Mitch McConnell Refuses To Discuss Tea Party Racism: 'I Have Got Better Things To Do'
First Posted: 07-18-10 01:25 PM | Updated: 07-18-10 01:25 PM
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell refused on Sunday to wade into the recent debate between the NAACP and the Tea Party over alleged racism within the conservative movement.
At their annual meeting in Kansas City last week the NAACP, the nation's largest civil rights organization, accused the Tea Party of harboring racist elements and called on leaders of the movement to "repudiate" those elements. Tea Party representatives and allies rejected the accusation.
And in an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union" with Candy Crowley on Sunday McConnell (R-Ky.) decided not to get involved.
"I am not interested in getting into that debate," he said. "What we are interested in is trying to have an election this fall that will respond to what the American people are asking us to do, which is to have some checks and balances here."
When pressed by Crowley about some of the more overt symbols of racism, like the now infamous protest signs, coming from Tea Party supporters, McConnell doubled down.
"Look, there are all kinds of things going on in America that make me uncomfortable, both on the right and on the left," the minority leader said. "I have got better things to do than to wade in to all of these disputes and discussions that are going on out in the country."
Here's the full excerpt of McConnell's exchange with Crowley from CNN:
CROWLEY: Do you think that there are racist elements in the tea party? Story continues below
MCCONNELL: Oh my goodness, in the whole country, is there racism?
CROWLEY: Well, as you know, this weekend, NAACP said that the tea -- there are racist elements in the tea party.
MCCONNELL: I am not interested in getting into that debate. What we are interested in is trying to have an election this fall that will respond to what the American people are asking us to do, which is to have some checks and balances here.
They have seen big government on full display for a year-and-a- half. They are appalled. They would like for it to stop. And the best way for it to stop is to have a mid-course correction, which is not unusual in American politics, and I am hoping that is what is coming this fall.
CROWLEY: Nothing that you have seen on TV, including some of the signs that we've seen, albeit the minority at some of these tea party rallies, some of the posters that have been put up in the name of some factions of the tea party make you the least bit uncomfortable?
MCCONNELL: Look, there are all kinds of things going on in America that make me uncomfortable, both on the right and on the left. I have got better things to do than to wade in to all of these disputes and discussions that are going on out in the country. What we are trying to do is to make the president a born again moderate.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Friday, July 16, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
if a Dallas Mayor can freak out like this, anybody can
Texas mayor apparently shot teen daughter, self
SLIDESHOW Previous Next
Letters and flowers lay on the front steps of Coppell Mayor Jayne Peters' home Wednesday, July 14, 2010 in Coppell, Texas. The mayor of the upscale suburb of Dallas and her teenage daughter were found shot to death at their home, city officials said Wednesday. Police discovered the bodies of Peters, 55, and Corrine Peters, 19, Tuesday evening, city spokeswoman Sharon Logan said. Police found no signs of forced entry, Logan said. (AP Photo/Cody Duty) (Cody Duty - AP)
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By ELIDA S. PEREZ
The Associated Press
Wednesday, July 14, 2010; 9:10 PM
COPPELL, Texas -- The mayor of an upscale Dallas suburb apparently shot her teenage daughter to death before fatally shooting herself, after leaving notes at their home warning officers about the scene they would find and outlining how to manage family affairs, police said Wednesday.
An envelope taped to the front door of Mayor Jayne Peters' home contained a key to the house and a typed note advising police they would discover something unpleasant inside, Coppell Deputy Police Chief Steve Thomas said.
Three other notes contained instructions for handling affairs, such as taking care of the family dogs, but did not provide explanations for the deaths of the 55-year-old Peters and her 19-year-old daughter, Corinne.
"It appeared to me that there had been some thought," Thomas said.
Police found the bodies Tuesday after the mayor failed to show up at a city council meeting. They said the Dallas County Medical Examiner's Office ruled Wednesday that the case should be officially classified as a homicide-suicide investigation.
"Forensic tests (and) procedures performed point to Corinne being the victim in this tragedy, with Mayor Peters subsequently taking her own life," police said in a statement. "Both of the fatal injuries are a result of a single gun shot wounds."
Thomas said the weapon was a semiautomatic handgun and there were no signs of a struggle.
"Everybody in the room is like, 'Did we miss a sign?'" Bob Mahalik, mayor pro tem who is now acting mayor of the city, said of council members' reaction to the deaths. "It's hard to wrap your arms around it."
Mahalik said he had a gut feeling something wasn't right when the mayor didn't turn up for the meeting.
"But nowhere in your wildest dreams did you think it would be that far not right," he said.
A small collection of flowers, wreaths and cards decorated the front porch of the Peters' 3,850 square-foot brick home, where the mayor and her daughter lived alone. A printed letter said: "Please know that you are loved no matter what happens. I know that God is with you and giving you comfort. You both are with Don, a wonderful husband and father. A family again."
The mayor's husband, Donald Peters, died of cancer in 2008 at the age of 58.
SLIDESHOW Previous Next
Letters and flowers lay on the front steps of Coppell Mayor Jayne Peters' home Wednesday, July 14, 2010 in Coppell, Texas. The mayor of the upscale suburb of Dallas and her teenage daughter were found shot to death at their home, city officials said Wednesday. Police discovered the bodies of Peters, 55, and Corrine Peters, 19, Tuesday evening, city spokeswoman Sharon Logan said. Police found no signs of forced entry, Logan said. (AP Photo/Cody Duty) (Cody Duty - AP)
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View More Activity
TOOLBOX
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By ELIDA S. PEREZ
The Associated Press
Wednesday, July 14, 2010; 9:10 PM
COPPELL, Texas -- The mayor of an upscale Dallas suburb apparently shot her teenage daughter to death before fatally shooting herself, after leaving notes at their home warning officers about the scene they would find and outlining how to manage family affairs, police said Wednesday.
An envelope taped to the front door of Mayor Jayne Peters' home contained a key to the house and a typed note advising police they would discover something unpleasant inside, Coppell Deputy Police Chief Steve Thomas said.
Three other notes contained instructions for handling affairs, such as taking care of the family dogs, but did not provide explanations for the deaths of the 55-year-old Peters and her 19-year-old daughter, Corinne.
"It appeared to me that there had been some thought," Thomas said.
Police found the bodies Tuesday after the mayor failed to show up at a city council meeting. They said the Dallas County Medical Examiner's Office ruled Wednesday that the case should be officially classified as a homicide-suicide investigation.
"Forensic tests (and) procedures performed point to Corinne being the victim in this tragedy, with Mayor Peters subsequently taking her own life," police said in a statement. "Both of the fatal injuries are a result of a single gun shot wounds."
Thomas said the weapon was a semiautomatic handgun and there were no signs of a struggle.
"Everybody in the room is like, 'Did we miss a sign?'" Bob Mahalik, mayor pro tem who is now acting mayor of the city, said of council members' reaction to the deaths. "It's hard to wrap your arms around it."
Mahalik said he had a gut feeling something wasn't right when the mayor didn't turn up for the meeting.
"But nowhere in your wildest dreams did you think it would be that far not right," he said.
A small collection of flowers, wreaths and cards decorated the front porch of the Peters' 3,850 square-foot brick home, where the mayor and her daughter lived alone. A printed letter said: "Please know that you are loved no matter what happens. I know that God is with you and giving you comfort. You both are with Don, a wonderful husband and father. A family again."
The mayor's husband, Donald Peters, died of cancer in 2008 at the age of 58.
caged monkeys in china
China Starts Gating, Locking Lower-Income Neighborhoods
CARA ANNA | 07/14/10 12:31 PM |
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BEIJING — The government calls it "sealed management." China's capital has started gating and locking some of its lower-income neighborhoods overnight, with police or security checking identification papers around the clock, in a throwback to an older style of control.
It's Beijing's latest effort to reduce rising crime often blamed on the millions of rural Chinese migrating to cities for work. The capital's Communist Party secretary wants the approach promoted citywide. But some state media and experts say the move not only looks bad but imposes another layer of control on the already stigmatized, vulnerable migrants.
So far, gates have sealed off 16 villages in the sprawling southern suburbs, where migrants are attracted to cheaper rents and in some villages outnumber permanent residents 10 to one.
"In some ways, this is like the conflict between Americans and illegal immigrants in the States. The local residents feel threatened by the influx of migrants," Huang Youqin, an associate professor of geography at the University at Albany in New York who has studied gating and political control in China, said in an e-mail. "The risk is that the government can control people's private life if it wants to."
The gated villages are the latest indignity for China's migrant workers, who already face limited access to schooling and government services and are routinely blamed by city folk for rising crime. Used to the hardship of the farm and the lack of privilege, migrants seem to be taking the new controls in their stride.
Jia Yangui said he accepts the new system as a trade-off for escaping farm work in the northern province of Shanxi. He arrived in Beijing less than two months ago and lives with a relative in one of the gated villages, Dashengzhuang. He sells oily pancakes just inside one of the gates.
"Anyway, it's not as strict as before, when we migrants would be detained on the way to the toilet," said Jia's relative, a middle-aged woman who gave her family name as Zheng.
"Sealed management" looks like this: Gates are placed at the street and alley entrances to the villages, which are collections of walled compounds sprinkled with shops and outdoor vendors. The gates are locked between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m., except for one main entrance manned by security guards or police, there to check identification papers. Security guards roam the villages by day.
"Closing up the village benefits everyone," read one banner which was put up when the first, permanent gated village was introduced in April.
Story continues below
But some Chinese question whether problems arising from growing gap between the country's rich and poor can be fixed with locks and surveillance cameras.
"It's a ridiculous idea!" said Li Wenhua, who does private welfare work with migrant workers in Beijing. "This is definitely not a good long-term strategy. The government should dig up the in-depth causes of crime and improve basic public services such as education and health care to these people."
Crime has been rising steadily over the past two decades, as China moved from state planning to free markets and Chinese once locked into set jobs began moving around the country for work. Violent crime in China jumped 10 percent last year, with 5.3 million reported cases of homicide, robbery, and rape, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences reported in February.
"Sealed management" was born in the village of Laosanyu during the Beijing Olympics in 2008, when the government was eager to control its migrant population. The village used it again during the sensitive 60th anniversary of Communist China last year. Officials then reported the idea to township officials, who decided to make the practice permanent this year.
"Eighty percent of the permanent residents applauded the practice," said Guo Ruifeng, deputy director of Laosanyu's village committee. He didn't say how many migrants approved, though they outnumber the locals by 7,000 to 700.
"Anyway, they should understand that it is all for their safety," he said. Guards only check papers if they see anything suspicious, he said.
Gating has been an easy and effective way to control population throughout Chinese history, said Huang, the geography professor. In past centuries, some walled cities would impose curfews and close their gates overnight. In the first decades of communist rule, the desire for top-down organization and control showed in work-unit compounds, usually guarded and enclosed.
As the economy has grown, privately run gated communities with their own security have emerged in the biggest cities, catering to well-to-do Chinese and expatriates, offering upscale houses and facilities like pools and gyms.
The new gated villages in Beijing are very different.
"To put it crudely, gated communities in the city are a way for the upper middle-class and urban rich to keep out trespassers, whereas gated villages represent a way for the state to 'keep in' or contain the problem of 'migrant workers' who live in these villages," Pow Choon-Pieu, an assistant professor of geography at the National University of Singapore who has studied the issue, said in an e-mail.
Jiang Zhengqing, a supermarket owner in the gated compound of Laosanyu, told the China Daily newspaper in May that he doesn't even know if he'll be in business next year because of the drop in customers.
"Before, the streets were crowded with people in the afternoon but now the village is deserted," he said. "I can't understand why the government has invested such a large amount of money into putting up these useless fences, rather than repair our dirty public restrooms and bumpy roads."
___
Associated Press researcher Yu Bing in Beijing contributed to this report.
CARA ANNA | 07/14/10 12:31 PM |
WHAT'S YOUR REACTION?
Important
Fascinating
Typical
Scary
Outrageous
Amazing
Infuriating
Beautiful
Read More: Beijing Locking Neighborhoods, China, China Locking Neighborhoods, China Sealed Management, Sealed Management, World News
3
0
views
Get World Alerts
Email Comments 4
BEIJING — The government calls it "sealed management." China's capital has started gating and locking some of its lower-income neighborhoods overnight, with police or security checking identification papers around the clock, in a throwback to an older style of control.
It's Beijing's latest effort to reduce rising crime often blamed on the millions of rural Chinese migrating to cities for work. The capital's Communist Party secretary wants the approach promoted citywide. But some state media and experts say the move not only looks bad but imposes another layer of control on the already stigmatized, vulnerable migrants.
So far, gates have sealed off 16 villages in the sprawling southern suburbs, where migrants are attracted to cheaper rents and in some villages outnumber permanent residents 10 to one.
"In some ways, this is like the conflict between Americans and illegal immigrants in the States. The local residents feel threatened by the influx of migrants," Huang Youqin, an associate professor of geography at the University at Albany in New York who has studied gating and political control in China, said in an e-mail. "The risk is that the government can control people's private life if it wants to."
The gated villages are the latest indignity for China's migrant workers, who already face limited access to schooling and government services and are routinely blamed by city folk for rising crime. Used to the hardship of the farm and the lack of privilege, migrants seem to be taking the new controls in their stride.
Jia Yangui said he accepts the new system as a trade-off for escaping farm work in the northern province of Shanxi. He arrived in Beijing less than two months ago and lives with a relative in one of the gated villages, Dashengzhuang. He sells oily pancakes just inside one of the gates.
"Anyway, it's not as strict as before, when we migrants would be detained on the way to the toilet," said Jia's relative, a middle-aged woman who gave her family name as Zheng.
"Sealed management" looks like this: Gates are placed at the street and alley entrances to the villages, which are collections of walled compounds sprinkled with shops and outdoor vendors. The gates are locked between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m., except for one main entrance manned by security guards or police, there to check identification papers. Security guards roam the villages by day.
"Closing up the village benefits everyone," read one banner which was put up when the first, permanent gated village was introduced in April.
Story continues below
But some Chinese question whether problems arising from growing gap between the country's rich and poor can be fixed with locks and surveillance cameras.
"It's a ridiculous idea!" said Li Wenhua, who does private welfare work with migrant workers in Beijing. "This is definitely not a good long-term strategy. The government should dig up the in-depth causes of crime and improve basic public services such as education and health care to these people."
Crime has been rising steadily over the past two decades, as China moved from state planning to free markets and Chinese once locked into set jobs began moving around the country for work. Violent crime in China jumped 10 percent last year, with 5.3 million reported cases of homicide, robbery, and rape, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences reported in February.
"Sealed management" was born in the village of Laosanyu during the Beijing Olympics in 2008, when the government was eager to control its migrant population. The village used it again during the sensitive 60th anniversary of Communist China last year. Officials then reported the idea to township officials, who decided to make the practice permanent this year.
"Eighty percent of the permanent residents applauded the practice," said Guo Ruifeng, deputy director of Laosanyu's village committee. He didn't say how many migrants approved, though they outnumber the locals by 7,000 to 700.
"Anyway, they should understand that it is all for their safety," he said. Guards only check papers if they see anything suspicious, he said.
Gating has been an easy and effective way to control population throughout Chinese history, said Huang, the geography professor. In past centuries, some walled cities would impose curfews and close their gates overnight. In the first decades of communist rule, the desire for top-down organization and control showed in work-unit compounds, usually guarded and enclosed.
As the economy has grown, privately run gated communities with their own security have emerged in the biggest cities, catering to well-to-do Chinese and expatriates, offering upscale houses and facilities like pools and gyms.
The new gated villages in Beijing are very different.
"To put it crudely, gated communities in the city are a way for the upper middle-class and urban rich to keep out trespassers, whereas gated villages represent a way for the state to 'keep in' or contain the problem of 'migrant workers' who live in these villages," Pow Choon-Pieu, an assistant professor of geography at the National University of Singapore who has studied the issue, said in an e-mail.
Jiang Zhengqing, a supermarket owner in the gated compound of Laosanyu, told the China Daily newspaper in May that he doesn't even know if he'll be in business next year because of the drop in customers.
"Before, the streets were crowded with people in the afternoon but now the village is deserted," he said. "I can't understand why the government has invested such a large amount of money into putting up these useless fences, rather than repair our dirty public restrooms and bumpy roads."
___
Associated Press researcher Yu Bing in Beijing contributed to this report.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
The Inflatable Loan Pool
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON
AMID the legal battles between investors who lost money in mortgage securities and the investment banks that sold the stuff, one thing seems clear: the investment banks appear to be winning a good many of the early skirmishes.
Weekend Business: Jeff Sommer with Gretchen Morgenson on a fight over mortgage-backed securities.
Related
Times Topic: Gretchen MorgensonBut some cases are faring better for individual plaintiffs, with judges allowing them to proceed even as banks ask that they be dismissed. Still, these matters are hard to litigate because investors must persuade the judges overseeing them that their losses were not simply a result of a market crash. Investors must argue, convincingly, that the banks misrepresented the quality of the loans in the pools and made material misstatements about them in prospectuses provided to buyers.
Recent filings by two Federal Home Loan Banks — in San Francisco and Seattle — offer an intriguing way to clear this high hurdle. Lawyers representing the banks, which bought mortgage securities, combed through the loan pools looking for discrepancies between actual loan characteristics and how they were pitched to investors.
You may not be shocked to learn that the analysis found significant differences between what the Home Loan Banks were told about these securities and what they were sold.
The rate of discrepancies in these pools is surprising. The lawsuits contend that half the loans were inaccurately described in disclosure materials filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
These findings are compelling because they involve some 525,000 mortgage loans in 156 pools sold by 10 investment banks from 2005 through 2007. And because the research was conducted using a valuation model devised by CoreLogic, an information analytics company that is a trusted source for mortgage loan data, the conclusions are even more credible.
The analysis used CoreLogic’s valuation model, called VP4, which is used by many in the mortgage industry to verify accuracy of property appraisals. It homed in on loan-to-value ratios, a crucial measure in predicting defaults.
An overwhelming majority of the loan-to-value ratios stated in the securities’ prospectuses used appraisals, court documents say. Investors rely on the ratios because it is well known that the higher the loan relative to an underlying property’s appraised value, the more likely the borrower will walk away when financial troubles arise.
By back-testing the loans using the CoreLogic model from the time the mortgage securities were originated, the analysis compared those values with the loans’ appraised values as stated in prospectuses. Then the analysts reassessed the weighted average loan-to-value ratios of the pools’ mortgages.
The model concluded that roughly one-third of the loans were for amounts that were 105 percent or more of the underlying property’s value. Roughly 5.5 percent of the loans in the pools had appraisals that were lower than they should have been.
That means inflated appraisals were involved in six times as many loans as were understated appraisals.
David J. Grais, a lawyer at Grais & Ellsworth in New York, represents the Home Loan Banks in the lawsuits. “The information in these complaints shows that the disclosure documents for these securities did not describe the collateral accurately,” Mr. Grais said last week. “Courts have shown great interest in loan-by-loan and trust-by-trust information in cases like these. We think these complaints will satisfy that interest.”
The banks are requesting that the firms that sold the securities repurchase them. The San Francisco Home Loan Bank paid $19 billion for the mortgage securities covered by the lawsuit, and the Seattle Home Loan Bank paid $4 billion. It is unclear how much the banks would get if they won their suits.
Among the 10 defendants in the cases are Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Merrill Lynch, Countrywide and UBS. None of these banks would comment.
As outlined in the San Francisco Bank’s amended complaint, it did not receive detailed data about the loans in the securities it purchased. Instead, the complaint says, the banks used the loan data to compile statistics about the loans, which were then presented to potential investors. These disclosures were misleading, the San Francisco Bank contends.
In one pool with 3,543 loans, for example, the CoreLogic model had enough information to evaluate 2,097 loans. Of those, it determined that 1,114 mortgages — or more than half — had loan-to-value ratios of 105 percent or more. The valuations on those properties exceeded their true market value by $65 million, the complaint contends.
The selling document for that pool said that all of the mortgages had loan-to-value ratios of 100 percent or less, the complaint said. But the CoreLogic analysis identified 169 loans with ratios over 100 percent. The pool prospectus also stated that the weighted average loan-to-value ratio of mortgages in the portion of the security purchased by Home Loan Bank was 69.5 percent. But the loans the CoreLogic model valued had an average ratio of almost 77 percent.
IT is unclear, of course, how these court cases will turn out. But it certainly is true that the more investors dig, the more they learn how freewheeling the Wall Street mortgage machine was back in the day. Each bit of evidence clearly points to the same lesson: investors must have access to loan details, and the time to analyze them, before they are likely to want to invest in these kinds of securities again.
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON
AMID the legal battles between investors who lost money in mortgage securities and the investment banks that sold the stuff, one thing seems clear: the investment banks appear to be winning a good many of the early skirmishes.
Weekend Business: Jeff Sommer with Gretchen Morgenson on a fight over mortgage-backed securities.
Related
Times Topic: Gretchen MorgensonBut some cases are faring better for individual plaintiffs, with judges allowing them to proceed even as banks ask that they be dismissed. Still, these matters are hard to litigate because investors must persuade the judges overseeing them that their losses were not simply a result of a market crash. Investors must argue, convincingly, that the banks misrepresented the quality of the loans in the pools and made material misstatements about them in prospectuses provided to buyers.
Recent filings by two Federal Home Loan Banks — in San Francisco and Seattle — offer an intriguing way to clear this high hurdle. Lawyers representing the banks, which bought mortgage securities, combed through the loan pools looking for discrepancies between actual loan characteristics and how they were pitched to investors.
You may not be shocked to learn that the analysis found significant differences between what the Home Loan Banks were told about these securities and what they were sold.
The rate of discrepancies in these pools is surprising. The lawsuits contend that half the loans were inaccurately described in disclosure materials filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
These findings are compelling because they involve some 525,000 mortgage loans in 156 pools sold by 10 investment banks from 2005 through 2007. And because the research was conducted using a valuation model devised by CoreLogic, an information analytics company that is a trusted source for mortgage loan data, the conclusions are even more credible.
The analysis used CoreLogic’s valuation model, called VP4, which is used by many in the mortgage industry to verify accuracy of property appraisals. It homed in on loan-to-value ratios, a crucial measure in predicting defaults.
An overwhelming majority of the loan-to-value ratios stated in the securities’ prospectuses used appraisals, court documents say. Investors rely on the ratios because it is well known that the higher the loan relative to an underlying property’s appraised value, the more likely the borrower will walk away when financial troubles arise.
By back-testing the loans using the CoreLogic model from the time the mortgage securities were originated, the analysis compared those values with the loans’ appraised values as stated in prospectuses. Then the analysts reassessed the weighted average loan-to-value ratios of the pools’ mortgages.
The model concluded that roughly one-third of the loans were for amounts that were 105 percent or more of the underlying property’s value. Roughly 5.5 percent of the loans in the pools had appraisals that were lower than they should have been.
That means inflated appraisals were involved in six times as many loans as were understated appraisals.
David J. Grais, a lawyer at Grais & Ellsworth in New York, represents the Home Loan Banks in the lawsuits. “The information in these complaints shows that the disclosure documents for these securities did not describe the collateral accurately,” Mr. Grais said last week. “Courts have shown great interest in loan-by-loan and trust-by-trust information in cases like these. We think these complaints will satisfy that interest.”
The banks are requesting that the firms that sold the securities repurchase them. The San Francisco Home Loan Bank paid $19 billion for the mortgage securities covered by the lawsuit, and the Seattle Home Loan Bank paid $4 billion. It is unclear how much the banks would get if they won their suits.
Among the 10 defendants in the cases are Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Merrill Lynch, Countrywide and UBS. None of these banks would comment.
As outlined in the San Francisco Bank’s amended complaint, it did not receive detailed data about the loans in the securities it purchased. Instead, the complaint says, the banks used the loan data to compile statistics about the loans, which were then presented to potential investors. These disclosures were misleading, the San Francisco Bank contends.
In one pool with 3,543 loans, for example, the CoreLogic model had enough information to evaluate 2,097 loans. Of those, it determined that 1,114 mortgages — or more than half — had loan-to-value ratios of 105 percent or more. The valuations on those properties exceeded their true market value by $65 million, the complaint contends.
The selling document for that pool said that all of the mortgages had loan-to-value ratios of 100 percent or less, the complaint said. But the CoreLogic analysis identified 169 loans with ratios over 100 percent. The pool prospectus also stated that the weighted average loan-to-value ratio of mortgages in the portion of the security purchased by Home Loan Bank was 69.5 percent. But the loans the CoreLogic model valued had an average ratio of almost 77 percent.
IT is unclear, of course, how these court cases will turn out. But it certainly is true that the more investors dig, the more they learn how freewheeling the Wall Street mortgage machine was back in the day. Each bit of evidence clearly points to the same lesson: investors must have access to loan details, and the time to analyze them, before they are likely to want to invest in these kinds of securities again.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
i think your gut reaction was the most revealing
Texas Rep. Joe Barton Backpedals On BP Apology: Oil Giant 'Should Be Held Responsible'
The Huffington Post First Posted: 06-17-10 04:23 PM | Updated: 06-17-10 05:23 PM
Joe Barton Apologizes For 'Shakedown' Comments To BP CEO Tony Hayward
On Thursday afternoon, Texas Republican Congressman Joe Barton issued an apology for telling BP CEO Tony Hayword that the Obama administration's actions to hold the oil giant accountable in the wake of the Gulf Coast oil spill was a "shakedown" -- a characterization that sparked a firestorm of criticism from Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike.
"I want the record to be absolutely clear that I think BP is responsible for this accident, should be held responsible, and should in every way do everything possible to make good on the consequences that have resulted from this accident," Barton said later in the day during the committee hearing. "And if anything I said this morning has been misconstrued in an opposite effect, I want to apologize for that misconstruction."
Later in the day, Barton issued a statement in which the Texas Republican apologized "for using the term 'shakedown' with regard to yesterday's actions at the White House" and retracted his "apology to BP."
Here's the full text of Barton's statement:
"I apologize for using the term 'shakedown' with regard to yesterday's actions at the White House in my opening statement this morning, and I retract my apology to BP. As I told my colleagues yesterday and said again this morning, BP should bear the full financial responsibility for the accident on their lease in the Gulf of Mexico. BP should fully compensate those families and businesses that have been hurt by this accident. BP and the federal government need to stop the leak, clean up the damage, and take whatever steps necessary to prevent a similar accident in the future. "I regret the impact that my statement this morning implied that BP should not pay for the consequences of their decisions and actions in this incident."
HuffPost's Sam Stein reports on the controversial comments made by Barton to Hayword earlier in day at a hearing on Capitol Hill where the BP oil chief was testifying about the company's role in the massive spill:
"I'm ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday," said Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) during a hearing on Thursday morning with BP's CEO Tony Hayward." I think it is a tragedy in the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown -- in this case a $20 billion shakedown -- with the attorney general of the United States, who is legitimately conducting a criminal investigation and has every right to do so to protect the American people, participating in what amounts to a $20 billion slush fund that's unprecedented in our nation's history, which has no legal standing, which I think sets a terrible precedent for our nation's future."
"I'm only speaking for myself. I'm not speaking for anyone else, but I apologize," Barton added. "I do not want to live in a county where anytime a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong, [it is] subject to some sort of political pressure that, again, in my words, amounts to a shakedown."
Airing criticisms against the notion of forcing BP to fork over $20 billion in liability revenue would seem like a fairly risky proposition considering just how reviled the oil giant is in the current political environment. And Democrats quickly jumped on the congressman's remark, as well as those from other Republicans, as evidence of a lack of sensitivity for the victims of the spill.
The Huffington Post First Posted: 06-17-10 04:23 PM | Updated: 06-17-10 05:23 PM
Joe Barton Apologizes For 'Shakedown' Comments To BP CEO Tony Hayward
On Thursday afternoon, Texas Republican Congressman Joe Barton issued an apology for telling BP CEO Tony Hayword that the Obama administration's actions to hold the oil giant accountable in the wake of the Gulf Coast oil spill was a "shakedown" -- a characterization that sparked a firestorm of criticism from Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike.
"I want the record to be absolutely clear that I think BP is responsible for this accident, should be held responsible, and should in every way do everything possible to make good on the consequences that have resulted from this accident," Barton said later in the day during the committee hearing. "And if anything I said this morning has been misconstrued in an opposite effect, I want to apologize for that misconstruction."
Later in the day, Barton issued a statement in which the Texas Republican apologized "for using the term 'shakedown' with regard to yesterday's actions at the White House" and retracted his "apology to BP."
Here's the full text of Barton's statement:
"I apologize for using the term 'shakedown' with regard to yesterday's actions at the White House in my opening statement this morning, and I retract my apology to BP. As I told my colleagues yesterday and said again this morning, BP should bear the full financial responsibility for the accident on their lease in the Gulf of Mexico. BP should fully compensate those families and businesses that have been hurt by this accident. BP and the federal government need to stop the leak, clean up the damage, and take whatever steps necessary to prevent a similar accident in the future. "I regret the impact that my statement this morning implied that BP should not pay for the consequences of their decisions and actions in this incident."
HuffPost's Sam Stein reports on the controversial comments made by Barton to Hayword earlier in day at a hearing on Capitol Hill where the BP oil chief was testifying about the company's role in the massive spill:
"I'm ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday," said Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) during a hearing on Thursday morning with BP's CEO Tony Hayward." I think it is a tragedy in the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown -- in this case a $20 billion shakedown -- with the attorney general of the United States, who is legitimately conducting a criminal investigation and has every right to do so to protect the American people, participating in what amounts to a $20 billion slush fund that's unprecedented in our nation's history, which has no legal standing, which I think sets a terrible precedent for our nation's future."
"I'm only speaking for myself. I'm not speaking for anyone else, but I apologize," Barton added. "I do not want to live in a county where anytime a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong, [it is] subject to some sort of political pressure that, again, in my words, amounts to a shakedown."
Airing criticisms against the notion of forcing BP to fork over $20 billion in liability revenue would seem like a fairly risky proposition considering just how reviled the oil giant is in the current political environment. And Democrats quickly jumped on the congressman's remark, as well as those from other Republicans, as evidence of a lack of sensitivity for the victims of the spill.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Man kills self 12 years after receiving heart from suicide victim
Man kills self 12 years after receiving heart from suicide victim
By Associated Press
StoryPrintTwitterFacebookSummary
A man who received a heart transplant 12 years ago and later married the donor's widow died the same way the donor did, authorities said: of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
More national news
Story Published: Apr 6, 2008 at 3:42 PM PDT
Story Updated: Apr 6, 2008 at 3:42 PM PDT
Heart transplant recipient Sonny Graham, left, and his wife, Cheryl, pray during a moment of silence in this Dec. 1, 2006 file photo.
Comments (0)HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. (AP) - A man who received a heart transplant 12 years ago and later married the donor's widow died the same way the donor did, authorities said: of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
No foul play was suspected in 69-year-old Sonny Graham's death at his Vidalia, Ga., home, investigators said. He was found Tuesday in a utility building in his backyard with a single shotgun wound to the throat, said Greg Harvey, a special agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Graham, who was director of the Heritage golf tournament at Sea Pines from 1979 to 1983, was on the verge of congestive heart failure in 1995 when he got a call that a heart was available in Charleston.
That heart was from Terry Cottle, 33, who had shot himself, Berkeley County Coroner Glenn Rhoad said.
Grateful for his new heart, Graham began writing letters to the donor's family to thank them. In January 1997, Graham met his donor's widow, Cheryl Cottle, then 28, in Charleston.
"I felt like I had known her for years," Graham told The (Hilton Head) Island Packet for a story in 2006. "I couldn't keep my eyes off her. I just stared."
In 2001, Graham bought a home for Cottle and her four children in Vidalia. Three years later, they were married after Graham retired from his job as a plant manager for Hargray Communications in Hilton Head.
From their previous marriages, the couple had six children and six grandchildren scattered across South Carolina and Georgia.
Cheryl Graham, now 39, has worked at several hospices in Vidalia. A telephone message left Sunday at a listing for Cheryl and Sonny Graham in Vidalia was not immediately returned.
Sonny Graham's friends said he would be remembered for his willingness to help people.
"Any time someone had a problem, the first reaction was, 'Call Sonny Graham,' " said Bill Carson, Graham's friend for more than 40 years. "It didn't matter whether you had a flat tire on the side of the road or your washing machine didn't work. He didn't even have to know you to help you."
By Associated Press
StoryPrintTwitterFacebookSummary
A man who received a heart transplant 12 years ago and later married the donor's widow died the same way the donor did, authorities said: of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
More national news
Story Published: Apr 6, 2008 at 3:42 PM PDT
Story Updated: Apr 6, 2008 at 3:42 PM PDT
Heart transplant recipient Sonny Graham, left, and his wife, Cheryl, pray during a moment of silence in this Dec. 1, 2006 file photo.
Comments (0)HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. (AP) - A man who received a heart transplant 12 years ago and later married the donor's widow died the same way the donor did, authorities said: of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
No foul play was suspected in 69-year-old Sonny Graham's death at his Vidalia, Ga., home, investigators said. He was found Tuesday in a utility building in his backyard with a single shotgun wound to the throat, said Greg Harvey, a special agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Graham, who was director of the Heritage golf tournament at Sea Pines from 1979 to 1983, was on the verge of congestive heart failure in 1995 when he got a call that a heart was available in Charleston.
That heart was from Terry Cottle, 33, who had shot himself, Berkeley County Coroner Glenn Rhoad said.
Grateful for his new heart, Graham began writing letters to the donor's family to thank them. In January 1997, Graham met his donor's widow, Cheryl Cottle, then 28, in Charleston.
"I felt like I had known her for years," Graham told The (Hilton Head) Island Packet for a story in 2006. "I couldn't keep my eyes off her. I just stared."
In 2001, Graham bought a home for Cottle and her four children in Vidalia. Three years later, they were married after Graham retired from his job as a plant manager for Hargray Communications in Hilton Head.
From their previous marriages, the couple had six children and six grandchildren scattered across South Carolina and Georgia.
Cheryl Graham, now 39, has worked at several hospices in Vidalia. A telephone message left Sunday at a listing for Cheryl and Sonny Graham in Vidalia was not immediately returned.
Sonny Graham's friends said he would be remembered for his willingness to help people.
"Any time someone had a problem, the first reaction was, 'Call Sonny Graham,' " said Bill Carson, Graham's friend for more than 40 years. "It didn't matter whether you had a flat tire on the side of the road or your washing machine didn't work. He didn't even have to know you to help you."
heart/lungs can't be borrowed
Lyndsey Scott Received Lungs Of 30-Year Smoker In Transplant, Dies
| 06/15/10 09:57 AM |
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Share Comments 154 LONDON — The family of a 28-year-old British woman who unknowingly received a lung transplant from a smoker says she would have been "horrified" and have lodged a complaint.
Cystic fibrosis sufferer Lyndsey Scott in February 2009 received a double lung transplant from a donor who had smoked for three decades. She died in July of pneumonia.
Britain's top transplant official Chris Rudge defended the decision and said patients should be told they are not getting a "brand new" organ. He said on the BBC that "lungs from a smoker can be working perfectly normally."
Scott's family called for patients to be told more information about organ donors before accepting a transplant.
| 06/15/10 09:57 AM |
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Share Comments 154 LONDON — The family of a 28-year-old British woman who unknowingly received a lung transplant from a smoker says she would have been "horrified" and have lodged a complaint.
Cystic fibrosis sufferer Lyndsey Scott in February 2009 received a double lung transplant from a donor who had smoked for three decades. She died in July of pneumonia.
Britain's top transplant official Chris Rudge defended the decision and said patients should be told they are not getting a "brand new" organ. He said on the BBC that "lungs from a smoker can be working perfectly normally."
Scott's family called for patients to be told more information about organ donors before accepting a transplant.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
why do inflation rates go up
Double-dip watch: Retail sales in May took their biggest nose-dive in eight months, according to Friday's report from the Commerce Department. Remember: Consumers account for 70 percent of the nation's economic activity.
American Corporations are sitting on huge piles of cash but they're not investing, and they're creating only a measly number of new jobs. And they won't invest and create jobs until they know there are customers out there to buy what they sell.
For three decades, starting in the late 1970s, the biggest economic problem America faced on an ongoing basis was inflation. Demand always seemed to be on the verge of outrunning the productive capacity of the nation. The Fed had to be ready to raise interest rates to stop the party, as it did on several occasions.
During this era of inflation economics, it appeared that John Maynard Keynes - and his Depression-era concern about chronically inadequate demand -- was dead. So-called "supply siders" told policy makers that if they cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy, they'd unleash a torrent of investment and innovation - thereby increasing the productive capacity of the nation. The benefits would trickle down to everyone else.
But the pendulum may now be swinging back to the earlier era in which demand always seems on the verge of trailing the nation's productive capacity. The biggest ongoing threats are chronic recession or even deflation, because consumers don't have enough money to what the economy is capable of selling at full or near-full employment. Despite gains in productivity, little has trickled down to America's middle class.
John Maynard Keynes is being exhumed because his Depression-era worry about inadequate demand is once again the nation's central economic problem.
Keynes prescribed two remedies -- both of which are now necessary: Government spending to "prime the pump" and get businesses to invest and hire once again. And, as Keynes wrote, "measures for the redistribution of incomes in a way likely to raise the propensity to consume." Translated: Instead of big tax cuts for corporations and the rich, tax cuts and income supplements for the middle class.
American Corporations are sitting on huge piles of cash but they're not investing, and they're creating only a measly number of new jobs. And they won't invest and create jobs until they know there are customers out there to buy what they sell.
For three decades, starting in the late 1970s, the biggest economic problem America faced on an ongoing basis was inflation. Demand always seemed to be on the verge of outrunning the productive capacity of the nation. The Fed had to be ready to raise interest rates to stop the party, as it did on several occasions.
During this era of inflation economics, it appeared that John Maynard Keynes - and his Depression-era concern about chronically inadequate demand -- was dead. So-called "supply siders" told policy makers that if they cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy, they'd unleash a torrent of investment and innovation - thereby increasing the productive capacity of the nation. The benefits would trickle down to everyone else.
But the pendulum may now be swinging back to the earlier era in which demand always seems on the verge of trailing the nation's productive capacity. The biggest ongoing threats are chronic recession or even deflation, because consumers don't have enough money to what the economy is capable of selling at full or near-full employment. Despite gains in productivity, little has trickled down to America's middle class.
John Maynard Keynes is being exhumed because his Depression-era worry about inadequate demand is once again the nation's central economic problem.
Keynes prescribed two remedies -- both of which are now necessary: Government spending to "prime the pump" and get businesses to invest and hire once again. And, as Keynes wrote, "measures for the redistribution of incomes in a way likely to raise the propensity to consume." Translated: Instead of big tax cuts for corporations and the rich, tax cuts and income supplements for the middle class.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
even israel must abide
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Australia Moves To Expel Israeli Diplomat
ROD McGUIRK | 05/24/10 05:14 AM |
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Share Comments 330 CANBERRA, Australia — Australia ordered the expulsion of an Israeli diplomat Monday after investigators concluded Israel was responsible for forging four Australian passports that were used in the slaying of a Hamas operative in Dubai.
Australia's reaction echoes that of the United Kingdom, which in March expelled a diplomat in retaliation for the use of 12 fake British passports in the plot to kill Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Dubai authorities blame Israel's Mossad intelligence service for the January slaying.
The governments of Ireland, Germany and France have yet to state how they will react to similar cases of alleged identity fraud against its citizens, as revealed in the investigation.
Australia had not expelled a foreign diplomat since 2004.
Foreign Minister Stephen Smith told Parliament that the operation to kill Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel room was not the first time Israel had forged Australian travel documents. He did not elaborate on previous incidents, but said the latest transgression breached "confidential undertakings" between the two countries that have stood for several years.
"These are not the actions of a friend," he said. "This is not what we expect from a nation with whom we have had such a close, friendly and supportive relationship."
Smith said Israel had been asked to withdraw a diplomat, whom he did not identify, within a week. The duration of the expulsion was indefinite.
Israeli radio stations have reported that the diplomats expelled from Australia and Britain were Mossad representatives.
"We regret this decision by the Australian government," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told The Associated Press. "It is not in line with the importance and the quality of the relationship between our countries."
Story continues below
Israeli ambassador Yuval Rotem is out of Australia until early next month.
Australia had notified the United States of its decision because of Canberra's security alliance with Washington and Washington's close friendship with Tel Aviv, Smith said.
Australia had also notified the United Arab Emirates and all the countries whose nationals claimed to have identities stolen in the case. Smith said Australian cooperation with Israel on security and intelligence matters would suffer.
"Clearly as a result of today's events, there will be something of a cooling period so far as relevant agencies are concerned and, just as in the United Kingdom, time will tell just how long that may or may not be," Smith said.
Israel had not retaliated against Britain's expulsion of a diplomat and Smith said he would be disappointed if Israel retaliated against Australia's decision.
Dubai authorities have identified at least 26 suspects from an alleged hit squad.
Smith said: "The high quality of these counterfeited passports points to the involvement of a state intelligence service."
He said Australia's investigation by police and intelligence services "left the government in no doubt that Israel was responsible for the abuse and counterfeiting of these passports."
Israeli radio reported that Australia expelled an Israeli diplomat in 2004 for his alleged involvement in helping two Israelis try to fraudulently obtain New Zealand passports. Neither the Israeli Embassy nor Smith's department would confirm the report Monday.
Two men described by the New Zealand government as Israeli intelligence agents spent three months in prison in that country after pleading guilty to passport fraud. They were then deported from New Zealand to Israel.
___
Associated Press writer Amy Teibel in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
Australia Moves To Expel Israeli Diplomat
ROD McGUIRK | 05/24/10 05:14 AM |
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Read More: Australia, Dubai Hamas Killing, Hamas Killing, Israel, Israel Diplomats, World News
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views331 Get World Alerts
Share Comments 330 CANBERRA, Australia — Australia ordered the expulsion of an Israeli diplomat Monday after investigators concluded Israel was responsible for forging four Australian passports that were used in the slaying of a Hamas operative in Dubai.
Australia's reaction echoes that of the United Kingdom, which in March expelled a diplomat in retaliation for the use of 12 fake British passports in the plot to kill Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Dubai authorities blame Israel's Mossad intelligence service for the January slaying.
The governments of Ireland, Germany and France have yet to state how they will react to similar cases of alleged identity fraud against its citizens, as revealed in the investigation.
Australia had not expelled a foreign diplomat since 2004.
Foreign Minister Stephen Smith told Parliament that the operation to kill Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel room was not the first time Israel had forged Australian travel documents. He did not elaborate on previous incidents, but said the latest transgression breached "confidential undertakings" between the two countries that have stood for several years.
"These are not the actions of a friend," he said. "This is not what we expect from a nation with whom we have had such a close, friendly and supportive relationship."
Smith said Israel had been asked to withdraw a diplomat, whom he did not identify, within a week. The duration of the expulsion was indefinite.
Israeli radio stations have reported that the diplomats expelled from Australia and Britain were Mossad representatives.
"We regret this decision by the Australian government," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told The Associated Press. "It is not in line with the importance and the quality of the relationship between our countries."
Story continues below
Israeli ambassador Yuval Rotem is out of Australia until early next month.
Australia had notified the United States of its decision because of Canberra's security alliance with Washington and Washington's close friendship with Tel Aviv, Smith said.
Australia had also notified the United Arab Emirates and all the countries whose nationals claimed to have identities stolen in the case. Smith said Australian cooperation with Israel on security and intelligence matters would suffer.
"Clearly as a result of today's events, there will be something of a cooling period so far as relevant agencies are concerned and, just as in the United Kingdom, time will tell just how long that may or may not be," Smith said.
Israel had not retaliated against Britain's expulsion of a diplomat and Smith said he would be disappointed if Israel retaliated against Australia's decision.
Dubai authorities have identified at least 26 suspects from an alleged hit squad.
Smith said: "The high quality of these counterfeited passports points to the involvement of a state intelligence service."
He said Australia's investigation by police and intelligence services "left the government in no doubt that Israel was responsible for the abuse and counterfeiting of these passports."
Israeli radio reported that Australia expelled an Israeli diplomat in 2004 for his alleged involvement in helping two Israelis try to fraudulently obtain New Zealand passports. Neither the Israeli Embassy nor Smith's department would confirm the report Monday.
Two men described by the New Zealand government as Israeli intelligence agents spent three months in prison in that country after pleading guilty to passport fraud. They were then deported from New Zealand to Israel.
___
Associated Press writer Amy Teibel in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Saturday, April 24, 2010
oh johnny!
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Bernie Goldberg Fires Back | ||||
| ||||
they've gotten through the tripwires...
A Coda on Closure
April 22nd, 2010 · 56 Comments
Over the past couple of weeks, a pair of posts I wrote about what I dubbed “epistemic closure” on the right kicked off a surprisingly broad set of conversations and debates—mostly, I suspect, because it slapped a name on a phenomenon that a lot of people already recognized, and which many conservatives were themselves feeling increasingly uneasy about. Since so many smart folks took up and tried to elaborate on the idea, I figure it behooves me to try to round up some of those responses and see if I have anything useful to add.
First, just for the sake of clarity: When I initially dropped the term (apparently subconsciously borrowed from my undergrad philosophy days, where it has an unrelated technical meaning) the particular phenomenon I had in mind was rather narrower than the full range of issues people have been discussing under that rubric. What I had meant to describe specifically was the construction of a full-blown alternative media ecosystem, which has been become more self-sufficient and self-contained as it’s become more interconnected. There is, I argued, reason to think that more consciously conservative news outlets could serve as a valuable counterweight to a professional class of journalists who largely self-identify as liberals. But in practice, I believe, it has instead become worryingly untethered from reality as the impetus to satisfy the demand for red meat overtakes any motivation to report accurately. That does not mean conservatives are completely cut off from outside information—as David Brooks notes today, research suggests that frequent visitors to partisan sites are actually more likely to also visit “the enemy”—but it tends to be approached in roughly the same spirit we might read the Korean Central News Agency. The press are no longer seen as even biased refs in the public debate, but as members of one team or another in a conflict whose only referee is victory.
Also, perhaps slightly less obviously, the “closure” I’m talking about is above all a collective or systemic property, not a property of individuals: It is not primarily about the propensity of conservative persons to be “closed-minded” or “dogmicatically rigid” or anything like that. I wasn’t really trying to coin a phrase in the original post, but this was part of my rationale for not going with these more familiar terms. Closure is the universal tendency toward confirmation bias plus a sufficiently large array of multimedia conservative outlets to constitute a complete media counterculture, plus an overbroad ideological justification for treating mainstream output as intrinsically suspect. Nor, as Jon Chait and Jonathan Bernstein stress, was I making a point about a lack of “new ideas” on the right or even a general lack of intellectual diversity—at least until the internal disagreement begins spilling over into the mainstream and threatening the boundary between mediaspheres. (Fierce debate in the pages of National Review might be OK—though as Jim Manzi demonstrates, there are limits—but the ultimate sin is taking your criticisms to CNN or NPR. You don’t talk smack about family outside the family.)
These are related and interesting topics, but my use of the term was focused on the way the conservative mediasphere is increasingly able to resist incursions from the “MSM” narrative and picture of reality. Sometimes this results in a skewed perception of the importance of a story—the obsession with ACORN or the idea that the “Climategate” e-mails were some kind of game changer in the larger AGW debate. At its worst, it manifests as a willingness to hold and circulate factually false beliefs that a simple search ought to explode.
As a few folks have objected, I don’t really make any attempt to “prove” that the right is worse on this front right now. I think many of the responses from the right, even where they disagree on various points, bear out the broad intuition that this is a real phenomenon and a problem. Nobody’s saying: “What on earth could he be talking about?” I could marshal a tedious list of examples, but they’d be redundant for people who already see the problem, and probably unpersuasive to people who don’t—especially if they happen to hold some of the beliefs in question. Still, just as a brief refresher, recall that over the past two years, the movement’s flagship publications and most prominent pundits have found it urgent to discuss: Bill Ayers’ potential authorship of Obama’s memoir, the looming threat of death panels, the president’s crypto-Islamic background and allegiances, his attempt to create a “private army” via the health care bill, his desire to see America come to ruin, the imagined racism of Sonia Sotomayor… I could go on, and others could try to compose a list of equally nutty notions in circulation on the left to show it’s just as bad on the other side, and presumably still others could argue earnestly that one or more of these are actually Very Serious Issues after all. It would be a spectacular waste of time and change nobody’s mind. So I won’t bother, because no enumeration in the span of a blog post will, or really should, outweigh the general impression an attentive person will have already formed from observation of the media landscape.
If you think this is all crazy talk and don’t see a problem, the rest of this is probably not very interesting. But since it seems like a fair number of people do see something awry, it may be worth going ahead and asking what happened and what it would take to correct course. It might be useful even if you also think the left is bad too, or has historically been worse, and bears some responsibility for the conservative reaction. (Cue Jack Nicholson’s Joker: “You IDIOT! You made me. Remember?”) God knows nobody’s more epistemically closed than the claque of collegiate Marxists who won’t trust a word in the corporate press. Sidney Hook was probably a smug jerk. But that’s not really on point. I’m not broaching this because I want to hold a contest for history’s most awesome and open-minded ideology; progressivism does not win the Internets if people talk about their concerns with the intellectual climate on the right.
It’s fair to ask why a libertarian would burn cycles on this when it’s the left that’s high in the saddle, growing government and guarding the executive’s prerogatives as zealously as Bush ever did. The answer is that, while I’ve never called myself a conservative, I’d like there to be a functioning opposition to that—an opposition that’s capable of governing if it gets good enough at opposing. I think Ramesh Ponnuru nails it in a videoblog with Jon Chait: A closed right stops being concerned with persuading outsiders by serious argument and contents itself with revving up the base.
Consider the reaction to Jim Manzi, who took up Ross Douthat’s challenge:
Conservative domestic policy would be in better shape if conservative magazines and conservative columnists were more willing to call out Republican politicians (and, to a lesser extent, conservative entertainers) for offering bromides instead of substance, and for pandering instead of grappling with real policy questions.
Manzi answered the call with a scathing analysis of Mark Levin’s pop-con bestseller Liberty and Tyranny, in particular a shallow chapter on climate change that can only be called an insult to the reader’s intelligence:
I get that people often want comfort food when they read. Fair enough. But if you’re someone who read this book in order to help you form an honest opinion about global warming, then you were suckered. Liberty and Tyranny does not present a reasoned overview of the global warming debate; it doesn’t even present a reasoned argument for a specific point of view, other than that of willful ignorance. This section of the book is an almost perfect example of epistemic closure.
Cue apoplexy. This response from RedState may be my favorite:
Mark recognizes that when you are at war, while it is important to get facts right (and I think Mark did a darned fine job sourcing his book, giving you the chance to criticize it), it is also important to inspire the troops and to do so by distilling the realities of the fight into useful information. I frankly don’t know if every statistic in Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative was correct or not. Nor do I know if every statistic or number in Reagan’s A Time For Choosing speech in 1964 was correct. I DON’T CARE. I know the facts were in the ballpark, and more importantly, the principles were timeless and correct. I have read Mark’s book, and I know a little about the topics in question – and it’s a good book, with good citations and a lot of good facts.
Nope, no problem here. Why fuss about the quality of arguments when you already know you’re on “Team Levin”? Except, of course, that folks not already on Team Levin may take greater exception to being treated as uncritical dunces by the movement’s opinion leaders, even if those who are on the team accept the condescension as a sign of affection.
So how’d we get here? I’ve laid out some of my thoughts already. Matt Yglesias suggests that the left is less prone to systemic closure because it’s more of a patchwork of interest groups. There may be something to that, but I think it’s common for partisans on both sides to think of the opposition as far more unified and ideologically coherent than they really are, and in any event, I don’t know if this works as an account of why the problem seems to have gotten worse lately. Noah Millman had a long and thoughtful post that I won’t really try to summarize, because it really demands to be read in full. But I will just quote the most fatalistic of the explanations, a sort of cyclical “all this has happened before, all of it will happen again” theory:
To a considerable extent, the life cycle of movements derives from the life cycle of the people who grow up within those movements. Young conservatives in the late 1980s and early 1990s saw their movement go from strength to strength – and learned that conservatism was always right and that people who didn’t see that were fools. These same folks in the Bush years tutored their successors in appalling intellectual tactics: bullying and sophistry and identity politics. By contrast, the generation of liberals who came of age in the Bush years had to weather that bullying, had to cut through that sophistry – and were vindicated by events. I am continually impressed by the intelligence and sophistication of liberals ten years younger than I am. They are the leaders of tomorrow’s left even more than today’s, and the right is just not in the same league. It was, once, in 1960s and 1970s, when left-wing ideas were dominant and left-wingers intellectually complacent – even as their intellectual roof was falling in. The bright young things who saw that the roof was falling in, and who debated what their new home should look like, became the rising generation of conservative leaders.
Fatalistic, but also reassuring in a way. I’m under no illusions that all this discussion has sprung up because my original posts were saying something earthshatteringly insightful; this was obviously something there was a measure of latent (and sometimes not so latent) discomfort with on the right already. And while it’s easy for me to snipe like Waldorf and Statler from the libertarian balcony, it takes some chutzpah for the folks within the movement to start openly allowing that the trend to closure is unhealthy, and begin talking about rolling it back. Maybe we’re starting to see that correction already—though it’ll take a while, and sustained effort, to make the cracks in the wall resemble a door.
Update: Conor Friedersdorf and Ross Douthat propose that it would help if the right could just be up front about the difference between base-servicing conservative entertainment and serious intellectual work—though Conor thinks it’s unlikely. Jon Stewart, incidentally, has some funny (and musical!) thoughts on the distinction, and on the asymmetry between mainstream liberal reporting and the conservative counterestablishment:
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Bernie Goldberg Fires Back
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Update II: As a writer at the Corner notes, the technical meaning “epistemic closure” has in the philosophy of logic really has nothing to do with what we’ve been talking about these last couple weeks. Presumably it was in the back of my head somewhere when I posted, but I had no intention of referencing that technical sense, and any attempt to link them is just going to yield confusion. As I mention above, I don’t think it would be preferable to simply use “closed-mindedness,” because that’s not really what I meant either, and I don’t want to confuse a group phenomenon with an individual disposition. So much as I, too, am getting a bit sick of the phrase, I figure I’ll stick with “epistemic closure” and assume any logicians who happen by will divine readily enough that we’re not using it in the technical sense.
Update III: Actually, come to think of it, there’s a sense in which “epistemic closure” is not only distinct from individual “closed-mindedness” but almost its opposite. To be closed minded is to be unwilling to consider new ideas. But folks in the conservative media bubble often wind up far too willing to entertain all sorts of outlandish new ideas—provided they come from the universe of trusted sources.
April 22nd, 2010 · 56 Comments
Over the past couple of weeks, a pair of posts I wrote about what I dubbed “epistemic closure” on the right kicked off a surprisingly broad set of conversations and debates—mostly, I suspect, because it slapped a name on a phenomenon that a lot of people already recognized, and which many conservatives were themselves feeling increasingly uneasy about. Since so many smart folks took up and tried to elaborate on the idea, I figure it behooves me to try to round up some of those responses and see if I have anything useful to add.
First, just for the sake of clarity: When I initially dropped the term (apparently subconsciously borrowed from my undergrad philosophy days, where it has an unrelated technical meaning) the particular phenomenon I had in mind was rather narrower than the full range of issues people have been discussing under that rubric. What I had meant to describe specifically was the construction of a full-blown alternative media ecosystem, which has been become more self-sufficient and self-contained as it’s become more interconnected. There is, I argued, reason to think that more consciously conservative news outlets could serve as a valuable counterweight to a professional class of journalists who largely self-identify as liberals. But in practice, I believe, it has instead become worryingly untethered from reality as the impetus to satisfy the demand for red meat overtakes any motivation to report accurately. That does not mean conservatives are completely cut off from outside information—as David Brooks notes today, research suggests that frequent visitors to partisan sites are actually more likely to also visit “the enemy”—but it tends to be approached in roughly the same spirit we might read the Korean Central News Agency. The press are no longer seen as even biased refs in the public debate, but as members of one team or another in a conflict whose only referee is victory.
Also, perhaps slightly less obviously, the “closure” I’m talking about is above all a collective or systemic property, not a property of individuals: It is not primarily about the propensity of conservative persons to be “closed-minded” or “dogmicatically rigid” or anything like that. I wasn’t really trying to coin a phrase in the original post, but this was part of my rationale for not going with these more familiar terms. Closure is the universal tendency toward confirmation bias plus a sufficiently large array of multimedia conservative outlets to constitute a complete media counterculture, plus an overbroad ideological justification for treating mainstream output as intrinsically suspect. Nor, as Jon Chait and Jonathan Bernstein stress, was I making a point about a lack of “new ideas” on the right or even a general lack of intellectual diversity—at least until the internal disagreement begins spilling over into the mainstream and threatening the boundary between mediaspheres. (Fierce debate in the pages of National Review might be OK—though as Jim Manzi demonstrates, there are limits—but the ultimate sin is taking your criticisms to CNN or NPR. You don’t talk smack about family outside the family.)
These are related and interesting topics, but my use of the term was focused on the way the conservative mediasphere is increasingly able to resist incursions from the “MSM” narrative and picture of reality. Sometimes this results in a skewed perception of the importance of a story—the obsession with ACORN or the idea that the “Climategate” e-mails were some kind of game changer in the larger AGW debate. At its worst, it manifests as a willingness to hold and circulate factually false beliefs that a simple search ought to explode.
As a few folks have objected, I don’t really make any attempt to “prove” that the right is worse on this front right now. I think many of the responses from the right, even where they disagree on various points, bear out the broad intuition that this is a real phenomenon and a problem. Nobody’s saying: “What on earth could he be talking about?” I could marshal a tedious list of examples, but they’d be redundant for people who already see the problem, and probably unpersuasive to people who don’t—especially if they happen to hold some of the beliefs in question. Still, just as a brief refresher, recall that over the past two years, the movement’s flagship publications and most prominent pundits have found it urgent to discuss: Bill Ayers’ potential authorship of Obama’s memoir, the looming threat of death panels, the president’s crypto-Islamic background and allegiances, his attempt to create a “private army” via the health care bill, his desire to see America come to ruin, the imagined racism of Sonia Sotomayor… I could go on, and others could try to compose a list of equally nutty notions in circulation on the left to show it’s just as bad on the other side, and presumably still others could argue earnestly that one or more of these are actually Very Serious Issues after all. It would be a spectacular waste of time and change nobody’s mind. So I won’t bother, because no enumeration in the span of a blog post will, or really should, outweigh the general impression an attentive person will have already formed from observation of the media landscape.
If you think this is all crazy talk and don’t see a problem, the rest of this is probably not very interesting. But since it seems like a fair number of people do see something awry, it may be worth going ahead and asking what happened and what it would take to correct course. It might be useful even if you also think the left is bad too, or has historically been worse, and bears some responsibility for the conservative reaction. (Cue Jack Nicholson’s Joker: “You IDIOT! You made me. Remember?”) God knows nobody’s more epistemically closed than the claque of collegiate Marxists who won’t trust a word in the corporate press. Sidney Hook was probably a smug jerk. But that’s not really on point. I’m not broaching this because I want to hold a contest for history’s most awesome and open-minded ideology; progressivism does not win the Internets if people talk about their concerns with the intellectual climate on the right.
It’s fair to ask why a libertarian would burn cycles on this when it’s the left that’s high in the saddle, growing government and guarding the executive’s prerogatives as zealously as Bush ever did. The answer is that, while I’ve never called myself a conservative, I’d like there to be a functioning opposition to that—an opposition that’s capable of governing if it gets good enough at opposing. I think Ramesh Ponnuru nails it in a videoblog with Jon Chait: A closed right stops being concerned with persuading outsiders by serious argument and contents itself with revving up the base.
Consider the reaction to Jim Manzi, who took up Ross Douthat’s challenge:
Conservative domestic policy would be in better shape if conservative magazines and conservative columnists were more willing to call out Republican politicians (and, to a lesser extent, conservative entertainers) for offering bromides instead of substance, and for pandering instead of grappling with real policy questions.
Manzi answered the call with a scathing analysis of Mark Levin’s pop-con bestseller Liberty and Tyranny, in particular a shallow chapter on climate change that can only be called an insult to the reader’s intelligence:
I get that people often want comfort food when they read. Fair enough. But if you’re someone who read this book in order to help you form an honest opinion about global warming, then you were suckered. Liberty and Tyranny does not present a reasoned overview of the global warming debate; it doesn’t even present a reasoned argument for a specific point of view, other than that of willful ignorance. This section of the book is an almost perfect example of epistemic closure.
Cue apoplexy. This response from RedState may be my favorite:
Mark recognizes that when you are at war, while it is important to get facts right (and I think Mark did a darned fine job sourcing his book, giving you the chance to criticize it), it is also important to inspire the troops and to do so by distilling the realities of the fight into useful information. I frankly don’t know if every statistic in Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative was correct or not. Nor do I know if every statistic or number in Reagan’s A Time For Choosing speech in 1964 was correct. I DON’T CARE. I know the facts were in the ballpark, and more importantly, the principles were timeless and correct. I have read Mark’s book, and I know a little about the topics in question – and it’s a good book, with good citations and a lot of good facts.
Nope, no problem here. Why fuss about the quality of arguments when you already know you’re on “Team Levin”? Except, of course, that folks not already on Team Levin may take greater exception to being treated as uncritical dunces by the movement’s opinion leaders, even if those who are on the team accept the condescension as a sign of affection.
So how’d we get here? I’ve laid out some of my thoughts already. Matt Yglesias suggests that the left is less prone to systemic closure because it’s more of a patchwork of interest groups. There may be something to that, but I think it’s common for partisans on both sides to think of the opposition as far more unified and ideologically coherent than they really are, and in any event, I don’t know if this works as an account of why the problem seems to have gotten worse lately. Noah Millman had a long and thoughtful post that I won’t really try to summarize, because it really demands to be read in full. But I will just quote the most fatalistic of the explanations, a sort of cyclical “all this has happened before, all of it will happen again” theory:
To a considerable extent, the life cycle of movements derives from the life cycle of the people who grow up within those movements. Young conservatives in the late 1980s and early 1990s saw their movement go from strength to strength – and learned that conservatism was always right and that people who didn’t see that were fools. These same folks in the Bush years tutored their successors in appalling intellectual tactics: bullying and sophistry and identity politics. By contrast, the generation of liberals who came of age in the Bush years had to weather that bullying, had to cut through that sophistry – and were vindicated by events. I am continually impressed by the intelligence and sophistication of liberals ten years younger than I am. They are the leaders of tomorrow’s left even more than today’s, and the right is just not in the same league. It was, once, in 1960s and 1970s, when left-wing ideas were dominant and left-wingers intellectually complacent – even as their intellectual roof was falling in. The bright young things who saw that the roof was falling in, and who debated what their new home should look like, became the rising generation of conservative leaders.
Fatalistic, but also reassuring in a way. I’m under no illusions that all this discussion has sprung up because my original posts were saying something earthshatteringly insightful; this was obviously something there was a measure of latent (and sometimes not so latent) discomfort with on the right already. And while it’s easy for me to snipe like Waldorf and Statler from the libertarian balcony, it takes some chutzpah for the folks within the movement to start openly allowing that the trend to closure is unhealthy, and begin talking about rolling it back. Maybe we’re starting to see that correction already—though it’ll take a while, and sustained effort, to make the cracks in the wall resemble a door.
Update: Conor Friedersdorf and Ross Douthat propose that it would help if the right could just be up front about the difference between base-servicing conservative entertainment and serious intellectual work—though Conor thinks it’s unlikely. Jon Stewart, incidentally, has some funny (and musical!) thoughts on the distinction, and on the asymmetry between mainstream liberal reporting and the conservative counterestablishment:
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Bernie Goldberg Fires Back
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party
Update II: As a writer at the Corner notes, the technical meaning “epistemic closure” has in the philosophy of logic really has nothing to do with what we’ve been talking about these last couple weeks. Presumably it was in the back of my head somewhere when I posted, but I had no intention of referencing that technical sense, and any attempt to link them is just going to yield confusion. As I mention above, I don’t think it would be preferable to simply use “closed-mindedness,” because that’s not really what I meant either, and I don’t want to confuse a group phenomenon with an individual disposition. So much as I, too, am getting a bit sick of the phrase, I figure I’ll stick with “epistemic closure” and assume any logicians who happen by will divine readily enough that we’re not using it in the technical sense.
Update III: Actually, come to think of it, there’s a sense in which “epistemic closure” is not only distinct from individual “closed-mindedness” but almost its opposite. To be closed minded is to be unwilling to consider new ideas. But folks in the conservative media bubble often wind up far too willing to entertain all sorts of outlandish new ideas—provided they come from the universe of trusted sources.
Time to retreat
Have Conservatives Gone Mad?
APR 23 2010, 1:10 PM ET | Comment
Serious thinkers on the right have finally gotten around to a full and open debate on the epistemic closure problem that's plaguing the conservative movement. The issue, to put it in terms that even I can understand, because I didn't study philosophy much in college: has the conservative base gone mad?
This matters to journalists, because I really do want to take Republicans seriously. Mainstream conservative voices are embracing theories that are, to use Julian Sanchez's phrase, "untethered" to the real world.
Can anyone deny that the most trenchant and effective criticism of President Obama today comes not from the right but from the left? Rachel Maddow's grilling of administration economic officials. Keith Olbermann's hectoring of Democratic leaders on the public option. Glenn Greenwald's criticisms of Elena Kagan. Ezra Klein and Jonathan Cohn's keepin'-them-honest perspectives on health care. The civil libertarian left on detainees and Gitmo. The Huffington Post on derivatives.
I want to find Republicans to take seriously, but it is hard. Not because they don't exist -- serious Republicans -- but because, as Sanchez and others seem to recognize, they are marginalized, even self-marginalizing, and the base itself seems to have developed a notion that bromides are equivalent to policy-thinking, and that therapy is a substitute for thinking.
It is absolutely a condition of the age of the triumph of conservative personality politics, where entertainers shouting slogans are taken seriously as political actors, and where the incentive structures exist to stomp on dissent and nuance, causing experimental voices to retrench and allowing a lot of people to pretend that the world around them is not changing. The obsession with ACORN, Climategate, death panels, the militarization of rhetoric, Saul Alinsky, Chicago-style politics, that TAXPAYERS will fund the bailout of banks -- these aren't meaningful or interesting or even relevant things to focus on. (The banks will fund their own bailouts.)
Conor Friedersdorf thinks the problem lies with the conservative movement's major spokespeople -- its radio/net news nexus -- and the "overwhelming evidence that their very existence as popular entertainers hinges on an ability to persuade listeners that they are "'worth taking seriously as political and intellectual actors.'" That is why the constant failures of these men to live up to their billing is so offensive, destructive, and ruinous to conservatives. There are plenty of women, too, is all I'll say.
I think this sensibility is pervasive throughout the smart media -- old and new. I think it's one reason why, say, Jake Tapper and other good reporters are very keen about direct fact-challenging -- why the media is reasserting itself as gatekeepers. (CNN might want to think about branding themselves here, even at the risk -- well, the reality -- of calling out Republicans more.) I think it's because there's so much misinformation out there -- most of it spread by the conservative echo-chamber. With the advent of Fox News and the power of that echo-chamber, complaints about liberal media bias are quite irrelevant -- the reaction to it being like lupus's reaction to the body, as Jon Stewart correctly noted.
APR 23 2010, 1:10 PM ET | Comment
Serious thinkers on the right have finally gotten around to a full and open debate on the epistemic closure problem that's plaguing the conservative movement. The issue, to put it in terms that even I can understand, because I didn't study philosophy much in college: has the conservative base gone mad?
This matters to journalists, because I really do want to take Republicans seriously. Mainstream conservative voices are embracing theories that are, to use Julian Sanchez's phrase, "untethered" to the real world.
Can anyone deny that the most trenchant and effective criticism of President Obama today comes not from the right but from the left? Rachel Maddow's grilling of administration economic officials. Keith Olbermann's hectoring of Democratic leaders on the public option. Glenn Greenwald's criticisms of Elena Kagan. Ezra Klein and Jonathan Cohn's keepin'-them-honest perspectives on health care. The civil libertarian left on detainees and Gitmo. The Huffington Post on derivatives.
I want to find Republicans to take seriously, but it is hard. Not because they don't exist -- serious Republicans -- but because, as Sanchez and others seem to recognize, they are marginalized, even self-marginalizing, and the base itself seems to have developed a notion that bromides are equivalent to policy-thinking, and that therapy is a substitute for thinking.
It is absolutely a condition of the age of the triumph of conservative personality politics, where entertainers shouting slogans are taken seriously as political actors, and where the incentive structures exist to stomp on dissent and nuance, causing experimental voices to retrench and allowing a lot of people to pretend that the world around them is not changing. The obsession with ACORN, Climategate, death panels, the militarization of rhetoric, Saul Alinsky, Chicago-style politics, that TAXPAYERS will fund the bailout of banks -- these aren't meaningful or interesting or even relevant things to focus on. (The banks will fund their own bailouts.)
Conor Friedersdorf thinks the problem lies with the conservative movement's major spokespeople -- its radio/net news nexus -- and the "overwhelming evidence that their very existence as popular entertainers hinges on an ability to persuade listeners that they are "'worth taking seriously as political and intellectual actors.'" That is why the constant failures of these men to live up to their billing is so offensive, destructive, and ruinous to conservatives. There are plenty of women, too, is all I'll say.
I think this sensibility is pervasive throughout the smart media -- old and new. I think it's one reason why, say, Jake Tapper and other good reporters are very keen about direct fact-challenging -- why the media is reasserting itself as gatekeepers. (CNN might want to think about branding themselves here, even at the risk -- well, the reality -- of calling out Republicans more.) I think it's because there's so much misinformation out there -- most of it spread by the conservative echo-chamber. With the advent of Fox News and the power of that echo-chamber, complaints about liberal media bias are quite irrelevant -- the reaction to it being like lupus's reaction to the body, as Jon Stewart correctly noted.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
9 Charged In Student's Bullying Death
Phoebe Prince, 15, Committed Suicide In January
POSTED: 11:38 am EDT March 29, 2010
UPDATED: 6:09 pm EDT March 29, 2010
NORTHAMPTON, Mass. -- Nine teenagers have been charged in connection with the suicide death of South Hadley High School student Phoebe Prince, 15, who took her life after she was bullied by other students at her school, Northwestern District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel said Monday.
Phoebe Prince
Two male teens, ages 17 and 18, were also both charged with statutory rape.
"The investigation revealed relentless activity directed at Phoebe," in the three months before her death, Scheibel said, until the situation became "intolerable" for the girl.
Prince, a student at the school whose family had recently moved to the U.S. from Ireland, took her own life in January, authorities said, after she was bullied for three months both at school and online by other students.
"It appears that Phoebe's death on Jan. 14 followed a tortuous day for her in which she was subjected to verbal harassment and threatened physical abuse," Scheibel said.
The district attorney said according to the investigation, which involved interviews with more than 50 people, on the day of her death Prince was harassed as she studied in the school library, and as she walked in the school hallways and later as she walked home.
The bullying in the library was witnessed by a faculty member and other students but was not reported until after Prince's death, Scheibel said, adding that the bullying of Prince was "common knowledge" at the school.
"On the day of her death, primarily three individuals -- one male and two females -- were involved in this assaultive behavior, which appears to have been motivated by the group's displeasure with Phoebe's brief dating relationship with a male student which had ended some six weeks previous," Scheibel said.
"Their conduct far exceeded the limits of normal teenage relationship-related quarrels," Scheibel said.
Six teens and three juveniles were charged in connection with the case, the charges including criminal harassment, violation of civil rights and disturbing a school assembly.
Click To Comment | 9 Charged In Student's Bullying Death | Video | Images: Phoebe Prince Case Timeline
Among those charged, three were teenaged girls, Scheibel said.
The teens were identified as:
Sean Mulveyhill
A 16-year-old from South Hadley was charged with violation of civil rights, as a youthful offender.
A 16-year-old from South Hadley was charged with violation of civil rights as a youthful offender, stalking as a youthful offender.
Sean Mulveyhill, 17, of South Hadley, charged with statutory rape, violation of civil rights, criminal harassment, disturbance of a school assembly.
Kayla Narey, 17, of South Hadley, charged with violation of civil rights, criminal harassment, disturbance of a school assembly.
Austin Renaud, 18, was charged with statutory rape.
Austin Renaud, 18, of Springfield, charged with statutory rape.
A 16-year-old from South Hadley was charged with violation of civil rights as a youthful offender, stalking as a youthful offender.
All of those charged will be summoned to court at a later date and more charges could follow, authorities said.
The indictments were handed up Friday, Scheibel said.
Three are still students at the school, and three were expelled in February, authorities said.
SURVEY
Nine teens are facing criminal charges in connection with the suicide death of a South Hadley, Mass., teen who committed suicide in January. Do you agree or disagree with this move?
Yes, they should have been charged
No, they should not have been charged
I'm not sure
Results | Disclaimer | E-Mail
"These students' lives have also been dramatically altered, and they won't be graduating from South Hadley High School," Principal Daniel T. Smith said at the time the expulsion was announced.
The district attorney said there were three months of intense harassment that ended when Prince hanged herself at her Newton Street home in South Hadley after school. Her younger sister found her in the staircase heading up to the family's second-floor apartment.
The case, and the earlier bullying-related death of Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, 11, of Springfield, sparked outrage across the commonwealth and prompted calls for strict anti-bullying legislation to be passed.
Lawmakers approved an anti-bullying law earlier this month that requires schools to report incidents of bullying to local police if it's believed any laws may have been broken. The bill is in conference committee to settle differences between House and Senate versions.
The district attorney said South Hadley school officials were aware of the Prince bullying but none were charged in connection with the case because officials said their actions did not rise to the level of a crime.
She did, however, say that Prince's mother had spoken to at least two school staff members about the bullying, and some faculty had intervened and reported it, but administrators failed to intervene, which Scheibel called "troublesome."
"A lack of understanding of harassment associated with teen dating relationships seems to have been prevalent at South Hadley High School. That in turn brought about an inconsistent interpretation and enforcement of the school's code of conduct when incidents were observed and reported," Scheibel said.
Previous Stories
Phoebe Prince, 15, Committed Suicide In January
POSTED: 11:38 am EDT March 29, 2010
UPDATED: 6:09 pm EDT March 29, 2010
NORTHAMPTON, Mass. -- Nine teenagers have been charged in connection with the suicide death of South Hadley High School student Phoebe Prince, 15, who took her life after she was bullied by other students at her school, Northwestern District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel said Monday.
Phoebe Prince
Two male teens, ages 17 and 18, were also both charged with statutory rape.
"The investigation revealed relentless activity directed at Phoebe," in the three months before her death, Scheibel said, until the situation became "intolerable" for the girl.
Prince, a student at the school whose family had recently moved to the U.S. from Ireland, took her own life in January, authorities said, after she was bullied for three months both at school and online by other students.
"It appears that Phoebe's death on Jan. 14 followed a tortuous day for her in which she was subjected to verbal harassment and threatened physical abuse," Scheibel said.
The district attorney said according to the investigation, which involved interviews with more than 50 people, on the day of her death Prince was harassed as she studied in the school library, and as she walked in the school hallways and later as she walked home.
The bullying in the library was witnessed by a faculty member and other students but was not reported until after Prince's death, Scheibel said, adding that the bullying of Prince was "common knowledge" at the school.
"On the day of her death, primarily three individuals -- one male and two females -- were involved in this assaultive behavior, which appears to have been motivated by the group's displeasure with Phoebe's brief dating relationship with a male student which had ended some six weeks previous," Scheibel said.
"Their conduct far exceeded the limits of normal teenage relationship-related quarrels," Scheibel said.
Six teens and three juveniles were charged in connection with the case, the charges including criminal harassment, violation of civil rights and disturbing a school assembly.
Click To Comment | 9 Charged In Student's Bullying Death | Video | Images: Phoebe Prince Case Timeline
Among those charged, three were teenaged girls, Scheibel said.
The teens were identified as:
Sean Mulveyhill
A 16-year-old from South Hadley was charged with violation of civil rights, as a youthful offender.
A 16-year-old from South Hadley was charged with violation of civil rights as a youthful offender, stalking as a youthful offender.
Sean Mulveyhill, 17, of South Hadley, charged with statutory rape, violation of civil rights, criminal harassment, disturbance of a school assembly.
Kayla Narey, 17, of South Hadley, charged with violation of civil rights, criminal harassment, disturbance of a school assembly.
Austin Renaud, 18, was charged with statutory rape.
Austin Renaud, 18, of Springfield, charged with statutory rape.
A 16-year-old from South Hadley was charged with violation of civil rights as a youthful offender, stalking as a youthful offender.
All of those charged will be summoned to court at a later date and more charges could follow, authorities said.
The indictments were handed up Friday, Scheibel said.
Three are still students at the school, and three were expelled in February, authorities said.
SURVEY
Nine teens are facing criminal charges in connection with the suicide death of a South Hadley, Mass., teen who committed suicide in January. Do you agree or disagree with this move?
Yes, they should have been charged
No, they should not have been charged
I'm not sure
Results | Disclaimer | E-Mail
"These students' lives have also been dramatically altered, and they won't be graduating from South Hadley High School," Principal Daniel T. Smith said at the time the expulsion was announced.
The district attorney said there were three months of intense harassment that ended when Prince hanged herself at her Newton Street home in South Hadley after school. Her younger sister found her in the staircase heading up to the family's second-floor apartment.
The case, and the earlier bullying-related death of Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, 11, of Springfield, sparked outrage across the commonwealth and prompted calls for strict anti-bullying legislation to be passed.
Lawmakers approved an anti-bullying law earlier this month that requires schools to report incidents of bullying to local police if it's believed any laws may have been broken. The bill is in conference committee to settle differences between House and Senate versions.
The district attorney said South Hadley school officials were aware of the Prince bullying but none were charged in connection with the case because officials said their actions did not rise to the level of a crime.
She did, however, say that Prince's mother had spoken to at least two school staff members about the bullying, and some faculty had intervened and reported it, but administrators failed to intervene, which Scheibel called "troublesome."
"A lack of understanding of harassment associated with teen dating relationships seems to have been prevalent at South Hadley High School. That in turn brought about an inconsistent interpretation and enforcement of the school's code of conduct when incidents were observed and reported," Scheibel said.
Previous Stories
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