Pelicans, Back From Brink of Extinction, Face Oil Threat
By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF and LESLIE KAUFMAN
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/us/05pelican.html?hp
FORT JACKSON, La. — For more than a decade, the hundreds of brown pelicans that nested among the mangrove shrubs on Queen Bess Island west of here were living proof that a species brought to the edge of extinction could come back and thrive.
The island was one of three sites in Louisiana where the large, long-billed birds were reintroduced after pesticides wiped them out in the state in the 1960s.
But on Thursday, 29 of the birds, their feathers so coated in thick brown sludge that their natural white and gray markings were totally obscured, were airlifted to a bird rehabilitation center in Fort Jackson, the latest victims of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Another dozen were taken to other rescue centers.
Six more pelicans were brought here on Friday, and as visitors to the center looked on, the birds huddled together in makeshift plywood cages and, in their unnatural stillness, looked as if the gooey muck had frozen them solid. The 29 pelicans brought in Thursday were being treated in hot rooms by workers in protective clothing.
“The pelicans are in dire trouble,” said Doug Inkley, a senior scientist with the National Wildlife Federation, who worried that the oil spill could put an end to the bird’s recovery in Louisiana.
The images of oil-covered birds — pelicans, northern gannets, laughing gulls and others — are eerily reminiscent of the Exxon Valdez disaster 21 years ago, and have in recent days have become the most vivid symbol of the damage wrought by the hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil that have poured into the Gulf of Mexico since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20. Since the spill, 612 damaged birds had been cataloged as of Friday, most dead but some alive and drenched in oil, federal officials said.
Yet the brown pelican, because of its history of robust recovery in the face of extreme peril, has a special significance for the public.
The birds were once so common on the coastline here that they grace the state flag. They were frequent companions for fishermen, who shared their waters and admired their skill at spotting fish from afar and diving from great heights to scoop them up in their bills.
At the turn of the 20th century, observers estimated the brown pelican population in Louisiana at close to 50,000. But by 1961, no nesting pair could be spotted along the state’s entire coast, according to LaCoast, a Coast Guard Web site. Like another subspecies of the brown pelican found in California, the local birds had been hard hit by DDT and other pesticides, which acted to thin the shells of their eggs. The eggs were crushed when the adults sat on them. (DDT was banned in the United States in 1972.)
In 1968, Louisiana took birds from a surviving Florida colony and reintroduced them along the state’s southern coast in three spots. One was Queen Bess Island, which had been the site of one of the last breeding pairs before extinction, said Kerry St. Pé, program director of the nearby Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program.
Still, the birds struggled, threatened this time by the loss of their habitat. The local wetlands, hurt by levees in the Mississippi that blocked sediment from flowing downstream and by canals cut by oil companies looking to lay pipe, were sinking into the gulf at an astonishing rate. Queen Bess was going under as well until 1990, when a coastal restoration project financed a rock barrier around the island, which stabilized it. The pelican colony began to flourish and the birds’ offspring helped repopulate the coastline, Mr. St. Pé said.
Last year, the birds were officially taken off the endangered species list. But the oil spill, experts said, could change that. Like all birds, pelicans are very sensitive to oil, said Melanie Driscoll, director of bird conservation for the National Audubon Society’s Louisiana Coastal Initiative. It prevents them from regulating their body temperature when it gets on their feathers, she said, and in Louisiana the pelicans are subject to overheating. The oil can also poison the fish the pelicans feed on and seep through the shells of pelican eggs, killing the embryos.
The potential for damage was frighteningly apparent at the rescue center set up here by the International Bird Rescue Research Center with BP and federal and state officials. All day Thursday, oiled birds, including the 29 brown pelicans, arrived at the makeshift veterinary emergency room built in a hangar on a former military base. They were carried from Coast Guard helicopters in dog kennels and cardboard boxes with air holes punched in them.
Most of the birds were so thoroughly coated in crude that they could not stand up. Some were stuck to the floor of their cages. Workers wiped off thick globs of oil with towels, then gave them fluids and fed them a fish slurry.
The pelicans were placed in plywood pens covered with blankets. The next morning, workers began to clean them using hot water and Dawn, a mild dish detergent.
So far, even the most heavily oiled pelicans have survived. Had they not been treated immediately, however, they would have almost certainly drowned or died of starvation or exposure, according to a veterinarian with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.
The birds at the rehabilitation center, said Sharon Taylor, a veterinarian here, represent a lucky few — far more are certain to die in the wild.
“A lot of them will just disappear into the environment,” she said. “We will probably only find a very, very small percentage of what’s been impacted out there.”
Still, she worried that because there are so many large rookeries nearby, far more pelicans would soon be headed to the center.
“Tomorrow or tonight we could get a hundred pelicans, we could get a thousand pelicans,” Ms. Taylor said.
John Collins Rudolf reported from Fort Jackson, La., and Leslie Kaufman from New York.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Gay? Whatever, Dude
Gay? Whatever, Dude
By CHARLES M. BLOW
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/opinion/05blow.html?th&emc=th
Last week, while many of us were distracted by the oil belching forth from the gulf floor and the president’s ham-handed attempts to demonstrate that he was sufficiently engaged and enraged, Gallup released a stunning, and little noticed, report on Americans’ evolving views of homosexuality. Allow me to enlighten:
1. For the first time, the percentage of Americans who perceive “gay and lesbian relations” as morally acceptable has crossed the 50 percent mark. (You have to love the fact that they still use the word “relations.” So quaint.)
2. Also for the first time, the percentage of men who hold that view is greater than the percentage of women who do.
3. This new alignment is being led by a dramatic change in attitudes among younger men, but older men’s perceptions also have eclipsed older women’s. While women’s views have stayed about the same over the past four years, the percentage of men ages 18 to 49 who perceived these “relations” as morally acceptable rose by 48 percent, and among men over 50, it rose by 26 percent.
I warned you: stunning.
There is no way to know for sure what’s driving such a radical change in men’s views on this issue because Gallup didn’t ask, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t speculate. To help me do so, I called Dr. Michael Kimmel, a professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the author or editor of more than 20 books on men and masculinity, and Professor Ritch Savin-Williams, the chairman of human development at Cornell University and the author of seven books, most of which deal with adolescent development and same-sex attraction.
Here are three theories:
1. The contact hypothesis. As more men openly acknowledge that they are gay, it becomes harder for men who are not gay to discriminate against them. And as that group of openly gay men becomes more varied — including athletes, celebrities and soldiers — many of the old, derisive stereotypes lose their purchase. To that point, a Gallup poll released last May found that people who said they personally knew someone who was gay or lesbian were more likely to be accepting of gay men and lesbians in general and more supportive of their issues.
2. Men may be becoming more egalitarian in general. As Dr. Kimmel put it: “Men have gotten increasingly comfortable with the presence of, and relative equality of, ‘the other,’ and we’re becoming more accustomed to it. And most men are finding that it has not been a disaster.” The expanding sense of acceptance likely began with the feminist and civil rights movements and is now being extended to the gay rights movement. Dr. Kimmel continued, “The dire predictions for diversity have not only not come true, but, in fact, they’ve been proved the other way.”
3. Virulent homophobes are increasingly being exposed for engaging in homosexuality. Think Ted Haggard, the once fervent antigay preacher and former leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, and his male prostitute. (This week, Haggard announced that he was starting a new “inclusive” church open to “gay, straight, bi, tall, short,” but no same-sex marriages. Not “God’s ideal.” Sorry.) Or George Rekers, the founding member of the Family Research Council, and his rent boy/luggage handler. Last week, the council claimed that repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” would lead to an explosion of “homosexual assaults” in which sleeping soldiers would be the victims of fondling and fellatio by gay predators. In fact, there is a growing body of research that supports the notion that homophobia in some men could be a reaction to their own homosexual impulses. Many heterosexual men see this, and they don’t want to be associated with it. It’s like being antigay is becoming the old gay. Not cool.
These sound plausible, but why aren’t women seeing the same enlightening effects as men? Professor Savin-Williams suggests that there may be a “ceiling effect,” that men are simply catching up to women, and there may be a level at which views top out. Interesting.
All of this is great news, but it doesn’t mean that all measures relating to acceptance of gay men and lesbians have changed to the same degree. People’s comfort with the “gay and lesbian” part of the equation is still greater than their comfort with the “relations” part — the idea versus the act — particularly when it comes to pairings of men.
As Professor Savin-Williams told me, there is still a higher aversive reaction to same-sex sexuality among men than among women.
For instance, in a February New York Times/CBS News poll, half of the respondents were asked if they favored letting “gay men and lesbians” serve in the military (which is still more than 85 percent male), and the other half were asked if they favored letting “homosexuals” serve. Those who got the “homosexual” question favored it at a rate that was 11 percentage points lower than those who got the “gay men and lesbians” question.
Part of the difference may be that “homosexual” is a bigger, more clinical word freighted with a lot of historical baggage. But just as likely is that the inclusion of the root word “sex” still raises an aversive response to the idea of, how shall I say, the architectural issues between two men. It is the point at which support for basic human rights cleaves from endorsement of behavior.
As for the aversion among men, it may be softening a bit. Professor Savin-Williams says that his current research reveals that the fastest-growing group along the sexuality continuum are men who self-identify as “mostly straight” as opposed to labels like “straight,” “gay” or “bisexual.” They acknowledge some level of attraction to other men even as they say that they probably wouldn’t act on it, but ... the right guy, the right day, a few beers and who knows. As the professor points out, you would never have heard that in years past.
All together now: stunning.
(I now return you to Day 46 of the oil spill where they finally may be making some progress.)
•
I invite you to join me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter, or e-mail me at chblow@nytimes.com.
By CHARLES M. BLOW
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/opinion/05blow.html?th&emc=th
Last week, while many of us were distracted by the oil belching forth from the gulf floor and the president’s ham-handed attempts to demonstrate that he was sufficiently engaged and enraged, Gallup released a stunning, and little noticed, report on Americans’ evolving views of homosexuality. Allow me to enlighten:
1. For the first time, the percentage of Americans who perceive “gay and lesbian relations” as morally acceptable has crossed the 50 percent mark. (You have to love the fact that they still use the word “relations.” So quaint.)
2. Also for the first time, the percentage of men who hold that view is greater than the percentage of women who do.
3. This new alignment is being led by a dramatic change in attitudes among younger men, but older men’s perceptions also have eclipsed older women’s. While women’s views have stayed about the same over the past four years, the percentage of men ages 18 to 49 who perceived these “relations” as morally acceptable rose by 48 percent, and among men over 50, it rose by 26 percent.
I warned you: stunning.
There is no way to know for sure what’s driving such a radical change in men’s views on this issue because Gallup didn’t ask, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t speculate. To help me do so, I called Dr. Michael Kimmel, a professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the author or editor of more than 20 books on men and masculinity, and Professor Ritch Savin-Williams, the chairman of human development at Cornell University and the author of seven books, most of which deal with adolescent development and same-sex attraction.
Here are three theories:
1. The contact hypothesis. As more men openly acknowledge that they are gay, it becomes harder for men who are not gay to discriminate against them. And as that group of openly gay men becomes more varied — including athletes, celebrities and soldiers — many of the old, derisive stereotypes lose their purchase. To that point, a Gallup poll released last May found that people who said they personally knew someone who was gay or lesbian were more likely to be accepting of gay men and lesbians in general and more supportive of their issues.
2. Men may be becoming more egalitarian in general. As Dr. Kimmel put it: “Men have gotten increasingly comfortable with the presence of, and relative equality of, ‘the other,’ and we’re becoming more accustomed to it. And most men are finding that it has not been a disaster.” The expanding sense of acceptance likely began with the feminist and civil rights movements and is now being extended to the gay rights movement. Dr. Kimmel continued, “The dire predictions for diversity have not only not come true, but, in fact, they’ve been proved the other way.”
3. Virulent homophobes are increasingly being exposed for engaging in homosexuality. Think Ted Haggard, the once fervent antigay preacher and former leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, and his male prostitute. (This week, Haggard announced that he was starting a new “inclusive” church open to “gay, straight, bi, tall, short,” but no same-sex marriages. Not “God’s ideal.” Sorry.) Or George Rekers, the founding member of the Family Research Council, and his rent boy/luggage handler. Last week, the council claimed that repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” would lead to an explosion of “homosexual assaults” in which sleeping soldiers would be the victims of fondling and fellatio by gay predators. In fact, there is a growing body of research that supports the notion that homophobia in some men could be a reaction to their own homosexual impulses. Many heterosexual men see this, and they don’t want to be associated with it. It’s like being antigay is becoming the old gay. Not cool.
These sound plausible, but why aren’t women seeing the same enlightening effects as men? Professor Savin-Williams suggests that there may be a “ceiling effect,” that men are simply catching up to women, and there may be a level at which views top out. Interesting.
All of this is great news, but it doesn’t mean that all measures relating to acceptance of gay men and lesbians have changed to the same degree. People’s comfort with the “gay and lesbian” part of the equation is still greater than their comfort with the “relations” part — the idea versus the act — particularly when it comes to pairings of men.
As Professor Savin-Williams told me, there is still a higher aversive reaction to same-sex sexuality among men than among women.
For instance, in a February New York Times/CBS News poll, half of the respondents were asked if they favored letting “gay men and lesbians” serve in the military (which is still more than 85 percent male), and the other half were asked if they favored letting “homosexuals” serve. Those who got the “homosexual” question favored it at a rate that was 11 percentage points lower than those who got the “gay men and lesbians” question.
Part of the difference may be that “homosexual” is a bigger, more clinical word freighted with a lot of historical baggage. But just as likely is that the inclusion of the root word “sex” still raises an aversive response to the idea of, how shall I say, the architectural issues between two men. It is the point at which support for basic human rights cleaves from endorsement of behavior.
As for the aversion among men, it may be softening a bit. Professor Savin-Williams says that his current research reveals that the fastest-growing group along the sexuality continuum are men who self-identify as “mostly straight” as opposed to labels like “straight,” “gay” or “bisexual.” They acknowledge some level of attraction to other men even as they say that they probably wouldn’t act on it, but ... the right guy, the right day, a few beers and who knows. As the professor points out, you would never have heard that in years past.
All together now: stunning.
(I now return you to Day 46 of the oil spill where they finally may be making some progress.)
•
I invite you to join me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter, or e-mail me at chblow@nytimes.com.
New York Times Editorial: The Spill and Energy Bill
New York Times Editorial: The Spill and Energy Bill
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/opinion/05sat1.html?th&emc=th
The nation’s political leaders have had a lot to say in recent years about America’s addiction to fossil fuels and the need to find cleaner, more climate-friendly alternatives. In recent weeks, they have had a lot to say about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. On Wednesday, President Obama put them together.
In a speech at Carnegie Mellon University, he invoked the spill to pound on Congress about its duty to pass a comprehensive energy bill that addresses oil dependency and global warming. The House has passed such a bill, but a companion measure in the Senate languishes, hostage to solid Republican opposition, exaggerated fears about its costs and timidity on the part of the Democratic leadership. “I will work with anyone from either party to get this done,” he said.
Mr. Obama’s task is to follow up that vow with action. We are not optimistic that his implacable Republican opposition will work with him on anything. But perhaps the spreading nightmare on the waters of the gulf will get a few to break with the party line.
The Senate bill is far from perfect. It coddles the coal companies, and its provisions for off-shore drilling will now have to be revised or at least tightened up with multiple safeguards. But for the first time, the bill would set a price on carbon-dioxide emissions, which are now dumped without penalty into the atmosphere. This is an essential prerequisite for shifting private and public investment to cleaner energy sources.
The oil savings would be substantial. According to a new study by the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics, the bill’s mandates for alternative fuels and more efficient vehicles would reduce oil imports one-third by 2035.
But instead of embracing this positive bill, the Senate is expected to vote soon on a measure that would move the country in exactly the wrong direction — a resolution sponsored by Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican, that would undercut the government’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases and reduce the anticipated oil savings from the tough new fuel economy standards the White House announced last April.
As this page has noted before, persuading the Senate to act is not only a matter of leadership, but a matter of international obligation. At the Copenhagen climate conference in December, Mr. Obama committed the United States to a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020 — the minimum that scientists believe necessary to begin steering the world away from the worst impacts of a warming planet.
Delivering on that pledge is even more urgent now than it was then. As he demonstrated at Carnegie Mellon, Mr. Obama knows how to hit all the right notes rhetorically. Passing a comprehensive bill would be good for the economy, by creating new jobs; good for the environment, by reducing emissions; and good for national security, by reducing our dependence on unstable oil-producing countries. The president’s task now is to convert that rhetorical fervor into actual, filibuster-proof votes.
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/opinion/05sat1.html?th&emc=th
The nation’s political leaders have had a lot to say in recent years about America’s addiction to fossil fuels and the need to find cleaner, more climate-friendly alternatives. In recent weeks, they have had a lot to say about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. On Wednesday, President Obama put them together.
In a speech at Carnegie Mellon University, he invoked the spill to pound on Congress about its duty to pass a comprehensive energy bill that addresses oil dependency and global warming. The House has passed such a bill, but a companion measure in the Senate languishes, hostage to solid Republican opposition, exaggerated fears about its costs and timidity on the part of the Democratic leadership. “I will work with anyone from either party to get this done,” he said.
Mr. Obama’s task is to follow up that vow with action. We are not optimistic that his implacable Republican opposition will work with him on anything. But perhaps the spreading nightmare on the waters of the gulf will get a few to break with the party line.
The Senate bill is far from perfect. It coddles the coal companies, and its provisions for off-shore drilling will now have to be revised or at least tightened up with multiple safeguards. But for the first time, the bill would set a price on carbon-dioxide emissions, which are now dumped without penalty into the atmosphere. This is an essential prerequisite for shifting private and public investment to cleaner energy sources.
The oil savings would be substantial. According to a new study by the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics, the bill’s mandates for alternative fuels and more efficient vehicles would reduce oil imports one-third by 2035.
But instead of embracing this positive bill, the Senate is expected to vote soon on a measure that would move the country in exactly the wrong direction — a resolution sponsored by Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican, that would undercut the government’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases and reduce the anticipated oil savings from the tough new fuel economy standards the White House announced last April.
As this page has noted before, persuading the Senate to act is not only a matter of leadership, but a matter of international obligation. At the Copenhagen climate conference in December, Mr. Obama committed the United States to a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020 — the minimum that scientists believe necessary to begin steering the world away from the worst impacts of a warming planet.
Delivering on that pledge is even more urgent now than it was then. As he demonstrated at Carnegie Mellon, Mr. Obama knows how to hit all the right notes rhetorically. Passing a comprehensive bill would be good for the economy, by creating new jobs; good for the environment, by reducing emissions; and good for national security, by reducing our dependence on unstable oil-producing countries. The president’s task now is to convert that rhetorical fervor into actual, filibuster-proof votes.
Tempting Area for Exaggeration Meets Tools of the YouTube Era
Tempting Area for Exaggeration Meets Tools of the YouTube Era
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/us/politics/05campaign.html?th&emc=th
WASHINGTON — It happened again. Another candidate for office is struggling to reconcile misleading statements he made about his record in the military. This time, it is Representative Mark Kirk, a Republican from Illinois running for the Senate, apologizing for misleading statements he made about, among other things, serving in the first Iraq war and in Kosovo.
“I simply misremembered it wrong,” he said, a remark that was blared across the front page of The Chicago Sun-Times on Friday. A few weeks ago, it was Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general and Democratic candidate for Senate, trying to explain misstatements suggesting he had served in Vietnam.
This type of political behavior is hardly new. Over the years, a parade of politicians from both parties — John Kerry, Al Gore, Tom Harkin, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and David Duke, to name a few — have had to account for what opponents portrayed as exaggerations or worse about their military service (or their attempts to avoid service altogether). Some of those candidates and many others have been called out for less-than-fully-truthful statements on countless other topics as well.
But the intensity of these latest skirmishes offers an insight into how the American political scene has changed. A common characteristic of politicians in search of votes — a propensity to puffery — has run head on into an aggressive new culture that subjects them to 24-hour flyspecking by opponents, bloggers, the mainstream media and regular citizens.
What is more, the rules of what is acceptable have grown murky since the days when Bruce F. Caputo, a Republican candidate for Senate from New York challenging Daniel Patrick Moynihan, was forced out after it was revealed that he had falsely claimed to have been drafted for Vietnam. (That information was leaked by a senior political operative for Senator Moynihan, Tim Russert.)
The most pressing question for Mr. Blumenthal and Mr. Kirk is how much water they are taking on. As both are learning, analysts said, the issue in many cases is not so much whether they served in battle in Vietnam or Iraq, but the credibility and character of the candidate.
Mr. Kirk has admitted to a number of errors and discrepancies related to his military service. In the last week, Mr. Kirk acknowledged that his official House Web site incorrectly stated in 2005 that he served “in Operation Iraqi Freedom” when he was actually serving stateside. The problem was found that year and corrected to say that he had served “during” the invasion of Iraq.
Mr. Kirk has often said he served in Iraq — which his campaign clarified that he did for two months in 2000 in Operation Northern Watch, which enforced the no-fly zone above Iraq. He also served twice in Afghanistan.
“Over the last generation, you’ve gone from people who were branded or identified with a party to races being much more about their character: Do voters trust them?” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant who advised Mr. Gore when he dealt with of questions about exaggerating his service when he ran for president in 2000. “That’s one of the reasons that exaggerations have become a major part of a campaign. It is a way of telling whether you can trust something. It’s something that opposition researchers, opponents, journalists can grab on to raise questions about.
“You have far more scrutiny than in the past, no matter what anyone says about newspapers being on the demise,” Mr. Lehane said.
Polls suggest Mr. Blumenthal has not been dragged down since the questions were first raised in an article in The New York Times. But Mr. Kirk has been forced this week to go on an apology tour to deal with challenges about the credibility of what he has claimed about his military record. Officials in both parties said the continuing questions could damage the prospects of Mr. Kirk, a five-term congressman and intelligence officer in the Naval Reserve, in his challenge against Alexi Giannoulias, a Democrat who had seemed vulnerable because of ties to the banking industry.
Candidates are prone to embellishing things in their past (from academic records to marital history) but war service has always been a particularly tempting area for exaggeration. Having a distinguished military career is a powerful drawing card, going back to George Washington.
“More than half our presidential candidates have had military service of some kind,” said Jeremy M. Teigen, a professor of political science at Ramapo College in New Jersey, who is writing a book on military credentials and political campaigns. “And a not-so-small number of them have strategically emphasized that.”
If the intensive media scrutiny of today is a warning to candidates to watch what claims they are making, it also leaves them vulnerable to the unearthing of any past dissembling, given how much easier it is now to hunt down old appearances and records and make them public. Nuances — like as the definition of the word “serve” — can be problematic, as Mr. Blumenthal has discovered.
“The degree of difficulty of political exaggeration of any kind is directly correlated with the ease of research and the proliferation of sources,” said Bob Kerrey, a Vietnam veteran and former senator from Nebraska who ran for president in 1992. “It’s so much easier to find something I once said when I was trying to convince people I was taller than Bill Clinton than it would be today.”
“In the old days — meaning the last time I campaigned in ’94 — if I had something hot on my opponent, if I had something that was really juicy, I would have go the bars where the journalists were and try to get them to print it,” Mr. Kerrey said. “Not any more. I’d just have to post it on YouTube. It’s quicker. And it’s better for my liver.”
Mr. Lehane, who is known for his talents at directing operations to gather unfavorable information about an opponent from their campaign appearances — in the vernacular, it is known as tracking — said chronicling what a candidates says and does is much easier now.
“In 1992, when you wanted to track the candidate you had to send people out there with tape recorders, and try to get something you could use,” he said. “It was hard to get people close enough. It does seem that you used to get away with a lot more puffery than you can get away with now.”
Emma Graves Fitzsimmons contributed reporting.
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/us/politics/05campaign.html?th&emc=th
WASHINGTON — It happened again. Another candidate for office is struggling to reconcile misleading statements he made about his record in the military. This time, it is Representative Mark Kirk, a Republican from Illinois running for the Senate, apologizing for misleading statements he made about, among other things, serving in the first Iraq war and in Kosovo.
“I simply misremembered it wrong,” he said, a remark that was blared across the front page of The Chicago Sun-Times on Friday. A few weeks ago, it was Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general and Democratic candidate for Senate, trying to explain misstatements suggesting he had served in Vietnam.
This type of political behavior is hardly new. Over the years, a parade of politicians from both parties — John Kerry, Al Gore, Tom Harkin, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and David Duke, to name a few — have had to account for what opponents portrayed as exaggerations or worse about their military service (or their attempts to avoid service altogether). Some of those candidates and many others have been called out for less-than-fully-truthful statements on countless other topics as well.
But the intensity of these latest skirmishes offers an insight into how the American political scene has changed. A common characteristic of politicians in search of votes — a propensity to puffery — has run head on into an aggressive new culture that subjects them to 24-hour flyspecking by opponents, bloggers, the mainstream media and regular citizens.
What is more, the rules of what is acceptable have grown murky since the days when Bruce F. Caputo, a Republican candidate for Senate from New York challenging Daniel Patrick Moynihan, was forced out after it was revealed that he had falsely claimed to have been drafted for Vietnam. (That information was leaked by a senior political operative for Senator Moynihan, Tim Russert.)
The most pressing question for Mr. Blumenthal and Mr. Kirk is how much water they are taking on. As both are learning, analysts said, the issue in many cases is not so much whether they served in battle in Vietnam or Iraq, but the credibility and character of the candidate.
Mr. Kirk has admitted to a number of errors and discrepancies related to his military service. In the last week, Mr. Kirk acknowledged that his official House Web site incorrectly stated in 2005 that he served “in Operation Iraqi Freedom” when he was actually serving stateside. The problem was found that year and corrected to say that he had served “during” the invasion of Iraq.
Mr. Kirk has often said he served in Iraq — which his campaign clarified that he did for two months in 2000 in Operation Northern Watch, which enforced the no-fly zone above Iraq. He also served twice in Afghanistan.
“Over the last generation, you’ve gone from people who were branded or identified with a party to races being much more about their character: Do voters trust them?” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant who advised Mr. Gore when he dealt with of questions about exaggerating his service when he ran for president in 2000. “That’s one of the reasons that exaggerations have become a major part of a campaign. It is a way of telling whether you can trust something. It’s something that opposition researchers, opponents, journalists can grab on to raise questions about.
“You have far more scrutiny than in the past, no matter what anyone says about newspapers being on the demise,” Mr. Lehane said.
Polls suggest Mr. Blumenthal has not been dragged down since the questions were first raised in an article in The New York Times. But Mr. Kirk has been forced this week to go on an apology tour to deal with challenges about the credibility of what he has claimed about his military record. Officials in both parties said the continuing questions could damage the prospects of Mr. Kirk, a five-term congressman and intelligence officer in the Naval Reserve, in his challenge against Alexi Giannoulias, a Democrat who had seemed vulnerable because of ties to the banking industry.
Candidates are prone to embellishing things in their past (from academic records to marital history) but war service has always been a particularly tempting area for exaggeration. Having a distinguished military career is a powerful drawing card, going back to George Washington.
“More than half our presidential candidates have had military service of some kind,” said Jeremy M. Teigen, a professor of political science at Ramapo College in New Jersey, who is writing a book on military credentials and political campaigns. “And a not-so-small number of them have strategically emphasized that.”
If the intensive media scrutiny of today is a warning to candidates to watch what claims they are making, it also leaves them vulnerable to the unearthing of any past dissembling, given how much easier it is now to hunt down old appearances and records and make them public. Nuances — like as the definition of the word “serve” — can be problematic, as Mr. Blumenthal has discovered.
“The degree of difficulty of political exaggeration of any kind is directly correlated with the ease of research and the proliferation of sources,” said Bob Kerrey, a Vietnam veteran and former senator from Nebraska who ran for president in 1992. “It’s so much easier to find something I once said when I was trying to convince people I was taller than Bill Clinton than it would be today.”
“In the old days — meaning the last time I campaigned in ’94 — if I had something hot on my opponent, if I had something that was really juicy, I would have go the bars where the journalists were and try to get them to print it,” Mr. Kerrey said. “Not any more. I’d just have to post it on YouTube. It’s quicker. And it’s better for my liver.”
Mr. Lehane, who is known for his talents at directing operations to gather unfavorable information about an opponent from their campaign appearances — in the vernacular, it is known as tracking — said chronicling what a candidates says and does is much easier now.
“In 1992, when you wanted to track the candidate you had to send people out there with tape recorders, and try to get something you could use,” he said. “It was hard to get people close enough. It does seem that you used to get away with a lot more puffery than you can get away with now.”
Emma Graves Fitzsimmons contributed reporting.
Immigration Debate Defines Race in California
Immigration Debate Defines Race in California
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/us/05calif.html?th&emc=th
IRVINE, Calif. — Meg Whitman was almost at the end of a 30-minute town hall-style meeting here, responding to questions about taxes and spending, schools and unemployment. But one topic had not come up, so Ms. Whitman, a Republican candidate for governor, raised it herself, serving up a stern attack against illegal immigration and a promise that she would protect California’s borders.
“I am 100 percent against amnesty,” Ms. Whitman proclaimed. “My Republican opponent says I’m for amnesty. That is absolutely not true.”
For almost a year, Ms. Whitman, the former chief executive of eBay, has campaigned on three issues: jobs, education and government spending. But as her contest for the Republican nomination for governor against Steve Poizner, the state insurance commissioner, enters its final days, she has found herself drawn into a loud and caustic argument over immigration policy. “It is the only issue,” said Stuart Stevens, Mr. Poizner’s chief campaign consultant.
The primary here on Tuesday will be the highest-stakes electoral contest since Arizona approved a tough immigration law, and that has allowed Mr. Poizner to reshape the campaign, focusing a series of stark attacks on Ms. Whitman. The extent to which immigration has, in the view of many Republicans, hijacked this contest has stirred worry that the nominee chosen next week will be weakened in the general election against Jerry Brown, a Democrat and former governor.
“There’s a difference between talking about a problem and trying to exploit the problem as a wedge issue to try to get scared white voters,” said Allan Hoffenblum, a Republican analyst here. “I’m not speaking as a lone wolf on this in the Republican Party. It’s concerning a lot of us.”
Hispanics are becoming increasingly influential in California politics. One in six voters this November is expected to be Hispanic — a proportion that is likely to grow in coming years — and Southern California has been at the forefront of efforts to boycott Arizona for enacting tough anti-immigrant legislation in late April.
In many ways, California’s primary race offers a worrisome preview of what many Republicans say are the political perils for the party nationally in being identified with tough immigration policies. Mr. Poizner has enthusiastically endorsed such policies in his campaign. His series of stark television advertisements portraying Ms. Whitman as an advocate of permissive immigration began three weeks ago.
The emphasis on immigration is striking in a state that is reeling from the economic downturn and saddled with what officials in both parties view as a dysfunctional government. At 12.5 percent, the unemployment rate here is far above the national average. The state has been hit hard by the foreclosure crisis, its public education system is a shambles, and disapproval of the Legislature and of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican barred by term limits from seeking re-election, are at near-record highs. The election is playing out against the backdrop of the latest battle in Sacramento over proposed cuts in spending to balance the budget.
One strain on the state’s finances is providing social services to a large population of illegal immigrants, which is one reason the issue has political resonance. Still, it is hardly clear that the tough-on-immigrants stance has universal appeal among Republican voters; in the Central Valley, for instance, many farmers use undocumented farm workers.
A Los Angeles Times/U.S.C. poll published on Sunday showed Ms. Whitman leading Mr. Poizner by 53 percent to 29 percent; other polls taken last month, after Mr. Poizner began his advertising assault against Ms. Whitman, showed that he had significantly tightened the race, until she started pushing back.
In an interview, Ms. Whitman — who has been running advertisements promising to be “tough as nails” on illegal immigration — said that she thought voters were concerned about other things besides immigration, and that she was raising the issue only in response to what she asserted were Mr. Poizner’s distortions of her record. She said Mr. Poizner had hurt himself as a general election candidate because of the tenor of his attacks.
“I think he’s damaged in the general because he’s only talked about one issue,” Ms. Whitman said. “And I think that’s a big mistake.”
Mr. Poizner said that illegal immigration was “part and parcel of our message from the get-go” and that he always viewed it as the No. 1 issue for Republican primary voters, and a point of contrast with Ms. Whitman.
“It’s huge: everywhere I go, people burst out into applause when I start talking about it,” Mr. Poizner said after appearing at a town hall-style meeting in El Segundo flanked by bright red screens with white lettering proclaiming, “No Amnesty: Stop Illegal Immigration.”
“Our positions are just different,” he continued. “Meg Whitman opposes Arizona. I fully support it. In fact, I don’t see how you can be a Republican running for high office in the United States and be taken seriously if you oppose what’s going on in Arizona.”
Both candidates are independently wealthy and together have spent more than $100 million — about $80 million for Ms. Whitman, and $25 million for Mr. Poizner — which has guaranteed a wide audience for the back-and-forth volley of television advertisements, radio spots and mailers. The demonstrated willingness of Ms. Whitman and Mr. Poizner to tap their own political fortunes to win the governorship is one of the key reasons Republicans are hopeful about defeating Mr. Brown.
Even without immigration, candidates this primary season face a politically daunting task in trying to navigate an increasingly conservative Republican base and emerge as a viable candidate in the general election. Mark Baldassare, president and chief executive of the Public Policy Institute of California, a policy study and polling group, said that 75 percent of Republicans statewide disapproved of President Obama in a poll earlier last month, compared with 39 percent of all registered voters in California.
“The Republican primary voters are not representative of the overall mood of Californians,” Mr. Baldassare said. “This is really a unique slice of the electorate.”
One sign of this is the extent to which both Ms. Whitman and Mr. Poizner are critical of Mr. Schwarzenegger. Mr. Poizner said he would not want the governor to campaign with him should he win the nomination. “I think it would be better if he just stays out of the primary and the general election,” he said.
Ron Nehring, the chairman of the state Republican Party, said the severity of the economic problems facing California would overshadow the immigration stances taken by the Republican candidate during the primaries. “The Democrats are always trying to paint Republicans as anti-immigrant,” he said. “But the first, second, third and fourth issue in the race for governor is jobs and the economy.”
Ms. Whitman’s advisers said that if she won the nomination, she would move away from immigration to broaden her appeal. But Mr. Poizner said he would not change his campaign a bit.
“This is important for everyone to know: What you see is what you get,” he said. “The campaign I’m waging now in the primary is exactly the same campaign I’ll be waging in the general against Jerry Brown. I think it’s a myth that independents, Democrats, these groups that supposedly would object to my strong positions on illegal immigration — uh-uh.”
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/us/05calif.html?th&emc=th
IRVINE, Calif. — Meg Whitman was almost at the end of a 30-minute town hall-style meeting here, responding to questions about taxes and spending, schools and unemployment. But one topic had not come up, so Ms. Whitman, a Republican candidate for governor, raised it herself, serving up a stern attack against illegal immigration and a promise that she would protect California’s borders.
“I am 100 percent against amnesty,” Ms. Whitman proclaimed. “My Republican opponent says I’m for amnesty. That is absolutely not true.”
For almost a year, Ms. Whitman, the former chief executive of eBay, has campaigned on three issues: jobs, education and government spending. But as her contest for the Republican nomination for governor against Steve Poizner, the state insurance commissioner, enters its final days, she has found herself drawn into a loud and caustic argument over immigration policy. “It is the only issue,” said Stuart Stevens, Mr. Poizner’s chief campaign consultant.
The primary here on Tuesday will be the highest-stakes electoral contest since Arizona approved a tough immigration law, and that has allowed Mr. Poizner to reshape the campaign, focusing a series of stark attacks on Ms. Whitman. The extent to which immigration has, in the view of many Republicans, hijacked this contest has stirred worry that the nominee chosen next week will be weakened in the general election against Jerry Brown, a Democrat and former governor.
“There’s a difference between talking about a problem and trying to exploit the problem as a wedge issue to try to get scared white voters,” said Allan Hoffenblum, a Republican analyst here. “I’m not speaking as a lone wolf on this in the Republican Party. It’s concerning a lot of us.”
Hispanics are becoming increasingly influential in California politics. One in six voters this November is expected to be Hispanic — a proportion that is likely to grow in coming years — and Southern California has been at the forefront of efforts to boycott Arizona for enacting tough anti-immigrant legislation in late April.
In many ways, California’s primary race offers a worrisome preview of what many Republicans say are the political perils for the party nationally in being identified with tough immigration policies. Mr. Poizner has enthusiastically endorsed such policies in his campaign. His series of stark television advertisements portraying Ms. Whitman as an advocate of permissive immigration began three weeks ago.
The emphasis on immigration is striking in a state that is reeling from the economic downturn and saddled with what officials in both parties view as a dysfunctional government. At 12.5 percent, the unemployment rate here is far above the national average. The state has been hit hard by the foreclosure crisis, its public education system is a shambles, and disapproval of the Legislature and of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican barred by term limits from seeking re-election, are at near-record highs. The election is playing out against the backdrop of the latest battle in Sacramento over proposed cuts in spending to balance the budget.
One strain on the state’s finances is providing social services to a large population of illegal immigrants, which is one reason the issue has political resonance. Still, it is hardly clear that the tough-on-immigrants stance has universal appeal among Republican voters; in the Central Valley, for instance, many farmers use undocumented farm workers.
A Los Angeles Times/U.S.C. poll published on Sunday showed Ms. Whitman leading Mr. Poizner by 53 percent to 29 percent; other polls taken last month, after Mr. Poizner began his advertising assault against Ms. Whitman, showed that he had significantly tightened the race, until she started pushing back.
In an interview, Ms. Whitman — who has been running advertisements promising to be “tough as nails” on illegal immigration — said that she thought voters were concerned about other things besides immigration, and that she was raising the issue only in response to what she asserted were Mr. Poizner’s distortions of her record. She said Mr. Poizner had hurt himself as a general election candidate because of the tenor of his attacks.
“I think he’s damaged in the general because he’s only talked about one issue,” Ms. Whitman said. “And I think that’s a big mistake.”
Mr. Poizner said that illegal immigration was “part and parcel of our message from the get-go” and that he always viewed it as the No. 1 issue for Republican primary voters, and a point of contrast with Ms. Whitman.
“It’s huge: everywhere I go, people burst out into applause when I start talking about it,” Mr. Poizner said after appearing at a town hall-style meeting in El Segundo flanked by bright red screens with white lettering proclaiming, “No Amnesty: Stop Illegal Immigration.”
“Our positions are just different,” he continued. “Meg Whitman opposes Arizona. I fully support it. In fact, I don’t see how you can be a Republican running for high office in the United States and be taken seriously if you oppose what’s going on in Arizona.”
Both candidates are independently wealthy and together have spent more than $100 million — about $80 million for Ms. Whitman, and $25 million for Mr. Poizner — which has guaranteed a wide audience for the back-and-forth volley of television advertisements, radio spots and mailers. The demonstrated willingness of Ms. Whitman and Mr. Poizner to tap their own political fortunes to win the governorship is one of the key reasons Republicans are hopeful about defeating Mr. Brown.
Even without immigration, candidates this primary season face a politically daunting task in trying to navigate an increasingly conservative Republican base and emerge as a viable candidate in the general election. Mark Baldassare, president and chief executive of the Public Policy Institute of California, a policy study and polling group, said that 75 percent of Republicans statewide disapproved of President Obama in a poll earlier last month, compared with 39 percent of all registered voters in California.
“The Republican primary voters are not representative of the overall mood of Californians,” Mr. Baldassare said. “This is really a unique slice of the electorate.”
One sign of this is the extent to which both Ms. Whitman and Mr. Poizner are critical of Mr. Schwarzenegger. Mr. Poizner said he would not want the governor to campaign with him should he win the nomination. “I think it would be better if he just stays out of the primary and the general election,” he said.
Ron Nehring, the chairman of the state Republican Party, said the severity of the economic problems facing California would overshadow the immigration stances taken by the Republican candidate during the primaries. “The Democrats are always trying to paint Republicans as anti-immigrant,” he said. “But the first, second, third and fourth issue in the race for governor is jobs and the economy.”
Ms. Whitman’s advisers said that if she won the nomination, she would move away from immigration to broaden her appeal. But Mr. Poizner said he would not change his campaign a bit.
“This is important for everyone to know: What you see is what you get,” he said. “The campaign I’m waging now in the primary is exactly the same campaign I’ll be waging in the general against Jerry Brown. I think it’s a myth that independents, Democrats, these groups that supposedly would object to my strong positions on illegal immigration — uh-uh.”
Obama to Name Retired General to Top Spy Post
Obama to Name Retired General to Top Spy Post
By PETER BAKER and ERIC SCHMITT
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/us/politics/05intel.html?th&emc=th
WASHINGTON — President Obama has picked Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr. as director of national intelligence, tapping a retired officer with decades of experience to improve coordination of the nation’s sprawling spy apparatus amid increasing threats at home and escalating operations abroad.
Mr. Obama plans to announce his choice in the Rose Garden on Saturday, two weeks after forcing Adm. Dennis C. Blair out of the spymaster job, according to administration officials, who insisted on anonymity to disclose the decision before the formal ceremony.
The selection amounts to pushing the reset button for the president as he tries to recalibrate an intelligence structure that has undergone continued revamping since the debacle leading up to the Iraq war, yet by most accounts still lacks the cohesion necessary in an evolving war with terrorists. Even as intelligence agencies expand their role overseas with drone strikes in Pakistan and increased focus on Yemen and Somalia, they have faced a spate of attempted attacks in the United States.
General Clapper, 69, who retired in 1995 after 32 years in the Air Force, rose from a signals intelligence officer to undersecretary of defense for intelligence, overseeing all military spy operations. In picking him, the president found an intelligence veteran who clashed with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and was pushed out of office as a result, only to return to the Pentagon as a top lieutenant to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.
If confirmed by the Senate, General Clapper will be the fourth official since 2005 to oversee the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies, a job created in the aftermath of the Iraq intelligence failures. Some intelligence officials have portrayed the job as a bureaucratic nightmare. Essentially, it involves coordinating some very powerful intelligence chiefs, including the C.I.A. director, who have bigger budgets, their own power bases and access to administration officials and members of Congress.
But Mr. Obama concluded that General Clapper’s experience would enable him to fix a dysfunctional situation. “He has a mandate to work it better and that will require some changes,” said a senior administration official.
“He knows the inside of the business better than anybody I know,” said John J. Hamre, a former deputy defense secretary and now president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But General Clapper will have to figure out how to refashion the job created by Congress to be more effective. “You can’t administratively fix birth defects in legislation,” Mr. Hamre said.
General Clapper may face a fight to get confirmed. The choice generated consternation in the Senate, where some Democrats and Republicans complained that he is too closely aligned to the military, has resisted strengthening the office he has been selected for, and has not cultivated close ties on Capitol Hill.
“He has served honorably and with distinction for a long time, but he’s focused too much on Defense Department issues,” Senator Christopher Bond of Missouri, the ranking Republican on the intelligence committee, said in a telephone interview on Friday. “And I don’t believe that he’s been forthcoming and open with the Intelligence Committee.”
Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the Democratic chairwoman of the intelligence committee, was traveling on Friday and unavailable for comment, her office said. But Ms. Feinstein also expressed reservations when General Clapper emerged as an early front-runner to succeed Mr. Blair last month, saying it would be better to appoint a civilian to the job. However, several leading candidates — including Mr. Hamre; Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director; and former Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska — all made clear they were not interested.
Other senators said that General Clapper lacked a forceful enough personality and management style to assert control over the sprawling American intelligence apparatus.
“There are problems within the intelligence community that must be addressed in a very strong and direct way,” Senator Saxby Chambliss, a Georgia Republican on the committee, said through a spokeswoman. “I have real reservations about General Clapper being that person.”
But General Clapper has an independent streak and has not been afraid to challenge bosses in the past. When Congress was debating the creation of the director of national intelligence job, General Clapper was director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the little-known part of the nation’s spy infrastructure that analyzes maps and secret satellite imagery. He told Congress that he would support transferring his agency from the Pentagon to the control of the new intelligence director.
That position contradicted the views of Mr. Rumsfeld, who eventually forced out General Clapper in 2006. But Mr. Rumsfeld was pushed out by President George W. Bush later that year and was replaced by Mr. Gates, who rehired the retired general for the Pentagon’s top intelligence job in 2007.
In 2008, General Clapper oversaw the dismantling of a controversial military intelligence office that lawmakers and civil liberties groups said was part of a Pentagon effort to expand into domestic spying. Mr. Rumsfeld created the unit, called the Counterintelligence Field Activity Office, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to counter the operations of foreign intelligence services and terrorist groups in the United States and abroad.
But the secretive office came under sharp criticism in 2005 after it was revealed that it was managing a database that included information about antiwar protests planned at churches, schools and Quaker meeting halls. General Clapper ordered an end to the database, called Talon, and most of the office’s operations were merged into the military’s Defense Intelligence Agency, which General Clapper led from 1991 to 1995.
The director of national intelligence is supposed to oversee the nation’s separate spy agencies and serve as the president’s primary adviser on matters of intelligence. But in practice, the director’s authority has been murky, particularly since the vast majority of America’s annual intelligence budget of nearly $50 billion is out of his direct control because it goes to spy satellites and high-tech listening devices operated by the Pentagon.
It has also been unclear how much control the director has over the C.I.A., which has grown in power as it has taken on an expanded role in secret wars in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere.
In fact, General Clapper’s predecessor was seen as being on the losing end of internal battles with Mr. Panetta. over who would appoint station chiefs around the world. Mr. Blair had little chemistry with Mr. Obama, officials said, and the president criticized the coordination of intelligence sharing after the botched effort to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet last Christmas.
The president decided to make a change and sat down with General Clapper in the Oval Office on May 5, when he asked the retired general for his views of the future of intelligence operations and the director’s job specifically, according to an administration official briefed on the session. General Clapper followed up with a letter about his vision that impressed the president, the official said. Mr. Blair resigned under pressure on May 20.
Those who know him say that General Clapper is expected to work smoothly with Mr. Panetta and John O. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s counterterrorism chief.
“Jim is a true intelligence professional,” said Gen. Michael V. Hayden, a former C.I.A. director.
By PETER BAKER and ERIC SCHMITT
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/us/politics/05intel.html?th&emc=th
WASHINGTON — President Obama has picked Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr. as director of national intelligence, tapping a retired officer with decades of experience to improve coordination of the nation’s sprawling spy apparatus amid increasing threats at home and escalating operations abroad.
Mr. Obama plans to announce his choice in the Rose Garden on Saturday, two weeks after forcing Adm. Dennis C. Blair out of the spymaster job, according to administration officials, who insisted on anonymity to disclose the decision before the formal ceremony.
The selection amounts to pushing the reset button for the president as he tries to recalibrate an intelligence structure that has undergone continued revamping since the debacle leading up to the Iraq war, yet by most accounts still lacks the cohesion necessary in an evolving war with terrorists. Even as intelligence agencies expand their role overseas with drone strikes in Pakistan and increased focus on Yemen and Somalia, they have faced a spate of attempted attacks in the United States.
General Clapper, 69, who retired in 1995 after 32 years in the Air Force, rose from a signals intelligence officer to undersecretary of defense for intelligence, overseeing all military spy operations. In picking him, the president found an intelligence veteran who clashed with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and was pushed out of office as a result, only to return to the Pentagon as a top lieutenant to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.
If confirmed by the Senate, General Clapper will be the fourth official since 2005 to oversee the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies, a job created in the aftermath of the Iraq intelligence failures. Some intelligence officials have portrayed the job as a bureaucratic nightmare. Essentially, it involves coordinating some very powerful intelligence chiefs, including the C.I.A. director, who have bigger budgets, their own power bases and access to administration officials and members of Congress.
But Mr. Obama concluded that General Clapper’s experience would enable him to fix a dysfunctional situation. “He has a mandate to work it better and that will require some changes,” said a senior administration official.
“He knows the inside of the business better than anybody I know,” said John J. Hamre, a former deputy defense secretary and now president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But General Clapper will have to figure out how to refashion the job created by Congress to be more effective. “You can’t administratively fix birth defects in legislation,” Mr. Hamre said.
General Clapper may face a fight to get confirmed. The choice generated consternation in the Senate, where some Democrats and Republicans complained that he is too closely aligned to the military, has resisted strengthening the office he has been selected for, and has not cultivated close ties on Capitol Hill.
“He has served honorably and with distinction for a long time, but he’s focused too much on Defense Department issues,” Senator Christopher Bond of Missouri, the ranking Republican on the intelligence committee, said in a telephone interview on Friday. “And I don’t believe that he’s been forthcoming and open with the Intelligence Committee.”
Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the Democratic chairwoman of the intelligence committee, was traveling on Friday and unavailable for comment, her office said. But Ms. Feinstein also expressed reservations when General Clapper emerged as an early front-runner to succeed Mr. Blair last month, saying it would be better to appoint a civilian to the job. However, several leading candidates — including Mr. Hamre; Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director; and former Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska — all made clear they were not interested.
Other senators said that General Clapper lacked a forceful enough personality and management style to assert control over the sprawling American intelligence apparatus.
“There are problems within the intelligence community that must be addressed in a very strong and direct way,” Senator Saxby Chambliss, a Georgia Republican on the committee, said through a spokeswoman. “I have real reservations about General Clapper being that person.”
But General Clapper has an independent streak and has not been afraid to challenge bosses in the past. When Congress was debating the creation of the director of national intelligence job, General Clapper was director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the little-known part of the nation’s spy infrastructure that analyzes maps and secret satellite imagery. He told Congress that he would support transferring his agency from the Pentagon to the control of the new intelligence director.
That position contradicted the views of Mr. Rumsfeld, who eventually forced out General Clapper in 2006. But Mr. Rumsfeld was pushed out by President George W. Bush later that year and was replaced by Mr. Gates, who rehired the retired general for the Pentagon’s top intelligence job in 2007.
In 2008, General Clapper oversaw the dismantling of a controversial military intelligence office that lawmakers and civil liberties groups said was part of a Pentagon effort to expand into domestic spying. Mr. Rumsfeld created the unit, called the Counterintelligence Field Activity Office, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to counter the operations of foreign intelligence services and terrorist groups in the United States and abroad.
But the secretive office came under sharp criticism in 2005 after it was revealed that it was managing a database that included information about antiwar protests planned at churches, schools and Quaker meeting halls. General Clapper ordered an end to the database, called Talon, and most of the office’s operations were merged into the military’s Defense Intelligence Agency, which General Clapper led from 1991 to 1995.
The director of national intelligence is supposed to oversee the nation’s separate spy agencies and serve as the president’s primary adviser on matters of intelligence. But in practice, the director’s authority has been murky, particularly since the vast majority of America’s annual intelligence budget of nearly $50 billion is out of his direct control because it goes to spy satellites and high-tech listening devices operated by the Pentagon.
It has also been unclear how much control the director has over the C.I.A., which has grown in power as it has taken on an expanded role in secret wars in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere.
In fact, General Clapper’s predecessor was seen as being on the losing end of internal battles with Mr. Panetta. over who would appoint station chiefs around the world. Mr. Blair had little chemistry with Mr. Obama, officials said, and the president criticized the coordination of intelligence sharing after the botched effort to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet last Christmas.
The president decided to make a change and sat down with General Clapper in the Oval Office on May 5, when he asked the retired general for his views of the future of intelligence operations and the director’s job specifically, according to an administration official briefed on the session. General Clapper followed up with a letter about his vision that impressed the president, the official said. Mr. Blair resigned under pressure on May 20.
Those who know him say that General Clapper is expected to work smoothly with Mr. Panetta and John O. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s counterterrorism chief.
“Jim is a true intelligence professional,” said Gen. Michael V. Hayden, a former C.I.A. director.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Offshore Corporate Tax Havens: Why Are They Still Allowed?
Offshore Corporate Tax Havens: Why Are They Still Allowed?
By Arianna Huffington
Copyright by The Huffington Post
Posted: June 1, 2010 06:34 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/offshore-corporate-tax-ha_b_596753.html?ref=email_share
The bracing reality that America has two sets of rules -- one for the corporate class and another for the middle class -- has never been more indisputable.
The middle class, by and large, plays by the rules, then watches as its jobs disappear -- and the Senate takes a break instead of extending unemployment benefits. The corporate class games the system -- making sure its license to break the rules is built into the rules themselves.
One of the most glaring examples of this continues to be the ability of corporations to cheat the public out of tens of billions of dollars a year by using offshore tax havens. Indeed, it's estimated that companies and wealthy individuals funneling money through offshore tax havens are evading around $100 billion a year in taxes -- leaving the rest of us to pick up the tab. And with cash-strapped states all across the country cutting vital services to the bone, it's not like we don't need the money.
You want Exhibit A of two sets of rules? According to the White House, in 2004, the last year data on this was compiled, U.S. multinational corporations paid roughly $16 billion in taxes on $700 billion in foreign active earnings -- putting their tax rate at around 2.3 percent. Know many middle class Americans getting off that easy at tax time?
In December 2008, the Government Accounting Office reported that 83 of the 100 largest publicly-traded companies in the country -- including AT&T, Chevron, IBM, American Express, GE, Boeing, Dow, and AIG -- had subsidiaries in tax havens -- or, as the corporate class comically calls them, "financial privacy jurisdictions."
Even more egregiously, of those 83 companies, 74 received government contracts in 2007. GM, for instance, got more than $517 million from the government -- i.e. the taxpayers -- that year, while shielding profits in tax-friendly places like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. And Boeing, which received over $23 billion in federal contracts that year, had 38 subsidiaries in tax havens, including six in Bermuda.
And while it's as easy as opening up an island P.O. Box, not every big company uses the dodge. For instance, Boeing's competitor Lockheed Martin had no offshore subsidiaries. But far too many do -- another GAO study found that over 18,000 companies are registered at a single address in the Cayman Islands, a country with no corporate or capital gains taxes.
America's big banks -- including those that pocketed billions from the taxpayers in bailout dollars -- seem particularly fond of the Cayman Islands. At the time of the GAO report, Morgan Stanley had 273 subsidiaries in tax havens, 158 of them in the Cayman Islands. Citigroup had 427, with 90 in the Caymans. Bank of America had 115, with 59 in the Caymans. Goldman Sachs had 29 offshore havens, including 15 in the Caymans. JPMorgan had 50, with seven in the Caymans. And Wells Fargo had 18, with nine in the Caymans.
Perhaps no company exemplifies the corporate class/middle class double standard more than KBR/Halliburton. The company got billions from U.S. taxpayers, then turned around and used a Cayman Island tax dodge to pump up its bottom line. As the Boston Globe's Farah Stockman reported, KBR, until 2007 a unit of Halliburton, "has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in this tropical tax haven."
In 2008, the company listed 10,500 Americans as being officially employed by two companies that, as Stockman wrote, "exist in a computer file on the fourth floor of a building on a palm-studded boulevard here in the Caribbean." Aside from the tax advantages, Stockman points out another benefit of this dodge: Americans who officially work for a company whose headquarters is a computer file in the Caymans are not eligible for unemployment insurance or other benefits when they get laid off -- something many of them found out the hard way.
This kind of sun-kissed thievery is nothing new. Indeed, back in 2002, to call attention to the outrage of the sleazy accounting trick, I wrote a column announcing I was thinking of moving my syndicated newspaper column to Bermuda:
I'll still live in America, earn my living here, and enjoy the protection, technology, infrastructure, and all the other myriad benefits of the land of the free and the home of the brave. I'm just changing my business address. Because if I do that, I won't have to pay for those benefits -- I'll get them for free!
Washington has been trying to address the issue for close to 50 years -- JFK gave it a go in 1961. But time and again Corporate America's game fixers -- aka lobbyists -- and water carriers in Congress have managed to keep the loopholes open.
The battle is once again afoot. On Friday, the House passed the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act. The bill, in addition to extending unemployment benefits, clamps down on some of they ways corporations hide their income offshore to avoid paying U.S. taxes. Even though practically every House Republican voted against it, the bill passed 215 to 204.
The bill's passage in the Senate, however, remains in doubt, with lobbyists gearing up for a furious fight to make sure America's corporate class can continue to profitably enjoy the largess of government services and contracts without the responsibility of paying its fair share.
The bill is far from perfect -- it leaves open a number of loopholes and would only recoup a very small fraction of the $100 billion corporations and wealthy individuals are siphoning off from the U.S. Treasury. And it wouldn't ban companies using offshore tax havens from receiving government contracts, which is stunning given the hard times we are in and the populist groundswell at the way average Americans are getting the short end of the stick.
But the bill would end one of the more egregious examples of the double standard between the corporate class and the middle class, finally forcing hedge fund managers to pay taxes at the same rate as everybody else. As the law stands now, their income is considered "carried interest," and is accordingly taxed at the capital gains rate of 15 percent.
The issue was famously brought up in 2007 by Warren Buffett when he noted that his receptionist paid 30 percent of her income in taxes, while he paid only 17.7 percent on his taxable income of $46 million dollars.
As Robert Reich points out, the 25 most successful hedge fund managers earned $1 billion each. The top earner clocked in at $4 billion. And all of them paid taxes at about half the rate of Buffett's receptionist.
Closing this outrageous loophole would bring in close to $20 billion dollars in revenue -- money desperately needed at a time when teachers and nurses and firemen are being laid off all around the country.
Hedge fund lobbyists are currently hacking away at the Senate's resolve with, not surprisingly, some success. And it's not just Republicans who are willing to do their bidding, but a number of Democrats as well. Indeed, it was a Democrat -- Chuck Schumer -- who led the fight against closing the loophole in 2007.
"I don't know how members of Congress can return home and look an office manager, a nurse, a court clerk in the eye and say 'I chose hedge fund managers instead of you and your family'," said Lori Lodes of the SEIU.
Nicole Tichon, of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, framed the debate in similar terms:
It's hard to imagine anyone campaigning on protecting hedge fund managers, Wall Street banks and companies that ship jobs and profits overseas. It's hard to imagine telling constituents that somehow they should continue to subsidize these industries. We're anxious to see whose side the Senate is on and what story they want to tell the American people.
Up until now, the story has been a familiar narrative of Two Americas, with one set of rules for those who can afford to hire a fleet of K Street lobbyists and a different set for everybody else. It's time to give this infuriating tale a different -- and far more just and satisfying -- ending.
By Arianna Huffington
Copyright by The Huffington Post
Posted: June 1, 2010 06:34 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/offshore-corporate-tax-ha_b_596753.html?ref=email_share
The bracing reality that America has two sets of rules -- one for the corporate class and another for the middle class -- has never been more indisputable.
The middle class, by and large, plays by the rules, then watches as its jobs disappear -- and the Senate takes a break instead of extending unemployment benefits. The corporate class games the system -- making sure its license to break the rules is built into the rules themselves.
One of the most glaring examples of this continues to be the ability of corporations to cheat the public out of tens of billions of dollars a year by using offshore tax havens. Indeed, it's estimated that companies and wealthy individuals funneling money through offshore tax havens are evading around $100 billion a year in taxes -- leaving the rest of us to pick up the tab. And with cash-strapped states all across the country cutting vital services to the bone, it's not like we don't need the money.
You want Exhibit A of two sets of rules? According to the White House, in 2004, the last year data on this was compiled, U.S. multinational corporations paid roughly $16 billion in taxes on $700 billion in foreign active earnings -- putting their tax rate at around 2.3 percent. Know many middle class Americans getting off that easy at tax time?
In December 2008, the Government Accounting Office reported that 83 of the 100 largest publicly-traded companies in the country -- including AT&T, Chevron, IBM, American Express, GE, Boeing, Dow, and AIG -- had subsidiaries in tax havens -- or, as the corporate class comically calls them, "financial privacy jurisdictions."
Even more egregiously, of those 83 companies, 74 received government contracts in 2007. GM, for instance, got more than $517 million from the government -- i.e. the taxpayers -- that year, while shielding profits in tax-friendly places like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. And Boeing, which received over $23 billion in federal contracts that year, had 38 subsidiaries in tax havens, including six in Bermuda.
And while it's as easy as opening up an island P.O. Box, not every big company uses the dodge. For instance, Boeing's competitor Lockheed Martin had no offshore subsidiaries. But far too many do -- another GAO study found that over 18,000 companies are registered at a single address in the Cayman Islands, a country with no corporate or capital gains taxes.
America's big banks -- including those that pocketed billions from the taxpayers in bailout dollars -- seem particularly fond of the Cayman Islands. At the time of the GAO report, Morgan Stanley had 273 subsidiaries in tax havens, 158 of them in the Cayman Islands. Citigroup had 427, with 90 in the Caymans. Bank of America had 115, with 59 in the Caymans. Goldman Sachs had 29 offshore havens, including 15 in the Caymans. JPMorgan had 50, with seven in the Caymans. And Wells Fargo had 18, with nine in the Caymans.
Perhaps no company exemplifies the corporate class/middle class double standard more than KBR/Halliburton. The company got billions from U.S. taxpayers, then turned around and used a Cayman Island tax dodge to pump up its bottom line. As the Boston Globe's Farah Stockman reported, KBR, until 2007 a unit of Halliburton, "has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in this tropical tax haven."
In 2008, the company listed 10,500 Americans as being officially employed by two companies that, as Stockman wrote, "exist in a computer file on the fourth floor of a building on a palm-studded boulevard here in the Caribbean." Aside from the tax advantages, Stockman points out another benefit of this dodge: Americans who officially work for a company whose headquarters is a computer file in the Caymans are not eligible for unemployment insurance or other benefits when they get laid off -- something many of them found out the hard way.
This kind of sun-kissed thievery is nothing new. Indeed, back in 2002, to call attention to the outrage of the sleazy accounting trick, I wrote a column announcing I was thinking of moving my syndicated newspaper column to Bermuda:
I'll still live in America, earn my living here, and enjoy the protection, technology, infrastructure, and all the other myriad benefits of the land of the free and the home of the brave. I'm just changing my business address. Because if I do that, I won't have to pay for those benefits -- I'll get them for free!
Washington has been trying to address the issue for close to 50 years -- JFK gave it a go in 1961. But time and again Corporate America's game fixers -- aka lobbyists -- and water carriers in Congress have managed to keep the loopholes open.
The battle is once again afoot. On Friday, the House passed the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act. The bill, in addition to extending unemployment benefits, clamps down on some of they ways corporations hide their income offshore to avoid paying U.S. taxes. Even though practically every House Republican voted against it, the bill passed 215 to 204.
The bill's passage in the Senate, however, remains in doubt, with lobbyists gearing up for a furious fight to make sure America's corporate class can continue to profitably enjoy the largess of government services and contracts without the responsibility of paying its fair share.
The bill is far from perfect -- it leaves open a number of loopholes and would only recoup a very small fraction of the $100 billion corporations and wealthy individuals are siphoning off from the U.S. Treasury. And it wouldn't ban companies using offshore tax havens from receiving government contracts, which is stunning given the hard times we are in and the populist groundswell at the way average Americans are getting the short end of the stick.
But the bill would end one of the more egregious examples of the double standard between the corporate class and the middle class, finally forcing hedge fund managers to pay taxes at the same rate as everybody else. As the law stands now, their income is considered "carried interest," and is accordingly taxed at the capital gains rate of 15 percent.
The issue was famously brought up in 2007 by Warren Buffett when he noted that his receptionist paid 30 percent of her income in taxes, while he paid only 17.7 percent on his taxable income of $46 million dollars.
As Robert Reich points out, the 25 most successful hedge fund managers earned $1 billion each. The top earner clocked in at $4 billion. And all of them paid taxes at about half the rate of Buffett's receptionist.
Closing this outrageous loophole would bring in close to $20 billion dollars in revenue -- money desperately needed at a time when teachers and nurses and firemen are being laid off all around the country.
Hedge fund lobbyists are currently hacking away at the Senate's resolve with, not surprisingly, some success. And it's not just Republicans who are willing to do their bidding, but a number of Democrats as well. Indeed, it was a Democrat -- Chuck Schumer -- who led the fight against closing the loophole in 2007.
"I don't know how members of Congress can return home and look an office manager, a nurse, a court clerk in the eye and say 'I chose hedge fund managers instead of you and your family'," said Lori Lodes of the SEIU.
Nicole Tichon, of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, framed the debate in similar terms:
It's hard to imagine anyone campaigning on protecting hedge fund managers, Wall Street banks and companies that ship jobs and profits overseas. It's hard to imagine telling constituents that somehow they should continue to subsidize these industries. We're anxious to see whose side the Senate is on and what story they want to tell the American people.
Up until now, the story has been a familiar narrative of Two Americas, with one set of rules for those who can afford to hire a fleet of K Street lobbyists and a different set for everybody else. It's time to give this infuriating tale a different -- and far more just and satisfying -- ending.
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