more than 150 lawmakers, announced its support for a bill written by Reps. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., Raúl Labrador, R-Idaho, and Michael McCaul, R-Texas. Their plan would offer DACA recipients a three-year renewal of legal status, allowing them to continue to live and work in the country with no special path to citizenship. It also contains a host of stringent features that are anathema to Democrats, including reducing legal immigration by 25 percent, adding border patrol agents and denying certain funding to cities that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.</p>
<p>The White House endorsed that bill, and it appeared to be gaining traction among conservatives. NumbersUSA, a group that advocates for reduced immigration, announcing its support Tuesday.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press writer Luis Alonso Lugo contributed to this report.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow Taylor and Colvin on Twitter at https://twitter.com/APAndrewTaylor and https://twitter.com/colvinj</p> | false | 1 | washington ap 305 pm white house releasing legislative framework immigration monday thats according white house spokeswoman sarah huckabee sanders sanders wont say whether framework include pathway citizenship hundreds thousands young immigrants brought country children living illegally says include specifics border security limiting immigrants sponsoring family members among measures says white house encourage senate bring proposal floor adds president wants lead issue ___ 1240 pm senators parties started fresh search wednesday compromise immigration legislation leaders conceded effort wont easy already accusing blame effort falter around three dozen senators evenly divided among republicans democrats planned meet late wednesday 2 senate gop leader john cornyn texas said hoped would get people thinking framework might actually work goal produce bipartisan package protect deportation dreamers hundreds thousands immigrants us illegally brought children provide billions toughen border security let antiimmigrant call giving dreamers hope amnesty block us fail side aisle made happen said senate minority leader chuck schumer dny schumer spoke 12 hours president donald trump put onus schumer cryin chuck schumer fully understands especially humiliating defeat wall daca president tweeted late tuesday using acronym deferred action childhood arrivals program allowed roughly 700000 immigrants remain country must safety security together strong military great people schumer said tuesday hed pulled back offer 25 billion trumps longpromised border wall mexico aide said schumer actually withdrawn offer sunday night became clear would quick compromise protecting dreamers senate minority leader mitch mcconnell rky said senators produce compromise plan feb 8 sides leaders said difficult begin debating immigration legislation debate fair sides suggests parties would allowed offer amendments cornyn said hoped bipartisan group senators produce measure pass senate said would also get presidents support eventually without support dont think would pass house representatives conservative views topic feb 8 date legislation expires reopened government threeday shutdown began democrats demanded movement toward immigration deal price financing federal agencies made feb 8 next pressure point reaching immigration deal republicans say resolution issue wait march 5 trump last year announced ending obamaera deferred action childhood arrivals program daca gave congress march 5 come legislative fix shutdown battle settled mostly trumps terms complicated already difficult search immigration pact gop hardliners appeared emboldened democrats absorbed withering criticism progressives neither development seemed likely push combatants toward compromises needed produce bill pass tea partydriven house pragmatic senate even senate come votes pass plan democrats fear little chance bill would gain support house republicans commitments made house legislators worked end government shutdown house gop whip steve scalise louisiana said monday warning amnesty measure trump weighed earlier tuesday via twitter nobody knows sure republicans amp democrats able reach deal daca february 8 everyone tryingwith big additional focus put military strength border security dems learned shutdown answer cornyn said schumer promised 25 billion wall border security measures though would immediate funding called schumers withdrawal offer step backward remained unclear precisely taking lead negotiating tattoo every group thats forming youd arm full said sen lindsey graham rsc working bring together new bipartisan group senators reach agreement house side republican study committee group 150 lawmakers announced support bill written reps bob goodlatte rva raúl labrador ridaho michael mccaul rtexas plan would offer daca recipients threeyear renewal legal status allowing continue live work country special path citizenship also contains host stringent features anathema democrats including reducing legal immigration 25 percent adding border patrol agents denying certain funding cities refuse cooperate federal immigration authorities white house endorsed bill appeared gaining traction among conservatives numbersusa group advocates reduced immigration announcing support tuesday ___ associated press writer luis alonso lugo contributed report ___ follow taylor colvin twitter httpstwittercomapandrewtaylor httpstwittercomcolvinj | 591 |
<p><a href="http://variety.com/t/vanessa-hudgens/" type="external">Vanessa Hudgens</a> didn’t really understand the appeal of <a href="http://variety.com/t/instagram/" type="external">Instagram</a> when it popped up seven years ago. “I remember when <a href="http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/instagram-800-million-mau-1202569870/" type="external">Instagram</a> first came out — I was totally against it,” she says. “I thought, ‘No one wants to see me getting my hair done.’”</p>
<p>Now Hudgens, like many of her celebrity and generational peers, is hooked. The 28-year-old actress connects with more than 27 million fans on Instagram on a near-daily basis, sharing a stream of snippets from her life on the social network. At some point, she says, “I realized I had this direct contact with my fans, to engage them in my life in a way that’s real.”</p>
<p>And she believes Instagram has changed the dynamics of the entertainment biz: “Studios can look at that and see who people are actually engaged with,” says Hudgens. She’s currently shooting <a href="http://variety.com/2017/film/news/vanessa-hudgens-jennifer-lopez-second-act-1202592603/" type="external">romantic comedy “Second Act” starring Jennifer Lopez</a> and the Ken Marino-directed comedy pic “Dog Days.”</p>
<p>Over the past few years, Facebook-owned Instagram has become the preferred app for many celebrities and digital stars, thanks to the app’s visual-first design, relatively low controversy, and a culture that emphasizes positivity — not to mention Instagram borrowing Snapchat’s popular Stories feature. (See related story, <a href="http://variety.com/2017/digital/features/instagram-ceo-kevin-systrom-1202614763/" type="external">“Instagram CEO Positions His Company as Safer Alternative to Controversial Rivals.”</a>)</p>
<p>It’s where Beyoncé has posted heavily art-directed photos of herself, famously <a href="http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/beyonce-instagram-record-twins-pregnancy-photo-1201975602/" type="external">posing pregnant with twins</a>, and Taylor Swift has surprised unsuspecting fans by lurking on their live video streams before direct-messaging them. Instagram also is the primary outlet for young digital-native stars like <a href="http://variety.com/t/cameron-dallas/" type="external">Cameron Dallas</a> (20.6 million followers) and Lele Pons (19.7 million), who are building their careers with new forms of programming on the platform.</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean they ignore other social networks. But the narrative that emerges is that each platform serves a different strength. Twitter is for news and opinions. Snapchat is for communicating with friends. Facebook is for keeping up with family and friends.</p>
<p>Instagram, on the other hand, is where you follow the people and things you love, according to actors and digital stars.</p>
<p>“Twitter is brains. Instagram is heart,” says <a href="http://variety.com/t/dove-cameron/" type="external">Dove Cameron</a>, star of Disney Channel teen sitcom “Liv and Maddie,” who has 15 million Instagram followers. “Instagram stimulates the creative side of my brain. Even if I weren’t an actor, it would be my primary platform.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BbU4yTmFARY/" type="external">ewww</a></p>
<p>A post shared by ♡DOVE♡ (@dovecameron) on Nov 10, 2017 at 11:24am PST</p>
<p>The camaraderie that exists among Instagram users is unlike any other social network, says <a href="http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/what-to-watch-tv-netflix-cameron-dallas-mick-december-26-schedule-1201947487/" type="external">Cameron Dallas</a>, a top influencer who became famous on Vine. “My fans are engaging with each other on all platforms,” he says, “but I feel like on Instagram they’re able to create a community.”</p>
<p>Unlike YouTube, Instagram doesn’t provide a way for top users to make money from their content directly. “I don’t know that Instagram is a platform we think about for monetization,” says Lisa Filipelli, founder of talent-management firm Flip Management. “It’s a place to connect with people you are following you – it feels authentic and organic.”</p>
<p>But top Instagrammers (as on other platforms) can make big bucks through branded-content deals. “Instagram has become a really critical platform for brands to use for inlfuencer marketing,” says eMarketer analyst&#160;Debra Aho Williamson.</p>
<p>And Instagram is a natural outlet for stars to promote their current projects. Ansel Elgort, star of this summer’s action-thriller hit “Baby Driver,” used Instagram to share photos of himself hanging out with director Edgar Wright; video from the red carpet with Lily James; outtakes from the movie in multiple Instagram Stories; and used Instagram Live to surprise fans in Brazil.&#160;Whether “Baby Driver” burnished Elgort’s image more than the other way around is beside the point: His honestly enthusiastic promotion of the film on Instagram undoubtedly was marketing fuel for the film.</p>
<p>“I can be very genuine on Instagram,” says Elgort, who previously starred in 2014’s “The Fault in Our Stars.” “If I feel like someone’s Instagram isn’t genuine, I don’t follow them.”</p>
<p>To some young movie and TV actors, Instagram is their face to the industry as well as their fans. Kira Kosarin, the 20-year-old star of Nickelodeon’s “The Thundermans,” says her Instagram account (3.1 million followers) has become like her business card.</p>
<p>“When somebody hears my name, they’re probably going to go to my Instagram before they even go to IMDb,” says Kosarin.</p>
<p>Instagram’s addition of Stories, with perishable content that goes away after 24 hours, has been a popular tool, a way for creators to supplement the photos and videos they post that stay up for good.</p>
<p>And by providing more of an all-in-one app, it’s pulled many stars away from Snapchat. Filipelli says that among her talent roster — which&#160;includes Tyler Oakley, Ingrid Nilsen, Amanda Steele, Kian Lawley, and Jc Caylen&#160;— “they’re all either not using Snapchat or barely at all.”</p>
<p>Colleen Ballinger, creator of the odd adolescent YouTube character Miranda Sings and star of Netflix’s “Haters Back Off,” says she used to post frequently on Snapchat. “I was really into Snapchat. I thought it was awesome,” she says. “But what I loved about Snapchat is now on Instagram. Now I can post a photo, story and live-stream, all in one app.”</p>
<p>Hollywood agents and talent say another difference between Instagram and Snapchat is that Instagram is more proactively engaged with its most popular users, with a 30-member team dedicated to reaching out to top Instagrammers. Snapchat is more focused on cutting content deals with media companies rather than promoting creator content, says Shots Studios CEO John Shahidi, who reps influencers including Lele Pons and Rudy Mancusco. “I think Instagram is going to be the only social platform out there for premium user-generated content on mobile,” says Shahidi.</p>
<p>One example of how Instagram has incorporated feedback: Instagram Stories can include links (which aren’t allowed in regular feed posts), so users can drive fans to e-commerce or off-site content. It also created new real estate at the top of the news feed to promote Instagram Stories, helping influencers gain new followers. “Once Instagram started folding in links [in Stories] to swipe up and move off-platform, for verified clients that was a game-changer,”&#160;says Andrew Graham, an agent in CAA’s digital talent and packaging group.</p>
<p>Instagram also got a lift when <a href="http://variety.com/2016/digital/news/twitter-vine-shutting-down-1201902457/" type="external">Twitter announced it was shutting down Vine</a> last year, prompting top Viners to flock to Instagram. And a year ago, Instagram rolled out live-streaming video. “Instagram has the two mediums people want to communicate in: video and static photos,” Graham says. “It’s kind of the killer app.”</p>
<p>Actor Colton Haynes, who has 6.4 million Instagram followers, has a presence on Twitter and Facebook. But he says Instagram is where he shows his true colors. “With my Instagram, I’m very candid — it’s not curated,” he says. It’s a place, he adds, where “you can really gauge how people are feeling.”</p>
<p>Still, Haynes, who currently appears in “American Horror Story: Cult” after roles in “Teen Wolf” and “Arrow,” says he’s not sure whether his social-media status has helped him professionally. “I’ve been hired because of my Instagram… then I’ve gotten cut out of the movie except for one scene,” he says. “It’s disappointing. Some people see you only as big on social media.”</p>
<p>Ross Butler, a former Disney Channel star who appeared in Netflix’s “13 Reasons Why” and “Riverdale” season one, says Instagram is an expression of both his personal and professional lives — that the two go hand in hand. “Obviously, yes, I want people to watch my shows. But if people truly believe in you as an artist then they’ll support you,” he says. Adds Butler, “I play a lot of assholes on TV — and I don’t want people to think that’s how I am in real life.”</p>
<p>Sharing an Instagram post with his 2.4 million followers, says Butler, “speaks 1,000 words” about his personal life, with hobbies that include cooking and board games. Compared with other platforms, “it’s a lot more appealing. You get more instant gratification.”</p>
<p>Pictured above (l. to r.): <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/vanessa-hudgens-so-you-think-you-can-dance-judge-season-14-1202448443/" type="external">Vanessa Hudgens</a>, Cameron Dallas, <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/descendants-2-costumes-video-dove-cameron-sofia-carson-1202503135/" type="external">Dove Cameron</a></p> | false | 1 | vanessa hudgens didnt really understand appeal instagram popped seven years ago remember instagram first came totally says thought one wants see getting hair done hudgens like many celebrity generational peers hooked 28yearold actress connects 27 million fans instagram neardaily basis sharing stream snippets life social network point says realized direct contact fans engage life way thats real believes instagram changed dynamics entertainment biz studios look see people actually engaged says hudgens shes currently shooting romantic comedy second act starring jennifer lopez ken marinodirected comedy pic dog days past years facebookowned instagram become preferred app many celebrities digital stars thanks apps visualfirst design relatively low controversy culture emphasizes positivity mention instagram borrowing snapchats popular stories feature see related story instagram ceo positions company safer alternative controversial rivals beyoncé posted heavily artdirected photos famously posing pregnant twins taylor swift surprised unsuspecting fans lurking live video streams directmessaging instagram also primary outlet young digitalnative stars like cameron dallas 206 million followers lele pons 197 million building careers new forms programming platform doesnt mean ignore social networks narrative emerges platform serves different strength twitter news opinions snapchat communicating friends facebook keeping family friends instagram hand follow people things love according actors digital stars twitter brains instagram heart says dove cameron star disney channel teen sitcom liv maddie 15 million instagram followers instagram stimulates creative side brain even werent actor would primary platform ewww post shared dove dovecameron nov 10 2017 1124am pst camaraderie exists among instagram users unlike social network says cameron dallas top influencer became famous vine fans engaging platforms says feel like instagram theyre able create community unlike youtube instagram doesnt provide way top users make money content directly dont know instagram platform think monetization says lisa filipelli founder talentmanagement firm flip management place connect people following feels authentic organic top instagrammers platforms make big bucks brandedcontent deals instagram become really critical platform brands use inlfuencer marketing says emarketer analyst160debra aho williamson instagram natural outlet stars promote current projects ansel elgort star summers actionthriller hit baby driver used instagram share photos hanging director edgar wright video red carpet lily james outtakes movie multiple instagram stories used instagram live surprise fans brazil160whether baby driver burnished elgorts image way around beside point honestly enthusiastic promotion film instagram undoubtedly marketing fuel film genuine instagram says elgort previously starred 2014s fault stars feel like someones instagram isnt genuine dont follow young movie tv actors instagram face industry well fans kira kosarin 20yearold star nickelodeons thundermans says instagram account 31 million followers become like business card somebody hears name theyre probably going go instagram even go imdb says kosarin instagrams addition stories perishable content goes away 24 hours popular tool way creators supplement photos videos post stay good providing allinone app pulled many stars away snapchat filipelli says among talent roster which160includes tyler oakley ingrid nilsen amanda steele kian lawley jc caylen160 theyre either using snapchat barely colleen ballinger creator odd adolescent youtube character miranda sings star netflixs haters back says used post frequently snapchat really snapchat thought awesome says loved snapchat instagram post photo story livestream one app hollywood agents talent say another difference instagram snapchat instagram proactively engaged popular users 30member team dedicated reaching top instagrammers snapchat focused cutting content deals media companies rather promoting creator content says shots studios ceo john shahidi reps influencers including lele pons rudy mancusco think instagram going social platform premium usergenerated content mobile says shahidi one example instagram incorporated feedback instagram stories include links arent allowed regular feed posts users drive fans ecommerce offsite content also created new real estate top news feed promote instagram stories helping influencers gain new followers instagram started folding links stories swipe move offplatform verified clients gamechanger160says andrew graham agent caas digital talent packaging group instagram also got lift twitter announced shutting vine last year prompting top viners flock instagram year ago instagram rolled livestreaming video instagram two mediums people want communicate video static photos graham says kind killer app actor colton haynes 64 million instagram followers presence twitter facebook says instagram shows true colors instagram im candid curated says place adds really gauge people feeling still haynes currently appears american horror story cult roles teen wolf arrow says hes sure whether socialmedia status helped professionally ive hired instagram ive gotten cut movie except one scene says disappointing people see big social media ross butler former disney channel star appeared netflixs 13 reasons riverdale season one says instagram expression personal professional lives two go hand hand obviously yes want people watch shows people truly believe artist theyll support says adds butler play lot assholes tv dont want people think thats real life sharing instagram post 24 million followers says butler speaks 1000 words personal life hobbies include cooking board games compared platforms lot appealing get instant gratification pictured l r vanessa hudgens cameron dallas dove cameron | 802 |
<p>Netflix is losing some fantastic titles in January, but there are a handful of old friends returning like "Apollo 13," "Breakfast at Tiffany's," "The Shawshank Redemption" and franchises like Batman, Bring It On, Lethal Weapon and The Godfather, <a href="http://kutv.com/news/entertainment/coming-to-netflix-january-2018" type="external">our affiliate KUTV reported</a>.</p>
<p>Here are five other titles coming to Netflix in January:</p>
<p>'Monsters vs. Aliens'</p>
<p>I'm more than a little surprised that "Monsters Vs. Aliens" has a Metascore of 56. I love the B-movie elements as the story pits a giant woman and a team of monsters against an invading alien army. Voice talent includes Reese Witherspoon, Seth Rogen, Hugh Laurie and Will Arnett. It's not high art, but it is fun art.</p>
<p>'Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales'</p>
<p>When I find myself talking about " <a href="http://kutv.com/news/entertainment/pirates-tells-a-familiar-tale" type="external">Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales</a>," I've come to accept that I'm sending mixed messages. On one hand, the film is my second favorite in the franchise. On the other hand, it really isn't that great of a film as it stretches its action sequences to the point that they lose all sense of thrill or adventure. A tighter edit might have made this romp more enjoyable. The lovely thing about Netflix is that you can dive in, test out the water and stay if you find yourself to be entertained. (Available 1/2/18)</p>
<p>'The Conjuring'</p>
<p>"The Conjuring" is one of the better horror films from the past decade. It is built on an old-school aesthetic that relies less on CGI or jump scares and more on atmosphere, storytelling, solid direction and strong performances from Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson. Director James Wan isn't the most flashy of directors, but when it comes to horror he is certainly one of the best. (Available 1/8/18)</p>
<p>'Dallas Buyers Club'</p>
<p>AIDS in the 1980s was a terrifying thing. I was just a child working his way up to his teens, but I watch a ton of morning news and was aware of many of the issues. Still, I didn't comprehend the incredibly slow FDA process that essentially gave those with the disease no other option than to try and find access to experimental drugs. "The Dallas Buyers Club" is about Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey), a man diagnosedwith AIDS who becomes increasingly frustrated by his lack of treatment options that he begins to explore less-than-legal avenues to get treatment for himself and those in similar situations. (Available 1/16/18)</p>
<p>Disney·Pixar 'Cars 3'</p>
<p>A complete list of titles coming to Netflix in January 2018</p>
<p>Available 1/1/1810,000 B.C.30 Days of NightAge Of ShadowsAlphaGoAmerica's SweetheartsApollo 13BatmanBatman &amp; RobinBatman BeginsBatman ForeverBatman ReturnsBreakfast at Tiffany'sBring It OnBring It On AgainBring It On: All or NothingBring It On: Fight to the FinishBring It On: In It to Win ItCaddyshackChef &amp; My Fridge: 2017DefianceDefinitely, MaybeEastsiders: Season 3Furry VengeanceGlacé: Season 1-- NETFLIX ORIGINALHow to Lose a Guy in 10 DaysJustin Bieber: Never Say Never|King KongLethal WeaponLethal Weapon 2Lethal Weapon 3Lethal Weapon 4License to WedLike Water for ChocolateLove Actually|Lovesick: Season 3-- NETFLIX ORIGINALMaddman: The Steve Madden StoryMarie AntoinetteMartin Luther: The Idea that Changed the WorldMidnight in ParisMonsters vs. AliensNational TreasureSharknado 5: Global SwarmingStardustStrictly BallroomThe Dukes of HazzardThe Exorcism of Emily RoseThe First TimeThe GodfatherThe Godfather: Part IIThe Godfather: Part IIIThe Italian JobThe Lovely BonesThe Shawshank RedemptionThe Truman ShowThe VaultTraining DayTreasures From The Wreck Of The UnbelievableTroyWedding CrashersWilly Wonka &amp; the Chocolate Factory</p>
<p>Available 1/2/18Mustang IslandDisney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No TalesRent</p>
<p>Available 1/5/18Before I Wake-- NETFLIX ORIGINALComedians in Cars Getting Coffee-- NETFLIX ORIGINALDEVILMAN crybaby: Season 1-- NETFLIX ORIGINALRotten-- NETFLIX ORIGINAL</p>
<p>Available 1/6/18Episodes: Season 1-5</p>
<p>Available 1/8/18The Conjuring</p>
<p>Available 1/10/1847 Meters DownAlejandro Riaño Especial de stand up-- NETFLIX ORIGINALCaptain Underpants: The First Epic MovieIn The Deep</p>
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<p>Thanks to Donald Trump, American elites are finally paying attention to blue-collar, white America. They do not like what they see.</p>
<p>Racist. Bigoted. Irrational. Angry. How many times have you read or heard one or more of these words used to describe Trump’s followers? Whether they are the academic, media, and entertainment elites of the Left or the political and business elites of the Right, America’s self-appointed best and brightest uniformly view the passions unleashed by Trump as the modern-day equivalent of a medieval peasants’ revolt. And, like their medieval forebears, they mean to crush it.</p>
<p>That effort is both a fool’s errand for the country and a poisoned chalice for conservatives and Republicans. It is foolish because the reasons the peasants are revolting will not fade easily. Ignoring and ridiculing their concerns, the way European elites have done with their own electorates for most of the last two decades, will simply intensify the masses’ rage and ensure that their political spokesmen become more intransigent and radical. If you want an American version of Marine Le Pen tomorrow, ignore the legitimate concerns of blue-collar Americans today.</p>
<p>And it is a poisoned chalice for the Right because such a strategy requires a permanent informal coalition with the Left. Keeping blue-collar white Americans out of political power will result in exactly what Washington elites have wanted for years: a series of grand bargains that keep the status quo largely intact and the Democratic party in power.</p>
<p>Conservative Republicans have fought for 60 years to build a coalition that not only will tell history to stop, but will also channel it in a new direction, a direction in which freedom flourishes and America and her values reign over a peaceful and prosperous globe. The constituency that is rallying to Trump is not fully conservative, but it shares more values with conservatives than do any of the other constituencies that could possibly be enticed to join our cause. It is thus imperative that conservatives understand what these fellow citizens want and find ways to make common cause with them where we can.</p>
<p>Blue-collar whites traditionally have been animated by the sense that government ought to be on the side of the little guy. They formed the backbone of the Democratic party during its New Deal/Great Society heyday, enthusiastically supporting a party that aided labor unions, created Social Security and Medicare, and expanded educational opportunities. While they no longer think of themselves as Democrats, they have not abandoned either these sentiments or the promises that these programs originally offered. Their openness to the Right is predicated on the Right’s guaranteeing that these advances will not be undone.</p>
<p>Patriotism has also been a blue-collar-white staple for decades. Blue-collar whites may not be particularly hawkish (their sons and daughters are often our “boots on the ground”), but they are not isolationist or pacifist, either. They are proud of America, favor effective measures to protect our security, and do not like to see America humiliated by her enemies.</p>
<p>Blue-collar whites remain more friendly to traditional religion than other, more educated groups but are not as motivated by social issues as they were 30 to 40 years ago. Whites without a college degree who remain motivated by these issues are already staunch Republicans. Those who remain independent tend to be open to candidates’ espousing traditional social values but do not prioritize those values highly when choosing whom to vote for.</p>
<p>Today these voters are most animated by a sense that they are being left behind by a changing America. They have good reason to think so: Americans with less than a college education have seen their incomes stagnate or decline for more than 15 years. Inflation-adjusted median incomes peaked for these men and women in 1999, during the Clinton administration (expect to hear a lot about that if Hillary is the Democratic nominee). Neither the Bush nor the Obama years have been good for them.</p>
<p>This has not made them want to overhaul America’s private sector. Polls show that blue-collar whites still believe in free enterprise and distrust government solutions. They do not believe, however, that the current economy is serving them well.</p>
<p>These developments have led them to be among the most pessimistic of all American voter groups. Pew Research broke the American electorate into eight groups in 2014, and the one that contains blue-collar white swing voters — “Hard-Pressed Skeptics” — was solidly down on their own future and on America’s. Sixty-one percent said America’s best years are behind us, and 65 percent said that hard work and determination are no guarantee of success.</p>
<p>These voters also do not trust either Wall Street or the American economy more generally to provide for their future. Seventy-four percent say that our economy unfairly favors powerful interests, and 54 percent say Wall Street hurts America’s economy. In each case, only “Solid Liberals” expressed more negative, anti-business views.</p>
<p>Trump’s opposition to immigration and suspicion of free trade have been his calling cards so far, so it should be no surprise to find that blue-collar white independent voters share his views. The Pew study found that 79 percent think immigrants are a burden on the country and 44 percent think free-trade agreements are bad for America. These voters have been hit hard by competition from foreigners, whether those foreigners live abroad (free trade) or at home (immigrants), and they want protection — now.</p>
<p>Blue-collar whites are also more open to government action than many movement conservatives. For example, 87 percent of “Steadfast Conservatives,” Pew’s term for movement conservatives, think government is doing too much that should be left to individuals and businesses; only 44 percent of Hard-Pressed Skeptics agree. Sixty percent of Hard-Pressed Skeptics think government aid to the poor does more good than harm; only 10 percent of Steadfast Conservatives agree. Seventy-nine percent of Hard-Pressed Skeptics say that cuts to Social Security benefits should be off the table. Clearly a campaign based on cutting food stamps and reforming entitlements will not resonate with blue-collar whites.</p>
<p>One might wonder whether meeting these voters halfway is worth it. But there is no alternative: All other voter groups who might be open to voting for a Republican nominee are farther to the left and oppose conservative consensus on key matters of principle.</p>
<p>Hispanics, for example, strongly favor government intervention in the economy. The Public Religion Research Institute has found that Hispanics favor raising taxes and increasing spending on education and infrastructure by a nearly two-to-one margin over cutting taxes and letting business grow. Upper-income young whites, whom Pew calls the “Next Generation Left,” favor free trade and low taxes but are highly secular and green, opposing the traditional definition of marriage and favoring greenhouse-gas-emission controls. These voters will vote for Republicans, but only for moderates such as former New York governor George Pataki or former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Building a working coalition by focusing on either of these groups, as many in the GOP establishment favor, would trigger a civil war within conservatism.</p>
<p>Winning the support of blue-collar voters means gaining their trust, and that means first affirming the core elements of their worldview. They have to believe that the GOP nominee understands that they have been the losers in the transition to a modern economy. They have to believe that the nominee will be on their side when the chips are down and that he is willing to take on the powerful. A nominee who appears ignorant of or callous toward these views, such as Mitt Romney, will be rejected as long as the Democratic nominee seems marginally acceptable.</p>
<p>This means that they will demand, at a minimum, some form of immigration restriction. America undoubtedly needs some immigrants to fuel its economic growth, especially since the native-born work force is aging. But “open borders” as an end goal of immigration reform will simply not fly with these voters.</p>
<p>The nominee should be guided by the principle “All the immigrants we need, but only the immigrants we need.” That means he or she should favor getting control of our borders and enforcing requirements to give American citizens priority for job openings. It may also mean reforms that help citizens move in search of work. Low-skilled, native-born Americans tend to stay in place when jobs leave their communities, a choice partially subsidized by a host of well-meaning government programs that allow them to get by without moving. Reforming these programs to encourage Americans to move where the jobs are will lower the demand for immigration and give blue-collar Americans of all races the help they need to get back on the ladder to self-sufficiency.</p>
<p>Addressing the downside of free trade is also key to winning these voters. Restricting trade itself is not a good idea, since trade creates jobs that these voters need. But free-trade competition places downward pressure on the wages and compensation of low-skilled workers. A GOP nominee who wants to attract these voters must embrace an economic policy that creates high-paying jobs that people with high-school educations can do.</p>
<p>This will require more than simply lowering corporate tax rates to encourage business investment, although it certainly does require that. It will require more than making it easier to produce oil, natural gas, and other natural resources that create good jobs for people with moderate levels of formal education. Ideally, it will involve enacting some policies that favor or subsidize high-paying jobs in America.</p>
<p>That could take many forms, but Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s tax reforms give some idea of what one can do. He has not cut corporate tax rates in Wisconsin. Instead, he has enacted two tax credits that reward businesses for jobs they create and for in-state business activity. Federal corporate tax credits for companies that create jobs in America, and perhaps for companies that increase employee compensation beyond the rate of inflation, would show blue-collar Americans that the government is working for them.</p>
<p>Blue-collar voters also need to know that “playing by the rules” will be rewarded, not punished. Some of the major objections they have to immigration and trade arise from the fact that our government looks the other way at cheating when it comes to foreigners (e.g., Chinese currency manipulation and businesses’ hiring illegal immigrants) but rigorously enforces the rules when it comes to Americans. To blue-collar whites, “working hard and playing by the rules” is a core value; a government that doesn’t share it is one that earns scorn and merits disgust. A GOP nominee who wants to win these voters over will have to show he is serious about creating economic rules that don’t disfavor American workers and will be enforced.</p>
<p>It is also possible to find common ground with these voters on tax policy. They will support tax cuts for everyone, even the “top 1 percent,” but they will not support tax cuts that seem unduly to favor the already well-to-do. This is a problem for most Republican candidates, because they have already endorsed tax policies that embrace the supply-side view that the best way to grow the economy is to cut taxes for the highest earners.</p>
<p>A politically ideal tax policy would look less like what is on offer now and more like what has worked for Governors Walker and Kasich (Ohio). Both Walker and Kasich have cut tax rates for all, but their cuts are much smaller than those that the other major candidates have proposed. Each of their state tax-cut plans also includes elements that backload the cuts in favor of working-class households — in Kasich’s case, an increase in the earned-income tax credit, and larger rate cuts for lower income brackets in Walker’s. A politically ideal tax plan would adopt similar approaches.</p>
<p>A bold nominee might even want to propose exempting the first $20,000 in wages from the Medicaid payroll tax, which would lower the cost of hiring a new employee and nearly eliminate this tax for most households earning less than the median income. This exemption would apply to all workers, so higher-income taxpayers would see their taxes cut too; but it would apply equally to all rather than give a greater benefit to people who are already doing well. It would be a federal version of the across-the-board property-tax cuts that Scott Walker has enacted with great success, cuts that benefit all and give equal treatment to people in all income brackets.</p>
<p>The same basic approach extends to a host of other issues. Higher education, for example, costs so much because academic elites keep out competitors and prop up tenured faculty who teach and publish very little. Deregulation and tying federal student aid to keeping tuition increases at or below inflation will give blue-collar students the education they want at a price they can afford.</p>
<p>Obamacare should be repealed and replaced, but with an eye more on how its replacement will work in practice than on how it looks in theory. That means designing a plan that subsidizes private-sector coverage and deregulates health-insurance and health-care markets to incentivize the private sector to deliver care more efficiently.</p>
<p>Conservatives can achieve all this while advancing freedom and opportunity. Ronald Reagan built his career on that understanding. Writing in these pages in December 1964, he asserted that conservatives “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 free lunch.’” Reagan spent the rest of his career representing that soul, and in so doing created the modern conservative movement and changed the world. We who stand on his shoulders would do well to readopt the sentiments that allowed him to attract the blue-collar Reagan Democrats and remake his coalition in our times.</p>
<p>– Henry&#160;Olsen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. This article originally appeared in the January 25, 2016, issue of National Review.</p> | false | 1 | thanks donald trump american elites finally paying attention bluecollar white america like see racist bigoted irrational angry many times read heard one words used describe trumps followers whether academic media entertainment elites left political business elites right americas selfappointed best brightest uniformly view passions unleashed trump modernday equivalent medieval peasants revolt like medieval forebears mean crush effort fools errand country poisoned chalice conservatives republicans foolish reasons peasants revolting fade easily ignoring ridiculing concerns way european elites done electorates last two decades simply intensify masses rage ensure political spokesmen become intransigent radical want american version marine le pen tomorrow ignore legitimate concerns bluecollar americans today poisoned chalice right strategy requires permanent informal coalition left keeping bluecollar white americans political power result exactly washington elites wanted years series grand bargains keep status quo largely intact democratic party power conservative republicans fought 60 years build coalition tell history stop also channel new direction direction freedom flourishes america values reign peaceful prosperous globe constituency rallying trump fully conservative shares values conservatives constituencies could possibly enticed join cause thus imperative conservatives understand fellow citizens want find ways make common cause bluecollar whites traditionally animated sense government ought side little guy formed backbone democratic party new dealgreat society heyday enthusiastically supporting party aided labor unions created social security medicare expanded educational opportunities longer think democrats abandoned either sentiments promises programs originally offered openness right predicated rights guaranteeing advances undone patriotism also bluecollarwhite staple decades bluecollar whites may particularly hawkish sons daughters often boots ground isolationist pacifist either proud america favor effective measures protect security like see america humiliated enemies bluecollar whites remain friendly traditional religion educated groups motivated social issues 30 40 years ago whites without college degree remain motivated issues already staunch republicans remain independent tend open candidates espousing traditional social values prioritize values highly choosing vote today voters animated sense left behind changing america good reason think americans less college education seen incomes stagnate decline 15 years inflationadjusted median incomes peaked men women 1999 clinton administration expect hear lot hillary democratic nominee neither bush obama years good made want overhaul americas private sector polls show bluecollar whites still believe free enterprise distrust government solutions believe however current economy serving well developments led among pessimistic american voter groups pew research broke american electorate eight groups 2014 one contains bluecollar white swing voters hardpressed skeptics solidly future americas sixtyone percent said americas best years behind us 65 percent said hard work determination guarantee success voters also trust either wall street american economy generally provide future seventyfour percent say economy unfairly favors powerful interests 54 percent say wall street hurts americas economy case solid liberals expressed negative antibusiness views trumps opposition immigration suspicion free trade calling cards far surprise find bluecollar white independent voters share views pew study found 79 percent think immigrants burden country 44 percent think freetrade agreements bad america voters hit hard competition foreigners whether foreigners live abroad free trade home immigrants want protection bluecollar whites also open government action many movement conservatives example 87 percent steadfast conservatives pews term movement conservatives think government much left individuals businesses 44 percent hardpressed skeptics agree sixty percent hardpressed skeptics think government aid poor good harm 10 percent steadfast conservatives agree seventynine percent hardpressed skeptics say cuts social security benefits table clearly campaign based cutting food stamps reforming entitlements resonate bluecollar whites one might wonder whether meeting voters halfway worth alternative voter groups might open voting republican nominee farther left oppose conservative consensus key matters principle hispanics example strongly favor government intervention economy public religion research institute found hispanics favor raising taxes increasing spending education infrastructure nearly twotoone margin cutting taxes letting business grow upperincome young whites pew calls next generation left favor free trade low taxes highly secular green opposing traditional definition marriage favoring greenhousegasemission controls voters vote republicans moderates former new york governor george pataki former california governor arnold schwarzenegger building working coalition focusing either groups many gop establishment favor would trigger civil war within conservatism winning support bluecollar voters means gaining trust means first affirming core elements worldview believe gop nominee understands losers transition modern economy believe nominee side chips willing take powerful nominee appears ignorant callous toward views mitt romney rejected long democratic nominee seems marginally acceptable means demand minimum form immigration restriction america undoubtedly needs immigrants fuel economic growth especially since nativeborn work force aging open borders end goal immigration reform simply fly voters nominee guided principle immigrants need immigrants need means favor getting control borders enforcing requirements give american citizens priority job openings may also mean reforms help citizens move search work lowskilled nativeborn americans tend stay place jobs leave communities choice partially subsidized host wellmeaning government programs allow get without moving reforming programs encourage americans move jobs lower demand immigration give bluecollar americans races help need get back ladder selfsufficiency addressing downside free trade also key winning voters restricting trade good idea since trade creates jobs voters need freetrade competition places downward pressure wages compensation lowskilled workers gop nominee wants attract voters must embrace economic policy creates highpaying jobs people highschool educations require simply lowering corporate tax rates encourage business investment although certainly require require making easier produce oil natural gas natural resources create good jobs people moderate levels formal education ideally involve enacting policies favor subsidize highpaying jobs america could take many forms wisconsin governor scott walkers tax reforms give idea one cut corporate tax rates wisconsin instead enacted two tax credits reward businesses jobs create instate business activity federal corporate tax credits companies create jobs america perhaps companies increase employee compensation beyond rate inflation would show bluecollar americans government working bluecollar voters also need know playing rules rewarded punished major objections immigration trade arise fact government looks way cheating comes foreigners eg chinese currency manipulation businesses hiring illegal immigrants rigorously enforces rules comes americans bluecollar whites working hard playing rules core value government doesnt share one earns scorn merits disgust gop nominee wants win voters show serious creating economic rules dont disfavor american workers enforced also possible find common ground voters tax policy support tax cuts everyone even top 1 percent support tax cuts seem unduly favor already welltodo problem republican candidates already endorsed tax policies embrace supplyside view best way grow economy cut taxes highest earners politically ideal tax policy would look less like offer like worked governors walker kasich ohio walker kasich cut tax rates cuts much smaller major candidates proposed state taxcut plans also includes elements backload cuts favor workingclass households kasichs case increase earnedincome tax credit larger rate cuts lower income brackets walkers politically ideal tax plan would adopt similar approaches bold nominee might even want propose exempting first 20000 wages medicaid payroll tax would lower cost hiring new employee nearly eliminate tax households earning less median income exemption would apply workers higherincome taxpayers would see taxes cut would apply equally rather give greater benefit people already well would federal version acrosstheboard propertytax cuts scott walker enacted great success cuts benefit give equal treatment people income brackets basic approach extends host issues higher education example costs much academic elites keep competitors prop tenured faculty teach publish little deregulation tying federal student aid keeping tuition increases inflation give bluecollar students education want price afford obamacare repealed replaced eye replacement work practice looks theory means designing plan subsidizes privatesector coverage deregulates healthinsurance healthcare markets incentivize private sector deliver care efficiently conservatives achieve advancing freedom opportunity ronald reagan built career understanding writing pages december 1964 asserted conservatives represent forgotten american simple soul goes work bucks raise takes insurance pays kids schooling contributes church charity knows aint thing free lunch reagan spent rest career representing soul created modern conservative movement changed world stand shoulders would well readopt sentiments allowed attract bluecollar reagan democrats remake coalition times henry160olsen senior fellow ethics public policy center article originally appeared january 25 2016 issue national review | 1,304 |
<p>By Rania El Gamal and Alex Lawler</p>
<p>DUBAI/LONDON (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia’s plans to float state oil titan Aramco are prompting the country to think the unthinkable.</p>
<p>Late last year, Saudi Arabia tried to get fellow oil producers around the world to agree to reduce production. Before an OPEC meeting in Vienna in November, Saudi officials were armed with an unprecedented bargaining chip: if there was no deal, the kingdom would quit the exporter group altogether.</p>
<p>The strategy was approved at the highest level of the Saudi government, said sources familiar with the matter.</p>
<p>It was not only aimed at ensuring the smooth workings of the world’s energy supply. It was also driven by a desire to push up oil prices to maximize the valuation of Saudi Aramco ahead of the listing, said the sources who declined to be named as the information is confidential.</p>
<p>In the end, the world’s biggest oil exporter did not have to enact that option. OPEC members along with non-OPEC producers including Russia agreed a deal in December to cut output by about 1.8 million barrels per day.</p>
<p>But the fact such a move was considered shows how Aramco’s initial public offering (IPO) – expected to be the biggest in history – is forcing the kingdom to rethink its OPEC policies.</p>
<p>Riyadh’s stance represented a shift, OPEC sources said, from its decades-old role of advocating restraint and seeking to convince fellow members like Algeria, Venezuela and Iran that prices rising too fast benefited alternative energy providers.</p>
<p>“Saudi Arabia is now the main price hawk,” said a high-level OPEC source. He added he was surprised how quickly the kingdom shifted from its policy of prioritizing market share, by pumping oil at full tilt, to supporting production cuts following its decision to list Aramco.</p>
<p>The Saudi energy ministry and OPEC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.</p>
<p>The IPO also raises questions over Saudi Arabia’s future role in OPEC, as the kingdom would become the only member with a national oil firm listed abroad. That in turn raises questions over the future of OPEC itself given the kingdom has been the group’s driving force since its inception almost 60 years ago.</p>
<p>Until now, Aramco – which oversees Saudi Arabia’s vast reserves – has always been a tool in the country’s OPEC policies, to reduce or increase production.</p>
<p>Once a stake in Aramco is floated, however, the company will have to take into account the interests of outside investors, according to industry sources.</p>
<p>Listing rules and anti-trust legislation, particularly in the United States, also preclude price-fixing, which Aramco could be accused of if it continued to follow Saudi Arabia’s OPEC policy of adjusting output to manage prices, the sources said.</p>
<p>“Aramco is the instrument used to manage the market even though its not involved in making the policy,” said Fareed Mohamedi, chief economist at U.S.-based Rapidan Group.</p>
<p>Saudi Aramco declined to comment on the potential risks of investors suing it post-IPO if it followed Saudi OPEC policies.</p>
<p>NORWEGIAN PATH</p>
<p>Saudi authorities aim to list around 5 percent of Aramco by the end of 2018 on both the Riyadh stock exchange and one or more international markets, with London, New York and Hong Kong in the running.</p>
<p>The IPO is the centerpiece of Vision 2030, an ambitious reform plan to diversify the Saudi economy beyond oil which is championed by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.</p>
<p>The prince has said he expects the IPO to value Aramco at a minimum of $2 trillion, and Saudi officials and investors say the valuation will be directly impacted by oil prices.</p>
<p>Saudi officials have said they want to see $60 per barrel this year, with banking sources suggesting the IPO might be timed to happen with crude trading at $60-$70 per barrel. Prices have been around $50 for most of this year and were above $58 this week.</p>
<p>Listing its national oil firm represents unknown territory for Saudi Arabia and OPEC. But Norway, which has listed its state oil company Statoil (OL:), might offer some guide to the path ahead.</p>
<p>The Nordic nation, which still owns 67 percent of the oil firm, has refrained from joining any international steps in regulating oil output since 2002, months after listing in New York and Oslo in 2001.</p>
<p>Over the past year, Saudi officials have met officials from Norway and Statoil to discuss how best to restructure Aramco’s business operations ahead of the IPO, according to several industry sources familiar with the meetings.</p>
<p>The sources cited U.S. anti-trust laws as the main reason why Norway does not join accords on production, such as the deal agreed in December.</p>
<p>A Statoil spokesman said the company had not advised Saudi officials on the IPO in any official capacity. Its CEO Eldar Saetre also told Reuters in February that it was not officially advising Aramco, but said it was “sharing” its experience.</p>
<p>Statoil referred queries about Norway’s position regarding international output accords to the ministry of energy. The ministry said there was no link between Norway not joining OPEC cuts and the fact that Statoil is a U.S. listed company.</p>
<p>LOSING MARKET SHARE</p>
<p>While Prince Mohammad, the likely future ruler of Saudi Arabia, is determined to proceed with the IPO, there are still concerns inside the government and Aramco about the wisdom of the move, according to Saudi and industry sources. Some conservatives oppose the idea of Riyadh relinquishing any control over its oil’s crown jewel.</p>
<p>Saudi officials have said that production decisions are a sovereign matter that will remain with the government – which will still own the bulk of Aramco post-IPO – but did not explain how this policy would be compatible with a listed company.</p>
<p>One Saudi-based industry source said Aramco would have to act like other listed oil company such as Chevron (NYSE:) or ExxonMobil (NYSE:). If it wanted to cut production, it would have to demonstrate to the investors that they would financially benefit from the move.</p>
<p>Inside Aramco, some executives do not believe that Saudi Arabia’s OPEC policies in preparation for the IPO will benefit the company in the long term, according to several sources.</p>
<p>They point to the fact that OPEC’s output cuts have eaten into Aramco’s market share in Asia, the world’s biggest oil-consuming region.</p>
<p>Since January, Riyadh has cut production by more than it was required to help OPEC achieve a full compliance with cuts and boost prices as other members were slow to reduce output.</p>
<p>The kingdom, previously China’s biggest crude supplier, has been overtaken by Russia while Iraq has eclipsed it as India’s number one source.</p> | false | 1 | rania el gamal alex lawler dubailondon reuters saudi arabias plans float state oil titan aramco prompting country think unthinkable late last year saudi arabia tried get fellow oil producers around world agree reduce production opec meeting vienna november saudi officials armed unprecedented bargaining chip deal kingdom would quit exporter group altogether strategy approved highest level saudi government said sources familiar matter aimed ensuring smooth workings worlds energy supply also driven desire push oil prices maximize valuation saudi aramco ahead listing said sources declined named information confidential end worlds biggest oil exporter enact option opec members along nonopec producers including russia agreed deal december cut output 18 million barrels per day fact move considered shows aramcos initial public offering ipo expected biggest history forcing kingdom rethink opec policies riyadhs stance represented shift opec sources said decadesold role advocating restraint seeking convince fellow members like algeria venezuela iran prices rising fast benefited alternative energy providers saudi arabia main price hawk said highlevel opec source added surprised quickly kingdom shifted policy prioritizing market share pumping oil full tilt supporting production cuts following decision list aramco saudi energy ministry opec immediately respond requests comment ipo also raises questions saudi arabias future role opec kingdom would become member national oil firm listed abroad turn raises questions future opec given kingdom groups driving force since inception almost 60 years ago aramco oversees saudi arabias vast reserves always tool countrys opec policies reduce increase production stake aramco floated however company take account interests outside investors according industry sources listing rules antitrust legislation particularly united states also preclude pricefixing aramco could accused continued follow saudi arabias opec policy adjusting output manage prices sources said aramco instrument used manage market even though involved making policy said fareed mohamedi chief economist usbased rapidan group saudi aramco declined comment potential risks investors suing postipo followed saudi opec policies norwegian path saudi authorities aim list around 5 percent aramco end 2018 riyadh stock exchange one international markets london new york hong kong running ipo centerpiece vision 2030 ambitious reform plan diversify saudi economy beyond oil championed saudi crown prince mohammad bin salman prince said expects ipo value aramco minimum 2 trillion saudi officials investors say valuation directly impacted oil prices saudi officials said want see 60 per barrel year banking sources suggesting ipo might timed happen crude trading 6070 per barrel prices around 50 year 58 week listing national oil firm represents unknown territory saudi arabia opec norway listed state oil company statoil ol might offer guide path ahead nordic nation still owns 67 percent oil firm refrained joining international steps regulating oil output since 2002 months listing new york oslo 2001 past year saudi officials met officials norway statoil discuss best restructure aramcos business operations ahead ipo according several industry sources familiar meetings sources cited us antitrust laws main reason norway join accords production deal agreed december statoil spokesman said company advised saudi officials ipo official capacity ceo eldar saetre also told reuters february officially advising aramco said sharing experience statoil referred queries norways position regarding international output accords ministry energy ministry said link norway joining opec cuts fact statoil us listed company losing market share prince mohammad likely future ruler saudi arabia determined proceed ipo still concerns inside government aramco wisdom move according saudi industry sources conservatives oppose idea riyadh relinquishing control oils crown jewel saudi officials said production decisions sovereign matter remain government still bulk aramco postipo explain policy would compatible listed company one saudibased industry source said aramco would act like listed oil company chevron nyse exxonmobil nyse wanted cut production would demonstrate investors would financially benefit move inside aramco executives believe saudi arabias opec policies preparation ipo benefit company long term according several sources point fact opecs output cuts eaten aramcos market share asia worlds biggest oilconsuming region since january riyadh cut production required help opec achieve full compliance cuts boost prices members slow reduce output kingdom previously chinas biggest crude supplier overtaken russia iraq eclipsed indias number one source | 663 |
<p>(The Sports Xchange) – Highlights from National Basketball Association games on Friday:</p>
<p>Celtics 90, Hornets 87</p>
<p>The Boston Celtics lost Kyrie Irving but rallied from 18 points down in the second half and captured their 11th straight victory, roaring past the Charlotte Hornets and hanging on for a 90-87 victory on Friday night.</p>
<p>With Gordon Hayward out for the season and Al Horford sitting out a second straight game with a concussion, Irving, the third member of the new Big Three, went down with a possible concussion less than two minutes into the game — the result of an errant elbow from teammate Aron Baynes.</p>
<p>Boston went on to a season-low 11 points in the first quarter and was down 18 early in the third before sending the Hornets to their fourth straight loss that completed an 0-4 road trip.</p>
<p>With journeyman guard Shane Larkin leading the way, the Celtics went on a 14-2 fourth-quarter run to take control of the game and held the Hornets to 11 points in the fourth quarter. But the home team still had to survive a scramble at the end to survive.</p>
<p>Pacers 105, Bulls 87</p>
<p>Victor Oladipo scored 25 points and Bojan Bogdanovic added 22 as Indiana snapped a four-game losing streak.</p>
<p>The Pacers never trailed and limited the Bulls to 25.9 percent shooting (7 of 27) from 3-point range. The Pacers had struggled defensively during the four-game skid, allowing an average of 115 points.</p>
<p>Thaddeus Young chipped in 13 points for Indiana (6-7), which won for the first time since Nov. 1. Myles Turner also reached double figures for the Pacers and finished with 11 points and nine rebounds. Bobby Portis, playing his second game since returning from an eight-game suspension, scored 20 points and grabbed 11 rebounds off the bench to lead Chicago, which lost its third straight.</p>
<p>Pistons 111, Hawks 104</p>
<p>Reggie Jackson made two pivotal 3-pointers in the final minute, lifting Detroit to its fourth straight win.</p>
<p>Jackson finished with 22 points and six assists for the Pistons (9-3), who gave away a 19-point lead before regaining control. Andre Drummond had 16 points, 20 rebounds and a career-high seven assists for Detroit. Avery Bradley supplied 20 points and Tobias Harris contributed 16 points and eight rebounds. Ish Smith led Pistons reserves with 17 points and five assists.</p>
<p>Kent Bazemore tallied 22 points, five rebounds and five assists for the Hawks (2-10). Dennis Schroder recorded 17 points and 11 assists, John Collins tossed in 16 points and eight rebounds, Dewayne Dedmon added 13 points and nine rebounds and Marco Belinelli chipped in 14 points.</p>
<p>Bucks 94, Spurs 87</p>
<p>Giannis Antetokounmpo had 28 points and 12 rebounds and newly acquired Eric Bledsoe added 13 points and hit a key jumper down the stretch as Milwaukee defeated San Antonio to snap a four-game losing streak.</p>
<p>The Bucks led 87-80 with 6:13 to play on a jumper by Khris Middleton, but Milwaukee missed its next five shots and allowed San Antonio to pull within 89-87 on Manu Ginobili’s 3-point play with 2:26 remaining.</p>
<p>Bledsoe, who was playing his first game with Milwaukee after being traded from Phoenix on Tuesday, made a jumper with 1:40 to play and Middleton added another with 55 seconds left to push the Bucks’ advantage to 93-87. The Spurs missed their final five shots and got no second chances down the stretch.</p>
<p>Thunder 120, Clippers 111</p>
<p>Paul George scored a season-high 42 points as Oklahoma City beat slumping Los Angeles.</p>
<p>Russell Westbrook added 22 points and eight assists while Anthony scored 14 points as Oklahoma City snapped a four-game losing streak.</p>
<p>Lou Williams scored a season-high 35 points to lead the Clippers. Blake Griffin and Austin Rivers added 17 each for Los Angeles, which lost for the fourth straight time and the sixth time in seven games.</p>
<p>Heat 84, Jazz 74</p>
<p>Dion Waiters scored 21 points and Goran Dragic added 18 to help Miami rally for a win over Utah.</p>
<p>Miami won its second straight after holding the Jazz to 4-of-33 shooting (12.1 percent) in the second half. Utah’s shooting struggles helped the Heat overcome 20 turnovers.</p>
<p>Rodney Hood scored 19 points to lead the Jazz. Rudy Gobert chipped in 12 points and 12 rebounds and Donovan Mitchell and Alec Burks each scored 12 points for Utah, which has lost four straight — three at home.</p>
<p>Magic 128, Suns 112</p>
<p>Aaron Gordon scored 22 points, Nikola Vucevic had 19 and Orlando blew open a see-saw game early in the fourth quarter to beat slumping Phoenix.</p>
<p>Terrence Ross and Jonathan Simmons added 17 each for the Magic, who are 8-4 and off to their best start since going 9-3 to start the 2011-12 season. The Magic are a perfect 4-0 against the Western Conference.</p>
<p>Alex Len had 21 points and 13 rebounds for Phoenix, TJ Warren had 20 and rookie Josh Jackson had a career-high 18 points for the Suns, who have lost five straight and the first three games of a seven-game homestand. They also lost forward Jared Dudley to a right knee sprain in the third quarter.</p>
<p>Nets 101, Trail Blazers 97</p>
<p>D’Angelo Russell totaled 21 points and nine assists as shorthanded Brooklyn beat Portland.</p>
<p>Russell five players in double figures for the Nets, who used a 31-18 third quarter to improve to 2-2 on a five-game road trip.</p>
<p>DeMarre Carroll added 16 points, former Trail Blazer Allen Crabbe added 12 and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson contributed 11. Jusuf Nurkic led the Trail Blazers with 21 points, and guard Damian Lillard added 19.</p> | false | 1 | sports xchange highlights national basketball association games friday celtics 90 hornets 87 boston celtics lost kyrie irving rallied 18 points second half captured 11th straight victory roaring past charlotte hornets hanging 9087 victory friday night gordon hayward season al horford sitting second straight game concussion irving third member new big three went possible concussion less two minutes game result errant elbow teammate aron baynes boston went seasonlow 11 points first quarter 18 early third sending hornets fourth straight loss completed 04 road trip journeyman guard shane larkin leading way celtics went 142 fourthquarter run take control game held hornets 11 points fourth quarter home team still survive scramble end survive pacers 105 bulls 87 victor oladipo scored 25 points bojan bogdanovic added 22 indiana snapped fourgame losing streak pacers never trailed limited bulls 259 percent shooting 7 27 3point range pacers struggled defensively fourgame skid allowing average 115 points thaddeus young chipped 13 points indiana 67 first time since nov 1 myles turner also reached double figures pacers finished 11 points nine rebounds bobby portis playing second game since returning eightgame suspension scored 20 points grabbed 11 rebounds bench lead chicago lost third straight pistons 111 hawks 104 reggie jackson made two pivotal 3pointers final minute lifting detroit fourth straight win jackson finished 22 points six assists pistons 93 gave away 19point lead regaining control andre drummond 16 points 20 rebounds careerhigh seven assists detroit avery bradley supplied 20 points tobias harris contributed 16 points eight rebounds ish smith led pistons reserves 17 points five assists kent bazemore tallied 22 points five rebounds five assists hawks 210 dennis schroder recorded 17 points 11 assists john collins tossed 16 points eight rebounds dewayne dedmon added 13 points nine rebounds marco belinelli chipped 14 points bucks 94 spurs 87 giannis antetokounmpo 28 points 12 rebounds newly acquired eric bledsoe added 13 points hit key jumper stretch milwaukee defeated san antonio snap fourgame losing streak bucks led 8780 613 play jumper khris middleton milwaukee missed next five shots allowed san antonio pull within 8987 manu ginobilis 3point play 226 remaining bledsoe playing first game milwaukee traded phoenix tuesday made jumper 140 play middleton added another 55 seconds left push bucks advantage 9387 spurs missed final five shots got second chances stretch thunder 120 clippers 111 paul george scored seasonhigh 42 points oklahoma city beat slumping los angeles russell westbrook added 22 points eight assists anthony scored 14 points oklahoma city snapped fourgame losing streak lou williams scored seasonhigh 35 points lead clippers blake griffin austin rivers added 17 los angeles lost fourth straight time sixth time seven games heat 84 jazz 74 dion waiters scored 21 points goran dragic added 18 help miami rally win utah miami second straight holding jazz 4of33 shooting 121 percent second half utahs shooting struggles helped heat overcome 20 turnovers rodney hood scored 19 points lead jazz rudy gobert chipped 12 points 12 rebounds donovan mitchell alec burks scored 12 points utah lost four straight three home magic 128 suns 112 aaron gordon scored 22 points nikola vucevic 19 orlando blew open seesaw game early fourth quarter beat slumping phoenix terrence ross jonathan simmons added 17 magic 84 best start since going 93 start 201112 season magic perfect 40 western conference alex len 21 points 13 rebounds phoenix tj warren 20 rookie josh jackson careerhigh 18 points suns lost five straight first three games sevengame homestand also lost forward jared dudley right knee sprain third quarter nets 101 trail blazers 97 dangelo russell totaled 21 points nine assists shorthanded brooklyn beat portland russell five players double figures nets used 3118 third quarter improve 22 fivegame road trip demarre carroll added 16 points former trail blazer allen crabbe added 12 rondae hollisjefferson contributed 11 jusuf nurkic led trail blazers 21 points guard damian lillard added 19 | 637 |
<p>And the King of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives . . . Shifra and Puah . . . If it be a son, then ye shall kill him . . . But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive. – Exodus I, 15.</p>
<p>Forcing women to undergo abortions against their will is a form of abuse. We are all agreed on that, right? Perhaps. Hillary Clinton, an ardent abortion rights party-liner, has denounced the “forced abortions” the Chinese communist government inflicts on women.</p>
<p>But glance at the leading feminist organization websites and you find no mention of this form of cruelty toward women. The dominant theme of feminist thinking is victimization. Women are said to suffer discrimination in the classroom, on sports fields, in the military, in the workplace, and even, or perhaps especially, within the family.</p>
<p>Leaving aside whether this vision of women as victims is true, exaggerated, or false, when it comes to abortion, it betrays a gigantic blind spot. Coercing women into aborting babies they want is clearly not government policy in the United States, but women are often the victims of male pressure to abort babies. Feminists, so exquisitely sensitive to male pressure on women in every other context, avert their eyes on this.</p>
<p>Jewish women are particularly keen feminists and have always been in the vanguard of abortion advocates. A Gallup poll found that among major religious groups in America, Jews are far more similar to the non-religious than they are to adherents of other leading faiths on the subject of abortion. While 38 percent of Catholics, 33 percent of Protestants, and 18 percent of Mormons believe that abortion is “morally acceptable,” a full 76 percent of Jews believe so, more than the 73 percent of the non-religious who agree.</p>
<p>Among the estimated 10 percent of America’s Jews who are Orthodox, views about abortion are thought to be more conservative, though good polling is difficult to find. A 2015 Pew survey of Orthodox Jews found that the Orthodox resembled white Evangelical Protestants more than they resembled Conservative or Reform Jews. The Orthodox also comprise a growing share of the American Jewish population, with a median age of 40 compared with 52 for the overall Jewish community, and with an average of 4.1 children per couple compared with 1.7 for other Jews. For the present though, Reform Jews remain the majority.</p>
<p>Leading Jewish communal organizations like the National Council of Jewish Women, Hadassah, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Hillel, and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations are vocal supporters of abortion rights.</p>
<p>What zealous advocacy to limit legal restrictions on abortion has done, certainly within the Jewish community, is blind people to the needs of women who want to give birth but face difficult personal circumstances.</p>
<p>Such is the power of the feminist, abortion-as-empowerment narrative that many Jews, like many secular Americans, are put off by the very discussion of crisis pregnancies. <a href="http://www.inshifrasarms.org/" type="external">In Shifra’s Arms</a>, a fledgling Jewish pregnancy support organization, is pushing abortion politics to the background and stepping in to help pregnant women with that other choice—the choice to become mothers.</p>
<p>When ISA debuted, it was greeted with deep suspicion in the Jewish world. Efforts to raise funds proceeded at a glacial pace, though the Jewish community gives generously to charities of nearly every other description. The United Jewish Appeal, for example, boasts that it supports programs for the elderly, the unemployed, the disabled, at risk children, and the sick, among dozens of other categories.</p>
<p>Perhaps suspecting that In Shifra’s Arms was an anti-abortion group, Nancy Ratzan, president of the National Council of Jewish Women, condemned it, declaring that the NCJW was “greatly concerned about pregnancy crisis centers and their focus to limit women’s choice and undermine the rights of women.” Alyssa Zucker, professor of psychology and women’s studies at George Washington University, was equally dismissive: “While these organizations say they are about choice,” she told the Washington Jewish Week, “they are really not. Their goal is to convince women not to have abortions.”</p>
<p>In fact, In Shifra’s Arms was merely attempting to fill a gap. Abortion is readily available. There are even Jewish charities that help women to pay for abortions. What about the Jewish women who were being pressured into abortions? What about those who were abandoned by husbands or boyfriends? Until ISA opened its doors, there was no American Jewish organization dedicated to helping women who wanted their babies. (Israel has more than one organization to assist women who want to give birth.)</p>
<p>ISA was the brainchild of a former Department of Labor official Erica Pelman, an Orthodox mother of three who was stricken when a close friend had shared her heartbreak at feeling forced to abort a baby because she had received no support from her family or the Jewish community.</p>
<p>Pelman gathered a small band of women in Washington, DC to step into the breach. All volunteers, they would provide counseling, emotional support, money, networking, childcare assistance, and other services to pregnant Jewish women who sought their help. With contributions from their friends and families, free legal advice, and services from accountants, social workers, and others, ISA began to advertise on the Internet and provide a sympathetic ear to women desperate for guidance.</p>
<p>In time, ISA was able to raise sufficient funds for a part-time licensed social worker, Fraida Nathan. In Shifra’s Arms does not attempt to discourage women from seeking abortions—some women who have sought ISA’s help have indeed chosen abortion—but does provide critical encouragement and assistance to those who want an alternative. The board of In Shifra’s Arms includes Jewish women who consider themselves pro-life and pro-choice, and their religious identification ranges from Orthodox to unaffiliated.</p>
<p>The women who sought help were not what the small band of women who launched ISA were expecting. Most were not unmarried teenagers or college women but women in their twenties, thirties, and sometimes forties. Some 20 percent were married, and about 28 percent were in abusive (sometimes violently abusive) relationships. That is the great untold story of abortion—in many, many cases it is not an expression of women’s autonomy at all, but a brutal imposition upon them.</p>
<p>A 2010 study of “intimate partner violence” sponsored by the Alan Guttmacher Institute found that “coerced abortion” was one form of abuse women reported, along with coerced pregnancy. The Daily Beast <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/10/08/coerced-abortions-a-new-study-shows-theyre-common.html" type="external">described</a> one of the study participants:</p>
<p>A 21-year-old woman is in a relationship with a man who repeatedly tells her he wants to get her pregnant. Even though he is physically abusive, she too, wants to have a baby with him. But a few months into her pregnancy, he changes his mind. He threatens to punch her in the stomach to induce an abortion, or to throw her down the stairs if she doesn’t have one. Because he has been violent so many times before, she doesn’t want to risk it. So, five months pregnant, she goes to a clinic and has the abortion.</p>
<p>Often the women who contact ISA have already experienced abortion once.</p>
<p>A 42-year-old married immigrant from Russia with older children had not expected to be pregnant again. Her husband, a truck driver, was tyrannical and difficult. Money was tight. He was so insistent that she abort the child that he left the family home for a week. When he returned, he actually drove her to the abortion clinic. She sat immobilized in the car. “I’d done it before,” she told Nathan, “and I just couldn’t do it again. Even if my husband divorces me, I cannot do it.”</p>
<p>She turned to In Shifra’s Arms, where she found sympathy and then tangible help. The first step was helping the client to decide what her own wishes were. Since money was tight, the mother elected to get certified as an X-ray technician. In Shifra’s Arms helped her with funds for babysitting for two semesters.</p>
<p>Her husband did not divorce her, and in time, was happy about the new addition to the family. All are now doing well and are grateful to ISA.</p>
<p>Another client was in her 30s when she contacted ISA. An Israeli, she was living in the United States with her American boyfriend. When he learned of her pregnancy, he angrily demanded that she get an abortion. Worried that this might be her last chance to become a mother, she refused. Her parents were both dead, but she did have an uncle in America. A secular liberal and abortion advocate, he chided her for getting pregnant in the first place and urged her to abort. When she declined, he refused any assistance. “You did this to yourself,” he said. “Don’t come to me.”</p>
<p>Her boyfriend seemed to agree. Her unwillingness to abort was an affront. The abuse was first emotional and then eventually physical. (Some men beat their wives or girlfriends in hopes of inducing an abortion.) It became so extreme that she moved out. The local women’s shelter was full, and while she had stayed with friends for a time, she felt she couldn’t impose for too long. Out of options, she turned to a Christian crisis pregnancy center. There, she was safe, but uncomfortable. The center featured Christian worship, which was awkward. Through an Internet search, she discovered In Shifra’s Arms. ISA cooperated with a local Chabad rabbi to find the pregnant woman a place to live for three months, and linked her with a domestic violence group. They advised her to return to Israel before the child’s birth. In Shifra’s Arms paid for her plane ticket and two months rent in Israel along with psychological counseling. She delivered a healthy baby boy. Her child, she reported from Israel, was the best thing that had ever happened to her.</p>
<p>The assistance In Shifra’s Arms provides varies from client to client, depending upon need. One woman who had older children was provided with housekeeping help for several months, which made a world of difference to her. Another, “Dawn,” a single woman in her late thirties, was just a few weeks pregnant when her boyfriend was killed in a car accident. She badly wanted the baby but felt utterly alone. “My family was not supportive,” she confided. ISA’s counselor saw that her first need was grief counseling. Nathan was then able to provide guidance for obtaining baby furniture and other resources. Like other clients, “Dawn” received a care package that contained the book What To Expect When You’re Expecting, a maternity store gift card, and other pampering items. ISA found a social work intern to accompany the client to doctor’s appointments, which relieved her sense of loneliness and isolation. With ISA’s aid, she also found other financial resources. “I never thought there would be a place that would help me,” she marveled.</p>
<p>In addition to care packages, all ISA clients get non-judgmental emotional support, advice, and referrals to social service agencies and other resources. ISA keeps in touch throughout the pregnancy and during the child’s first year. For indigent women, the ISA counselor will often phone a local rabbi and ask whether members of the congregation might be able to donate strollers, basinets, cribs, car seats and other baby essentials. In “Dawn’s” case, because the delivery was by C-section, ISA paid for a doula to spend the first two weeks after birth with mother and daughter.</p>
<p>A number of women who’ve been assisted by ISA have written movingly about the experience. A woman from New Jersey wrote: “I’d like to take a moment to thank you for everything you have done and continue to do. Support is not very widespread for me right now so I really appreciate you from the bottom of my heart. Once again, thank you, thank you, thank you for everything you do. Your heart is what the world needs more of.” Another described the phone counselor as an “angel sent from Heaven.”</p>
<p>Unintended pregnancy happens to many couples, even those with graduate degrees and impressive resumes. One woman who contacted ISA was working toward her engineering degree and living with her boyfriend who was in medical school. Their relationship seemed solid until the pregnancy. Feeling too pressured by medical school to handle fatherhood, he demanded that she abort. She was stunned and taken aback by how tyrannical he became. The ISA counselor helped her to work through her own feelings—her fear of losing him as well as her longing for the baby. In time, with help, the boyfriend relented and apologized. They agreed that she would delay her engineering degree for a while and do the lion’s share of baby care.</p>
<p>The full range of human drama and fickle fate comes through ISA’s doors. Some women have experienced infertility and worry that an unintended pregnancy may be their last chance at motherhood despite a boyfriend’s reluctance. Some are struggling with abandonment, abuse, or shame. Others are worried about money and how they will manage alone. Most already feel attached to the baby growing inside them. All are hoping for some sort of miracle to let them escape from the abortion clinic’s tragic “solution.”</p>
<p>The women ISA has reached have been offered the assistance and the wherewithal to choose their heart’s desire—to give birth. Surely that is an overlooked women’s issue.</p>
<p>Mona Charen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and syndicated columnist.</p> | false | 1 | king egypt spoke hebrew midwives shifra puah son ye shall kill midwives feared god king egypt commanded saved men children alive exodus 15 forcing women undergo abortions form abuse agreed right perhaps hillary clinton ardent abortion rights partyliner denounced forced abortions chinese communist government inflicts women glance leading feminist organization websites find mention form cruelty toward women dominant theme feminist thinking victimization women said suffer discrimination classroom sports fields military workplace even perhaps especially within family leaving aside whether vision women victims true exaggerated false comes abortion betrays gigantic blind spot coercing women aborting babies want clearly government policy united states women often victims male pressure abort babies feminists exquisitely sensitive male pressure women every context avert eyes jewish women particularly keen feminists always vanguard abortion advocates gallup poll found among major religious groups america jews far similar nonreligious adherents leading faiths subject abortion 38 percent catholics 33 percent protestants 18 percent mormons believe abortion morally acceptable full 76 percent jews believe 73 percent nonreligious agree among estimated 10 percent americas jews orthodox views abortion thought conservative though good polling difficult find 2015 pew survey orthodox jews found orthodox resembled white evangelical protestants resembled conservative reform jews orthodox also comprise growing share american jewish population median age 40 compared 52 overall jewish community average 41 children per couple compared 17 jews present though reform jews remain majority leading jewish communal organizations like national council jewish women hadassah antidefamation league jewish council public affairs hillel union american hebrew congregations vocal supporters abortion rights zealous advocacy limit legal restrictions abortion done certainly within jewish community blind people needs women want give birth face difficult personal circumstances power feminist abortionasempowerment narrative many jews like many secular americans put discussion crisis pregnancies shifras arms fledgling jewish pregnancy support organization pushing abortion politics background stepping help pregnant women choicethe choice become mothers isa debuted greeted deep suspicion jewish world efforts raise funds proceeded glacial pace though jewish community gives generously charities nearly every description united jewish appeal example boasts supports programs elderly unemployed disabled risk children sick among dozens categories perhaps suspecting shifras arms antiabortion group nancy ratzan president national council jewish women condemned declaring ncjw greatly concerned pregnancy crisis centers focus limit womens choice undermine rights women alyssa zucker professor psychology womens studies george washington university equally dismissive organizations say choice told washington jewish week really goal convince women abortions fact shifras arms merely attempting fill gap abortion readily available even jewish charities help women pay abortions jewish women pressured abortions abandoned husbands boyfriends isa opened doors american jewish organization dedicated helping women wanted babies israel one organization assist women want give birth isa brainchild former department labor official erica pelman orthodox mother three stricken close friend shared heartbreak feeling forced abort baby received support family jewish community pelman gathered small band women washington dc step breach volunteers would provide counseling emotional support money networking childcare assistance services pregnant jewish women sought help contributions friends families free legal advice services accountants social workers others isa began advertise internet provide sympathetic ear women desperate guidance time isa able raise sufficient funds parttime licensed social worker fraida nathan shifras arms attempt discourage women seeking abortionssome women sought isas help indeed chosen abortionbut provide critical encouragement assistance want alternative board shifras arms includes jewish women consider prolife prochoice religious identification ranges orthodox unaffiliated women sought help small band women launched isa expecting unmarried teenagers college women women twenties thirties sometimes forties 20 percent married 28 percent abusive sometimes violently abusive relationships great untold story abortionin many many cases expression womens autonomy brutal imposition upon 2010 study intimate partner violence sponsored alan guttmacher institute found coerced abortion one form abuse women reported along coerced pregnancy daily beast described one study participants 21yearold woman relationship man repeatedly tells wants get pregnant even though physically abusive wants baby months pregnancy changes mind threatens punch stomach induce abortion throw stairs doesnt one violent many times doesnt want risk five months pregnant goes clinic abortion often women contact isa already experienced abortion 42yearold married immigrant russia older children expected pregnant husband truck driver tyrannical difficult money tight insistent abort child left family home week returned actually drove abortion clinic sat immobilized car id done told nathan couldnt even husband divorces turned shifras arms found sympathy tangible help first step helping client decide wishes since money tight mother elected get certified xray technician shifras arms helped funds babysitting two semesters husband divorce time happy new addition family well grateful isa another client 30s contacted isa israeli living united states american boyfriend learned pregnancy angrily demanded get abortion worried might last chance become mother refused parents dead uncle america secular liberal abortion advocate chided getting pregnant first place urged abort declined refused assistance said dont come boyfriend seemed agree unwillingness abort affront abuse first emotional eventually physical men beat wives girlfriends hopes inducing abortion became extreme moved local womens shelter full stayed friends time felt couldnt impose long options turned christian crisis pregnancy center safe uncomfortable center featured christian worship awkward internet search discovered shifras arms isa cooperated local chabad rabbi find pregnant woman place live three months linked domestic violence group advised return israel childs birth shifras arms paid plane ticket two months rent israel along psychological counseling delivered healthy baby boy child reported israel best thing ever happened assistance shifras arms provides varies client client depending upon need one woman older children provided housekeeping help several months made world difference another dawn single woman late thirties weeks pregnant boyfriend killed car accident badly wanted baby felt utterly alone family supportive confided isas counselor saw first need grief counseling nathan able provide guidance obtaining baby furniture resources like clients dawn received care package contained book expect youre expecting maternity store gift card pampering items isa found social work intern accompany client doctors appointments relieved sense loneliness isolation isas aid also found financial resources never thought would place would help marveled addition care packages isa clients get nonjudgmental emotional support advice referrals social service agencies resources isa keeps touch throughout pregnancy childs first year indigent women isa counselor often phone local rabbi ask whether members congregation might able donate strollers basinets cribs car seats baby essentials dawns case delivery csection isa paid doula spend first two weeks birth mother daughter number women whove assisted isa written movingly experience woman new jersey wrote id like take moment thank everything done continue support widespread right really appreciate bottom heart thank thank thank everything heart world needs another described phone counselor angel sent heaven unintended pregnancy happens many couples even graduate degrees impressive resumes one woman contacted isa working toward engineering degree living boyfriend medical school relationship seemed solid pregnancy feeling pressured medical school handle fatherhood demanded abort stunned taken aback tyrannical became isa counselor helped work feelingsher fear losing well longing baby time help boyfriend relented apologized agreed would delay engineering degree lions share baby care full range human drama fickle fate comes isas doors women experienced infertility worry unintended pregnancy may last chance motherhood despite boyfriends reluctance struggling abandonment abuse shame others worried money manage alone already feel attached baby growing inside hoping sort miracle let escape abortion clinics tragic solution women isa reached offered assistance wherewithal choose hearts desireto give birth surely overlooked womens issue mona charen senior fellow ethics public policy center syndicated columnist | 1,221 |
<p>MIAMI DOLPHINS (6-7) AT BUFFALO BILLS (7-6)</p>
<p>GAME SNAPSHOT</p>
<p>KICKOFF: Sunday, 1 p.m. ET, New Era Field. TV: CBS, Beth Mowins, <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jay_Feely/" type="external">Jay Feely</a>.</p>
<p>SERIES HISTORY: 103rd regular-season meeting. Dolphins lead series, 59-42-1. Last season, the Dolphins swept the Bills, including a December game in the penultimate week of the season, a 34-31 overtime decision that eliminated the Bills from the playoff hunt and helped solidify Miami’s spot in the postseason.</p>
<p>KEYS TO THE GAME: The Bills have run the ball with renewed vigor the last two weeks, totaling 183 yards in a loss to New England and 227 against the Colts last week. This will have to continue against Miami because controlling the ball on the ground has been Buffalo’s key to offensive success all season.</p>
<p>When the Bills rush for at least 100 yards, they are 6-2. When they don’t, they are 1-4. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/LeSean_McCoy/" type="external">LeSean McCoy</a> has jumped into the top five with 1,007 yards, and he will be the key player for the Bills. Miami must limit McCoy and use a strong pass rush to apply pressure on the quarterback, whoever that is, and force mistakes. The Dolphins have five takeaways in the last two games, both victories.</p>
<p>Miami knew what it was doing when it dealt <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jay-Ajayi/" type="external">Jay Ajayi</a> to Philadelphia because Kenyan Drake has stepped in and carried the offense recently. He had his second straight 100-yard game in the victory over New England, and he also has been a weapon in the passing game. The Bills have to do a better job in run defense; if they do, they should be able to limit <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jay_Cutler/" type="external">Jay Cutler</a>‘s effectiveness, especially in the wintry conditions that are expected.</p>
<p>Miami’s game plan offensively will be to stay diverse, involving everyone in the passing game and using Drake as the starting point. Look for the downfield passing game to continue to evolve and look for a couple of formations Miami hasn’t showed to this point of the season.</p>
<p>MATCHUPS TO WATCH:</p>
<p>–Bills LG <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Richie_Incognito/" type="external">Richie Incognito</a> vs. Dolphins DT <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ndamukong-Suh/" type="external">Ndamukong Suh</a>. Incognito is coming off an excellent game as he helped pave the way for 227 rushing yards against the Colts. Suh was equally as impressive in Miami’s victory over the Patriots on Monday. The Bills’ rushing attack has to be productive, given all the struggles in the passing game, and the Dolphins, led by Suh, are strong in the middle of the field against the run.</p>
<p>–Dolphins WR <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jarvis-Landry/" type="external">Jarvis Landry</a> vs. Bills secondary. Landry can create matchup problems because he lines up in a variety of spots, so the Bills will have different defensive backs guarding him. Ideally, the Bills would love to put CB Tre’Davious White on him full-time, but the Bills prefer to keep White on the outside. Landry leads the Dolphins with 88 catches, so Buffalo has to find a way to contain him, and getting pressure on Cutler would help in that endeavor because Landry often wins his routes quickly.</p>
<p>FRIDAY INJURY REPORT</p>
<p>MIAMI DOLPHINS</p>
<p>–Out: G Jermon Bushrod (foot)</p>
<p>–Doubtful: QB <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Matt_Moore/" type="external">Matt Moore</a> (foot), CB Cordrea Tankersley (ankle, shoulder), S <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Michael_Thomas/" type="external">Michael Thomas</a> (knee), RB Damien Williams (shoulder, illness)</p>
<p>–Questionable: DE Andre Branch (knee), CB Xavien Howard (illness), DT Jordan Phillips (ankle)</p>
<p>BUFFALO BILLS</p>
<p>–Out: T <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Cordy-Glenn/" type="external">Cordy Glenn</a> (foot, ankle/injured reserve), G <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/John_Miller/" type="external">John Miller</a> (ankle), QB Nathan Peterman (concussion)</p>
<p>–Questionable: WR Kelvin Benjamin (knee)</p>
<p>PLAYER SPOTLIGHT: Dolphins DE Andre Branch. He will be a key in both the running and the passing games. Branch will be responsible for setting the edge in the running game, something that has been spotty since the loss of run-stopping DE William Hayes (season-ending back injury) three weeks ago. In the running game, figure DE Cam Wake and Suh will get lots of attention, as usual, so Branch must take advantage, which he hasn’t done as well as he did a year ago.</p>
<p>FAST FACTS: Dolphins QB Jay Cutler passed for 263 yards and three TDs in Week 14. In four career games vs. Buffalo, he has 1,200 passing yards and five TDs. … Dolphins RB Kenyan Drake had a career-high 193 scrimmage yards (114 rushing) last week. … Dolphins WR Jarvis Landry is tied for second in the NFL with 88 catches. He has at least five catches in all 13 games in 2017. … Dolphins DE Cameron Wake has 10 sacks, three forced fumbles and an interception in his past nine games vs. the division. He has 2.5 sacks in his past two games vs. Buffalo. … Dolphins S Reshad Jones had a sack in his last game vs. Buffalo (2015). He has at least 10 tackles in two of the past three meetings at Buffalo. … Bills QB <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tyrod_Taylor/" type="external">Tyrod Taylor</a> passed for 329 yards and three TDs, with no interceptions, and rushed for 60 yards in the last meeting with Miami. In four career games vs. Miami, he has eight TDs and no INTs. … Bills RB LeSean McCoy has 463 scrimmage yards (115.8 per game) and three TDs in the past four games. In five career meetings with Miami, he has five TDs (four rushing). … Bills LB Preston Brown had 13 tackles in the last meeting. He has 10 tackles in two of past three games at home vs. Miami. … Bills S <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Micah-Hyde/" type="external">Micah Hyde</a> is tied for third in the NFL with five interceptions.</p>
<p>PREDICTION: The Dolphins came up big in their upset win over the Patriots, but they won’t have enough left in the tank to defeat the Bills in Buffalo.</p>
<p>OUR PICK: Bills, 20-17.</p>
<p>–Ellen Port</p> | false | 1 | miami dolphins 67 buffalo bills 76 game snapshot kickoff sunday 1 pm et new era field tv cbs beth mowins jay feely series history 103rd regularseason meeting dolphins lead series 59421 last season dolphins swept bills including december game penultimate week season 3431 overtime decision eliminated bills playoff hunt helped solidify miamis spot postseason keys game bills run ball renewed vigor last two weeks totaling 183 yards loss new england 227 colts last week continue miami controlling ball ground buffalos key offensive success season bills rush least 100 yards 62 dont 14 lesean mccoy jumped top five 1007 yards key player bills miami must limit mccoy use strong pass rush apply pressure quarterback whoever force mistakes dolphins five takeaways last two games victories miami knew dealt jay ajayi philadelphia kenyan drake stepped carried offense recently second straight 100yard game victory new england also weapon passing game bills better job run defense able limit jay cutlers effectiveness especially wintry conditions expected miamis game plan offensively stay diverse involving everyone passing game using drake starting point look downfield passing game continue evolve look couple formations miami hasnt showed point season matchups watch bills lg richie incognito vs dolphins dt ndamukong suh incognito coming excellent game helped pave way 227 rushing yards colts suh equally impressive miamis victory patriots monday bills rushing attack productive given struggles passing game dolphins led suh strong middle field run dolphins wr jarvis landry vs bills secondary landry create matchup problems lines variety spots bills different defensive backs guarding ideally bills would love put cb tredavious white fulltime bills prefer keep white outside landry leads dolphins 88 catches buffalo find way contain getting pressure cutler would help endeavor landry often wins routes quickly friday injury report miami dolphins g jermon bushrod foot doubtful qb matt moore foot cb cordrea tankersley ankle shoulder michael thomas knee rb damien williams shoulder illness questionable de andre branch knee cb xavien howard illness dt jordan phillips ankle buffalo bills cordy glenn foot ankleinjured reserve g john miller ankle qb nathan peterman concussion questionable wr kelvin benjamin knee player spotlight dolphins de andre branch key running passing games branch responsible setting edge running game something spotty since loss runstopping de william hayes seasonending back injury three weeks ago running game figure de cam wake suh get lots attention usual branch must take advantage hasnt done well year ago fast facts dolphins qb jay cutler passed 263 yards three tds week 14 four career games vs buffalo 1200 passing yards five tds dolphins rb kenyan drake careerhigh 193 scrimmage yards 114 rushing last week dolphins wr jarvis landry tied second nfl 88 catches least five catches 13 games 2017 dolphins de cameron wake 10 sacks three forced fumbles interception past nine games vs division 25 sacks past two games vs buffalo dolphins reshad jones sack last game vs buffalo 2015 least 10 tackles two past three meetings buffalo bills qb tyrod taylor passed 329 yards three tds interceptions rushed 60 yards last meeting miami four career games vs miami eight tds ints bills rb lesean mccoy 463 scrimmage yards 1158 per game three tds past four games five career meetings miami five tds four rushing bills lb preston brown 13 tackles last meeting 10 tackles two past three games home vs miami bills micah hyde tied third nfl five interceptions prediction dolphins came big upset win patriots wont enough left tank defeat bills buffalo pick bills 2017 ellen port | 575 |
<p>The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) has now survived legislative, judicial, and electoral challenges.&#160; Those apparent successes notwithstanding, the PPACA remains a sweeping – and damaging – reform of the health care delivery, health entitlements, and health insurance sectors in the United States.&#160; Its policy flaws are myriad.</p>
<p>With its most significant provisions scheduled to take effect in 2014, advocates for an alternative reform have two apparent options: repeal and replace the PPACA when the time is right, or undertake sequential reforms intended to improve its policy outcomes.&#160; Of course, in the current political context, neither appears promising.&#160; Nevertheless, there is merit to continued evaluation of full-scale alternatives to the PPACA.&#160; One common defense of the law is that there has been no competing alternative, which is not true.&#160; But there is virtue to continuing to develop and refine as many alternatives as may be proposed.&#160; Toward that end, this short paper outlines one practical, conservative approach to replacing the law with a market-based reform plan.</p>
<p>It is important that the alternatives and the PPACA be evaluated on a level playing field with respect to the estimated impact on the federal budget, premiums, the uninsured and other empirical aspects of the impacts of reform. &#160;Naturally, these estimates depend largely on economic simulation models. When the Congressional Budget Office analyzes reform proposals, its estimates are the center of the policy debate.&#160; Its estimates are, in turn, heavily influenced by the modeling choices it makes.&#160; To compare the PPACA and our alternative, we provide an alternative approach developed by the American Action Forum, using the Health Economic Policy Simulation System (HEPSS), to analyze the impact of this replacement plan on key metrics of policy interest.</p>
<p>“Substitute” policy proposals are useful to the extent that they can be thoroughly evaluated on the basis of these impacts, and compared to the PPACA’s associated projections. In an effort to offer as many responsible routes to healthcare cost reduction and market improvement as possible, the following proposal describes a practical set of policy choices and associated projections.</p>
<p>The PPACA Replacement Plan The replacement plan is a decentralized, market-driven alternative to the PPACA.&#160; The plan is built on more flexible insurance rules, state authority, and consumer incentives.&#160; The key features of the proposal have been described in two separately published papers.[1]</p>
<p>The main provisions of the replacement plan (assumed to become effective in 2014) are as follows:</p>
<p>Results The results of our analysis are encouraging and displayed in Tables 1 and 2. The key findings are as follows:</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Estimating the Impacts of Health Care Reform</p>
<p>The goals of health care reform are relatively straightforward.&#160; The public and their elected leaders want to make progress on controlling costs while at the same time ensuring that more Americans gain insurance coverage and the health system offers high quality health care. And all of this should be achieved while improving, or least not worsening, the budget outlook.</p>
<p>So the goals are clear, but assessing the degree to which a specific legislative proposal makes progress toward these goals, or would instead lead to setbacks, is exceedingly difficult to do.&#160; In the long debate over the passage of the PPACA, judgments on these criteria were key moments in the debate.</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, these judgments were heavily influenced by the best available analytical information on the various reform options, produced by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).&#160; Over several years preceding the 2009-2010 health care debate, CBO built a number of simulation models specifically to assess the impact that various approaches to reform would have on premiums; program participation in Medicaid and Medicare; and private coverage.&#160; These, of course, have a huge influence on federal spending and taxes.[3]&#160; Thus, these models proved crucially important to the congressional debate.</p>
<p>Among other things, the authors of the PPACA worked closely with the staff at CBO in constructing their proposals.&#160; Many of the CBO analyses and cost estimates done on early versions of the PPACA were never seen beyond the offices of those writing the legislation.&#160; That’s because the authors received the information confidentially from CBO (as is their long-standing practice) and then modified the legislation as much as necessary until they received the kind of estimates they were looking for.&#160; In this way, the CBO model was instrumental in shaping the final bill.</p>
<p>Moreover, during debate on the legislation, CBO’s numbers became the most important data points used by both sides to make their points both for and against its enactment.</p>
<p>All of this is unavoidable.&#160; Health care reform is exceedingly complex public policy, and predicting how a specific proposal will alter the key metrics of policy interest cannot be done without significant expertise.&#160; Inevitably, the task must be delegated to experts, and the staff at CBO is certainly that.</p>
<p>And it is also inevitable that CBO’s estimates will be treated as “facts,” when in reality they are predictions – predictions that may or may not turn out to be accurate.&#160; The truth is that the CBO and its models are just that: models.&#160; They are subject to any number of errors, most especially about the assumptions that are a part of every model but also from the omission of the unintended and unexpected consequences that every complex law produces.&#160; Among other things, the CBO model makes assumptions about future cost growth of premiums.&#160; The estimates provided for the PPACA assumed a modest reduction in costs associated with more transparent price competition in the health insurance exchanges.</p>
<p>Given the uncertainty surrounding such predictions, the health reform policy process will be improved, and the debate enriched, by additional sources of information beyond CBO. That way policymakers and the public could see for themselves how different approaches to estimating, as well as different assumptions, can produce different results with respect to insured status, premium increases, and federal spending, taxes, and deficits.</p>
<p>The estimates provided in this paper are initial projections from the HEPSS model.&#160; We plan to continue refine the model and to provide additional analyses as the health reform debate unfolds.</p>
<p>The following is a description of HEPSS.</p>
<p>The Health Economic Policy Simulation System (HEPSS)</p>
<p>The Health Economic Policy Simulation System (HEPPS) is a microsimulation model with the capacity to estimate costs, premiums, and insurance coverage for the U.S. population.</p>
<p>HEPSS has two major components, one dedicated to providing estimates for the population under age 65 and the other for those age 65 and older.</p>
<p>The model predicts consumer responses to insurance enrollment and use of health services based on changes in public policies and the resulting incentives for different segments of the population.</p>
<p>The model is built like other models around coefficients used to estimate how people will respond when presented with various alternative insurance status options.&#160; This model is unique, however, in that is relies much more heavily than other models on large employer-originated data sets that contain substantial enrollment in high deductible plans.&#160; The model is also calibrated to reflect the impact of consumer incentives for cost effective care on the rise in health spending in future years.&#160; The emphasis on robust consumer information is crucial to calibrating the system-wide response to some of the policy options often considered in Congress.[4]</p>
<p>The HEPSS model, and earlier versions of it, has been used to provide estimates to the Department of Health and Human Services, members of the House and Senate, and various other public and private clients over the past several years.</p>
<p>It is AAF’s intention to continue to improve and refine the model and use it as an educational resource for on-going health policy debates.</p>
<p>Conclusion</p>
<p>Although the PPACA is now being implemented, there is certain to be on-going debate about the most appropriate course for health care policy in coming years, especially in light of the nation’s continuing fiscal challenges.&#160; As these debates occur, the quality of the decision-making will be a function, in part, of the estimates of what various policies might mean for insurance coverage, premiums, and the federal budget.</p>
<p>The HEPSS model is intended to be a resource to help the public and policymakers reach conclusions about what these policies might mean, using an approach to estimating that is entirely independent and not identical to the methods used by CBO.</p>
<p>As noted in this paper, the model projects that an alternative to the PPACA has the potential to provide substantial insurance coverage expansion within&#160;a decentralized, market-driven reform framework.&#160; There is no need for either individual or employer mandates.&#160; That alone should be of interest to the health policy community and can form the basis for a healthy debate in the months and years ahead.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>James C. Capretta, a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, served as an associate director at the Office of Management and Budget.&#160; Douglas Holtz-Eakin is President of the American Action Forum.&#160; The views herein are our own, and not those of our affiliated organizations.&#160; We thank Sarah Hale, Stephen Parente, Ross Parks, and Cameron Smith for their comments.&#160; All errors remain our own.</p>
<p>_______________________________________</p>
<p>[1] See “How to Replace Obamacare,” James C. Capretta and Robert E. Moffit,National Affairs, Spring 2012 ( <a href="http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/how-to-replace-obamacare" type="external">http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/how-to-replace-obamacare</a>) and “Constructing an Alternative to Obamacare:&#160; Key Details for a Practical Replacement Program,” James C. Capretta, American Enterprise Institute, Health Policy Outlook No. 6, December 2012 ( <a href="http://www.aei.org/files/2012/12/12/-constructing-an-alternative-to-obamacare-key-details-for-a-practical-replacement-program_171532844111.pdf" type="external">http://www.aei.org/files/2012/12/12/-constructing-an-alternative-to-obamacare-key-details-for-a-practical-replacement-program_171532844111.pdf</a>)</p>
<p>[2] CBO’s most recent estimates for the insurance coverage provisions of the PPACA can be found in a table entitled, “CBO’s February 2013 Estimate of the Effects of the Affordable Care Act on Health Insurance Coverage,” February 5, 2013 (available here: <a href="http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/43900_ACAInsuranceCoverageEffects.pdf" type="external">http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/43900_ACAInsuranceCoverageEffects.pdf</a>).</p>
<p>[3] “CBO’s Health Insurance Simulation Model: ATechnical Description,” Congressional Budget Office, October 2007 ( <a href="http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/ftpdocs/87xx/doc8712/10-31-healthinsurmodel.pdf" type="external">http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/ftpdocs/87xx/doc8712/10-31-healthinsurmodel.pdf</a>).</p>
<p>[4] A full description of the model and its specification can be found in Parente, S., R. Feldman, J. Abraham, and Y. Xu, “Consumer Response to a National Marketplace for Individual Health Insurance,”&#160;Journal of Risk and Insurance, 2011.</p> | false | 1 | patient protection affordable care act ppaca survived legislative judicial electoral challenges160 apparent successes notwithstanding ppaca remains sweeping damaging reform health care delivery health entitlements health insurance sectors united states160 policy flaws myriad significant provisions scheduled take effect 2014 advocates alternative reform two apparent options repeal replace ppaca time right undertake sequential reforms intended improve policy outcomes160 course current political context neither appears promising160 nevertheless merit continued evaluation fullscale alternatives ppaca160 one common defense law competing alternative true160 virtue continuing develop refine many alternatives may proposed160 toward end short paper outlines one practical conservative approach replacing law marketbased reform plan important alternatives ppaca evaluated level playing field respect estimated impact federal budget premiums uninsured empirical aspects impacts reform 160naturally estimates depend largely economic simulation models congressional budget office analyzes reform proposals estimates center policy debate160 estimates turn heavily influenced modeling choices makes160 compare ppaca alternative provide alternative approach developed american action forum using health economic policy simulation system hepss analyze impact replacement plan key metrics policy interest substitute policy proposals useful extent thoroughly evaluated basis impacts compared ppacas associated projections effort offer many responsible routes healthcare cost reduction market improvement possible following proposal describes practical set policy choices associated projections ppaca replacement plan replacement plan decentralized marketdriven alternative ppaca160 plan built flexible insurance rules state authority consumer incentives160 key features proposal described two separately published papers1 main provisions replacement plan assumed become effective 2014 follows results results analysis encouraging displayed tables 1 2 key findings follows 160 estimating impacts health care reform goals health care reform relatively straightforward160 public elected leaders want make progress controlling costs time ensuring americans gain insurance coverage health system offers high quality health care achieved improving least worsening budget outlook goals clear assessing degree specific legislative proposal makes progress toward goals would instead lead setbacks exceedingly difficult do160 long debate passage ppaca judgments criteria key moments debate surprisingly judgments heavily influenced best available analytical information various reform options produced congressional budget office cbo160 several years preceding 20092010 health care debate cbo built number simulation models specifically assess impact various approaches reform would premiums program participation medicaid medicare private coverage160 course huge influence federal spending taxes3160 thus models proved crucially important congressional debate among things authors ppaca worked closely staff cbo constructing proposals160 many cbo analyses cost estimates done early versions ppaca never seen beyond offices writing legislation160 thats authors received information confidentially cbo longstanding practice modified legislation much necessary received kind estimates looking for160 way cbo model instrumental shaping final bill moreover debate legislation cbos numbers became important data points used sides make points enactment unavoidable160 health care reform exceedingly complex public policy predicting specific proposal alter key metrics policy interest done without significant expertise160 inevitably task must delegated experts staff cbo certainly also inevitable cbos estimates treated facts reality predictions predictions may may turn accurate160 truth cbo models models160 subject number errors especially assumptions part every model also omission unintended unexpected consequences every complex law produces160 among things cbo model makes assumptions future cost growth premiums160 estimates provided ppaca assumed modest reduction costs associated transparent price competition health insurance exchanges given uncertainty surrounding predictions health reform policy process improved debate enriched additional sources information beyond cbo way policymakers public could see different approaches estimating well different assumptions produce different results respect insured status premium increases federal spending taxes deficits estimates provided paper initial projections hepss model160 plan continue refine model provide additional analyses health reform debate unfolds following description hepss health economic policy simulation system hepss health economic policy simulation system hepps microsimulation model capacity estimate costs premiums insurance coverage us population hepss two major components one dedicated providing estimates population age 65 age 65 older model predicts consumer responses insurance enrollment use health services based changes public policies resulting incentives different segments population model built like models around coefficients used estimate people respond presented various alternative insurance status options160 model unique however relies much heavily models large employeroriginated data sets contain substantial enrollment high deductible plans160 model also calibrated reflect impact consumer incentives cost effective care rise health spending future years160 emphasis robust consumer information crucial calibrating systemwide response policy options often considered congress4 hepss model earlier versions used provide estimates department health human services members house senate various public private clients past several years aafs intention continue improve refine model use educational resource ongoing health policy debates conclusion although ppaca implemented certain ongoing debate appropriate course health care policy coming years especially light nations continuing fiscal challenges160 debates occur quality decisionmaking function part estimates various policies might mean insurance coverage premiums federal budget hepss model intended resource help public policymakers reach conclusions policies might mean using approach estimating entirely independent identical methods used cbo noted paper model projects alternative ppaca potential provide substantial insurance coverage expansion within160a decentralized marketdriven reform framework160 need either individual employer mandates160 alone interest health policy community form basis healthy debate months years ahead 160 james c capretta senior fellow ethics public policy center visiting fellow american enterprise institute served associate director office management budget160 douglas holtzeakin president american action forum160 views herein affiliated organizations160 thank sarah hale stephen parente ross parks cameron smith comments160 errors remain _______________________________________ 1 see replace obamacare james c capretta robert e moffitnational affairs spring 2012 httpwwwnationalaffairscompublicationsdetailhowtoreplaceobamacare constructing alternative obamacare160 key details practical replacement program james c capretta american enterprise institute health policy outlook 6 december 2012 httpwwwaeiorgfiles20121212constructinganalternativetoobamacarekeydetailsforapracticalreplacementprogram_171532844111pdf 2 cbos recent estimates insurance coverage provisions ppaca found table entitled cbos february 2013 estimate effects affordable care act health insurance coverage february 5 2013 available httpwwwcbogovsitesdefaultfilescbofilesattachments43900_acainsurancecoverageeffectspdf 3 cbos health insurance simulation model atechnical description congressional budget office october 2007 httpwwwcbogovsitesdefaultfilescbofilesftpdocs87xxdoc87121031healthinsurmodelpdf 4 full description model specification found parente r feldman j abraham xu consumer response national marketplace individual health insurance160journal risk insurance 2011 | 957 |
<p>WASHINGTON — Rep. Trent Franks, an Arizona Republican who is among the most conservative members of the House, said he would resign his seat after House officials learned that he had asked two female employees to bear his children as surrogates.</p>
<p>Franks’ announcement came as the House Ethics Committee said it would create a special subcommittee to investigate Franks for conduct “that constitutes sexual harassment and/or retaliation for opposing sexual harassment.”</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>His resignation, which Franks said is effective Jan. 31, will end the ethics investigation.</p>
<p>Franks said in his statement that the investigation concerns his “discussion of surrogacy with two previous female subordinates, making each feel uncomfortable.”</p>
<p>While Franks’ statement left the circumstances of the “discussion” murky, three Republicans familiar with the allegations said that he had asked the staffers, who worked for him at the time but have since left his office, if they would serve as surrogate mothers for his children. A spokesman for Franks did not respond to a request for comment on that claim.</p>
<p>In his statement, Franks said he never “physically intimidated, coerced, or had, or attempted to have, any sexual contact with any member of my congressional staff.”</p>
<p>“However, I do want to take full and personal responsibility for the ways I have broached a topic that, unbeknownst to me until very recently, made certain individuals uncomfortable,” Franks said, adding, “I deeply regret that my discussion of this option and process in the workplace caused distress.”</p>
<p>Franks explained in his statement that he and his wife have long struggled with infertility. After having twins with a surrogate, the couple sought additional children, he said.</p>
<p>House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office said in a statement Thursday that Ryan, R-Wis., had been briefed on “credible claims of misconduct” by Franks last week, after the House general counsel was contacted about the allegations and investigated them.</p>
<p>Franks did not deny the allegations when Ryan confronted him, according to the speaker’s statement. Ryan told Franks he should resign, and said he would refer the matter to the House Ethics Committee, his statement said.</p>
<p>“The speaker takes seriously his obligation to ensure a safe workplace in the House,” the statement said.</p>
<p>The Franks revelations came on the same day that Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., <a href="" type="internal">resigned his seat</a> following multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and as the House Ethics Committee opened a separate probe into Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas.</p>
<p>The committee initially launched an investigation into Farenthold in September 2015, but it was “significantly delayed” because the committee could not get “key witnesses other than Representative Farenthold” to testify, according to the committee’s statement.</p>
<p>Farenthold’s former communications director, Lauren Greene, accused Farenthold in 2014 of making sexually charged comments designed to gauge whether she was interested in a sexual relationship. Greene filed suit through the formal complaint process with Congress’s Office of Compliance.</p>
<p>It was revealed last week that Farenthold used $84,000 in taxpayer money to settle the lawsuit. Farenthold has denied wrongdoing in the case.</p>
<p>This week, Greene spoke publicly about her experience for the first time since making the accusation. In interviews with CNN and Politico, she described the significant professional backlash she faced after filing a lawsuit against Farenthold.</p>
<p>Greene’s attorney told Politico on Thursday that the House Ethics Committee has requested that Greene cooperate with the investigation and appear before the panel. The Ethics Committee had requested to interview her over a year ago, but she declined, wanting to move on from the matter, her attorney Les Alderman told Politico.</p>
<p>Farenthold said in a statement Thursday that he is “relieved” the House Ethics Committee will continue investigating the matter, saying he is “confident this matter will once and for all be settled and resolved.”</p>
<p>Franks has served in the House since 2003 and is known as a fierce opponent of legal abortion, recently sponsoring a bill banning abortions after 20-week gestation that passed the House. He is also an outspoken critic of the Senate’s filibuster rule, blaming it for blocking conservative bills.</p>
<p>Franks is also a member of the House Freedom Caucus, a hard-right faction that has often clashed with Republican leaders.</p>
<p>He considered a run for Senate in 2012 but dropped out suddenly. He continued as chairman of a House Judiciary subcommittee and as a member of the House Armed Services Committee.</p>
<p>While Franks was on the floor Thursday voting on a stopgap funding bill and other measures, he appeared to be consoled by a number of fellow Republicans. At one point, Franks and four colleagues locked arms and bowed their heads in an apparent prayer.</p>
<p>Franks said he was compelled to resign after concluding that he would be unable to endure the ethics probe “before distorted and sensationalized versions of this story would put me, my family, my staff, and my noble colleagues in the House of Representatives through hyperbolized public excoriation.”</p>
<p>“Rather than allow a sensationalized trial by media damage those things I love most, this morning I notified House leadership that I will be leaving Congress as of January 31st, 2018,” he said. “It is with the greatest sadness, that for the sake of the causes I deeply love, I must now step back from the battle I have spent over three decades fighting.”</p>
<p>Arizona’s 8th Congressional District, which stretches northwest of Phoenix, leans Republican by 13 points, according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. President Donald Trump defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the district by 21 points last year; Franks did not face a Democratic opponent.</p>
<p>Under Arizona state law, a special election must be called if there is a vacancy more than six months before a regularly scheduled election.</p>
<p>Names of potential Republican successors include Kimberly Yee, a state representative currently running for state treasurer, and Phil Lovas, a former state representative, according to multiple Arizona GOP operatives.</p> | false | 1 | washington rep trent franks arizona republican among conservative members house said would resign seat house officials learned asked two female employees bear children surrogates franks announcement came house ethics committee said would create special subcommittee investigate franks conduct constitutes sexual harassment andor retaliation opposing sexual harassment resignation franks said effective jan 31 end ethics investigation franks said statement investigation concerns discussion surrogacy two previous female subordinates making feel uncomfortable franks statement left circumstances discussion murky three republicans familiar allegations said asked staffers worked time since left office would serve surrogate mothers children spokesman franks respond request comment claim statement franks said never physically intimidated coerced attempted sexual contact member congressional staff however want take full personal responsibility ways broached topic unbeknownst recently made certain individuals uncomfortable franks said adding deeply regret discussion option process workplace caused distress franks explained statement wife long struggled infertility twins surrogate couple sought additional children said house speaker paul ryans office said statement thursday ryan rwis briefed credible claims misconduct franks last week house general counsel contacted allegations investigated franks deny allegations ryan confronted according speakers statement ryan told franks resign said would refer matter house ethics committee statement said speaker takes seriously obligation ensure safe workplace house statement said franks revelations came day sen al franken dminn resigned seat following multiple allegations sexual misconduct house ethics committee opened separate probe rep blake farenthold rtexas committee initially launched investigation farenthold september 2015 significantly delayed committee could get key witnesses representative farenthold testify according committees statement farentholds former communications director lauren greene accused farenthold 2014 making sexually charged comments designed gauge whether interested sexual relationship greene filed suit formal complaint process congresss office compliance revealed last week farenthold used 84000 taxpayer money settle lawsuit farenthold denied wrongdoing case week greene spoke publicly experience first time since making accusation interviews cnn politico described significant professional backlash faced filing lawsuit farenthold greenes attorney told politico thursday house ethics committee requested greene cooperate investigation appear panel ethics committee requested interview year ago declined wanting move matter attorney les alderman told politico farenthold said statement thursday relieved house ethics committee continue investigating matter saying confident matter settled resolved franks served house since 2003 known fierce opponent legal abortion recently sponsoring bill banning abortions 20week gestation passed house also outspoken critic senates filibuster rule blaming blocking conservative bills franks also member house freedom caucus hardright faction often clashed republican leaders considered run senate 2012 dropped suddenly continued chairman house judiciary subcommittee member house armed services committee franks floor thursday voting stopgap funding bill measures appeared consoled number fellow republicans one point franks four colleagues locked arms bowed heads apparent prayer franks said compelled resign concluding would unable endure ethics probe distorted sensationalized versions story would put family staff noble colleagues house representatives hyperbolized public excoriation rather allow sensationalized trial media damage things love morning notified house leadership leaving congress january 31st 2018 said greatest sadness sake causes deeply love must step back battle spent three decades fighting arizonas 8th congressional district stretches northwest phoenix leans republican 13 points according nonpartisan cook political report president donald trump defeated democratic nominee hillary clinton district 21 points last year franks face democratic opponent arizona state law special election must called vacancy six months regularly scheduled election names potential republican successors include kimberly yee state representative currently running state treasurer phil lovas former state representative according multiple arizona gop operatives | 565 |
<p>The resounding Senate crash of the seven-year Republican drive to scrap the Obama health care law incited GOP finger-pointing Friday but left the party with wounded leaders and no evident pathway forward on an issue that won’t go away.</p>
<p>In an astonishing cliff-hanger, the GOP-run Senate voted 51-49 to reject Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s last ditch attempt to sustain their drive to dismantle President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul with a starkly trimmed-down bill. The vote, which concluded shortly before 2 a.m. EDT, was a blistering defeat for President Donald Trump and McConnell, R-Ky., who’ve made uprooting the statute a top priority.</p>
<p>“They should have approved health care last night,” Trump said Friday during a speech in Brentwood, New York. “But you can’t have everything,” he added, seemingly shrugging off one of his biggest legislative setbacks.</p>
<p>Trump reiterated his threat to “let Obamacare implode,” an outcome he could hasten by steps like halting federal payments to help insurers reduce out-of-pocket costs for lower-earning consumers.</p>
<p>Senate Democrats were joined in opposition by three Republicans — Maine’s Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Arizona’s John McCain. The 80-year-old McCain, just diagnosed with brain cancer, had returned to the Capitol three days earlier to provide a vote that temporarily kept the measure alive, only to deliver the coup de grace Friday.</p>
<p>“3 Republicans and 48 Democrats let the American people down,” Trump tweeted Friday. He tweeted later that the Senate needed a rules change to “immediately go to a 51 vote majority, not senseless 60,” even though on the crucial vote a simple majority of 51 votes, including a tie-breaker by Vice President Mike Pence, was all that was needed.</p>
<p>“Hello, he only needed 51 in the health care bill and couldn’t do it,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., helpfully reminded reporters.</p>
<p>Earlier in the week, Republican defections sank two broad GOP efforts to scrap the 2010 law. One would have erased Obama’s statute and replaced it with a more constricted government health care role, and the other would have annulled the law and given Congress two years to replace it.</p>
<p>The measure that fell Friday was narrower and included a repeal of Obama’s unpopular tax penalties on people who don’t buy policies and on employers who don’t offer coverage to workers. McConnell designed it as a legislative vehicle the Senate could approve and begin talks with the House on a compromise, final bill.</p>
<p>But the week’s setbacks highlighted how, despite years of trying, GOP leaders haven’t resolved internal battles between conservatives seeking to erase Obama’s law and moderates leery of tossing millions of voters off of coverage.</p>
<p>“It’s time to move on,” McConnell said after the defeat.</p>
<p>Friday morning, House leaders resorted to singer Gordon Lightfoot to point fingers. They opened a House GOP meeting by playing “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” a ballad about the 1975 sinking of a freighter in Lake Superior. Lawmakers said leaders assured them it was meant as a reference to the Senate’s flop.</p>
<p>The House approved its health care measure in May, after its own tribulations.</p>
<p>In a statement, Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., pointedly said “the House delivered a bill.”</p>
<p>He added, “I encourage the Senate to continue working toward a real solution that keeps our promise.”</p>
<p>Conservative Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., running for a Senate seat, faulted McConnell for not crafting a plan that could pass. He said if McConnell abandons the health care drive, “he should resign from leadership.”</p>
<p>One moderate Republican said Trump shared responsibility.</p>
<p>“One of the failures was the president never laid out a plan or his core principles and never sold them to the American people,” said Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa. “Outsourced the whole issue to Congress.”</p>
<p>In statements Friday, McCain said the Senate bill didn’t lower costs or improve care and called the chamber’s inability to craft wide-ranging legislation “inexcusable.” He said Democrats and Republicans should write a bill together and “stop the political gamesmanship.”</p>
<p>Lawmakers spoke of two possible but difficult routes forward.</p>
<p>In one, balking GOP senators could be won over by new proposals from leaders or cave under pressure from angry constituents demanding they fulfill the party’s pledge to tear down Obama’s law. But both of those dynamics have been in play all year without producing results.</p>
<p>In the other, there would be a limited bipartisan effort to address the insurance market’s short-term concerns. That would provide money to insurers to help them subsidize some customers and prevent companies from driving up premiums or abandoning regions.</p>
<p>Schumer said he hoped the two parties could “work together to make the system better” by stabilizing marketplaces.</p>
<p>But many conservatives oppose such payments and consider them insurance industry bailouts, raising questions about whether Congress could approve such a package.</p>
<p>McConnell said it was time for Democrats “to tell us what they have in mind.” But saying he was backed by most Republicans, he added, “Bailing out insurance companies, with no thought of any kind of reform, is not something I want to be part of.</p> | false | 1 | resounding senate crash sevenyear republican drive scrap obama health care law incited gop fingerpointing friday left party wounded leaders evident pathway forward issue wont go away astonishing cliffhanger goprun senate voted 5149 reject majority leader mitch mcconnells last ditch attempt sustain drive dismantle president barack obamas health care overhaul starkly trimmeddown bill vote concluded shortly 2 edt blistering defeat president donald trump mcconnell rky whove made uprooting statute top priority approved health care last night trump said friday speech brentwood new york cant everything added seemingly shrugging one biggest legislative setbacks trump reiterated threat let obamacare implode outcome could hasten steps like halting federal payments help insurers reduce outofpocket costs lowerearning consumers senate democrats joined opposition three republicans maines susan collins lisa murkowski alaska arizonas john mccain 80yearold mccain diagnosed brain cancer returned capitol three days earlier provide vote temporarily kept measure alive deliver coup de grace friday 3 republicans 48 democrats let american people trump tweeted friday tweeted later senate needed rules change immediately go 51 vote majority senseless 60 even though crucial vote simple majority 51 votes including tiebreaker vice president mike pence needed hello needed 51 health care bill couldnt senate minority leader chuck schumer dny helpfully reminded reporters earlier week republican defections sank two broad gop efforts scrap 2010 law one would erased obamas statute replaced constricted government health care role would annulled law given congress two years replace measure fell friday narrower included repeal obamas unpopular tax penalties people dont buy policies employers dont offer coverage workers mcconnell designed legislative vehicle senate could approve begin talks house compromise final bill weeks setbacks highlighted despite years trying gop leaders havent resolved internal battles conservatives seeking erase obamas law moderates leery tossing millions voters coverage time move mcconnell said defeat friday morning house leaders resorted singer gordon lightfoot point fingers opened house gop meeting playing wreck edmund fitzgerald ballad 1975 sinking freighter lake superior lawmakers said leaders assured meant reference senates flop house approved health care measure may tribulations statement speaker paul ryan rwis pointedly said house delivered bill added encourage senate continue working toward real solution keeps promise conservative rep mo brooks rala running senate seat faulted mcconnell crafting plan could pass said mcconnell abandons health care drive resign leadership one moderate republican said trump shared responsibility one failures president never laid plan core principles never sold american people said rep charlie dent rpa outsourced whole issue congress statements friday mccain said senate bill didnt lower costs improve care called chambers inability craft wideranging legislation inexcusable said democrats republicans write bill together stop political gamesmanship lawmakers spoke two possible difficult routes forward one balking gop senators could new proposals leaders cave pressure angry constituents demanding fulfill partys pledge tear obamas law dynamics play year without producing results would limited bipartisan effort address insurance markets shortterm concerns would provide money insurers help subsidize customers prevent companies driving premiums abandoning regions schumer said hoped two parties could work together make system better stabilizing marketplaces many conservatives oppose payments consider insurance industry bailouts raising questions whether congress could approve package mcconnell said time democrats tell us mind saying backed republicans added bailing insurance companies thought kind reform something want part | 531 |
<p>By Mukhammadsharif Mamatkulov and Mariya Gordeyeva</p>
<p>TASHKENT/ALMATY (Reuters) – Sensing change in his native Uzbekistan, Hikmat Abdurahmonov plans to build a 10-storey office block and open a consultancy firm oriented towards foreign trade. In neighboring Kazakhstan, banker Umut Shayakhmetova is considering an Uzbek subsidiary.</p>
<p>“There is hope in the air,” she says.</p>
<p>Their plans, commonplace in many countries, are striking because Uzbekistan, as Shayakhmetova puts it, is “starting from zero”.</p>
<p>Until the death last year of former president Islam Karimov, it was one of the world’s most isolated states. Karimov, who came to power in communist times, kept an iron grip on the economy and politics and mistrusted both Russia and the West.</p>
<p>Since then, foreign delegations have been beating a path to the capital Tashkent, drawn by the potential of the Central Asian country’s oil and gas and vast cotton crop as well as areas such as car and food production, machinery and chemicals.</p>
<p>They also have political concerns: Uzbeks from a long-oppressed Muslim population have been arrested for attacks on civilians in New York, Istanbul, Stockholm and St Petersburg this year that killed at least 65 people and wounded many more.</p>
<p>Karimov’s successor, his longtime prime minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev, has maintained the top-down political system while starting tentative reforms to an economy that had failed to create jobs, fuelling discontent.</p>
<p>In August, the country said it would abolish, in 2019, the exit visa system that prevented Uzbeks leaving without official permission, easing the path of millions of migrant workers whose remittances, mostly from Russia, are a vital source of income.</p>
<p>A month later it stopped sending students, teachers and medical workers to harvest cotton after a global boycott campaign, and scrapped most of the capital controls that had bolstered state reserves but stifled trade and investment.</p>
<p>For Abdurahmonov, 36, who has run property, trade, finance and other businesses and lived in the United States, Britain, China and Singapore, the currency reform means he can focus on making money instead of tracking it down in an opaque system.</p>
<p>“I think you can feel it in the air how the atmosphere is really changing,” he said in an interview at his three-storey, loft-style office building on the eastern outskirts of Tashkent.</p>
<p>“People are planning new businesses, you can see a lot of start-ups coming (to us).”</p>
<p>‘SERIOUS’</p>
<p>While Abdurahmonov’s company leases out office space, arranges foreign trade deals and provides other services for local entrepreneurs, Shayakhmetova is chief executive of Halyk Bank, Kazakhstan’s biggest lender by assets.</p>
<p>“I have had meetings with high-level officials and I have the impression they are serious (about reforms),” she said in the Kazakh capital Almaty. “We are studying the market and talking to the regulator to see what their plans are.”</p>
<p>Shayakhmetova said the bank, which has assets of $26 billion and units in Russia, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, could set up a subsidiary in Tashkent in a year and a half.</p>
<p>The World Bank named Uzbekistan one of its top 10 improvers this year for ease of doing business, citing reforms in starting a business, construction permits, protection for minority investors, tax payments and electricity supplies.</p>
<p>Ranked 74 out of 190 countries, it was slightly ahead of China and Ukraine but well below Russia, which is 35th.</p>
<p>“Our next target is quite ambitious – we want to be in the top 20 by 2025,” Azim Akhmedkhodjaev, head of the state investments committee, said, citing a draft “Investment Code” to replace more than a hundred separate laws and regulations.</p>
<p>The country has not tackled the more complex and potentially painful restructuring of large state enterprises, however, or joined the World Trade Organisation, and is among states perceived as most corrupt, according to watchdog Transparency International, which ranks it 156 of 176.</p>
<p>Ordinary Uzbeks have yet to feel the full benefits of the foreign exchange liberalization, still unable to buy foreign currency in cash except on the illegal black market.</p>
<p>GLOBAL OUTREACH, RUSSIAN FOCUS</p>
<p>So far this decade, Russia, China and South Korea accounted for around two-thirds of investment, with most, last year, going into oil and gas, followed by chemicals and logistics.</p>
<p>Akhmedkhodjaev said the country had attracted $4.2 billion so far this year, including $3.7 billion in direct investment or FDI, compared with $1.9 billion in FDI in the whole of 2016.</p>
<p>According to World Bank data issued before Akhmedkhodjaev spoke to reporters this month, FDI inflows fell to $67 million in 2016. He did not comment on the discrepancy. http://reut.rs/2A4bDjy</p>
<p>The drop followed high-profile disputes with investors such as Britain’s Oxus Gold and Russian mobile phone operator MTS and a drop off in Chinese investment once a gas pipeline was built.</p>
<p>This year, France’s Peugeot (PA:) announced a joint venture and Turkish firm Gentes Yapi ve Endustry Tesisleri Ltd Sti signed a deal to build a large logistics facility.</p>
<p>That marked an easing of ties strained by Turkey granting asylum to a leading Uzbek opposition figure, although he and others have yet to return because, while some critics have been freed from jail, others have been detained.</p>
<p>Akhmedkhodjaev listed United States, Germany and Japan among investors this year, a reflection of the president’s global outreach, while the main inflow, almost a billion dollars, was expected to come from Russian energy giant LUKOIL (MM:).</p>
<p>Mirziyoyev has described Russia as a strategic partner, and Russian central bank data shows $2.7 billion in money transfers from Russia to Uzbekistan last year.</p> | false | 1 | mukhammadsharif mamatkulov mariya gordeyeva tashkentalmaty reuters sensing change native uzbekistan hikmat abdurahmonov plans build 10storey office block open consultancy firm oriented towards foreign trade neighboring kazakhstan banker umut shayakhmetova considering uzbek subsidiary hope air says plans commonplace many countries striking uzbekistan shayakhmetova puts starting zero death last year former president islam karimov one worlds isolated states karimov came power communist times kept iron grip economy politics mistrusted russia west since foreign delegations beating path capital tashkent drawn potential central asian countrys oil gas vast cotton crop well areas car food production machinery chemicals also political concerns uzbeks longoppressed muslim population arrested attacks civilians new york istanbul stockholm st petersburg year killed least 65 people wounded many karimovs successor longtime prime minister shavkat mirziyoyev maintained topdown political system starting tentative reforms economy failed create jobs fuelling discontent august country said would abolish 2019 exit visa system prevented uzbeks leaving without official permission easing path millions migrant workers whose remittances mostly russia vital source income month later stopped sending students teachers medical workers harvest cotton global boycott campaign scrapped capital controls bolstered state reserves stifled trade investment abdurahmonov 36 run property trade finance businesses lived united states britain china singapore currency reform means focus making money instead tracking opaque system think feel air atmosphere really changing said interview threestorey loftstyle office building eastern outskirts tashkent people planning new businesses see lot startups coming us serious abdurahmonovs company leases office space arranges foreign trade deals provides services local entrepreneurs shayakhmetova chief executive halyk bank kazakhstans biggest lender assets meetings highlevel officials impression serious reforms said kazakh capital almaty studying market talking regulator see plans shayakhmetova said bank assets 26 billion units russia georgia kyrgyzstan could set subsidiary tashkent year half world bank named uzbekistan one top 10 improvers year ease business citing reforms starting business construction permits protection minority investors tax payments electricity supplies ranked 74 190 countries slightly ahead china ukraine well russia 35th next target quite ambitious want top 20 2025 azim akhmedkhodjaev head state investments committee said citing draft investment code replace hundred separate laws regulations country tackled complex potentially painful restructuring large state enterprises however joined world trade organisation among states perceived corrupt according watchdog transparency international ranks 156 176 ordinary uzbeks yet feel full benefits foreign exchange liberalization still unable buy foreign currency cash except illegal black market global outreach russian focus far decade russia china south korea accounted around twothirds investment last year going oil gas followed chemicals logistics akhmedkhodjaev said country attracted 42 billion far year including 37 billion direct investment fdi compared 19 billion fdi whole 2016 according world bank data issued akhmedkhodjaev spoke reporters month fdi inflows fell 67 million 2016 comment discrepancy httpreutrs2a4bdjy drop followed highprofile disputes investors britains oxus gold russian mobile phone operator mts drop chinese investment gas pipeline built year frances peugeot pa announced joint venture turkish firm gentes yapi endustry tesisleri ltd sti signed deal build large logistics facility marked easing ties strained turkey granting asylum leading uzbek opposition figure although others yet return critics freed jail others detained akhmedkhodjaev listed united states germany japan among investors year reflection presidents global outreach main inflow almost billion dollars expected come russian energy giant lukoil mm mirziyoyev described russia strategic partner russian central bank data shows 27 billion money transfers russia uzbekistan last year | 553 |
<p>This past October, twenty years after the 1967 “March on the Pentagon” that marked a watershed in the Vietnam-era protest against U.S. policy in Southeast Asia, over a hundred veterans of the radicalisms of the 1960s met in Washington, D.C., under the auspices of the National Forum Foundation’s “Second Thoughts Project” to … well, to air their “second thoughts” about the old days.</p>
<p>The “Second Thoughts Project” is led by Peter Collier and David Horowitz, who once edited Ramparts, the flagship journal of the New Left, and are now better known as the authors of best-selling biographies of the Rockefellers, the Kennedys, and the Fords. The manifesto of the Collier/Horowitz enterprise may be considered their essay in the Washington Post magazine some three years ago, in which the authors said goodbye to all that: to “the self-aggrandizing romance with corrupt Third Worldism; to the casual indulgence of Soviet totalitarianism; to the hypocritical and self-dramatizing anti-Americanism that is the New Left’s bequest to mainstream politics.” Discerning readers may note that, whatever else has changed with Messrs. Collier and Horowitz, a fondness for punchy prose remains firmly in place.</p>
<p>The passage from the New Left to various points a droit has been a significant factor in American intellectual and political life for some time now. In terms of historical scholarship one remembers, for example, Alien Weinstein’s beginning his research into the Hiss Case on the presumption of Hiss’s innocence and then being forced by the evidence and his own intellectual integrity to the opposite conclusion, which he recorded in the award-winning volume Perjury. Dr. Weinstein is now an activist on behalf of democracy throughout the world. Ronald Radosh made a similar pilgrimage in his research on the Rosenberg case (The Rosenberg File: A Search for the Truth) and has gone on to become a prominent and courageous critic of the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. Among the memoirs of the sixties (and its antecedents), perhaps the most thoughtful exploration of this process of the examination of political conscience remains Norman Podhoretz’s 1979 volume, Breaking Ranks.</p>
<p>If, as Richard Weaver taught, “ideas have consequences,” then the second thoughts of Vietnam-era New Left activists are of more than biographical interest. Sooner or later, for better or for worse, these second thoughts will make their impact on the definition of American purpose in the world (as indeed, in some cases, they already have). One can, from the perspective that guides us in AMERICAN PURPOSE, be grateful that many of those who attended the “Second Thoughts Conference” have had the honesty to confront the fact that their commitments to human rights were being gravely traduced by their flirtation with Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, and others of that ilk. One can welcome the new enthusiasm about the democratic revolution in the world, the fresh recognition of the moral worthiness of the American experiment (even in the face of its incompleteness and flaws), the rejection of neo-isolationism. All of this is to the good. These are important second thoughts to have had, to have published, and to have acted upon.</p>
<p>But what next? Are there not third thoughts to be thought?</p>
<p>Specifically, what do those with second thoughts have to say about the pursuit of peace in a persistently conflicted and hostile world? No small part of the power of the Vietnam-era New Left derived from its cooptation of the term, work for peace. That the concept of peace was severely wounded by the New Left goes, or should go, without saying: which is why, parenthetically, one should be chary about referring to Vietnam-era activism as a peace movement, since in fact it was not about peace at all, but about the withdrawal of U.S. influence from the violent struggle for power in Southeast Asia. Yet the pursuit of peace remains a powerful motivating force in American public life, and he who wins the definitional struggle over what that pursuit means, in principle and in practice, is going to have considerable influence on the course of U.S. foreign policy.</p>
<p>There are third thoughts to be explored and debated, then, and they have to do with bringing the new sobriety of the 1980s into a critical confrontation with the best instincts of the 1960s. We know now what those with second thoughts are against. And they are right to be in opposition to those forces in world politics that are least likely to lead toward a world that is peaceful, secure, and free. The next step requires a move beyond polemicizing against those who have yet to consider second thoughts about the sixties, and a forthright exploration of these (doubtless, among many other) questions:</p>
<p>What is the peace that is to be sought in this world? What is the relationship of that peace to human rights, to democracy, to the quest for a minimum of civil order in international public life?</p>
<p>What lies beyond anticommunism? What third thoughts are needed to enable those who now recognize the evil of totalitarianism to position themselves in active support of the independent people of the Soviet Union, Central and Eastern Europe, Vietnam, the People’s Republic of China, and Cuba?</p>
<p>Can the neoisolationism of the New Left be effectively challenged without a definition and practice of intervention that includes more than U.S. material and logistical support for anticommunist rebels in the Third World? Those with second thoughts clearly recognize the centrality of the war of ideas in international affairs. By what instruments is that war of liberation to be fought?</p>
<p>Nonviolence was one string, however muted, in the chorus of the New Left. What role does nonviolent resistance play in opposing both totalitarian and authoritarian regimes today?</p>
<p>Finally, what do the second thoughters have to say to an American culture in which moral argument has become virtually impossible and moral categories and concepts are used indiscriminately to bludgeon political opponents? Second thought moralism may be aimed at more desirable political objectives than the moralism of the New Left. But neither is very satisfactory as a mode of conducting civil argument in a democracy. What third thoughts are required so that the United States becomes a political community capable of prudence—which is chief among the political virtues, because it teaches us to apply moral norms to complex human situations with wisdom and care?</p>
<p>These are the kinds of questions raised at the “Second Thoughts Conference” by such speakers as our friends Richard John Neuhaus and Michael Novak. Here are two intellectuals who recognize that politics is a function of culture and that the fundamental questions about American purpose and purposes in the world will be settled in the culture before they register in American politics. Their deeper understanding of the meaning of the sixties and their refusal to reduce public life to a matter of politics alone are lessons to be learned by all second thoughters (and by everyone else, for that matter).</p>
<p>The Washington Post‘s in-house neoconservative-basher, Sidney Blumenthal, was duly assigned to cover the “Second Thoughts Conference” for the Style section of the paper. Not surprisingly he pronounced the meeting a “festival of disillusionment.” That was a mean-spirited and inaccurate epithet, but it contains, unwittingly, the grain of an important truth: namely, that the times require more than second thoughts about past political and ideological errors. Second thoughts may be the condition for the possibility of a new definition of American purpose in our third century. But second thoughts do not, in and of themselves, define that purpose. That is the debate toward which those with second thoughts now need to turn their attention and considerable skills.</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 | past october twenty years 1967 march pentagon marked watershed vietnamera protest us policy southeast asia hundred veterans radicalisms 1960s met washington dc auspices national forum foundations second thoughts project well air second thoughts old days second thoughts project led peter collier david horowitz edited ramparts flagship journal new left better known authors bestselling biographies rockefellers kennedys fords manifesto collierhorowitz enterprise may considered essay washington post magazine three years ago authors said goodbye selfaggrandizing romance corrupt third worldism casual indulgence soviet totalitarianism hypocritical selfdramatizing antiamericanism new lefts bequest mainstream politics discerning readers may note whatever else changed messrs collier horowitz fondness punchy prose remains firmly place passage new left various points droit significant factor american intellectual political life time terms historical scholarship one remembers example alien weinsteins beginning research hiss case presumption hisss innocence forced evidence intellectual integrity opposite conclusion recorded awardwinning volume perjury dr weinstein activist behalf democracy throughout world ronald radosh made similar pilgrimage research rosenberg case rosenberg file search truth gone become prominent courageous critic sandinista regime nicaragua among memoirs sixties antecedents perhaps thoughtful exploration process examination political conscience remains norman podhoretzs 1979 volume breaking ranks richard weaver taught ideas consequences second thoughts vietnamera new left activists biographical interest sooner later better worse second thoughts make impact definition american purpose world indeed cases already one perspective guides us american purpose grateful many attended second thoughts conference honesty confront fact commitments human rights gravely traduced flirtation ho chi minh fidel castro others ilk one welcome new enthusiasm democratic revolution world fresh recognition moral worthiness american experiment even face incompleteness flaws rejection neoisolationism good important second thoughts published acted upon next third thoughts thought specifically second thoughts say pursuit peace persistently conflicted hostile world small part power vietnamera new left derived cooptation term work peace concept peace severely wounded new left goes go without saying parenthetically one chary referring vietnamera activism peace movement since fact peace withdrawal us influence violent struggle power southeast asia yet pursuit peace remains powerful motivating force american public life wins definitional struggle pursuit means principle practice going considerable influence course us foreign policy third thoughts explored debated bringing new sobriety 1980s critical confrontation best instincts 1960s know second thoughts right opposition forces world politics least likely lead toward world peaceful secure free next step requires move beyond polemicizing yet consider second thoughts sixties forthright exploration doubtless among many questions peace sought world relationship peace human rights democracy quest minimum civil order international public life lies beyond anticommunism third thoughts needed enable recognize evil totalitarianism position active support independent people soviet union central eastern europe vietnam peoples republic china cuba neoisolationism new left effectively challenged without definition practice intervention includes us material logistical support anticommunist rebels third world second thoughts clearly recognize centrality war ideas international affairs instruments war liberation fought nonviolence one string however muted chorus new left role nonviolent resistance play opposing totalitarian authoritarian regimes today finally second thoughters say american culture moral argument become virtually impossible moral categories concepts used indiscriminately bludgeon political opponents second thought moralism may aimed desirable political objectives moralism new left neither satisfactory mode conducting civil argument democracy third thoughts required united states becomes political community capable prudencewhich chief among political virtues teaches us apply moral norms complex human situations wisdom care kinds questions raised second thoughts conference speakers friends richard john neuhaus michael novak two intellectuals recognize politics function culture fundamental questions american purpose purposes world settled culture register american politics deeper understanding meaning sixties refusal reduce public life matter politics alone lessons learned second thoughters everyone else matter washington posts inhouse neoconservativebasher sidney blumenthal duly assigned cover second thoughts conference style section paper surprisingly pronounced meeting festival disillusionment meanspirited inaccurate epithet contains unwittingly grain important truth namely times require second thoughts past political ideological errors second thoughts may condition possibility new definition american purpose third century second thoughts define purpose debate toward second thoughts need turn attention considerable skills george weigel distinguished senior fellow ethics public policy center washington dc holds eppcs william e simon chair catholic studies | 671 |
<p><a href="http://variety.com/t/nathan-silver/" type="external">Nathan Silver</a> has an eye for a great face — a beautiful one, marked and matured and made extraordinary by feeling — that you don’t typically see at the center of a movie. Actress Lindsay Burdge has one of those. It’s her fine-lined, progressively devastated visage, often held in close-up that’s both adoring and unforgiving, that carries us through the stressful emotional machinations of “ <a href="http://variety.com/t/thirst-street/" type="external">Thirst Street</a>,” Silver’s most excitingly stylized microbudget indie to date. Taking a leaf (or several, in enticing sherbet shades) from Fassbinder and the arch experimentalism of 1970s psychodrama, with a dusting of the same decade’s Eurotica, this compact but internally unruly tragicomedy centers on a grief-stricken young flight attendant driven to obsessive madness by an over-extended one-night stand in Paris — tracking her as intimately and relentlessly as she does her callous male quarry.</p>
<p>“Thirst Street” isn’t exactly kind to its protagonist, whose extreme self-debasement for the sake of an unworthy man follows in the tradition of vintage melodrama — until a third-act kicker takes proceedings into potential revenge territory, the feminist implications of which not all viewers are likely to agree on. Even at its cruelest, however, the guiding perspective never strays from its heroine, Gina, and her desires, however misplaced; her plunging loneliness is continuously felt, even in the pic’s busiest, most fluorescent interludes. If we occasionally sense a disconnect between the scraped-raw characterization of Gina herself and the elaborately heightened formal approach of Silver and his ace cinematographer Sean Price Williams — their visual register ranging from gauzy softcore to iridescent Old Hollywood nostalgia — that itself seems reflective of her own dissociated state. Anjelica Huston’s arch, aloofly analytical narration, meanwhile, provides a chilly bridge throughout between inner and outer lives.</p>
<p>A pre-title sequence establishing the origin of Gina’s heartache unfolds with compelling economy, conveying the broken arc of a single ill-fated romance in mere minutes, with enough bejeweled human detail to stand as a short film on its own. In it, the New York State singleton’s globe-hopping but humdrum life of overlooked professional servility is illuminated when she meets sensitive academic Paul (Damien Bonnard), but their swift, blissful union cannot last: With her constant, job-dictated absences playing on his psychological frailties, Paul commits suicide. Having love withdrawn as suddenly as it was offered sends Gina into a tailspin. Only a layover in Paris, encouraged by an older colleague (Silver’s mother and regular collaborator Cindy) and a dubious tarot reader, does she muster the courage to talk to another man.</p>
<p>Unluckily for her, that man happens to be morosely mustachioed strip-joint bartender Jerome (Bonnard again, ominously enough), a serial player who sleeps with her once and forgets her name by dawn. No amount of stiff body language, monosyllabic grunts and subsequent text-ghosting on his part, however, can convince the unworldly Gina that he’s no keeper. Instead, hell-bent on regaining true romance, she quits her job, moves to Paris and rents an apartment across the road from her unresponsive lover, finally scoring a waitressing job at his seedy place of work.</p>
<p>This is behavior that many a commercial genre film — from romantic comedies to domestic thrillers — might depict from the man’s point of view as plainly psychotic, but “Thirst Street’s” script, co-written by the director and C. Mason Wells, is rather more even-handed. It’s not only Gina’s irrational impulses and wince-inducing inability to take a hint that are exposed, but the passive-aggressive ways in which Jerome continues to lead her on, and even to casually exploit her ill-considered devotion, all while rekindling relations with his bemused punk-singer ex Clemence (a superbly tart, thorny Esther Garrel).&#160;This impasse of the heart makes for acutely, intentionally painful viewing, as Gina’s attempts to regain even Jerome’s moderate interest extend to disquieting levels of self-abuse — a descent barely alleviated by an under-developed, erotically charged subplot concerning her friendship with female club worker Charlie (Lola Bessis).</p>
<p>It’s Burdge who brings flickering light and shade to this tough trawl through wallflower hell, as Gina’s sometimes overlapping processes of devotion, delusion, denial and final dawning play across her solemn but all-too-vulnerable face, often with little supplementary dialogue; it’s a remarkable performance that appears to draw equal inspiration from the minimalism of mumblecore and the most expressive anguish of a Hanna Schygulla.</p>
<p>She has a fine, tricky scene partner in Bonnard — as intriguingly abstruse here as in his breakout turn in the recent Alain Guiraudie puzzler “Staying Vertical” — though her closest collaborative ally might be Price Williams, whose typically inspired camerawork lights her suffering in expressionistic stabs of neon or stripped shades of gray, as required. The soundtrack shifts in tone nearly as restlessly as the image, switching from saccharine orchestral sweep to the cracked karaoke tremble of Gina’s wishfully on-the-nose rendition of “Time Is On My Side,” to the unexpectedly earthy Nashville truth-telling of Sandy Posey’s “Born a Woman”: “If you’re born a woman, you’re born to be hurt,” she croons, as we hope against slender hope for Gina to subvert that diktat.</p>
<p>Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (Venice Days), Sept. 7, 2017. (Also in Tribeca Film Festival — U.S. Narrative Competition.) Running time:&#160;83 MIN.</p>
<p>A Samuel Goldwyn Films release of an In Vivo Films, Industry Standard Films, Maudit, Papermoon Films, Washington Square Films, Yellow Bear Films presentation in association with Salem Street Entertainment, The Third Generation, TTM Films, UNLTD Prods., Bauen Holdings, Solab Pictures. (International sales: Stray Dogs, Paris.) Producers: Louise Bellicaud, Claire Charles-Gervais, Josh Mandel, C. Mason Wells, Ruben Amar, Katie Stern, Joshua Blum, Matthew Ellison, David Solal, Elsa Leeb, Jordan Goldnabel. Executive producers: Jason Dreyer, Todd Remis, David Moscow, Armin Tehrany, Valerie Tehrany, Andrew Morrison. Co-producer: Matthew Smaglik. Co-executive producer: Diane Lanyi.</p>
<p>Director: Nathan Silver. Screenplay: Silver, C. Mason Wells. Camera (color, widescreen): Sean Price Williams. Editors: Hugo Lemant, John Magary. Music: Paul Grimstad.</p>
<p>Lindsay Burdge, Damien Bonnard, Esther Garrel, Lola Bessis, Cindy Silver, Valerie Laurie, Jacques Nolot, Francoise Lebrun, Anjelica Huston (narrator). (English, French dialogue)</p> | false | 1 | nathan silver eye great face beautiful one marked matured made extraordinary feeling dont typically see center movie actress lindsay burdge one finelined progressively devastated visage often held closeup thats adoring unforgiving carries us stressful emotional machinations thirst street silvers excitingly stylized microbudget indie date taking leaf several enticing sherbet shades fassbinder arch experimentalism 1970s psychodrama dusting decades eurotica compact internally unruly tragicomedy centers griefstricken young flight attendant driven obsessive madness overextended onenight stand paris tracking intimately relentlessly callous male quarry thirst street isnt exactly kind protagonist whose extreme selfdebasement sake unworthy man follows tradition vintage melodrama thirdact kicker takes proceedings potential revenge territory feminist implications viewers likely agree even cruelest however guiding perspective never strays heroine gina desires however misplaced plunging loneliness continuously felt even pics busiest fluorescent interludes occasionally sense disconnect scrapedraw characterization gina elaborately heightened formal approach silver ace cinematographer sean price williams visual register ranging gauzy softcore iridescent old hollywood nostalgia seems reflective dissociated state anjelica hustons arch aloofly analytical narration meanwhile provides chilly bridge throughout inner outer lives pretitle sequence establishing origin ginas heartache unfolds compelling economy conveying broken arc single illfated romance mere minutes enough bejeweled human detail stand short film new york state singletons globehopping humdrum life overlooked professional servility illuminated meets sensitive academic paul damien bonnard swift blissful union last constant jobdictated absences playing psychological frailties paul commits suicide love withdrawn suddenly offered sends gina tailspin layover paris encouraged older colleague silvers mother regular collaborator cindy dubious tarot reader muster courage talk another man unluckily man happens morosely mustachioed stripjoint bartender jerome bonnard ominously enough serial player sleeps forgets name dawn amount stiff body language monosyllabic grunts subsequent textghosting part however convince unworldly gina hes keeper instead hellbent regaining true romance quits job moves paris rents apartment across road unresponsive lover finally scoring waitressing job seedy place work behavior many commercial genre film romantic comedies domestic thrillers might depict mans point view plainly psychotic thirst streets script cowritten director c mason wells rather evenhanded ginas irrational impulses winceinducing inability take hint exposed passiveaggressive ways jerome continues lead even casually exploit illconsidered devotion rekindling relations bemused punksinger ex clemence superbly tart thorny esther garrel160this impasse heart makes acutely intentionally painful viewing ginas attempts regain even jeromes moderate interest extend disquieting levels selfabuse descent barely alleviated underdeveloped erotically charged subplot concerning friendship female club worker charlie lola bessis burdge brings flickering light shade tough trawl wallflower hell ginas sometimes overlapping processes devotion delusion denial final dawning play across solemn alltoovulnerable face often little supplementary dialogue remarkable performance appears draw equal inspiration minimalism mumblecore expressive anguish hanna schygulla fine tricky scene partner bonnard intriguingly abstruse breakout turn recent alain guiraudie puzzler staying vertical though closest collaborative ally might price williams whose typically inspired camerawork lights suffering expressionistic stabs neon stripped shades gray required soundtrack shifts tone nearly restlessly image switching saccharine orchestral sweep cracked karaoke tremble ginas wishfully onthenose rendition time side unexpectedly earthy nashville truthtelling sandy poseys born woman youre born woman youre born hurt croons hope slender hope gina subvert diktat reviewed venice film festival venice days sept 7 2017 also tribeca film festival us narrative competition running time16083 min samuel goldwyn films release vivo films industry standard films maudit papermoon films washington square films yellow bear films presentation association salem street entertainment third generation ttm films unltd prods bauen holdings solab pictures international sales stray dogs paris producers louise bellicaud claire charlesgervais josh mandel c mason wells ruben amar katie stern joshua blum matthew ellison david solal elsa leeb jordan goldnabel executive producers jason dreyer todd remis david moscow armin tehrany valerie tehrany andrew morrison coproducer matthew smaglik coexecutive producer diane lanyi director nathan silver screenplay silver c mason wells camera color widescreen sean price williams editors hugo lemant john magary music paul grimstad lindsay burdge damien bonnard esther garrel lola bessis cindy silver valerie laurie jacques nolot francoise lebrun anjelica huston narrator english french dialogue | 653 |
<p><a href="http://variety.com/t/della-reese/" type="external">Della Reese</a>, who segued from pop and jazz singing stardom in the ‘50s and ‘60s to a long career as a popular TV actress on “ <a href="http://variety.com/t/touched-by-an-angel/" type="external">Touched by an Angel</a>” and other shows, died Sunday night at her home in California. She was 86.</p>
<p>“She was an incredible wife, mother, grandmother, friend, and pastor, as well as an award-winning actress and singer. Through her life and work she touched and inspired the lives of millions of people,” actress Roma Downey, Reese’s co-star on “Touched By an Angel,” said in a statement announcing Reese’s death. “She was a mother to me and I had the privilege of working with her side by side for so many years on ‘Touched by an Angel.’ I know heaven has a brand new angel this day. Della Reese will be forever in our hearts.”</p>
<p>CBS, home of “Touched By an Angel,” also hailed Reese’s legacy as an entertainer who focused her career on uplifting her audience.</p>
<p>“For nine years, we were privileged to have Della as part of the CBS family when she delivered encouragement and optimism to millions of viewers as Tess on ‘Touched By An Angel,’ ” CBS said. “We will forever cherish her warm embraces and generosity of spirit. She will be greatly missed. Another angel has gotten her wings.”</p>
<p>Reared in gospel, Reese became a seductive, big-voiced secular music star with her No. 1 R&amp;B and No. 2 pop hit “Don’t You Know” in 1959. The 45, her first single on RCA Records, was a ballad drawn from an aria from Puccini’s opera “La Boheme.”</p>
<p>She ranged through a series of releases that showed off her mastery of standards, jazz and contemporary pop through the early ‘70s, and over the course of her career she received four Grammy Award nominations.</p>
<p>By 1969 she had launched her TV show “Della” – the first talker hosted by an African-American woman – and had begun a move into an acting career that would take her to even greater national prominence.</p>
<p>Speaking of her TV and film work with the Associated Press’ Bob Thomas in 1997, she said, “I had good training for it. I was always a stylist, a lyricist. I became acquainted with the words in order to convince you I must believe in what I’m singing. That’s what acting is: believing. It was just like one thing flowing into another.”</p>
<p>After a number of guest appearances, Reese broke into TV full-time with a starring role in the hit 1975-78 Jack Albertson-Freddie Prinze comedy series “Chico and the Man.” Roles on “It Takes Two,” “Crazy Like a Fox,” “Charlie &amp; Co.” and (opposite her good friend Redd Foxx) “The Royal Family.”</p>
<p>She also took starring roles in the features “Harlem Nights” and “A Thin Line Between Love and Hate” and appeared in 20 made-for-TV pictures.</p>
<p>Her greatest popularity came as co-star of the inspirational CBS show “Touched by an Angel.” Though the show was axed during its debut 1994-95 season, a letter-writing campaign convinced execs to bring the series back, and Reese prevailed as the heavenly samaritan Tess for a total of nine seasons, winning seven consecutive NAACP Image Awards as best lead actress in a drama and collecting two Emmy nominations and a 1998 Golden Globe nod.</p>
<p>Though she continued to make TV guest appearances and took the occasional film role in the new millennium, she returned to her religious roots as the founding pastor of her own Los Angeles-based church, Understanding Principles for Better Living (or “Up”). In later years, she was frequently billed as Reverend Doctor Della Reese Lett.</p>
<p>She was born Delloreese Patricia Early on July 6, 1931, in Detroit. She began singing in church as a six-year-old; the glamorous black vocalist-actress Lena Horne was one of the film stars she admired as a girl. By her teens, she was working as a singer in gospel luminary Mahalia Jackson’s unit.</p>
<p>After graduating from Detroit’s Cass Technical High School (later attended by Diana Ross), she briefly attended Wayne State University, but soon moved into music professionally, taking Della Reese as her pro handle.</p>
<p>Like homegrown R&amp;B superstar Jackie Wilson, Reese received prominent exposure during an engagement at Detroit’s Flame Show Bar; her style reflected the influence of such jazz precursors as Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald.</p>
<p>Signed to Jubilee Records, the indie New York label that launched the doo-wop acts the Orioles and the Cadillacs, Reese scored her first chart success with the 1957 ballad “And That Reminds Me,” which reached No. 12 on the U.S. pop chart.</p>
<p>That song secured her a contract with RCA. She secured the biggest hit of her career out of the box with “Don’t You Know,” and followed it up in 1960 with the similarly styled “Not One Minute More” (No. 16 pop, No. 13 R&amp;B). Her top-charting LP was “Della,” which climbed to No. 35 in ’60.</p>
<p>Though other major chart hits eluded her, Reese recorded prolifically – frequently in a jazz style, and frequently in a live club setting – for RCA and ABC through the ‘60s. She was a popular attraction on the Las Vegas Strip during this era.</p>
<p>Reese got her first acting break from casting director Reuben Cannon, who offered her a guest shot on the youth-oriented cop show “The Mod Squad” in 1968. Roles on such skeins as “Police Woman,” “The Rookies” and “McCloud” followed.</p>
<p>The first series to show off her tart style to full advantage was “Chico and the Man,” in which she portrayed star Albertson’s landlady. The hit NBC show reached an abrupt end with co-star Prinze’s suicide in January 1977.</p>
<p>She subsequently was a familiar player on such successful series as “Welcome Back, Kotter,” “The Love Boat,” “The A-Team” (on which she guested as star Mr. T’s mother), “Night Court,” “MacGyver,” “Designing Women” and “L.A. Law.”</p>
<p>However, it was “Touched by an Angel” that cemented her TV stardom. With co-star Roma Downey, Reese, portraying the acerbic, Cadillac-driving supervising angel Tess, ministered to the spiritual needs of her earthbound “search and rescue cases.” Reese also performed the show’s theme song, “Walk With You.”</p>
<p>After receiving its first-season cancellation reprieve, the unique family-oriented show maintained a devoted audience of fans for nearly a decade, and spawned the spinoff “Promised Land.” Following its final 2002-03 season, it enjoyed syndicated runs on Ion, Hallmark Channel, Up and Me-TV.</p>
<p>By the time “Touched by an Angel” moved into reruns, Reese, an ordained minister since the early ‘80s, was increasingly focused on her religious work, with TV and film appearances largely restricted to guest shots. She announced her retirement from performing in 2014.</p>
<p>Throughout her long career, Reese proved indomitable in the face of serious health crises. In 1979, she suffered a brain aneurysm during a taping of “The Tonight Show,” and weathered two brain surgeries. She collapsed on the set of “Touched by an Angel” in 2002, and later announced she suffered from type 2 diabetes.</p>
<p>Reese’s four marriages included a brief, annulled union with Mercer Ellington, son of jazz great Duke Ellington. She is survived by her husband Franklin Lett, a film producer and concert promoter.</p> | false | 1 | della reese segued pop jazz singing stardom 50s 60s long career popular tv actress touched angel shows died sunday night home california 86 incredible wife mother grandmother friend pastor well awardwinning actress singer life work touched inspired lives millions people actress roma downey reeses costar touched angel said statement announcing reeses death mother privilege working side side many years touched angel know heaven brand new angel day della reese forever hearts cbs home touched angel also hailed reeses legacy entertainer focused career uplifting audience nine years privileged della part cbs family delivered encouragement optimism millions viewers tess touched angel cbs said forever cherish warm embraces generosity spirit greatly missed another angel gotten wings reared gospel reese became seductive bigvoiced secular music star 1 rampb 2 pop hit dont know 1959 45 first single rca records ballad drawn aria puccinis opera la boheme ranged series releases showed mastery standards jazz contemporary pop early 70s course career received four grammy award nominations 1969 launched tv show della first talker hosted africanamerican woman begun move acting career would take even greater national prominence speaking tv film work associated press bob thomas 1997 said good training always stylist lyricist became acquainted words order convince must believe im singing thats acting believing like one thing flowing another number guest appearances reese broke tv fulltime starring role hit 197578 jack albertsonfreddie prinze comedy series chico man roles takes two crazy like fox charlie amp co opposite good friend redd foxx royal family also took starring roles features harlem nights thin line love hate appeared 20 madefortv pictures greatest popularity came costar inspirational cbs show touched angel though show axed debut 199495 season letterwriting campaign convinced execs bring series back reese prevailed heavenly samaritan tess total nine seasons winning seven consecutive naacp image awards best lead actress drama collecting two emmy nominations 1998 golden globe nod though continued make tv guest appearances took occasional film role new millennium returned religious roots founding pastor los angelesbased church understanding principles better living later years frequently billed reverend doctor della reese lett born delloreese patricia early july 6 1931 detroit began singing church sixyearold glamorous black vocalistactress lena horne one film stars admired girl teens working singer gospel luminary mahalia jacksons unit graduating detroits cass technical high school later attended diana ross briefly attended wayne state university soon moved music professionally taking della reese pro handle like homegrown rampb superstar jackie wilson reese received prominent exposure engagement detroits flame show bar style reflected influence jazz precursors sarah vaughan ella fitzgerald signed jubilee records indie new york label launched doowop acts orioles cadillacs reese scored first chart success 1957 ballad reminds reached 12 us pop chart song secured contract rca secured biggest hit career box dont know followed 1960 similarly styled one minute 16 pop 13 rampb topcharting lp della climbed 35 60 though major chart hits eluded reese recorded prolifically frequently jazz style frequently live club setting rca abc 60s popular attraction las vegas strip era reese got first acting break casting director reuben cannon offered guest shot youthoriented cop show mod squad 1968 roles skeins police woman rookies mccloud followed first series show tart style full advantage chico man portrayed star albertsons landlady hit nbc show reached abrupt end costar prinzes suicide january 1977 subsequently familiar player successful series welcome back kotter love boat ateam guested star mr ts mother night court macgyver designing women la law however touched angel cemented tv stardom costar roma downey reese portraying acerbic cadillacdriving supervising angel tess ministered spiritual needs earthbound search rescue cases reese also performed shows theme song walk receiving firstseason cancellation reprieve unique familyoriented show maintained devoted audience fans nearly decade spawned spinoff promised land following final 200203 season enjoyed syndicated runs ion hallmark channel metv time touched angel moved reruns reese ordained minister since early 80s increasingly focused religious work tv film appearances largely restricted guest shots announced retirement performing 2014 throughout long career reese proved indomitable face serious health crises 1979 suffered brain aneurysm taping tonight show weathered two brain surgeries collapsed set touched angel 2002 later announced suffered type 2 diabetes reeses four marriages included brief annulled union mercer ellington son jazz great duke ellington survived husband franklin lett film producer concert promoter | 706 |
<p>A review of Richard Jackson's novel "Confessions of a Terrorist"</p>
<p>Richard Jackson, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00K1DCEYQ/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B00K1DCEYQ&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=forepolijour-20&amp;linkId=CZMTKSMV7GKHYV2P" type="external">Confessions of a Terrorist: A Novel</a> (London &amp; New York: Zed Books, 2014)</p>
<p>Richard Jackson, a professor of peace studies at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, has written a probing political essay that takes the form of an imagined dialogue between his British interrogator and an Egyptian terrorist who is apparently thought at the time of their conversation to be the mastermind of an imminent attack on Great Britain. Jackson is a well-regarded expert on the politics and tactics of terrorism and counter-terrorism.</p>
<p>The novel complicates our understanding of such fundamental questions as</p>
<p>The motivation of those who choose violent resistance against various forms of oppression are depicted in a balanced&#160;and perceptive way, as well as the life choices made by individuals who forsake ‘normalcy’ to pursue radical political goals are sensitively explored.</p>
<p>There is a narrative line that keeps the reader engaged, and slightly disoriented. The text of the novel is presented to the reader in the format of an official government transcript replete with redactions and occasional italicized comments made by a higher ranking bureaucrat who recommends various deletions so as to avoid causing adverse impressions on politicians and public opinion. The interrogator acknowledges from time to time the validity of his captive’s arguments, but, by contrast, the commentary by the bureaucrat is totally devoid of affect, concerned only with saving face in the event of exposure, and has recourse to various devices to cover up any disclosures in the transcript that could prove awkward if exposed.</p>
<p>Part of what makes <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00K1DCEYQ/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B00K1DCEYQ&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=forepolijour-20&amp;linkId=CZMTKSMV7GKHYV2P" type="external">Confessions</a> such an effective book is its non-judgmental tone that accepts this role-playing dynamic in which the two characters largely choose their respective ‘careers’ on the basis of their distinct social locations and individual experience. Neither is presented as morally superior to the other. Above all, morality and legality are sidelined by according priority to the higher callings of ‘freedom’ and ‘security’ by both characters—by the interrogating official and by the terrorist (addressed as ‘professor’ because he had been a professor economics in Egypt before joining the struggle). There is a spirit of mutual recognition, which occasionally lapses into an attitude of appreciation. Each person is responding to a challenging situation in an understandable manner, and yet each at the same time passes judgment on the dirty work of his counterpart. The interrogator is dragged through the counterterrorist mud by ‘the professor’, while the terrorist is humanized by linking his violent behavior to his deep experience of intolerable realities of inequality and oppression. In the end, both men seem to coexist on a plane of ethical equivalence, with each destined to play out their part as if entrapped in a tragic drama. The tone of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00K1DCEYQ/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B00K1DCEYQ&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=forepolijour-20&amp;linkId=CZMTKSMV7GKHYV2P" type="external">Confessions&#160;</a>contrasts with American neocon Manicheanism, epitomized by the simplistic language of George W. Bush, who insists that the CIA torturers were ‘patriots’ (and good) while their victims were ‘terrorists’ (and evil).</p>
<p>Jackson leaves readers on their own to contemplate the carnage and suffering caused by the actual encounters taking place in the real world, inevitably raising concerns as to whether there might be a better way to organize the collective life of the planet. In other words, can the characters in the novel escape from their assigned roles?</p>
<p>With nuclear weapons under the control of as many as nine governments and trends toward global warming showing few signs of abatement, the hegemonic and militarized dynamics of control and resistance seem dangerously precarious compulsions, threatening future catastrophe, and maybe even species annihilation. It seems to me that the sub-text of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00K1DCEYQ/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B00K1DCEYQ&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=forepolijour-20&amp;linkId=CZMTKSMV7GKHYV2P" type="external">Confession</a>s, if I am not misreading, is the question that haunted many of Jacques Derrida’s later reflections: are societies capable of finding ways to live together in peace and harmony? Not just to get along or cohabit, but to enjoy the reality of the other in sustainable and mutually satisfying ways. Even positing such an aspiration amid the turmoil and strife of our world strikes an irresponsibly utopian note. Perhaps, Jackson doesn’t want us to go there at all, but to stop short, and be content to decode what these archetypal adversaries of contemporary state/society relations are really saying and doing. If this is indeed the intention, we can thank Jackson for bestowing an excellent pedagogical tool that can serve us well in classrooms and life circumstances.</p>
<p>While the dialogue proceeds, there is also a drama of sorts mysteriously unfolding. It becomes unclear toward the end who is the prisoner of whom, and the entire plot thickens, raising the broad question as to which side has the upper hand in these titanic struggles of our time. In effect, is there ‘a right side’ of history that will eventually prevail, or are we forever doomed to be afflicted by the toxic dialectics of violence? The collapse of European colonialism suggests one kind of answer, but the rise of neoliberal capitalism suggests another. These larger concerns are not addressed directly by this fundamental interplay between violence from below and violence from above, which is what our preoccupation with whether such a struggle can be restrained within limits (respecting prohibitions on torture, refraining from targeting schools and hospitals) or is inevitably controlled by revolutionary absolutes.</p>
<p>The decision to have the interrogator be British, not American, seems odd at first, appearing to divert attention from the core global encounter, but on further thought, there is a supporting rationale. The colonial background of Britain in the Middle East may be a more valid perspective than the more conventional focus on the post-colonial role being played by the United States throughout the world.</p>
<p>Whatever else, Jackson has written a page-turning and thought-provoking book, which is highly recommended to anyone perplexed by this incurable scourge of violence. Although its characters are invented and the dialogue imagined, the reading experience is uncomfortably closer to non-fiction than fiction. In this instance, the imagined world is the real world! You can get a fuller sense of Richard Jackson’s thinking by <a href="https://richardjacksonterrorismblog.wordpress.com/" type="external">visiting his consistently intelligent blog</a>. The foreign offices and intelligence services of the world should have been required to read his posts on ISIS, which might have encouraged some thinking outside the militarist box, which is long overdue.</p>
<p>This article was originally published at <a href="https://richardfalk.wordpress.com/2014/12/31/terrorism-torture-and-the-problem-of-evil-in-our-time/" type="external">Global Justice in the 21st Century</a> and has been used here with permission.</p> | false | 1 | review richard jacksons novel confessions terrorist richard jackson confessions terrorist novel london amp new york zed books 2014 richard jackson professor peace studies university otago dunedin new zealand written probing political essay takes form imagined dialogue british interrogator egyptian terrorist apparently thought time conversation mastermind imminent attack great britain jackson wellregarded expert politics tactics terrorism counterterrorism novel complicates understanding fundamental questions motivation choose violent resistance various forms oppression depicted balanced160and perceptive way well life choices made individuals forsake normalcy pursue radical political goals sensitively explored narrative line keeps reader engaged slightly disoriented text novel presented reader format official government transcript replete redactions occasional italicized comments made higher ranking bureaucrat recommends various deletions avoid causing adverse impressions politicians public opinion interrogator acknowledges time time validity captives arguments contrast commentary bureaucrat totally devoid affect concerned saving face event exposure recourse various devices cover disclosures transcript could prove awkward exposed part makes confessions effective book nonjudgmental tone accepts roleplaying dynamic two characters largely choose respective careers basis distinct social locations individual experience neither presented morally superior morality legality sidelined according priority higher callings freedom security charactersby interrogating official terrorist addressed professor professor economics egypt joining struggle spirit mutual recognition occasionally lapses attitude appreciation person responding challenging situation understandable manner yet time passes judgment dirty work counterpart interrogator dragged counterterrorist mud professor terrorist humanized linking violent behavior deep experience intolerable realities inequality oppression end men seem coexist plane ethical equivalence destined play part entrapped tragic drama tone confessions160contrasts american neocon manicheanism epitomized simplistic language george w bush insists cia torturers patriots good victims terrorists evil jackson leaves readers contemplate carnage suffering caused actual encounters taking place real world inevitably raising concerns whether might better way organize collective life planet words characters novel escape assigned roles nuclear weapons control many nine governments trends toward global warming showing signs abatement hegemonic militarized dynamics control resistance seem dangerously precarious compulsions threatening future catastrophe maybe even species annihilation seems subtext confessions misreading question haunted many jacques derridas later reflections societies capable finding ways live together peace harmony get along cohabit enjoy reality sustainable mutually satisfying ways even positing aspiration amid turmoil strife world strikes irresponsibly utopian note perhaps jackson doesnt want us go stop short content decode archetypal adversaries contemporary statesociety relations really saying indeed intention thank jackson bestowing excellent pedagogical tool serve us well classrooms life circumstances dialogue proceeds also drama sorts mysteriously unfolding becomes unclear toward end prisoner entire plot thickens raising broad question side upper hand titanic struggles time effect right side history eventually prevail forever doomed afflicted toxic dialectics violence collapse european colonialism suggests one kind answer rise neoliberal capitalism suggests another larger concerns addressed directly fundamental interplay violence violence preoccupation whether struggle restrained within limits respecting prohibitions torture refraining targeting schools hospitals inevitably controlled revolutionary absolutes decision interrogator british american seems odd first appearing divert attention core global encounter thought supporting rationale colonial background britain middle east may valid perspective conventional focus postcolonial role played united states throughout world whatever else jackson written pageturning thoughtprovoking book highly recommended anyone perplexed incurable scourge violence although characters invented dialogue imagined reading experience uncomfortably closer nonfiction fiction instance imagined world real world get fuller sense richard jacksons thinking visiting consistently intelligent blog foreign offices intelligence services world required read posts isis might encouraged thinking outside militarist box long overdue article originally published global justice 21st century used permission | 562 |
<p>LILLE, France&#160; — “ <a href="http://variety.com/t/my-life-as-a-zucchini/" type="external">My Life as a Zucchini</a>” and “ <a href="http://variety.com/t/revolting-rhymes/" type="external">Revolting Rhymes</a>” topped the first <a href="http://variety.com/t/european-animation-awards/" type="external">European Animation Awards</a> in Lille, France, on Friday night, scooping best feature and best TV/broadcast production respectively.</p>
<p>Already scoring an Academy Award nomination, Swiss Claude Barras’ “ <a href="http://variety.com/2017/film/awards/my-life-as-a-zucchini-stop-motion-overseas-1201989355/" type="external">My Life as a Zucchini</a>,” a unsentimental, though stop-motion portrayal of orphanhood, took three awards in all, more than any other title at Lille, winning for best feature animation, and also for its guitar soundtrack and writing, a win for Celine Sciamma, a distinguished director in her own right.</p>
<p>A two-part CGI special produced by Magic Light Pictures for the BBC and created by Magic Light Pictures in Berlin and Triggerfish Animation Studios in Cape Town, “Revolting Rhymes’” took the big TV award for its stylish dramatization of Roald Dahl’s poem reprises of traditional fairy tales. It also won best character design in a TV series.</p>
<p>In one of the most interesting decisions of Academy voters, best feature film character design went to “The Red Turtle” for a scheme which sees the landscape of a tropical island caught with stunning precision while characters are more obviously fiction creations, the nose of the protagonist castaway being reduce to a simple line. It also took best storyboard in a feature film production.</p>
<p>Academy voters in general showed a large predilection for 2D animation, which can be combined with bold technical decisions. Remi Chayé’s “Long Way North,” from France’s Sacrebleu Productions, won best background and character design for not only the beauty of its graphics bit daring decision to use borderless designs, apt for a movie set in the Arctic waste.</p>
<p>Produced by Didier Brunner’s Folivari in France and boasting a painterly water color style inspired by its children’s book original, “Ernest &amp; Celestine,” the TV series spin-off of the highly successful movie – and the story of the friendship between a gentle bear and a feisty mice – won best background and character design in a TV series.</p>
<p>“Shaun the Sheep” Season 5 clinched best storyboarded.</p>
<p>Director of animation for “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” and remarkable “The Thief and the Cobbler” – 53 years in the making and still incomplete but a towering legend in animation history- Canadian-British animator Richard Williams received the first Lotte Reiniger Achievement Award in recognition of his contribution to the art of animation. He also took the only standing applause of the night and pointed out that it was a woman, Lotte Reiniger, whom he met when he was 23, who made the first feature-length animated feature.</p>
<p>In a further TV award, Cartoon Networks’ “The Amazing World of Gumball” won best writing for its tale of a 12-year-old blue cat, his adopted goldfish brother/best friend Darwin, his brilliant little sister and his rabbit parents, which constantly make the mundane extraordinary with unmistakable animation techniques. “Gumball” has already won at the BAFTAs, Annecy and Kids Choice Awards and has a slew of Annie Award nominations with one win for best animation.</p>
<p>Sparking one of the biggest applauses of the night, French TV series “Lastman” won for its action soundtrack.</p>
<p>Of shorts, already sparking buzz from its Cannes Directors’ Fortnight bow and a 2017 Annecy Fest best animated short winner, existential musical “The Burden” scooped animated short. Terry Gilliam meets Ingmar Bergman, Swede Niki Lindroth von Bahr’s short sees surreal hybrid beings singing about the difficulty of relationships, their fish heads stuck in dressing gowns, or about the dehumanizing pressures of office life, a song and dance routine performed by an office of monkeys. Alienation this year has rarely been so comedic, and sad.</p>
<p>“Merlot,” a daintily drawn multi-panel graduation film by Giulia Martinelli and Marta Gennari, at Piedmont’s Centro Sperimentali di Cimematografia, snagged best student film. Set in an fairy tale ocean-blue forest, its knockabout comedy sees characters and action ricocheting from one to another in frame panel.</p>
<p>Winner of best commissioned film, Studio Moth’s “The Last Job on Earth,” a reflection on how A.I. may replace the workforce, pictures a young girl’s lonely day at work when she is the last worker in the world.</p>
<p>“Peripheria,” which scored a Cesar nomination for best animated short, won best background and character design for its bold ravaged animation of a an abandoned council estate in an urban environment which reverts to savagery, described as a modern Pompeii.</p>
<p>The first <a href="http://variety.com/2017/film/festivals/european-animation-awards-bow-dec-8-lille-16-categories-1202462395/" type="external">European Animation Awards</a> unspooled in a packed main auditorium at Lille’s modern Le Nouveau Siècle theater. The only question is how to build on this year’s success.</p>
<p>Europe already has a large animation industry, producing 360 toon films a year and 730 TV series, the latter for a total budgetary value of $2.5 billion.</p>
<p>“We have a paradox. European animation is growing, it is exported. But we have to do more. We have a responsibility to dynamize the ecosystem,” said Patrick Eveno, president of the Annecy Festival organization.</p>
<p>As for the Awards themselves, “I think we can still make the <a href="http://variety.com/t/emile-awards/" type="external">Emile Awards</a> bigger,” said Peter Lord, president of the European Animation Awards, suggesting the number of categories can increase.</p>
<p>“With a large number of applications – close to 500 for the 16 categories –&#160; we already have a good overview of European production in 2016-2017, reflecting a high quality and large diversity,” said Jean-Paul Commin, one of the Awards founders.</p>
<p>There is also further cause for animation.</p>
<p>“Over 25,000 people in Europe are involved in animation so we have a strong potential of development in terms of membership,” he added.</p>
<p>The Emile Awards are named after France’s Emile Reynaud who made the four-minute animated short “Poor Pierrot” in 1892, three years before the Lumières’ live action shorts, and Emile Cohl, who shot a hand-drawn comedy, “Fantasmagorie,”&#160; in 1908 film for Gaumont.</p>
<p>WINNERS, THE 2017 EUROPEAN ANIMATION AWARDS</p>
<p>BEST FEATURE FILM</p>
<p>“My Life as a Zucchini,” (France, Switzerland)</p>
<p>BEST TV/BROADCAST PRODUCTION</p>
<p>“Revolting Rhymes,” (U.K.)</p>
<p>BEST COMMISSIONED FILM</p>
<p>“The Last Job on Earth,” (U.K.)</p>
<p>BEST BACKGROUND AND CHARACTER DESIGN IN AN ANIMATED SHORT FILM</p>
<p>“Peripheria,”&#160; (France)</p>
<p>BEST BACKGROUND AND CHARACTER DESIGN IN A TV/BROADCAST PRODUCTION</p>
<p>“Ernest &amp; Celestine,” (France)</p>
<p>BEST BACKGROUND AND CHARACTER DESIGN IN A</p>
<p>“Long Way North,” (France, Denmark)</p>
<p>BEST STUDENT FILM</p>
<p>“Merlot,” (Italy)</p>
<p>BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM</p>
<p>“The Burden,” (Sweden)</p>
<p>BEST CHARACTER ANIMATION IN A TV/BROADCAST PRODUCTION</p>
<p>“Revolting Rhymes,” (U.K.)</p>
<p>BEST CHARACTER ANIMATION IN A FEATURE FILM PRODUCTION</p>
<p>“The Red Turtle”</p>
<p>LOTTE REINIGER LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD</p>
<p>Richard Williams</p>
<p>BEST WRITING IN A TV/BROADCAST PRODUCTION</p>
<p>“The Amazing World of Gumball,” (U.K.)</p>
<p>BEST WRITING IN A FEATURE FILM PRODUCTION</p>
<p>“My Life as a Zucchini”</p>
<p>BEST SOUNDTRACK IN A TV/BROADCAST PRODUCTION</p>
<p>“Lastman,” (France),</p>
<p>BEST SOUNDTRACK IN A FEATURE FILM PRODUCTION</p>
<p>“My Life as a Zucchini”</p>
<p>BEST STORYBOARD IN A TV/BROADCAST PRODUCTION</p>
<p>“Shaun The Sheep” (Season 5), (U.K.)</p>
<p>BEST STORYBOARD IN A FEATURE FILM PRODUCTION</p>
<p>“The Red Turtle”</p> | false | 1 | lille france160 life zucchini revolting rhymes topped first european animation awards lille france friday night scooping best feature best tvbroadcast production respectively already scoring academy award nomination swiss claude barras life zucchini unsentimental though stopmotion portrayal orphanhood took three awards title lille winning best feature animation also guitar soundtrack writing win celine sciamma distinguished director right twopart cgi special produced magic light pictures bbc created magic light pictures berlin triggerfish animation studios cape town revolting rhymes took big tv award stylish dramatization roald dahls poem reprises traditional fairy tales also best character design tv series one interesting decisions academy voters best feature film character design went red turtle scheme sees landscape tropical island caught stunning precision characters obviously fiction creations nose protagonist castaway reduce simple line also took best storyboard feature film production academy voters general showed large predilection 2d animation combined bold technical decisions remi chayés long way north frances sacrebleu productions best background character design beauty graphics bit daring decision use borderless designs apt movie set arctic waste produced didier brunners folivari france boasting painterly water color style inspired childrens book original ernest amp celestine tv series spinoff highly successful movie story friendship gentle bear feisty mice best background character design tv series shaun sheep season 5 clinched best storyboarded director animation framed roger rabbit remarkable thief cobbler 53 years making still incomplete towering legend animation history canadianbritish animator richard williams received first lotte reiniger achievement award recognition contribution art animation also took standing applause night pointed woman lotte reiniger met 23 made first featurelength animated feature tv award cartoon networks amazing world gumball best writing tale 12yearold blue cat adopted goldfish brotherbest friend darwin brilliant little sister rabbit parents constantly make mundane extraordinary unmistakable animation techniques gumball already baftas annecy kids choice awards slew annie award nominations one win best animation sparking one biggest applauses night french tv series lastman action soundtrack shorts already sparking buzz cannes directors fortnight bow 2017 annecy fest best animated short winner existential musical burden scooped animated short terry gilliam meets ingmar bergman swede niki lindroth von bahrs short sees surreal hybrid beings singing difficulty relationships fish heads stuck dressing gowns dehumanizing pressures office life song dance routine performed office monkeys alienation year rarely comedic sad merlot daintily drawn multipanel graduation film giulia martinelli marta gennari piedmonts centro sperimentali di cimematografia snagged best student film set fairy tale oceanblue forest knockabout comedy sees characters action ricocheting one another frame panel winner best commissioned film studio moths last job earth reflection ai may replace workforce pictures young girls lonely day work last worker world peripheria scored cesar nomination best animated short best background character design bold ravaged animation abandoned council estate urban environment reverts savagery described modern pompeii first european animation awards unspooled packed main auditorium lilles modern le nouveau siècle theater question build years success europe already large animation industry producing 360 toon films year 730 tv series latter total budgetary value 25 billion paradox european animation growing exported responsibility dynamize ecosystem said patrick eveno president annecy festival organization awards think still make emile awards bigger said peter lord president european animation awards suggesting number categories increase large number applications close 500 16 categories 160 already good overview european production 20162017 reflecting high quality large diversity said jeanpaul commin one awards founders also cause animation 25000 people europe involved animation strong potential development terms membership added emile awards named frances emile reynaud made fourminute animated short poor pierrot 1892 three years lumières live action shorts emile cohl shot handdrawn comedy fantasmagorie160 1908 film gaumont winners 2017 european animation awards best feature film life zucchini france switzerland best tvbroadcast production revolting rhymes uk best commissioned film last job earth uk best background character design animated short film peripheria160 france best background character design tvbroadcast production ernest amp celestine france best background character design long way north france denmark best student film merlot italy best animated short film burden sweden best character animation tvbroadcast production revolting rhymes uk best character animation feature film production red turtle lotte reiniger lifetime achievement award richard williams best writing tvbroadcast production amazing world gumball uk best writing feature film production life zucchini best soundtrack tvbroadcast production lastman france best soundtrack feature film production life zucchini best storyboard tvbroadcast production shaun sheep season 5 uk best storyboard feature film production red turtle | 723 |
<p>By Duncan Miriri</p>
<p>NAIROBI (Reuters) – The implosion of a family-owned Kenyan mattress shop that grew to become East Africa’s biggest supermarket chain is a cautionary tale about trying to grow too far, too fast to cash in on the rapid growth of the country’s middle class.&#160;&#160;&#160;</p>
<p>Kenya’s High Court will rule on Nov. 16 on Nakumatt Supermarkets’ petition for protection from creditors to whom it owes more than $300 million. Thousands of jobs are at stake, and France’s Carrefour (PA:) and South Africa’s Shoprite (J:) are already moving to fill the gap.</p>
<p>It’s an ignominious fall – with more than 60 outlets and 1,500 suppliers, turnover at the company once equaled nearly one percent of Kenyan GDP.</p>
<p>Former employees, suppliers, fellow business people and private equity investors paint a picture of a firm whose management capacity did not keep up with its prodigious growth.</p>
<p>“It’s a tragedy that needn’t have happened,” said Andrew Dixon, who was hired in a scramble to revamp management. A former executive at Tesco (LON:) and Burt’s Bees, Dixon quit as chief marketing officer last month and this week took a job with Uchumi, another struggling Kenyan chain.</p>
<p>A fatal fire in one store, the demolition of another and an attack by militant Islamists on their flagship Westgate outlet in 2013 created a “perfect storm” of disasters for Nakumatt, Dixon told Reuters. Outdated management practices exacerbated other problems like endemic theft of cash and stock, he said.</p>
<p>“The business outgrew the management capacity,” said another Nairobi businessman familiar with the company, asking not to be named so that he could speak candidly. He pointed to a balance sheet loaded with short-term debt, problems paying suppliers and outdated IT systems.</p>
<p>Answering questions through his publicist, Managing Director Atul Shah, of the founding Shah family, rejected the idea that management was not modernised fast enough. Over the past decade, when the business was thriving, the only family member of management was Shah himself, he pointed out.</p>
<p>He acknowledged that theft of 10-15 percent of goods or stock did not measure up well against a global average of 2-3 percent, and investment in a modern warehouse management system from Oracle (NYSE:) two years ago came too late.</p>
<p>But he said the chain’s main undoing was the significant costs of a 2010 expansion plan that assumed sustained Kenyan economic growth of more than 10 percent per year. The chain went from 36 shops in 2011 to a peak of 62 in 2016.</p>
<p>“By now we would be talking about over 100 branches. In terms of revenue, a significant growth was also expected which never materialized but even if it didn’t materialize, investments and related financing were undertaken,” the publicist’s statement said.</p>
<p>Shah wants to restructure Nakumatt so it can re-emerge as a leaner chain, according to public court documents.</p>
<p>The court’s protection “is reasonably likely to achieve a better outcome for the company’s creditors as a whole and ensure continuity of the business … as opposed to the drastic action of winding up the company,” Shah said in the documents.</p>
<p>WELCOMING ELEPHANTS</p>
<p>For more than two decades, Nakumatt’s blue-and-white signage and large bronze elephant statues enticed well-heeled Kenyans into its shops to buy anything from imported meat to the latest flatscreen TV sets.</p>
<p>Atul Shah’s father started Nakumatt in the Rift Valley town of Nakuru. The family still owns the bulk of Nakumatt shares.</p>
<p>Atul, the fourth child, moved to the United States in his early twenties and worked on the shop floor at Wal-Mart (NYSE:). He came back to open the first Nakumatt superstore in Nairobi in 1992.</p>
<p>While the scale and ambition of the business expanded, many aspects of the way it was managed remained the same, however.</p>
<p>The company hired three top managers from outside the company, including Dixon, only this year. But it was too late.</p>
<p>“Investing in family businesses can be challenging … past success blinds them to the fact there are certain roles that require professional management,” said Ayisi Makatiani, managing partner at private equity firm Fanisi Capital.</p>
<p>Foreign investors could have helped overhaul management and inject cash, but despite a swarm of suitors, no deal was made.</p>
<p>One concern for investors was the stake held by former lawmaker Harun Mwau, who was named in 2011 under the U.S. Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Act for alleged drug trafficking, which he has denied.</p>
<p>Two sources with knowledge of potential investments said the role of Mwau in the company was the main stumbling block because they did not want to fall foul of U.S. law enforcement, who froze Mwau’s U.S. assets after the designation.</p>
<p>Nakumatt has said in the past that Mwau holds shares in the company but declined to confirm or deny it to Reuters. Mwau did not respond to Reuters calls and text messages seeking comment.</p>
<p>“Nobody acquiring was prepared to have him remain on the shareholder register,” said a source involved in one transaction with a London-based fund that fell through in 2011.</p>
<p>“They would have walked with about $110 million cash and the debt would had been taken over,” said the source, an account backed by several other sources with knowledge of the deal, including a Nairobi fund manager and an ex-employee.</p>
<p>Nakumatt declined to comment on the deals.</p>
<p>CARREFOUR, SHOPRITE</p>
<p>What happens to Nakumatt could have far-reaching effects for Kenyan retail and the wider economy, which has been expanding by more than 5 percent in recent years and is expected to grow by 5 percent this year. The World Bank designated Kenya a low-middle income country in 2014.</p>
<p>Nakumatt has estimated in court papers that closing the chain would affect the livelihoods of more than 30,000 people, including 6,720 direct employees.</p>
<p>Finance Minister Henry Rotich told reporters on Tuesday that while the government did not want to interfere in private businesses, it was looking at how to protect suppliers from non-payment so that debt didn’t build up all along the chain.</p>
<p>Kimani Rugendo, chairman of the Suppliers Association of Kenya with more than 2,000 members, said Nakumatt collectively owes them more than 30 billion shillings ($289.86 million).</p>
<p>His company, Kevian Ltd, which manufactures juices, bottled waters and sauces, is owed 90 million shillings. Nakumatt declined to comment on the claim.</p>
<p>“It is hurting the production and distribution trade,” he said. He stopped supplying Nakumatt two months ago.</p>
<p>Wambui Mbarire, the CEO of the retail trade association of Kenya, said Nakumatt’s woes had forced suppliers to tighten their credit terms, demanding payment upfront.</p>
<p>The big international supermarket chains sense an opportunity. Shoprite confirmed to Reuters it wants to take Nakumatt’s lease in one prime shopping mall after it was kicked out last month over rent arrears.</p>
<p>Carrefour, which opened two hypermarkets in Kenya last year through its UAE-based franchisee Majid Al Futtaim, will open a third this month in another shopping mall vacated by Nakumatt.</p>
<p>“The success of the stores has given us the impetus to plan a greater expansion of our footprint in Kenya,” said Frank Moreau, the Kenya head of Majid Al Futtaim retail, adding the first two stores are among the most successful in the franchise.</p>
<p>But Carrefour Kenya cannot fill Nakumatt’s big shoes just yet, said Boris Planer, the global chief economist at Planet Retail, a global retail consultancy.</p>
<p>Two decades of growth and peak annual turnover of $700 million would be hard to replicate anytime soon, he said.</p>
<p>Rugendo said that he would miss the retailer if it folded, even as he counted his losses.</p>
<p>“It is better the devil you know than the angel you don’t,” he said with a sigh.</p>
<p>($1 = 103.5000 Kenyan shillings)</p> | false | 1 | duncan miriri nairobi reuters implosion familyowned kenyan mattress shop grew become east africas biggest supermarket chain cautionary tale trying grow far fast cash rapid growth countrys middle class160160160 kenyas high court rule nov 16 nakumatt supermarkets petition protection creditors owes 300 million thousands jobs stake frances carrefour pa south africas shoprite j already moving fill gap ignominious fall 60 outlets 1500 suppliers turnover company equaled nearly one percent kenyan gdp former employees suppliers fellow business people private equity investors paint picture firm whose management capacity keep prodigious growth tragedy neednt happened said andrew dixon hired scramble revamp management former executive tesco lon burts bees dixon quit chief marketing officer last month week took job uchumi another struggling kenyan chain fatal fire one store demolition another attack militant islamists flagship westgate outlet 2013 created perfect storm disasters nakumatt dixon told reuters outdated management practices exacerbated problems like endemic theft cash stock said business outgrew management capacity said another nairobi businessman familiar company asking named could speak candidly pointed balance sheet loaded shortterm debt problems paying suppliers outdated systems answering questions publicist managing director atul shah founding shah family rejected idea management modernised fast enough past decade business thriving family member management shah pointed acknowledged theft 1015 percent goods stock measure well global average 23 percent investment modern warehouse management system oracle nyse two years ago came late said chains main undoing significant costs 2010 expansion plan assumed sustained kenyan economic growth 10 percent per year chain went 36 shops 2011 peak 62 2016 would talking 100 branches terms revenue significant growth also expected never materialized even didnt materialize investments related financing undertaken publicists statement said shah wants restructure nakumatt reemerge leaner chain according public court documents courts protection reasonably likely achieve better outcome companys creditors whole ensure continuity business opposed drastic action winding company shah said documents welcoming elephants two decades nakumatts blueandwhite signage large bronze elephant statues enticed wellheeled kenyans shops buy anything imported meat latest flatscreen tv sets atul shahs father started nakumatt rift valley town nakuru family still owns bulk nakumatt shares atul fourth child moved united states early twenties worked shop floor walmart nyse came back open first nakumatt superstore nairobi 1992 scale ambition business expanded many aspects way managed remained however company hired three top managers outside company including dixon year late investing family businesses challenging past success blinds fact certain roles require professional management said ayisi makatiani managing partner private equity firm fanisi capital foreign investors could helped overhaul management inject cash despite swarm suitors deal made one concern investors stake held former lawmaker harun mwau named 2011 us foreign narcotics kingpin act alleged drug trafficking denied two sources knowledge potential investments said role mwau company main stumbling block want fall foul us law enforcement froze mwaus us assets designation nakumatt said past mwau holds shares company declined confirm deny reuters mwau respond reuters calls text messages seeking comment nobody acquiring prepared remain shareholder register said source involved one transaction londonbased fund fell 2011 would walked 110 million cash debt would taken said source account backed several sources knowledge deal including nairobi fund manager exemployee nakumatt declined comment deals carrefour shoprite happens nakumatt could farreaching effects kenyan retail wider economy expanding 5 percent recent years expected grow 5 percent year world bank designated kenya lowmiddle income country 2014 nakumatt estimated court papers closing chain would affect livelihoods 30000 people including 6720 direct employees finance minister henry rotich told reporters tuesday government want interfere private businesses looking protect suppliers nonpayment debt didnt build along chain kimani rugendo chairman suppliers association kenya 2000 members said nakumatt collectively owes 30 billion shillings 28986 million company kevian ltd manufactures juices bottled waters sauces owed 90 million shillings nakumatt declined comment claim hurting production distribution trade said stopped supplying nakumatt two months ago wambui mbarire ceo retail trade association kenya said nakumatts woes forced suppliers tighten credit terms demanding payment upfront big international supermarket chains sense opportunity shoprite confirmed reuters wants take nakumatts lease one prime shopping mall kicked last month rent arrears carrefour opened two hypermarkets kenya last year uaebased franchisee majid al futtaim open third month another shopping mall vacated nakumatt success stores given us impetus plan greater expansion footprint kenya said frank moreau kenya head majid al futtaim retail adding first two stores among successful franchise carrefour kenya fill nakumatts big shoes yet said boris planer global chief economist planet retail global retail consultancy two decades growth peak annual turnover 700 million would hard replicate anytime soon said rugendo said would miss retailer folded even counted losses better devil know angel dont said sigh 1 1035000 kenyan shillings | 771 |
<p>Jordan is moving to convene an emergency meeting ahead of Donald Trump’s expected decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, according to diplomats. The Palestinian Authority’s foreign minister has also reportedly urged a meeting.</p>
<p>Jordan, which hosted the last Arab League summit and therefore serves as its current president, would invite members of the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to meet if Trump decides to acknowledge Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state, a senior diplomatic official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. The two organizations would “discuss ways of dealing with the consequences of such a decision that raised alarm and concern.”</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/news/411762-jerusalem-israel-capital-trump/" type="external" /></p>
<p>“It could ultimately hamper all efforts to get the peace process moving and holds a very high risk of provoking Arab and Muslim countries and Muslim communities in the West,” the source said.</p>
<p>Jordan&#160;is particularly sensitive to any change in Jerusalem’s status, as King Abdullah’s Hashemite dynasty is the custodian of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. Jordan, which lost East Jerusalem and the West Bank to Israel during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, says the city’s status needs to be decided only as part of a final settlement. “It is essential no unilateral decisions are made that would change the historic status quo of Jerusalem as an occupied city whose fate needs to be determined in final status talks within an overall peace package,” the senior diplomatic source said.</p>
<p>The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, while the international community does not recognize Israel’s claim to all of the city. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas warned on Sunday that any recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel would jeopardize Washington’s Middle East peace efforts.</p>
<p>“Any American step related to the recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel, or moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, represents a threat to the future of the peace process and is unacceptable for the Palestinians, Arabs and internationally,” Abbas told a group of visiting Arab lawmakers from Israel, according to Wafa news agency.</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/usa/406023-trump-embassy-jerusalem-peace-deal/" type="external" /></p>
<p>The Arab League also warned on Sunday of “hazardous consequences” if the US recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. “If implemented, it would mark a change in Washington’s historical stance that sees the holy city as an occupied Palestinian city and an integral part of the occupied Palestinian lands,” Saeed Abu-Ali, assistant secretary general for the occupied Palestinian and Arab lands, said in an Arab League statement, as quoted by Xinhua.</p>
<p>Also on Sunday, Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki asked the heads of the Arab League and OIC to host emergency meetings over the expected move by Trump. “Maliki called for holding meetings of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation on the level of permanent representatives to discuss the imminent dangers facing Jerusalem and the holy sites,” Wafa reported. Maliki reportedly urged the meetings during calls with Arab League Secretary-General Ahmad Aboul Gheit and OIC Secretary-General Yousef al-Othaimeen.</p>
<p>Abbas’s spokesman, Nabil Abu Rdeneh, said on Saturday that the Palestinian president has been in contact with Arab and world leaders to rally opposition against Trump’s expected decision, noting that he had been in touch with Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and France. “We believe that such an American step, if it takes place, will enter the region in a new course, and a dangerous phase whose results cannot be controlled,” he said.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner said on Sunday that the president has not yet made his decision on whether to formally recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. “He’s still looking at a lot of different facts, and then when he makes his decision, he’ll be the one to want to tell you, not me,” he said at an annual conference on US policy in the Middle East in Washington, which is organized by the Brookings Institution think-tank.</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/news/408142-jerusalem-settlements-annexation-postponed/" type="external" /></p>
<p>Kushner has been holding meetings with regional leaders for months, ahead of an expected peace initiative. Details of that initiative are unknown, including whether Trump would follow in the footsteps of his predecessors when it comes to supporting the idea of an independent Palestinian state.</p>
<p>Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat urged the US on Sunday not to change Jerusalem’s status. Doing so “is not only going to promote international anarchy and disrespect for global institutions and law, but it will also be disqualifying itself to play any role in any initiative toward achieving a just and lasting peace,” he said.</p>
<p>Reports that Trump was <a href="https://www.rt.com/usa/411677-trump-jerusalem-israel-capital/" type="external">ready</a> to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital first emerged on Friday, with AP and Reuters citing unnamed sources familiar with the issue. However, Trump is also expected to once again delay his campaign promise to move the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, where all foreign embassies are currently located.&#160;</p>
<p>Israel has been actively urging Washington to relocate its embassy. In May, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the move would contribute to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process by “shattering the Palestinian fantasy that Jerusalem is not the capital of Israel.” The Palestinians have been adamantly opposed to that notion from the beginning, with Palestine’s UN envoy stating in November 2016 that Palestinians would make life “miserable” for the US if it transferred its embassy to Jerusalem.</p> | false | 1 | jordan moving convene emergency meeting ahead donald trumps expected decision recognize jerusalem israels capital according diplomats palestinian authoritys foreign minister also reportedly urged meeting jordan hosted last arab league summit therefore serves current president would invite members arab league organisation islamic cooperation oic meet trump decides acknowledge jerusalem capital jewish state senior diplomatic official told reuters condition anonymity two organizations would discuss ways dealing consequences decision raised alarm concern read could ultimately hamper efforts get peace process moving holds high risk provoking arab muslim countries muslim communities west source said jordan160is particularly sensitive change jerusalems status king abdullahs hashemite dynasty custodian muslim holy sites jerusalem jordan lost east jerusalem west bank israel 1967 arabisraeli war says citys status needs decided part final settlement essential unilateral decisions made would change historic status quo jerusalem occupied city whose fate needs determined final status talks within overall peace package senior diplomatic source said palestinians want east jerusalem capital future state international community recognize israels claim city palestinian president mahmoud abbas warned sunday recognition jerusalem capital israel would jeopardize washingtons middle east peace efforts american step related recognition jerusalem capital israel moving us embassy jerusalem represents threat future peace process unacceptable palestinians arabs internationally abbas told group visiting arab lawmakers israel according wafa news agency read arab league also warned sunday hazardous consequences us recognizes jerusalem capital israel implemented would mark change washingtons historical stance sees holy city occupied palestinian city integral part occupied palestinian lands saeed abuali assistant secretary general occupied palestinian arab lands said arab league statement quoted xinhua also sunday palestinian authority foreign minister riyad almaliki asked heads arab league oic host emergency meetings expected move trump maliki called holding meetings arab league organization islamic cooperation level permanent representatives discuss imminent dangers facing jerusalem holy sites wafa reported maliki reportedly urged meetings calls arab league secretarygeneral ahmad aboul gheit oic secretarygeneral yousef alothaimeen abbass spokesman nabil abu rdeneh said saturday palestinian president contact arab world leaders rally opposition trumps expected decision noting touch egypt jordan saudi arabia qatar kuwait france believe american step takes place enter region new course dangerous phase whose results controlled said meanwhile trumps senior adviser soninlaw jared kushner said sunday president yet made decision whether formally recognize jerusalem israels capital hes still looking lot different facts makes decision hell one want tell said annual conference us policy middle east washington organized brookings institution thinktank read kushner holding meetings regional leaders months ahead expected peace initiative details initiative unknown including whether trump would follow footsteps predecessors comes supporting idea independent palestinian state chief palestinian negotiator saeb erekat urged us sunday change jerusalems status going promote international anarchy disrespect global institutions law also disqualifying play role initiative toward achieving lasting peace said reports trump ready recognize jerusalem israels capital first emerged friday ap reuters citing unnamed sources familiar issue however trump also expected delay campaign promise move us embassy jerusalem tel aviv foreign embassies currently located160 israel actively urging washington relocate embassy may prime minister benjamin netanyahu said move would contribute israelipalestinian peace process shattering palestinian fantasy jerusalem capital israel palestinians adamantly opposed notion beginning palestines un envoy stating november 2016 palestinians would make life miserable us transferred embassy jerusalem | 531 |
<p>RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — U.S. President Donald Trump delivered an appeal Sunday to people of all faiths to join in “adopting a principled realism” in the fight against “Islamist extremism and the Islamist terror groups it inspires.”</p>
<p>On Sunday, Trump told the Arab Islamic American Summit, which represents leaders from 50 Arab and Muslim countries, “We are not here to lecture — we are not here to tell other people how to live, what to do, who to be, or how to worship. Instead, we are here to offer partnership — based on shared interests and values — to pursue a better future for all of us.”</p>
<p>The speech marked an oratorical departure for Trump, who had made a point of using blunt language, specifically the words “radical Islamic terrorism,” in his joint address to Congress in February, despite National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster’s attempts to steer the tough-talking president toward language less likely to alienate Muslims at home or abroad. In this forum, before dozens of Muslim leaders, Trump mostly used the political term “Islamist” in lieu of the religious term “Islamic.”</p>
<p>After Trump’s remarks, Council on American-Islamic Relations Executive Director Nihad Awad released a statement in which he said, “While the shift in terminology seems to be a laudable attempt to delink the faith of Islam from terrorism, the use of the ill-defined term ‘Islamist’ will only serve to perpetuate that false linkage.”</p>
<p>The statement also noted that Trump did refer to “Islamic extremism” and “Islamic terror” in the speech.</p>
<p>The administration had hinted that Trump’s speech would be an antidote to President Barack Obama’s 2009 speech in Cairo.</p>
<p>“I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States,” Obama said then, “to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.”</p>
<p>Trump offered a different approach to fighting extremism.</p>
<p>“We will make decisions based on real-world outcomes, not inflexible ideology,” he said. “We will be guided by the lessons of experience, not the confines of rigid thinking. And, wherever possible, we will seek gradual reforms, not sudden intervention.”</p>
<p>During the 2016 campaign, critics warned that if Trump won the White House, Muslim countries would shun the United States and America would become isolated. To rebut that notion, Trump sat down with the Saudis and other Middle East leaders who had come to distrust Obama’s belief in the “Arab Spring.”</p>
<p>But first, on Saturday night, Trump danced. With sword in hand, the president joined Saudis in the traditional men’s “war dance,” called the “ardah.” Various male members of his inner circle — including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Chief Strategist Steve Bannon — also participated, although with varying amounts of enthusiasm.</p>
<p>Trump finds allies</p>
<p>Over two days, Trump showed that he could find many allies in unexpected places. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi praised Trump as “a unique personality who is capable of the impossible.” The Egyptian leader then invited Trump to visit his country. Trump responded that he plans to visit Egypt soon.</p>
<p>Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, the Emir of Kuwait, called the president “my brother Trump” and invited the president to his “tiny” country to see “how much people of Kuwait like and admire the United States.”</p>
<p>The Sunday speech followed a Saturday signing ceremony with Saudi King Salman to document an agreement for the immediate sale of $110 billion in American arms — $350 billion over 10 years — to the Saudis.</p>
<p>Trump dangled that same carrot before other leaders. When meeting with the emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad al Thani, Trump promised “very serious discussions” about the purchase of “lots of beautiful military equipment.”</p>
<p>Salaam Bhatti, spokesman for Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA, responded with criticism of the arms deal.</p>
<p>“The underlying challenge of the summit is the $350 billion arms deal,” Bhatti said. “Historically, the arms trade has resulted in more fighting, wars and extremism.</p>
<p>“We applaud the President on acknowledging that Muslims are 95 percent of the victims of terrorism. Rather than an arms trade, we encourage all nations committed to ending terrorism to instead invest resources into better education and a proven model of peace — like the TrueIslam.com educational initiative which is dedicated to educating Muslims and non-Muslims on Islam’s true teachings,” Bhatti said in a statement.</p>
<p>After the worst week of his tumultuous time in the White House, a week marred by revelations surrounding Trump’s firing of FBI chief James Comey, Trump enjoyed a weekend of triumph.</p>
<p>In a late-night briefing Sunday, Tillerson explained that the White House sees the fight against terrorism as a battle between good and evil.</p>
<p>“It is these forces that are most oppressive to women. It’s these forces that prey on those who are less able to care for themselves,” Tillerson said. “So I think that in our view, and I know the president’s view, defeating these evil forces is the first step on advancing human rights worldwide. And he clearly has that in his mind as well.”</p>
<p>Hopes for historic deal</p>
<p>On Monday morning, Trump flies to Tel Aviv, where he has visions of brokering the “ultimate deal” between Israelis and Palestinians. There, he will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. On Tuesday, Trump will see Palestinian Leader Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem.</p>
<p>“He certainly has the vision, and we believe he has the strength and the decisiveness,” said Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, “and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia stands prepared to work with the United States in order to bring about peace between Israelis and Palestinians and Israelis and Arabs.”</p>
<p>Contact Debra J. Saunders at [email protected] or at 202-662-7391. Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/debrajsaunders" type="external">@DebraJSaunders</a> on Twitter.</p>
<p>First lady visits Riyadh school</p>
<p>First lady Melania Trump visited the American International School of Riyadh, where she chatted with students and spoke of the value of education Sunday morning.</p>
<p>The first lady is accompanying Donald Trump, along with the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner, on his nine-day foreign trip.</p>
<p>The school visit began at 9:45 a.m. with a brief stop before a pre-school class to whom she gave Dr. Seuss books. Trump also chatted with students who were playing soccer, talked to elementary students who were learning primary and secondary colors, and clapped along as the school chorus sang a rendition of “Lean on Me.”</p>
<p>Saudi Minister of Education Ahmed Al-Eissa greeted Trump at the school campus. Also in attendance was Huda Alameel, the rector of Princess Noura University, who wore an abaya and hijab.</p>
<p>Trump did not wear a head scarf.</p>
<p>According to the first lady’s staff, this is her first visit to Saudi Arabia.</p>
<p /> | false | 1 | riyadh saudi arabia us president donald trump delivered appeal sunday people faiths join adopting principled realism fight islamist extremism islamist terror groups inspires sunday trump told arab islamic american summit represents leaders 50 arab muslim countries lecture tell people live worship instead offer partnership based shared interests values pursue better future us speech marked oratorical departure trump made point using blunt language specifically words radical islamic terrorism joint address congress february despite national security adviser hr mcmasters attempts steer toughtalking president toward language less likely alienate muslims home abroad forum dozens muslim leaders trump mostly used political term islamist lieu religious term islamic trumps remarks council americanislamic relations executive director nihad awad released statement said shift terminology seems laudable attempt delink faith islam terrorism use illdefined term islamist serve perpetuate false linkage statement also noted trump refer islamic extremism islamic terror speech administration hinted trumps speech would antidote president barack obamas 2009 speech cairo consider part responsibility president united states obama said fight negative stereotypes islam wherever appear trump offered different approach fighting extremism make decisions based realworld outcomes inflexible ideology said guided lessons experience confines rigid thinking wherever possible seek gradual reforms sudden intervention 2016 campaign critics warned trump white house muslim countries would shun united states america would become isolated rebut notion trump sat saudis middle east leaders come distrust obamas belief arab spring first saturday night trump danced sword hand president joined saudis traditional mens war dance called ardah various male members inner circle including secretary state rex tillerson chief staff reince priebus chief strategist steve bannon also participated although varying amounts enthusiasm trump finds allies two days trump showed could find many allies unexpected places egyptian president abdel fattah alsissi praised trump unique personality capable impossible egyptian leader invited trump visit country trump responded plans visit egypt soon jaber alahmad alsabah emir kuwait called president brother trump invited president tiny country see much people kuwait like admire united states sunday speech followed saturday signing ceremony saudi king salman document agreement immediate sale 110 billion american arms 350 billion 10 years saudis trump dangled carrot leaders meeting emir qatar tamim bin hamad al thani trump promised serious discussions purchase lots beautiful military equipment salaam bhatti spokesman ahmadiyya muslim community usa responded criticism arms deal underlying challenge summit 350 billion arms deal bhatti said historically arms trade resulted fighting wars extremism applaud president acknowledging muslims 95 percent victims terrorism rather arms trade encourage nations committed ending terrorism instead invest resources better education proven model peace like trueislamcom educational initiative dedicated educating muslims nonmuslims islams true teachings bhatti said statement worst week tumultuous time white house week marred revelations surrounding trumps firing fbi chief james comey trump enjoyed weekend triumph latenight briefing sunday tillerson explained white house sees fight terrorism battle good evil forces oppressive women forces prey less able care tillerson said think view know presidents view defeating evil forces first step advancing human rights worldwide clearly mind well hopes historic deal monday morning trump flies tel aviv visions brokering ultimate deal israelis palestinians meet israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu monday tuesday trump see palestinian leader mahmoud abbas bethlehem certainly vision believe strength decisiveness said saudi foreign minister adel aljubeir kingdom saudi arabia stands prepared work united states order bring peace israelis palestinians israelis arabs contact debra j saunders dsaundersreviewjournalcom 2026627391 follow debrajsaunders twitter first lady visits riyadh school first lady melania trump visited american international school riyadh chatted students spoke value education sunday morning first lady accompanying donald trump along presidents daughter ivanka trump soninlaw jared kushner nineday foreign trip school visit began 945 brief stop preschool class gave dr seuss books trump also chatted students playing soccer talked elementary students learning primary secondary colors clapped along school chorus sang rendition lean saudi minister education ahmed aleissa greeted trump school campus also attendance huda alameel rector princess noura university wore abaya hijab trump wear head scarf according first ladys staff first visit saudi arabia | 657 |
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