HOLLYWOOD’S ‘RACE PROBLEM’
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THE HUFFINGTON POST MAGAZINE
CAN JOHN SARBANES, SARBANES AND A BOLD BREED OF REFORMERS, CHANGE CAMPAIGN FINANCING AS WE KNOW IT?
THE BIG BUCKS STOP HERE BY PAUL BLUMENTHAL
OCTOBER 27, 2013
10.27.13 #72 CONTENTS
Enter POINTERS: Obamacare Down... Kanye Puts a Ring on It JASON LINKINS: Looking Forward in Angst DATA: The Methiest States in the U.S. Q&A: Alyssa Milano HEADLINES MOVING IMAGE
Voices
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HOWARD FINEMAN: American Politics Has Become an Apocalyptic Mess
MONEY IS NOT POWER These reformers are giving small donors a chance. BY PAUL BLUMENTHAL
IAN GOLDIN: It’s Time for Business to Focus on the Long-Term QUOTED
Exit BEHIND THE SCENES: The Myth of Diversity at This Year’s Oscars THE THIRD METRIC: The Art of Getting Exactly What You Want EAT THIS: Now for a Jam Session MUSIC: Dog Ears TFU
A FOCUSED MIND Meet the man taking Transcendental Meditation around the world. BY ANN BRENOFF
FROM THE EDITOR: The Reformers ON THE COVER: Rep. John
Sarbanes (D-Md.) photographed for Huffington by Stephen Voss
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
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The Reformers N THIS WEEK’S issue, Paul Blumenthal spotlights a bold group of thinkers who have made it their mission to transform campaign finance as we know it. Paul speaks to Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.), who has already begun campaigning for the 2014 election through nontraditional means. In an era where we speak of candidates’ “war chests,” and where donors can contribute up to $2,600 to one candidate for each primary election and again during the general election, Sarbanes’ pitch that “$5 is enough” is an effort to reject our broken status quo, where a candidates’ ability to outspend his or her opponent far outweighs the more substantive aspects of a campaign.
ART STREIBER
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“I just woke up one day and said, ‘I just can’t keep doing this the same old way,’” Sarbanes tells Paul. “I can’t keep going to the same donors with the same story. There’s got to be something more innovative here.” As it is, members of Congress devote huge chunks of their time to courting potential donors — through phone calls, meetings, any way to hit their maximum contribution mark. It’s a process that has nothing to do with the actual task of governing. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) describes it as “soul-crushing.” And recent political science research
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
has found that Congress is far more responsive to the concerns of the wealthy, as opposed to those of lower-income Americans. The good news is that a broad coalition — including the Sierra Club, the NAACP, Greenpeace and the Communications Workers of America — agrees that the way we finance our elections isn’t working. Alongside the failings of our current campaign finance system, Paul looks into the ways these groups have begun investing time and resources to reform the process so that small donors have more of a voice in the political process. Elsewhere in the issue, Kia Makarechi points out a troubling trend among the potential Academy Award candidates this year. While a handful of black actors are getting Oscar-worthy buzz for their performances, Kia notes that they all starred in roles that had to be played by black actors, from Chiwetel Ejiofor in 12 Years a Slave to Idris Elba in Mandela. Digging back through Oscar history, he finds that this problem has been around for a while. “The only black man to win best actor for a role that could have
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been played by a white actor is Denzel Washington,” Kia writes, “who won in 2001 for his turn as a LAPD detective in Training Day.” In our Voices section, Oxford professor Ian Goldin writes about the problem of short-term goals within corporations, which often have leaders who succumb to the pressures of today and neglect
I can’t keep going to the same donors with the same story. There’s got to be something more innovative here.” the responsibilities of tomorrow. Ian emphasizes the need for longterm thinking if we are to secure a sustainable future. “The danger of leaving a damaging legacy is real,” he writes. Finally, as part of our continuing focus on the Third Metric, Ann Brenoff talks to transcendental meditation teacher-tothe-stars Bob Roth.
ARIANNA
POINTERS
AP PHOTO/CHARLES DHARAPAK
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‘NOBODY’S MADDER THAN ME’
President Barack Obama addressed the Obamacare website’s glitches during a speech from the White House’s Rose Garden on Monday. “Nobody’s madder than me about the fact the website isn’t working as well as it should, which means it’s going to get fixed,” he said. “Everybody who wants insurance through the marketplace will get insurance. Period.” Since its launch nearly three weeks ago, HealthCare.gov has been plagued by technical problems that could take weeks or more to resolve. People who are uninsured have until Feb. 15 to sign up for insurance if they don’t want to pay a penalty for failing to comply with the individual mandate.
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LET THE WEDDINGS BEGIN
Starting at 12:01 a.m. Monday, gay couples were allowed to start getting married in New Jersey, and Newark Mayor Cory Booker opened City Hall to officiate marriages. The state Supreme Court upheld a ruling last Friday to recognize same-sex marriages starting Oct. 21. “The state has advanced a number of arguments, but none of them overcome this reality: Same-sex couples who cannot marry are not treated equally under the law today,” said Chief Justice Stuart Rabner. Gov. Chris Christie dropped the state’s legal challenge to gay marriages on Monday.
YOU’RE FIRED
The Associated Press has fired three journalists involved in an erroneous story that said Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe lied to a federal official who was investigating a fraud case. Veteran reporter Bob Lewis and editors Dena Potter and Norman Gomlak were all let go. The News Media Guild, which represents two of the fired employees, “has filed a grievance demanding their immediate reinstatement,” said guild administrator Kevin Keane.
ANOTHER SCHOOL SHOOTING
A student at a middle school in Nevada killed a math teacher and wounded two 12-yearold male students on Monday before killing himself. The teacher, who was a military veteran, had been trying to protect students from the shooter. “In my estimation, he is a hero,” said Reno Deputy Police Chief Tom Robinson. Of the shooter, Robinson said, “It’s too early to say whether he was targeting people or going on an indiscriminate shooting spree.”
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‘SCREAMING FAST’ IPAD
Apple unveiled the iPad Air on Tuesday at its latest media event in San Francisco. The new toy starts at $499 and weighs only 1 pound. Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller said it’s “screaming fast,” with graphics that are 72 times faster than those on the original. Apple also announced that the latest version of its operating system will be free. The upgrade cost $29.99 in 2010, but fell last year to $19.99.
KIMYE ENGAGED
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Kanye West officially popped the question to Kim Kardashian this week. West rented out San Francisco’s AT&T Park and arranged for the jumbo screen to light up with the message, ““PLEEEASE MARRY MEEE!!!” The E! star gladly accepted, and she is now sporting a 15-carat ring. The couple started dating in April of last year and had their first child, North West, in June.
THAT’S VIRAL CLASSY, REAL CLASSY
A selection of the week’s most talked-about stories. HEADLINES TO VIEW FULL STORIES
SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO DO THE RIGHT THING
WHY I’M NEVER GOING BACK TO THE U.S.
DRINK COFFEE EVERY DAY
MILLIONS OF YEARS TO CREATE, MOMENTS TO DESTROY
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JASON LINKINS
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KAREN BLEIER/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
A SPOONFUL OF SUGAR IS NOT GOING TO FIX A WEBSITE OW THAT the government shutdown is over, the bungled rollout of the federal Obamacare exchange website is drawing the attention it might have otherwise drawn weeks ago. So President Barack Obama took to the Rose
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Garden on Monday to do a bit of crisis management. There, he correctly maintained that “there’s no sugarcoating” the problems that people trying to use the website are experiencing. The problem is, he’s still doing a lot of sugarcoating! OBAMA: Of course, you’ve probably heard that healthcare.gov, the new website where people
Deborah Lielasus, 54, tried to sign up for coverage on Oct. 1 in Porstmouth, N.H., but got only as far as creating an account before the website stopped working.
Enter can apply for health insurance and browse and buy affordable plans in most states, hasn’t worked as smoothly as it was supposed to work, and the number of people who’ve visited the site has been overwhelming, which has aggravated some of these underlying problems. First of all, as near as I can tell, the way the website is “supposed to work” is “it is supposed to allow people to shop for, and obtain health insurance.” Since this is not what’s currently happening, a better way of saying it hasn’t worked “smoothly” is it hasn’t worked “at all.” Also, while it’s perfectly true that sometimes a high volume of visitors can overwhelm a website and cause outages, that’s not what’s happening here. The site is having trouble seamlessly accessing various government databases to collect information that enrollees need to do their shopping, and it’s providing bad information to insurers for those who have successfully managed to enroll. Everyone really needs to stop talking about volume being the problem, especially because Obama seems to be using that argument to say that ordinary Americans’ des-
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perate need to obtain affordable insurance is keeping the website from looking good for the press. “Oh, if only all you uninsured people would stop aggravating our precious web portal!” As the Washington Post’s editors opine, Obama “must... pay more attention to credibility and transparency,” adding that “administration is not going to restore confidence through secrecy and damage control.”
What we got in the leadup to the launch of Healthcare. gov was a complicated square dance of blame avoidance that obscured the pending disaster.” That’s exactly right. Over the weekend I had the occasion to revisit my favorite scene from Bailout, by Neil Barofsky, the former Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP). In it, he interviews Kris Belisle, the woman he eventually, wisely, hired to handle communications for his office. Here’s the section that applies perfectly to the situation everyone finds themselves in with the
Enter Obamacare website — I will highlight the hell out of the parts that I’d most like to sink in: “We’ll be completely transparent with the press,” Kris responded, correctly presuming that she already had the job. “We’ll admit and even highlight our mistakes.” “Okay. I understand the not lying, but my guess is that as a start-up, we’re going to have more than our fair share of screwups. Why would we want to bring them to the press’s attention?” I asked, intrigued. “Because if we do, we’ll earn the press’s trust. They’ll know we’re not spinning like everyone else. SIGTARP will quickly become the only credible source for information in Washington about TARP. We might be embarrassed at times and disclose things that we could — and others would — easily hide, but we’ll shock the press with our honesty. No one else does this, and before long, we’ll have a built in defense when we’re attacked. No matter what they hear, the press will come to
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us first and believe us, because we’ll prove to them that we tell the truth.” The merits of the strategy are so extremely obvious that it’s confounding that these two are the only people in Washington who have ever seemed to figure it out. The above passage should be carved on stone tablets and heaved at people.
What is the risk of taking responsibility? Are you worried that it might catch on in Washington?” This is one of the Beltway’s cultural problems. There’s a reason I bolded and underlined the part where Belisle says, “No one else does this.” Spoiler alert: It’s because no one else does this. According to the emerging “what went wrong” narrative, there seem to have been ample forewarnings that the website wouldn’t be ready for primetime. But culturally, Washington is a place where no one wants to be the bearer of bad news, and every gang of bureaucrats proceeds from the notion that “job
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one” is ensuring that the axe falls heaviest on another gang of bureaucrats. Consequently, what we got in the lead-up to the launch of Healthcare.gov was a complicated square dance of blame avoidance that obscured the pending disaster. Yes, the launch has been embarrassing. And yes, admitting to a cock-up is something that seems like it’s going to feel really terrible before you do it. I mean, you are going to tell a bunch of reporters that you made a mistake. That’s clearly going to suck!
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But if you follow the Belisle Doctrine, what you’ll discover is that reporters are going to be so blown away by the fact that you aren’t spinning them that they may not know how to react. They may even choose to give you the thin sliver of a benefit of the doubt. What’s more is that the difficult road ahead needs energy, and there is nothing quite like the exhilarating, spine-stiffening energy of fully taking responsibility for something. What is the risk of taking responsibility? Are you worried that it might catch on in Washington? If the Obama administration can draw anything valuable from its
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Call operators answer phones on the first day of Obamacare at an eHealthInsurance Services Inc. call center in Sacramento, Calif., on Oct. 1. The Obamacare insurance exchanges struggled to handle a flood of consumer interest that closed the U.S. website for much of the day.
Enter current travails over this website, it’s this: the challenge is at least worthy of the age. More and more, ordinary Americans are using the internet to seek out information and solve complex problems — and they are doing so with the expectations that their demands will be met seamlessly and instantaneously. Fixing this problem honors those expectations, and faces the modern world squarely. In addition, surmounting this challenge is of great benefit to both government and those who seek to govern. It’s going to give future presidents, both Republicans and Democrats, a new lease on vision and innovation, and the sphere of what is possible is going to grow. And ordinary Americans who have experience in this sort of technological innovation stand a better chance of running for office themselves — they’ll look at Washington and think, “Finally, there’s a place there for someone like me.” Slowly, we might even begin to find people steeped in the modern world wresting control of powerful legislative committees from the old men with bad hair who never learned how to set the timers on their VCRs. You will likely never meet a sin-
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cerely well-intentioned individual who isn’t a little bit of a complete screw-up at heart. Screwing up completely is basically the first step to making the world a better place. But the most highly effective wellintentioned individuals own their screw-ups. Obama should consider
More and more, ordinary Americans are using the internet to seek out information and solve complex problems — and they are doing so with the expectations that their demands will be met seamlessly and instantaneously.” giving that a try, if only because when he does so, every reporter’s head will explode from the shock. Naturally, if the next round of repairs to the Obamacare website don’t do the trick, he’ll get another chance. But as with the launch of website, the optimal occasion of taking responsibility is now a blown opportunity — it’s over and it’s done and it’s never coming back.
Q&A
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Alyssa Milano on Being a Child Star Then vs. Now “Much like what Miley is going through now, I kind of feel like I went through that also. I took my clothes off for films... to, not consciously, but subconsciously shed the image of being a little girl.”
Above: Alyssa Milano at the Billboard Music Awards in May. Bottom: Milano (second from left) attends the Tadashi Shoji Spring 2014 show during NY Fashion Week in September.
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DATA
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SOURCE(S): EL PASO INTELLIGENCE CENTER (EPIC), NATIONAL SECURITY SYSTEM (NSS), QUERY DATE JAN. 27, 2013. MEDIAMALITIA.COM (SMOKE)
The Methiest States in the U.S. The multimillion-dollar superlab of Breaking Bad may be gone, but thousands of meth labs around the country remain. The midwestern states tend to see the most incidents involving meth labs, and Missouri outranks all others with 1,825 busts and seizures in 2012, according to a Government Accountability Office analysis of Drug Enforcement Administration data. Moreover, an increasingly popular crude cooking method known as “shake and bake” has put meth production in addicts’ hands, eliminating the need for an RV or even chemistry know-how. It takes about 15 minutes to “shake and bake” a batch of meth in a plastic bottle using ingredients you may already have
lying around the house. Sometimes the bottle explodes, badly burning the often uninsured meth cook and anyone else in the line of fire. Meth use cost the U.S. economy around $23.4 billion in 2005, according to a RAND Corporation study. While incidents involving meth labs have tapered somewhat in recent years, thanks to the rise of “shake and bake” hospitals have noticed an uptick in meth burn cases. It costs around $230,000 to treat a meth lab burn victim, Mother Jones reported. The most common age of these victims: less than 4 years old. Oregon and Mississippi have figured out how to curb these accidents by making the key meth ingredient pseudoephedrine
THE MIDWEST BREAKS BAD TOTAL METH LABORATORY INCIDENTS* 1,825
8 8
15
9 3
6
10
3 3
492
1,429 1,585 634 919
31
376
801
9
79
2
14
9
136
678
32
1
192
10-30
30-80
80-200
3 1
1
2
457
9
13 1 0
NA
60
55 284
0 5-10
96
4
355
100
17
147
59 221
5
0-5
7
200-500
500+
*Including labs, dumpsites, chem / glass / equipment
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DATA
HOW TO MAKE METH SIMPLE DRUG STORE INGREDIENTS MAKE METH A REAL PROBLEM PSEUDOEPHEDRINE C10H15NO
COMMON HOUSEHOLD INGREDIENTS
=
+
Found in cold tablets Pseudoephedrine C10 H15 NO
+
METHAMPHETAMINE C10H15N
ETHER - found in engine starter fluid AMMONIA NITRATE - found in cold packs LITHIUM - foundHousehold in lithium batteries Common H2O - ordinary tap water Ingredients
=
Methamphetamine C 10H15 N
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Starter Fluid
prescription-only. Other states keep the Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wanted to make common cold medicine behind the counter Oregon’s success story a national reality, under a 2006 federal law, but when Oregon announcing legislation in 2010 for federal and Mississippi implemented prescription prescription regulation of pseudoephedrine. legislation, meth lab incidents immediately But according to Mother Jones, he never Ether - Found in engine starter fluid plummeted. Dozens of other states haveNitrate tried- Found introduced the bill in Congress, in Ammonia in cold packs Meth to follow their lead, but the pharmaceutical part because Lithium - Found in lithium batteries of “heavy industry Found in cold tablets Waterspending.” — Katy Hall industry isn’t having it.
BIG PHARMA VS. REGULATION PRESCRIPTION LEGISLATION OF PSEUDOEPHEDRINE MISSISSIPP-I RESCRIPTIOINNE P S T N E M E L P IM DOPHEDR ONLY FOR PSEU
OREGON MISSISSIPPI 0F METH LABS R E B M U N 0 0 10 900 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 200 0 200 3
2
O R EG O N SCRIPTIONE R P S T N E M E L IMP PHEDRINE O D U E S P R O F ONLY
200
4
200
5
200
6
200
7
200
8
200
9
2010
2011
NOTES: THE NUMBER OF LAB INCIDENTS ARE FOR THOSE YEARS THAT THE PRESCRIPTION-ONLY APPROACH WAS IN EFFECT FOR THE STATE FOR THE FULL YEAR. DECLINES IN THE NUMBER OF LAB INCIDENTS THAT BEGAN PRIOR TO THE STATES’ USE OF THE PRESCRIPTION-ONLY APPROACH ARE LIKELY DUE TO LEGAL RESTRICTIONS ON THE SALE OF PSE BEING PUT IN PLACE THROUGH THE STATES AND THE PASSAGE OF THE CMEA. DATA WAS ACCESSED ON OCTOBER 1, 2012.
EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/GETTY IMAGES (BOO! RECORD REVULSION FOR GOP); HUFFPOST ILLUSTRATION/GETTY IMAGES (HIGH TIMES); MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGES (UNHEALTHY); AP PHOTO/J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE ($13 BILLION)
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San Salvador, El Salvador 10.18.2013 Veterinarians operate on a Galapagos green turtle to remove a fishhook from its esophagus. The endangered turtle was rescued by volunteers at La Costa del Sol beach, 43 miles south of San Salvador. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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London, England 10.13.2013 Models prepare for the ENIGMA Alternative Hair show in Royal Albert Hall. The show is one of the most prestigious hairdressing events, bringing together international teams of hair artists to showcase groundbreaking styles. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Golan Heights, Israel 10.16.2013 An Israeli soldier sleeps in a training area during a brigade Armoured Corps Exercise. The Golan, seized by Israel from Syria during the 1967 SixDay War, has been mostly quiet since the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Tensions have risen in the area since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Himeji, Japan 10.16.2013 An 11-day-old newborn giraffe stands beside his mother, Mimi, at Himeji Central Park. The calf was born on Oct. 5, 2013, and is already 5.5 feet tall. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Sydney, Australia 10.17.2013 The South Australian Redbacks play against the Western Australian Warriors during the Ryobi Cup cricket match at Drummoyne Oval. A haze of smoke from recent brushfires in the nearby suburbs of Springwood, Winmalee and Lithgow settle over the stadium. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Madura, Indonesia 10.19.2013 Workers carry baskets of salt crystals from the solar salt harvest of seawater ponds. Salt harvesters have seen an increase in production due to a 10-month drought. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Derik, Syria 10.20.2013 A female fighter of the Kurdish Committees for the Protection of the Kurdish People (YPG) looks from behind a fortified wall at the movements of the Jabat al-Nusra opposition in the Kurdish town of Derik, which falls on the border of Turkey and Iraq. Kurdish fighters in the area are currently engaged in combat against al-Qaeda-affiliated groups. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Prague, Czech Rep. 10.18.2013 Dancers Alina Nanu and Gabriel Barrenengoa stand backstage during the Czech National Ballet’s performance of Swan Lake at the State Opera. The 120th anniversary of Swan Lake’s composer Pyotr Ilyich’s death falls on Nov. 6 of this year. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Kobe, Japan 10.17.2013 The number 1 shipyard of Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd. Kobe Shipyard, is pictured on Oct. 17, 2013. The shipyard completed construction in 1902. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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London, United Kingdom 10.17.2013 The tail-end of a dinosaur costume sticks out of a London city bus near the Houses of Parliament. The costume wearer had dressed up to promote the dinosaur experience exhibit at Blackgang Chine theme park on the Isle of White. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 10.15.2013 A burst of fireworks go off while the Black Bloc anarchist group clashes with police after a march of striking teachers turned violent on Brazil’s National Teachers Day. The peaceful rally went awry when masked protesters started hurling rocks and gasoline bombs and set fire to a passenger bus. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Arlington, Virginia 10.16.2013 Thania Sayne of Effingham, Ill., falls against the grave of her husband, Army Sgt. Timothy D. Sayne, during a burial service at Arlington National Cemetery the day before what would have been their third wedding anniversary. Sayne was pregnant with their second son, Douglas, when her husband was killed in September 2011 in Afghanistan. Tap here for a more extensive look at the week on The Huffington Post. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Voices
HOWARD FINEMAN
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15 Reasons Why American Politics Has Become an Apocalyptic Mess WHY IS AMERICA on the edge of a political and fiscal nervous breakdown? We aren’t fighting an external threat: no foreign ism or axis. We’re simply shackled by our inability to deal with our own finances. Why?
Street bailout of 2008, the stimulus of 2009 and Obamacare in 2010, the tea party aims to defund and delegitimize the federal government. Crippling the legislative machinery is a means, but also an end in itself.
HERE ARE THE 15 REASONS: 1. THE TEA PARTY In radical reaction to the Wall
2. SLOW GROWTH The tea party has a point — up to a point. Politicians flagrantly overspend on wars and social programs simultaneously because the U.S. economy had always risen
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx.) recite the Pledge of Allegiance at a rally to reopen National Parks that were forced to close during the government shutdown.
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fast enough to keep us afloat. That era is now over. We have to make painful choices, but aren’t willing to confront them frankly. 3. OBAMACARE The U.S. was the only major industrial country without national heath care, and even though Obamacare relies on the typical American mix of private-sector profit and government regulation, it remains a bone in the throat of American politics. No entitlement program ever passed with so little bipartisan support (though Social Security was close). President Barack Obama assumed that a favorable Supreme Court ruling and his own reelection in 2012 would settle the issue. He was wrong. Whether he could have
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done anything else to soothe the tea party fear and anger is doubtful, but he didn’t really try. 4. SCORECARDS The AFL-CIO invented a rating system for “pro-labor” voting records; Christian conservatives adopted it. But anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint amped up the volume. Republican members of Congress live in mortal fear of a bad rating and vote accordingly. 5. TWO CULTURES Americans used to inhabit a world of shared social mores, even if millions of people were coerced into accepting them. Now voters now live in two barely overlapping moral worlds: Secular Metropolitan America and Biblical Traditional America. And that separa-
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Tea party activists, veterans and Republicans gather at the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., to express frustrations over closed national memorials due to the government shutdown.
Voices tion is enhanced by the isolating force of modern media. Americans can spend most of their waking hours enveloped in one journalistic gestalt or another, staring at one cable show/website version of reality or the other. It makes political differences harder to bridge. 6. CONGRESSIONAL IGNORANCE For a host of reasons — the collapse of Congress’ committee system, the frantic pace of media coverage, the increasing complexity of legislation, the rise of massive, catch-all “continuing resolutions,” the time spent on raising campaign cash — for all of those reasons and others, a shocking number of lawmakers have no idea what they are debating, denouncing or voting on. “An amazing percentage of people here are intellectually lazy or distracted or ignorant or all three,” one senator told me, anonymously. 7. GARGANTUAN MONEY As Democratic strategist James Carville once said, money is not only the “milk of politics, it is the powdered milk and even the evaporated milk.” But not since the Gilded Age has fantastically rich money been able to exert such single-minded and focused control.
HOWARD FINEMAN
The U.S. Supreme Court is hellbent on expanding that power. The result so far has been to unchain the militantly anti-government right, led by the billionaire likes of the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson. They have neither the patience for nor a belief in the “regular order” of Congress or its half-a-loaf legislative agreements. They are used to spending cash to enforce their unconditional way. 8. NO BIG TENTS Political parties have collapsed as a means of whipping up consent. They don’t control the money; fat cats do. They don’t control the agenda; ideological interest groups do. All they have left is their reassuring absolutes: no new taxes for Republicans; defend Social Security, Medicare and Obamacare for Democrats. The more ideologically monochromatic the parties have become, the less able they are to engineer pragmatic legislative deals. As political scholars Norm Ornstein and Tom Mann put it, we now have all-or-nothing parliamentary-style “tribal” parties in a delicately balanced separation-of-powers system. 9. MY DISTRICT IS MY CASTLE Gerrymandering is nothing new.
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Voices The name and the practice date to the early 19th century. But a combination of technology and federal civil rights laws has produced an unusually large number of “safe” congressional districts, both red and blue. Democrats obtained more high-percentage “minority” districts; Republicans used control of state legislatures to draw more white conservative ones. The situation suited both parties, if not the country. The result: tea party Republicans can issue demands with impunity, and “moderate” Republicans risk a challenge from the right if they’re seen as collaborators. 10. THE END OF ‘REGULAR ORDER’ The old legislative machinery of Congress has been largely destroyed, which means that every major bill is an existential crisis and every crisis a possible meltdown. Budget reforms of the 1970s, meant to smooth the flow of financial decisions, gummed up the works instead. The committee system lies in ruins, robbed of patronage, earmarks, privacy and seniority — that is, the discipline and grease that enabled deal-making. Everything is rolled into one life-or-death struggle.
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The U.S. was the only major industrial country without national heath care, and even though Obamacare relies on the typical American mix of private sector profit and government regulation, it remains a bone in the throat of American politics.” 11. THEY EITHER DON’T KNOW OR HATE EACH OTHER Congress mirrors our socially divided culture. Members have little contact with those in the other party. They are too busy raising money, feeding their favorite media beasts or plotting partisan strategy. The “schmooze factor” can be overrated, but deep personal relationships do help, as MSNBC host and former Hill staffer Chris Matthews documents in his new book, Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked. Today it’s just the opposite: Members of one party campaign against their “colleagues” in the other, even showing up in person in that colleague’s home state or district. Check out the relationship between Senate leaders Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell. 12. MISJUDGING OBAMA Much of the “mainstream media”
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has dismissed the president as a weak negotiator, and many Democrats were upset at his deals to extend the Bush tax cuts in 2010, to install the sequestration mechanism in 2011 and not to enact more sweeping tax hikes in 2012. But that chatter led Republicans to underestimate Obama’s resolve and to assume they could force concessions on the one item he held most dear: Obamacare. It was a disastrous tactical choice. The public has doubts about the health-care program — doubts reinforced by the sloppy rollout of the insurance exchanges. But the public also doesn’t want to use the gov-
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ernment shutdown or debt ceiling fight to send health care messages. 13. THE NEW IOWA There once was a hiatus between presidential campaigns. And there used to be a tradition that new senators didn’t start running for president the moment they arrived in Washington. No more. The insatiable demands of fundraising, organizing and media attention are one reason. Then-Sen. Obama’s example in 2005 is another. No wonder Sen. Ted Cruz, who arrived only months ago, is leading the Republican rebellion as way to run for president. He couldn’t care less if he ever passes a bill in Congress. In fact, his whole campaign is premised on not passing things.
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President Obama addresses reporters in the Brady Press Briefing Room during the government shutdown.
Voices 14. APOCALYPSE AMERICA Win-win is a cool idea — for social media and much of business life. But America’s public and entertainment culture wants a narrative of total victory, crushing blows, winner-take-all contests and paranoid, apocalyptic sagas. White House aides talk about “breaking the will” of the tea party, and they glory in each new poll that shows the GOP’s public approval is plummeting toward single digits. (Yet how can you celebrate a prostrate GOP if the worldwide economy is in shambles?) We live in a time when ultimate fighting trumps boxing; football trumps baseball; talent contests trump variety shows; The Walking Dead is the new Friends. No wonder Washington is the way it is. The biters are everywhere. 15. YOU’RE NOT MY PRESIDENT It’s hard to know when in the modern era Americans stopped believing that whoever was president was president of all the people. It may have started with Lyndon Johnson, whose ascension after the assassination of John F. Kennedy was bitterly resented by the Kennedy crowd.
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‘An amazing percentage of people here are intellectually lazy or distracted or ignorant or all three,’ one senator told me, anonymously.” Many voters came to see Richard Nixon as an illegal usurper. In 1992, many Republicans refused to accept the legitimacy of Bill Clinton’s election, an attitude that led ultimately to his impeachment. But there is nothing in recent decades to match the visceral fear and hatred that a minority of Americans express for Barack Obama, whom they see as an alien, dictatorial force. There is no denying there is an element of race and xenophobia to it. To be sure, Obama’s most passionate foes wouldn’t like any big-city, liberal, Harvard-trained constitutional lawyer. But the fact that this one is black and has an unusual-for-America name just adds to the alienation. Obama’s fans flocked to him because of his biography. But the flip side of hagiography is demonization, and that is where his enemies are now. To say the least, that makes doing a deal with him difficult. Howard Fineman is the editorial director of The Huffington Post.
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IAN GOLDIN
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It’s Time for Business to Focus on the Long-Term AST WEEK, when we saw the effects of political gridlock writ large in U.S. politics, the report Now for the Long Term felt well-timed in its strong call for leaders in politics, business and civil society to include longrange thinking and planning into the mix. The immediate pressures of today cannot be ignored but neither can the need to create a sustainable future; not least if we want to leave a positive legacy. œ The danger of leaving a damaging legacy is real. The growing financial debt, rising carbon emissions, dwindling natural resources and the escalating burden of chronic disease all have the potential to leave unsolvable problems for the next generation if we fail to act on the scientific bases that show clearly the difficulties we are storing up. The Oxford Martin Commission for Future Generations has brought
From left to right: Mo Ibrahim, Kathy Calvin, Jochen Zeitz, John Elkington, Richard Branson, Shari Arison and Strive Masiyiwa launch The B Team in June 2013 in London, England.
Voices together scholars from the University of Oxford with 19 leaders from the world of business, government and civil society, to look at the implications of business as usual and find practical ways to overcome short-termism. In business it is more difficult than ever to balance the pressures of today with goals for the next decade. Business incentives tend to revolve around swift successes; increasing weight is attached to mark-to-market accounting, quarterly returns and short-term incentive bonuses. Uncertainty in global markets has led many companies and business leaders to seek safety in quick returns on investment. Questions about the role of government and unpredictable behavior, such as was manifest in the recent Washington stand-off, compounds the problem. It is not that the short-term is unimportant. After all, if firms go bankrupt there is no point in planning for the long term. We forget at our peril that the private sector is the largest source of jobs and that flourishing companies are vital for growth, and are a particularly valuable asset in a world that is still suffering the cascading effects of the 2008 financial crisis. Govern-
IAN GOLDIN
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ment employment is contracting, so the private sector must generate the jobs required for economies to recover from the crisis. Sustainable growth, however, requires that we go beyond the immediacy of quarterly reporting. While short-term measures can be a pointer to sustainable growth, they are not enough. Simply relying on short-term measures of
We need to rethink corporate governance so that owners and boards embrace longer-term mindsets and responsibilities to society at large.� success in business can create longer-term instability and risk. While the future is full of opportunity arising from the extraordinary advances of recent decades in terms of living standards, life expectancy and economic development, it is also highly uncertain and characterized by a pressure on resources and economic inequality. The rational actions of individuals and firms when aggregated lead to escalating demand
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Voices for food, water, minerals and energy which, together with the environmental consequences of escalating global consumption, is unsustainable. In order to understand the implications of our current patterns of consumption, we need urgently to reassess the relationship between shareholder and societal value and shift the focus significantly to the long term. Dominic Barton, the managing director of McKinsey & Company, and Mark Wiseman, president and CEO of Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, have both argued that firms are under increasing pressure to be short-term at the cost of longer-term strategic decision-making. Performance metrics based on share prices are used at the expense of long-term value creation. At the same time rewards are skewed to investors who want to make a quick return and who have little concern for a company’s long-term prosperity. Many companies and commentators are pressing for a shift towards the long term. Barton and Wiseman have sought to influence the buy-side by encouraging institutional investors and corporate directors to steer capital towards long-term value creation.
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The World Business Council for Sustainable Development is helping to galvanize the global business community towards sustainable ends. The B-Team, founded by Sir Richard Branson and Jochen Zeitz, is among the most recent private sector responses to short-termism, calling on businesses to prioritize people and planet alongside profit. This work is encouraging but too many businesses are failing to show leadership and take re-
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Dominic Barton participates in a session on the second day of the 2011 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Voices sponsibility on the scale required. Some global firms have become skilled at transcending national jurisdictions to avoid obligations, be they on the environment or tax. In a globalized commercial world, ensuring compliance requires coordination between countries that often compete for investment. In Now for the Long Term, the report of the Oxford Commission for Future Generations, we call for a move to “revalue the future,” which includes a number of ideas for focusing business on the long term. Our proposal for “innovative, open and reinvigorated institutions” fit for this century, not the last, includes a call for a Voluntary World Taxation and Regulatory Exchange. This Exchange will raise pressure on companies to disclose their tax planning and transfer pricing arrangements and on governments to reveal preferential tax rulings. Collectively, we need to rethink corporate governance so that owners and boards embrace longer-term mindsets and responsibilities to society at large. Above all, we need business leaders to invest their significant ingenuity, creativity and resources on creat-
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ing long-term value. Changing course in such ways may seem contrary to the rational choices of individual investors and companies. However, if we do not step up to this challenge, the collective result may be consequences so damaging future generations will wonder how we squandered our truly remarkable opportunities. The consequences of our actions will resonate for generations to come. But the choices are ours, and need to be taken now. Ian Goldin is the director of the Oxford Martin School at Oxford University. This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post and The Oxford Martin Commission for Future Generations, in conjunction with the release of the latter’s report Now for the Long Term, published by the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford. The report’s recommendations aim to break the gridlock that undermines attempts to address the world’s biggest challenges; to bridge the gap between knowledge and action; and to redress the balance between short-term political pressures and a need to secure a sustainable, inclusive and resilient future.
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QUOTED
Voices
“ It’s like going to Hawaii or Ibiza, but he’s the only one that lives there.”
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“ Paying $4.00 for a latte?”
— HuffPost commenter strafem2 on “5 Mistakes Coffee Drinkers Make”
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: AP PHOTO/VICE.COM VIA HBO; DAVID GUNN/GETTY IMAGES; JOE BURBANK-POOL/GETTY IMAGES; MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES
— Dennis Rodman
on North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un’s private island, which he visited last month
“ No family should be left with unanswered suspicions.”
— HuffPost commenter Aldyth
“ Nobody wears this color.”
— writer Delia Ephron
on why she doesn’t like New York’s Citi Bikes
on “Family Of Georgia Teen Kendrick Johnson Calls On Benjamin Crump After Horrifying Update In Son’s Death”
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Voices
QUOTED
I am humasexual. I am attracted to humans. But, of course ... not many.
— Morrisey,
clearing up rumors on whether he’s homosexual
“ Very few people have the level of perfection we do. It is actually very sick.”
— Designer Marc Newson
on himself and his friend, Apple’s chief of design Jonathan Ive, to Vanity Fair
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“ Wow, maybe Facebook is good for something besides rampant narcissism after all?”
— HuffPost commenter Mark4President on “Facebook Plea Helps Julia Mauer Find Long Lost Brother After 12 Years”
“ Borrowing to get out of debt? Is that like spending to reduce expenses?”
— HuffPost commenter fwspokane on “Detroit Secures $350 Million Loan To Help Pay Off Debt During Bankruptcy Proceedings”
DAVID LYNCH FOUNDATION
10.27.13 #72 FEATURES
REFORMERS UNITED MEDITATION MAN
A NEW BREED OF THINKERS HAS A BOLD PLAN TO REDUCE THE INFLUENCE OF MONEY IN POLITICS BY PAUL BLUMENTHAL
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COLUMBIA, M.D. — The 2014 election is over a year away, but even so Rep. John Sarbanes (DMd.) found himself standing in late July in the recessed living room of two supporters, Mary and David Marker, addressing a room full of potential donors to his reelection campaign. In this day and age of astronomical political spending, it’s never too soon for a lawmaker to gear up for the next campaign. And yet this was no ordinary fundraiser, and Sarbanes was making no ordinary pitch. “I want to thank you all for coming,” Sarbanes said. “I want to thank you for being interested. I want to thank you in advance for becoming a grassroots donor tonight. Remember, $5 is enough to state your commitment.” Five dollars might not seem like enough, not when donors can contribute up to $2,600 for each primary and general election, and politicians typically spend their time asking people to do just that. But this was a small-donor fundraising party — an event Sarbanes plans to repeat across his district as he attempts to fundamentally change the way political candidates raise money. In the past two years, Sarbanes,
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a four-term congressman and the son of former five-term Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D-Md.), has emerged as a leader in a new vanguard of campaign finance reformers. These politicians and activists are pushing to empower small donors and to fight back against the rising tide of big money in politics and the increasing pressure con-
“ I JUST WOKE UP ONE DAY AND — I JUST CAN’T KEEP DOING THIS THE SAME OLD WAY.” gressional candidates face to raise money for their campaigns, peers and parties. “I just woke up one day and — I just can’t keep doing this the same old way,” Sarbanes said in an interview with The Huffington Post. “I can’t keep going to the same donors with the same story. There’s got to be something more innovative here.” Sarbanes has room to innovate. The seat he occupies, which stretches between Baltimore and Washington, is safely Democratic. So before the 2012 election, he stockpiled a half-million dollars in donations that could be unlocked
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only after he raised contributions of $100 or less from 1,000 firsttime donors in his district — a goal that he ultimately achieved. The arrangement provided the large pool of money needed to run a successful campaign. But it also offered something more: an incentive to reach out to new small donors, the ones who usually get ignored come election season. The experiment was invigorating, Sarbanes said. It freed him from the tedium of calling the same wealthy donors he dialed every year asking for maximum contributions. It also allowed him to talk to more of his constituents. He used those conversations, along with discussions with reformers and organizations both inside and outside Washington, to craft what he calls “a meaningful bill to reform the way we fund campaigns.” Sarbanes introduced the proposed Grassroots Democracy Act earlier this year in the House of Representatives. After months of negotiations, it is poised to become the basis of a new piece of legislation around which Democrats will organize support for congressional campaign finance reform over the next few years. Sarbanes’ original bill would match every $1 in donations of $100 or less with $5 in public matching funds and provide a $50
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“ IF YOU WERE TRYING TO BECOME A RANKING MEMBER OR, IF YOU’RE IN THE MAJORITY, THE COMMITTEE CHAIR, IF YOU DON’T RAISE TONS OF MONEY FOR THE PARTY YOU’VE GOT NO CHANCE.” House Budget and House Ways and Means Committees member John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) is one lawmaker leading campaign finance reform.
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tax credit to every American voter to use as a contribution to the political candidate of his or her choosing. By being tied to a large pool of funds, small donors become as valuable as big ones. The bill would also bar participating candidates from accepting contributions larger than $1,000. The push for a campaign finance reform bill comes at a critical moment. The Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision opened the political spending floodgates and ushered in the era of the super PAC. This month, the court heard arguments in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, which
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“ THE NOTION THAT WE’RE SIMPLY GOING TO REGULATE THE BIG MONEY OUT BY ESTABLISHING LIMITS HAS FADED.” challenges the aggregate federal two-year contribution limit for individual donors. Without this limit, big donors would be able to spread their wealth further throughout Congress, gaining more influence in the process. While it may seem quixotic to push for campaign finance reform
Public Campaign CEO Nick Nyhart (right) spoke of the need to restore fair elections during a tour of fundraising hotspots in June 2013.
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while previously set restrictions are falling left and right, ordinary citizens are rallying around the issue of money in politics in a way not seen in many years. What had once been a cause limited to a niche group of good-government types in Washington has grown into a broad coalition. The Sierra Club, the NAACP, Greenpeace and the Communications Workers of America — four of the largest membership groups in the country — have begun to invest time and resources in supporting campaign finance reform for the first time. And a new breed of reformers are pushing new arguments to highlight the issue and bring conservatives and disaffected voters into the fold. More than anything else, however, reformers believe they have finally cracked the code for changing the way politicians raise money. The key, they say, is to encourage candidates’ political activity and increase the voice of small donors in the fundraising system. “The notion that we’re simply going to regulate the big money out by establishing limits has faded,” said Nick Nyhart, president and CEO of Public Campaign, one of the groups rallying around this new effort. “People
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are saying, well, you might need those regulations, but that alone is not going to do what you need to get people in. So there has been a big shift in that.”
THE INCREASING PRESSURE on lawmakers to raise campaign cash is not simply a result of the rise of special interests in Washington. The Republican takeover of both the House and Senate in 1994 sparked a reordering of fundraising priorities, as power on Capitol Hill finally came up for grabs
Freshman congressman Beto O’Rourke (D-Tx.) is a supporter of the Sarbanes bill for campaign finance reform.
AP PHOTO/J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE
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after 40 years of Democratic rule in the House. Holding just a small majority in the House through the 1990s and early 2000s, Republican leaders put heavy pressure on their members to raise larger and larger sums of money in order to protect incumbents and go after vulnerable Democratic seats. Republican leaders also placed term limits on committee chairmanships and chose leaders based on how much money they could raise for the party. Democrats, while not adopting the term limits, responded by increasing pressure on their safe incumbents to raise money for their party. “If you were trying to become a ranking member or, if you’re in the majority, the committee chair, if you don’t raise tons of money for the party you’ve got no chance,” said Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), another campaign finance reform leader in Congress. “No matter how loyal you may be, no matter how much work you do, no matter how smart you may be, you’ve got very little chance of getting one of those positions.” “It’s implied,” said Rep. Beto O’Rourke, a freshman Democrat from Texas who supports the Sarbanes bill. “If you do not par-
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ticipate in this [fundraising], you diminish your ability to be influential. Whether it’s gaining a committee assignment, whether it’s getting the help that you need on legislation that you want to carry, whatever it is, you’re just seen as not a team player.” The current system of fundraising basically requires members of Congress to devote huge amounts of time to calling and meeting with donors able to provide maximum contributions. On Nov. 16, 2012, little more than a week after the election, House Democratic leadership gathered freshman members together for an introduction to life in Washington. This included a PowerPoint pre-
Sen Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) describes the experience of calling donors to ask for campaign contributions “soulcrushing.”
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sentation given by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (and revealed by The Huffington Post in January) explaining time management on Capitol Hill. The presentation laid out a nine- to 10-hour workday with three to four hours devoted solely to “call-time,” or the practice of calling donors to ask for campaign contributions, and another one to two hours spent going to fundraising events. “There was the expectation that you would spend half your day calling for money [and] generating new leads by going to after-work get-togethers, meetand-greets,” said O’Rourke, who attended the meeting. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), himself a former DCCC chairman, said when asked about the recommended three to four hours per day of call-time, “It’s exactly why we need to change the system.” Other members of Congress similarly voiced concerns about the constant pressure to raise money. Sen. Chris Murphy (DConn.) described call-time as “soul-crushing.” Yarmuth told HuffPost that it was “an experience I quickly grew to abhor.” Rep. Ed v (D-Colo.), who rep-
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resents a suburban swing district around Denver, said raising money comes with the territory, particularly when you’re in a competitive seat. “I know that’s part of what is required of me in a swing district,” Perlmutter told HuffPost, “to raise money so that I can get up on the air, so that I can con-
“ THERE WAS THE EXPECTATION THAT YOU WOULD SPEND HALF YOUR DAY CALLING FOR MONEY [AND] GENERATING NEW LEADS BY GOING TO AFTERWORK GET-TOGETHERS, MEET-AND-GREETS.” duct the field program, do the parades, put out the yard signs, do the voter-to-voter contact that is required to win a swing district.” He begins fundraising for his next race about a week after an election. This constant race for money has made Congress dependent on a select donor class that is not
STEPHEN VOSS
“ I CAN’T KEEP GOING TO THE SAME DONORS WITH THE SAME STORY. THERE’S GOT TO BE SOMETHING MORE INNOVATIVE HERE.”
Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.) told donors “$5 is enough” during a fundraising campaign in July.
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representative of the American public. In the 2010 election, .05 percent of the U.S. population made at least one then-maximum contribution of $2,500 to a political candidate. Yet these donors accounted for 37 percent of all contributions to candidates, parties and PACs, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In the 2012 election, these max-out donors — there were slightly over 241,000 — accounted for 51 percent of all contributions. A host of recent political science research has found that Congress is most responsive to the concerns of the wealthy, while hardly registering the opinions of lower-income Americans. Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig, one of the new leaders of the campaign finance reform movement, has been outspoken about the corrupting influence of money in politics. “There’s a fundamental economy of influence in Washington that’s kind of matured over the last 30 or 20 years,” Lessig said. “What’s striking about this story is the pathological extent of this influence is really relatively recent. So it was my view that we weren’t going to solve this prob-
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lem by modest reforms.” Lessig’s high profile in Silicon Valley and across the Internet has helped attract a wider audience outside Washington to the issue of money in politics. In a popular TED talk earlier this year, he argued that the enormous amount of time spent fundraising from the wealthy plays a major role in warping the institution of Congress, resulting in a “dependence corruption” that he called “democracy-destroying.” “Now, by corruption, I don’t mean brown paper bag cash secreted among members of Congress,” Lessig said in his talk. “I don’t mean any criminal act. The corruption I’m talking about is
Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.) admits that being in a swing region generates a lot of extra pressure to constantly fundraise.
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perfectly legal.” “Larry has been very important in getting people focused on the issue,” said Larry Kramer, a longtime acquaintance of Lessig’s and president of the Hewlett Foundation, which is examining funding campaign finance reform efforts. Large organizations are coming to the realization that the influence of money in politics is impeding progress on their primary issues. Hilary Shelton, NAACP senior vice president for advocacy, explained that money “plays a spoiling role in campaigns,” by limiting the number and type of candidates who hail from lowerincome and minority communities. The goal, he said, is to get those elected to “better represent the real values of the communities in which they’re running.” “We’re realizing these days that we have no chance of fighting climate change and creating a clean energy economy, much less protecting wildlife and wild land, if we can’t also protect our democracy,” said Sierra Club President Michael Brune. The best solution to this, according to Lessig, is the legislation offered by Sarbanes and supported by other reformers,
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because it shifts the focus of fundraising away from big donors and toward the millions of Americans who cannot afford to make $1,000 contributions. “I don’t think the problem gets solved unless we have citizenfunded elections,” Lessig said.
THE MODEL that Lessig, Sarbanes and other reformers are championing is inspired by the public funding system that New York City adopted in 1999. That system provides a 6-to-1 match of public dollars on the first $175 of all contributions made to participating candidates. It has been hailed a big success for empowering donors in lower-income and
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) co-authored a bill with Rep. David Price (D-NC) that would provide a 5-to-1 match on the first $250 of any contribution up to $1,250 for congressional candidates.
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minority neighborhoods. Observers have pointed to Bill de Blasio’s victory in the Democratic mayoral primary this year as another success of the system. Previous reform efforts sought to eliminate or severely limit private money in elections. In the “clean money” systems pushed at the state level in the mid-1990s through the mid-2000s, candidates would receive a lump-sum payment of public funds to cover the cost of the campaign, in exchange for renouncing nearly all private funding. The presidential public funding system provides a 1-to-1 match on the first $250 of all contributions during the primaries and a lump-sum $91.2 million payment for the general election. Candidates are required to abide by spending limits in both the primary and general elections to receive the public funds. But a series of Supreme Court decisions between 2008 and 2011 gutted provisions in both the federal campaign finance laws and clean money systems, and the Citizens United decision ensured that outside money could not be kept away from elections. The lump sum provided in the presi-
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dential system eventually became too small for general election candidates. In 2008, Barack Obama became the first candidate to not participate in the program during the general election, and in 2012, neither Obama nor Mitt Romney took part. Unlike other campaign finance reform efforts, the New York City
REFORMERS BELIEVE THEY HAVE FINALLY CRACKED THE CODE FOR CHANGING THE WAY POLITICIANS RAISE MONEY. model accepts the role of private money in elections. In 2001, progressive writer Mark Schmitt called the city’s system “an evolutionary leap,” because it acknowledges that loopholes in campaign finance laws will always exist and that there is no way to completely prevent private money from finding its way into elections. Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer, the dean of the Washington-based reform community, embraced the New York City model as an answer to the broken presidential financing system following the 2008 election.
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“It is completely focused on the role of the citizen in financing elections in a post-Citizens United world, and it is designed to empower them and encourage their participation by making their contributions much more important,” Wertheimer said. Whereas the previous generation of reformers had attempted to get money out of politics, the current efforts aim to change the nature of fundraising rather than to end it completely. “What’s great about matching funds is it still incentivizes candidates to build real grassroots support in perpetuity to get more and more matching funds, and it signals to the little guy that their small-dollar contribution can make a big difference,” Progressive Change Campaign Committee cofounder Adam Green said. Lessig simply rejects the basic premise behind previous reform efforts. “I just think it’s terrible to think about creating a First Amendment that says that money is not speech,” he said. “That’s just crazy.” Not everyone in the reform community agrees, however, that the Sarbanes bill represents the full realization of the small-donor empowerment model created in
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New York City. Veteran reform groups in Washington, led by Wertheimer, back competing legislation put forward by Reps. David Price (D-N.C.) and Van Hollen, which would provide a 5-to-1 match on the first $250 of any contribution up to $1,250 for congressional candidates. It would also provide a similar small-donor matching system for presidential elections and clarify the law restricting coordination between super PACs and candidates. Other progressive groups argue that the Price-Van Hollen bill would continue to empower big donors more than small donors. Green called the bill “weak and ineffective.”
Money “plays a spoiling role in campaigns,” according to NAACP senior vice president for advocacy Hilary Shelton.
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“It just doesn’t solve the problem and really just creates subsidies for big-dollar donors,” he said. Wertheimer disagrees, saying that the Price-Van Hollen bill is “the closest” to the New York City model “of any of those bills around.” The Sarbanes bill, Wertheimer argues, is not true to the New York City model because it only matches contributions of $100 or less and places low contribution limits on participating candidates.
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The New York City system matches the first $175 of any donation. “It’s very difficult for me to understand how groups that are supporting and advocating strongly the same kind of system in New York that exists in the Price-Van Hollen proposal can then credibly turn around and say, ‘Well, that’s just too objectionable for us,’” Wertheimer said. Other supporters of the Price-Van Hollen bill, however, find the protest by some progressives unnecessary. “It’s not worth spending a whole lot of time fighting about any of
Campaign finance reform advocate Fred Wertheimer speaks in front of the Supreme Court after the McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission arguments this month.
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this stuff,” said Meredith McGehee, policy director of the Campaign Legal Center. “There’s always a tendency within any coalition to gather around in a circular firing squad and shoot each other.” Though they’ve welcomed the new crop of campaign finance reformers, longtime activists believe the focus of reformers should be on building political support for their ideas in Washington. “A lot of times it’s the down and dirty how-do-you-win-this in politics,” McGehee said. But those pushing to upend the way campaigns are financed say that they need to look beyond the machinations on Capitol Hill and embrace a bigger, bolder vision. “Nearly everyone in the movement and outside of it accepts the fact that we are going to need to build a huge grassroots movement if we have any chance of doing anything,” said Josh Silver, CEO of Represent.Us, a new reform group organizing around its own bill to empower small donors and reform lobbying laws. To do that, Silver said, there needs to be a significant shift in how reformers talk about the issue. “You have to shift to corruption and away from democracy and
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campaign finance reform and getting money out of politics,” Silver said, echoing the language Lessig has used. “The top-line message has to be corruption. The simple reason is if you go to a Walmart or you’re at a campground or you’re at church and you talk to somebody about campaign finance reform or even democracy, their eyes tend to glaze over. If you talk to them about political corruption, they get fired up and start talking about how much they agree with you.”
INSTEAD OF LOOKING to the traditional reform effort’s backers — typically large foundations like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which tend to dole out small amounts of cash for isolated projects — the new class of reformers are looking to an alternate source of capital. “It’s going to need money on a completely different order of magnitude than anybody is talking about,” Lessig said. McGehee agrees. “If you look at the traditional funders on the reform side, they dole out little teaspoons at a time. What’s your deliverable? What’s your conference? You’re never going to have societal change when you approach it like that.” To back their bold vision, the
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new crop of reformers are looking to funders who similarly embrace societal change: Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. “These are people who think about taking risks in order to produce world-changing results,” Lessig said. “This is the venture capital mindset. It’s, ‘OK, I’m going to sink $50 million in this and maybe nothing comes of it, but if something comes of it, it’s worldchanging and that’s the kind of game I’m interested in. I’m not interested in on-average 3 percent return. I’m interested in radical change in the way the world is.’” Silver said that much of Represent.Us funding has come from Silicon Valley, including from current and former employees of Google and Facebook. “I found this really, really resonates with a wide variety of people,” Ethan Beard, former social media director for Facebook and a board member and founder of Represent.Us, said. “It’s been getting great support from people here in Silicon Valley.” Another group, the Fund for the Republic, is working to raise $40 million over the next five years for the numerous new and old groups working to reform campaign finance law. “The funding is way too programmatically focused and way
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“ NOW, BY CORRUPTION, I DON’T MEAN BROWN PAPER BAG CASH SECRETED AMONG MEMBERS OF CONGRESS,” LESSIG SAID IN HIS TALK. “I DON’T MEAN ANY CRIMINAL ACT. THE CORRUPTION I’M TALKING ABOUT IS PERFECTLY LEGAL.” Lawrence Lessig believes that reformers need to strike while Americans are still outraged by the Citizens United decision.
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too focused on short-term returns, and we have to take a play out of the conservative playbook and think about funding for structural issues, which means we have to think in a longer time scale and be less concerned with specific programs initially and more with the overall strategy and health of the field,” said Nick Penniman, president of the Fund for the Republic. The large membership organizations that have recently joined the reform effort note that their members are ready to be mobilized. “The thing that we bring to this whole fight has always been our greatest strength, whether it be us or the Sierra Club or the NAACP, which is our members and getting them engaged in the process,” said Shane Larson, legislative director for the Communications Workers of America. Given the partisan gridlock in Washington, any chance for success also relies on motivating conservatives as well as liberals. “I think that actually the right is a natural base,” Lessig said. “We’re never going to get a majority of Republicans in Congress, but I do think we can get a majority of outside-the-Beltway
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Republicans to agree with this point, absolutely.” Richard Painter, a former ethics counsel to President George W. Bush, agrees. “I’m of the view that there’s no way you’re going to limit the size and scope of government unless you deal with the money in the campaigns, because all these people do, who want to soak off the government for more contracts, is hire lobbyists, put a little campaign money, and then you get enormous leverage from it,” he said. Painter is a proponent of the concept of tax credits or vouchers for contributions, which would give all Americans the means to take part in the money election that precedes the general election.
John Silver is the CEO of Represent. Us, a new reform group organizing around its own bill to empower small donors and change lobbying laws.
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“Some would call that government subsidy,” Painter said. “I don’t. I think that’s a taxpayer’s money. It’s not the government’s money. And my view is that if you pay taxes, you ought to be able to designate some of that money for the process of choosing who is going to spend the money.” All the new energy around campaign finance reform notwithstanding, the effort still faces an uphill battle. “I think it will probably take some critical issue or scandal or monumental event to move Congress to actually act on this, because the record low approval rating, all the other frustrations voiced by the American public, really doesn’t seem to be moving this,” Rep. O’Rourke said. Indeed, Congress created much of the current campaign finance regulatory system after the Watergate scandal, and the McCainFeingold reform legislation passed immediately following the Enron scandal in 2002. “It’s not an implausible final step,” said Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, referring to waiting for a moment of public outrage. “It’s probably the easiest step of all.”
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But sometimes even scandal isn’t enough to facilitate change. There was, after all, a push for reform in 2009 and 2010 as well, following a global financial meltdown that many traced back to the financial industry’s influence in Washington. That effort came up short. This is where the divide between the new and old reformers comes into stark relief. While the new class of reformers are focused on selling a “bold” bill to grassroots Democrats and Republicans, veteran reformers talk about the end game in Washington. “In the history of campaign finance reform battles going back to the Watergate reforms, they have never been won without bipar-
Ethan Beard, former social media director for Facebook and a board member and founder of Represent. Us, said that Silicon Valley has been very supportive of reform.
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tisan leadership and support, because someone has always got 41 votes out there, unless some things change,” Wertheimer said, noting the number of votes needed to maintain a Senate filibuster. Wertheimer worries that the Sarbanes bill’s low matching fund threshold would not prove attractive to Republicans and would not provide enough money for candidates looking to compete in elections that feature super PACs lurking around the corner. Time is also a concern for groups seeking to reform the system. Big membership groups now engaged on the issue envision a 10-year plan to organize support for a reform bill, and new groups focused on building a movement similarly take a long view. Lessig believes, however, that reformers need to strike while Americans are still outraged by the Citizens United decision and before they accept the new levels of spending and sink into cynicism. “This 10-year movement, I guess, I don’t buy it,” he said. “And I don’t buy it because I think it’s got the physics of reform wrong.” Lessig advocates finding the “Saturn V equivalent” to blast the reform effort “into orbit.”
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Reform veterans point out that there will never be a final fix for campaign fundraising. “Nobody ever says, ‘Pass one tax bill and you’re done,’” McGehee said. “Why should there be one campaign finance bill and then you’re done? So it’s kind of this constant struggle.” The new reformers are not blind to the challenges of passing cam-
BY BEING TIED TO A LARGE POOL OF FUNDS, SMALL DONORS BECOME AS VALUABLE AS BIG ONES. paign finance legislation, particularly given the current partisan divide in Congress. But they still want to think big and bold. “I’m not naive on that point, but what’s the alternative to trying to press for something different here?” Sarbanes asked. “You can’t keep a democracy going in a functional and constructive way if only 10 percent of the people you represent think your institution is functioning in an acceptable way. That’s just not viable.” Paul Blumenthal is a reporter for The Huffington Post covering money and influence in politics.
BRINGING CALM TO THE CENTER OF LIFE’S STORM MEDITATION MAN
BY ANN BRENOFF
If there was a perfect year in which to discover transcendental meditation, it might just have been 1968.
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That was the year that Bob Roth was a freshman at UC Berkeley — a campus considered Ground Zero for the anti-war movement and the cultural changes sweeping through the country at the time. He remembers living surrounded by helicopters spewing tear gas over student war protesters and Army tanks parked outside his front door. Demonstrations. Riots. Chaos. ¶ And against this backdrop, Roth did what many college students do: He took a part-time job. He sold scoops of ice cream at Swenson’s ice cream parlor, never expecting that amid the rush of pending social changes engulfing him, it would be at the ice cream shop where he would meet a guy who would ultimately alter the course of his life forever.
Bob Roth speaks about the benefits of Transcendental Meditation (TM) at a health conference in Los Angeles in 2011.
MEDITATION MAN
The college crew at Swenson’s was the usual motley collection of hippies, straights and everything in between, recalls Roth. But one guy stood out: Peter Stevens. “He was like a quiet reflection pool amid the chaos,” recalls Roth, “and I was drawn to him.” “Peter was centered, energetic, super-smart, kind to all, easy-going, never agitated, with an ineffable calm about him,” Roth told The Huffington Post. He learned that Peter “meditated,” something that Roth said was a bit of a disconnect for him. “Meditation was not in my vocabulary.” But he was intrigued and curious, and went with Stevens to a class in TM, a meditative practice derived from the ancient Vedic tradition in India. After just one class, Roth was hooked. Today, Roth is the executive director of the David Lynch Foundation, where he has helped bring TM programs to more than 300,000 at-risk kids in 35 countries, as well as veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and women and girls who are survivors of domestic violence. He’s also the national director of the Center for Leadership Performance, which introduces the TM
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program to business, industry and government organizations — and even some United Nations groups. Today, Roth’s student roster includes a lot of very recognizable names: Oprah, Russell Simmons, Russell Brand, Martin Scorsese, Mehmet Oz, Hugh Jackman and dozens of others. He’d be embarrassed to be
Roth’s student roster includes Oprah, Russell Simmons, Russell Brand, Martin Scorsese, Mehmet Oz and Hugh Jackman. called “meditation teacher to the stars,” but such a description wouldn’t be far off. For the past 40 years, he has meditated twice a day no matter where he is, in places as discombobulating as an airplane when need be. He explains TM with the following analogy: The surface of the ocean is waves and white caps. But deeper down, the ocean is still. How TM differs from other meditations, he says, is that it doesn’t attempt to still the waves, but rather allow access to the
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You are thinking more clearly, are able to make decisions more ethically, perform more creatively.
” A student from the Nataki Talibah Schoolhouse of Detroit practices TM.
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stillness. By practicing it twice a day for 20 minutes, he said, studies have shown that people sleep better, reduce their stress, and lower their blood pressure. In children, the practice can reduce ADHD symptoms and symptoms of other learning disorders. Not all Roth’s clients are rich and famous. One of the key focuses of the David Lynch Foundation is to target those who aren’t and improve their lives through TM. There’s a story that Roth likes to tell about the DLF’s Quiet Time program — where
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“ It’s not just about learning to relax. TM wakes up the brain and the executive functions. It resets the brain to perform in a less ‘flight or fight’ manner.” thousands of at-risk children are taught TM in school. It involves a little girl he called Jessica (not her real name) who lives in a crime-infested neighborhood of San Francisco. Jessica showed up one day at school wearing a white dress splattered with what her
Thousands of at-risk students are taught TM as part of “The Quiet Time” program.
DAVID LYNCH FOUNDATION
MEDITATION MAN
teacher, at first glance, thought was red paint. It was blood — blood from Jessica’s uncle who had been shot that morning in a random drive-by while waiting with her at the bus stop. Instead of running home, Jessica ran to school so that she could meditate, she told her teachers. The DLF Quiet Time program had been in her school for about a year at the time and for her, it made school a safe place whereas her home often couldn’t be. “For me,” said Roth, “that says it all.” As part of the Quiet Time Pro-
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gram, the foundation supplies teachers for each child to have one-on-one meditation instruction and follow-up. “In a school with 1,000 students,” he said, “we bring in 20 teachers.” The results have been gratifying, said Roth, who believes that results must be quantifiable to matter. “Change needs to show up in grades, reduced number of suspensions and dropout rates,” he said. And the Quiet Time program has done all that. The San Francisco Unified School District reports an 86-percent reduction in suspensions over two years in schools where the program has been introduced; a 65 percent
Students meditate at a San Francisco public school.
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It feels like something foundational can be done to help transform lives through meditation.
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Bob Roth attends the David Lynch Foundation’s “Change Begins Within” benefit in 2011. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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decrease in violent conflict at the John O’Connell High School; and the Journal of Psychiatry shows reduced ADHD symptoms and symptoms of other learning disorders among students who practice TM. Carlos Garia, retired superintendent of the San Francisco Unified School District, heralded the program as one which is “transforming lives.” He said, “It is transforming schools and
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neighborhoods, and it will transform our society.” All of which is music to Roth’s ears. TM is a life-changer for individuals, he said, but also a game changer in the broader sense. It may start with an individual’s desire to sleep better or reduce stress, but results are similar to what happens when you pull on one leg of the table, said Roth. “The whole table moves.” And what moves in this case are blood pressure numbers, heart attack risk factors, and the overall ability to make better decisions with a more focused mind.
Jerry Seinfeld (center) talks to George Stephanopoulos (left) and Bob Roth on Good Morning America in 2012.
MEDITATION MAN
“You are thinking more clearly, are able to make decisions more ethically, perform more creatively.” It’s like when you water a plant because some leaves are wilting, he said, but the whole plant benefits from the water. And it spills over into those around you in a chain reaction. Companies interested in innovation are drawn to TM because of the positive impact it has on their work force. It’s why Oprah had Roth bring his program to her staff of 400. “It’s not just about learning to relax,” said Roth. “TM wakes up the brain and the executive functions. It resets the brain to perform in a less ‘flight or fight’ manner.” And yes, it reduces stress. Whether he is teaching a homeless guy — the DLF has a program that works with New York City homeless — or a billionaire, “they both suffer from stress,” said Roth. But as one celebrity who shall remain unnamed quipped when Roth asked her why she wanted to learn to meditate, “I want to maintain a permanent connection with the intelligence of the universe. I also can’t sleep.” TM training allows people to access an ability they already are
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hard wired for: to take a profound rest at will. Roth says the tipping point has been reached in regard to the public’s understanding of the value of mediation. As he wrote on Maria Shriver’s blog, “It feels like something foundational can be done to help transform lives through
“ I want to maintain a permanent connection with the intelligence of the universe. I also can’t sleep.” meditation, not only among those most at-risk to suffer traumas in life, but also the teen in the private school who battles the very real demons of substance abuse and unspoken thoughts of suicide; the parent who is struggling to survive an ugly divorce and still keep the family intact; or just the person — man, woman, boy, girl — who is navigating life’s daily vicissitudes and can’t seem to catch a breath, turn off the noise, get a good night’s sleep.” Ann Brenoff is a senior writer for The Huffington Post.
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Forest Whitaker stars as longtime White House butler Cecil Gaines in Lee Daniel’s The Butler.
The Myth of Diversity at This Year’s Oscars BY KIA MAKARECHI
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N BLEAK situations, incremental improvements can be mistaken for bigtime progress. So it goes with Hollywood’s consistent inability to include actors of color. Popular critical consensus suggests that we may have as many as four black Best Actor nominees: Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave), Idris Elba (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom), Forest Whitaker (Lee Daniels’ The Butler) and Michael B. Jordan (Fruitvale Station). Ejiofor is currently favored to win the category, where he’ll
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probably be joined by the likes of Tom Hanks (Captain Phillips), Robert Redford (All Is Lost) and Bruce Dern (Nebraska). That these men of color are even being discussed in awards blogger circles is certainly cause for celebration, because each of their films presents a perspective that doesn’t get much play in Hollywood. But insofar as these four movies are important, they are also limited by their veracity. They’re all based on true stories: 12 Years tells the tale of Solomon Northup, a free black man who was captured and enslaved and wrote an autobiography by the same name; Mandela is self-explanatory; Fruitvale Station
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Chiwetel Ejiofor plays a freemanturned-slave in Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave.
Exit centers on the 2009 shooting death of Oscar Grant III, a black man shot dead by a police officer in Oakland; The Butler draws its meat from the life of Eugene Allen, a black butler who worked for the White House for over three decades. Put another way, these roles have to be played by black actors. Each of these men has more than earned the nominations they’re expected to receive (now’s a good time to pinch in some salt: awards bloggers love to shower performances with praise, but nominations are certainly not guaranteed), but the fact that they’re generally only rewarded for roles that literally could not have been given to white actors is cause for concern. “Generally only rewarded for roles that literally could not have been given to white actors” is not casual phrasing. A study of the roles that have earned black men Best Actor nominations reveals that this is a historical problem. Sidney Poitier won in 1963 for playing a black itinerant worker in Lilies of the Field, a movie based on a novel by the same name. Jamie Foxx won in 2004 for playing Ray Charles in Ray, and Forest Whitaker won in 2006 for playing Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. The only
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Each of these men has more than earned the nominations they’re expected to receive... but the fact that they’re generally only rewarded for roles that literally could not have been given to white actors is cause for concern.” black man to win Best Actor for a role that could have been played by a white actor is Denzel Washington, who won in 2001 for his turn as a LAPD detective in Training Day. That’s one man over 85 years of Academy Awards. The situation isn’t much better at the Golden Globes, where Morgan Freeman’s performance as a chauffeur who triumphs over racism in Driving Miss Daisy joins the otherwise identical list of Best Actor winners. (Nor, it’s worth noting, does the picture improve when including Best Actor nominees at the Oscars, a class that includes blacks playing “black roles” such as Will Smith in Ali, Don Cheadle in Hotel Rwanda, Terrence Howard in Hustle & Flow, Freeman in Invictus, Washington in Malcolm X, Laurence Fishburne in What’s Love Got to Do With It, etc.) Jordan has discussed enjoying filming Chronicle, which he describes as a win because the character was originally supposed to be a white Jewish man. “[With]
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Exit the lack thereof of quality roles for African-American actors, I look for stuff like that,” he said in an interview with HuffPost Entertainment. “I want the script that Ben Affleck or Leonardo DiCaprio couldn’t do because of scheduling. I want that one. I want those types of roles.” Hollywood is even worse at including women of color in awardwinning performances, (Halle Berry is the only black woman to ever win the Oscar for Best Actress for her role in Monster’s Ball, one with a complex and controversial relationship with race), and this year’s Emmys were a shockingly white-male affair. 12 Years, The Butler, Fruitvale and Mandela all cleared an extra hurdle: they are all independently financed films that were created without the interest or fiscal support of the major movie studios. True equality in the Best Actor race doesn’t mean only rewarding black men in roles white men could never play. Instead, we’ll know when Hollywood casting directors and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences view people of color as deserving of equal opportunities to shine when a black man in the role of a fictional caring father, son, teacher, student, doctor,
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The only black man to win Best Actor for a role that could have been played by a white actor is Denzel Washington, who won in 2001 for his turn as a LAPD detective in Training Day.” author or otherwise non-racially coded character is nominated for and wins Best Actor. Until then, however, let’s raise a glass to this year’s class of outstanding performers, because maybe, just maybe their success in this year’s awards rat race will jostle the shamefully whitewashed powers that be within the industry. Forgive me for not getting my hopes up.
Denzel Washington won an Academy Award for Best Actor playing a race-neutral role, while Halle Berry is the only black women in Oscar history to win Best Actress.
THE THIRD Exit METRIC
MARTIN GEE
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The Art of Getting Exactly What You Want BY CAROLINE GREGOIRE
OW DO WE GET what we want in work and in life? That question drives many of our habits and behaviors, and has made self-help — with countless books, workshops, seminars and retreats promising the elusive answer to that very question — a billiondollar industry. It’s made titles like Goals! How To Get Everything
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You Want — Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible, See You At The Top, and How to Win Friends & Influence People best-sellers. A thousand different pieces of advice promise the path to getting what you want, most of which involve overcoming your fear and persevering through setbacks. And in addition to external resistance, we tend to set up a lot of obstacles
Exit for ourselves — imagining what could go wrong or inventing reasons we’re incapable of accomplishing a particular goal — sometimes forgetting that the path to success may be simpler, or less linear, than we realize. Many successful people in a range of professions advanced their careers and found fulfillment in creative, unorthodox ways.
THE THIRD METRIC
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In a world that changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.” They knew they had what it took, and didn’t give naysayers (including the ones inside their own heads) the opportunity to tell them otherwise.
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HERE ARE SIX INSPIRING SUCCESS STORIES FROM PEOPLE WHO MADE THEIR OWN LUCK:
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Now for a Jam Session
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BY JULIE R. THOMSON
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F YOU’VE NEVER tried your hand at making homemade jam, reading the list of instructions can make it sound like something you never want to do. Actually, it can be downright intimidating. Between the pectin, sterilizing, and risk of giving yourself and everyone you love botulism, the stakes feel high when it comes to canning. And while yes, all those steps and warnings are a necessary part of making jam, the risk of doing something wrong when making jam is no higher than any other dish you make. Jam making just has a bad reputation these days — which is probably why only grandmothers (who know how easy it is) and
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Why should you settle for overly-sweetened storebought jam when you can be enjoying your own, infinitely better-tasting jam on your morning toast?” serious home cooks seem to make it anymore. But making jam is one of the easiest things you can do in your kitchen, and one of the best ways to enjoy produce all year long. We’re going to to share a couple of key tips to help you through the process, because we think more people should be making jam. After all, why should you settle for overly-sweetened store-bought jam when you can be enjoying your own, infinitely better-tasting jam on your morning toast?
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Here are a few things you should know for jam-making success:
• Have everything that you will need ready to use. Since things happen a little quickly when making jam, it’s nice to have all your tools at the ready. • Take the time to test the jam’s doneness. It’s better to make sure that your jam is the right consistency than to rush through it and be disappointed with the results. • Don’t skimp on the sugar. You might be tempted to add less sugar to your jam, but if you’re a beginner it’s best to follow the recipe to a tee. Because the sugar in jelly
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is not just for sweetening, but for helping it gel and preserving it too. Wait to tweak recipes until you have more experience. • Make smaller batches. It’ll just be easier to manage until you get the hang of it. • Just know that once you’ve made jam a couple of times, the whole process will become second nature to you and you won’t have to sweat a thing. So make jam, and make it often. Use the tips above with any of your favorite jam recipes, or try them on some of our favorites:
• Apricot jam • Raspberry jam
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MUSIC
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Dog Ears: Ghosts and Candy In which we spotlight music from a diversity of genres and decades, lending an insider’s ear to what deserves to be heard. BY THE EVERLASTING PHIL RAMONE AND DANIELLE EVIN
FAUST
DAVID CONDOS
Avant prog-rock septette Faust was founded on the cusp of the ’70s in northern Germany. The fearless pack was originally comprised of Uwe Nettelbeck, Hans Joachim Irmler, Zappi Diermaier, Arnulf Meifert, Jean-Hervé Péron, Gunther Wustoff and Rudolf Sosna. Their cutting-edge, uncensored abandon gained the attentions of Polydor Records, which released their debut in 1971. Two years later, Faust became an early act for Richard Branson’s Virgin Records, burnishing its reputation as pioneers of sonic technology. After disbanding in 1975, Faust regrouped by the early ’90s and has released over two-dozen recordings to date. Collaborations include Dälek and violinist Tony Conrad. Uncover Faust with “... In the Spirit,” from 1972’s Faust So Far.
Singer/songwriter David Condos was born in the Windy City and raised in Omaha. Making his bones playing in various Nebraskan ensembles, the multi-instrumentalist went solo at the hit of the aughts. By middecade, he’d relocated to Nashville and released several single-handed projects. In 2008, his work was featured in the film Nothing But the Truth (starring Kate Beckinsale). This decade has seen Condos fronting the alternative trio Milktooth and furnishing a Kmart spot. Open an ear to this deserving troubadour with “Lullaby for a Ghost,” from his 2006 project Smoking City. Glorious listening.
TAP HERE TO BUY: iTunes.com GENRE: Prog Rock ARTIST: Faust SONG: ... In the Spirit ALBUM: Faust So Far
TAP HERE TO BUY: iTunes.com GENRE: Singer/Songwriter ARTIST: David Condos SONG: Lullaby for a Ghost ALBUM: Smoking City
THE CARETAKER/ LEYLAND KIRBY Northern England soundscapist James Leyland Kirby (also of V/VM) founded The Caretaker in the mid’90s, opening a door to an untried sonic dimension utilizing his vintage 78 collection — ears pressed into your great-grandparents’ memories. Kirby’s credits include the score for Grant Gee documentary Patience (After Sebald) and numerous side projects. Discover Leyland Kirby’s supernatural thoroughfare with “An Empty Bliss Beyond This World,” from The Caretaker’s An Empty Bliss Beyond This World. Time travel is possible with this eerily relaxing collection. TAP HERE TO BUY: iTunes.com GENRE: Experimental ARTIST: The Caretaker/Leyland Kirby SONG: An Empty Bliss Beyond This World ALBUM: An Empty Bliss Beyond This World
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MUSIC
BIG MAYBELLE
SKIP JAMES
ELLIOTT SMITH
Soul songbird Mabel Louise Smith, a.k.a. Big Maybelle, was born on May 1, 1924, in Jackson, Tennessee. At age 8, Mabel won a singing contest, opening the gate. By 1936, she joined Memphis bandleader Dave Clark, and her trajectory was on course. In 1952, on signing with Okeh Records, she became Big Maybelle. She recorded “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” produced by a young Quincy Jones, in 1955 (in a turnabout, it went to No. 1 for blue-eyed soul legend Jerry Lee Lewis in 1957). Her all-too-brief career included a trove of releases for Brunswick, Decca, King, Savoy, and Scepter Records. The diva passed away from diabetic complications in 1972 in Cleveland. Remember her with “Candy,” from the collection Blues, Candy & Big Maybelle.
Bluesman Skip James was born Nehemia Curtis James in the Mississippi Delta in 1902, the son of a preacher and reformed bootlegger. As a teen, he held odd jobs in construction and sharecropping. In his 20s, James made his first demos. Then in 1931, he recorded a couple dozen sides for Paramount Records. Just as his career was filling up with promise, it was crushed by the economic gravity of the Great Depression. James retreated to the church as a choir director, later becoming a minister. Decades would pass before this enigmatic, unmistakably original and accomplished picker’s resurgence came about at the Newport Folk Festival in the mid-’60s. James passed away in 1969, but his influence runs deep. His songs have been immortalized by Cream, Chris Thomas King, Bonnie Raitt, and Alvin Youngblood Hart. In 1992, James was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame. The 1931 title “Devil Got My Woman,” off Blues From the Delta, is spooky and heartbreaking.
Artist Elliott Smith is one of our late, great treasures. He was born Steven Paul Smith on Aug. 6, 1969, in Omaha, Nebraska. In his first year his parents divorced. Mother and baby relocated to Duncanville, Texas (near Dallas), where he was raised. His father was a shrink, his grandfather a Dixieland jazz drummer, and his grandmother a glee-club singer. Elliott started piano at age 9, and wrote his first song at 10, eventually picking up the clarinet and guitar. Smith’s life was sorrowfully and senselessly cut short in 2003 by a stab wound shrouded in mystery amidst rumors of murder/suicide. The posthumously released recordings of the New Moon collection contain 24 of Smith’s gut-wrenching gems rescued from oblivion by producer Larry Crane. Getting to hear the private seeds of the genius’ work is a real privilege. Truly, a majestic songwriter. Download “Fear City,” and the full album.
TAP HERE TO BUY: iTunes.com GENRE: Blues ARTIST: Big Maybelle SONG: Candy ALBUM: Blues, Candy & Big Maybelle
TAP HERE TO BUY: iTunes.com GENRE: Blues ARTIST: Skip James SONG: Devil Got My Woman ALBUM: Blues From the Delta
TAP HERE TO BUY: iTunes.com GENRE: Alternative ARTIST: Elliott Smith SONG: Fear City ALBUM: New Moon
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