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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (62757)	2/25/2013 7:05:52 PM
From: calgal	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

The Blog Farrakhan: Hagel Says What I've Been Saying for 30 Years 5:45 PM, Feb 25, 2013 • By DANIEL HALPER Single Page Print Larger Text Smaller Text Alerts National Review Online reports that Chuck Hagel has been endorsed by Louis Farrakhan. The Nation of Islam head likes Hagel because he sounds just like himself. “Now look, Senator Hagel is hated by the Jews because he wrote in his book that the United States Senate, quote, is an institution that does not inherently bring out a great deal of courage. Most of the time members play it safe and adopt an ‘I’ll support Israel’ attitude,’” said Farrakhan. “AIPAC comes knocking with a pro-Israel letter and then you’ll get 80 to 90 senators signing on it. I don’t think I’ve ever signed one of the letters. Hagel said, if he’s ever asked why, he would respond, ‘I didn’t sign the letter because it was a stupid letter. The Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here, but I’m a United States Senator, I’m not an Israeli senator.’” “Now wait,” Farrakhan told the crowd. “He said this to Aaron David Miller in the book The Much-Too-Promised Land. And guess what? I said the same thing 30 years ago at the National Press Club in Washington, and they have not left me alone since. Special interests along with Zionist AIPAC are robbing America of the principle of democracy and representative government. The record is there. Now, 30 years later, after beating the heck out of me for all those years, they’re finally getting up enough courage to tell it like it is.” After arguing that the media is controlled by Jewish interests, he applauded Hagel’s nomination. “Senator Hagel is in trouble,” Farrakhan said. “But America needs a man in Congress like that, who’s not a rubber stamp for others. You need a man like Senator Hagel as your secretary of defense because a man with a mind like that will keep you out of fighting somebody else’s wars. You need a man in government that has another opinion that is not controlled, and if the Senate does not confirm him as defense secretary because of his opinion on Israel, that only proves that the Senate in the U.S. Congress is controlled by the Israeli lobby. And it also sentences America to war with Iran for the state of Israel.”

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (62757)	2/26/2013 6:24:37 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Jack Lew & The Art of the Score By Rich Lowry - February 26, 2013 Some guys have it, and some don’t. I’m referring to that special quality that makes powerful institutions want to throw fistfuls of dollars at them in senseless acts of high-priced beneficence. Jack Lew has it like nobody’s business. You might think the bespectacled treasury-secretary nominee is just another brainy budget wonk and miss the animal magnetism that makes his employers lose all sense of financial proportion around him, paying him astronomical sums, forgiving his loans, and granting him generous golden parachutes. Yes, Jack Lew is a rare talent — at the art of getting paid. He left the Clinton administration, where he served as director of the Office of Management and Budget, for what turned out to be the extremely lucrative field of nonprofit education. At New York University, he made more than $800,000 in 2002. According to his W-2, examined by staff on Capitol Hill, he made $1.2 million in total compensation in 2006. Lest you discount these figures as a reflection of the racket that is higher education rather than as an indication of Jack Lew’s knack for getting paid, consider that he made more than the president of the university, John Sexton. One imagines a sheepish Sexton asking the university’s board why he was making less than the executive vice president for operations and getting back the pained explanation, “Surely, John, you must understand — it’s because he’s Jack Lew.” Even for Jack Lew, housing in New York City can be expensive. Not to worry. New York University gave him a loan for housing. The universally recognized trouble with loans is that they have to be paid back. Not to worry. All is forgiven if you are Jack Lew, especially your loans. According to Lew, the university forgave the loan of some $1.4 million “in equal installments over five years.” When he left NYU, Lew received what he describes as “a one-time severance payment upon my departure.” He wasn’t fired, usually the occasion for severance pay. He simply left and got paid for the act of leaving. Hey, that’s Jack Lew — he gets paid when he stays, and he gets paid when he goes. He went to Citigroup, which NYU had made its primary private lender for student loans in exchange for a cut of those loans. (Coincidences happen to everyone, including Jack Lew.) At Citi, Lew established beyond a doubt his expertise at getting paid. In 2008, as the bank nearly blew up and laid off one-seventh of its employees, Lew ran its disastrous Alternative Investments unit — and got paid $1.1 million. The bank had to be bailed out by the federal government, but it couldn’t stop paying Jack Lew. The journalist Jonathan Weil of Bloomberg has unearthed Lew’s contract at Citi. It said, reasonably enough, that he wouldn’t get his “guaranteed incentive and retention award” if he left the company. It made an exception, though, if Lew left to get “a full-time high level position with the United States government or regulatory body.” Jack Lew being Jack Lew, he didn’t leave Citi for a mid-level government position, or a low-level government position, or even a part-time high-level government position. No, he landed the aforementioned full-time high-level position. He became deputy secretary of state, on his way to resuming his duties at OMB, then becoming chief of staff to the president, and now secretary of the treasury. And, of course, he always got paid. The cynics talk of crony capitalism. The scoffers hint of special favors for the politically connected. The good-government types worry about the unseemliness of a too-big-to-fail Wall Street bank’s giving one of its executives an incentive to become a high-ranking government official. Maybe they should all give it a rest and simply stand back and marvel at the moneymaking machine that is Jack Lew. Lesser mortals criticize and cavil. He gets paid. Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review. realclearpolitics.com