truesee's Blog

Police: Woman attacked man with bottle of hot sauce

Three women jailed after attacking man with a broken bottle of hot sauce, according to Orlando police.

Bianca Prieto

Orlando Sentinel

4:40 p.m. EDT, July 12, 2010 

July 12, 2010

More Americans’ credit scores at new lows

Eileen Aj Connelly
Associated Press

NEW YORK — The credit scores of millions more Americans are sinking to new lows.

Figures provided by FICO show that 25.5 percent of consumers — nearly 43.4 million people — now have a credit score of 599 or below, marking them as poor risks for lenders. It’s unlikely they will be able to get credit cards, auto loans or mortgages under the tighter lending standards banks now use.

Because consumers relied so heavily on debt to fuel their spending in recent years, their restricted access to credit is one reason for the slow economic recovery.

“I don’t get paid for loan applications, I get paid for closings,” said Ritch Workman, a Melbourne, Fla., mortgage broker. “I have plenty of business, but I’m struggling to stay open.”.

FICO’s latest analysis is based on consumer credit reports as of April. Its findings represent an increase of about 2.4 million people in the lowest credit score categories in the past two years. Before the Great Recession, scores on FICO’s 300-to-850 scale weren’t as volatile, said Andrew Jennings, chief research officer for FICO in Minneapolis. Historically, just 15 percent of the 170 million consumers with active credit accounts, or 25.5 million people, fell below 599, according to data posted on Myfico.com.

More are likely to join their ranks. It can take several months before payment missteps actually drive down a credit score. The Labor Department says that about 26 million people are out of work or underemployed, and millions more face foreclosure, which alone can chop 150 points off an individual’s score. Once the damage is done, it could be years before this group can restore their scores, even if they had strong credit histories in the past.

On the positive side, the number of consumers who have a top score of 800 or above has increased in recent years. At least in part, this reflects that more individuals have cut spending and paid down debt in response to the recession. Their ranks now stand at 17.9 percent, which is notably above the historical average of 13 percent, though down from 18.7 percent in April 2008 before the market meltdown.

There’s also been a notable shift in the important range of people with moderate credit, those with scores between 650 and 699. The new data shows that this group comprised 11.9 percent of scores. This is down only marginally from 12 percent in 2008, but reflects a drop of roughly 5.3 million people from its historical average of 15 percent.

This group is significant because it may feel the effects of lenders’ tighter credit standards the most, said FICO’s Jennings. Consumers on the lowest end of the scale are less likely to try to borrow. However, people with mid-range scores that had been eligible for credit before the meltdown are looking to buy homes or cars but finding it hard to qualify for affordable loans.

Workman has seen this firsthand.

A customer with a score of 679 recently walked away from buying a house because he could not get the best interest rate on a $100,000 mortgage. Had his score been 680, the rate he was offered would have been a half-percent lower. The difference was only about $31 a month, but over a 30-year mortgage would have added up to more than $11,000.

“There was nothing derogatory on his credit report,” Workman said of the customer. He had, however, recently gotten an auto loan, which likely lowered his score.

Studies have shown FICO scores are generally reliable predictions of consumer payment behavior, but Workman’s experience points to one drawback of credit scoring: Lenders can’t differentiate between two people with the same score.

Another consumer might have a 679 score because of several late payments,
which could indicate he or she is a bigger repayment risk.

On a broader scale, some of the spike in foreclosures came about because homeowners were financially irresponsible, while others lost their jobs and could no longer pay their mortgages. Yet both reasons for foreclosures have the same impact on a borrower’s FICO score.

In the past too much credit was handed out based on scores alone, without considering how much debt consumers could pay back, said Edmund Tribue, a senior vice president in the credit risk practice at MasterCard Advisors. Now the ability to repay the debt is a critical part of the lending decision.

Workman still thinks credit scores alone play too big a role. “The pendulum has swung too far,” he said. “We absolutely swung way too far in the liberal lending, but did we have to swing so far back the other way?”

Obama's policy time bombs Chris Frates and Ben White   July 11, 2010 07:28 PM EDT

President Barack Obama has long boasted about the transformative change he’s bringing to the country.

But by the time those reforms finally arrive, he could be long gone from the White House.

Some of Obama’s biggest promises won’t go into effect until long after his first term — and in some cases, well past a second. In fact, buried deep within some of the Democrats’ most significant reform bills are dozens of policy time bombs set to blow at more politically convenient times.

The Democratic reform triumvirate — health care, Wall Street and energy — is filled with provisions designed to front-load policy benefits and delay political pain.

Health care reform cracks down on insurers right away but won’t force people to buy insurance until 2014. A new consumer financial protection agency kicks in almost immediately under the Wall Street reform bill, but banks won’t feel its full force for more than 10 years. And even Democrats’ nascent immigration reforms include at least an eight-year wait before illegal immigrants can apply for permanent residency — after Obama leaves office.

The delicate balance aims to gradually get a skittish public accustomed to the enormous changes, while insulating lawmakers from potential backlash.

“You always delay anything that might be disruptive or difficult,” said Frances Lee, professor of political science at the University of Maryland. “The goal is to do it in a way that no one feels it and no one writes news stories about it — minimize the blowback.”

Lawmakers and the White House justifiably, and almost reflexively, argue that it’s logical to phase in the sweeping changes over time. Forcing massive industries like Wall Street and health care to make drastic changes overnight would be virtually impossible and incredibly destabilizing.

That doesn’t mean politics aren’t a factor.

Perhaps most famously, House Democrats practically demanded that their leaders load the health care bill with goodies that take effect before November’s election, giving them something to sell on the campaign trail.

In the Wall Street reform bill, some of the toughest crackdowns on the financial sector were delayed. The bill offers long timetables for compliance and generous opportunities for extensions.

For instance, a new rule to drastically cut the amount banks can invest in hedge funds and private equity doesn’t sound as tough when banks could get more than a decade to do it, as some analysts believe.

The bill also calls for a six-month study of the so-called Volcker rule, which restricts banks’ ability to make the risky transactions. The actual rule-making, however, doesn’t take place until the fall of 2011. The new rules are supposed to take effect by mid-2012, with full compliance by 2014. 

But they are allowed to file up to three years of extensions — and can take an additional five years to ditch some of their most difficult-to-sell investments.

This period could give banks plenty of time to find other ways to make money — or figure out how to skirt the new rules.

“There is a long phase-in period in which the actual rules will be crafted by regulators,” Goldman Sachs analysts wrote in a note to clients last week. “While this may lead to further surprises down the line, we see this as important as financial institutions have time to adapt their business models.”

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said he didn’t know how long the Volcker rule gives banks to phase in the changes, but making sudden, sweeping changes could trigger an economic crisis.

“When you are forcing a whole group of institutions to sell the same thing, it’s crazy to make them all sell it at one time. That’s creating a fire sale. That’s very destabilizing, so we have tried to phase it in,” Frank told POLITICO on June 30, the same day the House passed the financial reform bill that bears his name.

Lawmakers also gave credit-rating agencies a stay of execution of sorts.

The Senate passed a tough provision that essentially banned banks from choosing their own rating agencies, a way to keep banks from shopping around for investment ratings they might not deserve. But in the bill’s final version, Congress allowed for a two-year study before enacting the provision — plenty of time for credit raters to lobby for a pardon, away from the harsh glare of major legislation.

Another major requirement, that banks wall off their most risky derivatives-trading businesses into separately capitalized subsidiaries, also delays the pain for banks. They will have until 2015 to move their equity, commodity and other riskier derivatives into spinoff ventures.

Goldman analysts estimated that banks will have to refinance $100 billion in securities under the bill. However, they don’t have to do it until 2013, which should make it fairly painless.

Democrats took a similar tack on health care reform, quickly activating the more popular bits, such as a ban on denying people insurance because of pre-existing conditions, while delaying the most unpopular ones.

For instance, the provisions requiring everyone to buy insurance and penalizing employers that don’t offer coverage won’t begin until 2014. A tax on high-end insurance plans isn’t effective until 2018. Not surprisingly, those three elements were viewed as the least favorable pieces of health reform in a recent Kaiser Health Tracking Poll.

But some Democrats say there are plenty of popular items in the health care bill that were delayed to keep from botching the law’s rollout. Many of the delayed provisions, according to Lee, were aimed at keeping costs under Obama’s $900 billion price tag. The later it starts, the cheaper it looks in the 10-year budget projections.

Obama certainly isn’t the first president to work the calendar to keep costs down, Lee noted. In 2001, President George W. Bush’s tax cuts front-loaded relief for poor and middle-class taxpayers and gradually phased in tax cuts for the wealthy. In fact, the full repeal of the estate tax just took effect this year, Lee said. 

And in 1983, when Congress raised the Social Security retirement age, the first people the change affected were those who turned 65 in 2003 — giving most lawmakers who voted for it plenty of time to retire, Lee said.

Democrats are continuing the pattern in their work on an energy bill.

If a carbon cap is passed this year, the first year emissions would have to be cut is 2012, but the immediate decreases aren’t drastic. In fact, because the recession has decreased economic activity, the country could probably meet the emissions targets without changing how it does business.

And lawmakers are hoping to further reduce the upfront pain by sending checks to consumers to help offset any increased energy costs.

An immigration reform plan by Senate Democrats also includes long time horizons. One of the most controversial proposals is likely to be the path to legal residence for the roughly 11 million people living in the country illegally.

It calls for screening, registering and fingerprinting illegal immigrants. Once registered, they would have to wait eight years after current visa backlogs have cleared before applying for permanent residency. The provision is based on the idea that people who entered the country illegally should have to wait at the back of the line for the opportunity to live here permanently.

Norm Ornstein, a congressional expert at the American Enterprise Institute, said part of the reason lawmakers would rather serve voters dessert before making them eat their vegetables is as old as politics itself.

“If half your political process has a strong interest in seeing you fail and is telling everybody that the sky is falling on them,” he said, “then you have a much stronger incentive to front-load the benefits and backload the cost.”

Darren Samuelsohn contributed to this report.

link to video

http://www.politico.com/singletitlevideo.html?bcpid=19407224001&bctid=111545286001

Gingrich says he's seriously considering White House run and will decide early next year

Former U.S. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich speaks during a fundraising breakfast for Iowa Congressional candidate Brad Zaun, Monday, July 12, 2010, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall) (Charlie Neibergall, AP / July 12, 2010)

MIKE GLOVER

Associated Press Writer

6:14 p.m. CDT, July 12, 2010 

'Please, sir, don't take me to jail'

Karen Voyles
Staff writer

Published: Monday, July 12, 2010 at 12:32 p.m.
Last Modified: Monday, July 12, 2010 at 12:32 p.m.

A Gainesville man was arrested Sunday, one day after his birthday, after Waldo Police pulled his truck over to check its tint and found bags of marijuana, cash and a pistol.

Stacey Jerald Dennis, who turned 36 on Saturday, was charged with possession of marijuana, possession with intent to sell marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia and delivering drug paraphernalia.

Dennis, of 3721 N.W. 63rd St. in Gainesville, was driving a Ford F150 pickup northbound on U.S. 301 with one passenger, Jimmie Leon Ross, 30, of 2806 S.E. 19th Ave. in Gainesville, on Sunday night. Officer Brandon Roberts said he noticed the dark tint on the truck's window and decided to pull the truck over. While following the truck, Roberts said he received confirmation from dispatchers that the owner of the truck had an expired driver's license.

After Dennis pulled over and acknowledged he had let his license lapse by a day, Roberts said he noticed the odor of marijuana. Officer Jeff Pedrick assisted in the search of the truck, which turned up two partially smoked marijuana cigarettes, a freshly rolled marijuana cigarette, a wad of cash, a plastic container of sandwich-size plastic bags of marijuana, several boxes of flavored cigars, a glass smoking pipe and a .45-caliber handgun.

The gun was found in the glove box of the car, directly in front of the seat where Ross had been sitting. According to police, the handgun had been reported stolen out of Levy County. Ross had served a year in state prison on drug charges and was released in 2007. He was charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Dennis and Ross both were charged with one count each of delivery of drugs, possession of marijuana, drug possession with intent to sell and possession of drug paraphernalia.

LINK TO PHOTOS

http://www.gainesville.com/article/20100712/ARTICLES/100719906/1105/NEWS?Title=-Please-sir-don-t-take-me-to-jail-&tc=ar

From booty shorts to belly shirts, some intern fashions make companies cringe

Employers struggle to impart integrity and professionalism on scantily clad workers

Jill Rosen

The Baltimore Sun

July 12, 2010

In a recent episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" called "The Bare Midriff," Larry David is disgruntled that his new secretary is wearing a shirt that exposes her tummy. When he confronts her, she tells him she's proud of her body and wants to flaunt it.

"You can flaunt two-thirds of the day outside the office and then you have one-third non-flaunt," he tells her. "Why not take a break in the flaunt?"

In white-collar offices across Maryland, "the flaunt" has become an issue and a distraction, particularly when it comes to interns who, professionals say, perennially show more daring than sense in their work wardrobes.

In Washington, D.C., where they've never quite forgotten Monica Lewinsky, a name has evolved for the scantily-clad summer staff: "skinterns."

"It's something we deal with all the time," says Carol Vellucci, director of the University of Baltimore's Career Center. "One staff member said she received a call from a not-to-be-named employer who had to speak to their intern about wearing booty shorts to the office. I said, 'She had to tell her that'"?

Booty shorts. Thigh-grazing dresses. Flip-flops. Ripped jeans. Cleavage-baring tops. See-through skirts. Forgotten bras. … Employers have seen it all — and wish they hadn't.

Missy Martin hires about 80 interns a year as vice president of human resources for Ripken Baseball, where she says it's critical that employees — even interns — represent the Ripken name with integrity and professionalism. That's difficult to do with thong underwear peeking from your waistband.

If Martin sees a sartorially-challenged intern, she says she nips the problem in the bud with an up-front discussion about standards and expectations. But at other offices, she's seen young staff members in jaw-dropping get-ups.

"It's not that they come in and look sloppy, that's not what you see," she says. "They're showing up to work in bar clothes. Short skirts, tank tops and cleavage showing. It's like, 'Kids, do you realize you're not supposed to be dressed like you're going out to drink in Canton?' "

Vellucci says, no, they don't.

When a lot of students hear they're supposed to get "dressed up" for work, she says they think of their best, night-on-the-town outfits. "It seems to be something that especially younger students aren't quite getting," Vellucci says.

To remedy that, the university has just launched a one-credit elective, taught by Velluci, called "Personal And Professional Skills for Business." Anyone can take it, but it's required for business majors. She talks about things like how to network, how to write a resume, how to handle oneself in an interview — and what to wear.

"It's really, really basic," she says. "No cleavage. Closed toe shoes. All the things that you'd think you wouldn't have to say but we say them anyway."

Every year at Towson University, the College of Business and Economics invites students to an event called Dress Smart. Part fashion show, part networking opportunity, the event is designed to show students, in a very visual way, what isn't right for the office.

Professor Laleh Malek, the organizer, asks students to wear things to the program that range from professional to a little bit wrong to wildly inappropriate. The students model and mingle while real company recruiters, folks from firms including T. Rowe Price and Black & Decker, talk to them and tell them why their outfits work or don't.

"Recruiters from well known firms come in and say this is wrong — so if you thought it was right it's not," Malek says.

With the prevalence of the vaguely defined "business casual," Malek says it's no wonder interns can become confused.

She urges them to take a better-safe-than-sorry approach, erring on the conservative side.

"We advise you put your best foot forward cause you are meeting clients, you're meeting people who could potentially be prospective employers and in the current economic situation, it's all about employers seeing who you are," Malek says. "How you dress gives off an image of who you are."

Missy Martin learned that the hard way, in the first minutes of her first job out of college.

She walked into the office and her boss started clapping and said, "Oh, we have a short skirt today!"

"I wanted to die. To die," she says. "I learned a very hard lesson. You should let your brains and accomplishments speak for you and not the skirts and the tight tops."

Martin believes that if an intern is wearing the wrong thing, the short skirt or whatever it is will serve as a blinder, hiding all of his or her attributes. "I think it takes you down a notch," she says. "When you see an individual at work that doesn't have the sense to realize you shouldn't be showing things…it drowns out all of their good deeds, their good work, because they don't have good judgment."

At Himmelrich PR, Mike Fila managers the intern program. How they should look in the office is a huge part of his first-day orientation lecture.

Why? Because he's seen how it can go wrong — especially in the summer when young women are tempted to wear less because it's so hot outside and young men think it's alright to come in unshaven, or in shorts.

"These things just don't project the kind of professionalism you would want in an office atmosphere," he says. "We go over how we as paid staff present ourselves and how we believe interns should present themselves as well….

"Most often it's because they just don't know. It's their first experience in a formal office environment. I've never gotten any push back."

Fila brings his interns to call on clients. And he expects them to look the part. "Daisy Dukes would just not work," he says.

Himmelrich intern Alexa Pollokoff of Owings Mills just graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in Marketing. On her first day of work, before Fila even got to the "What Not to Wear" speech, she showed up in black dress slacks and a short-sleeved white blouse, explaining, "I tried to steer it down the middle road."

So, potential employers, there's at least one out there who gets it.

For some, job loss leads to fulfillment

They start businesses, thrive in new careers

 

Jim Deramo, who once worked for a Winthrop oil company, started his own business, Jim D & Sons. (Joanne Rathe/Globe Staff)

Katie Johnston Chase

Globe Staff

July 12, 2010

Like about 104,000 others in Massachusetts who have lost jobs in the past three years, none of the three changed occupation by choice. But unlike their counterparts, they have found work they like even better — whether it is because they are pursuing a new passion, have a saner schedule, or enjoy running their own business.

“Sometimes getting fired is the best thing that can ever happen to you,’’ said Wendie Howland, a former insurance case manager and consultant who is now a certified nurse life care planner.

Many job seekers no doubt disagree. And post-firing happiness is not enjoyed by all workers equally. Executives, or others especially successful in previous jobs, are more likely to thrive — even if they end up making less money.

Almost a quarter of executives who lost jobs during the recession are more satisfied with their new position, accord ing to an online survey conducted by the recruiting firm Korn/Ferry International. But according to a separate Korn/Ferry survey, a majority of newly reemployed workers are making less money.

Some people are working for smaller companies, and some have switched careers or gone into business for themselves. But if their companies had not forced them out, several of them probably never would have made the leap, they said.

James Wiess, for instance, might have stayed on the path he was on if he had not been laid off from Putnam Investments in November 2008. With guidance from the Boston career firm New Directions, he started volunteering at job training and tutoring programs, which helped lead him to a career as a high school math teacher.

If not for the layoff, though, “I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have had the guts to do it,’’ he said.

The fresh slate is liberating after 25 years of hanging on every stock market dip, said Wiess, 50, who will start student-teaching at English High School in Jamaica Plain as part of the Boston Teacher Residency program.

He will be making a fraction of his old salary as a portfolio manager when he starts working full time next year, but he has saved enough money that he doesn’t anticipate having to change his lifestyle.

And he is grateful that instead of obsessing about the stock market, he can spend time helping young people understand how math “describes the world around us.’’

“It feels like it will be much more worthwhile,’’ he said.

Many unemployed people who are lucky enough to land a job do not feel the same way, though. Of the approximately 170 monthly job placements Jewish Vocational Services has been making recently, few workers have landed better positions than they had before, said president Jerry Rubin — so few, in fact, “we could tell you who they are,’’ he said with a grim laugh.

Being open to switching careers helps, Rubin added — which is exactly what Tom Hurwitch did after he lost his job as a strategy consultant for the oil, gas, and utilities industries at the management consulting giant Booz & Co. in October 2008.

A month later, Hurwitch landed a job as a project manager at Arcadia Solutions, a small Burlington company that provides information technology solutions to the health care industry. His salary is about 10 percent lower than it was and the benefits aren’t as good, he said, but he feels lucky.

The health care industry is fairly recession-proof, for one thing, he said, and he doesn’t have to leave his wife and two young daughters to travel four or five days a week, as he did at Booz.

“You’re very much a cog at a management consulting firm, whereas with Arcadia you’re much more a player in the organization,’’ said Hurwitch, 35.

Cassie Scarano, president of Commongood Careers, a Boston executive search firm that focuses on the nonprofit sector, theorizes that people who were top performers at their old jobs are more likely to find satisfying work because they are proactive and tend to turn the layoff into an opportunity to find something better.

“Immediately it’s very problematic,’’ Scarano said of being laid off, “but in the longer term it actually turns out to be a fairly positive thing for people.’’

That’s the way it went for Jim Deramo.

His dream of starting his own oil service business was pushed into reality almost overnight when the Winthrop oil company where he had worked for 13 years went under at the end of 2007.

A month later, he was putting the vinyl letters on his first Jim D & Sons van in Revere and calling on his family for help.

Deramo is working harder than ever for the same salary — answering middle-of-the-night calls and putting in 100-hour weeks in the winter to keep up with the demand — but he wouldn’t go back to his old job even if he could.

“I’m happier,’’ said Deramo, who enjoys building relationships with his customers. “People trust me.’’

Howland also went into business for herself when she was let go from her job as a consultant for workers compensation insurance claims in the fall of 2007.

After being out of work for a year, Howland, 59, who already had a master’s degree in nursing, became a certified nurse life care planner.

Now she is making about $25,000 more a year to come up with “road maps for care’’ for people with lifelong medical conditions.

Howland said the work is more rewarding than her old job, though it is a path she never would have taken if she hadn’t been forced out.

“I ought to find my old boss,’’ she said, “and thank her for doing me the favor.’’

The left needs a right brain

E.J. Dionne Jr.  Washington Post
Monday, July 12, 2010; A15

If the midterm elections were held now, Republicans would probably take control of the House of Representatives. It's as hard these days to find a Democrat who's not alarmed as it is to find a Cleveland Cavaliers fan who's cheering for LeBron James. 

Worse for Democrats: They face two very different challenges, and addressing one could exacerbate the other. Think of it as a set of simultaneous equations. 

On the one hand, independent voters are turning on them. Democratic House candidates enjoyed a 51 percent to 43 percent advantage over Republicans in 2008. This time, the polls show independents tilting Republican by substantial margins. 

But Democrats are also suffering from a lack of enthusiasm among their own supporters. Poll after poll has shown that while Republicans are eager to cast ballots, many Democrats seem inclined to sit out this election. 

The dilemma is that arguments that might motivate partisans could further alienate the less-ideological independents. The classic formulation holds that the party can either move left to excite its base or move to the center to win back independents. 

If there is an answer to this conundrum, it lies in the reality that many voters -- partisans and independents alike -- are not particularly ideological. They respond to facts as they see them (a stalled economic recovery) and to a party's performance (the Senate Republicans' obstruction ends up hurting Democrats because they are supposed to be in charge). 

The GOP's gridlock strategy was well-thought-out and has paid enormous dividends. Republican leaders understood that delay was their friend because the immediate elation over President Obama's election was bound to wear off. And while Republicans erected their blockade, they insisted that all the nastiness arose from Obama's failure to reach out to them. 

The politics of passive-aggressiveness worked twice over. Independents hated all the fighting. And even when Democrats won on health care and other issues, they emerged less with a renewed sense of purpose than with feelings of exhaustion and frustration over all the compromises it took to eke out victory. 

Turning all this around is a White House mission, and the president's campaign stops last week in Missouri and Nevada previewed his effort to paint Republicans as both extreme and recalcitrant. His speech in Kansas City included one major innovation, an echo of a legendary 1940 assault by Franklin D. Roosevelt against his political opponents in Congress -- "Martin, Barton and Fish." 

Obama went after the alliterative trio of "Barton and Boehner and Blunt," references to Reps. Joe Barton of Texas, John Boehner of Ohio and Roy Blunt of Missouri. Challenging them for their resolute opposition to every Democratic approach, Obama asked "if that 'no' button is just stuck." 

He hopes that this Republican trinity can do double duty. It creates a tangible group of foes against whom Democrats can rally. And it reminds independents that a Republican vote this fall would not simply be a rebuke to Washington but also an affirmative ballot for Republican leaders who are none too popular themselves. 

Democrats are counting on a similar twofer from their attacks on the current brand of Republicanism as being too doctrinaire and too extreme. The energy that the Tea Party provides Republicans could be offset by a negative reaction in the electoral middle to the new movement's ferocity. This is the GOP's simultaneous equation puzzle: It must benefit all it can from Tea Party organizing without getting tarred by its members' frequently radical outbursts. 

But there is an intangible: Passion counts in politics. It motivates a movement's most fervent followers but can also carry moderates attracted to those who promise change and profess great certainty about how to achieve it. Barack Obama got himself elected president by understanding this. 

Passion may come especially hard to Democrats this year, and even in the best of times it can be difficult to muster among liberals. As the philosopher Michael Walzer observed in his book "Politics and Passion," liberals by their nature highly prize skepticism, irony and doubt. Walzer argued that "administrators do well when they follow their rational convictions," but "political activists must be more passionately engaged, or else they will lose every struggle for political power." 

On paper, Democrats have a rational solution to their political math problem. They must still find the passion that executing it will require.

Sarah Palin is supported by a political operation befitting someone considering a presidential run. AP

A new financial report filed Sunday evening showed Sarah Palin’s political action committee has taken its fundraising to a higher level – and suggests that she has begun building a more sophisticated political operation in place of a bare-bones organization powered mostly by her rock star status and scrappy on-line presence.

The report, filed with the Federal Election Commission, shows that Palin’s political action committee raised more money in the second quarter of this year – $866,000 – than it had in any previous three-month stretch since Palin formed the group in January 2009.

The committee, SarahPAC, also spent nearly twice as much – $742,000 – as it had in any previous quarter, the lion’s share of which went to the type of list-building and fundraising (including its first major direct-mail campaign) that typically undergird top-tier political committees. It also reported its biggest-ever round of donations to candidates – $87,50 – and its highest outlays for travel costs, including $17,000 on private jet fare to crisscross the country for high-profile political speaking gigs, and speechwriting. It also showed continued payments for that speechwriting as well as foreign and domestic policy consulting, and its first ever payments to a scheduler.

In short, for the first time since the 2008 campaign when she was the vice-presidential running mate to GOP presidential candidate John McCain, Palin is supported by a political operation befitting someone considering a presidential run.

SarahPAC, a so-called leadership political action committee, relied largely on small donors for its fundraising haul between the beginning of April and the end of last month, according to the report, which shows more than $1 million in the bank at the end of the quarter.

Though the stated purposes of political action committees like SarahPAC are to boost like-minded candidates through contributions and appearances on their behalf, it’s become common for prospective presidential candidates to use such committees to pay for political staffs and travel before formally declaring their candidacies – as well as to collect chits by contributing to potential allies. Several of Palin’s potential rivals for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination – including Govs. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and Haley Barbour of Mississippi and former Govs. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and Mike Huckabee of Arkansas – have their own PACs, and some have multiple committees in different states.

Most of their reports are due this week, though a spokesman said Pawlenty’s Freedom First PAC raised more than $700,000, while Romney’s field-leading Free and Strong America PAC, which reports monthly, had raised more than $1 million in April and May alone. Of the bunch, only Barbour had filed a second quarter report, which showed that one of his committees, a Georgia state committee called Haley's Leadership PAC quietly created late last year, pulled in nearly $70,000 from April through June, largely through a fundraiser last month that drew some big Republican names to a trendy restaurant in Washington’s Glover Park neighborhood.

Though SarahPAC has been competitive with all but Romney’s fundraising juggernaut in previous quarters, Palin and her PAC until recently had eschewed many of the traditional trappings of a big-time political operation. Instead, she largely relied on an ad hoc strategy built around Facebook posts, Tweets, and occasional speeches and fundraising emails, which sometimes left her appearing reactive or even flakey, such as on the few occasions where scheduling mix-ups or crossed signals prevented her making appearances at events at which she had been expected. 

But Sunday’s report offers a glimpse into an operation that is becoming more organized and streamlined as it builds out.

For instance, for the first time since it launched, SarahPAC reported payments – $11,000 worth – for scheduling assistance.

It also reported $128,000 in travel-related costs – more than twice as much as Palin had accrued in any previous three-month span, which reflects a packed political schedule that had Palin hop-scotching the nation stumping for candidates and appearing at political events. Take the $10,500 charter flight booked by the PAC in April; PAC officials said it jetted Palin between a fundraising rally for fellow tea party hero Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) in Minneapolis to New Orleans, where Palin spoke to the Southern Republican Leadership Conference. The conference, considered a crucial stop for would-be presidential candidates, draws a cross-section of activists and operatives, and attendees got gift bags including caribou jerky from Palin, for which SarahPAC reported paying $3,800 to Indian Valley Meats in Indian, Alaska.

But perhaps most indicative of a more traditional, robust political operation were the $330,000 in fundraising costs reflected in the report, including $154,000 to HSP Direct, a direct-mail vendor that put together SarahPAC’s first direct-mail campaign. Palin had previously used primarily online fundraising techniques, which tend to have lower overhead but cannot necessarily equal the return rate of a well-targeted but more expensive traditional direct-mail campaign. HSP’s campaign for SarahPAC, which started in earnest in April, sent glossy fundraising solicitations to more than 500,000 conservative households, asking them to help the PAC support conservative candidates in 2010, according to SarahPAC treasurer Tim Crawford.

Through the direct-mail campaign and its continued online fundraising, SarahPAC added about 8,000 new donors in the second quarter, bringing its total contributors to more than 25,000, said Crawford, adding the PAC also has more than 200,000 emails on its list.

“Essentially when we started last January, we started from scratch,” Crawford said. “We didn’t have a big base of people coming out of the presidential campaign. Everybody knew that there was this massive amount of support, but she didn’t have it, because all that stuff was property of the McCain campaign. But now, I think we’ve got a pretty formidable thing going on, and it grows every day,” Crawford said.

Among SarahPAC’s $87,500 in second-quarter contributions were donations to candidates Palin has helped boost in contested GOP primary victories this year in states that will play a key role in determining the 2012 Republican presidential nominees, such as Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle ($2,500), South Carolina congressional candidate Tim Scott ($5,000) and Iowa gubernatorial candidate Terry Branstad ($5,000). SarahPAC also gave $5,000 to the reelection campaign of Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, whose support will be courted assiduously by the field of 2012 GOP presidentiaal aspirants.

Palin’s endorsements and her PAC’s accompanying contributions have helped her forge a burgeoning reputation as queen-maker whose coveted support has been credited with helping a group of female Republican candidates – “mama grizzlies,” in her parlance – to victory.

But Sunday’s report shows more goes into her endorsement decisions than just her gut instinct.

In fact, the PAC continued paying a Sacramento-based researcher named Andrew Davis to vet most candidates before Palin endorses them.

The PAC also paid $5,700 for speechwriting to Lindsay Hayes, who previously penned speeches for the McCain-Palin campaign, and before that for former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens. And SarahPAC continued paying $10,000 a month to a consulting firm run by former John McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann to provide consulting on “national and international issues” to Palin.

Her late June speech outlining a hawkish approach to international engagement was well received by conservative foreign policy types and taken seriously by the broader community – a marked contrast from the wide-spread criticism in 2008 that her views on international affairs were often ill informed.

Palin also got a surge of glowing press this week for a campaign-style video paid for by SarahPAC that promoted her message of conservative female empowerment and touted the surge of the grassroots tea-party activists who have in turn embraced her. Payments to the videographer hired to shoot and produce the video were not reflected in the report, likely because campaigns, like businesses, have a lag between delivery of goods and services, and billing and payment for them.

To be sure, SarahPAC in some ways still embodies Palin’s non-traditional, grassroots personae. It paid $6,000 a month to the consulting firm owned by Rebecca Mansour, a Los Angeles screenwriter and political neophyte whose creation of the popular cheerleading blog Conservatives4Palin endeared her to Palin’s inner circle and led to her being hired to help manage Palin’s Internet presence, including her closely watched Facebook page.

Jesse Jackson faults Cavs owner's LeBron comments

Associated Press

7:23 p.m. CDT, July 11, 2010

Chris Bosh, Dwyane Wade and LeBron James greet fans at American Airlines Arena. (HANS DERYK, REUTERS / July 10, 2010)

Jesse Jackson criticized Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert on Sunday, saying Gilbert sees LeBron James as a "runaway slave" and that the owner's comments after the free-agent forward decided to join the Miami Heat put the player in danger.

Shortly after James announced his decision last week, Gilbert fired off an incendiary letter to Cleveland's fans, ripping the 25-year-old and promising to deliver a title before James wins one. He called James' decision "cowardly" and later told The Associated Press he believes James quit during a handful of Cavaliers playoff games.

"He has gotten a free pass," Gilbert told the AP in a phone interview late Thursday night. "People have covered up for (James) for way too long. Tonight we saw who he really is."

Jackson said Gilbert's comments were "mean, arrogant and presumptuous."

"He speaks as an owner of LeBron and not the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers," the reverend said in a release from his Chicago-based civil rights group, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. "His feelings of betrayal personify a slave master mentality. He sees LeBron as a runaway slave. This is an owner employee relationship -- between business partners -- and LeBron honored his contract."

Messages were left Sunday night seeking comment from Gilbert, the Cavaliers and James.

Jackson also called Gilbert's comments an attack on all NBA players and said the owner should face a "challenge" from the league and the players' association.

NBA spokesman Tim Frank declined comment.

http://www.wreg.com/news/wreg-casa-mexicana-robbery-story,0,6221676.story

Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, July 11, 2010

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/cb_bahamas_teen_fugitive

Naked man hospitalized after drinking game leads to prosthetic leg being set aflame

(5 p.m.)

Sun-News report

Las Cruces Sun-News

Posted:07/09/2010 04:55:12 PM MDT

Sheriff's deputies learned that the victim and friends were drinking Monday and had made a bet that whoever drank the least would be set on fire, according to a news release.

The victim told investigators that since he drank only six beers, the least amount, he agreed to let his friends set him on fire.

The victim, who has a prosthetic left leg made of plastic, said his friends set his leg on fire, which spread to his buttocks and lower back area, causing severe burns.

Not being able to stand the pain, the victim disrobed. His friends then decided to take him to the hospital but became "nervous and dropped the victim off" on U.S. 70, the release said.

Witnesses reported seeing an individual walking on a U.S. 70 bridge with his leg on fire. Another witness reported that the victim was naked, while other witnesses reported that the victim was struck by two cars and even attempted to jump into passing vehicles as well into the path of an oncoming tractor-trailer.

When questioned by deputies if he had asked his friends to stop at any point in time while setting him on fire, he stated "no, he lost the bet" and therefore did not attempt to stop them.

The man was taken from MountainView Regional Hospital to a Texas burn treatment center.

Read Saturday's Las Cruces Sun-News in print and online for more on this story.