The Morning Delivery

Not to be Crude, but Why Are Gas Prices so Darn High?

With U.S. gasoline prices having climbed nearly 30 cents in the past month, pushing the national average to $3.87 a gallon, according to the Energy Information Administration, consumers (and by extension voters) are beginning to voice their concern.

A recent Gallup Poll finds that one in four Americans feel gas prices will shoot up to more than $5 a gallon during 2012

This all bodes ill for President Obama as he prepares to clash with the presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney during the long hot summer. In a fragile economy with unemployment still over 8 percent, a sharp rise in gas prices makes it all the more difficult for Mr. Obama to defend his domestic policies and convince voters to keep him in the White House for another four years.

With excessive gas prices causing many to cancel vacation plans, while seeing their weekly budgets squeezed just to fill up their tank, many Americans not only are mad, but they want answers.

Who's to blame: greedy oil companies, President Obama, a do-nothing Congress, unrest in the Middle East?

After looking into this, here is what I found were the most common reasons cited by industry experts for the high price of gasoline at the pump.

What Determines the Price of Gas at the Pump?

• The biggest factor is the cost of the raw material used to produce the gasoline – crude oil. That price has been between $105 and $120 a barrel, depending on the type of crude oil purchased.

• At these prices, a standard 42-gallon barrel, then, translates to $2.50 to $2.85 a gallon at the pump.

• Excise taxes add another 49 cents a gallon on average nationwide.

• So the price for gasoline is already at $3.00 or more per gallon even before adding the cost of refining, transporting, and selling the gasoline at retail outlets.

• Taken together, crude oil costs and taxes account for more than 85 percent of what people are paying at the pump. That leaves just 12 percent for the refiners, distributers, and retailers.

Why does the price of gasoline vary by state?

• The amount of gasoline taxes collected by states can vary widely, from as low as 26.4 cents per gallon in Alaska, to a high of 67.4 cents per gallon in New York.

• The average nationwide tax collected on each gallon of gasoline sold at the retail station is 48.8 cents; of that, 18.4 cents per gallon goes to the federal government with the remaining ending up in state and local government coffers.

Estimating the costs of gasoline at the pump

• Crude Oil: 76 percent

• Excise Tax: 12 percent

• Refining: 6 percent

• Transportation Retailing: 12 percent.

Source: Energy Information Administration (EIA)

How Do the Oil Industry Profits compare to other industries?

• Based on company filings with the federal government as reported by U.S. Census Bureau and Standard & Poor's Research Insight, the latest data for the third quarter of 2011 shows the oil and natural gas industry earned 6.7 cents for every dollar of sales, compared to 9.2 cents for every dollar of sales for all manufacturing. Other sectors, such as the pharmaceutical, computer and the beverage and tobacco industries, earned three times that and more.

Are oil companies driving up gas prices by not building new refineries?

• Oil companies do not set the price of gasoline. Crude oil is the primary component in gasoline production, the price rises and falls with the cost of crude, which is set by supply and demand on the global commodities market. In addition, industry experts emphasize weather events, inventories, exchange rates, investments, spare capacity, production decisions, and supply growth, all of which factor into the price of crude oil and thus—gasoline prices.

• Another thing to keep in mind: Even though no new refineries have been built in the United States in the last 35 years, major investments in existing refineries during this time have increased their capacity by 13 percent while improving worker safety, efficiency, environmental performance and refineries’ ability to produce high-quality products.

• In addition, The United States has the largest refining capacity in the world—U.S. capacity is 17.7 million barrels per day from 148 refineries, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2011 Refinery Capacity Report. The report estimates U.S. refining capacity accounts for 21 percent of global capacity—almost doubles that of the second-largest refining country, China, which has 9.4 million barrels per day of capacity.

• Contrary to popular belief, the refining industry remains one of America’s largest manufacturing sectors—more than 50 companies own and operate refineries in 32 states.

Which countries are we most dependent on for our supply of oil?

The U.S. produces 51 percent of all the oil and petroleum products we consume. The rest is imported, largely from our neighbors in North America with Canada representing the largest supplier to the U.S., accounting for 25 percent of our imports compared to 12 percent for Saudi Arabia.

Does the value of the dollar affect the price of gas?

According to analysts from the American Petroleum Institute, the value of the U.S. dollar against other countries around the world means that American consumers are more affected by rising crude oil prices than the citizens of other countries that use currencies like the Yen but less than those who use the Euro. As oil prices have gone up all around the world, the price increase has been less for countries who have a strong currency other than the U.S. dollar, but more for those who don’t.

Source: American Petroleum Institute

Fuel Saving Tips:

• Easy on the pedal: the faster you drive, the more gasoline your car uses.

• Your air conditioner reduces fuel economy by as much as 2 miles per gallon; so it's advised you use it sparingly.

• Avoid traveling during rush hour; combine several trips for errands into one; and consider car pooling.

• Make sure your tires are properly inflated; underinflated tires can decrease fuel economy by up to one mile per gallon.

• Avoid abrupt starts, otherwise known as jackrabbit starts; because they require twice as much gasoline as gradual starts.

• Regular tune-ups can improve fuel economy by an average of one mile per gallon.

Bill Lucey
[email protected]
March 22, 2012

Source: American Petroleum Institute

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Web Sites to Keep in Mind:

Energy Tomorrow (API)

Service Station FAQ’s:

AAA’s Daily Fuel Gauge Report

Real Time Retail Fuel Prices: Oil Price Information Services (OPIS)  

Gasoline Taxes by Individual States (API)

State of the Union Speech: Summary of Key Talking Points

During his 6, 498 word State of the Union speech Tuesday evening, President Obama touched on a number of topics near and dear to the hearts of the middle class, including: education, home mortgages, applauding the end of the Iraq war, getting America back to work, while at the same time, challenging Congress to change the way it does business these days. ``We need to end the notion that the two parties must be locked in a perpetual campaign of mutual destruction; that politics is about clinging to rigid ideologies instead of building consensus around common sense ideas’’ Mr. Obama said.

After reaching out across the aisle, Mr. Obama proceeded to lay out his blueprint for an ``America built to last.’’

For those who missed the speech, here is a brief outline of the major talking points highlighted on Tuesday evening.

• Remove tax incentives to locate overseas through an international minimum tax. President Obama proposes eliminating tax incentives to ship jobs offshore by ensuring that all American companies pay a minimum tax on their overseas profits, preventing other countries from attracting American business through unusually low tax rates.

• Stop letting companies take a tax deduction for moving overseas and instead provide a credit for moving jobs back home

• End subsidies for millionaires-stop giving federal subsidies. Mr Obama proposes stop providing food stamps, unemployment benefits, and farm subsidies – to millionaires, because they don’t need it and the country can’t afford it.

• Prevent tax increases for working families by extending the payroll tax cut. The President proposes extending the payroll tax cut – which provides $40 per paycheck for the typical family – for the rest of the year so that taxes don’t go up on American workers.

• Proposed giving every responsible homeowner the opportunity to refinance:  Mr. Obama recommends using some of the Administration’s proposed bank fees to cover the cost of the refinancing plan, since financial institutions helped cause the housing crisis from which borrowers and the economy are still trying to recover.

• Make sure Wall Street plays by the same rules; President Obama wants to establish a Financial Crimes Unit of investigators to work with U.S. Attorneys to go after large-scale financial fraud so that Americans’ investments are protected. He also called on Congress to pass legislation that makes the penalties for fraud count – so that firms don’t just see punishment for breaking the law as the price of doing business.

• Reduce the influence of money and lobbyists and do away with procedures that stop Congress from working on behalf of the American people.  The president proposes new safeguards to prevent Members of Congress from profiting from their positions

    Ban insider trading by Members of Congress

    Holding Congress to same conflict-of-interest standards as the Executive branch:

    Prohibit lobbyists from bundling, and bundlers from lobbying

Give nominations an up-or-down vote: As one step to fix the way business is done in Washington,

• The President challenged the Senate to pass a rule that after 90 days, all judicial and public service nominations must receive a simple up or down vote.

• Eliminate roadblocks in the Senate by reforming the filibuster: Senators who want to filibuster should vocalize their objection on the Senate floor

• Pass a balanced, fair deficit reduction plan.

• The President wants Congress to reduce the deficit in a balanced way that asks everyone to do their part, so no one has to bear the entire burden and everyone – including millionaires and billionaires – has to pay their fair share.

-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
January 24, 2012

State of the Union Addresses and its Storied Traditions

``The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.''

Abraham Lincoln's Second Annual Message
December 1, 1862

As President Barack Obama prepares for his third State of the Union address on Tuesday night during an election year no less, he is reportedly planning to lay the foundation of a new economy, one that is ``built to last.’’

Hoping to strike a populist chord and rally the middle class discouraged by his handling of the battered economy, the president is  expected to  champion a restructuring of the tax code, which will make wealthier Americans pay more taxes to help pay for spending proposals aimed at creating new jobs.  Mr. Obama is also likely to take a hard line on China, particularly the way it manipulates its currency for trade advantages, another bitter subject among a majority of Americans.

Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana will deliver the response to the president’s address.

For those who might wonder exactly how many of the grand traditions associated with the State of the Union address first got started, what follows is a brief historical overview of the annual address that began 222 years ago.

• Article II, Section 3, clause 1 of the United States Constitution authorizes the State of the Union Message, which states: “He [the President] shall from time to time give to the Congress Information on the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.

• The State of the Union address is customarily delivered in the House chamber of the Capitol, before a joint session of Congress.

• George Washington delivered the first State of the Union Address on January 8, 1790.

• President Thomas Jefferson altered the procedure with his first annual message (December 8, 1801) by having his private secretary delivering copies of the message to both houses of Congress to be read by clerks in the House and Senate. Jefferson believed the addresses delivered orally by his predecessors was too British or aristocratic, likening it to the monarch’s speech from the Throne and out of step with a republic.

• Between 1801 and 1913, then, U.S. Presidents would typically send annual reports as a formal written letter to Congress, which contained information about the state of the nation, including a list of policy recommendations.

• Beginning in 1913, President Woodrow Wilson broke with tradition when he delivered the 1913 Annual Message in the House chamber before a joint session of Congress.

• Calvin Coolidge became the first President to broadcast the annual address on radio.

• President Herbert Hoover made no personal appearances before Congress.

• Franklin Roosevelt first inaugurated the term “State of the Union,” which became the popular name of the speech from his presidency forward. Prior to FDR, The message was simply known as “the President’s Annual Message to Congress.’’

• FDR additionally ushered in the modern tradition of reciting the collective words “we” and “our” with greater frequency than his predecessors.

• Harry Truman’s 1947 State of the Union address was televised for the first time.

• Beginning in 1965, as way of attracting a larger audience, President Lyndon Johnson began delivering the State of the Union address in prime time.  Previously, the annual addresses were delivered during the day.

• Prior to the ratification of the 20th amendment (January 23, 1933), which changed the timing for the new terms of Senators and Representatives to January 3, the annual message was routinely delivered in December.

• Since 1934, the President’s annual message has been delivered between January 3rd through February 2nd.

• Aside from reserved places for leadership, seats in the chamber are not assigned to Members. Anytime during the day, House Members may claim a seat for the evening’s address on the condition they remain physically in the seat to secure their place for the speech.

• At the January 25, 2011, State of the Union, Members of Congress broke from tradition and sat next to Members of the opposing party. In previous years, Members sat with affiliates of their own party. This historic departure was brought about at the urging of Senator Mark Udall of Colorado who wrote a letter to Members, encouraging them to cross the aisle.

• In keeping with a longstanding custom and to ensure the continuity of government, one cabinet secretary does not attend the State of the Union speech.

• After September 11, 2001, congressional leadership began requiring two Members from each house of Congress, representing both parties, to remain absent from the Capitol during the President’s speech.

• Seating in the gallery is restricted to ticket holders and is managed by the House Sergeant at Arms. Each Member of Congress receives one chamber ticket, with a specific reserved seat, for the address. Congressional leadership and the White House meanwhile receive multiple tickets.

• Ronald Reagan in 1982 began the tradition of inviting guests, who performed an act of heroism or achieved a significant milestone, to join the First Lady in the gallery. At the appropriate time, the president will acknowledge the guest sitting with the First Lady while noting their individual contribution. Presidential speechwriters typically refer to these guests as “Lenny Skutniks” in reference to the first guest highlighted by Reagan in 1982.

• President Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell message, broadcast to the nation on January 17, 1961, is remembered most for its warnings against the “military-industrial complex.”

• During his 1995 State of the Union address, Bill Clinton introduced the concept of a “New Covenant” as a way of invoking the twin themes of “opportunity and responsibility” with the current policy challenges facing his administration.

• Of the five Presidents since 1965 who gave State of the Union postelection addresses, the average State of the Union legislative success rate was 51.4 percent, approximately eight percentage points higher than the overall average. The success rate falls for second-term addresses to 38.6 percent.

• According to recent analysis by the Congressional Research Service, of State of the Union addresses from 1946 to 2003, every 50 words a President devoted to an issue resulted in a 2 percent increase in the public identifying that problem as the most important in the nation.

• During a presidential election year, about 13 percent of State of the Union addresses deal with past achievements, scholarly studies have shown,  while policy proposals rise to an average of 36 requests, mostly likely to demonstrate an ambitious agenda if reelected to a second term.

• The practice of a rebuttal to the president’s State of the Union address began in 1966 when Senator Everett Dirksen (R-IL) and Representative Gerald Ford (RMI) delivered the Republican reply to President Lyndon Johnson.

• In 1995, Republican Governor Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey became the first non- Congressional elected official to deliver the opposition response, while Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) in 2007 was the first freshman Member of Congress to provide the opposition response to the State of the Union address.

• The opposing party often responds directly to specific proposals contained in the President’s State of the Union address. Excerpts of the State of the Union address are released hours before the president’s address. Such a practice, allows the opposition enough time to change its response by adding specific counter punches to the President’s proposals.

• FDR holds the record for the most State of the Union Messages delivered — 12 — of which 10 were personal appearances before Congress; President Zachary Taylor submitted only one written annual message, in 1849; while two Presidents did not serve long enough to submit an annual message: William Henry Harrison, who died in 1841, 32 days after his inauguration, and James A. Garfield, who was assassinated in 1881 and served only 199 days.

• President George W. Bush’s 2002 address was the first to be made available as a live web cast on the Web from the White House website, and the 2004 address was the first to be broadcast in high definition television.

• President Reagan delivered a televised farewell address to the nation from the Oval Office on January 11, 1989, a practice followed by President Clinton on January 18, 2001.

-Bill Lucey
January 23, 2012
[email protected]

Source: Congressional Research Service; the American Presidency Project

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Web Sites to Keep in Mind

C-Span Video Archive of State of the Union Addresses:

Words Presidents have used in their State of the Union Addresses: (SpeechWars.com) 

The American Presidency Project 

2012 State of the Union (WhiteHouse.gov)  

2012 State of the Union  Republican Response

Michelle has No. 44's Back in Jodi Kantor's ``The Obamas''

If you picked up a copy of ``The Obamas’’ by New York Times political reporter Jodi Kantor expecting a catalogue of abuses in the West Wing of the White House, similar to the sensational tales being reported about the clandestine and lavish Halloween party; or explosive verbal exchanges between First Lady Michelle Obama and Rahm Emanuel and Robert Gibbs—you might come away greatly disappointed.

Those events, minor as they were, has peppered the headlines of most news outlets, both on the cable channels and web sites.  But don’t fall for the off speed pitch. This is more a tale of Michelle Obama‘s voyage from entering the White House armed with top chic and glamorous designer labels before transforming herself into sporting more main street attire, such as a $34.95 dress from H & M, the fast fashion clothing company; while valiantly trying to restore her husband’s image of being shaped by a ``sense of purpose’’ and acting as a `transformative figure’; important characteristics that slipped away from the president soon after assuming the presidency.

The First Lady saw it as her mission to get no. 44 back on message.

Michelle Obama accompanied Barack to the White House in January, 2009, reluctantly as it turns out. The first lady, as Kantor notes, wanted to remain in Chicago with children Sasha and Malia so they could finish out their school terms and gradually make the leap to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue later in the year.

Such a scenario was determined unthinkable by the West Wing brain trust; so came they did to the nation’s capital. The White House was a jolt at first, it wasn’t exactly their $1.65 million historic brick mansion back in Chicago; there were too many security personnel buzzing around and invading their sense of privacy. Then again, any house which has 132 rooms, six levels, 35 bathrooms, 412 doors, and three elevators, like the White House has, takes some getting used to.  But the Obama’s eventually adapted to their new digs, including the first lady.

It’s somewhat surprising that Michelle Obama has taken such a dim view of the book; she reportedly has complained ``The Obamas’’ has portrayed her as an ``angry black woman’’, rather than a supportive wife and accomplished first lady.

While slices of the book, unquestionably, document her assertiveness; ok, bitchiness if your prefer (questioning staff for inviting guests to a White House dinner without being asked first), avoiding meaningless ceremonial first lady duties and embracing more national issues in which she could bring about profound change-such as her obesity campaign.

And it was no secret that the first lady growled at Emanuel, the chief of staff,  for booking her (without asking her first) to campaign with Allen Boyd, U.S. congressman from the 2nd congressional district in North Florida in exchange for his vote on a key energy bill that the White House wanted passed.

The first lady soon made it clear in no uncertain terms, that she would not be an ``easy sell.’’ If the West Wing wanted her out on the campaign trail (during the mid-terms when the president’s popularity was plummeting ) ; they would have to ask her properly and more importantly, she didn’t want to campaign for congressional members she knew little about. Congressman Boyd, as it turns out, voted against the health care bill. Besides, unbeknownst to the first lady and the White House, she was being used to ``head off a potential black challenger for Boyd’s seat.’’

Overall, Kantor delivers a fair and balanced treatment of the first lady, far from coming off as an angry black woman, ``The Obamas’’ shows Mrs. Obama to be an important element of the White House machinery, especially in reminding her husband of his sense of purpose and to change the culture in Washington, important themes that brought Obama to Washington with such high expectations.  The highly publicized horse trading on display over the health care bill (e.g., the infamous ``Cornhusker Kickback’’ to secure passage of health care) was one subtle reminder how Mr. Obama fell victim to the ``business as usual’’ approach instead of changing the culture like he promised. 

Mr. Obama's increased disengagement from the cries of the American people during the Great Recession, partly attributable, some argue, to being so hemmed in by a coterie of advisors (Gibbs, Emanuel, and David Axelrod, Obama’s top political advisor) alarmed the first lady that her husband was losing touch with the pulse of the American public.  As Axelrod told Kantor, ``when she [Michelle Obama] thinks things have been mishandled or when things are off the track she'll raise it, because she's hugely invested in him and has a sense of how hard he’s working and wants to make sure everybody is doing their work properly.’’

Another fascinating slice of ``The Obamas’’ was the degree to which the First Family, Mrs. Obama in particular, drives Sasha and Malia hard not only with academic distinction, but with other extracurricular activities as well, including piano, and flute lessons,  excelling in basketball and scheduling tennis lessons. At first glance,  you might think Michelle Obama is in ``Tiger Mom’’ country, but once you appreciate Michelle, much like her husband, attended college in the age when affirmative action was in full swing; the high standards they expect of their children comes into sharper focus.

Kantor reports how Mrs. Obama while attending Princeton often endured suspicious glances from white students, wondering if she entered its prestigious Ivy League halls because of a quota system. Even as the Obama’s both made great strides in their professional careers, the presumption seemed to always follow them that they got there because of their race.

So it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that Sasha and Malia are being pushed and shaped and driven- even to the point of overachieving- to prevent wild accusations many years from now that they rose to their respective professional careers because they are the children of Michelle and Barack Obama and not because of their own hard work and academic success.

Unlike so many mismatches with First Family marriages, (consider Richard and Pat Nixon, FDR and Eleanor), Michelle and Barack are cut from the same cloth: both are highly educated, both share similar perspectives of the world, share the same friends, want to portray black Americans in a positive light, while longing for a meaningful change of culture in Washington.

In the end, if Mr. Obama loses in 2012, questions will be raised time and again why Michelle Obama wasn’t incorporated more effectively into getting the president’s message out to the American people by articulating a profound sense of purpose, a sense of hope, while helping her husband build the bridge of comprise and bipartisanship so sorely needed with the U.S. Congress.

Unless the economy improves dramatically, Mr. Obama is now in danger of having fallen victim to the same set of circumstances that undid Jimmy Carter; in that he came to Washington with a mountain of ideas he wanted put into action, but because he never understood the inner-working of the U.S. Congress, including keeping powerful congressional members at arm’s length, he gave voters the impression that he was nothing more than a highly educated policy wonk who didn’t understand Washington.

-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
January 17, 2012

What Everyone Should Know About Iowa

Barack Obama campaigning on a farm in Adel, Iowa, 2007      Photo: Associated Press

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The race is on.

In just a little over two weeks, on January 3, 2012, the nation will turn their attention to the much anticipated results of the Iowa caucuses to find out which of the Republican candidates will be considered presidential timber, or at least enough to give Barack Obama a run for his money in November; and which ones will fade into the sunset as voters deem them not quite ready for prime time. Remember, it was only four years ago in Iowa, when Democratic contenders for the White House, Joe Biden and Christopher Dodd after receiving such a miniscule amount of the vote-decided to cut their losses and drop out of the race.

So as we anxiously wait to see if Newt Gingrich (Newt Gingrich the historian that is) is really the reborn darling of the GOP; if Ron Paul is able to pull off the mother of all stunners; and if Mitt Romney, fresh from his endorsement from the Des Moines Register, is able to leap to the head of the pack and claim front-runner status-what better time than the present than to catch up on some Iowa history with its rich political tradition in a state so proud of its first-in-the nation prominence.

Iowa: Historic Background

• 1788: Julien Dubuque creates first European settlement in Iowa.

• 29th state admitted to the Union on December 28, 1846, with the capital at Iowa City.

• State Motto: ``Our Liberties We Prize and Rights We Will Maintain''

• Nickname: Hawkeye

• Population: 3,046,355 (2010).

• The word "Iowa" comes from the American Indian tribe of the same name, Ioway, a Sioux tribe.

• The Mesquakie Indian Tribe still owns land in Iowa.

• The Du Buque Visitor was the first newspaper published in Iowa in 1836.

• In 1857, capital of State of Iowa moved to Des Moines.

• Iowa’s sound financial standing makes it one of just seven states currently holding a AAA rating from all three major U.S. financial rating agencies - Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch.

• According to Moody’s Investors Service, Iowa has the second lowest state debt per capita in the nation.

• Iowa has slipped from the 20th most populous state in 1940 to 30th in 2000.

• Iowa is first in corn production.

• Iowa is ranked the nation’s second-most livable state based on 43 factors ranging from median household income to crime rate and from sunny days to infant mortality rate.

• Iowa is named the fifth-best state to raise a child.

• Iowa ranks sixth in safest neighborhoods in the U.S.

• Iowa has the highest SAT scores in the country and the 15th-highest ACT scores.

• Iowa has the third-highest public high school graduation rate in the U.S.

• Iowans enjoy the seventh-shortest average commute time (19.1 minutes) among the 50 states.

• Iowa’s capital city, Des Moines, was listed as one of the best cities to live, work and play.

• About four-fifths of Iowa’s population (81 percent) claim to be Christian (predominantly Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and Methodists) compared with 78 percent of the national population.

• Citizens aged 65 and over represent 14.7 percent of the population in Iowa, compared with 12.4 percent nationwide, the 4th highest in the country.

• Whites in Iowa make up 2,748,640 or 93.9 percent of the population; Hispanic or Latino’s 82,473 or 2.8 percent of the population; and Black or African Americans: 61,853 or 2.1 percent of the population.

• Unemployment: 6 percent, 7th lowest in the nation.

• Median Family Income: $48,005.

• Mitt Romney's $10,000 Question: 78,330 Iowans or 6.4 percent of the population makes $10,000 or less a year.

• Famous Iowans include: the 31st president of the United States, Herbert Hoover (Born in West Branch, Iowa on August 10, 1874);  Henry A. Wallace, Vice President to Franklin D. Roosevelt (1941-1945); Samuel Freeman Miller, served on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1862 to 1890; First Lady Mamie Doud Eisenhower, wife of General and President Dwight D. Eisenhower,, Suffragist leader Carrie Chapman Catt, Bob Feller, Baseball Hall of Famer who pitched for the Cleveland Indians from 1936 to 1956; Academy Award actor, director, producer, John Wayne; Big Band Leader, Glenn Miller, Academy Award winning actress Donna Reed, George Gallup, creator of the polling technique that bears his name; Abigail Van Buren (Dear Abby) and Ann Landers, widely-read advice columnists in newspapers; and television actor and co-star in the CBS sitcom ``Two and a Half Men’’, Ashton Kutcher.

• The Republican Party was first organized in Crawfordsville, Iowa in February, 1854.

• The hamburger was first introduced in Clarinda (Southwestern Iowa) when a restaurant owner, Bert Gray, discovered a new way of making a sandwich by using ground beef. The Clarinda restaurant's chef who was from Hamburg, Germany named the sandwich.

• Onawa, Iowa, ice cream vendor Christian Nelson created the Eskimo Pie.

• On February 3, 1959, a small-plane crash outside Mason City, Iowa, killed three American rock and roll pioneers: Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, as well as the pilot, Roger Peterson. The musicians had just played for more than 1,000 fans at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake.

• The motion picture ``Field of Dreams' was filmed in Dyersville (eastern Iowa); and the 1995 movie ``The Bridges of Madison County" was made on location in Madison County, Iowa.

• Ronald Reagan was once a sports reporter for WHO radio in Des Moines.

• On March 4, 2002, the Iowa English Language Reaffirmation Act formally reestablished English as the official language of government in Iowa. The law encourages "every citizen of the state to become more proficient in the English.’’ 26 other states have approved similar measures.

Iowa Caucus History/Highlights

• Iowa adopted a caucus system soon after it became a state in 1846.

• Caucus is an Indian word, meaning ``elder'' or ``counselor''

• A caucus is a political party meeting where voters suggest policy issues and pick delegates to the county convention. It's the first step in selecting party candidates for president.

• The caucus system was the dominant system for nominating public officials until the primary system became popular in the early 1900's.

• April 10, 1916 would mark the first and only time Iowa held a presidential primary. Governor George W. Clarke addressing the General Assembly in 1917 called for a repeal of the direct primary law and the return of the caucus and convention system.

• Prior to 1972,  the Iowa political parties typically held their precinct caucuses in late March or in April, which fell in the middle of the national primary schedule.

• Beginning in 1972, the Iowa Democratic Party moved its caucus date forward to January 24, making it the first primary event in the nation.

• The official date for precinct caucuses is set by the state central committee of each party, and since 1976 the Republican and Democratic parties have held their caucuses on the same day.

• Iowa has 6 Electoral Votes.

• Iowans elect less than two percent of the delegates to the parties' respective national conventions

• Iowa has 1784 precincts spread out over 99 counties

• In Iowa, the law permits seventeen-year-olds who will be eighteen by the time of the general election to participate in the caucuses.

• Over the last 10 presidential elections (1972-2008) Iowa has split its vote between Republican and Democrats, by voting  Republican five times (1972, 1976, 1980, 1984, 2004), while voting Democratic five times as well (1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2008).

• In 1972, George McGovern campaigned in Iowa for only a day and a half. Small wonder, then, that he finished third with 23 percent of the vote behind Edmund Muskie with 36 percent of the vote.

• As proof of the scant attention the Iowa caucuses received prior to 1976, it’s worth noting that it was never referred to in Theodore White's: ``The Making of the President 1972'' or Timothy Crouse's ``The Boys on the Bus''; not even in Hunter S. Thompson's ``Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72.''

• Between 1976-2008, The Democratic candidate who went on to secure the nomination won seven out of nine Iowa caucuses, the exceptions being Michael Dukakis finishing third in 1988 and Tom Harkin, senator from Iowa, the ``favorite son’’, trouncing Bill Clinton with 76 percent of the vote in 1992.

• The eventual Republican nominee between 1976-2008, would win the Iowa Caucus only three times: 1976, 1996, and 2000.

• In 1976, Jimmy Carter, commonly referred to as "Jimmy Who’’ before the Iowa caucuses, won a commanding 27.6 percent of the vote in Iowa with Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana a distant second with 13.6 percent. After his impressive caucus showing, Tom Whitney, the Iowa Democratic chairman called Carter’s win ``striking’’, telling The New York Times that he thought the ``former [Georgia] governor was going to be a major factor in 1976.’’

• In 1980, after edging Ronald Reagan in the Iowa caucuses, The Washington Post wrote that George [H. W]. Bush had "established himself tonight as a serious challenger to Ronald Reagan’’, while a Post editorial, two days later, called Bush's win an impressive victory and a "major setback" for Reagan. A jubilant Bush belted out to television cameras that he had the “Big Mo,” momentum

• In the 1988 Iowa caucuses, Vice President Bush, the GOP heir apparent and leading in polls, slipped to third place, beaten by Bob Dole who was second in the national polls, while a surprising second place finish went to televangelist Pat Robertson whose candidacy up to this time was considered negligible. R. W. Apple Jr. in his post-election analysis  for  The New York Times wrote: ``A surprisingly  feeble showing by Vice President Bush raised insistent questions about his chances of winning the nomination, even though almost every major politician has been describing him for months as the favorite.’’

• In 1988, (Pat Robertson, second with 25 percent of the vote) and again in 1996 (Pat Buchanan, second with 23 percent of the vote), the ideologically more extreme candidates fared better in caucuses than in primary states.

• In 1992, Bill Clinton was one of the rare exceptions to the rule when he skipped the Iowa caucuses altogether, (making only one January appearance in the Hawkeye state); but still managed to capture his party’s nomination.

• In 1996,  Pat Buchanan so overjoyed with his strong second place finish to Bob Dole in the Iowa caucuses roared: "I've emerged as the first-tier challenger to Senator Dole’’, while his sister and campaign manager, Bay Buchanan, declared, "There's only one conservative left in this race ... we now go to New Hampshire.”

• In 2000, The Des Moines Register described publisher Steve Forbes’ impressive showing behind George W. Bush a “strong No. 2.”, who benefited mightily from his ``flat tax’’ proposal.

• In 2004, both John Kerry and John Edwards’ poll numbers were in the single digits prior to the Iowa caucuses, only to finish first and second respectively, while Howard Dean, the national frontrunner, came in a distant third.

• In 2008, 98.6 percent of the voting-age population in Iowa was registered to vote, compared with 74.2 percent nationwide.

• In the 2008 Iowa caucuses, the junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, cruised to victory in a record turnout with 37.6 of the delegate support with John Edwards coming in second with 29.8 percent, while Hillary Clinton came in a disappointing third with 29.5 percent of the vote.  After receiving such a small percentage of the vote, both Senators Joe Biden Christopher Dodd announced they were dropping out of the race.

• On the Republican side in 2008, Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and a Baptist minister delivered a crushing setback to Mitt Romney by winning 34.4 percent of the delegate support, well ahead of Romney who came away with 25.4 percent of the vote. ``Tonight we proved that American politics is still in the hands of ordinary folks like you'' Huckabee shouted to jubilant supports after claiming victory, while Mr. Obama took to the stage clapping his hands and telling supporters, ``They said this day would never come.''

• Victories for Mondale (1984), Bush (2000), and Gore (2000), in the Iowa caucuses coincided with their front runner status, while Carter (1976), Bush (1980), Obama (2008), and Huckabee (2008) victories in Iowa vastly exceeded expectations.

• Since 1972, no candidate failing to finish among the top three places in caucus results has gone on to win the presidency

-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
December 19, 2011

Source: ``The Iowa Precinct Caucuses: The Making of a Media Event’’ (Third Edition) By Hugh Winebrenner and Dennis J. Goldford;   ``The Iowa Caucuses, 1972-2008: A Eulogy’’ By Peverill Squire, published in The Forum 2008 (Volume 5, Issue 4); Iowa Economic Development Authority; State Historical Society of Iowa; U.S. Census Bureau

***

Iowa Caucus Results: 1972-2008

January 24, 1972

Democrats
Uncommitted 35.8 percent
Edmund Muskie 35.5 percent
George McGovern   22.6 percent
Others    7 percent
Hubert Humphrey   1.6 percent
Eugene McCarthy   1.4 percent
Shirley Chisholm 1.3 percent
Henry Jackson   1.1 percent

General Election Results:  The Democrats nominated McGovern and President Nixon won the general election
Source: Des Moines Register
 
1976 Iowa Caucuses
January 19, 1976

Democrats
Jimmy Carter 37.15 percent
Birch Bayh 13.16 percent
Fred R. Harris 9.93 percent
Morris K. Udall 5.97 percent
Sargent Shriver 1.10 percent
Others.  1.76
2,212 precincts reporting, 95 percent of the vote
Source: The New York Times

Republicans
Ford: 264 votes
Reagan: 248 votes
Undecided: 62
Other Candidates: 9
Note: The 1976 results are of a straw poll of 62 sample precincts conducted by the Republican Party of Iowa
Source: Iowa.Gov Official Register
 
1980 Iowa Caucuses
January 21, 1980

Republicans
George H. W. Bush 31.6 percent
Ronald Reagan 29.5 percent
Howard Baker 15.3 percent
John Connally        9.3 percent
Phil Crane 6.7 percent
John Anderson    4.3 percent
Undecided 1.7 percent
Bob Dole 1.5 percent

Democrats
President Jimmy Carter 59.1 percent
Ted Kennedy   31.2 percent
Uncommitted 9.6 percent
General election results:   Ronald Reagan defeated incumbent Jimmy Carter.
Source: Des Moines Register

1984 Iowa caucuses
February 20, 1984

Democrats
Walter Mondale 48.9 percent
Gary Hart 16.5 percent
George McGovern   10.3 percent
Uncommitted 9.4 percent
Alan Cranston      7.4 percent
John Glenn 3.5 percent
Rueben Askew 2.5 percent
Jesse Jackson    1.5 percent
Ernest Hollings    0 percent

Republican caucuses were uncontested in favor of incumbent President Ronald Reagan.

General election results:  President Reagan was re-elected over Walter Mondale.
Source: Des Moines Register

1988 Iowa caucuses 
February 8, 1988

Democrats
Richard Gephardt 31.3 percent
Paul Simon   26.7 percent
Michael Dukakis   22.2 percent
Jesse Jackson   8.8 percent
Bruce Babbitt   6.1 percent
Uncommitted   4.5 percent
Gary Hart   .3 percent
Al Gore    0 percent

Republicans
Robert Dole   37.4 percent
Pat Robertson   24.6percent
George Bush   18.6percent
Jack Kemp   11.1percent
Pete DuPont   7.3percent
No preference   .7percent
Alexander Haig   .3percent

General election Results:  Vice President George Bush defeated Dukakis
Source: Des Moines Register
 
1992 Iowa caucuses
February 10, 1992

Democrats
Tom Harkin 76.4 percent
Uncommitted 11.9 percent
Paul Tsongas 4.1 percent
Bill Clinton 2.8 percent
Bob Kerrey 2.4 percent
Jerry Brown 1.6 percent
Others    .6 percent

Republican caucuses were uncontested in favor of incumbent President George H. W. Bush.

General election results:  Governor Bill Clinton defeated incumbent President Bush

Source: Des Moines Register

1996 Iowa caucuses
February 12, 1996

Republicans
Robert Dole 26 percent
Pat Buchanan 23 percent
Lamar Alexander 17. 6percent
Steve Forbes 10.1 percent
Phil Gramm 9.3 percent
Alan Keyes 7.4 percent
Richard Lugar 3.7 percent
Maurice Taylor 1. 4 percent
Robert Dornan   1.4 percent
Other   .04 percent

Democrats
Incumbent Bill Clinton unopposed.

General election results:  President Clinton won re-election over Senator Robert Dole.

Source: Des Moines Register

2000 Iowa Caucuses

January 24, 2000

Democrats
Al Gore   63 percent
Bill Bradley 35 percent
Uncommitted   2 percent

Republicans
George W. Bush 41 percent
Steve Forbes 30 percent
Alan Keyes 14 percent
Gary Bauer 9 percent
John McCain 5 percent
Orrin Hatch 1 percent

General election results: George W. Bush won election over Al Gore
 
2004 Iowa Caucus
January 19, 2004

Democrats
John Kerry: 37.6 percent
John Edwards: 31.8 percent
Howard Dean: 18.0 percent
Richard A. Gephardt: 10.5 percent
Dennis J. Kucinich: 1.3 percent
Other: 0.4
1,951 of 1,993 precincts reporting, or 98 percent

Republican caucuses were uncontested in favor of incumbent President George W. Bush

Source: Iowa Democratic Party

2008 Iowa Caucus

January 3, 2008

Democrats
Barack Obama 37. 6 percent
John Edwards: 29.7
Hillary Rodham Clinton: 29.5 percent
Bill Richardson: 2.1 percent
Joe Biden: 0.9
Uncommitted: 0.1 percent
Christopher J. Dodd: 0.0
Mike Gravel: 0.0 percent
Dennis J. Kucinich: 0.0 percent
Others: 0.0 percent
100 percent reporting

Republicans
Mike Huckabee: 34.4 percent
Mitt Romney: 25.2 percent
Fred D. Thompson: 13.4 percent
John McCain:  13.1 percent
Ron Paul: 10.0 percent
Rudolph W. Giuliani: 3.5 percent
Duncan Hunter: 0.4 percent
Tom Tancredo: 0.0
98 percent reporting
Source: The New York Times
***
Web Sites to Keep in Mind:

Iowa Quick Facts (State Data Center of Iowa) 

Iowa Media Guide (Greater Des Moines Partnership)

Iowa Caucus 2012-Campaign Contacts/Caucus Resources (Foreign Press Centers)

IowaPolitics.com (2012 GOP Caucus Countdown) 

Des Moines Register (Caucus Page)

Iowa Media Links: Television, Radio, Print Media (IowaPolitics.com)

Iowa Caucuses (2012 Race for the White House) 

Iowa Caucuses & How They Work

Iowa Fact Sheet (Economic Research Service) 

How Iowa Compares to Other States (Iowa.gov)

Gallup Poll (Election 2012) 

Iowa Caucus on Twitter:  

New Hampshire Union Leader: Presidential Endorsement Scorecard

The St Louis Cardinals stunned the world, winning the 2011 World Series as a wild card team; so maybe there’s room for another wild card in 2012.

Before Bill Clinton broke the string in 1992, losing to Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts, beginning in 1952, every candidate who won the New Hampshire primary went on to the win the presidency. In 2000, George W. Bush won the presidential election despite losing to John McCain in New Hampshire; as did Barack Obama who was upended by Hillary Clinton in the 2008  New Hampshire presidential primary. But though the importance of winning this pivotal New England state has been diminished slightly over the years, winning New Hampshire would be a boon to any candidate so early in the political season. Which is why Newt Gingrich, not long ago considered by many to be nothing more than a broken down relic of the 1990’s, has suddenly sprung to life and is downright giddy in winning the endorsement of the New Hampshire Union Leader, which made its preference known in its Sunday edition.

New Hampshire’s primary has been set for January 10th.

Despite all the buzz and excitement among die-hard conservatives over Mr. Gingrich’s recent surge in the polls, most of whom are still lukewarm about throwing their weight behind Mitt Romney, how influential, you might ask, is the New Hampshire Union Leader in ensuring a victory for their endorsed candidate; or for that matter, in picking the next president of the United States?

Well, their track record is not great; in fact, it’s below the Mendoza Line.

In the past 13 presidential elections from 1948 through 2008, the Union Leader has only endorsed the winning candidate (prior to the New Hampshire primary) twice: Richard Nixon in 1968 and Ronald Reagan in 1980. For those scoring at home, 15.4 percent of the time, the Union Leader endorsed the winning candidate in the presidential election.

Despite polls just three weeks before the 1948 presidential election, showed that Thomas Dewey would crush Harry Truman on Election Day, the 33rd president of the United States, ignored  such doom and gloom by continuing his whistle stop tour, brandishing his signature mantra: ``Give ‘em Hell Harry’’, while  hammering away at the ``Do Nothing 80th Congress’’  and the ``One-Party Press.’’ A majority of U.S. newspapers, including the Union Leader, endorsed Dewey; and Life Magazine almost two weeks before the election, published a picture of the New York governor, identifying him ``as the next president of the United States.’’

Even before Watergate tore him to smithereens, polls in mid 1971-showed Richard Nixon’s popularity had dipped below 50 percent, opening the door to challenges in the 1972 primaries from the left and right within his own party. One of them was a conservative congressman from Ohio, John Ashbrook, who earned the endorsement of the New Hampshire Union Leader. The other primary challenger was a liberal, Pete McCloskey.

Despite the Union Leader’s endorsement, Ashbrook received only 6 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire primary;  McCloskey’s anti-war campaign, garnered him 11 percent of the vote, while Nixon received a commanding 83 percent of the vote, leaving his opponents in the dust as he easily captured 1323 of the 1324 delegates to the Republican Convention. Ashbrook faded into the thin night air shortly after the Iowa caucuses (April 4) where he received just a few votes in the straw polls.

The Union Leader also placed their stamp of approval on the candidacy of Delaware Governor Pierre du Pont IV in 1988; only to see him earn 10.1 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire primary, behind Vice President George H.W. Bush who had 37.6 percent of the vote, Senator Robert Dole received 28.4 percent, and Jack Kemp with 12.8 percent. Alexander Haig only managed 0.3 percent of the vote, while evangelist Pat Robertson was practically at the bottom of the pack with 0.4 percent. After such a poor showing in New Hampshire, du Pont withdrew from the race.

The one Republican candidate who benefited mightily from the Union Leader’s endorsement was Pat Buchanan, who in the 1992 Republican primary in New Hampshire earned nearly 40 percent of the Republican vote, collecting more than 3 million votes, not enough to beat the Vice President, but strong enough to weaken his candidacy, showing Bush as a weak vulnerable candidate once the general election rolled around. As it turns out, Buchanan’s strong showing in New Hampshire would end there. He never won a primary. Buchannan, some would argue, would only further divide the party when he delivered his disruptive cultural wars speech at the Republican Convention in Houston of 1992, when he declared: that ``American was in the midst of a ``cultural war’’, a ``religious war’’, and in a struggle for the`` soul of America.’’

Yet another poster child of the conservative movement endorsed by the Union Leader only to fizzle before he really began, was publisher and businessman Steve Forbes who managed a mere 13 percent of the vote in New Hampshire in 2000. John McCain took 49 percent of the vote; while George W. Bush took 31 percent. Polling conservative voters before the primary showed they agreed with Forbes’ core conservative issues on taxes and abortion over the other candidates, but they still preferred Bush or McCain when push came to shove. After his third primary loss in Delaware in February, 2000 (a state he won in 1996) and after pumping $35 million of his own money into the campaign, Forbes withdrew from the race, leaving Bush, McCain and Alan Keyes to fend for themselves in their pursuit of the 2000 Republican nomination.

So if nothing else, the Republican field of Romney, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, and others can take heart, knowing that losing the endorsement of the Union Leader isn't exactly the end of the world.

While all these candidates, to be sure, would have welcomed the endorsement from the New Hampshire Union Leader with open arms, history shows, future presidents are not exactly at the mercy of an editorial endorsement from this conservative newspaper either, even if it has the largest circulation in the state of New Hampshire.

-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
November 28, 2011

****
Candidates Endorsed by the New Hampshire Union Leader Before the New Hampshire Primary.

1948: Tom Dewey
1952:  Robert A. Taft
1960:  Richard Nixon
1964:  Barry Goldwater
1968:  Richard Nixon
1972:  John Ashbrook
1976:  Ronald Reagan
1980:  Ronald Reagan
1988:  Pierre du Pont
1992:  Pat Buchanan
1996: Pat Buchanan
2000:  Steve Forbes
2008: John McCain

Source: Office of the Editorial Page Editor: New Hampshire Union Leader

J. Edgar Hoover: A Primer

On November 11, ``J.Edgar’’, a motion picture epic starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Naomi Watts and directed by Clint Eastwood hits the screens  nationwide, giving audiences the opportunity to bear witness to a dramatic depiction of John Edgar Hoover,’s idealistic side, his dark side and most certainly his voyeuristic side as America’s top cop for almost 50 years gathers deeply guarded secrets and listens to wiretaps of the important and powerful from his FBI headquarters in Washington D.C.

With so much territory to cover during Hoover’s long tenure; from the Red Scare to the public shenanigans of John Dillinger, ``Ma'' Barker, Bonnie and Clyde to the explosive dossiers assembled on high profile public figures like John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., it will be a tall order indeed for Mr. DiCaprio to capture the essence of arguably the most controversial FBI director in U.S. history.

Let’s just hope the film doesn’t disappoint and lives up to its all-star billing.

For those interested in catching up on some history on Mr. Hoover before heading off the theaters, I’ve assembled some facts, feats, and historic footnotes about the FBI’s former director.

John Edgar Hoover

• Born: January 1, 1895.

• Nickname: ``Speed’’, a boyhood nickname he earned after carrying groceries for elderly neighbors for just a few nickels.

• Early in his FBI career, Hoover liked to smoke Lucky Strike cigarettes

• 1913: Graduated from Central High School in Washington D.C.

• In 1913, while attending law school, Hoover took a $30 a month job as a book cataloguer in the Library of Congress. It was here where he learned the value of maintaining a systemized coding system, which required placing the topic, title, author, and location on individual index cards in order to easily locate an item. Hoover applied a similar system in tracking criminals later in his career with the FBI.

• Hoover’s family lived in a two-story stucco house at 413 Seward Square in a neighborhood known as ``Pipetown’’, just seven blocks from the U.S. Capitol.

• 1917: Earned a law degree from George Washington University.

• In 1917, begins working at the Justice Department as a 21-year-old clerk.

• From 1919 to 1921, Hoover helped the Justice Department conduct the ``Palmer Raids’’ in which they rounded up a number of suspects in U.S. cities, who the Department believed were socialists, anarchists and radicals, charging them with attempting to overthrow the government.

• August 22, 1921: Hoover is named assistant director of the Bureau of Investigation.

• December, 1924: Hoover is named permanent director of the Bureau of Investigation; later renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation or FBI.

• Shortly after assuming active control of the Bureau, Hoover turns a haphazardly stored finger printing collection he inherited into a national database that could be accessed by local and state law enforcement officials in order to match fingerprints at a crime scene.

• In 1930, Hoover establishes the Uniform Crime Report, which are national statistics used to determine whether there is a pattern to crimes being committed and whether it’s on the rise or is decreasing.

• By 1931, Hoover and the FBI had compiled 10 million sets of fingerprints; by 1974 it had surpassed 159 million.

• June 18, 1934: In response to gangsters like John Dillinger evading the law, Congress passed a number of federal crime laws, which for the first time gave Hoover and his agents the right to carry firearms with the authority to make arrests.

• July 22, 1934: John Dillinger was gunned down by the FBI after exiting the Biograph Theater in Chicago, accompanied by his girlfriend Polly Hamilton after seeing the movie, ``Manhattan Melodrama’’ starring Clark Gable, William Powell and Myrna Loy.

• 1933: Hoover is believed to have coined the term ``G-Men ‘’ (government agent) in a newspaper article.
NOTE: According to The Oxford English Dictionary, ``G-Men’’ was first used in F.D. Pasley’s 1931 book, `` Al Capone: The Biography of a Self-made Man’’ when he writes: ``He offered a G man (Government agent) ten gran' to forget it.’’

• 1934: The FBI budget stood at $2, 589, 500.

• Beginning in 1935, Hoover establishes the FBI Police Training School; renamed the FBI National Police Academy in 1936 and the FBI National Academy in 1945.

• Hoover labeled American legendary crime figure Kate ``Ma’’ Barker, ``a she wolf…a veritable beast of prey.’’  Barker was killed with her youngest son, Fred, on January 16, 1935 at Lake Weir, Florida.

• James Cagney became the first actor to depict a Bureau agent in the 1935 motion picture ``G-Men’’ The success of the film immediately bestowed celebrity status to Hoover and his department, making them appear as heroes in the eyes of the American public.

• August 5, 1935: Time Magazine publishes the first of three cover stories on J. Edgar Hoover; the other two would come on August 8, 1949 and December 22, 1975.

• 1936: A detective magazine called ``Feds’’ published a feature on Hoover in which they dubbed him ``Public Hero Number One.’’

• May 1, 1936: J. Edgar Hoover makes his first and only arrest in New Orleans: that of an associate of the Barker gang-Alvin "Old Creepy" Karpis.

• In addition to ``Ma’’ Barker and Dillinger, other high profile criminals that were tracked down under Hoover's watch included: Baby Face Nelson, Machine Gun Kelly, Pretty Boy Floyd and Bonnie and Clyde.

• May 29, 1946:  Hoover informs President Truman of a suspected ring of spies in Washington ``noted for their pro-Soviet leanings, and all too eager to learn America’s atomic secrets, among them, Alger Hiss.

• 1948-49: Hoover is instrumental to California Congressman Richard M. Nixon with the investigation of Alger Hiss. In 1950, Hiss was convicted of perjuring himself during his testimony which centered on his involvement with a Soviet spy ring.

• In 1950, Hoover sanctions an FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. The idea was actually hatched by International News Service (INS) reporter James Donovan who asked the FBI to provide him with the most dangerous criminals the FBI was currently tracking. The list appeared in the Washington Daily News on February 7, 1949.

• 1950-54: Hoover provides Senator Joseph McCarthy with a list of suspected Communists working within the U.S. State Department.

• Beginning in 1951, Hoover compiled a ``Sexual Deviates’’ index program, which was a list of known homosexuals of past and present employees of several department within the U.S. government.  When the ``Sexual Deviates’’ indexes were destroyed in 1977, the files numbered over 300,000 pages.

• Between 1956 and 1971, the FBI conducted a campaign of domestic counterintelligence through a program called COINTELPRO (the Counterintelligence Program) which initially targeted the Communist Party in the United States in 1950's; it then expanded in subsequent decades to include anti-Vietnam protestors, white supremacists and Civil Rights leaders. By 1960, the FBI had compiled 432,000 open files on subversives.

• January 10, 1964: The FBI begins transcribing tapes of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., along with a few of his associates from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and two female employees from the Philadelphia Naval Yard at the Willard Hotel, drinking and engaging in sexual activity.  Wiretaps were additionally planted in King’s rooms on February 22, 1964 at the Hyatt House in Los Angeles. The conversations included King’s bawdy descriptions of John F. Kennedy’s sex life, along with a vulgar reference to JFK’s  wife, Jacqueline Kennedy.

• May 8, 1964: President Lyndon Johnson waves the FBI’s mandatory retirement requirement at age 70 in order for the 69 year-old Hoover to remain as director of the FBI. ``The nation cannot afford to lose you’’, the president said.

• In 1966, a Gallup poll found 84 percent of Americans in favor of the work the FBI’s office was doing. By 1975, it had dipped to 52 percent.

• By 1969, the FBI had compiled 754.000 personal files on individuals.

• Hoover died at his Washington D.C. home on May 2, 1972. Soon after his death , Helen Gandy, Hoover’s lifelong partner and executive assistant for 52 years, shredded or destroyed his most sensitive personal files.

• Hoover was buried in Congressional Cemetery, just 13 blocks from the home he was raised in as a young boy.

• High profile names Hoover had personal files of, included: Eleanor Roosevelt, John D. Rockefeller III, Albert Einstein, John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe.

• In all, Hoover remained director of the FBI for 48 years, served 11 presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Richard Nixon; and 18 Attorney Generals from A. Mitchell Palmer to John Mitchell.

• The FBI headquarters in 1975 contained 6.5 million files, filling 7,000 six-drawer file cabinets.

• By 1979 the FBI field offices housed an additional 300,000 cubic feet of files.

• According to Bowker's Books in Print database, there are currently 61 adult books, and 4 juvenile books published or distributed in the United States about J. Edgar Hoover.

-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
November 8, 2011

Source: The FBI Archives; ``PuppetMaster: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover’’ by Richard Hack; ``Young J. Edgar’’ by Kenneth Ackerman

****

Web Sites to Keep in Mind:

The FBI J. Edgar Hoover Files

J. Edgar Hoover Foundation
 

Key Dates of U.S. Presence in Iraq

With President Obama announcing today he is pulling the remaining U.S. troops out of Iraq by the end of December after the Iraqi Parliament refused to give U.S. troops immunity from prosecution, here is a look back at some key dates in the United States presence in Iraq.

Key Dates on U.S. Presence in Iraq

• October 16, 2002: President Bush signs the authorization for use of military force against Iraq.

• June, 2004:  U.N. Security Council adopts Resolution 1546, reaffirming the authorization for the multinational force in Resolution 1511, while noting that its presence in Iraq “is at the request of the incoming Interim Government of Iraq.”

• May 1, 2007: President George W. Bush vetoed the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans’ Care, Katrina Recovery, and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act, H.R. 1591, partially due to certain measures that would have limited the U.S. military role in Iraq.

• November 26, 2007:  U.S. President George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Kamel Al-Maliki signed a ``Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship’’ between the Republic of Iraq and the United States of America.

• November 17, 2008: U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and Iraq Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari sign a withdrawal agreement, which among other provisions, calls for the withdrawal of all U.S. forces no later than December 31, 2011.

• January 1, 2009: The U.S. signs a security agreement with Iraq that requires all U.S. combat troops to move outside of cities by the end of June 2009, while all U.S. troops leave Iraq by December 31, 2011.

• February 27, 2009: President Obama delivers a speech to U.S. Marines at Camp Lejeune, stating the U.S. strategy in Iraq was complete and calls for U.S. troops to be reduced to 50,000 troops by August 31, 2010; and a complete withdrawal by December 31, 2011.

• October 21, 2011: President Obama announces that all U.S. troops will leave Iraq by the end of the year, after the loss of 4,400 troops and $ 1 trillion spent on the nine-year military engagement.

-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
October 21, 2011

Source: Congressional Research Service

 

The Fading American Dream

``I have learned this, at least, from my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.’’ -

-Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854

Eloquent words from Henry David Thoreau’s classic in 19th century America; but how exactly is that moving expression put into practice in the 21st century?

And what exactly is the American Dream?

In the 21st century, that belief might mean landing your own reality show or getting noticed on American Idol, but for the vast majority of Americans -the ideal of getting ahead by holding a steady job with good compensation seems to have been swept out to sea.

 James Truslow Adams is thought to have coined the phrase, ``American Dream’’ in his 1931 study, ``The Epic of America’’ when he wrote: ``If the American dream is to come true and to abide with us, it will, at bottom, depend on the people themselves.’’

Ever since then, the phrase has been sprinkled throughout the text of speeches delivered by U.S. presidents. Jimmy Carter said the ``American Dream endures’’; Richard Nixon invoked the phrase in his 1968 acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention; as did Ronald Reagan in his October, 1982 address to the nation; and George W. Bush in 2002 said: "If you own your own home, you're realizing the American Dream"

But the prospect of achieving the American Dream has gone through some tumultuous headwinds in the last two decades.

Imagine that just 10 years ago in December 2001, 71 percent of respondents in a Gallup poll believed that the youth would have a better life than their parents. That sentiment has now been sliced to 44 percent, the lowest it has ever been dating back to 1983.

Considering a reported 46.2 million Americans now live below the official poverty line, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the highest its been in 52 years, another 14 million without jobs, including an unemployment rate of 16 percent for blacks, 11.3 percent for Hispanics, and 24.6 percent for teenagers, while home ownership has plunged to 65.1 percent, the biggest drop since the Great Depression, the American Dream, for many, is nothing more than an antiquated concept reserved for political stump speeches and 19th century New England Transcendentalists.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the ``American Dream’’ as the ideal that ``every citizen of the United States should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative.’’

How does that ideal hold up today?

In 1994, according to a Roper Starch Worldwide report, 64 percent thought the American Dream was harder to achieve than it was in the past. When the Great Recession hit in 2008, a ``Rockefeller Foundation/Time Campaign for American Workers Survey’’, reported that 45 percent of its respondents thought that even by working hard and playing by the rules, the American Dream was unattainable. And most recently, a 2010 survey by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University reported that 57 percent (of 1, 202 unemployed respondents) believed that no matter how determined they are, hard work does not guarantee success. And as yet another portent of what the future holds: just a third of its panelists believed they will recover financially and return to where they were before the crippling recession took hold with 61 percent not expecting to recover their economic station in life.

Despite the fears of the future, of a double-dip recession, the despair among the unemployed of ever landing on their feet again, the feeling that exploding debt has prevented the country from keeping pace economically with the two Asian giants (China and India); despite all this fear and feeling of hopelessness-Americans, by and large, still refuse to believe our best days are behind us by holding fast to the notion of the American Dream one day becoming a reality if not in their lives than in their children’s and future generations.

According to the Pew Economic Mobility and the American Dream Survey conducted in March, 2011, 37 percent believe they will reach the American Dream in their lifetime; 68 percent say they have achieved or will achieve the American Dream, and 54 percent believe they will be better off 10 years from now.

Thankfully, there have been recent examples of individuals achieving the American Dream right in front of our eyes. "Only in America is my story possible." Barack Obama would say many times on the campaign trail, retelling his story of being raised by single mother (his Kenyan father having abandoned them when he was 2), but through hard work, determination and the resiliency so characteristic of the American spirit-rose from his underprivileged childhood to earn an Ivy League education; win election as an Illinois State Senator, then U.S. Senator before becoming the first African-American U..S president in the nation’s history.

So too with Sonia Sotomayor, a Puerto Rican, raised in a housing project in the Bronx, N.Y.by a single mother (her father died when she was nine) only to become editor of the Yale Law Review, later appointed to the federal bench by H.W. Bush, and in August, 2009 was confirmed the first Hispanic justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

And it took the death of Steve Jobs, age 56, co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc., to realize just how much this Silicon Valley native achieved in such a short period of time. Jobs, as is widely known, was the brainchild of the iphone, ipad, and other revolutionary digital devices who achieved success by dint of his creative ingenuity, despite his humble beginnings. In his 2005 commencement address at Stanford University, Jobs told the graduates after dropping out of Reed College (Portland, Ore) in 1972 (because he felt he was draining his parents’ finances), ``I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple.’’

Unfortunately, individual success stories like President Obama, justice Sotomayor, and Mr. Jobs-inspiring as they might be-are still rare, the exception rather than the rule in a country that is beginning to lose its exceptionalism that once was the hallmark of the country. More and more, it seems, Americans are dependent on government if they hope to shovel themselves out of their economic plight.

The Pew survey additionally reported that as many of 83 percent of respondents want the government to either provide opportunities for the poor and middle class to improve their economic situations, prevent them from falling behind or both.; a sentiment, interesting enough, that had bi-partisan support with 91 percent of Democrats, 84 percent of independents and 73 percent of Republicans agreeing.

And yet all Americans seem to witness day after day, week after week is a dysfunctional government in Washington, unable to develop bipartisanship in passing bills when the country needs them the most; only compounding citizens’ loss of faith in government, and making them feel all the more powerless in changing the financial disorder in their lives.

As Alex Keyssar, professor of History and Social Policy at Harvard University tells me, the biggest fear Americans have is ``that the system is structured in such a way that an individual can’t solve his or her own problem through their own initiative or find their own answers.''

-Bill Lucey

[email protected]

October 17, 2011

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Web Sites to Keep in Mind

John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development (Rutgers University)

Economic Mobility Project (Pew Charitable Trusts)

Roper Public Opinion Archives (The Mood of America)

Center for the Study of the American Dream (Xavier University)

Poverty Highlights (U.S. Census Bureau)

Will Chris Christie's Time Ever Come Again?

 

``We just don't recognize the most significant moments of our lives when they're happening. Back then I thought, well! there will be other days. I didn't realize that...that was the only day.’’

            -Dr. Archibald 'Moonlight' Graham ''-Field of Dreams''

 
                                                                                                                                AP

When the burly Chris Christie announced Tuesday in front of a packed news conference in Trenton of his decision not to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2012, because ``now is not my time’’, many agreed with his decision, reasoning the New Jersey governor, only 49, and his star still rising within the GOP- is like a bottle of fine wine-that still needs additional fermenting, before his quest for the presidency becomes a reality.

But what if his time never comes again? What if 2012 turns out to have been Christie’s only real shot at the top prize, but he passed it up—and years later comes to regret it.?

Life, after all, is filled with regrets and missed opportunities of the times when we should have taken our opportunity when it presented itself-but passed it up because we thought the time wasn’t quite right; whether it was a marriage proposal, a lucrative job offer, seeking out a long lost relative, offering our apology for a past misdeed or going on that dream vacation that never did materialize.

So too is history filled with regrets by characters who missed golden opportunities. The combustible Ty Cobb once said that if he had to do it all over again,`` I would have had more friends’’, while Ted Williams would probably had doffed his cap during his final game at Fenway Park when fans stood for several minutes chanting ``We Want Ted!’’ Actress Bette Davis, meanwhile, turned down the role of Scarlet O’Hara in ``Gone with the Wind’’; and Burt Ward who played Robin on the popular television series ``Batman’’ (1966-1968) was pursued by director Mike Nichols to play the role of Benjamin Braddock in the Graduate (a role that changed Dustin Hoffman’s life forever), but Ward opted instead to renew his contract with the television series and was soon never heard from again.

Soon after delivering a powerful mesmerizing keynote address at the 1984 Democratic Convention in San Francisco, New York Governor Mario Cuomo catapulted to rock star status as he was quickly hounded by party regulars and supporters to throw his hat in the ring and abandon Albany for Washington D.C.

Christie indicated in his press conference there is still too much unfinished business to attend to in New Jersey; and so it would be unfair to his constituents to walk away after just 20 months in office.

Similarly, Mr. Cuomo decided to stay in Albany and dismissed all suggestions of pursuing the presidency when he  told Joe Klein of New York Magazine in 1987: ``I'd wake up in the morning thinking about Dubuque instead of Albany. ``I couldn't run for president’’, Cuomo explained, `` with one hand and running with the state with the other.''

Whether Mr. Cuomo came to regret the decision not to pursue the presidency when his popularity was at its highest point-is just a matter of conjecture. The former New York governor once said that `` I have no regrets about anything that's happened in my life. If anything, I've gotten a good deal more than I deserved and I'm working very hard to come to as close as I can to deserving it.''

Still, you  wonder how much time Mr. Cuomo reflects on those exhilarating days of the 1980’s when he was one of the most sought after politicians in the country, a popularity he was never able to recapture as the years wore on and especially after he was denied a fourth term as governor in losing to George Pataki in 1994.

But arguably one of the most star-crossed examples of a political figure wasting a golden opportunity was Hillary Clinton who chose not to seek the Democratic nomination in 2004. 

After winning the U.S. Senate race in 2000, Clinton quickly earned her stripes by serving on the Armed Service Committee, the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and voting against two major tax cuts proposed by the Bush Administration. In 2003, she released a 562-page autobiography, ``Living History’’ about her years in the White House as First Lady and dealing with the embarrassment of her husband’s extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky. The book set first week sales for a non-fiction work and went on to sell more than one million copies in the first year of its release.

In their book, `` Game Change’’  political reporters John Heilemann and Mark Halperin document just how close Mrs. Clinton came to seeking the Democratic nomination in 2004.  The author’s point out Steve Ricchetti , who served as Bill Clinton’s deputy White House chief of staff,  told Mrs. Clinton she was facing a ``Bobby Kennedy moment’’ with an unpopular war and a divided electorate and that the time was ripe given her popularity to announce her candidacy. So serious was Clinton that she even held a closed door sit down meeting with her husband, her daughter Chelsea, former campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, former deputy chief of staff at the White House, Evelyn Lieberman, and Cheryl Mills, who defended Mr. Clinton during his impeachment trial.  She polled them all on whether she should run. The sole dissenter was her daughter Chelsea who advised her to finish her Senate term otherwise voters would never forgive her.

In the end, Mrs. Clinton listened to her daughter despite all the those who urged her to run; because as she told Solis Dolis, ``I’d be crucified’’ by the media if she abandoned the Senate.

Little did Mrs. Clinton know that a new upstart in the Senate;  a rising star in the Democratic party, Barack Hussein Obama would attract a new legion of followers when he delivered a spellbinding keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convention in Boston. Ever since that speech, the junior senator from Illinois’s popularity grew to a fevered pitch, so that by the time the primary season of 2006 and 2007 was in full bloom-Hillary’s once rock solid base was beginning to fragment and her narrative of becoming the first female U.S. president was being overshadowed by a more compelling narrative; that of the first African-American president.

One can’t help but wonder just how much that tete-e-tete that Mrs. Clinton conducted with senior advisors and her husband and daughter before deciding not to run in 2004, still haunts her to this day.

Mr. Christie is more or less banking that President Obama will be re-elected, which will then open the electorate up to his fresh ideas in 2016.

But if Obama is as beatable as some predict and his soundly defeated by a Mitt Romney, Christie may have to wait until 2020 to make a lunge for the presidency; and by then it is conceivable that he might be damage goods, depending, of course, on his legislative track record with New Jersey voters in a battered economy.

It’s too soon to tell if Christie will come to regret his decision not to seek the presidency; but for his sake I hope he doesn’t one day many many years from now come to repeat the memorable line spoken by Dr. Archibald 'Moonlight' Graham '' in the motion picture Field of Dreams: `` Back then I thought, well! there will be other days. I didn't realize that...that was the only day.’’

 -Bill Lucey
[email protected]
October 6, 2011