Democratic strategist should take a page from the micro targeting playbook. I would advise however to use this tool to target swing voters, increasing ones base of supporters, which is only way candidates such as Hilary Clinton can win the presidency.
"Romney's Data Cruncher; A pioneer in 'microtargeting,' he sounds part marketer and part political strategist -- and maybe even part Big Brother.
Source: The Washington Post 07/05/2007
In late 2002, Alex Gage sold his share of a well-established polling firm and set about convincing Karl Rove that he had the answer to ensuring President Bush's reelection.
His pitch was simple: Take corporate America's love affair with learning everything it can about its customers, and its obsession with carving up the country into smaller and smaller clusters of like-minded consumers, and turn those trends into a political strategy. The Bush majority would be made up of thousands of groups of like-minded voters whom the campaign could reach with precisely the right message on the issues they considered most important.
At first, Rove and campaign manager Ken Mehlman had doubts about the potential of microtargeting, according to Bush pollster Matthew Dowd.
"I had to really sell Karl on it, and Ken to a degree," said Dowd, who said the skepticism was rooted in whether the investment in databases and computer modeling would yield better results than the traditional precinct-by-precinct targeting of likely supporters. "I told them it was going to a major expense on the front end to save money on the back end."
As a test, Gage was asked to produce targeted messages in several Pennsylvania judicial races in the fall of 2003. Why? The state offered a diverse mix of geography and ethnicity, and it almost certainly would be a battleground for both parties in 2004.
When the election was over, the Republican National Committee commissioned a poll to figure out whether Gage's suppositions about why people voted were accurate. Gage's models predicted voters' tendencies with 90 percent accuracy, according to Dowd, and Gage was hired to microtarget the 16 or so battleground states in the 2004 election.
It wasn't long before this new, more sophisticated form of data mining became part of the mythology surrounding Rove and his role as "the architect" of Bush's reelection. Its use in Ohio, in particular, was credited with unearthing Bush supporters and delivering the state and the election to him.
Now Gage is working for another Republican presidential candidate entranced by the possibilities of microtargeting -- Mitt Romney. A Harvard Business School graduate who went on to head Bain Capital, Romney has made a point of adapting modern business techniques to politics, and it was in his successful 2002 campaign to be governor of Massachusetts that Gage's methods were first tried.
"The governor believes in accountability, benchmarks and metrics," said Beth Myers, Romney's campaign manager, explaining his interest in microtargeting. "He believes in using data when it comes to making decisions."
Describing what he does, Gage, 57, sounds part marketer, part political strategist -- and more than a little Big Brother. "Microtargeting is trying to unravel your political DNA," he said. "The more information I have about you, the better."
The more information he has, the better he can group people into "target clusters" with names such as "Flag and Family Republicans" or "Tax and Terrorism Moderates." Once a person is defined, finding the right message from the campaign becomes fairly simple.
" 'Flag and Family Republicans' might receive literature on a flag-burning amendment from its sponsor, while 'Tax and Terrorism Moderates' get an automated call from [former New York mayor] Rudy Giuliani talking about the war on terror, even if they lived right next door to one another," Alex Lundry, the senior research director of TargetPoint -- the firm Gage founded in 2003 -- wrote recently in Winning Campaigns magazine.
Some people are not convinced. Skeptics think that splicing the electorate into small subgroups does not tell a campaign anything it can't learn from a traditional poll.
"It's harder and harder to reach voters these days, so the desire to cut corners is understandable," said Steve Murphy, a Democratic media consultant and campaign manager for former congressman Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) during the 2004 presidential campaign. "But it still comes down to shoe leather. I have NASCAR's Hot Pass on DirecTV, and I read the New York Post. What microtargeting category does that put me in?"
And in a presidential primary, in which voters are far more homogenous than in a general election, can microtargeting find meaningful distinctions between groups? Gage and Romney are convinced that it can.
From Business to Politics
Using consumer data to predict buying behavior is nothing new in the business world. Bruce I. Newman, a professor at DePaul University and editor of the Journal of Political Marketing, said the term "microtargeting" began popping up in marketing textbooks in the 1960s, when the field of consumer behavior began gaining popularity.
Pat Caddell, pollster for Jimmy Carter, employed a rudimentary form of microtargeting during the 1976 presidential campaign when he set up a chart with issues on one axis and regions of the country on the other. Caddell used the chart to advise Carter on what issues to emphasize as he stumped across the nation.
Today, companies of every size use microtargeting on a "very regular basis" to make basic decisions about how to market and sell their products, Newman said. Also, whereas the political world has long copied the techniques of the business world, that dynamic is changing.
"What's beginning to happen now is that the commercial side is looking at the political side," said Newman, asking such questions as "We would like to know what you did with George W. Bush in 2004."
Gage said that when he pitched microtargeting to the Harvard MBAs advising Romney in his gubernatorial campaign, they were stunned that the idea had never been used in politics. "You guys don't do this already?" they asked, according to Gage.
For Gage, using the same consumer information employed by corporate marketers to figure out voter behavior was a logical step. His career had been spent crunching numbers as a pollster, much of it with two pillars of the Republican survey research establishment -- Robert M. Teeter and Fred Steeper.
By the 1990s, Gage was spending most of his time on corporate work. "I was pretty burned out" on politics, he acknowledged. But Gage had also begun to mull the rudimentary elements of political microtargeting.
Working with a few Michigan-based operatives -- direct-mail consultant Fred Wszolek; Michael Meyers, executive director of the state GOP; and Brent Seaborn, who is now director of strategy for Giuliani's presidential campaign -- he came up with a methodology he called "supersegmentation." Later, they borrowed the term "microtargeting."
Around that time, Michael Murphy, then Romney's campaign strategist, became intrigued by the high number of independent voters in Massachusetts, seeing them as the key to winning in a Democratic stronghold. He sought out Gage for help.
"I wanted to break the independent-voter file into target segments and Alex's approach was the best way to do it, so I reached out to Alex and we, along with Tagg Romney and Alex Dunn of the Romney staff, sort of invented microtargeting in that race," Murphy said.
What did they find?
That a 32-year-old white Protestant woman with two children and a retired Roman Catholic male engineer -- while both independents -- were driven by often contradictory issues, Murphy said. "Some independents are more base Republican -- like, some are pure fiscal [voters], some are focused on education," he added.
All of this seems somewhat straightforward -- after all, anyone with even a passing interest in politics knows that a mother of two and a retired widower are probably motivated by different issues.
Wszolek, the Michigan-based direct-mail consultant, has known Gage since 1984 and worked closely with him to fine-tune a theory of political microtargeting. Wszolek acknowledged that "what you're doing is putting a very fine point on the obvious."
But, he added, the key insight of political microtargeting is that, rather than simply determining whether married men are more likely than unmarried women to support a candidate, a campaign can identify segments within larger demographic groups and tailor messages down to the household level -- an extraordinary amount of precision that helps turn a guessing game into a series of targeted strikes. If television advertising is painting with broad brush strokes, microtargeting is political pointillism.
The first step in doing this is conducting a large survey of voters. By matching up their political views with detailed information about their consumer habits, a model is established that can be applied to the population as a whole.
A campaign would then know which issues are important to an unmarried woman who subscribes to Outside magazine and is a frequent flier, and how they are different from issues important to an unmarried woman who has two grown children, uses corrective lenses and is an AARP member -- even if they are next-door neighbors.
"A lot of people were skeptical that a big sample would tell you anything different than a small sample," Wszolek said. "What we found with large-sample research [is] you see something totally different. That was Alex's central revelation."
Winning for Bush in 2004
It took TargetPoint six months -- and cost the Bush campaign $3.25 million -- to conduct surveys, overlay them with thousands of data points and break down the electorate into unique segments.
To Mehlman, having the information meant the campaign was fundamentally different from the one before. "In 2000, we very broadly talked to people on broad issues," he said. "In 2004, instead of talking about what we thought was most important, we talked about what the voters thought was most important."
In Ohio, the key battleground of the 2004 campaign, Gage's microtargeting showed that black voters -- who had traditionally not been drawn to the GOP -- wanted to hear candidates talk about education and health care. As a result, they received a series of contacts -- direct mail and phone calls, primarily -- emphasizing Bush's accomplishments on just those two issues. It was a much different message from the president's broader attempt to cast the election as a choice between staying the course in Iraq and the anti-terrorism effort or switching teams in midstream.
It worked. Nationwide, Bush won 11 percent of the black vote, a two-point increase from 2000; in Ohio, he won 16 percent, an improvement of seven percentage points. Bush won Ohio by 118,601 votes, or approximately 2 percent of the more than 5.6 million votes cast for the two major-party nominees.
In New Mexico, Gage's microtargeting discovered a segment of 19,000 lower- and middle-class, middle-aged Hispanic women whose children attended public schools. That group was strongly resistant to Republican candidates -- just one in five said they would back a GOP candidate -- but about half said they would back Bush. Why? Because 80 percent of the group were strongly supportive of his No Child Left Behind education legislation.
The Bush campaign made a targeted strike with a message focused on his push for testing and standards in public schools. It focused particularly on the 6,000 women in the group who were all but certain to vote. Again, the goal was not to win Hispanics or even Hispanic women but rather to minimize the Bush campaign's losses in this particular demographic.
On Election Day 2004, Bush carried New Mexico by 5,988 votes. It was the only state that he lost in 2000 and won four years later.
In response to Gage's success, Democrats have made their own attempts at microtargeting, and they think they have caught up in the technology, if not the organization, needed to apply it. Republicans worked to hone their microtargeting techniques under the single roof of the RNC-Bush campaign, but Democrats have been experimenting with a patchwork of smaller, less centralized efforts, according to Ken Strasma, founder of Strategic Telemetry, a Democratic firm.
Gage doesn't sound worried. What he does is as much art as science, and he never stops tinkering with his models. "Part of the challenge is to constantly attack what you're doing and try to do it better," he said.
Targeting Iowa for Romney in '08
Eighteen months ago, Gage made the trip up to Boston to meet with Myers. At a Beacon Hill restaurant, the two old friends chatted about Romney's potential as a presidential candidate and microtargeting's ability to help deliver him the GOP nomination.
Over the next months, Gage and Myers talked from time to time about how microtargeting might best be used to make a difference in a presidential primary. One Saturday last fall, Myers, Gage and Will Feltus, a member of National Media Inc., the company that handles Romney's advertising, gathered for a final bull session.
At issue was whether microtargeting could find meaningful -- and measurable -- differences in a primary electorate that was Republican to begin with and similar in its demographic and ideological traits. After hashing out the details on maps and graphs, Myers and the rest of the Romney team reached a decision. "The question was whether you could differentiate between the eight kinds of chocolate," she said. "I became convinced that the power of microtargeting was enhanced by segregating a generally homogenous universe."
Myers's conversation, like that of her candidate, is more from the business world than from the political one. She likes to talk about the "seamless web" that allows the campaign not only to "see at any given time what the left hand is doing" but also to use the "right hand [to] tell us what impact it has."
But the Romney campaign is decidedly circumspect when it comes to divulging details of exactly what Gage and his team are doing, other than to say the process of interviewing individuals has begun in Iowa.
Romney communications director Matt Rhoades is only slightly more specific when asked about the campaign's plans for microtargeting. "Our microtargeting strategy is tied to the calendar, and we have developed microtargeting models in Iowa," he said.
Developing that strategy has placed Gage in a central role in the campaign. Myers describes Gage as its "strategic orchestra leader" -- he oversees polling, media and online operations and works to ensure that every part of the Romney operation is working in concert.
Gage is more humble about his role, calling himself a "planner." He said, "I have always believed in Eisenhower's observation: 'In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.' " "
Sunday, July 08, 2007
McCain scales back Florida staff; Sen. John McCain pulled at least six people off his 2008 campaign in Florida, a sign the primary might cater only to deep-pocketed candidates. CAMPAIGN 2008
Source: The Miami Herald 07/06/2007
A cash crunch has forced Republican John McCain to gut his presidential campaign in Florida, an early sign that only a few, extremely flush contenders will be able to compete in a state hosting one of the nation's first primaries.
Supporters of moving Florida's primary from mid-March to Jan. 29 had argued the change would bring a presidential ground game to a state traditionally viewed as a stopover for raising money to be spent elsewhere. But McCain's retrenchment suggests most of the field will continue to focus on earlier, smaller states where their limited resources can go much farther.
While a scrappy candidate can potentially make headway in New Hampshire living rooms and Iowa coffee shops, a television run in the nation's fourth-largest state costs more than $1 million a week.
''Moving up the presidential primary in Florida certainly gives it more attention than other states, but the path to the presidency still leads through Iowa and New Hampshire,'' said Justin Sayfie, a top Florida fundraiser for President Bush.
Florida will still have a bigger say than in past primaries, in which the nominees were foregone conclusions by the time voters went to the polls, said state Rep. David Rivera of Miami, who sponsored the early-primary bill. Mixed results in the earliest states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada could make Florida a decisive step on the way to the nomination.
Battered over his support for the war and a controversial immigration overhaul, McCain announced this week that he has only $2 million in the bank -- a pittance by the standards of a modern-day national race.
McCain laid off dozens of staff members across the country, including his regional press secretary responsible for Florida and other states. A Miami consulting firm, the campaign's state coordinator, and the assistant to the finance director are off the Florida payroll, leaving only McCain's finance director. A political director for Florida and other southeastern states moved to South Carolina full time.
''It seems as if they are moving their resources out of Florida and refocusing them on smaller, early states,'' said consultant Carlos Curbelo, who helped organize McCain's visits to Miami.
His chief rivals, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, have nearly a dozen staff members each in Florida. McCain's campaign said he will continue to visit Florida.
''It's obviously a little upsetting that he doesn't have the staff here to build the infrastructure, because I think that's important for grass-roots support,'' said state Rep. Ellyn Bogdanoff, who is serving as McCain's Southeast legislative co-chairwoman. ``You can't build a grass-roots operation overnight and, unfortunately, McCain is already behind the eight ball.''
Allison DeFoor, a member of McCain's advisory committee in Florida and a former vice chairman of the state GOP, said: ``Obviously, this is not good news. Those of us in Florida have been advocating more boots on the ground, not less.''
McCain has burned through most of the more than $24 million he has raised so far with little to show for it in the polls. In contrast, Giuliani has $18 million on hand, while Romney has $12 million.
In a sign of how much money matters, Romney's television advertising has been credited with helping the little-known former governor of Massachusetts rise to the top of the polls in Iowa and New Hampshire. He has run the most television ads of any presidential candidate, including 319 spots in Florida, according to a recent survey by The Nielsen Co.
Giuliani is favored by Republican voters in Florida, followed by unofficial candidate Fred Thompson, in the latest survey by Quinnipiac University. Thompson is expected to make his first Florida appearance Saturday at the Young Republican National Convention in Hollywood, potentially creating even more competition for McCain.
McCain supporters said there's plenty of time for the self-proclaimed maverick to wage a comeback. Unlike some of the lesser-known candidates who depend on advertising and grass-roots organization to raise their profiles, McCain is a former presidential contender, a well-known U.S. senator from Arizona and a decorated Vietnam veteran.
In a conference call on Monday, McCain's top campaign officials blamed the campaign's downturn partly on his support for a controversial immigration plan that collapsed in the Senate last month. McCain came to immigrant-rich South Florida a month ago to deliver his most extensive remarks championing the revisions, which would allow millions of illegal immigrants to earn citizenship.
''The immigration bill has been a distraction, and it's been an ugly, divisive debate that he was in the middle of,'' said Republican fundraiser Ana Navarro, who lobbied for the plan in Washington. ``He's been courageous, but it had a huge political cost.''
Source: The Miami Herald 07/06/2007
A cash crunch has forced Republican John McCain to gut his presidential campaign in Florida, an early sign that only a few, extremely flush contenders will be able to compete in a state hosting one of the nation's first primaries.
Supporters of moving Florida's primary from mid-March to Jan. 29 had argued the change would bring a presidential ground game to a state traditionally viewed as a stopover for raising money to be spent elsewhere. But McCain's retrenchment suggests most of the field will continue to focus on earlier, smaller states where their limited resources can go much farther.
While a scrappy candidate can potentially make headway in New Hampshire living rooms and Iowa coffee shops, a television run in the nation's fourth-largest state costs more than $1 million a week.
''Moving up the presidential primary in Florida certainly gives it more attention than other states, but the path to the presidency still leads through Iowa and New Hampshire,'' said Justin Sayfie, a top Florida fundraiser for President Bush.
Florida will still have a bigger say than in past primaries, in which the nominees were foregone conclusions by the time voters went to the polls, said state Rep. David Rivera of Miami, who sponsored the early-primary bill. Mixed results in the earliest states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada could make Florida a decisive step on the way to the nomination.
Battered over his support for the war and a controversial immigration overhaul, McCain announced this week that he has only $2 million in the bank -- a pittance by the standards of a modern-day national race.
McCain laid off dozens of staff members across the country, including his regional press secretary responsible for Florida and other states. A Miami consulting firm, the campaign's state coordinator, and the assistant to the finance director are off the Florida payroll, leaving only McCain's finance director. A political director for Florida and other southeastern states moved to South Carolina full time.
''It seems as if they are moving their resources out of Florida and refocusing them on smaller, early states,'' said consultant Carlos Curbelo, who helped organize McCain's visits to Miami.
His chief rivals, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, have nearly a dozen staff members each in Florida. McCain's campaign said he will continue to visit Florida.
''It's obviously a little upsetting that he doesn't have the staff here to build the infrastructure, because I think that's important for grass-roots support,'' said state Rep. Ellyn Bogdanoff, who is serving as McCain's Southeast legislative co-chairwoman. ``You can't build a grass-roots operation overnight and, unfortunately, McCain is already behind the eight ball.''
Allison DeFoor, a member of McCain's advisory committee in Florida and a former vice chairman of the state GOP, said: ``Obviously, this is not good news. Those of us in Florida have been advocating more boots on the ground, not less.''
McCain has burned through most of the more than $24 million he has raised so far with little to show for it in the polls. In contrast, Giuliani has $18 million on hand, while Romney has $12 million.
In a sign of how much money matters, Romney's television advertising has been credited with helping the little-known former governor of Massachusetts rise to the top of the polls in Iowa and New Hampshire. He has run the most television ads of any presidential candidate, including 319 spots in Florida, according to a recent survey by The Nielsen Co.
Giuliani is favored by Republican voters in Florida, followed by unofficial candidate Fred Thompson, in the latest survey by Quinnipiac University. Thompson is expected to make his first Florida appearance Saturday at the Young Republican National Convention in Hollywood, potentially creating even more competition for McCain.
McCain supporters said there's plenty of time for the self-proclaimed maverick to wage a comeback. Unlike some of the lesser-known candidates who depend on advertising and grass-roots organization to raise their profiles, McCain is a former presidential contender, a well-known U.S. senator from Arizona and a decorated Vietnam veteran.
In a conference call on Monday, McCain's top campaign officials blamed the campaign's downturn partly on his support for a controversial immigration plan that collapsed in the Senate last month. McCain came to immigrant-rich South Florida a month ago to deliver his most extensive remarks championing the revisions, which would allow millions of illegal immigrants to earn citizenship.
''The immigration bill has been a distraction, and it's been an ugly, divisive debate that he was in the middle of,'' said Republican fundraiser Ana Navarro, who lobbied for the plan in Washington. ``He's been courageous, but it had a huge political cost.''
Jabs at Clinton Play Well With GOP
"Jabs at Clinton Play Well With GOP Base
Source: Associated Press Newswires 07/06/2007
WASHINGTON (AP) - Forget Bill. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic presidential leader, has become the Republican candidates' favorite punching bag.
Mitt Romney argues she would turn the United States into a "big government, big taxation, welfare state." John McCain calls the New York senator an irresponsible guardian of taxpayer dollars. Rudy Giuliani claims she'd put the country "on defense against terrorism." And all three lambast her on Iraq.
At every turn, the leading GOP contenders are criticizing Clinton even as they are entangled in their own turbulent race for the Republican nomination.
"They see her not only as the clear Democratic front-runner but also as the most formidable potential opponent," said Joseph Marbach, a Seton Hall University political science professor. Thus, Marbach and others say, each is trying to prove he is the strongest Republican to challenge Clinton in November 2008 -- and damage her in the process.
The two-term New York senator leads the Democratic field but faces fierce challenges from Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and ex-Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. GOP candidates have harped on them, too, but to a lesser extent.
It's standard campaign fare for Republicans to castigate Clinton's husband and his administration -- and they still do. They also have assailed her sporadically since 1992. Now, she is a White House candidate in her own right, and as such, is increasingly in the GOP candidates' crosshairs.
For good reason, analysts say.
"This gives them a way for their supporters to measure whether they're tough enough to take her on in a general election," said Ed Rollins, a Republican who was a White House political director under President Reagan. Plus, Clinton-bashing is a surefire way for Romney, McCain and Giuliani to energize the dispirited GOP base that votes in primaries, he said.
"She is hated by the core," Rollins said.
Polls show Clinton is incredibly popular with Democrats but extraordinarily unpopular with Republicans. Half the country views her favorably and half unfavorably.
Beating up on Clinton now also could pay dividends for Republicans come next fall by driving up her already high negatives, hampering her effort to win the primary and leaving her wounded for the general election -- or perhaps deprive her of the nomination altogether.
"They are trying to weaken her at the outset knowing she's the one to beat," said Donna Brazile, a Democrat who ran Al Gore's campaign in 2000. She doubted Republicans would succeed, adding that Clinton has proven time and again "she can stand up to the right-wing slime machine."
Clinton spokesman Phil Singer dismissed the GOP onslaught, saying, "Republicans are clearly nervous because they know that Senator Clinton is the candidate with the strength and experience to win the general election and become president."
The White House got into the Clinton-criticizing act Thursday, making fun of the couple for assailing Bush's decision to erase the prison sentence of former aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Clinton himself commuted the sentences of 36 people and pardoned 140 people, many of them controversial, in the final hours of his presidency.
"I don't know what Arkansan is for chutzpah, but this is a gigantic case of it," said Tony Snow, the presidential spokesman.
Jabs at Clinton from those looking to succeed Bush guarantee applause from the party faithful.
In Los Angeles, McCain criticized her for backing $150 million in projects he considered wasteful and unnecessary in wartime. Earlier, at a debate in Manchester, N.H., the Arizona senator needled her on Iraq, intoning: "When Senator Clinton says this is Mr. Bush's war, President Bush's war," she is wrong.
In Sioux City, Iowa, Romney claimed that Clinton would push the country off course economically, militarily and socially, and he cracked that her platform wouldn't get her elected in France. "Her view is the old, classic, European caricature that we describe of big government, big taxation, welfare state," said to former Massachusetts governor.
In a debate in Columbia, S.C., Giuliani argued that Clinton was an apostle of big government. "The leading Democratic candidate for president of the United States has said that the unfettered free market is the most disastrous thing in modern America," the former New York mayor said.
And, the trio piled on when Clinton voted against a war-funding bill. Giuliani said she had "gone from an anti-war position to an anti-military, anti-troops position." McCain accused her of embracing "the policy of surrender," while Romney claimed she "abandons principle in favor of political positioning." "
Source: Associated Press Newswires 07/06/2007
WASHINGTON (AP) - Forget Bill. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic presidential leader, has become the Republican candidates' favorite punching bag.
Mitt Romney argues she would turn the United States into a "big government, big taxation, welfare state." John McCain calls the New York senator an irresponsible guardian of taxpayer dollars. Rudy Giuliani claims she'd put the country "on defense against terrorism." And all three lambast her on Iraq.
At every turn, the leading GOP contenders are criticizing Clinton even as they are entangled in their own turbulent race for the Republican nomination.
"They see her not only as the clear Democratic front-runner but also as the most formidable potential opponent," said Joseph Marbach, a Seton Hall University political science professor. Thus, Marbach and others say, each is trying to prove he is the strongest Republican to challenge Clinton in November 2008 -- and damage her in the process.
The two-term New York senator leads the Democratic field but faces fierce challenges from Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and ex-Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. GOP candidates have harped on them, too, but to a lesser extent.
It's standard campaign fare for Republicans to castigate Clinton's husband and his administration -- and they still do. They also have assailed her sporadically since 1992. Now, she is a White House candidate in her own right, and as such, is increasingly in the GOP candidates' crosshairs.
For good reason, analysts say.
"This gives them a way for their supporters to measure whether they're tough enough to take her on in a general election," said Ed Rollins, a Republican who was a White House political director under President Reagan. Plus, Clinton-bashing is a surefire way for Romney, McCain and Giuliani to energize the dispirited GOP base that votes in primaries, he said.
"She is hated by the core," Rollins said.
Polls show Clinton is incredibly popular with Democrats but extraordinarily unpopular with Republicans. Half the country views her favorably and half unfavorably.
Beating up on Clinton now also could pay dividends for Republicans come next fall by driving up her already high negatives, hampering her effort to win the primary and leaving her wounded for the general election -- or perhaps deprive her of the nomination altogether.
"They are trying to weaken her at the outset knowing she's the one to beat," said Donna Brazile, a Democrat who ran Al Gore's campaign in 2000. She doubted Republicans would succeed, adding that Clinton has proven time and again "she can stand up to the right-wing slime machine."
Clinton spokesman Phil Singer dismissed the GOP onslaught, saying, "Republicans are clearly nervous because they know that Senator Clinton is the candidate with the strength and experience to win the general election and become president."
The White House got into the Clinton-criticizing act Thursday, making fun of the couple for assailing Bush's decision to erase the prison sentence of former aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Clinton himself commuted the sentences of 36 people and pardoned 140 people, many of them controversial, in the final hours of his presidency.
"I don't know what Arkansan is for chutzpah, but this is a gigantic case of it," said Tony Snow, the presidential spokesman.
Jabs at Clinton from those looking to succeed Bush guarantee applause from the party faithful.
In Los Angeles, McCain criticized her for backing $150 million in projects he considered wasteful and unnecessary in wartime. Earlier, at a debate in Manchester, N.H., the Arizona senator needled her on Iraq, intoning: "When Senator Clinton says this is Mr. Bush's war, President Bush's war," she is wrong.
In Sioux City, Iowa, Romney claimed that Clinton would push the country off course economically, militarily and socially, and he cracked that her platform wouldn't get her elected in France. "Her view is the old, classic, European caricature that we describe of big government, big taxation, welfare state," said to former Massachusetts governor.
In a debate in Columbia, S.C., Giuliani argued that Clinton was an apostle of big government. "The leading Democratic candidate for president of the United States has said that the unfettered free market is the most disastrous thing in modern America," the former New York mayor said.
And, the trio piled on when Clinton voted against a war-funding bill. Giuliani said she had "gone from an anti-war position to an anti-military, anti-troops position." McCain accused her of embracing "the policy of surrender," while Romney claimed she "abandons principle in favor of political positioning." "
Saturday, July 07, 2007
New breed of evangelical leaders
"The new breed on the right The Rev. Joel Hunter seems emblematic of a kinder, gentler generation of evangelical leaders.
Source: Orlando Sentinel 07/02/2007
he abortion question had to be asked. In a broadcast where the leading Democratic presidential candidates talked about faith, the preachers and CNN producers agreed, it was arguably the single most important issue to America's evangelical voters.
So the Rev. Joel Hunter, pastor of the Longwood congregation at Northland Church and a strong opponent of abortion, volunteered. He acknowledged Hillary Clinton's pro-choice position but asked whether she could envision any common ground with an anti-abortion community that seeks to reduce the number of abortions "to zero."
Clinton leapt at the opportunity to give her standard response that abortion should be "safe, legal and rare. And, by rare, I mean rare."
The nondenominational minister passed up the opportunity to attack a favorite evangelical target -- and instead, reached out to an opponent.
"Our focus on arguments and opponents is not working," said Hunter, 59, "and it prevents even incremental progress."
It was vintage Joel Hunter. And that's what made him the natural choice to ask such a tough question on national television. In the past 18 months, he has become emblematic of a new generation of evangelical leaders: younger mega-church pastors putting a kinder, gentler face on a conservative religious movement known for strident and sometimes divisive rhetoric.
Since the death of the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Hunter has become a face in this emerging cohort. He has been cited in front-page articles in The New York Times and Washington Post, in op-ed columns in the Los Angeles Times, and he has been interviewed by National Public Radio, BBC programs, CNN and ABC's Nightline.
Hunter's provocative book -- Right Wing, Wrong Bird: Why the Tactics of the Religious Right Won't Fly With Most Conservative Christians, which was published by the church -- has been picked up by a commercial publisher and will be rereleased next year.
But it will have a different title: A New Kind of Conservative.
"Hunter exemplifies the New Guard of American evangelical leaders," said Jeff Sheler, author of Believers: A Journey of Evangelical America. "This is a group of successful pastors, mostly, who are more centrist and less partisan than the Old Guard of the Religious Right, and who present a more winsome and moderate face of evangelical Christianity."
A wider range of issues In Hunter's church, there is no fire and brimstone.
Instead, the message and the presentation are the same: clear, practical, reasonable, upbeat and Bible-based. Hunter's success in the Sunbelt is an anomaly in some ways. He is a funny, folksy Midwesterner in a congregation that is largely Southern. A Hoosier, he is a storyteller as much as a preacher, often using self-deprecating anecdotes.
"I don't want to bore myself," said Hunter, a compact, energetic man with a reflexive, sometimes impish smile. He reads widely and deeply, including publications such as The Economist and Foreign Affairs.
Hunter and others in this new breed of church leaders want to push the evangelical agenda beyond the traditional opposition to abortion, gay marriage and stem-cell research. They endorse those positions but also want to be involved in the national dialogue about immigration, global warming, AIDS, war and peace, the genocide in Darfur, human trafficking and concern for the poor. Hunter also opposes the death penalty.
And, he does not want the Republican Party to take for granted the evangelical vote.
In the 2008 campaign, the conservative Christian vote will be a "jump ball," Hunter said, especially if the choice in the voting booth is between faith and competence. "If it's not possible to have both, you go for competence every time."
Experts disagree whether mega-church pastors such as Hunter, T.D. Jakes and Rick Warren are leading their flocks or simply understanding that many worshippers now appreciate a more toned-down approach.
"Clearly Rick Warren and Joel Hunter are trying to put a new public face on American evangelicalism," said Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based Ethics and Public Policy Center. "That is, a faith that isn't predictably knee-jerk right wing, that wants to look at a wider range of issues."
The Rev. Jim Wallis, of the liberal Sojourners community, said the pastors are responding to "dramatic changes in the evangelical world, especially in the younger generation."
And that generation, more than others, cares about the environment, global warming and matters of war and peace.
Until recently, the national evangelical leadership included those who denied the scientific consensus that global warming exists. They rejected the notion that climate change is primarily a result of human activity and feared that significant remedies would cost too many jobs.
Hunter and his allies reject these notions and have adopted the term "Creation Care" as an evangelical euphemism for environmentalism. "We're approaching it with a biblical agenda rather than a political agenda," he said. "The church should be about replenishing as much as repenting."
This should have been obvious, said the Rev. Fred Morris, former executive director of the Florida Council of Churches, who has long urged Hunter to become involved in environmental issues.
"Anyone who professes to believe in a Creator God has a moral and spiritual obligation to care for and defend God's Creation," Morris said. "I think he is going to get into hotter and hotter water with his evangelical colleagues, but he is willing to do that, because he knows it is a crucial issue."
Making waves if Hunter ends up in hot water, it won't be the first time.
His most public misstep came in 2006, when he accepted an invitation to lead the Christian Coalition. It soon became apparent that it was a mismatch; the organization built by Pat Robertson was not willing to move toward a broader political agenda.
"The whole thing was a mystery," said Cromartie, of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, "that they asked him, and that he accepted."
In any event, Hunter said, the experience was, for him, "a clear signal that there has to be a new voice for the evangelical community."
Toward that end, Hunter works tirelessly in his church community.
In a typical week, he teaches a nighttime class on Creation Care, meets with a visiting Turkish minister who has been beaten for his beliefs, then swoops into Florida Hospital South to see two ailing parishioners.
His schedule is punctuated by frequent visits across the parking lot to Northland's new 3,200-seat, state-of-the-art sanctuary, which will be dedicated in August. The hall will enable Hunter to move out of the converted skating rink where he now leads worship and reduce the number of weekend services from seven to five.
Those in the 7,000-member congregation seem supportive of their pastor's higher profile.
"It wasn't until we listened to Joel Hunter preaching that we were drawn back into the church," said Marie Carling, 57, of Sanford. "I heard him addressing social needs. He was speaking as a leader of the church about working together with government, with civic organizations."
Still, Hunter acknowledges that not everyone is pleased with his emergence.
"There is some push-back on issues," he said, "from a very small but emotional percentage of the congregation."
And Hunter is not blinded by his growing prominence.
"It could all go away tomorrow, and I wouldn't miss it," he said. "Things are only seductive if you're not satisfied with what you have. I'm satisfied with my church, with my family and with my life. The rest is kind of icing." "
Source: Orlando Sentinel 07/02/2007
he abortion question had to be asked. In a broadcast where the leading Democratic presidential candidates talked about faith, the preachers and CNN producers agreed, it was arguably the single most important issue to America's evangelical voters.
So the Rev. Joel Hunter, pastor of the Longwood congregation at Northland Church and a strong opponent of abortion, volunteered. He acknowledged Hillary Clinton's pro-choice position but asked whether she could envision any common ground with an anti-abortion community that seeks to reduce the number of abortions "to zero."
Clinton leapt at the opportunity to give her standard response that abortion should be "safe, legal and rare. And, by rare, I mean rare."
The nondenominational minister passed up the opportunity to attack a favorite evangelical target -- and instead, reached out to an opponent.
"Our focus on arguments and opponents is not working," said Hunter, 59, "and it prevents even incremental progress."
It was vintage Joel Hunter. And that's what made him the natural choice to ask such a tough question on national television. In the past 18 months, he has become emblematic of a new generation of evangelical leaders: younger mega-church pastors putting a kinder, gentler face on a conservative religious movement known for strident and sometimes divisive rhetoric.
Since the death of the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Hunter has become a face in this emerging cohort. He has been cited in front-page articles in The New York Times and Washington Post, in op-ed columns in the Los Angeles Times, and he has been interviewed by National Public Radio, BBC programs, CNN and ABC's Nightline.
Hunter's provocative book -- Right Wing, Wrong Bird: Why the Tactics of the Religious Right Won't Fly With Most Conservative Christians, which was published by the church -- has been picked up by a commercial publisher and will be rereleased next year.
But it will have a different title: A New Kind of Conservative.
"Hunter exemplifies the New Guard of American evangelical leaders," said Jeff Sheler, author of Believers: A Journey of Evangelical America. "This is a group of successful pastors, mostly, who are more centrist and less partisan than the Old Guard of the Religious Right, and who present a more winsome and moderate face of evangelical Christianity."
A wider range of issues In Hunter's church, there is no fire and brimstone.
Instead, the message and the presentation are the same: clear, practical, reasonable, upbeat and Bible-based. Hunter's success in the Sunbelt is an anomaly in some ways. He is a funny, folksy Midwesterner in a congregation that is largely Southern. A Hoosier, he is a storyteller as much as a preacher, often using self-deprecating anecdotes.
"I don't want to bore myself," said Hunter, a compact, energetic man with a reflexive, sometimes impish smile. He reads widely and deeply, including publications such as The Economist and Foreign Affairs.
Hunter and others in this new breed of church leaders want to push the evangelical agenda beyond the traditional opposition to abortion, gay marriage and stem-cell research. They endorse those positions but also want to be involved in the national dialogue about immigration, global warming, AIDS, war and peace, the genocide in Darfur, human trafficking and concern for the poor. Hunter also opposes the death penalty.
And, he does not want the Republican Party to take for granted the evangelical vote.
In the 2008 campaign, the conservative Christian vote will be a "jump ball," Hunter said, especially if the choice in the voting booth is between faith and competence. "If it's not possible to have both, you go for competence every time."
Experts disagree whether mega-church pastors such as Hunter, T.D. Jakes and Rick Warren are leading their flocks or simply understanding that many worshippers now appreciate a more toned-down approach.
"Clearly Rick Warren and Joel Hunter are trying to put a new public face on American evangelicalism," said Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based Ethics and Public Policy Center. "That is, a faith that isn't predictably knee-jerk right wing, that wants to look at a wider range of issues."
The Rev. Jim Wallis, of the liberal Sojourners community, said the pastors are responding to "dramatic changes in the evangelical world, especially in the younger generation."
And that generation, more than others, cares about the environment, global warming and matters of war and peace.
Until recently, the national evangelical leadership included those who denied the scientific consensus that global warming exists. They rejected the notion that climate change is primarily a result of human activity and feared that significant remedies would cost too many jobs.
Hunter and his allies reject these notions and have adopted the term "Creation Care" as an evangelical euphemism for environmentalism. "We're approaching it with a biblical agenda rather than a political agenda," he said. "The church should be about replenishing as much as repenting."
This should have been obvious, said the Rev. Fred Morris, former executive director of the Florida Council of Churches, who has long urged Hunter to become involved in environmental issues.
"Anyone who professes to believe in a Creator God has a moral and spiritual obligation to care for and defend God's Creation," Morris said. "I think he is going to get into hotter and hotter water with his evangelical colleagues, but he is willing to do that, because he knows it is a crucial issue."
Making waves if Hunter ends up in hot water, it won't be the first time.
His most public misstep came in 2006, when he accepted an invitation to lead the Christian Coalition. It soon became apparent that it was a mismatch; the organization built by Pat Robertson was not willing to move toward a broader political agenda.
"The whole thing was a mystery," said Cromartie, of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, "that they asked him, and that he accepted."
In any event, Hunter said, the experience was, for him, "a clear signal that there has to be a new voice for the evangelical community."
Toward that end, Hunter works tirelessly in his church community.
In a typical week, he teaches a nighttime class on Creation Care, meets with a visiting Turkish minister who has been beaten for his beliefs, then swoops into Florida Hospital South to see two ailing parishioners.
His schedule is punctuated by frequent visits across the parking lot to Northland's new 3,200-seat, state-of-the-art sanctuary, which will be dedicated in August. The hall will enable Hunter to move out of the converted skating rink where he now leads worship and reduce the number of weekend services from seven to five.
Those in the 7,000-member congregation seem supportive of their pastor's higher profile.
"It wasn't until we listened to Joel Hunter preaching that we were drawn back into the church," said Marie Carling, 57, of Sanford. "I heard him addressing social needs. He was speaking as a leader of the church about working together with government, with civic organizations."
Still, Hunter acknowledges that not everyone is pleased with his emergence.
"There is some push-back on issues," he said, "from a very small but emotional percentage of the congregation."
And Hunter is not blinded by his growing prominence.
"It could all go away tomorrow, and I wouldn't miss it," he said. "Things are only seductive if you're not satisfied with what you have. I'm satisfied with my church, with my family and with my life. The rest is kind of icing." "
Friday, July 06, 2007
Liberals Could Move to Retake USA
“A little less conversation and more action.”
It is apparent that the public must elect even more liberals to Congress not for the purposes of moving the country toward the left but in order to bring balance and moderation upon these radically conservative incompetent Republicans now abusing the powers of the White House.
It is apparent that the public must elect even more liberals to Congress not for the purposes of moving the country toward the left but in order to bring balance and moderation upon these radically conservative incompetent Republicans now abusing the powers of the White House.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Gridlock in Orlando
""CREATING GRIDLOCK Development is supposed to stop when roads get too congested. But politicians and developers are finding exceptions to the rules.
Source: Orlando Sentinel 06/25/2007
Traffic jams madden drivers throughout Central Florida because many roads handle more cars than they are supposed to, or close to it.
A policy called concurrency is supposed to stop development if the roads are too crowded. But that rarely happens.
Many policymakers argue that concurrency is a failure because it encourages sprawl. In theory, it forces development outward to where roads haven't been congested yet. That "consumes unspoiled land and requires that you have to build roads to get there," said Jon Peck, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Community Affairs, which regulates growth.
There are ways around it.
Some cities have chosen to establish "transportation concurrency exception areas." More than 30 communities across Florida have designated portions of land -- sometimes, huge ones -- as TCEAs.
Even though roads are congested, development can continue as long as planners encourage transportation alternatives such as buses and carpooling and plan for dense development.
Orlando planners say the city's exception area has allowed big downtown redevelopment projects that might not have otherwise existed because, realistically, there's no way to widen the streets.
"All of this high-rise development downtown probably would have had trouble," said Kevin Tyjeski, Orlando's chief planning manager.
The exception area takes up almost half the city limits, but Tyjeski said it makes sense because so much of the city has been densely developed.
TCEAs took hold in 1990s
The exception areas were designed in the mid-1990s after it became apparent that there were many problems with tying development to road capacity, said Tom Pelham, secretary of Florida's Department of Community Affairs.
Among the problems Pelham cited: Traffic-study numbers can be manipulated. Also, policies allow developers to buy their way out by paying for partial transportation improvements.
There are many ways to measure whether roads are too crowded, and different agencies use different methods -- sometimes yielding conflicting results.
What it all means is that despite so many crowded roads, concurrency rarely puts a stop to growth, said Pelham, who was recently in Orlando for his agency's growth-management summit.
While at times project sizes might get reduced, Pelham said, "I think in practice, the players generally find a way to get approval" of their developments.
Proponents of the exception areas say they instead require cities to consider other ways of moving people around besides simply widening roads. Many exception areas are in places where the city is trying to encourage redevelopment, often downtowns.
Widening roads to allow more cars to travel comfortably often isn't the answer in those places, many say.
"The great cities of the world get to a point where the automobile is no longer the preferred method of transportation," said Charles Lee, director of advocacy for Audubon of Florida.
Sanford already has an exception area in its downtown along Lake Monroe. Now the city, along with Seminole County, is trying to create another one along U.S. Highway 17-92 south of downtown, an aging road where officials hope to attract vibrant new businesses.
Altamonte Springs is having public hearings on the exception area it will create for the city's central core. That includes the Uptown Altamonte development of high-rise apartments and condominiums, shops and offices.
Maitland also wants to establish an exception area for the portion of U.S. 17-92 that it wants to redevelop.
There has also been informal talk of exception areas in Tavares and Casselberry.
While many "smart-growth" proponents say it's advantageous to allow parts of cities to opt out of the road-capacity requirements, others say things have gone too far.
Have cities overreached?
Many governments have very small exception areas, but other planners have exempted huge portions of their cities.
In Tampa, where planners say more than 30 percent of the roads are operating at failing levels, one member of the local transportation-advisory board wants the exception area scaled back from its current size of more than 40,000 acres.
"That's a horrible thing," said Margaret Vizzi, a Tampa resident. "All of this development is occurring, and they don't have to pay a bit of attention to traffic."
Cities say they have encountered little resistance from residents or state officials when establishing exception areas. Peck could not cite an instance when the DCA, which oversees growth management, had blocked an attempt for one.
But officials said requirements for exception areas have become tougher since the Legislature enacted a growth-management overhaul in 2005.
Not just anything can get exempted. There are limits on amounts of vacant land and requirements for dense development.
And "you don't just forget about mobility," said Mike McDaniel, chief of comprehensive planning for DCA. Programs must be in place to encourage other modes of transportation, he said.
Putting onus on employers
In Sanford's first exception area along Lake Monroe, commercial developments with 50 or more employees will have to help pay for transit or create a program that details how employers will reduce employees' time on the road. That could include plans for on-site day care or incentives for carpooling.
Still, Sanford principal planner Antonia Gerli said it's uncertain how the city will make sure employers follow their plans. "Those are issues that probably need to be worked out still," she said.
And other goals have not been met. For example, the city was to encourage Lynx to start Sunday service and increase its frequency in the area by 2006, but the service has stayed the same, city officials said.
Many of the roads within Central Florida's exception areas aren't yet over capacity, but they can still be miserable to drive on during the wrong times -- namely, rush hour. And the roads are expected to get increasingly crowded as time goes on. Many more major roads will be over capacity, transportation officials say, unless there are radical changes in planning and more emphasis on alternate ways of getting around.
In Altamonte Springs, where State Road 436's capacity is considered close to a failing level, much of the development in its core commercial and business area doesn't have to meet concurrency standards because plans were approved in the 1980s, before current policies went into place. But having an exception area would likely make approval of land-use changes easier.
In the meantime, other cities are looking at variations on the theme.
In Kissimmee, officials are considering a similar type of district for downtown. Concurrency isn't ignored, but it has a more flexible definition.
City officials must fix transportation problems "with alternate modes of transportation," said Craig Holland, the city's development-services director. "Walking is the big one. Bicycle paths, buses." "
Source: Orlando Sentinel 06/25/2007
Traffic jams madden drivers throughout Central Florida because many roads handle more cars than they are supposed to, or close to it.
A policy called concurrency is supposed to stop development if the roads are too crowded. But that rarely happens.
Many policymakers argue that concurrency is a failure because it encourages sprawl. In theory, it forces development outward to where roads haven't been congested yet. That "consumes unspoiled land and requires that you have to build roads to get there," said Jon Peck, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Community Affairs, which regulates growth.
There are ways around it.
Some cities have chosen to establish "transportation concurrency exception areas." More than 30 communities across Florida have designated portions of land -- sometimes, huge ones -- as TCEAs.
Even though roads are congested, development can continue as long as planners encourage transportation alternatives such as buses and carpooling and plan for dense development.
Orlando planners say the city's exception area has allowed big downtown redevelopment projects that might not have otherwise existed because, realistically, there's no way to widen the streets.
"All of this high-rise development downtown probably would have had trouble," said Kevin Tyjeski, Orlando's chief planning manager.
The exception area takes up almost half the city limits, but Tyjeski said it makes sense because so much of the city has been densely developed.
TCEAs took hold in 1990s
The exception areas were designed in the mid-1990s after it became apparent that there were many problems with tying development to road capacity, said Tom Pelham, secretary of Florida's Department of Community Affairs.
Among the problems Pelham cited: Traffic-study numbers can be manipulated. Also, policies allow developers to buy their way out by paying for partial transportation improvements.
There are many ways to measure whether roads are too crowded, and different agencies use different methods -- sometimes yielding conflicting results.
What it all means is that despite so many crowded roads, concurrency rarely puts a stop to growth, said Pelham, who was recently in Orlando for his agency's growth-management summit.
While at times project sizes might get reduced, Pelham said, "I think in practice, the players generally find a way to get approval" of their developments.
Proponents of the exception areas say they instead require cities to consider other ways of moving people around besides simply widening roads. Many exception areas are in places where the city is trying to encourage redevelopment, often downtowns.
Widening roads to allow more cars to travel comfortably often isn't the answer in those places, many say.
"The great cities of the world get to a point where the automobile is no longer the preferred method of transportation," said Charles Lee, director of advocacy for Audubon of Florida.
Sanford already has an exception area in its downtown along Lake Monroe. Now the city, along with Seminole County, is trying to create another one along U.S. Highway 17-92 south of downtown, an aging road where officials hope to attract vibrant new businesses.
Altamonte Springs is having public hearings on the exception area it will create for the city's central core. That includes the Uptown Altamonte development of high-rise apartments and condominiums, shops and offices.
Maitland also wants to establish an exception area for the portion of U.S. 17-92 that it wants to redevelop.
There has also been informal talk of exception areas in Tavares and Casselberry.
While many "smart-growth" proponents say it's advantageous to allow parts of cities to opt out of the road-capacity requirements, others say things have gone too far.
Have cities overreached?
Many governments have very small exception areas, but other planners have exempted huge portions of their cities.
In Tampa, where planners say more than 30 percent of the roads are operating at failing levels, one member of the local transportation-advisory board wants the exception area scaled back from its current size of more than 40,000 acres.
"That's a horrible thing," said Margaret Vizzi, a Tampa resident. "All of this development is occurring, and they don't have to pay a bit of attention to traffic."
Cities say they have encountered little resistance from residents or state officials when establishing exception areas. Peck could not cite an instance when the DCA, which oversees growth management, had blocked an attempt for one.
But officials said requirements for exception areas have become tougher since the Legislature enacted a growth-management overhaul in 2005.
Not just anything can get exempted. There are limits on amounts of vacant land and requirements for dense development.
And "you don't just forget about mobility," said Mike McDaniel, chief of comprehensive planning for DCA. Programs must be in place to encourage other modes of transportation, he said.
Putting onus on employers
In Sanford's first exception area along Lake Monroe, commercial developments with 50 or more employees will have to help pay for transit or create a program that details how employers will reduce employees' time on the road. That could include plans for on-site day care or incentives for carpooling.
Still, Sanford principal planner Antonia Gerli said it's uncertain how the city will make sure employers follow their plans. "Those are issues that probably need to be worked out still," she said.
And other goals have not been met. For example, the city was to encourage Lynx to start Sunday service and increase its frequency in the area by 2006, but the service has stayed the same, city officials said.
Many of the roads within Central Florida's exception areas aren't yet over capacity, but they can still be miserable to drive on during the wrong times -- namely, rush hour. And the roads are expected to get increasingly crowded as time goes on. Many more major roads will be over capacity, transportation officials say, unless there are radical changes in planning and more emphasis on alternate ways of getting around.
In Altamonte Springs, where State Road 436's capacity is considered close to a failing level, much of the development in its core commercial and business area doesn't have to meet concurrency standards because plans were approved in the 1980s, before current policies went into place. But having an exception area would likely make approval of land-use changes easier.
In the meantime, other cities are looking at variations on the theme.
In Kissimmee, officials are considering a similar type of district for downtown. Concurrency isn't ignored, but it has a more flexible definition.
City officials must fix transportation problems "with alternate modes of transportation," said Craig Holland, the city's development-services director. "Walking is the big one. Bicycle paths, buses." "
Clinton urges Bush to talk to Iran
"Clinton, Richardson urge Bush administration to continue talking to Iran
Associated Press Newswires 06/27/2007
WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bill Richardson on Wednesday urged the Bush administration to continue a dialogue with Iran as the U.S. tries to thwart the country's pursuit of nuclear weapons.
In separate speeches, the candidates offered a broad indictment of President Bush's foreign policies, from the Iraq war to the use of unilateral force to relations with Iran and North Korea.
Clinton said the administration has given Iran "six years of the silent treatment."
"In this vacuum, Tehran continues its progress toward developing nuclear weapons and increasing its influence in the region," she told the Center for a New American Security. "After initial talks with Iran and Syria on Iraq, the administration says it isn't sure that we need any more discussions with either of them. I think we should keep talking."
Richardson, who served as U.N. ambassador for Clinton's husband, said that instead of lecturing Iran's leadership, the United States should talk with them without preconditions. And instead of using inflammatory names, such as "Axis of Evil," the U.S. and its allies should seek and find common ground, particularly with moderates unhappy with the current leadership.
"If we want Iran to improve its behavior, we would do well to stop threatening to attack them," he told the Center for National Policy. "We must remember that no nation has ever been forced to renounce nukes -- but many have been persuaded to do so with a combination of carrots and sticks."
Richardson, the New Mexico governor, said he would not seek immediate face-to-face negotiations with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hardliner elected in 2005, but with others around him.
The administration has rejected direct negotiations with Ahmadinejad and has instead pursued international economic sanctions to stop the country's nuclear weapons development.
Meanwhile, nearly all the Republicans vying to replace Bush said during a recent debate they would not rule out using nuclear weapons to halt the program. Vice President Dick Cheney has repeatedly said the administration is keeping all options on the table for dealing with Iran, even as efforts continue to resolve the dispute diplomatically.
The New York senator said U.S. priorities should be bringing troops home from Iraq, demanding that Iraqis take responsibility for their country or lose U.S. aid and intensive diplomacy to restore frayed relationships.
"We have a long road ahead to repair the damage that has been done these past six years," she said.
She said she would introduce legislation soon to deal with nuclear terrorism. She said the administration has abandoned nonproliferation efforts, cutting off dialogue with Iran and allowing North Korea to reprocess enough material to make nuclear bombs and test a nuclear weapon.
Clinton said she would increase funds for the global threat reduction initiative, ensure the removal of highly enriched uranium from research reactors around the world and create a senior adviser to the president for nuclear terrorism. "
Associated Press Newswires 06/27/2007
WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bill Richardson on Wednesday urged the Bush administration to continue a dialogue with Iran as the U.S. tries to thwart the country's pursuit of nuclear weapons.
In separate speeches, the candidates offered a broad indictment of President Bush's foreign policies, from the Iraq war to the use of unilateral force to relations with Iran and North Korea.
Clinton said the administration has given Iran "six years of the silent treatment."
"In this vacuum, Tehran continues its progress toward developing nuclear weapons and increasing its influence in the region," she told the Center for a New American Security. "After initial talks with Iran and Syria on Iraq, the administration says it isn't sure that we need any more discussions with either of them. I think we should keep talking."
Richardson, who served as U.N. ambassador for Clinton's husband, said that instead of lecturing Iran's leadership, the United States should talk with them without preconditions. And instead of using inflammatory names, such as "Axis of Evil," the U.S. and its allies should seek and find common ground, particularly with moderates unhappy with the current leadership.
"If we want Iran to improve its behavior, we would do well to stop threatening to attack them," he told the Center for National Policy. "We must remember that no nation has ever been forced to renounce nukes -- but many have been persuaded to do so with a combination of carrots and sticks."
Richardson, the New Mexico governor, said he would not seek immediate face-to-face negotiations with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hardliner elected in 2005, but with others around him.
The administration has rejected direct negotiations with Ahmadinejad and has instead pursued international economic sanctions to stop the country's nuclear weapons development.
Meanwhile, nearly all the Republicans vying to replace Bush said during a recent debate they would not rule out using nuclear weapons to halt the program. Vice President Dick Cheney has repeatedly said the administration is keeping all options on the table for dealing with Iran, even as efforts continue to resolve the dispute diplomatically.
The New York senator said U.S. priorities should be bringing troops home from Iraq, demanding that Iraqis take responsibility for their country or lose U.S. aid and intensive diplomacy to restore frayed relationships.
"We have a long road ahead to repair the damage that has been done these past six years," she said.
She said she would introduce legislation soon to deal with nuclear terrorism. She said the administration has abandoned nonproliferation efforts, cutting off dialogue with Iran and allowing North Korea to reprocess enough material to make nuclear bombs and test a nuclear weapon.
Clinton said she would increase funds for the global threat reduction initiative, ensure the removal of highly enriched uranium from research reactors around the world and create a senior adviser to the president for nuclear terrorism. "
Visiting the North East
Vacation is over, back to the work of Checks & Balances. “Loyal to the Struggle of Restoring balance and integrity in government.”
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Jennings loses court appeal
"By JEREMY WALLACE
Christine Jennings' push for a new congressional election suffered another major setback in court Monday, increasing her need for Congress to step in.The 1st District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee denied Jennings' latest effort to get access to voting machine computer source code that her attorneys deem critical to her legal challenge of Republican Vern Buchanan's 369-vote margin of victory in the 13th Congressional District election.Without the source code, Jennings' legal team said they would be "crippled" in trying to prove touch-screen voting machines malfunctioned in last November's elections, costing her the victory.
Hayden Dempsey, an attorney for Buchanan, said the ruling is "devastating" for Jennings, and in all likelihood ends her legal case in Florida.But Jennings, a Democrat, dismissed the significance of the latest ruling, instead saying she was already more focused in pursuing her challenge in Congress, which has the final say on whether there will be a new election.A House panel on
Thursday approved a plan to review the 2006 election. The Government Accountability Office, the independent investigative arm of Congress, said it would submit a report in September after analyzing prior state audits of electronic voting machines and related data to determine what, if any, additional tests should be conducted.
Jennings is disputing the election results because about 13 percent of the voters who went to the polls in Sarasota County did not have a vote tallied for them in the congressional contest.Monday's setback is not the first snag Jennings has encountered in the courts.In January, a lower court ruled against her initial attempt to get access to the computer source code, saying her arguments were nothing more than "speculation and conjecture."Jennings appealed, but grew frustrated waiting for the appeals court to issue a ruling. Jennings said the wait has been the most troubling aspect of her legal case.She said, given the fact that there are questions about people's votes, she expected the courts to move much quicker."What surprises me most is how many months it has been," Jennings said.It has been so long that, in May, Jennings asked the court to put the brakes on her court challenge while she instead focused on Congress.Despite the court ruling, Congress will continue with its inquiry into the dispute. U.S. Rep. Charles Gonzales, the Texas Democrat leading the investigation, has said his panel is working independent of the courts in Florida and needs to run its own probe.
Jennings has refused to say if she would run for Congress again in 2008, insisting she is holding out hope that Congress will rule in her favor and make her the congresswoman or set a special election."
Christine Jennings' push for a new congressional election suffered another major setback in court Monday, increasing her need for Congress to step in.The 1st District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee denied Jennings' latest effort to get access to voting machine computer source code that her attorneys deem critical to her legal challenge of Republican Vern Buchanan's 369-vote margin of victory in the 13th Congressional District election.Without the source code, Jennings' legal team said they would be "crippled" in trying to prove touch-screen voting machines malfunctioned in last November's elections, costing her the victory.
Hayden Dempsey, an attorney for Buchanan, said the ruling is "devastating" for Jennings, and in all likelihood ends her legal case in Florida.But Jennings, a Democrat, dismissed the significance of the latest ruling, instead saying she was already more focused in pursuing her challenge in Congress, which has the final say on whether there will be a new election.A House panel on
Thursday approved a plan to review the 2006 election. The Government Accountability Office, the independent investigative arm of Congress, said it would submit a report in September after analyzing prior state audits of electronic voting machines and related data to determine what, if any, additional tests should be conducted.
Jennings is disputing the election results because about 13 percent of the voters who went to the polls in Sarasota County did not have a vote tallied for them in the congressional contest.Monday's setback is not the first snag Jennings has encountered in the courts.In January, a lower court ruled against her initial attempt to get access to the computer source code, saying her arguments were nothing more than "speculation and conjecture."Jennings appealed, but grew frustrated waiting for the appeals court to issue a ruling. Jennings said the wait has been the most troubling aspect of her legal case.She said, given the fact that there are questions about people's votes, she expected the courts to move much quicker."What surprises me most is how many months it has been," Jennings said.It has been so long that, in May, Jennings asked the court to put the brakes on her court challenge while she instead focused on Congress.Despite the court ruling, Congress will continue with its inquiry into the dispute. U.S. Rep. Charles Gonzales, the Texas Democrat leading the investigation, has said his panel is working independent of the courts in Florida and needs to run its own probe.
Jennings has refused to say if she would run for Congress again in 2008, insisting she is holding out hope that Congress will rule in her favor and make her the congresswoman or set a special election."
Clinton issues warning to Iraq
"Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton on Tuesday warned Iraqis must decide if they want to stop killing one another, and pledged to bring US troops home.
Clinton had harsh words for the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, as she called on President George W. Bush to begin withdrawing US troops from the country immediately.
"The Iraqis have to decide whether they want to continue killing each other," Clinton told a forum organized by AFSCME, America's largest public employee and healthcare union in Washington.
"It is not just one group against another group, it is multiple groups," she said referring to raging sectarian violence in Iraq.
"When our young men and women are on the street in Baghdad they often don't know what is happening, they don't know who's side they are supposed to be on," said Clinton, in remarks tailored to rampant anti-war sentiment among grass roots Democrats.
"I think it is time that we start bringing our troops home."
Clinton has faced tough questions over her stance on the war after voting in 2002 to authorize Bush to wage the conflict, and has refused to apologize for her vote.
Last year, at the "Take Back America" conference of liberal activists which she is due to address again on Wednesday, Clinton was booed, after declining to endorse a date for withdrawing US troops from Iraq.
Last month, Clinton voted against Bush's new 100 billion dollar emergency war budget in the Senate, after the president forced Democrats to remove troop withdrawal timelines."
Clinton had harsh words for the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, as she called on President George W. Bush to begin withdrawing US troops from the country immediately.
"The Iraqis have to decide whether they want to continue killing each other," Clinton told a forum organized by AFSCME, America's largest public employee and healthcare union in Washington.
"It is not just one group against another group, it is multiple groups," she said referring to raging sectarian violence in Iraq.
"When our young men and women are on the street in Baghdad they often don't know what is happening, they don't know who's side they are supposed to be on," said Clinton, in remarks tailored to rampant anti-war sentiment among grass roots Democrats.
"I think it is time that we start bringing our troops home."
Clinton has faced tough questions over her stance on the war after voting in 2002 to authorize Bush to wage the conflict, and has refused to apologize for her vote.
Last year, at the "Take Back America" conference of liberal activists which she is due to address again on Wednesday, Clinton was booed, after declining to endorse a date for withdrawing US troops from Iraq.
Last month, Clinton voted against Bush's new 100 billion dollar emergency war budget in the Senate, after the president forced Democrats to remove troop withdrawal timelines."
'Signing statements' add presidential powers
"WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration sometimes fails to follow all provisions of laws after President Bush attaches "signing statements" meant to interpret or restrict the legislation, congressional examiners say.
Signing statements, in which the president appends bills he is signing into law with statements reserving the right to revise, interpret or disregard provisions on national security and constitutional grounds, have become a major sticking point in the power struggle between Congress and the White House.
Lawmakers who asked the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study said it was further proof that the Bush White House oversteps constitutional bounds in ignoring the will of Congress.
"Too often, the Bush administration does what it wants, no matter the law. It says what it wants, no matter the facts," Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd, D-West Virginia, said Monday. Byrd and House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Michigan, requested the report.
The White House, in issuing the statements, has argued that the president has a right to control executive branch employees and officers, that he has authority to withhold from Congress information sometimes considered privileged or that Congress should not interfere with his constitutional role as commander in chief.
The GAO report, which did not assess the merits of the president's arguments, said signing statements go back at least to President Andrew Jackson in the 1830s, while citing other congressional studies that such statements have become increasingly common since the Reagan administration.
Conyers made signing statements the topic of his committee's first oversight hearing after Democrats took over control of Congress in January.
The limited GAO study examined signing statements concerning 19 provisions in fiscal year 2006 spending bills. It found that in six of those cases the provisions were not executed as written.
In one case the Pentagon did not include separate budget justification documents explaining how the Iraq War funding was to be spent in its 2007 budget request. In another, the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not submit a proposal and spending plan for housing, as Congress directed.
Byrd and Conyers said Bush has issued 149 signing statements, 127 of which raised some objection. They said the statements often raise multiple objections, resulting in more than 700 challenges to distinct provisions of law.
The GAO said signing statements accompanied 11 of the 12 spending bills in 2006, singling out 160 specific provisions in those bills.
The issue gained attention last year after Bush -- after lengthy negotiations on renewal of the Patriot Act with language backed by Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, that banned the torture of detainees -- attached a signing statement in which he reserved the right to interpret that provision.
The White House defends the statements, saying presidents have the prerogative to address matters of national security and express reservations about the constitutionality of legislation.
"We expect to continue to use statements where appropriate, on a bill-by-bill basis," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said. "The opportunities in this Congress have been limited since we've mostly only received bills to name post offices and federal buildings."
The American Bar Association, at an annual meeting last year, approved a resolution condemning use of signing statements, saying presidents should not resort to diluting or changing laws passed by Congress rather than using their veto powers."
Signing statements, in which the president appends bills he is signing into law with statements reserving the right to revise, interpret or disregard provisions on national security and constitutional grounds, have become a major sticking point in the power struggle between Congress and the White House.
Lawmakers who asked the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study said it was further proof that the Bush White House oversteps constitutional bounds in ignoring the will of Congress.
"Too often, the Bush administration does what it wants, no matter the law. It says what it wants, no matter the facts," Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd, D-West Virginia, said Monday. Byrd and House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Michigan, requested the report.
The White House, in issuing the statements, has argued that the president has a right to control executive branch employees and officers, that he has authority to withhold from Congress information sometimes considered privileged or that Congress should not interfere with his constitutional role as commander in chief.
The GAO report, which did not assess the merits of the president's arguments, said signing statements go back at least to President Andrew Jackson in the 1830s, while citing other congressional studies that such statements have become increasingly common since the Reagan administration.
Conyers made signing statements the topic of his committee's first oversight hearing after Democrats took over control of Congress in January.
The limited GAO study examined signing statements concerning 19 provisions in fiscal year 2006 spending bills. It found that in six of those cases the provisions were not executed as written.
In one case the Pentagon did not include separate budget justification documents explaining how the Iraq War funding was to be spent in its 2007 budget request. In another, the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not submit a proposal and spending plan for housing, as Congress directed.
Byrd and Conyers said Bush has issued 149 signing statements, 127 of which raised some objection. They said the statements often raise multiple objections, resulting in more than 700 challenges to distinct provisions of law.
The GAO said signing statements accompanied 11 of the 12 spending bills in 2006, singling out 160 specific provisions in those bills.
The issue gained attention last year after Bush -- after lengthy negotiations on renewal of the Patriot Act with language backed by Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, that banned the torture of detainees -- attached a signing statement in which he reserved the right to interpret that provision.
The White House defends the statements, saying presidents have the prerogative to address matters of national security and express reservations about the constitutionality of legislation.
"We expect to continue to use statements where appropriate, on a bill-by-bill basis," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said. "The opportunities in this Congress have been limited since we've mostly only received bills to name post offices and federal buildings."
The American Bar Association, at an annual meeting last year, approved a resolution condemning use of signing statements, saying presidents should not resort to diluting or changing laws passed by Congress rather than using their veto powers."
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Another Official close to Gonzalez resigns
"By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer Fri Jun 15, 7:21 PM ET
WASHINGTON - A senior Justice Department official who helped carry out the dismissals of federal prosecutors said Friday he is resigning. Mike Elston, chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, is the fifth Justice official to leave after being linked to the dismissals of the prosecutors.
Elston was accused of threatening at least four of the eight fired U.S. attorneys to keep quiet about their ousters. In a statement Friday, the Justice Department said Elston was leaving voluntarily to take a job with an unnamed Washington-area law firm.
The firings have led to congressional investigations, an internal Justice Department inquiry and calls on Capitol Hill for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Reached Friday afternoon, Elston confirmed his plans to leave but declined further comment. His departure is effective at the end of next week and was widely anticipated since McNulty announced his own resignation last month.
In a statement, McNulty said Elston served the Justice Department "with distinction for nearly eight years."
"With his breadth of trial and appellate service, I have no doubt he will continue to enjoy an outstanding legal career," McNulty said.
House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers said the resignation raises a red flag for investigators.
"When yet another significant player resigns in the U.S. attorney scandal, it only deepens the mystery of who targeted U.S. attorneys for firing, why they did it, and what exactly is going on in the highest reaches of the Justice Department and who is filling the vacuum of leadership that has developed there," said Conyers, D-Mich.
As McNulty's top aide, Elston's duties included overseeing the government's 93 U.S. attorneys nationwide. Elston helped plan and carry out the firings of seven of the eight prosecutors who were dismissed in 2006 — firings which were orchestrated by two of Gonzales' top aides beginning shortly after the 2004 elections. Elston also called several of the U.S. attorneys afterward trying to quell the growing outcry.
At least four of the prosecutors Elston contacted said they felt threatened by his calls, which they interpreted as demands to stay quiet about why they were fired. Congress is investigating the firings, which Democrats believe were politically motivated.
Elston and his attorney, Bob Driscoll, said the phone calls were never meant to be threatening.
Statements released from the
House Judiciary Committee painted a different picture.
"I believe that Elston was offering me a quid pro quo agreement: my silence in exchange for the attorney general's," wrote Paul Charlton, the former U.S. attorney in Nevada.
John McKay, former top prosecutor in Seattle, said he perceived a threat from Elston during his call. And Carol Lam, who was U.S. attorney in San Diego, said that "during one phone call, Michael Elston erroneously accused me of 'leaking' my dismissal to the press, and criticized me for talking to other dismissed U.S. attorneys."
A fourth former U.S. attorney, Bud Cummins in Little Rock, Ark., had made a similar accusation in an e-mail released in March. At the time, Elston said he was "shocked and baffled" that his Feb. 20 conversation with Cummins could be interpreted as threatening.
"I do not understand how anything that I said to him in our last conversation in mid-February could be construed as a threat of any kind, and I certainly had no intention leaving him with that impression," Elston in a two-page letter to Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., who had questioned the call.
The Senate Judiciary Committee authorized a subpoena for Elston's testimony about his role in the firings but never issued it because he voluntarily met with congressional investigators to answer more than seven hours of questions behind closed doors.
Other aides who have resigned in the wake of the firings include former Gonzales chief of staff Kyle Sampson and White House liaison Monica M. Goodling. A fifth official, Mike Battle, who ran the Justice office that oversees the U.S. attorneys, left in March.
Elston has worked for the Justice Department since 1999, winning its highest award for attorneys in 2006 for his legal performance.
He started as a trial prosecutor in Illinois, and moved to the U.S. attorney's office in northern Virginia in 2002. There, Elston worked for McNulty, then the U.S. attorney whom he followed to Justice Department headquarters in late 2005."
WASHINGTON - A senior Justice Department official who helped carry out the dismissals of federal prosecutors said Friday he is resigning. Mike Elston, chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, is the fifth Justice official to leave after being linked to the dismissals of the prosecutors.
Elston was accused of threatening at least four of the eight fired U.S. attorneys to keep quiet about their ousters. In a statement Friday, the Justice Department said Elston was leaving voluntarily to take a job with an unnamed Washington-area law firm.
The firings have led to congressional investigations, an internal Justice Department inquiry and calls on Capitol Hill for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Reached Friday afternoon, Elston confirmed his plans to leave but declined further comment. His departure is effective at the end of next week and was widely anticipated since McNulty announced his own resignation last month.
In a statement, McNulty said Elston served the Justice Department "with distinction for nearly eight years."
"With his breadth of trial and appellate service, I have no doubt he will continue to enjoy an outstanding legal career," McNulty said.
House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers said the resignation raises a red flag for investigators.
"When yet another significant player resigns in the U.S. attorney scandal, it only deepens the mystery of who targeted U.S. attorneys for firing, why they did it, and what exactly is going on in the highest reaches of the Justice Department and who is filling the vacuum of leadership that has developed there," said Conyers, D-Mich.
As McNulty's top aide, Elston's duties included overseeing the government's 93 U.S. attorneys nationwide. Elston helped plan and carry out the firings of seven of the eight prosecutors who were dismissed in 2006 — firings which were orchestrated by two of Gonzales' top aides beginning shortly after the 2004 elections. Elston also called several of the U.S. attorneys afterward trying to quell the growing outcry.
At least four of the prosecutors Elston contacted said they felt threatened by his calls, which they interpreted as demands to stay quiet about why they were fired. Congress is investigating the firings, which Democrats believe were politically motivated.
Elston and his attorney, Bob Driscoll, said the phone calls were never meant to be threatening.
Statements released from the
House Judiciary Committee painted a different picture.
"I believe that Elston was offering me a quid pro quo agreement: my silence in exchange for the attorney general's," wrote Paul Charlton, the former U.S. attorney in Nevada.
John McKay, former top prosecutor in Seattle, said he perceived a threat from Elston during his call. And Carol Lam, who was U.S. attorney in San Diego, said that "during one phone call, Michael Elston erroneously accused me of 'leaking' my dismissal to the press, and criticized me for talking to other dismissed U.S. attorneys."
A fourth former U.S. attorney, Bud Cummins in Little Rock, Ark., had made a similar accusation in an e-mail released in March. At the time, Elston said he was "shocked and baffled" that his Feb. 20 conversation with Cummins could be interpreted as threatening.
"I do not understand how anything that I said to him in our last conversation in mid-February could be construed as a threat of any kind, and I certainly had no intention leaving him with that impression," Elston in a two-page letter to Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., who had questioned the call.
The Senate Judiciary Committee authorized a subpoena for Elston's testimony about his role in the firings but never issued it because he voluntarily met with congressional investigators to answer more than seven hours of questions behind closed doors.
Other aides who have resigned in the wake of the firings include former Gonzales chief of staff Kyle Sampson and White House liaison Monica M. Goodling. A fifth official, Mike Battle, who ran the Justice office that oversees the U.S. attorneys, left in March.
Elston has worked for the Justice Department since 1999, winning its highest award for attorneys in 2006 for his legal performance.
He started as a trial prosecutor in Illinois, and moved to the U.S. attorney's office in northern Virginia in 2002. There, Elston worked for McNulty, then the U.S. attorney whom he followed to Justice Department headquarters in late 2005."
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Florida Faces Vanishing Water Supply
"Drought has hit many parts of the country, including Florida, where the giant Lake Okeechobee became so dry and so low, dry grasses on the lake floor caught fire. But the weather isn't the only reason for the state's water woes, the author of a new book says.
"Florida's groundwater has been overallocated — not just in South Florida, but all over the state," says Cynthia Barnett, author of Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern United States. "In addition, we just haven't taken conservation as seriously as other parts of the country."
Much like Las Vegas in the early 1990s, Florida seems to be in denial about the need to conserve water, she tells Renee Montagne.
"Many homeowners associations in Florida not only require sod, but they have guys in golf carts driving around measuring the shade of green," Barnett says. And if you don't have the right shade, you get a nasty letter from the homeowners association and a fine."
Farmers are also big water consumers, using nearly half of Florida's public supply, Barnett says.
In some parts of the state, city wells have been closed because of saltwater intrusion — sea water creeps in when freshwater aquifers drop too low.
That problem isn't limited to Florida. Several cities along the East Coast are struggling with it, too.
"Water-rich states are beginning to really worry about water supply and water conflict," Barnett says. "Several of these conflicts are headed for the Supreme Court.""
Monday, June 11, 2007
DEMOCRATS COURT HISPANICS
"DEMOCRATS COURT VOTES OF HISPANICS; PARTY ACTIVISTS, POLITICIANS SAY TRENDS ARE CHANGING, CUTTING REPUBLICAN SUPPORT
Source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel 06/11/2007
No longer willing to write off Hispanics on the assumption that they're automatically Republican voters, Florida Democrats are increasingly courting them as a promising source of support.
"We're not going to cede one Hispanic vote," said U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, one of dozens of elected officials at a weekend Democratic Party conference at the Westin Diplomat Resort & Spa.
Invigorating the party's efforts to court Hispanic voters could yield a powerful advantage for Democrats, but Wasserman Schultz said Hispanic voters often get too little attention in South Florida campaigns.
"People automatically think Republican and they're totally wrong," she said. "In election after election in South Florida, Hispanics are the swing vote that makes the difference."
State Rep. Darren Soto, D-Orlando, agreed. "They will go `Viva Bush' one year and they will go viva someone else another year."
Soto was one of two first-term state legislators -- along with state Rep. Luis Garcia Jr., D-Miami Beach -- who energized a gathering of the party's Hispanic Caucus.
Last fall, Garcia won the previously Republican seat that includes the Little Havana section of Miami. Garcia, who was appointed a vice chairman of the state party over the weekend, is starting a Democratic Club in Little Havana.
Soto became the fourth Hispanic Democrat in the House by winning a special election this spring. But the party is still far behind the Republicans, who have a large contingent of Hispanic lawmakers from Miami-Dade County.
Still, Garcia, Soto and Wasserman Schultz said several factors put the Hispanic vote in play. Among them: Non-Cubans aren't as likely to have historical ties to the Republican Party as Cuban-Americans.
"Living in Weston, I see it just walking around the neighborhood. There are people from Colombia, Venezuela and Peru. They don't have the same preconditioning to vote Republican," said Weston resident Andrew Torres, president of the new Broward chapter of the state Democratic Party's Hispanic Caucus.
Garcia said Fidel Castro's grip on power has helped the Republicans, especially with older Cuban-Americans, "because he's the boogeyman." Democrats said younger Cuban-Americans, born in this country, don't have the same intensity of feelings toward Castro and don't have the same ties to the Republican Party as their parents.
Florida U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said once Castro is gone, "you will see Cuban-Americans shift to the Democratic Party."
Nelson said that's happening already, citing his own re-election last year, in which he won more than 40 percent of the vote in Hialeah precincts.
Torres said the increasing numbers of younger voters and people from countries other than Cuba make this a good time to capitalize on trends favoring Democrats.
"There's a fantastic opportunity to attract more Hispanics to the Democratic Party," he said. "We want to provide a vehicle where more Hispanics, especially younger Hispanics, are involved."
Soto warned that such factors wouldn't produce results on their own. Candidates must craft their campaigns carefully.
Overwhelmingly Catholic, Hispanic voters might be more conservative on social issues such as abortion and gay rights than many in the Democratic Party, Soto and Torres said.
Garcia and Soto said their successful campaigns showed that common campaign techniques need to be finessed.
For example, Soto said, many Hispanic people work two or three jobs and are less likely to have the time and energy to pay attention to traditional political advertising. Personal contact is vital.
Soto said it is important to make voting easy. Garcia credits his victory to an effective effort to get voters to use absentee ballots, a strategy long dominated by the Republicans.
And Soto said it is a good idea to reach out to voters with at least some use of Spanish, "even it it's a sentence here or there." That can greatly increase a voter's comfort level with a candidate. "A lot of people who only speak Spanish are still eligible to vote."
Millie Herrera, past president of the state Hispanic Democratic Caucus who has run for office in Miami-Dade County and served as a party official, said Democrats must do a better job than in the past.
"If the Democratic Party has not reached out to the Hispanic community, and the Republican Party has, they will go with the Republican Party or register non-partisan," she said. "
Source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel 06/11/2007
No longer willing to write off Hispanics on the assumption that they're automatically Republican voters, Florida Democrats are increasingly courting them as a promising source of support.
"We're not going to cede one Hispanic vote," said U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, one of dozens of elected officials at a weekend Democratic Party conference at the Westin Diplomat Resort & Spa.
Invigorating the party's efforts to court Hispanic voters could yield a powerful advantage for Democrats, but Wasserman Schultz said Hispanic voters often get too little attention in South Florida campaigns.
"People automatically think Republican and they're totally wrong," she said. "In election after election in South Florida, Hispanics are the swing vote that makes the difference."
State Rep. Darren Soto, D-Orlando, agreed. "They will go `Viva Bush' one year and they will go viva someone else another year."
Soto was one of two first-term state legislators -- along with state Rep. Luis Garcia Jr., D-Miami Beach -- who energized a gathering of the party's Hispanic Caucus.
Last fall, Garcia won the previously Republican seat that includes the Little Havana section of Miami. Garcia, who was appointed a vice chairman of the state party over the weekend, is starting a Democratic Club in Little Havana.
Soto became the fourth Hispanic Democrat in the House by winning a special election this spring. But the party is still far behind the Republicans, who have a large contingent of Hispanic lawmakers from Miami-Dade County.
Still, Garcia, Soto and Wasserman Schultz said several factors put the Hispanic vote in play. Among them: Non-Cubans aren't as likely to have historical ties to the Republican Party as Cuban-Americans.
"Living in Weston, I see it just walking around the neighborhood. There are people from Colombia, Venezuela and Peru. They don't have the same preconditioning to vote Republican," said Weston resident Andrew Torres, president of the new Broward chapter of the state Democratic Party's Hispanic Caucus.
Garcia said Fidel Castro's grip on power has helped the Republicans, especially with older Cuban-Americans, "because he's the boogeyman." Democrats said younger Cuban-Americans, born in this country, don't have the same intensity of feelings toward Castro and don't have the same ties to the Republican Party as their parents.
Florida U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said once Castro is gone, "you will see Cuban-Americans shift to the Democratic Party."
Nelson said that's happening already, citing his own re-election last year, in which he won more than 40 percent of the vote in Hialeah precincts.
Torres said the increasing numbers of younger voters and people from countries other than Cuba make this a good time to capitalize on trends favoring Democrats.
"There's a fantastic opportunity to attract more Hispanics to the Democratic Party," he said. "We want to provide a vehicle where more Hispanics, especially younger Hispanics, are involved."
Soto warned that such factors wouldn't produce results on their own. Candidates must craft their campaigns carefully.
Overwhelmingly Catholic, Hispanic voters might be more conservative on social issues such as abortion and gay rights than many in the Democratic Party, Soto and Torres said.
Garcia and Soto said their successful campaigns showed that common campaign techniques need to be finessed.
For example, Soto said, many Hispanic people work two or three jobs and are less likely to have the time and energy to pay attention to traditional political advertising. Personal contact is vital.
Soto said it is important to make voting easy. Garcia credits his victory to an effective effort to get voters to use absentee ballots, a strategy long dominated by the Republicans.
And Soto said it is a good idea to reach out to voters with at least some use of Spanish, "even it it's a sentence here or there." That can greatly increase a voter's comfort level with a candidate. "A lot of people who only speak Spanish are still eligible to vote."
Millie Herrera, past president of the state Hispanic Democratic Caucus who has run for office in Miami-Dade County and served as a party official, said Democrats must do a better job than in the past.
"If the Democratic Party has not reached out to the Hispanic community, and the Republican Party has, they will go with the Republican Party or register non-partisan," she said. "
Impeach Alberto Gonzales
"Source: Orlando Sentinel 06/11/2007
WASHINGTON -- By his own admission, he might have misled the public in describing his role in firing eight U.S. attorneys.
A top aide likely violated civil-service laws by injecting politics into hiring career prosecutors at the Justice Department.
And his bedside manner leaves something to be desired.
But Attorney General Alberto Gonzales nonetheless is expected to survive today when the Senate takes up a no-confidence vote on his performance.
Now, the questions are where a Democratic-led investigation of Gonzales' two-year tenure at the department goes from here and whether it is losing steam.
"Purely a symbolic vote," White House press secretary Tony Snow said on Fox News Sunday. "What you've got here [is] a Senate that's had a great deal of difficulty delivering on any of its promises."
The vote marks a critical juncture in a congressional probe that has raised questions about whether the mission of the Justice Department has been politicized under Gonzales.
The investigation began with the testimony of a group of U.S. attorneys fired last year -- and evidence suggesting the White House and Justice Department conspired to replace them to affect public-corruption and voting cases that would benefit Republicans.
Some Republicans called for Gonzales to resign, but he has retained the support of President Bush, his political mentor from Texas.
Gonzales has sought to put himself above the fray, appearing to go about the daily business of the department and law enforcement. He is to be in Miami today, giving a speech at a conference on nuclear terrorism, and later in Mobile, Ala., addressing a child-protection task force.
The Republican leadership appears to be falling in line behind Gonzales.
As concerned as some in the GOP are about the job that he has done at the department, they are approaching today's vote more as an opportunity to make a statement about the Democratic leadership. Fresh from the collapse of immigration-reform legislation, the nonbinding no-confidence resolution shows how Democrats are failing to lead on issues of importance to Americans, they say.
Even some Republicans who have called for Gonzales to resign, including Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, plan to vote against the measure.
"This vote is irrelevant," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said. "If I were them, I'd worry about the public's no-confidence vote in this Congress, which specializes in doing nothing and complaining about everything. The Senate should go back to work on serious business instead of playing these games."
Even a leader of the Democratic effort to oust Gonzales, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who a month ago said he thought there was a good chance the resolution would win the necessary 60 votes, was trying to lower expectations.
"If all senators who have actually lost confidence in Attorney General Gonzales voted their conscience, this vote would be unanimous," Schumer said. "However, the president will certainly exert pressure to support the attorney general, his longtime friend. We will soon see where people's loyalties lie." "
WASHINGTON -- By his own admission, he might have misled the public in describing his role in firing eight U.S. attorneys.
A top aide likely violated civil-service laws by injecting politics into hiring career prosecutors at the Justice Department.
And his bedside manner leaves something to be desired.
But Attorney General Alberto Gonzales nonetheless is expected to survive today when the Senate takes up a no-confidence vote on his performance.
Now, the questions are where a Democratic-led investigation of Gonzales' two-year tenure at the department goes from here and whether it is losing steam.
"Purely a symbolic vote," White House press secretary Tony Snow said on Fox News Sunday. "What you've got here [is] a Senate that's had a great deal of difficulty delivering on any of its promises."
The vote marks a critical juncture in a congressional probe that has raised questions about whether the mission of the Justice Department has been politicized under Gonzales.
The investigation began with the testimony of a group of U.S. attorneys fired last year -- and evidence suggesting the White House and Justice Department conspired to replace them to affect public-corruption and voting cases that would benefit Republicans.
Some Republicans called for Gonzales to resign, but he has retained the support of President Bush, his political mentor from Texas.
Gonzales has sought to put himself above the fray, appearing to go about the daily business of the department and law enforcement. He is to be in Miami today, giving a speech at a conference on nuclear terrorism, and later in Mobile, Ala., addressing a child-protection task force.
The Republican leadership appears to be falling in line behind Gonzales.
As concerned as some in the GOP are about the job that he has done at the department, they are approaching today's vote more as an opportunity to make a statement about the Democratic leadership. Fresh from the collapse of immigration-reform legislation, the nonbinding no-confidence resolution shows how Democrats are failing to lead on issues of importance to Americans, they say.
Even some Republicans who have called for Gonzales to resign, including Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, plan to vote against the measure.
"This vote is irrelevant," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said. "If I were them, I'd worry about the public's no-confidence vote in this Congress, which specializes in doing nothing and complaining about everything. The Senate should go back to work on serious business instead of playing these games."
Even a leader of the Democratic effort to oust Gonzales, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who a month ago said he thought there was a good chance the resolution would win the necessary 60 votes, was trying to lower expectations.
"If all senators who have actually lost confidence in Attorney General Gonzales voted their conscience, this vote would be unanimous," Schumer said. "However, the president will certainly exert pressure to support the attorney general, his longtime friend. We will soon see where people's loyalties lie." "
Humanity In Iraq
Far too often notions of peace, justice, humanity, and universal human rights are deemed radical ideas by war hawks. I discuss these issues as they relate to the War in Iraq because we must never forget the 2 primary justifications that sparked this war.
The American people and the World were told Saddam Hussein’s gassing of thousands of Kurds and the prevention of the development of weapons of mass destruction were the reasons behind this conflict.
In all practicality the above reasons are humanitarian, for the purpose of saving lives. However, this war has killed 100 times more innocent civilians and children than Saddam’s gassing of the Kurds. In addition this war has resulted in the death of Iraqi civilians to trump any WMD ever deployed.
Recent reports also discuss the matter of “insurgency”. “Chessani's defense team called Dinsmore as a witness to describe what was happening around Al-Hadithah in the months leading up to the killings. He said insurgents regularly used hospitals and mosques to launch attacks. Men pretending to be asleep in a house shot and killed a Marine when he entered. ''They would exploit any hesitation in order to gain an advantage,'' Dinsmore said. “
In my opinion let me explain to you what I see as an insurgent. Hypothetically picture the USA being invaded by a superpower as a result American patriots fight the invaders in the streets. Back in this superpowers homeland these patriots are labeled “insurgents”. This is precisely what has happened in Iraq. This definition of an “insurgent” is a crucial topic that will lead to an end of this War. Are these Iraqi citizens, civilians fighting for their land, political decedents, or members of Al Queda?
In its on this topic alone that I hold this position, the War in Iraq must be ended immediately.
Source: Source: San Jose Mercury News 06/08/2007
The American people and the World were told Saddam Hussein’s gassing of thousands of Kurds and the prevention of the development of weapons of mass destruction were the reasons behind this conflict.
In all practicality the above reasons are humanitarian, for the purpose of saving lives. However, this war has killed 100 times more innocent civilians and children than Saddam’s gassing of the Kurds. In addition this war has resulted in the death of Iraqi civilians to trump any WMD ever deployed.
Recent reports also discuss the matter of “insurgency”. “Chessani's defense team called Dinsmore as a witness to describe what was happening around Al-Hadithah in the months leading up to the killings. He said insurgents regularly used hospitals and mosques to launch attacks. Men pretending to be asleep in a house shot and killed a Marine when he entered. ''They would exploit any hesitation in order to gain an advantage,'' Dinsmore said. “
In my opinion let me explain to you what I see as an insurgent. Hypothetically picture the USA being invaded by a superpower as a result American patriots fight the invaders in the streets. Back in this superpowers homeland these patriots are labeled “insurgents”. This is precisely what has happened in Iraq. This definition of an “insurgent” is a crucial topic that will lead to an end of this War. Are these Iraqi citizens, civilians fighting for their land, political decedents, or members of Al Queda?
In its on this topic alone that I hold this position, the War in Iraq must be ended immediately.
Source: Source: San Jose Mercury News 06/08/2007
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Shooting in Sarasota
"Jacquelyn Ferguson knew she was going to be fired when she walked into work at the cardiologist's office Friday morning, deputies say.Whether that ever happened, no one knows.While the two spoke in private, Ferguson, 51, took out a gun and shot and killed her manager, 45-year-old Denise Keyworth.Then, less than three hours later, the woman described as "peaceful" and "against guns" by her neighbors shot herself.A Herald-Tribune editor found Ferguson at her home in Palm-Aire, lying in a lounge chair with a head wound, a black revolver in her lap and a pool of blood on the floor.The two women met last fall, when Ferguson started working for Dr. Jeffrey Sack.But the office environment was troubled. Sack was arrested on drug charges in October, and the Drug Enforcement Administration raided the office.A neighbor said Ferguson was depressed about work and taking medication. Ferguson told a co-worker she could not afford to lose her job.The murder-suicide began unfolding before 9 a.m. at Sack's office on Bee Ridge Road.When Ferguson walked in, the two other employees in the room left to give her privacy to speak with Keyworth. They, too, had heard that Ferguson would be fired.Moments later, they heard gunshots. They ran to a neighboring office."They heard bumping noises, multiple gunshots and one short scream," said Dave Jones, the manager of the adjacent Center for Angiography. "They were seeking refuge."They called the police. They called Dr. Sack.Fearing the shooter would come to his office next, Jones locked patients and nurses in rooms in his office.Outside, police crouched on cars and rooftops. They closed off heavily traveled Bee Ridge Road between Tuttle Avenue and Lockwood Ridge Road. The nearby Church of the Palms preschool on Bee Ridge went into lockdown.Working on the assumption that Ferguson would be in the back of the building, deputies asked everyone in Jones' office to huddle in a big group and shuffle out the front door."It was a little bit shaky," Jones said of the moment when they had to leave the locked office, unsure if the shooter was still next door. "We had to pass by the SWAT team with our arms in the air."Before the building was evacuated, there were about a dozen people inside. Emergency and law enforcement officials rushed Sack's office.Keyworth was dead. And Ferguson was gone.Killer described as quietDeputies from Manatee and Sarasota counties were stationed in Ferguson's neighborhood waiting for a warrant to search her home, and waiting for her return to the one-story gray house and pool.They did not realize she was already inside, dead on the lanai.Friends and neighbors said Ferguson was calm, with a penchant for exotic pet birds and holistic medicine."She was always ready to help out when you go on vacation or anything," said Jessie Laiken, who lived across the street.Ferguson was unmarried and did not have a boyfriend, friends said. She did not want a relationship."She really keeps to herself," said Shyla Roberts.Ferguson was from Maryland and had two sons living in the Washington, D.C., area, Roberts said.A few months after she started at Sack's office, Ferguson accepted an invitation to eat Christmas dinner at Keyworth's home in Sarasota.Family members of Keyworth gathered there Friday afternoon. They said they were not ready to talk to the media.Keyworth worked for Sack for a "number of years," according to court documents, but left in February of 2005.She started a business called Making Dollars & Sense Inc. in October 2005, and filed an annual report with the state for the business in April. The number for the business has been disconnected.She was rehired to work for Sack in May of 2006.Police say Sack illegally ordered a medicine used to treat drug dependency. Because the medicine can be abused, doctors need a special authorization from the DEA to order and dispense it.Sack lacked that authorization, according to case documents.He was arrested last year after a federal sting.Reached this morning at his Tampa office, Sack's attorney, John M. Fitzgibbons, said he expected the trial to clear Sack's record.Sack also has a previous conviction in federal court for prescription drug fraud, stemming from the 1996 purchase of a painkiller under a false identity. He was sentenced to three years' probation and fined $7,000.Wearing cut-off jeans and driving a Mercedes-Benz, Sack arrived at the scene just after 9 a.m. Friday and was escorted to the command center.Attempts to reach him Friday were unsuccessful."
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Blank Checks for Defense Spending
"By Robert Dreyfuss, Tomdispatch.com. Posted June 6, 2007.
Defense spending has nearly doubled since the mid-1990s, and Democrats willing to challenge the bloated Pentagon budget are essentially nonexistent.
War critics are rightly disappointed over the inability of congressional Democrats to mount an effective challenge to President Bush's Iraq adventure. What began as a frontal assault on the war, with tough talk about deadlines and timetables, has settled into something like a guerrilla-style campaign to chip away at war policy until the edifice crumbles.
Still, Democratic criticism of administration policy in Iraq looks muscle-bound when compared with the Party's readiness to go along with the President's massive military buildup, domestically and globally. Nothing underlines the tacit alliance between so-called foreign-policy realists and hard-line exponents of neoconservative-style empire-building more than the Washington consensus that the United States needs to expand the budget of the Defense Department without end, while increasing the size of the U.S. Armed Forces. In addition, spending on the 16 agencies and other organizations that make up the official U.S. "intelligence community" or IC -- including the CIA -- and on homeland security is going through the roof.
The numbers are astonishing and, except for a hardy band of progressives in the House of Representatives, Democrats willing to call for shrinking the bloated Pentagon or intelligence budgets are essentially nonexistent. Among presidential candidates, only Rep. Dennis Kucinich and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson even mention the possibility of cutting the defense budget. Indeed, presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are, at present, competing with each other in their calls for the expansion of the Armed Forces. Both are supporting manpower increases in the range of 80,000 to 100,000 troops, mostly for the Army and the Marines. (The current, Bush-backed authorization for fiscal year 2008 calls for the addition of 65,000 more Army recruits and 27,000 Marines by 2012.)
How astonishing are the budgetary numbers? Consider the trajectory of U.S. defense spending over the last nearly two decades. From the end of the Cold War into the mid-1990s, defense spending actually fell significantly. In constant 1996 dollars, the Pentagon's budget dropped from a peacetime high of $376 billion, at the end of President Ronald Reagan's military buildup in 1989, to a low of $265 billion in 1996. (That compares to post-World War II wartime highs of $437 billion in 1953, during the Korean War, and $388 billion in 1968, at the peak of the War in Vietnam.) After the Soviet empire peacefully disintegrated, the 1990s decline wasn't exactly the hoped-for "peace dividend," but it wasn't peanuts either.
However, since September 12th, 2001, defense spending has simply exploded. For 2008, the Bush administration is requesting a staggering $650 billion, compared to the already staggering $400 billion the Pentagon collected in 2001. Even subtracting the costs of the ongoing "Global War on Terrorism" -- which is what the White House likes to call its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- for FY 2008, the Pentagon will still spend $510 billion. In other words, even without the President's two wars, defense spending will have nearly doubled since the mid-1990s. Given that the United States has literally no significant enemy state to fight anywhere on the planet, this represents a remarkable, if perverse, achievement. As a famous Democratic politician once asked: Where is the outrage?
Neocons, war profiteers, and hardliners of all stripes still argue that the "enemy" we face is a nonexistent bugaboo called "Islamofascism." It's easy to imagine them laughing into their sleeves while they continue to claim that the way to battle low-tech, rag-tag bands of leftover Al Qaeda crazies is by spending billions of dollars on massively expensive, massively powerful, futuristic weapons systems.
As always, a significant part of the defense bill is eaten up by these big-ticket items. According to the reputable Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, there are at least 28 pricey weapons systems that, just by themselves, will rack up a whopping $44 billion in 2008. The projected cost of these 28 systems -- which include fighter jets, the B-2 bomber, the V-22 Osprey, various advanced naval vessels, cruise-missile systems, and the ultra-expensive aircraft carriers the Navy always demands -- will, in the end, be more than $1 trillion. And that's not even including the Star Wars missile-defense system, which at the moment soaks up about $11 billion a year.
By one count, U.S. defense spending in 2008 will amount to 29 times the combined military spending of all six so-called rogue states: Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. The United States accounts for almost half -- approximately 48% -- of the entire world's spending on what we like to call "defense." Again, according to the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, U.S. defense spending this year amounts to exactly twice the combined military spending of the next six biggest military powers: China, Russia, the U.K., France, Japan, and Germany. "
Defense spending has nearly doubled since the mid-1990s, and Democrats willing to challenge the bloated Pentagon budget are essentially nonexistent.
War critics are rightly disappointed over the inability of congressional Democrats to mount an effective challenge to President Bush's Iraq adventure. What began as a frontal assault on the war, with tough talk about deadlines and timetables, has settled into something like a guerrilla-style campaign to chip away at war policy until the edifice crumbles.
Still, Democratic criticism of administration policy in Iraq looks muscle-bound when compared with the Party's readiness to go along with the President's massive military buildup, domestically and globally. Nothing underlines the tacit alliance between so-called foreign-policy realists and hard-line exponents of neoconservative-style empire-building more than the Washington consensus that the United States needs to expand the budget of the Defense Department without end, while increasing the size of the U.S. Armed Forces. In addition, spending on the 16 agencies and other organizations that make up the official U.S. "intelligence community" or IC -- including the CIA -- and on homeland security is going through the roof.
The numbers are astonishing and, except for a hardy band of progressives in the House of Representatives, Democrats willing to call for shrinking the bloated Pentagon or intelligence budgets are essentially nonexistent. Among presidential candidates, only Rep. Dennis Kucinich and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson even mention the possibility of cutting the defense budget. Indeed, presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are, at present, competing with each other in their calls for the expansion of the Armed Forces. Both are supporting manpower increases in the range of 80,000 to 100,000 troops, mostly for the Army and the Marines. (The current, Bush-backed authorization for fiscal year 2008 calls for the addition of 65,000 more Army recruits and 27,000 Marines by 2012.)
How astonishing are the budgetary numbers? Consider the trajectory of U.S. defense spending over the last nearly two decades. From the end of the Cold War into the mid-1990s, defense spending actually fell significantly. In constant 1996 dollars, the Pentagon's budget dropped from a peacetime high of $376 billion, at the end of President Ronald Reagan's military buildup in 1989, to a low of $265 billion in 1996. (That compares to post-World War II wartime highs of $437 billion in 1953, during the Korean War, and $388 billion in 1968, at the peak of the War in Vietnam.) After the Soviet empire peacefully disintegrated, the 1990s decline wasn't exactly the hoped-for "peace dividend," but it wasn't peanuts either.
However, since September 12th, 2001, defense spending has simply exploded. For 2008, the Bush administration is requesting a staggering $650 billion, compared to the already staggering $400 billion the Pentagon collected in 2001. Even subtracting the costs of the ongoing "Global War on Terrorism" -- which is what the White House likes to call its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- for FY 2008, the Pentagon will still spend $510 billion. In other words, even without the President's two wars, defense spending will have nearly doubled since the mid-1990s. Given that the United States has literally no significant enemy state to fight anywhere on the planet, this represents a remarkable, if perverse, achievement. As a famous Democratic politician once asked: Where is the outrage?
Neocons, war profiteers, and hardliners of all stripes still argue that the "enemy" we face is a nonexistent bugaboo called "Islamofascism." It's easy to imagine them laughing into their sleeves while they continue to claim that the way to battle low-tech, rag-tag bands of leftover Al Qaeda crazies is by spending billions of dollars on massively expensive, massively powerful, futuristic weapons systems.
As always, a significant part of the defense bill is eaten up by these big-ticket items. According to the reputable Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, there are at least 28 pricey weapons systems that, just by themselves, will rack up a whopping $44 billion in 2008. The projected cost of these 28 systems -- which include fighter jets, the B-2 bomber, the V-22 Osprey, various advanced naval vessels, cruise-missile systems, and the ultra-expensive aircraft carriers the Navy always demands -- will, in the end, be more than $1 trillion. And that's not even including the Star Wars missile-defense system, which at the moment soaks up about $11 billion a year.
By one count, U.S. defense spending in 2008 will amount to 29 times the combined military spending of all six so-called rogue states: Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. The United States accounts for almost half -- approximately 48% -- of the entire world's spending on what we like to call "defense." Again, according to the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, U.S. defense spending this year amounts to exactly twice the combined military spending of the next six biggest military powers: China, Russia, the U.K., France, Japan, and Germany. "
The Federalist Society, the U.S. Attorneys Scandal
"Harpers.org by Scott Horton
The Federalist Society bills itself as “a group of conservatives and libertarians interested in the current state of the legal order.” It sponsors debates and public information functions at law schools around the country. I have participated in Federalist Society functions for more than a decade myself, and I always enjoy them. But there is another, darker side of the Federalist Society which doesn’t show up on its website, but it making increasing appearances on documents turnover in the current probe of the U.S. Attorneys scandal. It serves as a means by which “loyal Bushies” identify themselves to one another, prove their absolute ideological loyalty, and it operates as an express elevator to high government office. Recall, for instance, that in the list of qualifications that
Kyle Sampson prepared, one column was headed “Federalist Society?”
Now evidence has surfaced suggesting that the Federalist Society was deeply enmeshed in the plot to purge the Justice Department of those who were unwilling to fulfill Karl Rove’s political plans, and in identifying new candidates who would. McClatchy reports:
A leader of an influential conservative legal group recommended a replacement candidate for the U.S. attorney in San Diego just days after the sitting prosecutor’s name was secretly placed on a Justice Department firing list, according to a document released Wednesday. The recommendation by the executive vice president of the Federalist Society, Leonard Leo, came before anyone outside of a tight group in the White House and Justice Department knew about a nascent strategy that ultimately led to the firings of nine U.S. attorneys.
It could not be determined whether a short e-mail, sent on March 7, 2005, making the recommendation meant that Leo knew of the plan to fire Carol Lam or whether his message was unsolicited and coincidental. The subject line of Leo’s e-mail to Mary Beth Buchanan, then-director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, says, “USA San Diego,” indicating the top prosecutor job for the Southern District of California. Lam was on the job at the time and had no plans to step down.
What is most revealing here is both that Leo knew that Lam was being fired before she did, and that he was busy identifying replacements. And the candidate he suggested is telling:
The text of the note reads, “You guys need a good candidate?” Leo goes on to say he would “strongly recommend” the Air Force’s general counsel, Mary Walker. Walker led a Pentagon working group in 2003, which critics said helped provide the administration with a rationale to circumvent the international Geneva Conventions banning torture in the interrogations of terrorism suspects.
Mary Walker, who is close to a number of Religious Right groups, was a principal architect of legal efforts to justify torture and other war crimes. She also played a suspicious role, apparently attempting to suppress an independent investigation of misconduct by religious evangelical groups at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Walker is also widely believed to be involved in efforts to harass and intimidate Air Force JAGs she considered to be politically disloyal. She appears to have launched a vendetta against the Air Force’s Judge Advocate General, who had, together with his deputy, opposed her torture initiatives. She has been one of the most widely disliked figures in the Rumsfeld Pentagon.
On its website, the Federalist Society claims that it was “founded on the principles that the state exists to preserve freedom [and] that the separation of governmental powers is central to our Constitution.” It would apparently be incorrect to suppose that the “separation of powers” they have in mind here would in any way limit political control over the prosecutorial functions. "
The Federalist Society bills itself as “a group of conservatives and libertarians interested in the current state of the legal order.” It sponsors debates and public information functions at law schools around the country. I have participated in Federalist Society functions for more than a decade myself, and I always enjoy them. But there is another, darker side of the Federalist Society which doesn’t show up on its website, but it making increasing appearances on documents turnover in the current probe of the U.S. Attorneys scandal. It serves as a means by which “loyal Bushies” identify themselves to one another, prove their absolute ideological loyalty, and it operates as an express elevator to high government office. Recall, for instance, that in the list of qualifications that
Kyle Sampson prepared, one column was headed “Federalist Society?”
Now evidence has surfaced suggesting that the Federalist Society was deeply enmeshed in the plot to purge the Justice Department of those who were unwilling to fulfill Karl Rove’s political plans, and in identifying new candidates who would. McClatchy reports:
A leader of an influential conservative legal group recommended a replacement candidate for the U.S. attorney in San Diego just days after the sitting prosecutor’s name was secretly placed on a Justice Department firing list, according to a document released Wednesday. The recommendation by the executive vice president of the Federalist Society, Leonard Leo, came before anyone outside of a tight group in the White House and Justice Department knew about a nascent strategy that ultimately led to the firings of nine U.S. attorneys.
It could not be determined whether a short e-mail, sent on March 7, 2005, making the recommendation meant that Leo knew of the plan to fire Carol Lam or whether his message was unsolicited and coincidental. The subject line of Leo’s e-mail to Mary Beth Buchanan, then-director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, says, “USA San Diego,” indicating the top prosecutor job for the Southern District of California. Lam was on the job at the time and had no plans to step down.
What is most revealing here is both that Leo knew that Lam was being fired before she did, and that he was busy identifying replacements. And the candidate he suggested is telling:
The text of the note reads, “You guys need a good candidate?” Leo goes on to say he would “strongly recommend” the Air Force’s general counsel, Mary Walker. Walker led a Pentagon working group in 2003, which critics said helped provide the administration with a rationale to circumvent the international Geneva Conventions banning torture in the interrogations of terrorism suspects.
Mary Walker, who is close to a number of Religious Right groups, was a principal architect of legal efforts to justify torture and other war crimes. She also played a suspicious role, apparently attempting to suppress an independent investigation of misconduct by religious evangelical groups at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Walker is also widely believed to be involved in efforts to harass and intimidate Air Force JAGs she considered to be politically disloyal. She appears to have launched a vendetta against the Air Force’s Judge Advocate General, who had, together with his deputy, opposed her torture initiatives. She has been one of the most widely disliked figures in the Rumsfeld Pentagon.
On its website, the Federalist Society claims that it was “founded on the principles that the state exists to preserve freedom [and] that the separation of governmental powers is central to our Constitution.” It would apparently be incorrect to suppose that the “separation of powers” they have in mind here would in any way limit political control over the prosecutorial functions. "
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Opposition to NASA Chief Michael Griffin
I completely dispute the opinion of NASA Chief Michael Griffin on global warming. Why do I u ask? The fact of the matter is man has never been as industrialized as we are today, spewing pollutants into the environment. Manmade pollutants are not a naturally occurring phenomenon. Furthermore, the Chief said it is “arrogant for people now to determine the current climate is optimal”. Would you agree with me in that this is an absurd statement primarily because human beings, animals, and plants are not biologically evolving alongside the rate of the warming of the Earth.
"NASA administrator Michael Griffin defends the space agency's programs, including plans for a permanent moon base and manned missions to Mars. He also says that while NASA studies climate change, the agency has no authorization to "take actions to affect climate change in either one way or another."
The following are excerpts from Griffin's conversation with Steve Inskeep, edited for clarity:
It has been mentioned that NASA is not spending as much money as it could to study climate change — global warming — from space. Are you concerned about global warming?
I'm aware that global warming exists. I understand that the bulk of scientific evidence accumulated supports the claim that we've had about a one degree centigrade rise in temperature over the last century to within an accuracy of 20 percent. I'm also aware of recent findings that appear to have nailed down — pretty well nailed down the conclusion that much of that is manmade. Whether that is a longterm concern or not, I can't say.
Do you have any doubt that this is a problem that mankind has to wrestle with?
I have no doubt that … a trend of global warming exists. I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with. To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change. First of all, I don't think it's within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown. And second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings — where and when — are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take.
Is that thinking that informs you as you put together the budget? That something is happening, that it's worth studying, but you're not sure that you want to be battling it as an army might battle an enemy?
Nowhere in NASA's authorization, which of course governs what we do, is there anything at all telling us that we should take actions to affect climate change in either one way or another. We study global climate change, that is in our authorization, we think we do it rather well. I'm proud of that, but NASA is not an agency chartered to, quote, battle climate change."
"NASA administrator Michael Griffin defends the space agency's programs, including plans for a permanent moon base and manned missions to Mars. He also says that while NASA studies climate change, the agency has no authorization to "take actions to affect climate change in either one way or another."
The following are excerpts from Griffin's conversation with Steve Inskeep, edited for clarity:
It has been mentioned that NASA is not spending as much money as it could to study climate change — global warming — from space. Are you concerned about global warming?
I'm aware that global warming exists. I understand that the bulk of scientific evidence accumulated supports the claim that we've had about a one degree centigrade rise in temperature over the last century to within an accuracy of 20 percent. I'm also aware of recent findings that appear to have nailed down — pretty well nailed down the conclusion that much of that is manmade. Whether that is a longterm concern or not, I can't say.
Do you have any doubt that this is a problem that mankind has to wrestle with?
I have no doubt that … a trend of global warming exists. I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with. To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change. First of all, I don't think it's within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown. And second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings — where and when — are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take.
Is that thinking that informs you as you put together the budget? That something is happening, that it's worth studying, but you're not sure that you want to be battling it as an army might battle an enemy?
Nowhere in NASA's authorization, which of course governs what we do, is there anything at all telling us that we should take actions to affect climate change in either one way or another. We study global climate change, that is in our authorization, we think we do it rather well. I'm proud of that, but NASA is not an agency chartered to, quote, battle climate change."
Seeking Perspective on Iraq Death Toll
By Ted Koppel
“There is a reason for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq that has more to do with American interests: stability in the Persian Gulf, the world's single largest producer and exporter of oil and natural gas.”
"It's been a brutal month for American soldiers in Iraq; but it would be a mistake to think that it's the number of deaths alone that is creating the sense of national urgency to get out. Given the right circumstances, Americans are quite prepared to tolerate far higher casualties. Roughly 43,000 people die on our roads and highways every year.
Considerable effort is expended to bring that number down: Our vehicles are increasingly built to withstand crashes. We seem to have made real progress in persuading drivers to wear seatbelts and not to consume alcoholic beverages when they're about to get behind the wheel. Law enforcement does what it can to reduce speeding. Having said that, the number of driving fatalities every year remains stubbornly constant.
Apparently, 43,000 deaths a year is a price we are prepared to pay for the benefits that motorcycles, cars, trucks and buses provide. Those benefits are such, that no politician in recent memory has seriously suggested getting rid of all motor vehicles. It simply wouldn't happen. Our economy would come to a grinding halt. The impact on the national interest would be devastating.
In another week or so, we will have lost 3,500 U.S. troops in Iraq. That, of course, is over a four-year period.
So, the level of outrage and the growing opposition to the Iraq war has to be connected to something other than simply the number of those killed. After all, we lose that many people in traffic accidents every month, with barely a murmur of protest.
Where the Bush administration has failed, tragically and repeatedly, is in explaining to the American public why U.S. forces were sent into Iraq in the first place, and why they must remain there now.
Certainly, the United States has a moral obligation to deal with the chaos and anarchy that were, at least partially, unleashed by the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But that falls into the category of something we're doing for them. The president cannot and should not expect Americans to give their open-ended support to a nation that seems overwhelmingly to regard our troops as "invaders and occupiers."
What, then? There is a reason for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq that has more to do with American interests: stability in the Persian Gulf, the world's single largest producer and exporter of oil and natural gas.
Do we know for a fact that, without U.S. troops in Iraq, that country's chaos would bleed into Saudi Arabia and Kuwait; Egypt, Syria and Jordan? No. But chances are better than even that it would — and you can throw Iran into the mix.
That is not an easy political argument to make: Blood for oil has never been a popular slogan in America. But try to separate us from our motor vehicles and you'll get a sense of where our national interests lie. And if you try to keep those vehicles running without Persian Gulf oil, you'll know that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is nowhere in our immediate future."
“There is a reason for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq that has more to do with American interests: stability in the Persian Gulf, the world's single largest producer and exporter of oil and natural gas.”
"It's been a brutal month for American soldiers in Iraq; but it would be a mistake to think that it's the number of deaths alone that is creating the sense of national urgency to get out. Given the right circumstances, Americans are quite prepared to tolerate far higher casualties. Roughly 43,000 people die on our roads and highways every year.
Considerable effort is expended to bring that number down: Our vehicles are increasingly built to withstand crashes. We seem to have made real progress in persuading drivers to wear seatbelts and not to consume alcoholic beverages when they're about to get behind the wheel. Law enforcement does what it can to reduce speeding. Having said that, the number of driving fatalities every year remains stubbornly constant.
Apparently, 43,000 deaths a year is a price we are prepared to pay for the benefits that motorcycles, cars, trucks and buses provide. Those benefits are such, that no politician in recent memory has seriously suggested getting rid of all motor vehicles. It simply wouldn't happen. Our economy would come to a grinding halt. The impact on the national interest would be devastating.
In another week or so, we will have lost 3,500 U.S. troops in Iraq. That, of course, is over a four-year period.
So, the level of outrage and the growing opposition to the Iraq war has to be connected to something other than simply the number of those killed. After all, we lose that many people in traffic accidents every month, with barely a murmur of protest.
Where the Bush administration has failed, tragically and repeatedly, is in explaining to the American public why U.S. forces were sent into Iraq in the first place, and why they must remain there now.
Certainly, the United States has a moral obligation to deal with the chaos and anarchy that were, at least partially, unleashed by the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But that falls into the category of something we're doing for them. The president cannot and should not expect Americans to give their open-ended support to a nation that seems overwhelmingly to regard our troops as "invaders and occupiers."
What, then? There is a reason for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq that has more to do with American interests: stability in the Persian Gulf, the world's single largest producer and exporter of oil and natural gas.
Do we know for a fact that, without U.S. troops in Iraq, that country's chaos would bleed into Saudi Arabia and Kuwait; Egypt, Syria and Jordan? No. But chances are better than even that it would — and you can throw Iran into the mix.
That is not an easy political argument to make: Blood for oil has never been a popular slogan in America. But try to separate us from our motor vehicles and you'll get a sense of where our national interests lie. And if you try to keep those vehicles running without Persian Gulf oil, you'll know that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is nowhere in our immediate future."
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
FL U.S. Attorney post has few takers
"Source: Orlando Sentinel 05/30/2007
Wanted: Veteran attorney to oversee important cases in 35 Florida counties. Job expected to last 18 months or so. Salary: $145,400.
Sounds enticing, but so far there have been almost no takers.
In the past, lawyers clamored to be U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Florida -- one of the most powerful federal-prosecutor jobs in the country.
Stretching from Fort Myers to Orlando and Jacksonville, the office has prosecuted some of the nation's biggest criminal cases, from Colombian drug lord Carlos Lehder to real-estate infomercial personality William McCorkle and Soviet spy George Trofimoff.
But after U.S. Attorney Paul Perez announced March 13 that he was stepping down for a lucrative private-sector job, only one person applied for the post. So earlier this month, the job was re-advertised with an application deadline of June 15.
"It's astonishing," said Michael Seigel, the former No. 2 man in the region's U.S. Attorney's Office from 1995 to 1999, who twice was considered for the top job. "The typical number is 15 people.
"Being U.S. attorney at the end of the Bush administration -- most people would not see that as being a plus on your resume."
Current and former prosecutors say there are several reasons complicating decisions for prospective applicants.
With 18 months before the next presidential election, a change in administrations -- especially if a Democrat is elected -- would likely guarantee the U.S. attorney would be replaced. The jobs are filled by political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president.
There also would be a significant risk to any civil lawyer selected for the job who would have to leave his or her practice with little time to earn a reputation in the new role, attorneys say. Any career prosecutor who got the job could risk a smaller pension if not allowed to return to an old job when the new administration takes over.
"Everyone can sense the political winds are changing in this country, and there's a possibility a Democrat could win [the White House]," said Rick Jancha, an Orlando defense lawyer and Republican who retired in January after 21 years as a federal prosecutor. "There would be a real likelihood [the new U.S. attorney] would lose their job. So if you're a career prosecutor, why screw up your retirement for 18 months as boss?"
And once the U.S. attorney resigns or is replaced, he or she would be barred by federal law for two years from handling any criminal or civil cases investigated by the prosecutor's office.
Finally, there is the controversy and drama engulfing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year, possibly for political reasons. His office and the White House are currently under scrutiny by Congress.
Seigel, a Democrat who is a University of Florida law professor, thinks the turmoil inside the Justice Department in Washington is a key factor.
"It's got to be a reflection of the low morale and the attorney general's awful performance in defending the actions the department took in firing eight U.S. attorneys. I think the politicization of the department -- a lot of people are not interested in getting in the middle of that."
Perez, 52, now a corporate lawyer in Jacksonville, said the political controversy in Washington and congressional hearings have little to do with operating the U.S. Attorney's Office in Central Florida.
"
I think that's an inside-the-beltway issue," Perez said. "That doesn't affect what's going on in the field. That shouldn't keep qualified people from applying for U.S. attorney.
"This is major league, the big show," Perez said of the district. "You're basically a mini-Department of Justice."
The job also has been a steppingstone for lawyers to become federal judges and partners in major law firms. Perez said working with 200 employees, including 94 attorneys, was the best post he has ever had.
"Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who was U.S. attorney for New Jersey, told me earlier this year it was the best job he ever had," Perez said. "Michael Chertoff, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said it was the best job he had."
Orlando business lawyer Marcos Marchena, chairman of the Middle District Conference committee that will screen candidates, said it is expected to submit at least three names to Florida's Republican U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez for review with Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson. The senators will submit a candidate's name to the White House for consideration, and the nominee will be sent to the Senate for confirmation.
Screening committee members decided to postpone the May 3 deadline because they received only one application, Marchena said. He noted that only a half-dozen lawyers applied for a similar vacancy in Miami two years ago.
Since the application process was reopened, Marchena said, he has received inquiries from interested parties.
He admits political issues in Washington might complicate the process, but he is confident qualified candidates to oversee criminal and civil cases locally for the federal government will be found. Marchena also said some U.S. attorneys have been retained by successor administrations.
"It's an important position and crucial position for our society," Marchena said.
Perez said he urged the department to name his former No. 2, Jim Klindt, as the acting U.S. attorney because of the short amount of time before the election.
"When there's 18 months left," Perez said, "maybe more attention should be paid to continuity and less disruption caused by a new person coming in." "
Wanted: Veteran attorney to oversee important cases in 35 Florida counties. Job expected to last 18 months or so. Salary: $145,400.
Sounds enticing, but so far there have been almost no takers.
In the past, lawyers clamored to be U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Florida -- one of the most powerful federal-prosecutor jobs in the country.
Stretching from Fort Myers to Orlando and Jacksonville, the office has prosecuted some of the nation's biggest criminal cases, from Colombian drug lord Carlos Lehder to real-estate infomercial personality William McCorkle and Soviet spy George Trofimoff.
But after U.S. Attorney Paul Perez announced March 13 that he was stepping down for a lucrative private-sector job, only one person applied for the post. So earlier this month, the job was re-advertised with an application deadline of June 15.
"It's astonishing," said Michael Seigel, the former No. 2 man in the region's U.S. Attorney's Office from 1995 to 1999, who twice was considered for the top job. "The typical number is 15 people.
"Being U.S. attorney at the end of the Bush administration -- most people would not see that as being a plus on your resume."
Current and former prosecutors say there are several reasons complicating decisions for prospective applicants.
With 18 months before the next presidential election, a change in administrations -- especially if a Democrat is elected -- would likely guarantee the U.S. attorney would be replaced. The jobs are filled by political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president.
There also would be a significant risk to any civil lawyer selected for the job who would have to leave his or her practice with little time to earn a reputation in the new role, attorneys say. Any career prosecutor who got the job could risk a smaller pension if not allowed to return to an old job when the new administration takes over.
"Everyone can sense the political winds are changing in this country, and there's a possibility a Democrat could win [the White House]," said Rick Jancha, an Orlando defense lawyer and Republican who retired in January after 21 years as a federal prosecutor. "There would be a real likelihood [the new U.S. attorney] would lose their job. So if you're a career prosecutor, why screw up your retirement for 18 months as boss?"
And once the U.S. attorney resigns or is replaced, he or she would be barred by federal law for two years from handling any criminal or civil cases investigated by the prosecutor's office.
Finally, there is the controversy and drama engulfing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year, possibly for political reasons. His office and the White House are currently under scrutiny by Congress.
Seigel, a Democrat who is a University of Florida law professor, thinks the turmoil inside the Justice Department in Washington is a key factor.
"It's got to be a reflection of the low morale and the attorney general's awful performance in defending the actions the department took in firing eight U.S. attorneys. I think the politicization of the department -- a lot of people are not interested in getting in the middle of that."
Perez, 52, now a corporate lawyer in Jacksonville, said the political controversy in Washington and congressional hearings have little to do with operating the U.S. Attorney's Office in Central Florida.
"
I think that's an inside-the-beltway issue," Perez said. "That doesn't affect what's going on in the field. That shouldn't keep qualified people from applying for U.S. attorney.
"This is major league, the big show," Perez said of the district. "You're basically a mini-Department of Justice."
The job also has been a steppingstone for lawyers to become federal judges and partners in major law firms. Perez said working with 200 employees, including 94 attorneys, was the best post he has ever had.
"Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who was U.S. attorney for New Jersey, told me earlier this year it was the best job he ever had," Perez said. "Michael Chertoff, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said it was the best job he had."
Orlando business lawyer Marcos Marchena, chairman of the Middle District Conference committee that will screen candidates, said it is expected to submit at least three names to Florida's Republican U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez for review with Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson. The senators will submit a candidate's name to the White House for consideration, and the nominee will be sent to the Senate for confirmation.
Screening committee members decided to postpone the May 3 deadline because they received only one application, Marchena said. He noted that only a half-dozen lawyers applied for a similar vacancy in Miami two years ago.
Since the application process was reopened, Marchena said, he has received inquiries from interested parties.
He admits political issues in Washington might complicate the process, but he is confident qualified candidates to oversee criminal and civil cases locally for the federal government will be found. Marchena also said some U.S. attorneys have been retained by successor administrations.
"It's an important position and crucial position for our society," Marchena said.
Perez said he urged the department to name his former No. 2, Jim Klindt, as the acting U.S. attorney because of the short amount of time before the election.
"When there's 18 months left," Perez said, "maybe more attention should be paid to continuity and less disruption caused by a new person coming in." "
Predatory Lending
Have you been misled, been lied too or giving false information when applying for a loan? If so, I advise you to report this and sue the crooks. Too many companies have become irresponsible in their business practices. There is a place for honesty, truth, and integrity in business. Please feel free to post information about crooked companies on this web site.
"Ameriquest Faces Lawsuit by Borrowers
by Chris Arnold
May 30, 2007 · Ameriquest was a high-flying sub-prime lender during the housing boom, and was accused of predatory lending by state prosecutors. The company now faces a class-action lawsuit from borrowers.
Chris Arnold talks to people who lost their homes after getting Ameriquest loans and to former employees who describe the hyper-aggressive sales practices.
As the nationwide real-estate boom of recent years goes bust, economists and regulators are questioning the role that mortgage lenders played in helping to create an overheated housing environment. Here, an overview of what happened:
A Rush of New Buyers
In the early 2000s, the economy was healthy, interest rates were low and consumers felt a bit flush – all of which helped push real-estate values up across the country. With values escalating, lenders felt more confident about making mortgages to customers whose poor credit histories had prevented them from buying homes in the past. (When values are rising, borrowers are less likely to default, because they can take money out of their homes if they run into trouble.)
That put more potential homebuyers in the market, helping to raise home-ownership rates to a record 69 percent in 2004 – which pushed housing prices up more. Skyrocketing prices (double-digit growth year over year was common in some areas) lured real-estate speculators, creating even more demand — and driving the cycle further.
Risky Loans Proliferated
To attract this growing pool of borrowers, lenders repurposed "creative financing" products that had previously been marketed to high-income borrowers seeking flexibility with their money. Among the most popular were variations on the adjustable-rate mortgage, or ARM.
ARMs are loans whose interest rates adjust up or down periodically. The initial rate is typically fixed for a period of two or three years. The benefit is that the starter rates are lower for ARMs than for traditional, fixed-rate mortgages. That means lower monthly payments, making homeownership more affordable and allowing borrowers to qualify for a bigger loan.
Some of the creative ARM products that flourished of late included interest-only and payment-option loans. With the former, a borrower only pays the interest on the loan — not the principal balance — during the introductory period. With payment-option ARMs, borrowers get to choose how much they pay each month: enough to cover the interest plus the principal, the interest only... or less than the interest. In that last scenario, the unpaid interest is tacked on to the principal, leaving borrowers owing more than the amount of the original loan.
How prevalent were these loans? Nearly 23 percent of all mortgages taken out in 2005 were interest-only ARMs, and more than 8 percent were payment-option ARMs, according to First American LoanPerformance. In certain once-sizzling markets, the numbers were much higher: For example, 34 percent of all new mortgages in California in 2005 were interest-only.
These products made sense to borrowers who thought they'd live in their homes for a few years, then sell at a profit or refinance. But now that housing sales have stalled and prices are softening, borrowers can't do either very easily.
And many borrowers are facing painful payment hikes: According to a First American CoreLogic study, one-third of ARMs taken out between 2004 and 2006 began with "teaser" rates below 4 percent. Payments on these loans will double on average – if they haven't already done so, says study author Dr. Christopher Cagan.
Growth in Subprime Lending
And then there were the loans to borrowers with poor credit. Subprime loans expanded to 20 percent of the mortgage market in 2006, from 9 percent a decade earlier. These loans carry higher interest rates to compensate for the risk posed by borrowers. They can be traditional fixed-rate loans, but most are ARMs, according to Susan Wachter of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.
Recent subprime loans were rife with risky terms — interest-only payment options, penalties for paying off the loan early (which makes it costly to refinance into a better loan), and low documentation requirements, meaning borrowers needed little paperwork to verify that they could, in fact, afford the loans. (These so-called "liar loans" accounted for about 58 percent of all loans in 2006, according to First American LoanPerformance).
Kathleen Keest of the Center for Responsible Lending says the pairing of these new loan types and new pool of borrowers was dangerous.
"They took the riskiest of products and sold them to the weakest borrowers to compound risk," Keest says.
Unethical Practices
In the old days, most homeowners obtained mortgages from their local bank or credit union, which adhered to strict lending rules. Nowadays, the lion's share of homebuyers' business (70 percent) goes to independent mortgage brokers — some of whom get bonuses for steering borrowers to higher-interest loans.
Experts say many recent borrowers were put into ARMs that are likely to cost far more over the life of the loan than if they'd chosen a fixed-rate option. Often, consumers could have locked in fixed-rate loans at low interest rates, but lenders downplayed the advantages of these loans.
Experts also cite numerous cases where borrowers say they didn't understand the loan structure — and the escalating payments; in many cases, they couldn't really afford them. Jennie Haliburton, a 77-year-old widow in Philadelphia, told NPR she refinanced into a subprime ARM that now costs her $300 more than the $800 she was originally told she'd pay. Her loan resets in May 2008. If the current interest rate holds, the monthly payments will grow to $1,218; depending on rates, they could eventually reach almost $1,700 — 95 percent of her Social Security income.
Loose Oversight
New loan products allowed more Americans to own their own homes than ever before. But regulators exercised little oversight over the booming mortgage market. The Federal Reserve and four other federal regulators did not issue guidance for nontraditional mortgages until last year. They recommended that lending institutions consider the borrowers' ability to make payments over the life of the loan before underwriting, and that they improve disclosure to consumers.
Yet many, including Federal Reserve executive Roger T. Cole, say it was too little, too late. "Given what we know now, yes, we could have done more, sooner," Cole told Congress in March.
But the loans are already out there; all that's left is to wait for the fallout. According to First American CoreLogic, this year and next, about $260 billion in prime ARMs and $376 billion in subprime ARMs will begin to reset.
So What Now?
Several lenders are taking steps to curtail the rising tide of foreclosures. Washington Mutual plans to refinance up to $2 billion in subprime loans at below-market rates. Citigroup and Bank of America are working with an advocacy group to similarly target $1 billion in subprime mortgages, focusing on cities with high foreclosure rates. Freddie Mac is fueling the market with a commitment to buy up to $20 billion in subprime loans, and Ohio is floating a $100 million bond issue to help troubled homeowners.
The new environment may also drive new solutions. Lenders now face falling home prices, large loan portfolios with no money down, and a home-foreclosure process that may cost them tens of thousands of dollars. Renegotiating loans -– lowering the interest rate or extending the payment period –- may be more attractive than foreclosing."
"Ameriquest Faces Lawsuit by Borrowers
by Chris Arnold
May 30, 2007 · Ameriquest was a high-flying sub-prime lender during the housing boom, and was accused of predatory lending by state prosecutors. The company now faces a class-action lawsuit from borrowers.
Chris Arnold talks to people who lost their homes after getting Ameriquest loans and to former employees who describe the hyper-aggressive sales practices.
As the nationwide real-estate boom of recent years goes bust, economists and regulators are questioning the role that mortgage lenders played in helping to create an overheated housing environment. Here, an overview of what happened:
A Rush of New Buyers
In the early 2000s, the economy was healthy, interest rates were low and consumers felt a bit flush – all of which helped push real-estate values up across the country. With values escalating, lenders felt more confident about making mortgages to customers whose poor credit histories had prevented them from buying homes in the past. (When values are rising, borrowers are less likely to default, because they can take money out of their homes if they run into trouble.)
That put more potential homebuyers in the market, helping to raise home-ownership rates to a record 69 percent in 2004 – which pushed housing prices up more. Skyrocketing prices (double-digit growth year over year was common in some areas) lured real-estate speculators, creating even more demand — and driving the cycle further.
Risky Loans Proliferated
To attract this growing pool of borrowers, lenders repurposed "creative financing" products that had previously been marketed to high-income borrowers seeking flexibility with their money. Among the most popular were variations on the adjustable-rate mortgage, or ARM.
ARMs are loans whose interest rates adjust up or down periodically. The initial rate is typically fixed for a period of two or three years. The benefit is that the starter rates are lower for ARMs than for traditional, fixed-rate mortgages. That means lower monthly payments, making homeownership more affordable and allowing borrowers to qualify for a bigger loan.
Some of the creative ARM products that flourished of late included interest-only and payment-option loans. With the former, a borrower only pays the interest on the loan — not the principal balance — during the introductory period. With payment-option ARMs, borrowers get to choose how much they pay each month: enough to cover the interest plus the principal, the interest only... or less than the interest. In that last scenario, the unpaid interest is tacked on to the principal, leaving borrowers owing more than the amount of the original loan.
How prevalent were these loans? Nearly 23 percent of all mortgages taken out in 2005 were interest-only ARMs, and more than 8 percent were payment-option ARMs, according to First American LoanPerformance. In certain once-sizzling markets, the numbers were much higher: For example, 34 percent of all new mortgages in California in 2005 were interest-only.
These products made sense to borrowers who thought they'd live in their homes for a few years, then sell at a profit or refinance. But now that housing sales have stalled and prices are softening, borrowers can't do either very easily.
And many borrowers are facing painful payment hikes: According to a First American CoreLogic study, one-third of ARMs taken out between 2004 and 2006 began with "teaser" rates below 4 percent. Payments on these loans will double on average – if they haven't already done so, says study author Dr. Christopher Cagan.
Growth in Subprime Lending
And then there were the loans to borrowers with poor credit. Subprime loans expanded to 20 percent of the mortgage market in 2006, from 9 percent a decade earlier. These loans carry higher interest rates to compensate for the risk posed by borrowers. They can be traditional fixed-rate loans, but most are ARMs, according to Susan Wachter of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.
Recent subprime loans were rife with risky terms — interest-only payment options, penalties for paying off the loan early (which makes it costly to refinance into a better loan), and low documentation requirements, meaning borrowers needed little paperwork to verify that they could, in fact, afford the loans. (These so-called "liar loans" accounted for about 58 percent of all loans in 2006, according to First American LoanPerformance).
Kathleen Keest of the Center for Responsible Lending says the pairing of these new loan types and new pool of borrowers was dangerous.
"They took the riskiest of products and sold them to the weakest borrowers to compound risk," Keest says.
Unethical Practices
In the old days, most homeowners obtained mortgages from their local bank or credit union, which adhered to strict lending rules. Nowadays, the lion's share of homebuyers' business (70 percent) goes to independent mortgage brokers — some of whom get bonuses for steering borrowers to higher-interest loans.
Experts say many recent borrowers were put into ARMs that are likely to cost far more over the life of the loan than if they'd chosen a fixed-rate option. Often, consumers could have locked in fixed-rate loans at low interest rates, but lenders downplayed the advantages of these loans.
Experts also cite numerous cases where borrowers say they didn't understand the loan structure — and the escalating payments; in many cases, they couldn't really afford them. Jennie Haliburton, a 77-year-old widow in Philadelphia, told NPR she refinanced into a subprime ARM that now costs her $300 more than the $800 she was originally told she'd pay. Her loan resets in May 2008. If the current interest rate holds, the monthly payments will grow to $1,218; depending on rates, they could eventually reach almost $1,700 — 95 percent of her Social Security income.
Loose Oversight
New loan products allowed more Americans to own their own homes than ever before. But regulators exercised little oversight over the booming mortgage market. The Federal Reserve and four other federal regulators did not issue guidance for nontraditional mortgages until last year. They recommended that lending institutions consider the borrowers' ability to make payments over the life of the loan before underwriting, and that they improve disclosure to consumers.
Yet many, including Federal Reserve executive Roger T. Cole, say it was too little, too late. "Given what we know now, yes, we could have done more, sooner," Cole told Congress in March.
But the loans are already out there; all that's left is to wait for the fallout. According to First American CoreLogic, this year and next, about $260 billion in prime ARMs and $376 billion in subprime ARMs will begin to reset.
So What Now?
Several lenders are taking steps to curtail the rising tide of foreclosures. Washington Mutual plans to refinance up to $2 billion in subprime loans at below-market rates. Citigroup and Bank of America are working with an advocacy group to similarly target $1 billion in subprime mortgages, focusing on cities with high foreclosure rates. Freddie Mac is fueling the market with a commitment to buy up to $20 billion in subprime loans, and Ohio is floating a $100 million bond issue to help troubled homeowners.
The new environment may also drive new solutions. Lenders now face falling home prices, large loan portfolios with no money down, and a home-foreclosure process that may cost them tens of thousands of dollars. Renegotiating loans -– lowering the interest rate or extending the payment period –- may be more attractive than foreclosing."
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