Headlines : Is Obama a pathological liar! Washington Times: “In the weird world that is Washington, men and women say things daily, hourly, even minutely, that they know deep down are simply not true. …
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LOS ANGELES — The event that many feared would be the “Carmageddon” of epic traffic jams cruised calmly to a finish Sunday, with bridge work on the Los Angeles roadway completed nearly a full day ahead of schedule and officials reopening a 10-mile stretch of the busy freeway.
Drivers honked their horns and waved from car windows as traffic started moving in all 10 lanes of Interstate 405 just after noon for the first time since being shut down at midnight Friday. There were no major problems since the freeway was closed, despite warnings.
The mayor praised contractors for working so quickly and thanked city residents for heeding calls to stay off the roads. He also gave credit to news outlets for spreading word about the closure, which had been planned to last for 53 hours.
“We couldn’t have done this without the cooperation of this city,” Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said.
Crews finished demolition work on the bridge at about 7 a.m., toppling two massive pillars. About 4,000 tons of concrete rubble was expected to be removed over the course of the job.
For weeks, authorities warned people that driving as usual this weekend could trigger what had been hyped as an event that could back up vehicles from the I-405 to surface streets and other freeways, causing a domino effect that could paralyze much of Los Angeles.
But the fears of epic traffic jams dissipated with only light weekend traffic.
“It was just so nice. It took me actually less time to get to work than it would have on a normal weekend,” said Jenn Tanaguchi, a hairstylist who has to drive from downtown to her job at a salon in Brentwood. “People were telling me that I would have to leave two hours early, that everything would be blocked out. But there were no problems. It was such a nice ride.”
Officials said during the closure there were 65 percent fewer automobiles on freeways in the LA metro area, compared with normal weekend traffic.
The California Department of Transportation reopened the freeway in phases. The off-ramps were opened first, then the freeway itself, followed by connectors from other freeways and the on-ramps, the mayor said.
Demolition work previously was expected to be completed by 2 a.m. Monday, followed by cleanup and reopening of the freeway at 5 a.m., with on-ramps and connectors all reopened by an hour later.
The reopening attracted a few onlookers to a parking lot above the freeway. Albert Hill, 47, a Westwood resident, brought his 3-year-old son to take photos of the empty lanes and the first cars to return to the 405.
“This is a historic moment for me. I’ve lived here my whole life, so to see it closed down, I thought it could never happen,” Mr. Hill said. “This Carmageddon thing was the best weekend ever in LA. There was no traffic anywhere. I couldn’t believe it. I think we should have Carmageddon every weekend.”
Project contractor Kiewit Infrastructure West faced a $6,000 fine in each direction for every 10 minutes of delay in getting the freeway re-opened, according to the city’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority. That’s a total of $72,000 an hour.
Instead Kiewit will receive an extra $300,000 for finishing early. Because the firm avoided paying workers for an additional 12-hour shift – which would have cost $700,000 – it gets a bonus and the project gets to save $400,000.
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Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
LOS ANGELES — The event that many feared would be the “Carmageddon” of epic traffic jams cruised calmly to a finish Sunday, with bridge work on the Los Angeles roadway completed nearly a full day ahead of schedule and officials reopening a 10-mile stretch of the busy freeway.
Drivers honked their horns and waved from car windows as traffic started moving in all 10 lanes of Interstate 405 just after noon for the first time since being shut down at midnight Friday. There were no major problems since the freeway was closed, despite warnings.
The mayor praised contractors for working so quickly and thanked city residents for heeding calls to stay off the roads. He also gave credit to news outlets for spreading word about the closure, which had been planned to last for 53 hours.
“We couldn’t have done this without the cooperation of this city,” Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said.
Crews finished demolition work on the bridge at about 7 a.m., toppling two massive pillars. About 4,000 tons of concrete rubble was expected to be removed over the course of the job.
For weeks, authorities warned people that driving as usual this weekend could trigger what had been hyped as an event that could back up vehicles from the I-405 to surface streets and other freeways, causing a domino effect that could paralyze much of Los Angeles.
But the fears of epic traffic jams dissipated with only light weekend traffic.
“It was just so nice. It took me actually less time to get to work than it would have on a normal weekend,” said Jenn Tanaguchi, a hairstylist who has to drive from downtown to her job at a salon in Brentwood. “People were telling me that I would have to leave two hours early, that everything would be blocked out. But there were no problems. It was such a nice ride.”
Officials said during the closure there were 65 percent fewer automobiles on freeways in the LA metro area, compared with normal weekend traffic.
The California Department of Transportation reopened the freeway in phases. The off-ramps were opened first, then the freeway itself, followed by connectors from other freeways and the on-ramps, the mayor said.
Demolition work previously was expected to be completed by 2 a.m. Monday, followed by cleanup and reopening of the freeway at 5 a.m., with on-ramps and connectors all reopened by an hour later.
The reopening attracted a few onlookers to a parking lot above the freeway. Albert Hill, 47, a Westwood resident, brought his 3-year-old son to take photos of the empty lanes and the first cars to return to the 405.
“This is a historic moment for me. I’ve lived here my whole life, so to see it closed down, I thought it could never happen,” Mr. Hill said. “This Carmageddon thing was the best weekend ever in LA. There was no traffic anywhere. I couldn’t believe it. I think we should have Carmageddon every weekend.”
Project contractor Kiewit Infrastructure West faced a $6,000 fine in each direction for every 10 minutes of delay in getting the freeway re-opened, according to the city’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority. That’s a total of $72,000 an hour.
Instead Kiewit will receive an extra $300,000 for finishing early. Because the firm avoided paying workers for an additional 12-hour shift – which would have cost $700,000 – it gets a bonus and the project gets to save $400,000.
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Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
ARKANSAS
Suspect in soldier’s death seeks bigger stage
LITTLE ROCK — The Muslim man who confessed to shooting two soldiers outside a military recruiting station in Arkansas, and killing one, claims he’s being treated like a common criminal with a state murder charge.
Abdulhakim Muhammad goes on trial this week in Little Rock in the death of Army Pvt. William Andrew Long. He has confessed to The Associated Press, the judge handling his case and others, hoping the world would pay attention to the war he declared on the United States.
Muhammad claims his case should be tried in federal or military court, and he says charging him in state court increases the chance he’ll be executed.
State prosecutors say the murder charge is fitting because Muhammad committed a drive-by shooting like a common thug.
CONNECTICUT
Oldest ferry to close because of budget cuts
ROCKY HILL — A round of budget cuts in Connecticut is forcing the nation’s oldest operating ferry to close.
Historical archives say the Rocky Hill Ferry has been crossing the Connecticut River between the towns of Rocky Hill and Glastonbury continuously since 1655.
It is among two historic ferries that Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s administration has put on the chopping block to close a $1.6 billion budget gap.
Historical documents say the ferry began with pole-operated boats run by families from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The state took over its operation in 1915 and Connecticut archivists say it has been in service longer than any other ferry in the United States.
FLORIDA
Last space shuttle astronauts finish packing
CAPE CANAVERAL — The astronauts making NASA’s last shuttle flight gave up their off-duty time Sunday and finished packing up their gigantic suitcase for the ride home.
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An arbitrator has overturned for the fifth time the refiring of a reinstated Metropolitan Police Department officer, lending support to persistent accusations by rank-and-file officers that Chief Cathy L. Lanier has systematically abused their due process rights and undermined MPD’s disciplinary system.
The ruling is among the many “inefficiency cases” – so-named for the rationale used by MPD to refire 18 of the 27 officers who had been reinstated – that have been overturned by arbitrators, with back pay, raising further questions about the chief’s judgment in handling personnel matters.
It also underscores what police union officials and their representatives have argued for years: Chief Lanier, in response to negative media attention, implemented a flawed legal opinion by the D.C. Office of the Attorney General (OAG) in refiring the 18 officers, who had been fired and then reinstated on appeal.
Four inefficiency cases remain to be decided. Nine other officers kept their jobs in spite of Chief Lanier’s attempts to refire them.
According to the July 8 arbitrator’s ruling, the MPD charged former officer Edwin Santiago in 2004 with moonlighting without approval and lying to investigators. After a police trial board sustained the charges, Mr. Santiago was fired in September 2004, the ruling states.
The MPD reinstated him with back pay and benefits in 2007 when the D.C. Public Employee Relations Board found the department had violated his right to a timely hearing, according to the ruling, and he continued to work without incident.
“That should have been the end of the matter,” arbitrator Andrew M. Strongin wrote of Mr. Santiago’s reinstatement.
But in May 2008, after “local news outlets” disclosed MPD’s willingness to reinstate police officers who had violated the law, Chief Lanier moved to refire Mr. Santiago and 17 others “for reasons that appear to be a response to negative publicity,” Mr. Strongin wrote.
First, she solicited an “evaluation” from the attorney general’s office that cause existed to terminate the officers for inefficiency, according to the ruling.
On May 23, 2008, Attorney General Peter J. Nickles told Chief Lanier in a letter that reinstatement of the officers, including Mr. Santiago, posed a “profound public safety issue.” He wrote that when an officer has engaged in misconduct that calls the officer’s credibility into question, “that officer has irreparably impaired his or her ability to serve the criminal justice system.”
‘Credibility can’t be trusted’
Armed with the Nickles letter, Chief Lanier issued a news release that same day claiming that several of the officers were reinstated “due to administrative error.”
“We can’t have officers testifying in court when their credibility can’t be trusted,” she said.
She then asked the OAG to review the 27 reinstatements to determine “whether or not these individuals could be reasonably retained as MPD officers,” according to an Aug. 1, 2008, letter that Mr. Nickles sent to Chief Lanier. Of the 27, Mr. Nickles said his office would not rely on or call as witnesses 18 of them.
“We also believe that the conduct is serious enough – and the supporting documentation is compelling enough – to support any decision that MPD would make about these officers, including termination,” he wrote.
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© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
CALIFORNIA, Pa. — Much has happened in the 53 years since Vonnie sent Clark the letter, wondering why he hadn’t called before going back to college.
They married later that year. He graduated. They had four children.
They divorced, and he changed his name.
At last, the letter is wending its way to Clark – that is, Muhammad Siddeeq – who awaits its arrival with mixed emotions.
“I’m curious, but I’m not sure I’d put it under the category of ‘looking forward to it,’ ” Mr. Siddeeq told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
The letter, bearing four 1-cent stamps postmarked February 1958 and addressed to Clark C. Moore, arrived in the mailroom at California University of Pennsylvania last week. School officials checked their files but couldn’t figure out who Clark Moore was.
Friends and family still lived in the area and saw media reports about the letter. They called Mr. Siddeeq, now 74 and living in Indianapolis, who had changed his name after converting to Islam.
“I never dreamed of anything like this,” Mr. Siddeeq told the Washington Observer-Reporter.
The letter, its stamps turned upside down as sign of love, arrived at California University of Pennsylvania on July 8, tucked inside some magazines. It had been slit open, but the two-page letter from a love-struck Pittsburgh girl was still inside, addressed to her beau at what was then California State Teachers College. It was signed, “Love Forever, Vonnie.”
The couple divorced after eight years of marriage and don’t talk much now, Mr. Siddeeq said. He got remarried and taught math and science in the Indianapolis public school system.
The Tribune-Review reached Vonnie at her daughter’s home in Atlanta. She declined to discuss the letter and was upset that it had become public.
But Mr. Siddeeq recalled the frequent letters fondly.
“Back then, we wrote at least once or twice a week, sometimes three times,” he told the Tribune-Review. “That was before email. It would perk your whole day up to get back to your room and find a letter.”
The letter, he told the Observer-Reporter, is “just a testament of the sincerity, interest and innocence of that time.”
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
The streets of Juba, South Sudan’s capital, were filled with jubilation this month as the world’s newest nation formally declared its independence after a decades-long war that claimed more than 2 million lives. Certainly, the long dark night is over for now. But the dawn’s early light reveals a land that still faces significant existential challenges.
For one thing, the fundamental problem that made Sudan’s history so fraught with ambivalence remains; most of its natural resources are in the south, while trading routes, industrial infrastructure and ocean ports are in the north. Even though both sides are proclaiming independence, the very survival of each depends on the other. It is estimated that at least 75 percent of Sudan’s oil is in the south, while the only means of exporting oil is along a pipeline that goes through the north to the Port of Sudan.
It is not just a matter of sharing resources, however. The reason why the two sides could not agree to coexist in peace, despite so many obvious reasons to do so, comes down to culture. The north’s culture, largely Muslim, Arab and nomadic, is a trading one that has traditionally relied upon arbitrage and war to survive. The southern culture, insular and pastoral, is based on a strong connection to the land and an intricate system of tribal identity. The big question remains whether the two countries can remain culturally and politically distinct while being economically connected.
Then there is the reality that climate change (whatever its causes) is rapidly transforming the landscape. Each year, the Sahara Desert encroaches further upon the southern border, making water, grazing land and farmland more scarcely available to the northern populations. The outlying conflicts in the north, first in Darfur and most recently in Southern Kordofan, highlight such stark realities – and add a dimension or two of their own.
The north-south divide was traditionally described as a clash between Muslims and Christians, with some elements of racial antagonism thrown in. The north-north conflicts are raging are among Muslims themselves. These new conflicts within the north have exposed the racial antagonism between the “Arabized” Muslims in and around Khartoum and the dark-skinned Muslim tribes in the outlying areas. If things get worse, these disaffected groups might opt to join the south or, worse, attempt to splinter into their own nations.
The south’s own fragmented existence also bears mention. South Sudan is a vast, sparsely populated and largely undeveloped country. Until now, the largely dispersed and independent tribal groups there have joined together for the purpose of defeating a common enemy. But it remains to be seen whether they can actually form a strong enough national identity to survive as an independent nation. The disparate groups will especially need such unity if they are to effectively negotiate the oil pipeline stranglehold currently employed by the north.
At the end of the day, the logic of two Sudans is hard to fathom. They share many natural networks, rivers, trading routes and vital oil pipelines. The stakes are high for economic cooperation, especially around oil exports, which form the largest share of each economy.
The optimal scenario is that the two countries eventually will develop a pragmatic approach to matters of mutual concern. But for now, good fences will have to suffice. For the south, that means a resolution of the contested Abyei, the oil-rich region along the north-south border. For the north, it means that the south must largely stay out of the internecine conflicts brewing in Darfur and Kordofan – something that will be difficult for southerners given the support they got during their own struggle for independence.
Finally, there is the matter of the southern Sudanese diaspora. Countless refugees are spread all over the world, and one wonders whether they will be interested in going back and starting from scratch in a land that lacks all the amenities to which they have become accustomed.
• Armstrong Williams is on Sirius Power 128, 7-8 p.m. and 4-5 a.m., Mondays through Fridays. Become a fan on Facebook at www.facebook.com/arightside, and follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/arightside. Read his content on RightSideWire.com.
© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The mayor of Los Angeles said Sunday that a 10-mile stretch of Interstate 405, one of the nation’s busiest freeways, would reopen beginning about 11:30 a.m. PDT because bridge work on the roadway was completed 16 hours ahead of schedule.
At a Sunday-morning news conference, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa praised contractors for working so quickly and thanked city residents for heeding calls to stay off the roads.
Crews finished demolition work on the bridge at about 7 a.m., toppling two massive pillars.
The freeway previously was scheduled to reopen at 5 a.m. Monday, with on-ramps and connectors all open an hour later.
The traffic that many thought would cause a “Carmageddon” was much lighter than normal as Los Angeles entered the second day of closure on Sunday.
Officials were elated that the public appeared to have gotten the message to avoid Carmageddon by staying off the roads, though some had been concerned the lack of gridlock would make drivers complacent and spur them to return to the roads before Monday’s scheduled reopening.
“We hope they still listen to what we’re saying and not go out and try to drive through this area, because it is going to be congested if people do that,” said Mike Miles, a district director of the California Department of Transportation, known as Caltrans.
Authorities closed the segment of 405 on the western side of Los Angeles at midnight Friday to allow partial demolition of a bridge.
For weeks, authorities warned people that driving as usual this weekend could trigger what’s been hyped as “Carmageddon” — an event could back up vehicles from the 405 to surface streets and other freeways, causing a domino effect that could paralyze much of Los Angeles.
But the fears of epic traffic jams dissipated with fewer cars on the roads.
“It’s been one of the most quiet Saturdays I’ve seen in forever,” said Steven Ramada, who had expected to hear lots of cars honking in front of his Sherman Oaks home but instead only heard news helicopters.
Project contractor Kiewit Infrastructure West would have faced a $6,000 fine in each direction for every 10 minutes of delay in getting the freeway reopened after Monday’s 2 a.m. deadline, according to the city’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority. That’s a total of $72,000 an hour.
Powerful machines with long booms hammered away at the south side of the half-century-old Mulholland Bridge, which was being removed to allow construction of an additional freeway lane. The plan is to leave the north-side lanes standing until the south side is rebuilt. Another closure will be required in the future to demolish the north side.
Gail Standish, 47, pedaled from Beverly Hills with her bicycling club to a 405 overlook a quarter-mile from the closed span.
“Everybody’s calling this weekend ‘Carmageddon,’ but seeing the freeway empty, it feels more post-apocalyptic,” Ms. Standish said.
Authorities looking at the potential impact of the $1 billion interstate project spent months giving the public dire warnings. The event got its name when Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky told an early June press conference that “this doesn’t need to be a Carmageddon” if people avoided driving.
The potential for Carmageddon is rooted in Los Angeles’ geography. The city is divided by the Santa Monica Mountains, which stretch more than 40 miles from near downtown westward through Malibu. The populous San Fernando Valley lies on the north side, and the Los Angeles Basin sprawls to the south.
Local and long-distance freeway traffic through the mountains has to squeeze through Sepulveda Pass on I-405 or about five miles to the east through Cahuenga Pass, which carries U.S. 101 through the heart of Hollywood. In between there is no grid of boulevards, just a few narrow, windy canyon roads.
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Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Casey Anthony walked out of jail a free woman under heavy guard early Sunday, facing shouts of “baby killer” only days after the country watched in rapt attention as she was acquitted of murder in the death of her 2-year-old daughter.
The 25-year-old Miss Anthony, who spent years in the spotlight’s glare, including two months of nationally televised trial proceedings, swiftly boarded an SUV just after midnight and rode out of public view, her destination unknown as new questions unfolded as to what her future would hold.
As Miss Anthony’s SUV left the jail’s parking lot, the crowd of more than 100 people surged against the orange plastic police barricades, and some yelled, “You suck!” Mounted patrolmen and police cruisers blocked the street outside the jail so Miss Anthony’s vehicle could drive onto a nearby highway ramp unobstructed.
“A baby killer was just set free!” Bree Thornton, 39, shouted at the passing SUV.
Miss Anthony had a handful of supporters in the crowd, including one man who carried a “Casey, will you marry me” sign.
But her backers — at the jail and across the country — appeared to be vastly outnumbered by her critics.
When Miss Anthony was acquitted July 5 of murder in the death of her toddler, hundreds of thousands of people captivated by the case — and doubtful of her credibility — poured their rage into postings on the micro-blogging site Twitter and on Facebook, which has an “I Hate Casey Anthony” group. Those and other social media sites provided a platform and a vast audience for a decibel level of vitriol seldom seen before.
Miss Anthony’s legal team said on Friday it had received an emailed death threat with a manipulated photo showing their 25-year-old client with a bullet hole in her forehead.
Since her acquittal on murder charges, Miss Anthony had been finishing her four-year sentence for telling investigators several lies, including an early claim that her daughter, Caylee, was kidnapped by a nonexistent nanny. With credit for the nearly three years she had spent in jail since August 2008 and for good behavior, she had only days remaining when she was sentenced July 7.
For nearly two months, the murder trial of Miss Anthony was a living entity. It breathed daily across the nation’s television airwaves, then was reinforced nightly on cable TV programs that dissected every word uttered in the courtroom and fueled speculation on her fate.
Jose Baez, Miss Anthony’s lead lawyer, signaled in a brief statement to reporters that a new chapter was opening in the Anthony case.
“It is my hope that Casey Anthony can receive the counseling and treatment she needs to move forward with the rest of her life,” Mr. Baez said in the statement.
Certainly, she still faces the anger and ire around the nation that brought tight security for Sunday’s release.
Orange County Jail spokesman Allen Moore said there were no known threats received at the jail. Yet officials had a number of contingency plans in place, including plans in case shots were fired as she was being released.
The crowd included about a half-dozen sign-carrying protesters who had gathered despite a drenching thunderstorm Saturday night. Onlookers had varied reactions to her release.
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Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Relying overwhelmingly on people making the maximum allowable contributions, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney amassed an $18 million haul that dwarfs other Republican presidential candidates, second-quarter financial disclosures released Friday show.
Yet two firebrands mounted last-minute campaigns that seemed to effortlessly raise funds in small increments in weeks while requiring little spending, leaving significant amounts stored away as candidates prepare for the Iowa straw poll next month.
Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning Republican from Texas, raised $4.5 million and has $3 million on hand. Rep. Michele Bachmann, his third-term colleague in Congress, from Minnesota, focusing all resources on a newly created presidential campaign rather than her House seat, was in a similar position.
Though former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s haul of $4.5 million beat that of Mrs. Bachmann, he seemed to use up most of the take as soon as it reached his bank account, leaving him with less money heading into the third quarter.
Early financial measures of support for other official Republican candidates also were not bright.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum had a poor showing of $580,000 raised and $230,000 in the bank. He focused much of his spending on Iowa. Wealthy businessman Herman Cain raised $2 million, but spent nearly all of it, and loaned his campaign half a million dollars in personal funds to have cash on hand.
The flailing campaign of onetime House speaker Newt Gingrich raised $2 million, but spent nearly all of it, and closes the quarter heavily in debt. In the past three months, the Gingrich campaign, which endured an exodus of key staffers last month, racked up unpaid debts of $100,000 in legal fees and $90,000 in communications services.
And in the final days of the quarter, donations slowed to a trickle, with Mr. Gingrich receiving fewer donations per week than in the early spring. The campaign lists $47,000 owed to the candidate himself to compensate or reimburse him for “direct mail list/travel.”
Jon Huntsman Jr., former Utah governor and former ambassador to China, did not file a financial report Friday because of his late entry into the presidential race. As with Mr. Romney, money raised is more a sign of voter enthusiasm than a necessity, as both men have their own means to fund their campaigns.
With the primaries still months away, the nomination race is open, and federal rules allow politicians to raise and spend money through other accounts to “test the waters” without declaring a candidacy.
A fund controlled by one such undeclared politician, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, was highly active, spending nearly all of the $1.6 million it raised, overwhelmingly from small donors. Though most could not be transferred to a campaign, it closes the period with more than $1 million dollars in the bank.
The committee set up by Rudolph W. Giuliani for his 2008 presidential run saw activity last quarter, spending $60,000 on administrative costs. The former New York City mayor did not close the account by paying down any outstanding debts, including a $350,000 phone bill, $275,000 for airfare, $215,000 in rent and utilities, and a $141,000 debt to Giuliani Security Safety, a division of the consulting firm he oversees. Earlier this year, he donated about $1 million to the account, taking it closer to being in the black, and loaned it $300,000.
Such activity is not a sure sign that a politician will run for office, however. The old presidential campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton, now secretary of state under President Obama, has been actively raising money in the past three months, forms filed Friday show, long after it went into debt in a protracted competition against Mr. Obama in 2008.
Despite a $127,000 haul between April and June, the Clinton campaign applied less than a third to paying down a $330,000 debt to pollster Mark Penn.
© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
BEIJING (AP) — China on Sunday slammed President Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama as an act that has “grossly interfered in China’s internal affairs” and damaged Chinese-American relations.
The strident statement from China’s Foreign Ministry came hours after Mr. Obama met with the Tibetan spiritual leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who was in Washington for an 11-day Buddhist ritual.
China earlier called on the United States to stop Saturday’s meeting, warning it could hurt relations between the two countries.
After the 45-minute private session at the White House, China said the Foreign Ministry and the Chinese Embassy had lodged objections with U.S. representatives in Beijing and Washington.
“Such an act has grossly interfered in China’s internal affairs, hurt the feelings of the Chinese people and damaged Sino-American relations,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in the statement.
“We demand the U.S. side seriously consider China’s stance, immediately adopt measures to wipe out the baneful impact, stop interfering in China’s internal affairs and cease to connive and support anti-China separatist forces that seek ‘Tibetan independence,’” Mr. Ma said.
China considers the Dalai Lama a separatist intent on ending Chinese rule over Tibet. The Nobel laureate says he seeks only a high level of autonomy for Tibet.
The meeting came less than 10 days before U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is due to visit the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen and meet with Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo, Beijing’s top foreign policy official.
“It’s difficult to say at the moment whether this meeting will be affected,” said Jin Canrong, an international affairs expert at Renmin University. “But this meeting is quite important, and whether it takes place or is canceled will give us an indication of what the follow-up impact will be.”
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. also is scheduled to visit China this summer, followed by a trip to Washington by his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.
China Central Television showed Mr. Xi visiting Tibet on Sunday to attend festivities marking the 60th anniversary of communist rule, which occurred in May.
Mr. Obama last met with the Dalai Lama in February 2010, infuriating Beijing during a tension-filled year in which China and the U.S. also feuded over online censorship and arms sales for Taiwan. Relations were considered back on track in January when President Hu Jintao visited Washington.
“I think after this meeting Sino-U.S. relations will be rather cold over the next few months,” Mr. Jin said. “It may lead to the suspension of high-level official exchanges and therefore impact on the strategic mutual trust and cooperation between China and the U.S. in some fields, including military ties.”
The White House said that during Saturday’s meeting Mr. Obama “underscored the importance of the protection of human rights of Tibetans in China.” Mr. Obama restated U.S. policy that it does not support Tibetan independence.
Tibet has been a source of controversy for decades, since Beijing sent troops to occupy the country following the 1949 Communist revolution. It insists the region has been part of Chinese territory for centuries, a claim disputed by many Tibetans, who say their Himalayan region has a long history of autonomous rule led by a series of Buddhist leaders.
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Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The campaign fundraising efforts of President Obama raised $86 million in the past three months from 500,000 people — but at least $35 million of it can be traced to just 244 well-connected supporters who collected contributions from wealthy friends.
Just 634 donations from people giving $30,000 or more to the Obama Victory Fund comprise $23 million, while the 1,335 donations the fund received from those giving $250 add up to about $336,000, a Washington Times analysis shows.
The campaign has branded itself as a new type of political operation and touted its reliance on a grassroots network of everyday people writing reasonably sized checks.
“Ninety-eight percent of all donations that came in were $250 or less, and our average donation was about $69,” Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said in a video to supporters.
And the dramatic reach is, in part, a testament to the power of personal relationships, among the moneyed elite as with the population at large: The mathematics of the ranges collected by the bundlers and the number of large donations given suggest that nearly every maximum donation came after personal contact with one of the 244 emissaries who received credit for shepherding it.
But the list, which was voluntarily disclosed by Mr. Obama and includes 27 people who brought in more than half a million dollars each — at least $13.5 million between them — is made up of many of the same people who have had outsized influence on American politics for years.
While the figures released by Mr. Obama include only names and locations, a Times analysis found 25 that likely bundled contributions for John Kerry in 2004. At least 90 worked as bundlers for Mr. Obama when he was a freshman senator mounting a bid for the presidency in 2008, but others were betting on his opponents: Ten were raising money for Hillary Rodham Clinton and seven bundled for John Edwards.
Federal donor histories of the half of the 244 that could be traced by The Times show that that segment alone, with their immediate families, has personally donated $21 million to U.S. elections in more than 7,800 checks between 2007 and 2010.
Fred Eychaner of media company Newsweb Corp., for example, made 73 federal-level political donations totaling $700,000 during the 2008 and 2010 elections before joining the ranks of Mr. Obama’s lowest tier of bundlers, those raising between $50,000 and $100,000. Mr. Obama appointed Mr. Eychaner a Kennedy Center trustee in September.
Azita Raji, meanwhile, a retired investment banker from Belvedere, Calif., raised more than half a million dollars for Mr. Obama from associates. Mr. Raji and family members personally gave $70,000 in the last two election cycles.
And Robert Wolf of UBS Americas, who in 2008 bundled $100,000 for Mr. Kerry, raised between $200,000 and $500,000 for Mr. Obama this cycle. He and family members have given 115 donations totaling some $185,000 in the last two cycles.
The money has made up significant chunks of the wider Democratic machine, with $6.3 million of the personal donations by bundlers identified by The Times going to the Democratic National Committee, $2.4 million to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and $1.9 million to its House counterpart.
Spread their wealth
The business leaders often spread their wealth freely, as if hedging their bets to maintain favor with whoever may be in power. In that figure are 118 donations to Republicans totaling $210,000, including $100,000 to the Republican National Committee.
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ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Casey Anthony walked out of jail a free woman under heavy guard early Sunday, facing shouts of “baby killer” only days after the country watched in rapt attention as she was acquitted of murder in the death of her 2-year-old daughter.
The 25-year-old Miss Anthony, who spent years in the spotlight’s glare, including two months of nationally televised trial proceedings, swiftly boarded an SUV just after midnight and rode out of public view, her destination unknown as new questions unfolded as to what her future would hold.
As Miss Anthony’s SUV left the jail’s parking lot, the crowd of more than 100 people surged against the orange plastic police barricades, and some yelled, “You suck!” Mounted patrolmen and police cruisers blocked the street outside the jail so Miss Anthony’s vehicle could drive onto a nearby highway ramp unobstructed.
“A baby killer was just set free!” Bree Thornton, 39, shouted at the passing SUV.
Miss Anthony had a handful of supporters in the crowd, including one man who carried a “Casey, will you marry me” sign.
But her backers — at the jail and across the country — appeared to be vastly outnumbered by her critics.
When Miss Anthony was acquitted July 5 of murder in the death of her toddler, hundreds of thousands of people captivated by the case — and doubtful of her credibility — poured their rage into postings on the micro-blogging site Twitter and on Facebook, which has an “I Hate Casey Anthony” group. Those and other social media sites provided a platform and a vast audience for a decibel level of vitriol seldom seen before.
Miss Anthony’s legal team said on Friday it had received an emailed death threat with a manipulated photo showing their 25-year-old client with a bullet hole in her forehead.
Since her acquittal on murder charges, Miss Anthony had been finishing her four-year sentence for telling investigators several lies, including an early claim that her daughter, Caylee, was kidnapped by a nonexistent nanny. With credit for the nearly three years she had spent in jail since August 2008 and for good behavior, she had only days remaining when she was sentenced July 7.
For nearly two months, the murder trial of Miss Anthony was a living entity. It breathed daily across the nation’s television airwaves, then was reinforced nightly on cable TV programs that dissected every word uttered in the courtroom and fueled speculation on her fate.
Jose Baez, Miss Anthony’s lead lawyer, signaled in a brief statement to reporters that a new chapter was opening in the Anthony case.
“It is my hope that Casey Anthony can receive the counseling and treatment she needs to move forward with the rest of her life,” Mr. Baez said in the statement.
Certainly, she still faces the anger and ire around the nation that brought tight security for Sunday’s release.
Orange County Jail spokesman Allen Moore said there were no known threats received at the jail. Yet officials had a number of contingency plans in place, including plans in case shots were fired as she was being released.
The crowd included about a half-dozen sign-carrying protesters who had gathered despite a drenching thunderstorm Saturday night. Onlookers had varied reactions to her release.
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Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The No. 2 Democrat in the Senate on Sunday called for a congressional investigation into the phone-hacking scandal that has rocked Rupert Murdoch’s media behemoth News Corp.
Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,”Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, said Congress should join an FBI investigation into whether News Corp. — the parent company of Fox News, the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal — engaged in illegal activity.
“What’s going on in England is startling. We need to follow through” with a congressional inquiry, Mr. Durbin said.
His comments came only hours after Rebekah Brooks, Mr. Murdoch’s former British CEO, was arrested in London. Ms. Brooks, 43, is being questioned on suspicion of phone hacking and suspicion of corruption, the Associated Press reported. She is the former editor of Mr. Murdoch’s News of the World, which published its final edition July 10, just days after it was revealed journalists working for the tabloid hacked into hundreds of voicemail accounts of celebrities, politicians and the victims of crimes.
The FBI investigation was launched to find out if 9/11 victims or their families were also the targets of News Corp. journalists.
There have also been allegations that high-level law enforcement officials received bribes from journalists and other News Corp. employees. London Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson resigned Sunday over those claims, according to the AP.
Last week, Les Hinton, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal and CEO of Dow Jones, also resigned, becoming the first significant casualty of the episode on this side of the Atlantic.
Beyond Mr. Hinton’s resignation, Mr. Murdoch’s American outlets have not yet been tied directly to the scandal.
“They’ve not been touched by it, they’ve told me,” said Ohio Gov. John Kasich, referring to Fox News, for which Mr. Kasich, a Republican, worked as a host and commentator before returning to politics.
Mr. Durbin said the congressional investigation, if opened, would focus on whether Mr. Murdoch or other News Corp. employees violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits payments to foreign officials designed to influence their actions.
Republicans appear less interested in an investigation. Also speaking on “Meet the Press,” Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, said Congress should simply “let law enforcement work here” and not get involved, instead focusing on more pressing matters like the national debt.
Regardless of whether the scandal touches American companies, Mr. Kasich said it’s a “terrible thing” that will “change journalism” throughout the world, not just in the U.K.
The affair has already cost Mr. Murdoch dearly by sinking his bid to take over British Sky Broadcasting. Along with Ms. Brooks and his son, James, Mr. Murdoch is set to answer questions before a parliamentary committee on Tuesday, though Ms. Brooks may be able to avoid answering questions directly related to her arrest and the ongoing police investigation.
As the spotlight grows hotter, Mr. Murdoch is trying to stop the bleeding and restore faith in his company. He ran full-page ads in his U.K. papers on Saturday that began by saying, “We are sorry.”
“It may take some time for us to rebuild trust and confidence but we are determined to live up to the expectations of our readers, colleagues and partners,” the ad continued.
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As Washington stares at rising national debt and projected deficits for years to come, many states are faced with the opposite problem: whether to spend their budget surpluses and, if so, on what.
At least a dozen states ended fiscal 2011 with surpluses. Indiana reported one of the largest, with an extra $1.2 billion in its accounts. Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican, on Friday authorized bonus payments of up to $1,000 for state employees. An employee who “meets expectations” will get $500, those who “exceed expectations” will receive $750 and “outstanding workers” will see an extra $1,000 in their August paychecks.
“No state anywhere comes close to Indiana’s record of spending tax dollars carefully, with total savings over the last six years in the billions. Your spending efficiency has enabled us to stay in the black even as revenues plummeted,” said Mr. Daniels, who recently flirted with a run for the White House but ultimately stayed out of the race.
While Indiana decided to reward its employees, other states are redirecting surplus funds into cash-strapped areas such as education. Idaho ended the year with an $85 million surplus, the majority of which will be funneled to public schools and colleges, Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter, a Republican, said in a statement last week.
Other states are bulking up their savings accounts. Maine finished the year with a surplus of nearly $50 million. About half will go to the state’s reserve, the Bangor Daily News reported. Iowa closed its books with $480 million left over, on top of an already healthy “rainy day fund.”
Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican, on Sunday touted the fact that since taking office in January, he has helped the Buckeye State turn its deficit into a surplus.
“In my state, where we faced an $8 billion deficit, we wiped it out. We eliminated it,” he said on “Meet the Press.”
“We’ve been able to cut taxes, improve [and] reform government. And you know why? We looked [the fiscal problems] square in the eye. … That is what they’re not doing here in D.C. right now.”
Arkansas, South Carolina and other states also ended their fiscal terms firmly in the black. During the depths of the Great Depression a few years ago, states emptied reserve accounts or raised taxes to make ends meet. Unlike Washington, nearly all states are required by law to balance their budgets each year. Only Vermont lacks such a requirement, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The biggest drivers of surpluses are higher-than-expected tax collections. Thirteen states have reported revenue higher than anticipated, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers. Only two states reported less tax revenue than expected, and another 31 states were on target. Four states have not finished the 2011 budget cycle.
Last year, 46 states reported revenue at lower-than-expected rates, and the tax turnaround is, to some, an indication that the economy has begun to turn around.
“But the thing we’re stressing is … they’re still not back to the levels they were before the recession,” said Brian Sigritz, director of state fiscal studies at the budget officers association.
Spending reductions also played a big role. Many states made major cuts to education and other parts of their budgets. Even with better-than-expected tax revenue, those cuts were still necessary, partly because federal stimulus dollars, which propped up many state budgets over the past two years, have been fully expended.
Despite ending the fiscal year on a high note, governors are aware of how quickly the rosy financial picture can change. They are cautioning taxpayers and lawmakers that a little extra cash doesn’t mean the state should embark on a spending spree.
“I’m grateful for the revenue growth. But I still think that we’re a long way from out of the woods,” Mr. Otter of Idaho said in his statement “You need to remember that this is about half a billion dollars less than we had in my first year as governor. So we’re going to keep working hard.”
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Some pundits and Republican naysayers contend that former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. is too moderate to win the GOP presidential nomination.
And that’s a claim he denies with vigor and a hint of anger.
During a recent interview with The Washington Times, Mr. Huntsman checked off his accomplishments as Utah governor from 2005 to 2009: making record tax cuts, signing into law the first school voucher program and overseeing the rise of his state’s economy to first-in-the-nation status.
He is confident that the race won’t turn on his religion and downplays whispers from evangelical Protestants who vow not to support a Mormon.
“These presidential nomination contests aren’t about religion; they’re about leadership,” Mr. Huntsman told The Times in the kitchen of his home in Washington’s tony Kalorama neighborhood.
Mr. Huntsman, 51, is proud of his leadership, which he predicts conservatives will respect despite his tenure as President Obama’s ambassador to China and his positive comments about what Republican voters see as an overly liberal president.
“All people have to do is look at the record. Sometimes they don’t, and they just rely on tags,” he said.
“When you look at what we did on record tax cuts, being pro-life and pro-Second Amendment, passing the largest tax cuts in the history of our state. We went to the No. 1 position economically,” he said. “Education reform, the first governor to sign a voucher program, we did it around special education.”
He noted that the Pew Research Center named Utah the “best managed state in America.”
Mr. Huntsman said he won’t stand a chance if voters allow the 2012 Republican presidential nomination to revolve around religion.
“If it’s about religion, I’ll always come up short anyway,” said Mr. Huntsman, a Mormon who until April 30 was Mr. Obama’s hand-picked ambassador to China.
Mr. Huntsman steers conversation away from one of his obvious advantages. If elected, he would be the only U.S. president with an intimate, firsthand knowledge of the culture, language and economy of China, the one country capable of eventually challenging U.S. economic and military supremacy.
He speaks fluent Mandarin and has spent much of his adult life on the communist mainland and in non-communist Taiwan, making a President Huntsman less likely to miss cultural nuances during critical trade and security talks.
But he and chief campaign strategist John Weaver know that few voters choose the nation’s chief executive on the basis of China planks, or foreign policy generally. Instead, he said, he will run on what former governors normally do — his record as a manager of a state — at a time when the nation is in dire need of successful management.
Mr. Huntsman declined to reveal his money-raising target for the end of this year, though he did say, “If the money comes in, it will be because we have a message of leadership people want. If we don’t raise the money, then we’re not on a winning trajectory.”
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The campaign fundraising efforts of President Obama raised $86 million in the last three months from 500,000 people — but at least $35 million of it can be traced to just 244 well-connected supporters who collected contributions from wealthy friends.
And just 634 donations from people giving $30,000 or more to the Obama Victory Fund comprise $23 million, while the 1,335 donations the fund received from those giving $250 add up to about $336,000, a Washington Times analysis shows.
The campaign has branded itself as a new type of political operation and touted its reliance on a grassroots network of everyday people writing reasonably-sized checks.
“Ninety-eight percent of all donations that came in were $250 or less, and our average donation was about $69,” Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said in a video to supporters.
And the dramatic reach is, in part, a testament to the power of personal relationships, among the moneyed elite as with the population at large: The mathematics of the ranges collected by the bundlers and the number of large donations given suggest that nearly every maximum donation came after personal contact with one of the 244 emissaries who received credit for shepherding it.
But the list, which was voluntarily disclosed by Mr. Obama and includes 27 people who brought in more than half a million dollars each — at least $13.5 million between them — is made up of many of the same people who have had outsize influence on American politics for years.
While the figures released by Mr. Obama include only names and locations, a Times analysis found 33 that likely bundled contributions for John Kerry in 2004. At least 90 worked as bundlers for Mr. Obama when he was a freshman senator mounting a bid for the presidency in 2008, but others were betting on his opponents: Roughly 13 were raising money for Hillary Rodham Clinton and about six bundled for John Edwards.
Federal donor histories of the half of the 244 who could be fingerprinted by The Times show that that segment alone, with their immediate families, has personally donated $21 million to U.S. elections in more than 7,800 checks between 2007 and 2010.
Fred Eychaner of media company Newsweb Corp., for example, made 73 federal-level political donations totaling $700,000 during the 2008 and 2010 elections before joining the ranks of Mr. Obama’s lowest tier of bundlers, those raising between $50,000 and $100,000. Mr. Obama appointed Mr. Eychaner a Kennedy Center trustee in September.
Azita Raji, meanwhile, a retired investment banker from Belvedere, Calif., raised more than half a million dollars for Mr. Obama from associates. Mr. Raji and family members personally gave $70,000 in the last two election cycles.
And Robert Wolf of UBS Americas, who in 2008 bundled $100,000 for Mr. Kerry, raised between $200,000 and $500,000 for Mr. Obama this cycle. He and family members have given 115 donations totaling some $185,000 in the last two cycles.
The money has made up significant chunks of the wider Democratic machine, with $6.3 million of the personal donations by bundlers identified by The Times going to the Democratic National Committee, $2.4 million to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and $1.9 million to its House counterpart.
Spread their wealth
And the business leaders often spread their wealth freely, as if hedging their bets to maintain favor with whoever may be in power. In that figure are 118 donations to Republicans totaling $210,000, including $100,000 to the Republican National Committee.
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AUSTIN, Texas — Should Rick Perry conclude that voter discontent has left an opening for him to enter the presidential race, the longtime Texas governor would be among the GOP field’s most conservative candidates.
Primary voters would get a skilled politician with TV anchorman looks, a Southern preacher’s oratory and a cowboy’s swagger, matched by a disarming candor and sense of humor. The former cotton farmer from the village of Paint Creek in West Texas has never lost an election in nearly three decades as a politician.
What they wouldn’t get is a candidate whose politics are positioned to unite a Republican electorate that stretches from moderate pro-business fiscal conservatives to evangelical social conservatives, with the tea party falling somewhere along the spectrum.
“Texans, God love them, have that bigger-than-life persona about politics and that doesn’t necessarily play everywhere,” said Christopher Nicholas, a Republican political consultant who has worked extensively in the Northeast and Midwest. “I haven’t heard a lot of Republicans call Social Security a disease.”
Mr. Perry has. He branded Social Security and other New Deal programs “the second big step in the march of socialism,” according to a book published last year. The “first step” was a national income tax, which he has said stands alongside the direct election of U.S. senators as a major mistake among the amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
Mr. Perry has said he likely will decide in two or three weeks whether he’ll run for president.
Mr. Perry told the Des Moines Register that he’s “getting more and more comfortable every day that this is what I’ve been called to do. This is what America needs.”
In the just-completed Texas legislative session, Mr. Perry’s “emergency items” included laws that require a photo ID in order to vote, a sonogram before a woman has an abortion and enforcement of federal immigration laws by local police.
He rejects the idea of climate change and the theory of evolution, arguing for natural climate variations and intelligent design of the universe.
In fact, he said last year when promoting his book, “Fed Up: Our Fight to Save America From Washington,” which was a state’s rights treatise that railed against the federal government, that he’s too conservative to run for national office.
“The best concrete evidence that I’m really not running for president is this book, because when you read this book, you’re going to see me talking about issues that for someone running for public office, it’s kind of been the third rail if you will,” Mr. Perry told the Associated Press shortly after winning re-election in 2010.
In the few polls that have included Mr. Perry, he ranks high among Republican primary voters in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Gov. Terry Branstad, Iowa Republican, told the AP on Saturday that he thinks it’s very likely that Mr. Perry will jump into the race and reshape the state’s caucuses.
“I get the definite impression he’s very likely to run,” Mr. Branstad said, basing his opinion on a conversation the governors had Friday.
“I think he becomes a significant factor if he becomes a candidate,” Mr. Branstad said. “It could change the whole complexion of the Iowa caucus race.”
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Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
While Congress and the White House still have more than two weeks to raise the debt ceiling before the Treasury Department’s early August deadline, the financial markets are getting jittery, fearing they won’t reach a deal in time.
“They’re starting to get spooked,” said Ward McCarthy, chief financial economist at Jefferies Co.
Two major rating agencies have warned that the government’s credit rating could be downgraded if, by Aug. 2, it fails to increase its $14.29 trillion debt ceiling — the nation’s legal limit on how much it can borrow. Treasury says failing to do so would cause the suspension of some of its debt payments, a scenario experts say could lead to a major financial crisis.
And while the financial markets generally have been steady in recent days, Wall Street hasn’t overflowed with bullish confidence either.
“With the credit agencies beating a drum in the background, the parallels of certain parts of Europe are beginning to become somewhat disconcerting” to investors, Mr. McCarthy said.
Negotiations between Democrats and Republicans to raise the debt ceiling have been stalled for months. Republicans have insisted such action be coupled with significant spending cuts and no tax increases. Democrats say they are OK with some spending cuts but also want to raise taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals.
President Obama, who has been meeting congressional leaders to try to hammer out a compromise, has said he wants a deal by Friday in order to avoid a possible downturn in the financial markets.
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said that while he doesn’t characterize the markets as “spooked,” there is “growing unease” on Wall Street about the delay in Congress to raise the debt limit.
“It’s not a reason to sell stocks or bonds, but it surely is a reason not to buy,” he said. “There are stress lines developing.”
Mr. Zandi said as each day passes without an agreement, “those stress lines will turn into fissures and ultimately cracks.”
“It’s one of those things that the markets are OK until they’re not, and there’s no telling what the catalyst will be,” he said. “And when it happens, it will be very rapid and very significant.”
The House this week is poised to vote on the Republican “cut, cap and balance” proposal, which would immediately cut federal spending, cap it going forward and call for a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution.
Senate Republicans on Sunday voiced support for the plan.
“The real deal to limit spending and get us in balance would be an amendment to our Constitution. Without that we’re just going to talk to each other and run America into the ground,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats have criticized the proposal, and Republicans admit the amendment, which must be ratified by three-fourths of the states, wouldn’t be implemented until years from now.
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Rep. Michele Bachmann’s latest campaign finance report shows she has a strong network of small-dollar donors backing her presidential bid but, for now, she lacks the support of the big-money bundlers.
The report, which covers April to June, showed that Mrs. Bachmann collected more than $4.2 million and had $3.6 million in the bank — putting her neck-and-neck with Texas Rep. Ron Paul for second place in the early money chase and in the rearview mirror of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who raised $18 million and has $12.7 million in the bank.
With six months until the caucuses and primaries next year, the financial reports provide a glimpse into candidates’ abilities to draw the kind of support needed to win the partys nomination and put up a strong fight in the general election against President Obama, who raised $86 million in the three months that ended June 30.
Mrs. Bachmann raised $2.2 million over the past two weeks and transferred $2 million from her congressional campaign committee account. Her88,000 donations averaged $48 a pop.
The three-term congresswoman, though, has struggled to gain the backing of the all important high-dollar bundlers who can tap financial networks for hundreds of thousands of dollars for a campaign.
The challenge in front of Mrs. Bachmann is clear: Can the tea party favorite translate the grass-roots support that helped her raise almost $14 million for her re-election last year into the kind of mainstream credibility necessary to attract the major fundraisers who are crucial to a serious White House run.
“Presidential campaigns are obviously phenomenally expensive, and you have to raise the money in relatively small chunks,” said Dirk Van Dongen, president of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors and a bundler who remains uncommitted in the race. “Even when you are talking about maximum contributions, $2,500 seems like a lot of money until you think of the hundreds of millions of dollars that these candidates need to raise, and bundlers are absolutely critical to that process for any serious candidate.”
Former Ambassador Mel Sembler, a Romney supporter, said that in order to survive the grueling presidential fight, candidates must have both small donors and bundlers.
“You need both sides of the equation,” Mr. Sembler said. “I think Michele at this point is doing the small-donor side, but she has to get out and get more of the national fundraisers and people across the United States, like myself, who have been at this for so many years, who are dedicated to this. She is learning how to do this and I’m sure she will get better and better.”
He added, “Do I think she’s going to be our nominee? No, but I like her out there talking.”
The Bachmann camp on Friday announced it is beefing up efforts to court major donors by forming a finance team of veteran fundraisers, including Guy Short, who helped her take in $13.5 million for her re-election last year; Mary Heitman, former finance director for the Republican National Committee; and Jody Thomas, onetime political director and fundraiser for former Rep. J.C. Watts of Oklahoma.
GOP insiders, though, say the odds are against Mrs. Bachmann.
“She won’t be able to raise money from big donors because they don’t really like her,” said John Feehery, a Republican consultant.
Though Mrs. Bachmann appears poised to win the Iowa caucuses, there’s doubt about whether a win there translates into success in New Hampshires first-in-the-nation primary or elsewhere.
One big money bundler put it bluntly: “Iowa is theater — pure unadulterated theater.
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ANALYSIS/OPINION:
A statement President Obama made halfway through his news conference last week was so unfathomable, so utterly incomprehensible, that befuddled White House stenographers simply gave up and tacked a “[sic]” next to it.
Here is what the president said: “If the American people looked at this, theyd say, boy, some of these decisions are tough, but they dont require us to gut Medicare or Social Security. They dont require us to stop helping young people go to college. They dont require us to stop helping families who’ve got a disabled child. They dont require us to violate our obligations to our veterans. And they dont require ‘job-killing tax cuts.’ [sic]”
That’s right, the Harvard graduate said tax cuts kill jobs. But then again, he did study law, not economics. So let’s turn to a man who studied the economy, albeit at little ol’ Eureka College.
When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, the top tax rate in America was 70 percent. Reagan cut that to 50 percent in 1982, then to 38.5 percent in 1987, and finally to 28 percent in 1998. What happened? Unemployment dropped from 9.2 percent (exactly what it is today) to 5.3 percent and inflation plummeted from 13.5 percent to 4 percent. At the same time, real income for Americans grew by an average $4,000.
But wait. Mr. Obama said it’s better today. “Our tax rates are lower now than they were under Ronald Reagan,” he said. “They’re much lower than they were under Dwight Eisenhower.”
For Reagan, not true. (Mr. Obama knows that. Still, Reagan inherited that 70 percent rate and it took his entire presidency to get it down to 28 percent, so Mr. Obama can technically make the claim.) But for Eisenhower, Mr. Obama’s right on. Still, is that really something to brag about? In 1953, the top tax rate was 92 percent! So, yeah, it’s lower now.
Nevertheless, Reagan has nothing on another tax-cutting president, whose record is among the very best. He knew what Mr. Obama does not, and enunciated it in the simplest terms: “Our true choice is not between tax reduction, on the one hand, and the avoidance of large federal deficits on the other,” he said. “It is increasingly clear that an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits.”
“In short,” he said, “it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now.”
Yes, John F. Kennedy — a Democrat! — had the right idea. He slashed the capital gains tax in 1962 and dropped the top tax rate to 70 percent. Federal tax revenues went up 50 percent, from less than $100 billion in 1961 to more than $150 billion in by 1968.
Reducing taxes, historically, has driven up federal revenue. In the 1920s, Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge dropped the top tax rate from 70 percent to 25 percent; revenue rose from just more than $700 million in 1921 to $1.1 billion by the end of the 1920s.
Reagan proved it again. In 1980, Americans paid $517 billion in taxes, but after eight years of cutting taxes, revenue nearly doubled to just shy of $1 trillion — $991 billion. George W. Bush’s tax cuts had the same effect: Revenue was $1.9 trillion when he took office and $2.5 trillion when he left in 2008.
Since then, though, it has been stagnant, even as Mr. Obama runs up trillion-dollar deficits. Revenue was $2.1 trillion in 2009, but Mr. Obama spent $3.5 trillion. Last year, $2.16 trillion in, $3.45 trillion out. (Pretty clear here that his Harvard education didn’t exactly teach him how to balance a checkbook.)
But Mr. Obama says it’ll all get better if he can just get more money from those private-jet owners. Those damn rich are just not paying their share. The facts, though, tell another story. During the Coolidge/Harding years, the “rich,” who then made about $50,000, went from paying about 45 percent of all tax revenue to pouring in more than three-quarters of all the cash the federal government collected. During Reagan’s years, the top 5 percent paid 37 percent of all taxes; today, they pay 57 percent. (So no, the tax bills for “the wealthy” didn’t go down during the Bush years, they went up — by $100 billion in 2005 alone.)
One of the real problems is the tax-paying base. A whopping 43 percent (some say nearly 50 percent) of Americans — 66 million “lucky duckies” out of 151 million taxpayers — don’t pay a cent, according to the Tax Policy Center. That’s a far cry from the past: From 1950 to 1990, that number averaged 21 percent, dropping to 18 percent in 1986, according to the Tax Foundation.
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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A home invasion at Rep. Leonard L. Boswell’s Iowa farm ended when his 22-year-old grandson fetched a shotgun and aimed it at the intruder, according to a statement from the congressman’s office. No one was seriously injured.
The incident started about 10:45 p.m. Saturday when an armed man came in through the front door, attacked Mr. Boswell’s daughter, Cindy Brown, and demanded money, the statement said. Mr. Boswell, 77, heard his daughter’s screams, came into the entryway and attempted to disarm the intruder.
As they struggled, Mr. Boswell’s grandson, Mitchell Brown, got a shotgun from another room. When he pointed the shotgun at the intruder, the man fled into the fields around the house outside Lamoni.
Mr. Boswell’s wife, Dody Boswell, 75, also was home during the attack. His spokesman, Grant Woodard, said the whole family is safe and unhurt, aside from some scrapes and bruises.
The family is shaken up, but “they’re dealing with it pretty well,” Mr. Woodard said Sunday morning.
He deferred other questions to the Decatur County Sheriff’s Office, which is investigating along with the FBI and other agencies. Sheriff Herbert Muir wasn’t available for comment Sunday morning.
Mr. Boswell, a Democrat, has represented Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District for eight terms in the House. He is expected to face a challenge next year from Republican Rep. Tom Latham, who is moving into the district to avoid running against Republican Rep. Steve King after their territories were merged during the once-per-decade redistricting that follows each census.
Iowa is going from five to four congressional seats because its population growth hasn’t kept pace with the rest of the nation. The new 3rd District will include Des Moines and 16 counties in southwest Iowa.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
With the debt-limit deadline only 16 days away, congressional Republicans on Sunday reiterated their support for a balanced-budget amendment as the answer to the nation’s fiscal woes.
“Neither party is going to balance the budget unless there’s some discipline in the system,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
In exchange for a constitutional amendment, Mr. Graham said he would be open to closing tax loopholes or identifying other ways to raise revenues, but only if those revenues go toward debt reduction. He rejected President Obama’s assertion on Friday that lawmakers can balance the budget without such an amendment, as evidenced by the spending binges of recent years.
“There is no plan to achieve [a balanced budget] unless the Constitution is changed,” Mr. Graham said.
But congressional Democrats and administration officials are rejecting the House’s “cut, cap and balance” plan, which likely will come up for a vote this week. The proposal would call for major spending cuts, capping federal spending and the balanced-budget amendment. In exchange for those three things, the debt ceiling would be raised.
Rep. Chris Van Hollen, Maryland Democrat, said Republicans simply want to “manipulate the Constitution” and impose their own budget priorities through the amendment process.
“The framers would be turning in their graves … [the cut, cap and balance plan] is not going to become law,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”
White House Budget Director Jacob Lew called the proposal “draconian” and said it would necessitate cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Cars flowed freely through the nation’s second-largest city Saturday, despite fears of epic “Carmageddon” traffic jams spawned by the 53-hour shutdown of a 10-mile (16-kilometer) stretch of one of the region’s most critical freeways.
Authorities closed the segment of Interstate 405 on the western side of the metropolis to allow partial demolition of a bridge, warning motorists to stay off the roads or plan alternate routes.
With the heart of the day yet to come, officials were optimistic that the public far and wide had gotten the message.
“The work is progressing, traffic is cooperating,” said Mike Miles, a district director of the California Department of Transportation, known as Caltrans.
There was some concern, however, that lack of gridlock might make the public complacent and get behind the wheel before the route reopens early Monday.
A banner informs visitors of the upcoming Interstate 405 freeway closure, at the Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica, Calif., Thursday, July 14, 2011. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
“We hope they still listen to what we’re saying and not go out and try to drive through this area, because it is going to be congested if people do that,” Miles said.
Progress on demolition of the half-century-old Mulholland Bridge was said to be good. Powerful machines with long booms hammered away at the south side of the span, which is being removed to allow the interstate to be widened. The plan is to leave the north-side lanes standing until the south side is rebuilt.
Gail Standish, 47, peddled from Beverly Hills with her bicycling club to a 405 overlook a quarter-mile (400 meters) from the closed span.
“Everybody’s calling this weekend Carmageddon, but seeing the freeway empty it feels more post-apocalyptic,” Standish said.
Authorities looking at the potential impacts of the $1 billion interstate project spent months giving the public dire warnings. The event got its name when Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky told an early June press conference that “this doesn’t need to be a Carmageddon” if people avoided driving.
Major tests of the public’s compliance were likely to come Saturday afternoon when the city fully dives into its weekend, and in the evening when Major League Soccer’s Los Angeles Galaxy, featuring Britain’s David Beckam, is scheduled to play Spanish heavyweight Real Madrid at Memorial Coliseum south of downtown.
One west side resident, David Noll, said he heeded the warnings and told his parents to cancel plans to come from the San Francisco Bay area for a visit.
“They made us believe that this weekend was going to be the worst thing ever, so I told my parents to stay home,” he said. “I’m upset because we could have been hanging out together right now.”
California Highway Patrol Officer Charmaine Fajardo said a 74-year-old man was arrested Saturday for jogging in the 10-mile (16-kilometer) segment of Interstate 405 after police told him he couldn’t do so.
Fajardo said a suspected drunken driver was arrested after going around barricades, and one or more bicyclists also were intercepted. Officers now have orders to arrest anyone trying to enter the shuttered freeway.
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ORLANDO, Florida (AP) — Casey Anthony is spending her last day in jail Saturday preparing for an uncertain future after nearly three years behind bars.
Anthony was acquitted of first-degree murder in Caylee’s death earlier this month in a sensational trial that was carried extensively on cable television stations. She was found guilty of four counts of lying to police, but with time served and good behavior credits, she didn’t have to serve out her four-year sentence.
Orange County Jail officials planned to release Anthony sometime Sunday under circumstances they refused to disclose. One of her attorneys, Cheney Mason, said Friday that Anthony is scared to leave jail, given numerous threats on her life and the scorn of a large segment of the public that believes she had something to do with the death of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee.
Mason said he isn’t taking any chances: “We are all vigilant and I am armed.”
Another attorney, Charles Greene, said Friday that Anthony was “emotionally unstable” and needed “a little breathing room” after the draining two-month trial.
However, that “breathing room” may be hard to come by given that Anthony’s first steps of freedom will be under the glare of the media spotlight. Scores of reporters, cameramen and protesters were expected to be outside the jail when she is released. Local television stations were going live with coverage starting late Saturday night.
And the vitriol directed at Anthony has been pointed: After the verdict, anger spilled onto social networks like Facebook and Twitter from people who had spent weeks watching the trial on local and cable television networks. On Friday, Anthony’s legal team said it had received an emailed death threat with a manipulated photo showing the 25-year-old woman with a bullet hole in her forehead. It has been forwarded to authorities. Officials had said earlier this week that they had not received any credible threats, but they did not return a call Friday about that email.
Security experts have said Anthony will need to hole up inside a safe house protected by bodyguards, perhaps for weeks, in case someone tries to make good on one of those threats. Ideally, several SUVs with tinted windows will pull up to the jail to whisk her away, probably in the middle of the night, the experts said. Jail officials have not disclosed when she will be released.
“This will not be a usual release,” jail spokesman Allen Moore said in an email. “Due to the high-profile nature of this case and intense, emotional interest by the public, appropriate measures will be taken to release the individual into the community in such a manner so as to preserve the safety of the individual and public.”
Once she is out of jail, Anthony will not get special treatment beyond the protection any person would get if there were a credible threat, law enforcement authorities said.
“She’s like every other resident or citizen here,” Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said. “We’re not going to be her personal security. Her attorneys will make appropriate decisions or prepare for her own security after that.”
Exactly where she will go remains unclear. It’s unlikely she’ll return to the home she once shared with her parents, as the trial left her family fractured. Defense attorney Jose Baez argued during the trial that Caylee accidentally drowned in the family pool and that Casey Anthony’s father, George, covered it up to make it look like a homicide. Baez also argued that George Anthony molested his daughter when she was a child — which resulted in psychological issues that caused her to lie and act without apparent remorse after Caylee went missing.
“Most of the time you can always go home, but she doesn’t have that option,” said Daniel Meachum, an Atlanta lawyer who has represented football star Michael Vick and actor Wesley Snipes. “Baez has to have somewhere for her to go for her to get herself together.”
“I’d tell her to go to a big house in the middle of nowhere,” said Dallas-based security expert Stuart Diamond, who has worked for celebrities and federal agencies. “That would be the safest thing for her. It’s more of an effort for someone to really follow through on a threat.”
Casey Anthony was convicted of telling detectives several lies in July 2008, when Caylee’s disappearance was reported. She said that Caylee had been kidnapped by a nonexistent nanny, among other things.
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LONDON (AP) — “We are sorry” the full-page ad began Saturday, as Rupert Murdoch tried to halt a phone-hacking scandal that has claimed two of his top executives with a gesture of atonement and promises to right the wrongs committed by his now-shuttered tabloid, News of the World.
Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative-led government and the London police, meanwhile, faced increasing questions over their close relationship with Murdoch’s media empire.
Cameron was feeling the heat Saturday after government records showed that Murdoch executives held 26 meetings with him in since he was elected in May 2010 and were invited to his country retreat. Senior police officers also had close ties to Murdoch executives, even hiring one as a consultant who has since been arrested in the phone hacking and police bribery scandal rocking Murdoch’s News Corp.
Murdoch is struggling to contain the crisis, which has already forced him to shut down the 168-year-old News of the World, scuttled his bid for lucrative TV broadcaster BSkyB, knocked billions off the value of News Corp. and claimed the jobs of two key aides: Rebekah Brooks, CEO of his British unit News International, and Wall Street Journal publisher Les Hinton.
On Saturday, News Corp. ran an ad in seven British national newspapers with the headline “We are sorry.” Signed by Murdoch, it apologized “for the serious wrongdoing that occurred.”
“We are deeply sorry for the hurt suffered by the individuals affected. We regret not acting faster to sort things out,” it said.
A front-page headline in another Murdoch paper, The Times, called it a “Day of atonement.”
The company plans to take out more ads in the coming days outlining its next steps — part of a brand new strategy by the once all-powerful mogul.
The public displays of contrition came after News Corp. last week hired PR firm Edelman Communications, whose clients include Starbucks and Burger King, to help with public relations and lobbying. The hiring coincided with an abrupt change in tone — as recently as Thursday Murdoch was quoted by the Wall Street Journal as saying the company had handled the crisis “extremely well in every way possible” and complaining he was “getting annoyed” at all the negative headlines.
Cameron has appointed a judge to conduct a sweeping inquiry into criminal activity at the News of the World and in the British media as he tries to distance the government from the scandal.
But Rupert Murdoch’s son James, Brooks and ex-News of the World editor Andy Coulson were all guests at the prime minister’s country house, Chequers.
Coulson’s stay in March came only two months after he resigned as Cameron’s communications chief amid the spiraling scandal — an invitation that critics said showed poor judgment on Cameron’s part and revealed the cozy relationship between political leaders and Murdoch’s powerful media empire.
Coulson is one of nine people arrested and questioned by police over what they knew about phone hacking at the News of the World. No one has yet been charged.
Foreign Secretary William Hague defended the government Saturday, saying “it’s not surprising that in a democratic country there is some contact between leaders” and media chiefs.
“I’m not embarrassed by it in any way, but there is something wrong here in this country and it must be put right,” Hague told the BBC. “It’s been acknowledged by the prime minister and I think that’s the right attitude to take.”
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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama held a White House meeting Saturday with the Dalai Lama, a fellow Nobel Peace laureate, hours after China called on the U.S. to rescind an invitation that could sour relations with Beijing.
The Tibetan spiritual leader has been in Washington for an 11-day Buddhist ritual. Thousands of expatriate Tibetans joined a 76th birthday celebration Wednesday for the Dalai Lama, who’s just relinquished leadership of Tibet’s government-in-exile.
The White House said that during the 45-minute private session in the Map Room, Obama “underscored the importance of the protection of human rights of Tibetans in China.” In a statement issued after the meeting, the White House also said Obama reiterated his support for the preservation of Tibet’s religious, cultural and linguistic traditions.
Obama restated U.S. policy that it does not support Tibetan independence, a goal that the Dalai Lama said he also does not seek.
In a nod to the criticism from Beijing, Obama also stressed to the Dalai Lama that he considers a cooperative relationship between the United States and China to be important, according to the White House statement.
In remarks after the meeting forwarded by Kate Saunders from the International Campaign for Tibet, the Dalai Lama said of his visit with Obama: “Firstly we developed a very close sort of feeling for each other.” He said Obama expressed his concern over basic human values, such as human rights and religious freedoms. “So naturally he shows genuine concern about suffering in Tibet and other places.”
A Chinese crackdown led the Dalai Lama to flee into exile in India in 1959. China says he’s welcome to return if he drops his separatist activities, accepts Tibet as an inalienable part of China and recognizes Taiwan as a province of China.
Hours before the Dalai Lama’s arrival, the Chinese Foreign Ministry urged the White House to cancel the visit.
“We firmly oppose any foreign official to meet with the Dalai Lama in any form,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in a statement posted on the ministry’s website.
“We request the U.S. side to honor its serious commitment that recognizes Tibet as part of China and opposes Tibet independence,” Hong said.
The White House kept the meeting low-key, closing it from news reporters and photographers. It chose the Map Room for the visit instead of the Oval Office, which is reserved for visiting heads of state.
The visit comes less than 10 days before U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to visit the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. Vice President Joseph Biden is also scheduled to visit China this summer, followed by a trip to Washington by his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.
Obama had been criticized by pro-Tibetan activists for putting off an invitation during the Dalai Lama’s stay in the capital. White House officials said the president’s schedule had been occupied with debt-limit negotiations with congressional leaders.
Obama last met the Dalai Lama in February 2010.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Racing the debt clock, Congress is working on dual tracks while President Barack Obama appeals to the public in hopes of influencing a deal that talks have failed to produce so far.
“We have to ask everyone to play their part because we are all part of the same country,” Obama said Saturday, pushing a combination of spending cuts and tax increases that has met stiff resistance from Republicans. “We are all in this together.”
In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama said the wealthiest must “pay their fair share.” He invoked budget deals negotiated by GOP President Ronald Reagan and Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill, and Democratic President Bill Clinton and Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich.
“You sent us to Washington to do the tough things, the right things,” he said. “Not just for some of us, but for all of us.”
As a critical Aug. 2 deadline approached, the chances that Obama would get $4 trillion or even $2 trillion in deficit reduction on terms he preferred were quickly fading as Congress moved to take control of the debate.
At a news conference Friday, Obama opened the door to a smaller package of deficit reductions without revenue increases.
A weekend deadline that the president gave congressional leaders to choose one of three deficit reduction options became a moot point after House and Senate leaders made it clear to the White House on Friday that they were moving ahead with their own plans.
House Republicans prepared to vote this coming week on allowing an increase in the government’s borrowing limit through 2012 as long as Congress approved a balanced-budget constitutional amendment, which is highly unlikely.
In the Senate, the Republican and Democratic leaders worked on a bipartisan plan that would allow Obama to raise the debt limit without a prior vote by lawmakers. The talks focused on how to address long-term deficit reduction in the proposal in hopes of satisfying House Republicans.
In the Republicans’ address Saturday, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah argued for passage of a balanced-budget amendment. He blamed Democrats for failing to embrace adequate budget cuts and said “the solution to a spending crisis is not tax increases.”
An amendment that requires a balanced budget, he said, “would put us on a path to fiscal health and would prevent this White House or any future White House from forcing more debt on the American people.”
The government said Friday it was using its last stopgap measure to avoid exceeding the current $14.3 trillion debt limit. Administration officials, economists and the financial markets have warned that missing the Aug. 2 deadline and precipitating a government default would send convulsions through an already weakened economy.
Obama had held five straight days of meeting with congressional leaders at the White House, but none of the three options he proposed — deficit cuts of $4 trillion, $2 trillion or $1.5 trillion over 10 years — were unlocking enough support to increase the debt ceiling by the $2.4 trillion Obama wants to make it last beyond the 2012 elections.
Essentially declaring those discussions over, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Friday: “”Now the debate will move from a room in the White House to the House and Senate floors.”
In search of a deal, Obama has used a combination of private meetings with congressional leaders and high visibility press conferences, radio addresses and public statements in an effort to win the public to his side. His pitch is also aimed at independent voters, to whom he is presenting himself as a willing compromiser.
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The sound of a nation healing is the quiet prick of a needle through nylon fabric, the whisper of red, white or blue thread tightening into a stitch.
Less than two months from the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11, D.C. residents, politicians and visiting friends and families affected by the terrorist attacks relieved a little bit more of the pain Thursday by adding stitches to the National 9/11 Flag when it arrived on Capitol Hill as part of a cross-country tour.
“Our goal is to make the flag whole again,” said Jeff Parness, chairman of New York Says Thank You Foundation, the project sponsor. “This is not telling a story about what happened on 9/11, but what happened on 9/12. We’re stitching together our histories. That’s what America is all about.”
The flag continued to fly for about a month across from where the World Trade Center towers fell, and was supposed to be buried in 2008 along with several others ravaged by a tornado in Greensburg, Kan.
However, a group of Greensburg stitchers offered to sew together the flags so that they would become a permanent part of the Sept. 11 memorial.
People line up to stitch the National 9/11 Flag during a special ceremony Thursday at the Russell Senate Office Building. The flag is on tour countrywide to be mended in time for the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. (Barbara L. Salisbury/The Washington Times)
On Thursday, the 20-by 30-foot flag filled nearly half of the Russell Senate Office Building’s marbled Kennedy Caucus Room.
New York City firefighters — who volunteered their services off the clock — stood guard, one on each side of the patched flag, their white dress gloves several shades brighter than the grayed stripes of the tattered, 45-pound flag, which House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, called a symbol “of the country coming together to try to convey that it will never forget.”
The tour, which included stops in Maryland and Virginia several weeks ago, has put the flag in the hands of several generations of Americans, including Pearl Harbor survivors, victims of the 1999 Columbine High School shootings in Colorado and the 2009 shootings at Fort Hood, Texas.
Others who have sewn the flag include relatives of 9-year-old Christina Green, born on Sept. 11, 2001, and one of the victims of the January assassination attempt in Tucson, Ariz., on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
Earlier this year, several blue threads from the flag that supported President Abraham Lincoln’s bleeding head were added to a white swatch of fabric and sewn into the national flag.
The flag’s next stop is Idaho, and in a few weeks it will make the long trip — with the firefighter escorts — to Juneau, Alaska.
“This is the American tradition of stitching and healing,” Mrs. Pelosi said to the Sept. 11 families in attendance. “This is about you and your loss and how you helped America through your pain.”
The day also was dedicated to encouraging participation in the 9/11 Day of Service.
Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, urged people not “to make 9/11 a holiday, but a day to acknowledge losses by making sacrifices on that day.”
Monica Iken, Manhattan resident and member of the National September 11 Memorial Museum, said she knows that feeling of pain and sacrifice and what it means to turn it into good.
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Those sneaky students in the back of the classroom aren’t the only cheaters.
Teachers and school leaders are getting in on the scams by boosting test scores not through better instruction, but by erasing wrong answers, replacing them with the right ones and hoodwinking parents in the process.
Nowhere was the corruption more widespread than in Atlanta, where a recent probe found that 44 schools and 178 teachers and principals had been falsifying student test scores for the past decade. Suspected cheating also is under review in the District, and the Department of Education’s inspector general is assisting with the investigation.
In Pennsylvania, reports that surfaced this week show suspected cheating in at least three dozen school districts. State Education Secretary Ronald Tomalis on Thursday ordered those districts to investigate the suspicious scores and report back within 30 days. He also asked a data company to analyze 2010 scores, according to the Associated Press.
Similar charges of cheating have been discovered in Baltimore, Houston and elsewhere.
Rep. John Kline, Minnesota Republican, is chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. (Associated Press)
Although the details differ, education specialists think each scandal has a common denominator.
“There’s a very simple cause: consequences,” said Gregory Cizek, a professor of educational measurement and evaluation in the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Any district where you’ve got kids who are at risk of not succeeding … there are problems as big as Atlanta, as big as D.C., as big as Philadelphia. The more stakes there are involved, the more you’re going to see it.”
The Atlanta probe found that “cheating occurred as early as 2001,” the year the No Child Left Behind Act was enacted. Mr. Cizek and others argue that the greater accountability schools face, the more likely that teachers and administrators are to, at best, turn a blind eye to cheating. At worst, they encourage it.
Former Atlanta Superintendent Beverly Hall was named superintendent of the year by the American Association of School Administrators in 2009. She retired last month and told USA Today on Wednesday that she “did not know about the cheating.”
Under No Child Left Behind guidelines, schools can be labeled “failing” if student test scores don’t meet state benchmarks. Poor results are embarrassing for teachers and often cost principals, superintendents and school board members their jobs. By contrast, high scores on reading and math tests equal praise for those in charge.
In the face of such pressure, teachers and administrators sometimes go with their “natural reaction,” said Robert Schaeffer, public education director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing.
“The teachers and principals who changed test scores did something unethical and probably illegal, [but they were] caught between a rock and a hard place,” he said. “We’ve created a climate that corrupted the educational process. The sole goal of education … became boosting scores by any means necessary.”
The Education Department has estimated that more than 80 percent of schools could be labeled as “failing” this year under No Child Left Behind, and congressional leaders are working on overhauling the law.
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce has passed the first three pieces of its five-step reform process, and Rep. John Kline, Minnesota Republican and committee chairman, has said the final legislation will change the accountability process and free schools from the testing mandates.
“One of our primary goals is to put more control in the hands of state and local education officials who can properly monitor and address situations like this to ensure students are not being cheated out of a quality education,” Mr. Kline said.
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ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — When Casey Anthony is released from jail Sunday, it will probably be in the middle of the night. If her lawyers are smart, security experts say, they will arrange for several SUVs with tinted windows to pull up to the Orange County Jail. Then they will bundle her into one of them and whisk her away to a safe house, where she will be protected by bodyguards for days, if not weeks.
“I’d tell her to go to a big house in the middle of nowhere,” said Dallas-based security expert Stuart Diamond, who has worked for celebrities and federal agencies. “That would be the safest thing for her. It’s more of an effort for someone to really follow through on a threat.”
Online and elsewhere, Anthony has been vilified, many believing she got away with murder. Some have wished the same fate on her that prosecutors say befell her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee.
Anthony’s legal team said Friday it received an emailed death threat with a doctored photo of the 25-year-old woman with a bullet hole through her forehead. The threat was forwarded to authorities.
One her attorneys, Cheney Mason, said Anthony is nervous about getting out of jail, and he isn’t taking any chances: “We are all vigilant and I am armed.”
A jury acquitted Anthony last week of murder but found her guilty of lying to law officers investigating the disappearance of Caylee in 2008. She was sentenced to four years in prison, but with good behavior and nearly three years already served, she will be out this weekend.
Details of her release are being closely held, and the sheriff’s department is not making the time public beforehand.
“This will not be a usual release,” jail spokesman Allen Moore said in an email. “Due to the high-profile nature of this case and intense, emotional interest by the public, appropriate measures will be taken to release the individual into the community in such a manner so as to preserve the safety of the individual and public.”
The Orange County Jail has had very few high-profile inmates. Former astronaut Lisa Nowak, who was convicted in a bizarre attack on a romantic rival, walked out the jail’s front door, where a horde of media pushed and elbowed their way toward her, shouting questions and trying to snap photos. In another case, Noelle Bush, the daughter of then-Gov. Jeb Bush and niece of then-President George W. Bush, received special handling after her arrest on drug charges. Secret Service agents were worried she could be targeted.
Once she is out of jail, Anthony will not get special treatment beyond the protection any person would get if there were a credible threat, law enforcement authorities said. (Earlier this week, authorities said they had not received any credible threats, but they did not immediately return a call Friday about the new email.)
“She’s like every other resident or citizen here,” Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said. “We’re not going to be her personal security. Her attorneys will make appropriate decisions or prepare for her own security after that.”
She should be let out of jail at “an offbeat time like 3 or 4 in the morning,” said Daniel Meachum, an Atlanta lawyer who has represented football star Michael Vick and actor Wesley Snipes.
Ideally, security experts said, she should go to a safe house. She may have to arrange backup locations, in case the address is discovered.
She probably won’t be going to the home she had shared with her parents before her arrest, in part because the trial fractured their relationship. Defense attorney Jose Baez told jurors that Anthony’s father, George Anthony, molested his daughter and covered up his granddaughter’s death after Caylee accidentally drowned in the family pool. George Anthony has denied the abuse and cover-up allegations.
“Most of the time you can always go home, but she doesn’t have that option,” Meachum said. “Baez has to have somewhere for her to go for her to get herself together.”
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ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — When Casey Anthony is released from jail Sunday, it will probably be in the middle of the night. If her lawyers are smart, security experts say, they will arrange for several SUVs with tinted windows to pull up to the Orange County Jail. Then they will bundle her into one of them and whisk her away to a safe house, where she will be protected by bodyguards for days, if not weeks.
“I’d tell her to go to a big house in the middle of nowhere,” said Dallas-based security expert Stuart Diamond, who has worked for celebrities and federal agencies. “That would be the safest thing for her. It’s more of an effort for someone to really follow through on a threat.”
Online and elsewhere, Anthony has been vilified, many believing she got away with murder. Some have wished the same fate on her that prosecutors say befell her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee.
Anthony’s legal team said Friday it received an emailed death threat with a doctored photo of the 25-year-old woman with a bullet hole through her forehead. The threat was forwarded to authorities.
One her attorneys, Cheney Mason, said Anthony is nervous about getting out of jail, and he isn’t taking any chances: “We are all vigilant and I am armed.”
A jury acquitted Anthony last week of murder but found her guilty of lying to law officers investigating the disappearance of Caylee in 2008. She was sentenced to four years in prison, but with good behavior and nearly three years already served, she will be out this weekend.
Details of her release are being closely held, and the sheriff’s department is not making the time public beforehand.
“This will not be a usual release,” jail spokesman Allen Moore said in an email. “Due to the high-profile nature of this case and intense, emotional interest by the public, appropriate measures will be taken to release the individual into the community in such a manner so as to preserve the safety of the individual and public.”
The Orange County Jail has had very few high-profile inmates. Former astronaut Lisa Nowak, who was convicted in a bizarre attack on a romantic rival, walked out the jail’s front door, where a horde of media pushed and elbowed their way toward her, shouting questions and trying to snap photos. In another case, Noelle Bush, the daughter of then-Gov. Jeb Bush and niece of then-President George W. Bush, received special handling after her arrest on drug charges. Secret Service agents were worried she could be targeted.
Once she is out of jail, Anthony will not get special treatment beyond the protection any person would get if there were a credible threat, law enforcement authorities said. (Earlier this week, authorities said they had not received any credible threats, but they did not immediately return a call Friday about the new email.)
“She’s like every other resident or citizen here,” Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said. “We’re not going to be her personal security. Her attorneys will make appropriate decisions or prepare for her own security after that.”
She should be let out of jail at “an offbeat time like 3 or 4 in the morning,” said Daniel Meachum, an Atlanta lawyer who has represented football star Michael Vick and actor Wesley Snipes.
Ideally, security experts said, she should go to a safe house. She may have to arrange backup locations, in case the address is discovered.
She probably won’t be going to the home she had shared with her parents before her arrest, in part because the trial fractured their relationship. Defense attorney Jose Baez told jurors that Anthony’s father, George Anthony, molested his daughter and covered up his granddaughter’s death after Caylee accidentally drowned in the family pool. George Anthony has denied the abuse and cover-up allegations.
“Most of the time you can always go home, but she doesn’t have that option,” Meachum said. “Baez has to have somewhere for her to go for her to get herself together.”
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LOS ANGELES (AP) — When the sun rises above Los Angeles on Saturday, residents in this car-dependent, traffic-choked city will see a rare sight: a 10-mile stretch of one of the nation’s busiest freeways turned into a virtual ghost road.
Interstate 405, a freeway normally so clogged that locals like to joke that its name is shorthand for “traffic that moves no faster than 4 or 5 miles an hour,” is closing for 53 hours for a major construction project.
As crews worked feverishly to get the freeway open in time for Monday morning’s rush-hour, residents have been making plans for weeks to stay off local roads, lest they trigger what officials dubbed “Carmageddon.”
Such an event could back up vehicles from the 405 to surface streets and other freeways, causing a domino effect that could paralyze much of the city.
With warnings having been broadcast through television, radio, social media and flashing freeway signs as far away as San Francisco, much of the city’s nearly 4 million residents appear ready to stay off the roads.
If they do, there will be no shortage of staycation activities awaiting them.
They can snag free popcorn being at movie theaters along the 405 or drop in on Michael Jackson’s dermatologist for 25-percent-off Botox injections so that frazzled commuters won’t look quite so frazzled.
Those who do want that real road warrior look might consider swinging by T-Man’s Tattoos (located just off the 405) in the San Fernando Valley.
“If you come on in and mention you’re in town because you’re stuck from Carmageddon, you can get 15 percent off tattoos and piercings,” proprietor Howard Teman said.
For those who do get caught in traffic, L.A. musician Ken Elkinson is offering free downloads of his boxed set, “Music for Commuting,” a collection of soothing tunes.
For those wanting a laugh, Grammy-winning humorist Stan Freberg is planning to visit a mall just off the freeway to sign copies of his latest CD, “Songs in the Key of Freberg,” which features a song called “Gridlock.”
That is if he can get there.
“We could end up just toodling around in traffic in our Prius, playing ‘Gridlock’ ourselves,” he said of himself and his wife, Hunter.
Along with all the gimmicky promotions and attempts to cash in (“I Survived Carmageddon” T-shirts are being sold all over the place), there have also been months of planning.
Construction crews have been gearing up, but so have police, fire and medical officials seeking to ensure that everything goes smoothly. Or, if it doesn’t, to ensure they are prepared to handle any emergency.
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Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
LONDON (AP) — Rupert Murdoch accepted the resignations of The Wall Street Journal’s publisher and the chief of his British operations on Friday as the once-defiant media mogul struggled to control an escalating phone hacking scandal, offering apologies to the public and the family of a murdered schoolgirl.
The scandal has knocked billions off the value of Murdoch’s News Corp., scuttled his ambitions to take control of a lucrative satellite TV company, withered his political power in Britain — and is threatening to destabilize his globe-spanning empire.
The controversy claimed its first Murdoch executive in the United States as Les Hinton, chief executive of the Murdoch-owned Dow Jones Co. and publisher of the Wall Street Journal, announced he was resigning with immediate effect.
Murdoch’s British lieutenant, Rebekah Brooks, stepped down earlier Friday.
Hinton, 67, has worked for Murdoch’s News Corp. for 52 years and is one of the media baron’s staunchest allies. He became head of Dow Jones in December 2007.
He was chairman of Murdoch’s British newspaper arm during some of the years its staffers are alleged to have hacked cell phones, but testified to a parliamentary committee in 2009 that he had seen no evidence abuses had spread beyond a single jailed reporter, Clive Goodman.
Hinton said Friday that “the pain caused to innocent people (by hacking) is unimaginable.”
“That I was ignorant of what apparently happened is irrelevant, and in the circumstances I feel it is proper for me to resign from News Corp. and apologize to those hurt by the actions of News of the World,” he said.
Murdoch said he accepted Hinton’s resignation with “much sadness.” It capped a difficult week for the embattled mogul.
Just a day after asserting that News Corp. had made only “minor mistakes,” Murdoch issued an apology to run in Britain’s national newspapers for “serious wrongdoing” by the News of the World, which he shut down last week amid allegations of large-scale illegal hacking by its staff.
“We are sorry for the serious wrongdoing that occurred. We are deeply sorry for the hurt suffered by the individuals affected. We regret not acting faster to sort things out,” said the full-page ad, signed by Murdoch and due to run in Saturday’s editions of Britain’s main national newspapers.
Murdoch promised “further concrete steps to resolve these issues and make amends for the damage they have caused.”
Murdoch also met the family of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, whose phone was hacked by the News of the World in 2002. The revelation that journalists had accessed her phone in search of scoops inflamed the long-simmering scandal about illegal eavesdropping by the newspaper.
The 80-year-old mogul emerged from the meeting at a London hotel to catcalls of “shame on you!” from hecklers. He said that “as founder of the company I was appalled to find out what had happened and I apologized.”
Dowler family lawyer Mark Lewis said Murdoch appeared humbled and had offered “a heartfelt and what seemed to be a very sincere apology.”
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Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
More than 500 federal agents and state and local law enforcement authorities swept through an Orange County, Calif., neighborhood Friday that had been the territory of the Mexican Mafia in what one official called a “critical blow” to the gang’s prison-based leadership and those members and associates they control throughout the region.
Armed with arrest and search warrants, the Santa Ana Gang Task Force said 99 of the gang’s leaders, members and associates face federal charges in a takedown of gangs in and out of prison, culminating a three-year, multi-agency investigation known as “Operation Black Flag.”
“A dangerous criminal street gang has suffered a critical blow to its organization and to its ability to intimidate and extort residents in the Orange County area. The criminals targeted by this operation aligned themselves with the Mexican Mafia in order to ensure their stronghold on their territory,” said John Torres, special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive’s Los Angeles field division.
“Today’s operation has removed an insidious threat to the stability of our communities, and has sent a clear message to those individuals involved in gang activity that they will be pursued, prosecuted and removed from the very streets they seek to terrorize,” Mr. Torres said.
Twenty-six of 57 federal defendants were arrested during Friday’s early morning operation, while 25 were already incarcerated on unrelated charges. Six are considered fugitives and are being sought by the task force. In addition, eight of the state defendants were arrested Friday and three are considered fugitives. The remainder were already in custody.
The gang members were named in five federal grand jury indictments handed up in June, accusing the leaders, members and associates of crimes ranging from drug trafficking to conspiracy to murder. Two of the five federal indictments charge violations of the federal racketeering statute, known as RICO.
According to federal law enforcement authorities, one of the RICO indictment charges 28 defendants associated with an Orange County branch of the Mexican Mafia, purportedly led by Peter Ojeda, 40, who was indicted in 2005 and currently is incarcerated in federal prison serving time in that case.
The Mexican Mafia is described by the authorities as a powerful and violent prison gang that controls drug distribution and other illegal activities within the California penal system and on the streets of Southern California by organizing Hispanic street gangs to establish a larger network for the Mexican Mafia’s illegal activities. The authorities said if a gang does not accede to the Mexican Mafia, it will assault or kill the gang’s members who are not in custody, as well as those members who are incarcerated within the California penal system.
As a member of the Mexican Mafia, the authorities said Ojeda maintained the primary leadership role among Hispanic street gang members in Orange County and his influence over gangs extended from the streets to the jail system. High ranking and intermediate level members of the F-Troop criminal street gang, as well as high ranking members of other Hispanic criminal street gangs, such as Delhi, Highland Street, Orange Varrio Cypress, East Side Santa Ana, Little Hood Santa Ana, McClay, Townsend and Forming Kaos, made up the Orange County Mexican Mafia and assisted Ojeda in exerting his influence over Hispanic street gangs, according to the indictment.
The indictment said Ojeda ordered Hispanic gangs in Orange County to pay money as a “tax” or “tribute” that consisted of a portion of the proceeds the gangs earned from various criminal activities. In return, it said gang members were permitted to exert influence over their neighborhoods and territories and seek protection or assistance from the Mexican Mafia.
According to the indictment, Ojeda disciplined Orange County gangs members who engaged in unsanctioned violence, did not pay taxes as required, or committed some act of disrespect to the organization, its members or those protected by it. The discipline included “green lights” placed on the offender, meaning the gang or gang member would be physically disciplined or required to pay a “penalty.”
The Mexican Mafia also disciplined members, associates and other gang members by putting them on a “Hard Candy” list, meaning the person would be targeted for death by any member or associate, the indictment said.
The second indictment, the authorities said, charges an additional 17 defendants associated with the Forming Kaos street gang in Costa Mesa, Calif. They are named on charges of engaging in conspiracies to commit murder, assault with dangerous and deadly weapons, extortion, conspiracies to commit extortion, and narcotics and firearms trafficking for monetary gain.
Forming Kaos, or FK, operated and claimed territory in Costa Mesa, Calif., primarily on the westside of the city and guarded their territory against any encroachment from members or associates of any other gang. The indictment alleges FK members have and are willing to engage in acts of violence, including murders and assaults, to defend their territory, which they mark or “plaque” or “tag” with graffiti.
FK members are expected to retaliate through the use of violence, including murders and assaults, against anyone who assaults or kills another FK member, or disrespects FK or its members. The indictment said those invited to join FK are typically “jumped in,” whereby they are assaulted by two or more gang members for a limited period of time by other FK members to prove their toughness and worthiness to join the enterprise.
© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Mitt Romney leads all Republicans in the contest for campaign cash, cementing his frontrunner status among contenders hoping to go up against President Barack Obama in 2012.
While Romney’s $12.7 million in the bank far outdistanced a spread-out GOP field, dollars don’t always translate to votes. The chasm between Romney and his rivals suggested many Republican donors are waiting on the sidelines, watching the topsy-turvy campaign foment and the candidates finally start to engage one another.
“It’s a little unsettling that people have so underperformed expectations,” said Dave Carney, an adviser to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who is weighing joining the race. “Clearly, there’s some … concern about either economics or about the candidates. I don’t know the reason.”
Romney, a ferocious fundraiser who spent weeks on the road collecting pledges and checks, added more than $18.4 million to his account during the April-to-June fundraising period. That sum outpaced his closest rival to announce numbers so far, Rep. Michele Bachmann, by a 3-to-1 margin in banked cash. Yet he still came up short for his campaign’s internal $50 million goal for the first half of this year.
Unlike four years ago when he hoped to help his first presidential bid with $44.6 million from his own personal fortune, Romney so far has not opened his wallet to help his second White House bid.
Bachmann, a darling among tea partyers, said she would report $3.6 million in the bank, a blend of fundraising and a transfer from her congressional campaign fund. She brought in a total of $4.2 million since formally beginning her campaign in June.
It was not immediately clear how many of those dollars she could spend in a primary and how many of them were accessible only if she were the nominee.
A potent fundraiser, Bachmann relied on small donors to raise $13.5 million for her 2010 re-election campaign and recently brought on board veteran high-dollar fundraising consultants to help build a national operation.
Tim Pawlenty, the former two-term governor of Minnesota, raised just around $4 million during the April-to-June period and has about $1.4 million available for his primary contest and some $600,000 more available if he were to capture the nomination.
The reports also detailed problems for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose campaign was carrying more than $1 million in debt. The former Georgia lawmaker — whose bid has struggled since 18 staff members, consultants and advisers resigned en masse — raised $2.1 million for the quarter but spent $1.8 million. Gingrich listed about $322,000 in the bank.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who lost re-election in 2006, reported taking in $582,000, with less than $225,000 banked for the primaries.
The financial picture for the 2012 presidential nominating race slowly came into clearer focus with the reports. While money doesn’t guarantee success, it does pay for crucial television ads, polling to measure whether a message is working and staff to run the mechanics of a national election.
The numbers are one of the first measures of the campaigns’ early strength as they look to take on Obama’s well-funded re-election bid. On Wednesday, Obama’s team announced it had raised $86 million during the second quarter of the year for his campaign and the Democratic Party.
Georgia businessman Herman Cain has said he raised almost $2.5 million in the first weeks of his White House bid, but some of that came out of his own pocket. His report due Friday would detail how much the talk show host and Godfathers Pizza CEO invested in his effort.
Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, a tea party favorite, was expected to report a strong fundraising quarter.
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Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The quarterly campaign finance reports that will give the first real insight into fledgling machines of 2012 presidential candidates, and the relative strength of House and Senate incumbents and their challengers, are beginning to arrive in earnest this Friday afternoon in Washington, hours before a midnight filing deadline.
Reporters and pundits will dive deep into these reports this weekend, but The Washington Times is obtaining the reports within 10 minutes after they arrive, and for the political junkies who need to know now, here are some nuggets of first-glance observations:
The Barack Obama campaign raised $22 million from people giving less than $250, and $12 million from larger donors. It did not accept donations from political action committees, but did rely on about 250 well-connected “bundlers” who collected at least $50,000. About 30 collected $500,000 or more each.
The Obama Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee working with the president and the national party, brought in $40 million, transferring half to the Democratic National Committee and about $12 million to the president’s reelection campaign. And that’s where the big-money donors directed their wealth. The overwhelming majority of donors to the OVF gave $10,000 or more.
The fund returned about half a million dollars to donors. It spent $67,000 at the N9NE Steakhouse. The DNC has more than $20 million on hand, but has debts of about $10 million.
A similar joint fundraising committee between House Speaker John A. Boehner and the National Republican Congressional Committee raised $1 million in the last three months.
Mr. Boehner’s campaign itself filed seconds ago and raised $1.8 million, spending $1.1 million. It has more than $3 million in the bank.
Minnesota Republican Tim Pawlenty raised $4.4 million and has $2 million remaining in the bank. Lobbyist James Hyland bundled $18,000 for the campaign. The haul dwarfs Rick Santorum, who attracted a mere $582,000.
In the House after Boehner, Florida Republican Alan West leads in funds raised in the last three months with $1.5 million, besting even leaders such as Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, Maryland Democrat.
The fundraising of Joe Wilson, South Carolina Republican, who famously shouted “You lie!” at the president during the State of the Union address, lags, and he spent more than he raised.
The fund preparing for the Republican National Convention has $1 million in debts.
And Sarah Palin’s PAC raised $1.3 million, overwhelmingly from small individual donors. She spent even more, but still closes the period with more than a million dollars.
Some campaigns from cycles long gone are still active, or at least have ledgers that aren’t closed out. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s old presidential committee raised $127,000 this quarter, but still owes the firm of consultant Mark Penn $290,000. The campaign did not pay down any of that debt despite its intake.
© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
WASHINGTON — Horror stories are flying about the damage that might be wreaked should Congress and President Barack Obama fail to cut a deal by the Aug. 2 deadline to increase America’s borrowing limit. Nearly every American is in harm’s way, either directly or indirectly.
Absent a deal by then, the government would find itself tight on cash and unable to borrow — and have to start deciding which of the 80 million bills due in August it should pay and which it should put off.
Tough decisions would come immediately: On Aug. 3, some $23 billion in Social Security benefit payments are due to be processed. On Aug. 4, the Treasury Department must pay $87 billion to investors to redeem maturing Treasury securities. On Aug. 15, more than $30 billion in interest payments come due.
In addition to those costs, the government normally pays $5 billion to $10 billion daily to defense contractors, Medicare providers, federal employees and others.
Obama has said he can’t guarantee Social Security checks and payments to veterans and the disabled will go out on schedule in the absence of a deal: “There may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it.” He could be challenged on that, however, because some legal and congressional budget experts question whether he can unilaterally decline to pay Social Security benefits if there are still assets in the program’s trust fund.
Regardless of how that issue is resolved, there’s no question that government services, programs and benefits could take an enormous hit.
No one knows exactly what choices Obama and his top officials would make if the crisis comes. The White House Office of Budget and Management is the agency charged with reviewing possible cuts in benefits and payments while the Treasury Department handles cash flow. All have been mum about their crisis plans, apparently to avoid market speculation or panic.
But Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has insisted the deadline is real. “There is no credible way to give Congress more time,” he said recently.
One analysis, by the Bipartisan Policy Center, suggests that once the government runs out of cash and lacks the power to further borrow, it would need to slash spending at once by as much as a whopping 44 percent. The U.S. now borrows more than 40 cents for every dollar it spends.
So long as the Treasury has tax revenues coming in, it can still make interest payments to technically avoid default. Some analysts think it would lean that way at first, so as to do less harm to the country’s long-term credit rating. Default would be a “major crisis” that would radiate “shockwaves” through the financial system, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress recently.
But putting a priority on paying interest on maturing debt to avoid a default would simply force spending cuts instead — some of them more likely to hit ordinary people.
Parks and monuments can be temporarily shut. That’s been done before.
But is it worth taxpayers’ money to pay the costs of pursuing a second trial against former baseball star Roger Clemens if the judge who declared a mistrial in his perjury case this week clears the way? And what about clinical trials on new drugs or other scientific research projects? Or completing half-finished highway construction projects?
The government is even weighing the prospect of selling off some of its assets — gold in Fort Knox, buildings, property, even some national parklands — to make ends meet, if absolutely necessary.
Government contractors are likely to be among the early victims, says Paul Light, professor of public policy at New York University. “No new contracts. Delayed payments. Stop work orders. I can’t imagine that Obama would ever touch soldiers’ pay. But you’d get closing of parks, as we’ve seen in Minnesota, the national monuments, freezes on discretionary spending including Medicaid.”
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Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Fighting back against Republican calls for greater spending cuts, President Obama said Friday that the government doesn’t need to make major changes to get its budget back on track and called for that solution to include some trims coupled with tax increases.
“Here’s the good news: that it turns out we don’t have to do anything radical to solve this problem. Contrary to what some folks say that — we’re not Greece. You know, we’re not Portugal,” Mr. Obama said at his third press conference in three weeks, using his most powerful public relations tool to take his arguments directly to voters.
Mr. Obama and congressional leaders are negotiating over whether and how to raise the federal government’s borrowing limit, which early next month will bump up against the $14.29 trillion limit set in law. The administration, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and leading business groups have all warned of major damage to the U.S. economy if the federal government cannot pay its bills.
The GOP wants to couple any debt increase to spending cuts in both discretionary and entitlement programs such as Medicare, while Mr. Obama wants tax increases to be part of the mix. That stance is actually an about-face from earlier this year, though, when Mr. Obama had called for the debt limit to be raised without any conditions at all.
The president said there are three options on the table: a big deal that total $4 billion in tax increases and potential spending cuts; a plan about half that size; and a “fallback position” that would increase the debt limit but push off action on the deficit.
House Republicans have said they’ll put together a bill with spending cuts, and hold a vote on it next week, essentially putting down a very public marker for where they stand.
“We want to be able to go home to the people that elected us and show them that we’re not going to allow this kind of spending to continue. We don’t have the money, they don’t have the money,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Virginia Republican.
But Mr. Obama rejected the outlines of House Republicans’ spending-cuts plan as an effort “just to make political statements,” and said it would require slashing too deeply from domestic spending.
Still, the president insisted he’s open to a deal — “If they show me a serious plan, I’m ready to move,” he said — and added he wants to hear from congressional leaders by the middle of the weekend on whether they are willing to compromise.
Even as Mr. Obama tried to strike an optimistic tone, he said the consequences of not raising the debt limit would be “Armageddon.”
Friday marks the first day this week that that White House and Hill negotiators have not met.
© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
Big issues are piling up in Congress, but halfway through the year, the Senate is on pace for its least productive legislative session since records were first kept, and the House is also operating at a clip well below normal, according to an analysis of floor activity by The Washington Times.
Congressional analysts say the action regularly stalls when power is shared between the two parties, but this year’s slow pace, particularly in the Senate, is at a historic low even by standards of divided government.
Through June 30, the upper chamber had passed the fewest bills since the Congressional Record started keeping monthly data in 1947. The Senate had also amassed the second-fewest total number of pages in the Record — a measure of floor action — and notched the sixth-fewest number of floor votes.
One senator called the pace of activity “glacial,” and the nadir may have come this month, when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, canceled the chamber’s Independence Day vacation to work on debt reduction, only to hold two meaningless votes and then adjourn early.
Much of the real action has been shunted behind closed doors, where big deals are worked out and then offered to lawmakers in all-or-nothing votes.
Analysts said Senate Democrats are likely trying to shield the chamber from having to take difficult votes ahead of what’s expected to be a tough election cycle next year.
“Harry Reid has been facing a major problem of arithmetic,” said David Mayhew, a political science professor at Yale with whom The Times shared its findings. “He has only 53 Democrats; he cannot count on any Republicans at all; and a dozen or so of those Democrats must be terrified by the election results of last November. So it’s hard for Reid to mobilize floor majorities. Given that problem, why move measures along at all?”
Across the Capitol, the Republican-run House is doing only slightly better. Through June 30, it had passed the second-fewest bills on record, but was above average in both time spent in session and number of recorded votes held, earning it a tie for 10th least productive session overall in The Times‘ analysis.
Together, the House and Senate combine to account for the third least productive Congress on record, trailing only 1981 and 1989.
Measuring futility
The Times analysis looked at five yardsticks for legislative activity: the amount of time each chamber has spent in session; the total number of bills that have passed; the number of floor votes each chamber has taken; the total pages amassed in the Congressional Record; and the number of bills originating in each chamber that have been signed into law.
Using the Resume of Congressional Activity, printed in the official Congressional Record at the end of each month, The Times ranked each chamber’s activity on all five measures through June 30 for each year, then combined the rankings into a “legislative futility” index.
By that reckoning, 2011 is the worst year for the Senate since complete records were first compiled in 1947. It has passed just 28 bills, the worst in the 65 years on record, and compiled 4,308 pages of activity in the Congressional Record, which was second worst. The nine bills it has seen signed by President Obama are the sixth-worst total, while the 104 votes rank 15th and the 541 hours in session is 19th.
Asked for comment on the analysis, Mr. Reid’s office requested that The Times provide the data used. The Times provided the information, but Mr. Reid’s office did not respond to repeated follow-up messages this week.
Mr. Mayhew, the Yale political scientist, said the Senate is in a position it hasn’t been in for nearly a century, after last year’s elections turned over House control to the GOP but left the upper chamber under Democratic control.
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