Olympic spectators traveling to the Games in London faced delays Tuesday after a faulty train forced the closure of one of the busiest underground links to the Olympic Park.
There have been concerns over whether London's public transport system, the busiest in Europe, would be able to handle the rush of spectators attending the Games.
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The system appeared to cope well with the crowds on Monday.
Operator Transport for London said the Central Line service, which stretches east to west across the city, was halted east of Liverpool Street station on Tuesday after a driver reported smelling smoke.
The driver's train was taken out of service at Leyton, one stop to the east of the Stratford station which is being used as the hub for people arriving at the Olympic Park.
London Olympic VIP lanes not needed as many turn to public transit
The authorities said there were severe delays on the rest of the Central Line, but that staff were advising Olympic fans how to travel to the park via a number of other rail routes.
More on London 2012: Hosting the Games
British Transport Police said the problem may have been due to smoke coming from the train's brakes.
London's entire transit network handles an average of 12 million trips a day.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this repor
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Insurance rebates seen as selling point for health law
Lucia Harkenreader’s check landed in her mailbox last week: a rebate of $456.15 from her health insurance company, with a letter dryly explaining that the money came courtesy of the federal health care law.
“It almost looked like junk mail,” said Ms. Harkenreader, a tax accountant in Mountain Top, Pa., who said she did not love the overall law but was pleased at the unexpected windfall. “If this is part of Obamacare, I’m happy that somebody is finally coming down on the insurance companies and saying, ‘Look, let’s be fair here.’ ”
The law requires insurers to give out annual rebates by Aug. 1, starting this year, if less than 80 percent of the premium dollars they collect go toward medical care. For insurers covering large employers, the threshold is 85 percent.
As a result, insurers will pay out $1.1 billion this year, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, although most of it will not go to individuals. The average rebate will be $151 per household, with the highest in Vermont ($807 per family), Alaska ($622) and Alabama ($518). No rebates will be issued in New Mexico or Rhode Island, because insurers there met the 80/20 requirement.
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Although the percentage of insurance companies that owe rebates this year is relatively small, about 14 percent, many giants of the industry are on the list. They include Aetna, Cigna, Humana and UnitedHealthcare.
President Obama is highlighting the rebates as a tangible early benefit of the legislation; on the day the Supreme Court upheld the law as constitutional last month, he said millions of Americans would see rebates because their insurance companies had “spent too much on things like administrative costs and C.E.O. bonuses, and not enough on your health care.”
So is your check in the mail? Don’t count on it.
Advertise | AdChoices
Self-insured employers, which cover more than half the nation’s workers, are exempt from the new rule, as are Medicare and Medicaid. And of the 75 million people in health plans subject to the rule, only about 17 percent, or 12.8 million, will get rebates this year, according to the Obama administration.
Many who buy coverage directly from insurers, like Ms. Harkenreader and other self-employed people, are receiving checks. But in most cases rebates are being sent to employers, who can chose to put them toward future premium costs instead of distributing them to workers.
“I’ve been trying to explain that to people — that very few people would be getting a check,” said Timothy S. Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University who is an expert on the health care law.
Still, he and others say the rebate provision could prove a potent selling point for a law that remains unpopular with many Americans, not to mention a well-timed tool for the Obama re-election campaign. Premiums — and anger toward insurance companies — keep rising: the cost of employer-sponsored family health plans jumped by 9 percent last year to more than $15,000, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Video: Economist: Country should be reimbursing for health (on this page)
For Ms. Harkenreader, 53, who is putting a son through college, the rebate helps soothe the frustration she feels toward her insurer, Golden Rule, which is owned by UnitedHealthcare.
“It seems like the health insurance companies really just don’t have any consideration for the cost out here,” said Ms. Harkenreader, who pays about $480 a month for a high-deductible plan, up from $400 last year. “What costs have gone up to justify that rise in premium? I’d love to know. Did you give your people a raise? I guess your light bill went up?”
Professor Jost said he had heard “quite a bit of anecdotal evidence of insurers giving really low premium increases this year” — a sign that the rebate rule might already be having an effect. (This year’s rebates are based on the share of premiums that went to administrative costs in 2011.)
Amber Wagner of St. Peters, Mo., said that in addition to a rebate of $143, she had gotten word from her insurer, Anthem, that her premium rate would drop starting next month.
“It does make sense,” Ms. Wagner, 29, said of the rebate rule. “Why should they get to spend all this money on advertising and lining the pockets of people who own the company and make me pay more?”
Insurance companies say the rebate requirement does not address swiftly rising medical costs, which they say are the main reason premiums keep going up.
“Placing an arbitrary cap on administrative costs is going to do nothing to make health care more affordable,” said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry trade group. “There’s a lot of misinformation out there.”
Critics also say the rule could drive insurers with high administrative costs out of some markets if they are not given more time to meet the 80/20 standard, potentially leaving customers in the lurch. That concern factored into a decision by the Department of Health and Human Services to allow insurers in several states to spend a higher portion of premiums on overhead for now. Those states are Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Nevada, New Hampshire and North Carolina. Eight other states sought but were not granted a reprieve.
Advertise | AdChoices
Employers can put the rebates toward future premium costs, share them directly with workers or use them to enhance benefits. Insurers have the option of directly reducing future premiums instead of sending out rebates.
In Kentucky, the Floyd County commissioners voted last week to distribute the county’s rebate of $169,748.78 from Humana to county employees as a surprise. The 260 employees will soon receive checks, although Stephen Bush, the board president, said the amounts have yet to be determined. Those who paid higher premiums will probably get more, he said.
“It’s probably been five, seven years since they’ve gotten a raise,” Mr. Bush said. “If they want to use it for premiums, they can. But if they’re living paycheck to paycheck or it’s a difficult time, they have that opportunity to use it for whatever they want.”
Robert Blendon, a health policy professor at Harvard, said that while the rebates might win over some opponents of the law, they were too limited to have much impact. Polls have found that most people believe the law will drive premiums up.
“My view is the number is too small,” Professor Blendon said. “Most people have already come to some judgment about the law and they are moving on to other things.”
This story, "Insurance rebates seen as early benefit of health care law," originally appeared in The New York Times.
“It almost looked like junk mail,” said Ms. Harkenreader, a tax accountant in Mountain Top, Pa., who said she did not love the overall law but was pleased at the unexpected windfall. “If this is part of Obamacare, I’m happy that somebody is finally coming down on the insurance companies and saying, ‘Look, let’s be fair here.’ ”
The law requires insurers to give out annual rebates by Aug. 1, starting this year, if less than 80 percent of the premium dollars they collect go toward medical care. For insurers covering large employers, the threshold is 85 percent.
As a result, insurers will pay out $1.1 billion this year, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, although most of it will not go to individuals. The average rebate will be $151 per household, with the highest in Vermont ($807 per family), Alaska ($622) and Alabama ($518). No rebates will be issued in New Mexico or Rhode Island, because insurers there met the 80/20 requirement.
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Burned-out nurses spur more patient infections
Military to fill empty seats at London Olympics
Rome’s leaning Colosseum has experts worried
Ford looks to aluminum to slash weight of pickups
Romney: US has duty to protect Israel
Story: Expanding Medicaid cuts death rates, study finds
Although the percentage of insurance companies that owe rebates this year is relatively small, about 14 percent, many giants of the industry are on the list. They include Aetna, Cigna, Humana and UnitedHealthcare.
President Obama is highlighting the rebates as a tangible early benefit of the legislation; on the day the Supreme Court upheld the law as constitutional last month, he said millions of Americans would see rebates because their insurance companies had “spent too much on things like administrative costs and C.E.O. bonuses, and not enough on your health care.”
So is your check in the mail? Don’t count on it.
Advertise | AdChoices
Self-insured employers, which cover more than half the nation’s workers, are exempt from the new rule, as are Medicare and Medicaid. And of the 75 million people in health plans subject to the rule, only about 17 percent, or 12.8 million, will get rebates this year, according to the Obama administration.
Many who buy coverage directly from insurers, like Ms. Harkenreader and other self-employed people, are receiving checks. But in most cases rebates are being sent to employers, who can chose to put them toward future premium costs instead of distributing them to workers.
“I’ve been trying to explain that to people — that very few people would be getting a check,” said Timothy S. Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University who is an expert on the health care law.
Still, he and others say the rebate provision could prove a potent selling point for a law that remains unpopular with many Americans, not to mention a well-timed tool for the Obama re-election campaign. Premiums — and anger toward insurance companies — keep rising: the cost of employer-sponsored family health plans jumped by 9 percent last year to more than $15,000, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Video: Economist: Country should be reimbursing for health (on this page)
For Ms. Harkenreader, 53, who is putting a son through college, the rebate helps soothe the frustration she feels toward her insurer, Golden Rule, which is owned by UnitedHealthcare.
“It seems like the health insurance companies really just don’t have any consideration for the cost out here,” said Ms. Harkenreader, who pays about $480 a month for a high-deductible plan, up from $400 last year. “What costs have gone up to justify that rise in premium? I’d love to know. Did you give your people a raise? I guess your light bill went up?”
Professor Jost said he had heard “quite a bit of anecdotal evidence of insurers giving really low premium increases this year” — a sign that the rebate rule might already be having an effect. (This year’s rebates are based on the share of premiums that went to administrative costs in 2011.)
Amber Wagner of St. Peters, Mo., said that in addition to a rebate of $143, she had gotten word from her insurer, Anthem, that her premium rate would drop starting next month.
“It does make sense,” Ms. Wagner, 29, said of the rebate rule. “Why should they get to spend all this money on advertising and lining the pockets of people who own the company and make me pay more?”
Insurance companies say the rebate requirement does not address swiftly rising medical costs, which they say are the main reason premiums keep going up.
“Placing an arbitrary cap on administrative costs is going to do nothing to make health care more affordable,” said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry trade group. “There’s a lot of misinformation out there.”
Critics also say the rule could drive insurers with high administrative costs out of some markets if they are not given more time to meet the 80/20 standard, potentially leaving customers in the lurch. That concern factored into a decision by the Department of Health and Human Services to allow insurers in several states to spend a higher portion of premiums on overhead for now. Those states are Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Nevada, New Hampshire and North Carolina. Eight other states sought but were not granted a reprieve.
Advertise | AdChoices
Employers can put the rebates toward future premium costs, share them directly with workers or use them to enhance benefits. Insurers have the option of directly reducing future premiums instead of sending out rebates.
In Kentucky, the Floyd County commissioners voted last week to distribute the county’s rebate of $169,748.78 from Humana to county employees as a surprise. The 260 employees will soon receive checks, although Stephen Bush, the board president, said the amounts have yet to be determined. Those who paid higher premiums will probably get more, he said.
“It’s probably been five, seven years since they’ve gotten a raise,” Mr. Bush said. “If they want to use it for premiums, they can. But if they’re living paycheck to paycheck or it’s a difficult time, they have that opportunity to use it for whatever they want.”
Robert Blendon, a health policy professor at Harvard, said that while the rebates might win over some opponents of the law, they were too limited to have much impact. Polls have found that most people believe the law will drive premiums up.
“My view is the number is too small,” Professor Blendon said. “Most people have already come to some judgment about the law and they are moving on to other things.”
This story, "Insurance rebates seen as early benefit of health care law," originally appeared in The New York Times.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
O'Brien says main goal is to keep team together
Of the long list of problems now facing Penn State coach Bill O'Brien, the top priority sounds simple: keeping the Nittany Lions intact.
So he's stressing education and the opportunity to play in front of 108,000 fans every fall Saturday as part of his pitch to persuade players to stay in Happy Valley.
It seems to be working — so far.
O'Brien said in a conference call with reporters Tuesday that no current member of the team has indicated they will transfer following the NCAA sanctions imposed this week on Penn State. The penalties allow current players to transfer immediately without restrictions.
"Life is full of adversity. The way you travel through life is how you handle adversity," O'Brien said in relaying what he told players during team meetings the last two days. "I told the guys to think about the guys they're sitting next to in that room.
"We've got a bunch of good kids here who are good tough football payers who care about education," he added.
The NCAA imposed unprecedented penalties in response to the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal. The university's investigation found that coach Joe Paterno and three other school officials concealed allegations against Sandusky, the retired defensive coordinator — conclusions vehemently denied by Paterno's family and the officials.
A reduction in scholarships and a four-year postseason ban are among the sanctions, so potentially crippling that some observers have suggested they are worse than the so-called "death penalty" of shutting down football entirely for at least a season.
Not so, said O'Brien, who added it was important for the fans and the program that games would remain on television.
"We are playing football. We are opening our season on Sept. 1 before 108,000 strong against Ohio University," O'Brien said emphatically. "We get to get better as football players, and we get to do that for Penn State."
It has been a trying year for the Nittany Lions even before the NCAA announced its sanctions. Players who had nothing to do with the scandal have been caught in the resulting media firestorm since Sandusky was arrested in November and Paterno was fired days later.
O'Brien was hired in January after serving as offensive coordinator of the New England Patriots.
While he didn't offer specific details, O'Brien said he has a plan to get the program through its latest crisis. His experience coaching in the NFL, where teams are limited to 53-man rosters, might help in leading and shaping Penn State's scholarship-restricted roster.
"You're talking about having experience in how to put that roster together, learning from the best in (Patriots head coach) Bill Belichick. How to practice," he said. "So there's no question that my NFL experience ... will certainly help."
As for concerns about not playing in the postseason for the next four years, O'Brien counters that Penn State plays what equates to six or seven bowl games each year with home contests at massive Beaver Stadium, the second-largest stadium in the country.
Recruiting could also become an even bigger challenge, but O'Brien said he felt "very good" about recruiting. One high-profile high school prospect, cornerback Ross Douglas, has taken back his verbal pledge to commit to Penn State in 2013. Another 2013 recruit, tight end Adam Breneman, has said he's sticking with Penn State.
The recruiting strategy might change given the scholarship decline, but the "philosophy I've brought here does not change ... meaning that we're looking for high-character guys that are good students. We're going to find ways to do that."
O'Brien is also optimistic about keeping his coaching staff together, which includes defensive coordinator Ted Roof, who coached at Auburn when the Tigers won the national championship two seasons ago; and former NFL assistants Stan Hixon and Charles London. Also on the staff are two holdovers from the Paterno era: defensive line coach Larry Johnson and linebackers coach Ron Vanderlinden.
As for O'Brien himself, the head coach left no doubt about his loyalties.
"I made a commitment to Penn State. I believe in Penn State," he said. "I feel very close to these kids ... they've been dealt with honestly, openly and again we've got a bunch of guys here that want to succeed and do well on and off the field, and I feel close to them."
So he's stressing education and the opportunity to play in front of 108,000 fans every fall Saturday as part of his pitch to persuade players to stay in Happy Valley.
It seems to be working — so far.
O'Brien said in a conference call with reporters Tuesday that no current member of the team has indicated they will transfer following the NCAA sanctions imposed this week on Penn State. The penalties allow current players to transfer immediately without restrictions.
"Life is full of adversity. The way you travel through life is how you handle adversity," O'Brien said in relaying what he told players during team meetings the last two days. "I told the guys to think about the guys they're sitting next to in that room.
"We've got a bunch of good kids here who are good tough football payers who care about education," he added.
The NCAA imposed unprecedented penalties in response to the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal. The university's investigation found that coach Joe Paterno and three other school officials concealed allegations against Sandusky, the retired defensive coordinator — conclusions vehemently denied by Paterno's family and the officials.
A reduction in scholarships and a four-year postseason ban are among the sanctions, so potentially crippling that some observers have suggested they are worse than the so-called "death penalty" of shutting down football entirely for at least a season.
Not so, said O'Brien, who added it was important for the fans and the program that games would remain on television.
"We are playing football. We are opening our season on Sept. 1 before 108,000 strong against Ohio University," O'Brien said emphatically. "We get to get better as football players, and we get to do that for Penn State."
It has been a trying year for the Nittany Lions even before the NCAA announced its sanctions. Players who had nothing to do with the scandal have been caught in the resulting media firestorm since Sandusky was arrested in November and Paterno was fired days later.
O'Brien was hired in January after serving as offensive coordinator of the New England Patriots.
While he didn't offer specific details, O'Brien said he has a plan to get the program through its latest crisis. His experience coaching in the NFL, where teams are limited to 53-man rosters, might help in leading and shaping Penn State's scholarship-restricted roster.
"You're talking about having experience in how to put that roster together, learning from the best in (Patriots head coach) Bill Belichick. How to practice," he said. "So there's no question that my NFL experience ... will certainly help."
As for concerns about not playing in the postseason for the next four years, O'Brien counters that Penn State plays what equates to six or seven bowl games each year with home contests at massive Beaver Stadium, the second-largest stadium in the country.
Recruiting could also become an even bigger challenge, but O'Brien said he felt "very good" about recruiting. One high-profile high school prospect, cornerback Ross Douglas, has taken back his verbal pledge to commit to Penn State in 2013. Another 2013 recruit, tight end Adam Breneman, has said he's sticking with Penn State.
The recruiting strategy might change given the scholarship decline, but the "philosophy I've brought here does not change ... meaning that we're looking for high-character guys that are good students. We're going to find ways to do that."
O'Brien is also optimistic about keeping his coaching staff together, which includes defensive coordinator Ted Roof, who coached at Auburn when the Tigers won the national championship two seasons ago; and former NFL assistants Stan Hixon and Charles London. Also on the staff are two holdovers from the Paterno era: defensive line coach Larry Johnson and linebackers coach Ron Vanderlinden.
As for O'Brien himself, the head coach left no doubt about his loyalties.
"I made a commitment to Penn State. I believe in Penn State," he said. "I feel very close to these kids ... they've been dealt with honestly, openly and again we've got a bunch of guys here that want to succeed and do well on and off the field, and I feel close to them."
NASCAR suspends Allmendinger indefinitely
NASCAR indefinitely suspended driver A.J. Allmendinger on Tuesday after confirming he violated its substance-abuse policy, putting his career and future with Penske Racing in jeopardy.
The suspension came after a test of his backup urine sample confirmed the original positive result.
Allmendinger originally was suspended July 7 after failing a random drug test taken in late June. His backup "B'' urine sample was tested Tuesday by Aegis Analytical Laboratories in Nashville, Tenn.
NASCAR officials announced the result and subsequent suspension Tuesday night.
"While not a pleasant experience by any stretch of the imagination, we feel like we have one of the best drug testing programs in sports," NASCAR spokesman David Higdon said.
Officials did not announce what substance Allmendinger tested positive for. Allmendinger previously said he tested positive for a stimulant, but did not give specifics. He has denied knowingly taking a banned substance.
"This was not the news we wanted to hear and we will work to get to the source of what may have caused this," said Tara Ragan, Allmendinger's business manager, in a statement. "To that end, we have secured the services of an independent lab to conduct thorough testing on every product within AJ's home and motor coach to find what might collaborate with his test, which created results that were within nanograms of accepted standards. We are working closely with NASCAR and Penske Racing to identify the next action steps in this process."
NASCAR officials did not say how far Allmendinger's positive test went beyond a predetermined range of acceptable levels — and as is the case in other sports drug testing programs, officials wouldn't consider it a valid defense if a competitor just barely exceeded acceptable levels of a banned substance.
"We choose not to disclose the level," Higdon said. "To us, a violation is a violation, and that's what happened here."
Given the indefinite nature of his suspension, Allmendinger's only avenue to return to NASCAR is to complete a "road to recovery" program. He will be issued a letter outlining a process for reinstatement, and must agree to the letter to participate in the program.
In a statement, Allmendinger's Penske Racing team acknowledged it had been notified of the test results.
"Penske Racing is very disappointed with the result of the B sample test and will evaluate its course of action as it pertains to AJ over the coming week," the team said.
The team said Sam Hornish Jr. will drive the No. 22 car this weekend at Indianapolis and next weekend at Pocono. Hornish has filled in for Allmendinger in the past two Sprint Cup Series races.
Allmendinger's primary sponsors, Shell and Pennzoil, called NASCAR's process and procedures "appropriate" in a statement.
"We share Penske Racing's disappointment with the result of AJ's B sample test and will work closely with them to determine plans moving forward," the sponsors said. "We hope for the best for AJ during this difficult time."
Speaking to The Associated Press earlier Tuesday, before Allmendinger's B sample results were announced, NASCAR CEO Brian France he is confident in the series' drug testing program that once again came under scrutiny after Allmendinger's original failed test.
"We believe it's a strong testing system that works," France told The Associated Press in London, where the NASCAR executive will speak Wednesday at the Beyond Sports Summit. "We've got the best guy (David Black, Aegis' CEO) running the program, and it's a solid system that we believe does the job intended."
Because Allmendinger has said he tested positive for a stimulant, there has been speculation that it came from a supplement or energy drink consumed by the first-year Penske Racing driver. Allmendinger works out regularly and is known to be health conscious.
He is the second Sprint Cup Series driver suspended under the tightened policy implemented in 2009. Jeremy Mayfield was the first driver, and he unsuccessfully sued to have the results overturned.
NASCAR does not reveal the substance found in a positive test, but court documents showed it was methamphetamine that Mayfield had in his system.
France indicated Tuesday that NASCAR is unlikely to reconsider its policy of not revealing the substance.
Ragan thanked fans for supporting Allmendinger.
"We continue to be extremely grateful by the breadth and scope of support for AJ from his fans and partners," Ragan said. "We would like to again thank NASCAR, Penske Racing and all our sponsor partners for the open communication, and for helping us at every step in this process. We expect to have further updates in the upcoming days."
The suspension came after a test of his backup urine sample confirmed the original positive result.
Allmendinger originally was suspended July 7 after failing a random drug test taken in late June. His backup "B'' urine sample was tested Tuesday by Aegis Analytical Laboratories in Nashville, Tenn.
NASCAR officials announced the result and subsequent suspension Tuesday night.
"While not a pleasant experience by any stretch of the imagination, we feel like we have one of the best drug testing programs in sports," NASCAR spokesman David Higdon said.
Officials did not announce what substance Allmendinger tested positive for. Allmendinger previously said he tested positive for a stimulant, but did not give specifics. He has denied knowingly taking a banned substance.
"This was not the news we wanted to hear and we will work to get to the source of what may have caused this," said Tara Ragan, Allmendinger's business manager, in a statement. "To that end, we have secured the services of an independent lab to conduct thorough testing on every product within AJ's home and motor coach to find what might collaborate with his test, which created results that were within nanograms of accepted standards. We are working closely with NASCAR and Penske Racing to identify the next action steps in this process."
NASCAR officials did not say how far Allmendinger's positive test went beyond a predetermined range of acceptable levels — and as is the case in other sports drug testing programs, officials wouldn't consider it a valid defense if a competitor just barely exceeded acceptable levels of a banned substance.
"We choose not to disclose the level," Higdon said. "To us, a violation is a violation, and that's what happened here."
Given the indefinite nature of his suspension, Allmendinger's only avenue to return to NASCAR is to complete a "road to recovery" program. He will be issued a letter outlining a process for reinstatement, and must agree to the letter to participate in the program.
In a statement, Allmendinger's Penske Racing team acknowledged it had been notified of the test results.
"Penske Racing is very disappointed with the result of the B sample test and will evaluate its course of action as it pertains to AJ over the coming week," the team said.
The team said Sam Hornish Jr. will drive the No. 22 car this weekend at Indianapolis and next weekend at Pocono. Hornish has filled in for Allmendinger in the past two Sprint Cup Series races.
Allmendinger's primary sponsors, Shell and Pennzoil, called NASCAR's process and procedures "appropriate" in a statement.
"We share Penske Racing's disappointment with the result of AJ's B sample test and will work closely with them to determine plans moving forward," the sponsors said. "We hope for the best for AJ during this difficult time."
Speaking to The Associated Press earlier Tuesday, before Allmendinger's B sample results were announced, NASCAR CEO Brian France he is confident in the series' drug testing program that once again came under scrutiny after Allmendinger's original failed test.
"We believe it's a strong testing system that works," France told The Associated Press in London, where the NASCAR executive will speak Wednesday at the Beyond Sports Summit. "We've got the best guy (David Black, Aegis' CEO) running the program, and it's a solid system that we believe does the job intended."
Because Allmendinger has said he tested positive for a stimulant, there has been speculation that it came from a supplement or energy drink consumed by the first-year Penske Racing driver. Allmendinger works out regularly and is known to be health conscious.
He is the second Sprint Cup Series driver suspended under the tightened policy implemented in 2009. Jeremy Mayfield was the first driver, and he unsuccessfully sued to have the results overturned.
NASCAR does not reveal the substance found in a positive test, but court documents showed it was methamphetamine that Mayfield had in his system.
France indicated Tuesday that NASCAR is unlikely to reconsider its policy of not revealing the substance.
Ragan thanked fans for supporting Allmendinger.
"We continue to be extremely grateful by the breadth and scope of support for AJ from his fans and partners," Ragan said. "We would like to again thank NASCAR, Penske Racing and all our sponsor partners for the open communication, and for helping us at every step in this process. We expect to have further updates in the upcoming days."
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Connoisseurs say 'non' to Champagne as English wines sparkle
"I imagine hell like this: Italian punctuality, German humor and English wine." Attributed to actor and writer Peter Ustinov, that gibe has long been the conventional wisdom in Britain -- the world's biggest wine importer.
But these days, a small but growing number of English winemakers are having the last laugh.
The Bolney Estate in West Sussex took home a Gold Outstanding award for its 2007 Blanc de Blancs sparkling wine at this year's International Wine and Spirit Competition. The event attracted nearly 3,000 entrants and the English vineyard scored a coup by winning one of only 12 such distinctions conferred in the wine category.
The judges' tasting notes almost seemed to be a metaphor for the industry itself, praising the wine as "youthfully exuberant and with immense charm" and "perfectly dry, harmonious and polished even at this youthful stage."
Sam Linter, winemaker at The Bolney Estate, recalled how her parents started a small-scale planting in the southern England vineyard in 1972.
Her mother Janet Pratt, a horticulturalist, helped realize the dream of husband Rodney Pratt, who discovered a passion for winemaking while studying in Germany and living with a host family which tended its vineyard on weekends.
Experimental varieties
But the Pratts soon discovered they needed more than love of the land.
"They planted the wrong varieties, did the wrong things, scrapped the vineyard, started again, and then started planting experimental varieties, they could really start learning what would really work well here," Linter told NBCNews.com. "And they worked really hard at that for a few years until they gradually got the knowledge base that we have now in order to plant more."
Linter said that English winemakers' inital toils produced very little wine. "The quality -- it wasn't there in the early days, I think we'd all admit that," she added.
Slowly, they figured it out -- the experimentation produced an award-winning wine in the 1980s, and won over their daughter, who would take over in the next decade. "They actually showed that they could do it, too, and so I suddenly realized there's actually a hidden potential here that needs developing."
NBC News
A 2007 Blanc de Blancs sparking wine grown at The Bolney Estate in southern England, seen here, took home a Gold Outstanding award at this year's International Wine and Spirit Competition.
Linter and her team have been hard at work building on her parents' legacy.
But despite the awards bestowed on Bolney and a handful of other winemakers across England, to many it's still far from mainstream. Marketing English sparkling wines is seen as difficult enough to have featured as one of the challenges designed to stymie contestants Britain's version of "The Apprentice" this season.
For the past year, Londoner Julia Stafford has been working to change that, preaching the gospel of English wine. Her pulpit: a tiny stall in London's bustling foodie haven, Borough Market. Her mission: to show customers that tasting is believing.
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"If you think about it, we import 1.77 billion bottles of still and sparkling wine every year," she said. "And we're only a tiny little island -- so we appreciate our wines."
English customers, Stafford said, "want to find something to be proud of.”
"What we find over here is, they come in, they taste, they find something they like and they become repeat customers, and we have a really strong, loyal following," she said.
Stafford herself is a convert. She left a career in oil and gas to pursue "more sustainable, energy-efficient businesses." The original plan was to open a completely English-sourced pub in London's Marylebone neighborhood. As part of her research, she turned her attention to the country's wines.
"I didn't actually know anything about English wine at the time. So I basically went on a two-year exploration of the countryside, going around to vineyards. Some of them are so small that they don't even have anybody to man the telephones, they don't have email, and it's almost an inside joke that you sometimes have to send pigeons to get messages to some of the very, very small ones."
NBC News
London's Wine Pantry is believed to be the only outlet to exclusively retail English wines.
It was from her travels and meetings that she "got the English wine bug." When back in London, Stafford said she was able to read about the wineries racking up awards -- but there was one problem.
"There was nowhere actually where you could buy or taste them," she said.
So Stafford changed course, opening up the Wine Pantry -- believed to be the only outlet to exclusively retail English wines.
Her shop is tiny, like the industry itself.
In England, there are only 419 vineyards and about 2,985 acres in production for all types of wine: red, white, still, sparkling. That's three-and-a-half times the size of New York City's Central Park.
In France, in contrast, more than 4,700 winegrowers operate in the Champagne region alone, planting almost 83,000 acres -- the equivalent of planting Manhattan five-and-a-half times over with vines.
About 385 million bottles of bubbly leave Champagne vineyards each year. England produces a fraction of that, with 2.4 million bottles of white and 611,200 bottles of red.
'A very, very good product'
But despite the disparity in the production numbers, many of the vineyards across England have learned from the trial and error. And the grapes of Champagne don't just grow well in their home soil, they've flourished in the cooler climes across the English Channel.
"It's not just Champagne, Champagne, Champagne," according to manager and sommelier team member Mark Cesareo of London’s The Gilbert Scott, the latest offering from Michelin-starred chef Marcus Wareing. "People are starting to realize that ultimately, English sparkling wine is a very, very good product."
The restaurant -- housed within St. Pancras International Station, from where high-speed Eurostar trains zip between London and Paris -- also specializes in British food. Cesareo said that offers an opportunity to showcase England's finest wine along with the cuisine. Sometimes he orders more cases of English sparkling wines than Champagne -- not quite a regular occurrence, but he said he does see an emerging pattern.
"English sparkling wine -- it's about time, especially this year with the [Queen's Diamond] Jubilee, the Olympics, the [royal] wedding that just passed last year. It's the perfect time for it. Now is the time, now is the time," Cesareo declared.
Standing amid her vines, Linter gives credit to the French and the "massive amount of experience" in a country that supplies vines throughout Europe in addition to growing its own lauded stock. "But of course once the vines come over and we've planted them in our soil, they grow in our climate, in our soil; they're trained and looked after by us -- they become English. They've almost got their passport, by being planted in the soil."
But these days, a small but growing number of English winemakers are having the last laugh.
The Bolney Estate in West Sussex took home a Gold Outstanding award for its 2007 Blanc de Blancs sparkling wine at this year's International Wine and Spirit Competition. The event attracted nearly 3,000 entrants and the English vineyard scored a coup by winning one of only 12 such distinctions conferred in the wine category.
The judges' tasting notes almost seemed to be a metaphor for the industry itself, praising the wine as "youthfully exuberant and with immense charm" and "perfectly dry, harmonious and polished even at this youthful stage."
Sam Linter, winemaker at The Bolney Estate, recalled how her parents started a small-scale planting in the southern England vineyard in 1972.
Her mother Janet Pratt, a horticulturalist, helped realize the dream of husband Rodney Pratt, who discovered a passion for winemaking while studying in Germany and living with a host family which tended its vineyard on weekends.
Experimental varieties
But the Pratts soon discovered they needed more than love of the land.
"They planted the wrong varieties, did the wrong things, scrapped the vineyard, started again, and then started planting experimental varieties, they could really start learning what would really work well here," Linter told NBCNews.com. "And they worked really hard at that for a few years until they gradually got the knowledge base that we have now in order to plant more."
Linter said that English winemakers' inital toils produced very little wine. "The quality -- it wasn't there in the early days, I think we'd all admit that," she added.
Slowly, they figured it out -- the experimentation produced an award-winning wine in the 1980s, and won over their daughter, who would take over in the next decade. "They actually showed that they could do it, too, and so I suddenly realized there's actually a hidden potential here that needs developing."
NBC News
A 2007 Blanc de Blancs sparking wine grown at The Bolney Estate in southern England, seen here, took home a Gold Outstanding award at this year's International Wine and Spirit Competition.
Linter and her team have been hard at work building on her parents' legacy.
But despite the awards bestowed on Bolney and a handful of other winemakers across England, to many it's still far from mainstream. Marketing English sparkling wines is seen as difficult enough to have featured as one of the challenges designed to stymie contestants Britain's version of "The Apprentice" this season.
For the past year, Londoner Julia Stafford has been working to change that, preaching the gospel of English wine. Her pulpit: a tiny stall in London's bustling foodie haven, Borough Market. Her mission: to show customers that tasting is believing.
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"If you think about it, we import 1.77 billion bottles of still and sparkling wine every year," she said. "And we're only a tiny little island -- so we appreciate our wines."
English customers, Stafford said, "want to find something to be proud of.”
"What we find over here is, they come in, they taste, they find something they like and they become repeat customers, and we have a really strong, loyal following," she said.
Stafford herself is a convert. She left a career in oil and gas to pursue "more sustainable, energy-efficient businesses." The original plan was to open a completely English-sourced pub in London's Marylebone neighborhood. As part of her research, she turned her attention to the country's wines.
"I didn't actually know anything about English wine at the time. So I basically went on a two-year exploration of the countryside, going around to vineyards. Some of them are so small that they don't even have anybody to man the telephones, they don't have email, and it's almost an inside joke that you sometimes have to send pigeons to get messages to some of the very, very small ones."
NBC News
London's Wine Pantry is believed to be the only outlet to exclusively retail English wines.
It was from her travels and meetings that she "got the English wine bug." When back in London, Stafford said she was able to read about the wineries racking up awards -- but there was one problem.
"There was nowhere actually where you could buy or taste them," she said.
So Stafford changed course, opening up the Wine Pantry -- believed to be the only outlet to exclusively retail English wines.
Her shop is tiny, like the industry itself.
In England, there are only 419 vineyards and about 2,985 acres in production for all types of wine: red, white, still, sparkling. That's three-and-a-half times the size of New York City's Central Park.
In France, in contrast, more than 4,700 winegrowers operate in the Champagne region alone, planting almost 83,000 acres -- the equivalent of planting Manhattan five-and-a-half times over with vines.
About 385 million bottles of bubbly leave Champagne vineyards each year. England produces a fraction of that, with 2.4 million bottles of white and 611,200 bottles of red.
'A very, very good product'
But despite the disparity in the production numbers, many of the vineyards across England have learned from the trial and error. And the grapes of Champagne don't just grow well in their home soil, they've flourished in the cooler climes across the English Channel.
"It's not just Champagne, Champagne, Champagne," according to manager and sommelier team member Mark Cesareo of London’s The Gilbert Scott, the latest offering from Michelin-starred chef Marcus Wareing. "People are starting to realize that ultimately, English sparkling wine is a very, very good product."
The restaurant -- housed within St. Pancras International Station, from where high-speed Eurostar trains zip between London and Paris -- also specializes in British food. Cesareo said that offers an opportunity to showcase England's finest wine along with the cuisine. Sometimes he orders more cases of English sparkling wines than Champagne -- not quite a regular occurrence, but he said he does see an emerging pattern.
"English sparkling wine -- it's about time, especially this year with the [Queen's Diamond] Jubilee, the Olympics, the [royal] wedding that just passed last year. It's the perfect time for it. Now is the time, now is the time," Cesareo declared.
Standing amid her vines, Linter gives credit to the French and the "massive amount of experience" in a country that supplies vines throughout Europe in addition to growing its own lauded stock. "But of course once the vines come over and we've planted them in our soil, they grow in our climate, in our soil; they're trained and looked after by us -- they become English. They've almost got their passport, by being planted in the soil."
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
NKorea promotes Kim Jong Un to marshal
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been granted the title of marshal, state media reported Wednesday, cementing his status as the authoritarian nation's top military official as he makes key changes to the million-man force.
The decision to award Kim, who already serves as supreme commander of the Korean People's Army, was made Tuesday by the nation's top military, government and political officials, state media said in a special bulletin.
The formal move to bestow the title of marshal to Kim comes seven months into his rule and follows several days of reshuffling at the highest levels of the military.
On Monday, North Korea announced that the chief of the army, Ri Yong Ho, a high-ranking figure in both political and military circles, was dismissed from all posts due to illness. The following day, a little-known general, Hyon Yong Chol, was promoted to vice marshal, one of four named to that position since Kim Jong Un took power.
The dismissal of Ri, who had been promoted to vice marshal in 2010 and had been seen as a mentor to Kim Jong Un, was a surprise to many outside observers.
Kim Jong Un took over as North Korea's leader following the death of his father, longtime leader Kim Jong Il, in December, and has continued to maintain his father's policy of "songun," or military first.
The position of marshal had been left vacant following the death of Kim Jong Il, who posthumously was made grand marshal — the nation's top military title — in February on what would have been his 70th birthday. He had been named marshal 20 years ago when North Korea founder Kim Il Sung was promoted to grand marshal.
Aside from Ri and Hyon, eight other generals hold the post of vice marshal in North Korea.
It remains unclear how the military reshuffle will affect North Korea's tense relationship with its neighbors and the United States, which stations more than 28,000 troops in ally South Korea.
The decision to award Kim, who already serves as supreme commander of the Korean People's Army, was made Tuesday by the nation's top military, government and political officials, state media said in a special bulletin.
The formal move to bestow the title of marshal to Kim comes seven months into his rule and follows several days of reshuffling at the highest levels of the military.
On Monday, North Korea announced that the chief of the army, Ri Yong Ho, a high-ranking figure in both political and military circles, was dismissed from all posts due to illness. The following day, a little-known general, Hyon Yong Chol, was promoted to vice marshal, one of four named to that position since Kim Jong Un took power.
The dismissal of Ri, who had been promoted to vice marshal in 2010 and had been seen as a mentor to Kim Jong Un, was a surprise to many outside observers.
Kim Jong Un took over as North Korea's leader following the death of his father, longtime leader Kim Jong Il, in December, and has continued to maintain his father's policy of "songun," or military first.
The position of marshal had been left vacant following the death of Kim Jong Il, who posthumously was made grand marshal — the nation's top military title — in February on what would have been his 70th birthday. He had been named marshal 20 years ago when North Korea founder Kim Il Sung was promoted to grand marshal.
Aside from Ri and Hyon, eight other generals hold the post of vice marshal in North Korea.
It remains unclear how the military reshuffle will affect North Korea's tense relationship with its neighbors and the United States, which stations more than 28,000 troops in ally South Korea.
Religious Israeli lawmaker tears up New Testament
An Israeli lawmaker has torn up a copy of the New Testament in front of cameras in his parliament office.
An aide says Christian missionaries mailed the Christian scripture to Michael Ben-Ari of the ultranationalist National Union Party.
Itamar Ben-Gvir said Ben-Ari, an Orthodox Jew, was enraged to receive the book, in whose name he says millions of Jews were slaughtered. Ben-Ari tore it up, he said, then posed for photographs with the destroyed Bible.
Many Christians over the centuries persecuted Jews, holding them responsible for Jesus' crucifixion.
Government spokesman Mark Regev said, "We totally deplore this behavior and condemn it outright. This action stands in complete contrast to our values and our traditions. Israel is a tolerant society, but we have zero tolerance for this despicable and hateful act."
An aide says Christian missionaries mailed the Christian scripture to Michael Ben-Ari of the ultranationalist National Union Party.
Itamar Ben-Gvir said Ben-Ari, an Orthodox Jew, was enraged to receive the book, in whose name he says millions of Jews were slaughtered. Ben-Ari tore it up, he said, then posed for photographs with the destroyed Bible.
Many Christians over the centuries persecuted Jews, holding them responsible for Jesus' crucifixion.
Government spokesman Mark Regev said, "We totally deplore this behavior and condemn it outright. This action stands in complete contrast to our values and our traditions. Israel is a tolerant society, but we have zero tolerance for this despicable and hateful act."
Obama bracing to be outspent by Romney
Barack Obama was the first presidential candidate to raise more than $100 million in a month and in 2008 was the first to forgo public money for his campaign. Now, he faces the very real threat of being the first president to be outspent by a challenger.
Obama, who four years ago broke just about every fundraising record for a presidential hopeful, has now been forced to look his supporters in the eye and confess he might not keep pace with Republican Mitt Romney. It's a sobering realization for his campaign, which had imagined an unlimited budget for ads, offices and mail.
"I will be the first president in modern history to be outspent in his re-election campaign," Obama wrote to supporters recently.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Conservatives just two years ago feared Obama would raise and spend a billion dollars in the 2012 campaign. Now, there is a real possibility that Romney and his official partners at the Republican National Committee could overtake Obama in total spending.
How did Obama go from fundraising juggernaut to money chaser in just four years?
In the early days of the 2007 primaries, he used fundraising success to puncture Hillary Rodham Clinton's aura of inevitability. Obama surpassed Clinton's primary fundraising in the first two quarters of that year — $25 million to Clinton's $20 million from January to April, and $31 million to Clinton's $21 million in the three months that followed.
The numbers shocked observers and inspired supporters to give even more to the fresh-faced, first-term senator from Illinois. But now that magic seems elusive.
"They bought into hope and change and they're not getting it. There's some buyers' remorse," said Greg Mueller, a Republican strategist who is a veteran of Pat Buchanan's presidential campaigns.
Then, the potential was so great that Obama became the first modern candidate to bypass the public financing available to presidential candidates, and the spending limits that come with it, since the system was created in 1976 in the wake of the Watergate scandal.
At the same time, Obama shunned independent groups that sought to help his campaign and told supporters not to give to them. In his mind, he simply didn't need them and urged allies to shut down independent efforts to attack rival John McCain. He preferred to level criticism of his choosing, on his own terms.
But two years later, midterm elections yielded defeats for Democrats who lost their majority in the House. Early fundraising reports in 2011 showed the Republican independent groups were awash in cash, and Obama relented. With an economy that hasn't recovered quickly enough for voters, he opted to accept whatever help he can find, giving the go-ahead for outside groups to raise and spend cash on his behalf. His top advisers now are helping the groups he once abhorred, but he sounds unhappy about it.
"In the next four months ... there's going to be more money spent than we've ever seen before. Folks writing $10 million checks to try to beat me, running ads with scary voices," Obama lamented at a fundraiser Tuesday in Texas.
Part of the about-face was fueled by the Republican primaries. Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson donated $20 million to an independent group that, for a time, kept former House Speaker Newt Gingrich afloat. Adelson now is backing a pro-Romney group with at least another $10 million.
Like Obama's official campaign and its partners at the Democratic National Committee, outside groups on the Democratic side are at an admitted disadvantage.
"There's no doubt that Romney's campaign and the super PACs supporting him will outspend the president's campaign and the super PACs on our side," said Bill Burton, a former Obama aide who is now running an independent pro-Obama group. "There's more money on the Republican side."
Obama demonized Wall Street bankers and they responded by closing their wallets. He also has called on wealthier Americans to pay more in taxes — hardly an inspiration to donate, his advisers concede. For some of his most liberal supporters, he has not done enough to promote stronger unions or tougher environmental laws.
And, unlike four years ago, Obama is not campaigning as an optimistic vessel of hope and change.
Obama and his allied DNC committees raised $71 million in June, short of Romney's and Republicans' $106 million. Romney's June haul was just the second time in history that an American campaign and its partner committees passed the $100 million mark, and signals the 2012 GOP presidential fundraising could break Obama's 2008 record of $745 million. The reports also mark a second consecutive month Obama trailed his rival.
"We had our best fundraising month yet, and we still fell about $35 million short," campaign chief operating officer Ann Marie Habershaw told supporters in an email that asked for as little as $3 to help.
That's not to say Obama is broke or even certain to be outspent. And if he is, it's unlikely to become a determining factor in the election. While campaigns need money to pay staff, finance travel and buy television ads, money alone does not win elections when both candidates are financially competitive.
From the days when Obama and Romney formally announced their campaigns, Obama and his affiliated party groups have raised $552.5 million, compared with Romney's $394.9 million. The nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation broke down the numbers and noted that Romney would need to bring in $39.5 million more than Obama each month to exceed his total.
That leaves a steep climb for Romney, but not an impossible one. Conservatives who were skeptical of Romney now are rallying behind the GOP nominee after a topsy-turvy primary season that saw their favored candidates come up short. Polling shows Republicans eager to vote Obama out of office.
Romney's vice presidential selection in the coming weeks will create additional buzz and likely unleash a fundraising wave for the final months of the campaign.
Never before has an incumbent president failed to outraise a challenger, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a campaign finance watchdog. In Obama's record-setting 2008 campaign, he made history in September by raising $150 million.
Obama, who four years ago broke just about every fundraising record for a presidential hopeful, has now been forced to look his supporters in the eye and confess he might not keep pace with Republican Mitt Romney. It's a sobering realization for his campaign, which had imagined an unlimited budget for ads, offices and mail.
"I will be the first president in modern history to be outspent in his re-election campaign," Obama wrote to supporters recently.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Conservatives just two years ago feared Obama would raise and spend a billion dollars in the 2012 campaign. Now, there is a real possibility that Romney and his official partners at the Republican National Committee could overtake Obama in total spending.
How did Obama go from fundraising juggernaut to money chaser in just four years?
In the early days of the 2007 primaries, he used fundraising success to puncture Hillary Rodham Clinton's aura of inevitability. Obama surpassed Clinton's primary fundraising in the first two quarters of that year — $25 million to Clinton's $20 million from January to April, and $31 million to Clinton's $21 million in the three months that followed.
The numbers shocked observers and inspired supporters to give even more to the fresh-faced, first-term senator from Illinois. But now that magic seems elusive.
"They bought into hope and change and they're not getting it. There's some buyers' remorse," said Greg Mueller, a Republican strategist who is a veteran of Pat Buchanan's presidential campaigns.
Then, the potential was so great that Obama became the first modern candidate to bypass the public financing available to presidential candidates, and the spending limits that come with it, since the system was created in 1976 in the wake of the Watergate scandal.
At the same time, Obama shunned independent groups that sought to help his campaign and told supporters not to give to them. In his mind, he simply didn't need them and urged allies to shut down independent efforts to attack rival John McCain. He preferred to level criticism of his choosing, on his own terms.
But two years later, midterm elections yielded defeats for Democrats who lost their majority in the House. Early fundraising reports in 2011 showed the Republican independent groups were awash in cash, and Obama relented. With an economy that hasn't recovered quickly enough for voters, he opted to accept whatever help he can find, giving the go-ahead for outside groups to raise and spend cash on his behalf. His top advisers now are helping the groups he once abhorred, but he sounds unhappy about it.
"In the next four months ... there's going to be more money spent than we've ever seen before. Folks writing $10 million checks to try to beat me, running ads with scary voices," Obama lamented at a fundraiser Tuesday in Texas.
Part of the about-face was fueled by the Republican primaries. Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson donated $20 million to an independent group that, for a time, kept former House Speaker Newt Gingrich afloat. Adelson now is backing a pro-Romney group with at least another $10 million.
Like Obama's official campaign and its partners at the Democratic National Committee, outside groups on the Democratic side are at an admitted disadvantage.
"There's no doubt that Romney's campaign and the super PACs supporting him will outspend the president's campaign and the super PACs on our side," said Bill Burton, a former Obama aide who is now running an independent pro-Obama group. "There's more money on the Republican side."
Obama demonized Wall Street bankers and they responded by closing their wallets. He also has called on wealthier Americans to pay more in taxes — hardly an inspiration to donate, his advisers concede. For some of his most liberal supporters, he has not done enough to promote stronger unions or tougher environmental laws.
And, unlike four years ago, Obama is not campaigning as an optimistic vessel of hope and change.
Obama and his allied DNC committees raised $71 million in June, short of Romney's and Republicans' $106 million. Romney's June haul was just the second time in history that an American campaign and its partner committees passed the $100 million mark, and signals the 2012 GOP presidential fundraising could break Obama's 2008 record of $745 million. The reports also mark a second consecutive month Obama trailed his rival.
"We had our best fundraising month yet, and we still fell about $35 million short," campaign chief operating officer Ann Marie Habershaw told supporters in an email that asked for as little as $3 to help.
That's not to say Obama is broke or even certain to be outspent. And if he is, it's unlikely to become a determining factor in the election. While campaigns need money to pay staff, finance travel and buy television ads, money alone does not win elections when both candidates are financially competitive.
From the days when Obama and Romney formally announced their campaigns, Obama and his affiliated party groups have raised $552.5 million, compared with Romney's $394.9 million. The nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation broke down the numbers and noted that Romney would need to bring in $39.5 million more than Obama each month to exceed his total.
That leaves a steep climb for Romney, but not an impossible one. Conservatives who were skeptical of Romney now are rallying behind the GOP nominee after a topsy-turvy primary season that saw their favored candidates come up short. Polling shows Republicans eager to vote Obama out of office.
Romney's vice presidential selection in the coming weeks will create additional buzz and likely unleash a fundraising wave for the final months of the campaign.
Never before has an incumbent president failed to outraise a challenger, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a campaign finance watchdog. In Obama's record-setting 2008 campaign, he made history in September by raising $150 million.
Minor head injury leads to life-saving discovery
The 9-year-old Fairland, Ind. boy was struck in the head on July 4 while playing the children's game.
When he began to vomit and have severe headaches days later, his parents took him to a hospital where doctors made an alarming discovery, reports WRTV-TV in Indianapolis.
While there was no trauma from being hit, tests revealed a golf ball-sized mass in Jacob's brain.
Doctors were able to remove most of the mass but a small piece remains, wrapped around a nerve, the television station reports.
"(I had surgery) in my brain, so I can feel better," Jacob told the station.
Doctors suspect the mass is benign, but Jacob will likely undergo chemotherapy to prevent the remaining piece from causing problems.
"The doctor told us this is something he's probably had for a while. If he hadn't got hit in the head, who knows what would have happened," Stacy Hamilton, Jacob's mother said.
When he began to vomit and have severe headaches days later, his parents took him to a hospital where doctors made an alarming discovery, reports WRTV-TV in Indianapolis.
While there was no trauma from being hit, tests revealed a golf ball-sized mass in Jacob's brain.
Doctors were able to remove most of the mass but a small piece remains, wrapped around a nerve, the television station reports.
"(I had surgery) in my brain, so I can feel better," Jacob told the station.
Doctors suspect the mass is benign, but Jacob will likely undergo chemotherapy to prevent the remaining piece from causing problems.
"The doctor told us this is something he's probably had for a while. If he hadn't got hit in the head, who knows what would have happened," Stacy Hamilton, Jacob's mother said.
Monday, July 16, 2012
We're No. 1! We're No. 1! We're ... uh ... not?
In the opening scene of the new Aaron Sorkin show, "The Newsroom," a news anchor goes on a tirade when asked why "America is the greatest country in the world."
"It's not the greatest country in the world," he fumes. "We're seventh in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, third in median household income, No. 4 in labor force, and No. 4 in exports. ... So when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the world, I don't know what the f*** you're talking about."
It's another slab of "Network"-esque bravado from Sorkin -- the creator of "The West Wing" -- but the point is well taken, even if his statistics could be a bit off. By a number of objective measures, America is not No. 1.
Good luck in saying that aloud, however. Forget Social Security. The third rail of American politics is acknowledging we may not be the greatest country in the world.
"If you can think of a politician who can say consistently 'We're not No. 1; we're not No. 1,' then I'd be very surprised," says Melvyn Levitsky, a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer and former ambassador to Brazil.
It's not like acknowledging flaws is the same as acknowledging failure. The business sector seldom rests on its laurels. Successful companies assume there's room for improvement, and they'll put themselves through ISO 9000, Six Sigma, benchmarking, best practices and any number of other assessment programs to get there. (Some sectors of government -- which is often unfavorably compared to business by critics -- do that, too, but it doesn't grab anyone's attention unless its Vice President Al Gore illustrating his '90s "Reinventing Government" initiative by smashing an ashtray on the David Letterman show.)
If businesses don't evolve, they end up like Atari, Pan Am and Woolworth's, onetime industry leaders that crashed against the rocks of strategy, innovation and competition. So the successful ones aren't shy about borrowing good ideas from others.
Then why is it so hard for the United States to admit its shortcomings and do the same?
Craig Wheeland, a political scientist at Villanova, believes it has something to do with America's innate wariness of government.
"We have a peculiar set of approaches to how government should act in our economy and in our society," he says. "That creates a barrier to looking at best practices and borrowing ideas. The business world doesn't think like that. They look at ideas that seem to solve problems and test them out, and if they don't work, they change. They're more pragmatic."
Former Massachusetts governor and Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis is blunter. He describes the problem in one word: Hubris.
"Some interest in what's happening elsewhere and how other people are doing this would benefit us enormously," he says. "I think a little less hubris and a little more focus ... would do us a lot of good."
But Gerry Keim, a management professor at Arizona State University, isn't quite so harsh.
"We're not exceptional in all categories, [but] we're clearly exceptional in some categories, and I think we should be proud of that," he says, mentioning America's entrepreneurial spirit as an example.
However, he adds, "There are other areas [in which] one could learn a lot from other countries."
In that vein, here are a few lessons the U.S. may draw from leaders in the rest of the world.
Health care: What the doctor ordered
It took almost two years, hundreds if not thousands of meetings and reams of pages to produce the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare. After all that, almost nobody was happy with it; it was criticized as going too far, not going far enough, too complex and too much. The Supreme Court upheld the law on Thursday, but it still faces headwinds from critics and a skeptical public.
Japan's health care system is known for its relatively low costs and commitment to primary care.
Nevertheless, virtually everybody agrees that the United States has a health care problem. Almost 50 million Americans are without insurance, creating a burden on hospital emergency rooms and forcing people who need services into deep debt. Too few take advantage of primary care.
And it's costing a fortune: In 2011, the United States spent 18% of its gross domestic product on health, much more than its allies.
Contrast those figures with Japan. The Asian country of 125 million spent just 8.5% of its GDP on healthcare in 2009, among the best figures in the developed world. Yet, despite lower costs, it's No. 3 on the list of life expectancies (behind tiny Monaco and Macau) and 220th (out of 221) in infant mortality, according to the CIA Factbook. The United States ranks 50th in life expectancy and 173rd in infant mortality.
What's so special about Japan?
Sabine Fruhstuck, a professor of modern Japan at the University of California-Santa Barbara, attributes some of the system's success to Japanese ideals.
"The social contract is very different," she says. "There's an expectation and a commitment by the state to the welfare of the people."
In the United States, she observes, there's an emphasis on personal choice; in Japan, there's a more sympathetic relationship between the individual and the state.
Like the U.S. system, the Japanese arrangement is a combination of public and private. Insurance is mandatory, and citizens who can't afford the premiums are assisted by the government. The majority of hospitals are private, as are medical practices. Patients can pick their doctors and hospitals. Patients are not shy about using the system; a 2009 Washington Post article reported that Japanese citizens visit a doctor 14 times a year.
Nor are doctors shy about seeing patients, since they receive a payment for each visit. That's one of the system's flaws, says political science professor T.J. Pempel, a former director of UC-Berkeley's Institute for Asian Studies.
"Doctors have every incentive to move people through quickly," he says. "So you can get the feeling you're part of an assembly line."
The Japanese system doesn't pay for childbirth, nor does it cover cosmetic surgery. The system also has suffered from issues with Japan's aging population. The elderly consume more medical care than the young, and Japan's society hasn't added enough young workers to support retirees. Like other industrialized countries, it's struggling to keep costs under control.
However, the government is particularly committed to care throughout life, whether it's prenatal care or employee health, Pempel says. Pregnant women are given a wealth of information; many corporations, because they have a stake in the system, have clinics on site.
"There's a lot of [primary care], and it's covered. There's strong encouragement to go into a clinic at the first sign of problems," he says.
What's important to you?
The OECD has an interactive chart, the Better Life Index, on its website that allows visitors to compare countries across a variety of topics. How do countries perform on areas you care about? Visit the site and find out.
Indeed, the U.S. individualist tradition in health care generally runs counter to the rest of the industrialized world. Free-marketers like to point to the Swiss system, in which individuals buy their own insurance. But it, too, has a mandate. Many countries have cost controls in place, some more extreme than others. And the culture of the citizenry -- whether it's regarding diet, abortion, gun control, child and elder care traditions or personal responsibility -- can't help but play a role.
In the case of health care, Fruhstuck says, there's something to be said for group accountability.
"In Japan, there's attention to harmony, and the sense that everybody is responsible for everybody," she says. "The way you are has an impact on everybody around you, so you think about your behavior."
Education: Teach to the best
Today, Finland is regularly ranked as having one of the best-performing education systems in the world. The country's literacy rate is tops, its math proficiency second, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, an international trade group. Students from elementary through high school are among the world's best in test scores.
A generation ago, that wasn't the case. In the 1970s, Finland's schools were among the worst in the developed world.
What changed?
The problem was attacked on all sides, says Pasi Sahlberg, a former official in Finland's education ministry.
The country invested heavily in teacher education, requiring master's degree-based, five-year qualifications instead of three-year bachelor's degrees. Child poverty was addressed with meals, health care, dental care and counseling -- all free of charge for children. Finally, the system pursued what Sahlberg calls "intelligent accountability" that combines standardized testing with teacher assessment and school self-inspection -- with an emphasis on the teachers, not the tests.
Where did they get their ideas? Actually, they got a lot of them from the United States.
Teaching is highly respected in Finland, and requires several years of training and ongoing education.
"Within your 15,000 districts and 100,000 schools you have probably all the educational innovation that anybody needs to build good schools or well-performing districts," he says. "The Finnish education system owes a lot to these American ideas."
And yet Americans are forever lamenting the state of their schools. As Diane Ravitch, education historian and former assistant secretary of education to President George H.W. Bush, points out, we've been fretting about the American system and looking enviously over our shoulders for decades, whether it's to Germany, England, the former Soviet Union, Japan or China.
"We have this narrative that we're failing, failing, failing. The rest of the world would like to be like us, and we're saying, 'What's wrong with us? We're so terrible.' It must be some kind of American inferiority complex," she says.
Yes, of course there are schools with problems. Some districts have been damaged by cheating scandals, others suffer from poor facilities. The battle to improve test scores, led by federal programs such as No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, has provoked criticism (including Ravitch's). Some officials want to give more money to charter schools at the expense of the public system or offer "school choice" through vouchers.
Finland, which is small, homogenous and has less income inequality between rich and poor, managed to completely remake its structure. Is that possible in the polyglot, poverty-pocked United States?
It's already happening. West Virginia has instituted some of Finland's ideas -- some of which, of course, originated in the United States. Sahlberg believes they can work throughout the country, but they have to start with respect and training for the teacher.
"I think there is far too much loose rhetoric criticizing public school systems and blaming teachers in the U.S. that has no ground," he says. Finland has such respect for teachers that the job is now seen as being "on par with other academic positions, such as lawyers and doctors," he says. But it's because the country invested in the profession and continues to do so.
Ravitch adds that society has to join in. "There's a youth culture that's very disobedient, and the laws are such that it's very hard to maintain any kind of standard of discipline, and everybody blames the teachers," she says. "But it's kind of a vicious circle, because you have a lot of parents who are not particularly responsible either. The most common complaint at schools is if there's a parent night, there are many schools where nobody shows up."
Business: Making the sale
Perhaps surprisingly for a country that prides itself on its ability to do business, the United States does not lead the world in several indices of commerce. The International Finance Corporation and the World Bank ranked 183 countries in 11 areas; the United States didn't finish first in any of them, ending up fourth behind Singapore, Hong Kong and New Zealand in ease of doing business, 20th in trade across borders, and a dismal 72nd in paying taxes.
New Zealand, in fact, ranks highly in several areas. It's No. 1 in the world for starting a business, protecting investors and incorruptibility. The World Bank list placed it No. 3 overall. On last year's Forbes list of best countries for business, it was No. 2, behind Canada. The United States was 10th.
Richard Laverty with the New Zealand Trade and Enterprise office attributes the country's status to its aggressiveness in addressing business needs, though not at the expense of what makes the country special.
Oscar-winning director Peter Jackson made his "Lord of the Rings" movies in his native New Zealand.
"We're a small country. We need all the help we can get," he says. But, he adds more seriously, New Zealand has a "regulatory regime that's simple and transparent and applies across the country."
There's some need for investment. The country's economy is highly reliant on natural resources and not exactly an entrepreneurial center, especially compared to another small country like Israel, which is known for its trailblazing high-tech and pharmaceutical industries.
In recent years, New Zealand has become a filmmaking hotbed and has a growing high-tech sector, thanks to one of its leading citizens, "Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson. Director James Cameron bought a place there and plans to get going on "Avatar's" sequels; investor Peter Thiel, a big supporter of entrepreneurship, established a venture capital fund.
If New Zealand's small scale makes it challenging for the United States to emulate -- the country has more sheep than humans and, says Laverty, operates by "two degrees of separation" instead of six -- there's another country that may be more comparable, despite stark differences: Germany.
Not only has it been the world's leading exporter for several years in the past decade, it does so with a heavily unionized, relatively expensive labor force that gets six weeks of vacation a year and works a slightly shorter week than U.S. workers.
The Germans succeed by investing in their people from an early age, says Arizona State's Gerry Keim. A student from a German business school will likely speak three languages and have spent two semesters at two different partner schools outside of Germany.
"When they graduate, they'll be your competitor," he tells his students. "In terms of doing business globally, who do you think will have the advantage?"
His students, many of whom have never traveled outside the United States, are shocked, he says.
"They've never heard anyone raise these questions before," he says.
Germany can compete, despite its more generous benefits, because it has leaders who are knowledgeable about global markets. "They go to these other places and they're sponges," he says.
Americans, on the other hand, focus on what's different about other countries and why they're not more like the United States, Keim says. That provincial attitude frustrates him to no end.
"When you live in a country where if you can speak a foreign language it costs you points in an election poll, I wonder about the whole idea of American exceptionalism," he says.
The individual and the community
Can these success stories work for the United States? Other countries are more homogenous and have traditions of top-down government and higher taxes. The American Experiment arose out of something messier.
Throughout its history, the United States has balanced uneasily between honoring the group and venerating the individual. Thanks to the ongoing economic crisis, the issue has once again come to the fore. Why should we fund mass transit, some people ask, when 95% of American households own a car? Why should we invest in public schools when 1 out of every 10 students goes to a private institution?
Back and forth the debate goes.
If we wanted to follow the path of other countries, it wouldn't just take effort and money. It might take something even harder to put a price on, a soul-searching sense of what America is, which is at the very heart of the debate over "American exceptionalism."
Given the country's polarization, it's not an issue that will be settled easily, says Villanova's Wheeland.
"I see ideology as a driving force in national politics now," he says. "It seems the way to mobilize your core constituency in order to get them out in primaries and ultimately turn out in a general election. In American politics now, you have legislative institutions that are really drawn or created in a way to filter out people of more pragmatic, more centrist, more moderate, more problem-solving approaches, and you get the most ideologically oriented people elected today."
However, he observes, America is still creative, still willing to take risks. Levitsky, the former ambassador, notes that the reach of American culture is unparalleled.
Germany was the world's leading exporter for several years in the 2000s -- ahead of both the U.S. and China.
Dukakis says "we have a degree of freedom other countries envy." They're strengths that foreign observers -- even if their countries are ahead of the United States in one area or another -- still look at with respect.
"One of the things Kiwis really admire is Americans' entrepreneurial attitude," says New Zealand's Laverty. "I think that there's a greater appetite for risk and a greater acceptance of failure in the U.S. There's a cultural, go-at-it, you-can-do-it nature that we admire."
Wheeland agrees -- but hopes we're able to do more.
"Our political culture is one that almost celebrates the individual's ability to start over, and we take great pride in that," he says. "I think we just lose sight sometimes of the common good -- what helps us all as a community do better."
"It's not the greatest country in the world," he fumes. "We're seventh in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, third in median household income, No. 4 in labor force, and No. 4 in exports. ... So when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the world, I don't know what the f*** you're talking about."
It's another slab of "Network"-esque bravado from Sorkin -- the creator of "The West Wing" -- but the point is well taken, even if his statistics could be a bit off. By a number of objective measures, America is not No. 1.
Good luck in saying that aloud, however. Forget Social Security. The third rail of American politics is acknowledging we may not be the greatest country in the world.
"If you can think of a politician who can say consistently 'We're not No. 1; we're not No. 1,' then I'd be very surprised," says Melvyn Levitsky, a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer and former ambassador to Brazil.
It's not like acknowledging flaws is the same as acknowledging failure. The business sector seldom rests on its laurels. Successful companies assume there's room for improvement, and they'll put themselves through ISO 9000, Six Sigma, benchmarking, best practices and any number of other assessment programs to get there. (Some sectors of government -- which is often unfavorably compared to business by critics -- do that, too, but it doesn't grab anyone's attention unless its Vice President Al Gore illustrating his '90s "Reinventing Government" initiative by smashing an ashtray on the David Letterman show.)
If businesses don't evolve, they end up like Atari, Pan Am and Woolworth's, onetime industry leaders that crashed against the rocks of strategy, innovation and competition. So the successful ones aren't shy about borrowing good ideas from others.
Then why is it so hard for the United States to admit its shortcomings and do the same?
Craig Wheeland, a political scientist at Villanova, believes it has something to do with America's innate wariness of government.
"We have a peculiar set of approaches to how government should act in our economy and in our society," he says. "That creates a barrier to looking at best practices and borrowing ideas. The business world doesn't think like that. They look at ideas that seem to solve problems and test them out, and if they don't work, they change. They're more pragmatic."
Former Massachusetts governor and Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis is blunter. He describes the problem in one word: Hubris.
"Some interest in what's happening elsewhere and how other people are doing this would benefit us enormously," he says. "I think a little less hubris and a little more focus ... would do us a lot of good."
But Gerry Keim, a management professor at Arizona State University, isn't quite so harsh.
"We're not exceptional in all categories, [but] we're clearly exceptional in some categories, and I think we should be proud of that," he says, mentioning America's entrepreneurial spirit as an example.
However, he adds, "There are other areas [in which] one could learn a lot from other countries."
In that vein, here are a few lessons the U.S. may draw from leaders in the rest of the world.
Health care: What the doctor ordered
It took almost two years, hundreds if not thousands of meetings and reams of pages to produce the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare. After all that, almost nobody was happy with it; it was criticized as going too far, not going far enough, too complex and too much. The Supreme Court upheld the law on Thursday, but it still faces headwinds from critics and a skeptical public.
Japan's health care system is known for its relatively low costs and commitment to primary care.
Nevertheless, virtually everybody agrees that the United States has a health care problem. Almost 50 million Americans are without insurance, creating a burden on hospital emergency rooms and forcing people who need services into deep debt. Too few take advantage of primary care.
And it's costing a fortune: In 2011, the United States spent 18% of its gross domestic product on health, much more than its allies.
Contrast those figures with Japan. The Asian country of 125 million spent just 8.5% of its GDP on healthcare in 2009, among the best figures in the developed world. Yet, despite lower costs, it's No. 3 on the list of life expectancies (behind tiny Monaco and Macau) and 220th (out of 221) in infant mortality, according to the CIA Factbook. The United States ranks 50th in life expectancy and 173rd in infant mortality.
What's so special about Japan?
Sabine Fruhstuck, a professor of modern Japan at the University of California-Santa Barbara, attributes some of the system's success to Japanese ideals.
"The social contract is very different," she says. "There's an expectation and a commitment by the state to the welfare of the people."
In the United States, she observes, there's an emphasis on personal choice; in Japan, there's a more sympathetic relationship between the individual and the state.
Like the U.S. system, the Japanese arrangement is a combination of public and private. Insurance is mandatory, and citizens who can't afford the premiums are assisted by the government. The majority of hospitals are private, as are medical practices. Patients can pick their doctors and hospitals. Patients are not shy about using the system; a 2009 Washington Post article reported that Japanese citizens visit a doctor 14 times a year.
Nor are doctors shy about seeing patients, since they receive a payment for each visit. That's one of the system's flaws, says political science professor T.J. Pempel, a former director of UC-Berkeley's Institute for Asian Studies.
"Doctors have every incentive to move people through quickly," he says. "So you can get the feeling you're part of an assembly line."
The Japanese system doesn't pay for childbirth, nor does it cover cosmetic surgery. The system also has suffered from issues with Japan's aging population. The elderly consume more medical care than the young, and Japan's society hasn't added enough young workers to support retirees. Like other industrialized countries, it's struggling to keep costs under control.
However, the government is particularly committed to care throughout life, whether it's prenatal care or employee health, Pempel says. Pregnant women are given a wealth of information; many corporations, because they have a stake in the system, have clinics on site.
"There's a lot of [primary care], and it's covered. There's strong encouragement to go into a clinic at the first sign of problems," he says.
What's important to you?
The OECD has an interactive chart, the Better Life Index, on its website that allows visitors to compare countries across a variety of topics. How do countries perform on areas you care about? Visit the site and find out.
Indeed, the U.S. individualist tradition in health care generally runs counter to the rest of the industrialized world. Free-marketers like to point to the Swiss system, in which individuals buy their own insurance. But it, too, has a mandate. Many countries have cost controls in place, some more extreme than others. And the culture of the citizenry -- whether it's regarding diet, abortion, gun control, child and elder care traditions or personal responsibility -- can't help but play a role.
In the case of health care, Fruhstuck says, there's something to be said for group accountability.
"In Japan, there's attention to harmony, and the sense that everybody is responsible for everybody," she says. "The way you are has an impact on everybody around you, so you think about your behavior."
Education: Teach to the best
Today, Finland is regularly ranked as having one of the best-performing education systems in the world. The country's literacy rate is tops, its math proficiency second, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, an international trade group. Students from elementary through high school are among the world's best in test scores.
A generation ago, that wasn't the case. In the 1970s, Finland's schools were among the worst in the developed world.
What changed?
The problem was attacked on all sides, says Pasi Sahlberg, a former official in Finland's education ministry.
The country invested heavily in teacher education, requiring master's degree-based, five-year qualifications instead of three-year bachelor's degrees. Child poverty was addressed with meals, health care, dental care and counseling -- all free of charge for children. Finally, the system pursued what Sahlberg calls "intelligent accountability" that combines standardized testing with teacher assessment and school self-inspection -- with an emphasis on the teachers, not the tests.
Where did they get their ideas? Actually, they got a lot of them from the United States.
Teaching is highly respected in Finland, and requires several years of training and ongoing education.
"Within your 15,000 districts and 100,000 schools you have probably all the educational innovation that anybody needs to build good schools or well-performing districts," he says. "The Finnish education system owes a lot to these American ideas."
And yet Americans are forever lamenting the state of their schools. As Diane Ravitch, education historian and former assistant secretary of education to President George H.W. Bush, points out, we've been fretting about the American system and looking enviously over our shoulders for decades, whether it's to Germany, England, the former Soviet Union, Japan or China.
"We have this narrative that we're failing, failing, failing. The rest of the world would like to be like us, and we're saying, 'What's wrong with us? We're so terrible.' It must be some kind of American inferiority complex," she says.
Yes, of course there are schools with problems. Some districts have been damaged by cheating scandals, others suffer from poor facilities. The battle to improve test scores, led by federal programs such as No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, has provoked criticism (including Ravitch's). Some officials want to give more money to charter schools at the expense of the public system or offer "school choice" through vouchers.
Finland, which is small, homogenous and has less income inequality between rich and poor, managed to completely remake its structure. Is that possible in the polyglot, poverty-pocked United States?
It's already happening. West Virginia has instituted some of Finland's ideas -- some of which, of course, originated in the United States. Sahlberg believes they can work throughout the country, but they have to start with respect and training for the teacher.
"I think there is far too much loose rhetoric criticizing public school systems and blaming teachers in the U.S. that has no ground," he says. Finland has such respect for teachers that the job is now seen as being "on par with other academic positions, such as lawyers and doctors," he says. But it's because the country invested in the profession and continues to do so.
Ravitch adds that society has to join in. "There's a youth culture that's very disobedient, and the laws are such that it's very hard to maintain any kind of standard of discipline, and everybody blames the teachers," she says. "But it's kind of a vicious circle, because you have a lot of parents who are not particularly responsible either. The most common complaint at schools is if there's a parent night, there are many schools where nobody shows up."
Business: Making the sale
Perhaps surprisingly for a country that prides itself on its ability to do business, the United States does not lead the world in several indices of commerce. The International Finance Corporation and the World Bank ranked 183 countries in 11 areas; the United States didn't finish first in any of them, ending up fourth behind Singapore, Hong Kong and New Zealand in ease of doing business, 20th in trade across borders, and a dismal 72nd in paying taxes.
New Zealand, in fact, ranks highly in several areas. It's No. 1 in the world for starting a business, protecting investors and incorruptibility. The World Bank list placed it No. 3 overall. On last year's Forbes list of best countries for business, it was No. 2, behind Canada. The United States was 10th.
Richard Laverty with the New Zealand Trade and Enterprise office attributes the country's status to its aggressiveness in addressing business needs, though not at the expense of what makes the country special.
Oscar-winning director Peter Jackson made his "Lord of the Rings" movies in his native New Zealand.
"We're a small country. We need all the help we can get," he says. But, he adds more seriously, New Zealand has a "regulatory regime that's simple and transparent and applies across the country."
There's some need for investment. The country's economy is highly reliant on natural resources and not exactly an entrepreneurial center, especially compared to another small country like Israel, which is known for its trailblazing high-tech and pharmaceutical industries.
In recent years, New Zealand has become a filmmaking hotbed and has a growing high-tech sector, thanks to one of its leading citizens, "Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson. Director James Cameron bought a place there and plans to get going on "Avatar's" sequels; investor Peter Thiel, a big supporter of entrepreneurship, established a venture capital fund.
If New Zealand's small scale makes it challenging for the United States to emulate -- the country has more sheep than humans and, says Laverty, operates by "two degrees of separation" instead of six -- there's another country that may be more comparable, despite stark differences: Germany.
Not only has it been the world's leading exporter for several years in the past decade, it does so with a heavily unionized, relatively expensive labor force that gets six weeks of vacation a year and works a slightly shorter week than U.S. workers.
The Germans succeed by investing in their people from an early age, says Arizona State's Gerry Keim. A student from a German business school will likely speak three languages and have spent two semesters at two different partner schools outside of Germany.
"When they graduate, they'll be your competitor," he tells his students. "In terms of doing business globally, who do you think will have the advantage?"
His students, many of whom have never traveled outside the United States, are shocked, he says.
"They've never heard anyone raise these questions before," he says.
Germany can compete, despite its more generous benefits, because it has leaders who are knowledgeable about global markets. "They go to these other places and they're sponges," he says.
Americans, on the other hand, focus on what's different about other countries and why they're not more like the United States, Keim says. That provincial attitude frustrates him to no end.
"When you live in a country where if you can speak a foreign language it costs you points in an election poll, I wonder about the whole idea of American exceptionalism," he says.
The individual and the community
Can these success stories work for the United States? Other countries are more homogenous and have traditions of top-down government and higher taxes. The American Experiment arose out of something messier.
Throughout its history, the United States has balanced uneasily between honoring the group and venerating the individual. Thanks to the ongoing economic crisis, the issue has once again come to the fore. Why should we fund mass transit, some people ask, when 95% of American households own a car? Why should we invest in public schools when 1 out of every 10 students goes to a private institution?
Back and forth the debate goes.
If we wanted to follow the path of other countries, it wouldn't just take effort and money. It might take something even harder to put a price on, a soul-searching sense of what America is, which is at the very heart of the debate over "American exceptionalism."
Given the country's polarization, it's not an issue that will be settled easily, says Villanova's Wheeland.
"I see ideology as a driving force in national politics now," he says. "It seems the way to mobilize your core constituency in order to get them out in primaries and ultimately turn out in a general election. In American politics now, you have legislative institutions that are really drawn or created in a way to filter out people of more pragmatic, more centrist, more moderate, more problem-solving approaches, and you get the most ideologically oriented people elected today."
However, he observes, America is still creative, still willing to take risks. Levitsky, the former ambassador, notes that the reach of American culture is unparalleled.
Germany was the world's leading exporter for several years in the 2000s -- ahead of both the U.S. and China.
Dukakis says "we have a degree of freedom other countries envy." They're strengths that foreign observers -- even if their countries are ahead of the United States in one area or another -- still look at with respect.
"One of the things Kiwis really admire is Americans' entrepreneurial attitude," says New Zealand's Laverty. "I think that there's a greater appetite for risk and a greater acceptance of failure in the U.S. There's a cultural, go-at-it, you-can-do-it nature that we admire."
Wheeland agrees -- but hopes we're able to do more.
"Our political culture is one that almost celebrates the individual's ability to start over, and we take great pride in that," he says. "I think we just lose sight sometimes of the common good -- what helps us all as a community do better."
The woman who stood up to Joe Paterno
Vicky Triponey knows all too well the power Penn State's late football coach, Joe Paterno, held for more than half a century over the insular slice of central Pennsylvania that calls itself Happy Valley.
She experienced firsthand the clubby, jock-snapping culture, the sense of entitlement, the cloistered existence. It's what drove her five years ago from her job as the vice president who oversaw student discipline.
She was told she was too aggressive, too confrontational, that she wasn't fitting in with "the Penn State way."
She clashed often with Paterno over who should discipline football players when they got into trouble. The conflict with such an iconic figure made her very unpopular around campus. For a while, it cost Triponey her peace of mind and her good name. It almost ended her 30-year academic career.
Another person might have felt vindicated, smug or self-righteous when former FBI Director Louis Freeh delivered the scathing report on his eight-month investigation of the Jerry Sandusky child abuse scandal. But Triponey sensed only a deep sadness.
Photos: Paterno as Penn State coach
Penn State students take to the streets
The inquiry, commissioned by the board of trustees, exposed how the personal failings of Paterno and three other Penn State leaders -- along with the university's football-first culture -- empowered an assistant football coach who molested fatherless boys for more than a decade.
"There's no joy," Triponey told CNN as she sat down for an interview Friday, the day after the Freeh report was released. She said she found solace in the public recognition of Penn State's "culture of reverence for the football program," as the report phrased it, and that it is "ingrained at all levels of the campus community." Freeh found that the culture contributed to the Sandusky scandal.
Penn State community still admires Paterno, wants to move forward
She agrees with Freeh's suggestion that the university's trustees lead an effort to "vigorously examine and understand" Penn State's culture, why it's so resistant to outside perspectives and why it places such an "excessive focus on athletics."
"It's comforting to know that others can now understand," Triponey said. "It didn't have to happen this way."
Her former boss at Wichita State University described Triponey as "a dedicated, ethical professional" who was devastated by her experience at Penn State.
"Vicky knew that she had attempted to do the right thing in disciplining the football players, but she was unable to do so in the Penn State environment," said Gene Hughes, a president emeritus at Wichita State and Northern Arizona University.
At Penn State, Triponey was among the few who stood up to Paterno, the legendary "JoePa" who for 61 years was synonymous with a football program that pumped millions of dollars into Penn State. And she paid dearly for it. At the end, nobody at the top backed her. And it didn't seem to matter to anyone whether she was right, or even if she had a point.
Bowden: Paterno statue should go PSU victims' attorney: Report devastating Jay Paterno: Freeh report is not the end Buzz Bissinger on Joe Paterno
At the heart of the problem, the Freeh report stated, were university leaders eager to please Paterno above all else, a rubber-stamp board of trustees, a president who discouraged dissent and an administration that was preoccupied with appearances and spin.
Triponey has been saying that since 2005.
Sandusky, as the mastermind of college football's legendary "Linebacker U," enjoyed insider status and used Penn State's sporting events and athletic facilities to lure victims even after he retired in 1999. When he was indicted and arrested in November, the report said, Sandusky still had his keys to the Penn State locker room.
Triponey, a slim blonde who dresses preppie and carries herself with the reserve of an academic lifer, was always an outsider at Penn State, even though she grew up in central Pennsylvania. She was not involved in the Sandusky matter; she says she never met him. But she is keenly aware of the campus culture that allowed him to prey on boys for years, virtually unchecked.
"The culture is deep," she said. "The culture is making decisions based on how others will react, not based on what's right and wrong." It focused on the interests of those at "the top of the chain," she added. "Others at the bottom didn't matter."
Triponey was just one of the 430 witnesses who spoke with Freeh's investigators; her story, which she laid out for them over several hours in March, was supported by e-mails uncovered among the 3.5 million electronic documents the investigators examined.
"When I visited with them, that's when I started to be more hopeful," she said. "They got it, and they were determined to expose it. They found evidence of the culture that allowed Jerry Sandusky to exist.
More storms loom for Penn State in wake of Freeh report
"Now I can articulate it," she said. "That is what I was railing against."
Triponey is not named in the 267-page report; her experience is laid out in a footnote at the bottom of pages 65 and 66. The section deals with the janitors who were afraid they'd lose their jobs if they reported they'd seen Sandusky molesting a boy in the showers in 2000.
"I know Paterno has so much power that if he had wanted to get rid of someone, I would have been gone," one janitor told investigators. "Football runs this university."
"If that's the culture at the bottom," Freeh told reporters, "God help the culture at the top."
The Triponey footnote sheds some light on the top. "Some individuals interviewed identified the handling of a student disciplinary matter in 2007 as an example of Paterno's excessive influence at the university," the footnote stated. It described "perceived pressure" to "treat players in ways that would maintain their ability to play sports," including reducing disciplinary sanctions.
"I wasn't part of the evidence. I was confirmation of the evidence," Triponey told CNN. "This is not about me. This is about what Jerry Sandusky was allowed to do."
Penn State can learn from its mistakes, she believes, but needs new leadership, fresh blood -- someone from outside Happy Valley.
"It's a cocoon. It's a bubble. That's why those inside the bubble are really struggling. They're afraid; they're embarrassed; they're struggling with what to do," she said.
"Now the question is, 'do you face reality?'"
Opinion: The end of 'Joe Paterno University'
'The Penn State way'
Vicky Triponey grew up in a working-class household and was the first person in her family to attend college. Her father was a rabid Penn State football fan, but she chose to go to the University of Pittsburgh, commonly known as Pitt. She got her bachelor's degree in psychology and continued with post-graduate studies, pursuing a career in higher education. She earned her doctorate at the University of Virginia.
She worked at several colleges and universities before encountering her mentor, James Rhatigan, who developed the division of student affairs at Wichita State University. Rhatigan introduced her to Mike Meacham, a young man who had been student body president and worked for the alumni association. They married 21 years ago.
She left Wichita in 1998 for the University of Connecticut, where she helped coach Randy Edsall build up the football program. Edsall, who is now head coach at the University of Maryland, told CNN that they worked hard to ensure that football players lived by the same rules as other students.
"We always taught our guys they weren't better than somebody else," Edsall said. "My whole thing was, we told our guys up front that there was a student code of conduct they had to adhere to. If they violated it, there would be consequences."
Penn State recruited Triponey in 2003. She quickly figured out she was the leading candidate when the university brought on its A game for her interview. Her campus visit coincided with the weekend of "The Thon," a popular dance marathon that students hold to raise money for charity.
"I liked what I heard during the interview," she recalled. "It was a truly impressive place, and I considered it a fabulous next step in my career."
She also heard the expression "the Penn State way" for the first time that weekend. Had she understood its significance, she said, she would have "quickly run in the other direction."
Still, she enjoyed a long honeymoon. She felt she had the support of Penn State's president, Graham Spanier, who unabashedly sang her praises when she was hired and later at professional conferences they both attended.
"I arrived there and was supported, encouraged, and really for the first two years I thought we were doing good things," she said. "We were moving in some good directions. But that second year, in the fall, I started going home and telling Mike, 'They're not getting it. They're not embracing conversations about change.'"
There were controversies about her decisions to cut off funding to a student radio program and revamp the student government.
Spanier assured her that she was right to stick to her guns, but she was "hitting the brick wall in student discipline." Looking back, she says, "I was putting my neck out and taking a stand, but there weren't many people with me."
And then one day in late 2004, as disciplinary sanctions were being considered against a member of the football team, she received a visit from Paterno's wife, who had tutored the player.
He's a good kid, Sue Paterno said. Could they give him a break?
Triponey realized then that she wasn't in Kansas anymore. Or even Connecticut.
By the next year, 2005, she was battling Paterno himself over who controlled how football players were disciplined. Paterno also chafed over enforcing Penn State's code of conduct off campus.
Spanier called a meeting at which Paterno angrily dominated the conversation, Triponey recalled. She summarized the meeting in an e-mail to Spanier, Athletic Director Tim Curley and others, complaining that Paterno "is insistent that he knows best how to discipline his players" and that her department should back off.
Opinion: Penn State report is a warning to all of of us
She noted that Paterno preferred to keep the public in the dark about player infractions involving violence, and he pushed for not enforcing the student code of conduct off campus. She added that having "a major problem with Coach Paterno should not be our concern" in making disciplinary decisions.
"I must insist that the efforts to put pressure on us and try to influence our decisions related to specific cases ... simply MUST STOP," she wrote. "The calls and pleas from coaches, board members and others when we are considering a case are indeed putting us in a position that does treat football players differently and with greater privilege ... and it appears on our end to be a deliberate effort to use the power of the football program to sway our decisions in a way that is beneficial to the football program."
Curley, who once played for Paterno and according to the Freeh report was widely considered his "errand boy," responded to Triponey by explaining "Joe's frustrations with the system" and the "larger issues that bother him."
Triponey wrote back, complaining about Paterno's "disregard for our role and disrespect for the process." She added, "I don't see how we can continue to trust those inside the football program with confidential information if we are indeed adversaries."
She followed up with another e-mail to Spanier on September 1, 2005, stating her objection to Paterno's attitude and behavior, which she called "atrocious." She said others, including students and their parents, were mimicking him.
"I am very troubled by the manipulative, disrespectful, uncivil and abusive behavior of our football coach," she wrote. "It is quite shocking what this man -- who is idolized by people everywhere -- is teaching our students."
Paterno clearly seemed to resent "meddling" from outsiders, even if Triponey was simply doing her job. She saw the dangers of special treatment that placed football players under a softer standard than other students lived by. She said it wasn't right. But it was a battle she couldn't win.
Paterno ridiculed her on a radio show as "that lady in Old Main" who couldn't possibly know how to handle students because "she didn't have kids."
Tensions reached the breaking point in 2007 over how to discipline half a dozen players who'd been arrested at a brawl at an off-campus apartment complex. Several students were injured; one beaten unconscious.
Triponey met with Paterno and other university officials half a dozen times, although she preferred to remain neutral as the appeals hearing officer.
At the final meeting, Triponey urged the coach to advise his players to tell the truth. Paterno said angrily that he couldn't force his players to "rat" on each other since they had to practice and play together. Curley and Spanier backed him up on that point, she said.
Triponey recommended suspensions; Paterno pushed for community service that included having the team clean up the stadium for two hours after each home game.
In the end, four players were briefly suspended during the off-season. They didn't miss a game.
By then it was clear she no longer enjoyed Spanier's support. He began making noises about whether she really embraced "the Penn State way." He told her during an annual review that she was too confrontational, too aggressive. Triponey knew her days at Penn State were numbered when he advised her to think hard about whether she had a future there.
Paterno defended football, Penn State in letter before his death
Back from the ashes
When it all fell apart, Triponey felt completely alone.
She received threatening phone calls at home when her husband was traveling and was savaged on student message boards. Her house was vandalized and "For Sale" signs were staked in her front yard. By the time police installed surveillance cameras, she was already on her way out.
Spanier came to her home and sat in her living room after Paterno lost his temper at the meeting about the players involved in the brawl. She said he told her, "Well, Vicky, you are one of a handful of people, four or five people, who have seen the dark side of Joe Paterno. We're going to have to do something about it."
She shakes her head, recalling that conversation now. "'Doing something about it,'" she says, "ended with me being gone."
Citing "philosophical differences," Triponey resigned under pressure as the 2007 football season got under way. Unlike Sandusky, convicted last month of 45 counts of molesting young boys, she did not receive a $168,000 golden handshake, prime football seats for life or keys to the locker room.
She was no longer invited to events. She was shunned.
She sold her big house in State College and moved into a condo in Bellfonte, the quaint county seat where Sandusky was tried, while her husband, a Penn State professor, looked for a job at another university. It took two years, but he finally found a spot at the University of South Carolina's medical school in Charleston.
Opinion: After Penn State report, it's time to look at Second Mile
She stopped going to Wegman's, a favorite upscale supermarket outside State College, because "the Penn State people went there." They recognized her and without fail turned their backs and walked away, she recalled.
Former colleagues who did want to reach out held back. Later, they explained that they were afraid of losing their jobs, too.
That, she says, was "the Penn State way" as she knew it.
It had been corrupted by success.
"Winning became more important," she said, along with a strong desire "to avoid bad publicity." So many people were invested in the football program, they felt they had "to protect something that they had created, a grand experiment that was so perfect that they didn't dare let anybody know there were blemishes."
There was no accountability. Board meetings were scripted to avoid controversy. It was a point of pride that nobody ever argued. The leadership was "grounded in the spin, the image, the 'too big to fail.' It became a business dependent on the money and contributions," she said.
As for Paterno, who died of lung cancer in January, Triponey does not judge him harshly.
"Joe Paterno was an incredibly principled person," she said, recalling how, at the beginning, he made sure his athletes were successful students, as well. "That was at his core," she said, "but the pedestal became so high, he lost that somewhere."
She thought she had left academia forever, following her husband to Charleston and getting involved in charities and community work.
"At the time, it destroyed my career. I couldn't go back into higher education after what happened at Penn State. I had to leave the work I had done for 30 years. What enabled people to take a chance on me was when the Sandusky story broke."
Sandusky was indicted in November and accused of molesting 10 boys over 15 years. Spanier and Paterno were dismissed and Curley and another Penn State vice president, Gary Schultz, were charged with lying to a grand jury about what they knew about the Sandusky affair.
"The world of higher education started seeing me as a more credible person," Triponey said. "I did get messages and kudos."
Reporters started calling, and then so did people at other schools. Among them was R. Barbara Gitenstein, president of the College of New Jersey near Trenton. The Division III school focuses on liberal arts and had an opening in student affairs.
Triponey started in February and plans to stay at least until December as the interim director.
"Actually, she's not doing just fine," Gitenstein said. "She's doing great." She is well liked by the students, staff, trustees and other department heads, she added.
Penn State leaders 'empowered Sandusky'
"I think she's open, she accessible," Gitenstein said. "She's thoughtful, and she has knowledge about student affairs. She's also very responsible in terms of budget. She knows how to bring others along, to make them feel part of the enterprise."
Triponey says she's now working in a place where it's not just acceptable to speak truth to power, it's encouraged.
"I never though I'd be back doing work in higher education," she said. "I also never thought I'd see the day where public opinion is at the place where folks are saying Penn State's culture has got to change."
Edsall, her former colleague at UConn, says Triponey stands in contrast to the other officials at Penn State and the choices they made. "She lost her job, but she never lost her principles, her values or her morals," he said. "When you see a friend, a colleague, go through what she went through, it's good to see that things have come to light.
"I tell my players there are two things in life," he added. "You've got your name and you've got your reputation. And you know what? Vicky still has her name and she still has her reputation."
She took a stand for what she believed in, Edsall said, but the leadership at Penn State didn't want to change.
"They wanted to continue with the status quo, and look where it got them."
Triponey views the Freeh report as "my trigger that it's OK to start speaking out," she said.
"Maybe it's an opportunity for me to take the experience, take the pain, take the pain of other victims, and help change the culture," she said. "Maybe not at Penn State, but other coaches, other presidents around the country are in a position now to see the danger in a culture like this."
It has all left her "saddened, disgusted and horrified, but also hopeful," she said.
It has brought new life to the teacher in her.
She experienced firsthand the clubby, jock-snapping culture, the sense of entitlement, the cloistered existence. It's what drove her five years ago from her job as the vice president who oversaw student discipline.
She was told she was too aggressive, too confrontational, that she wasn't fitting in with "the Penn State way."
She clashed often with Paterno over who should discipline football players when they got into trouble. The conflict with such an iconic figure made her very unpopular around campus. For a while, it cost Triponey her peace of mind and her good name. It almost ended her 30-year academic career.
Another person might have felt vindicated, smug or self-righteous when former FBI Director Louis Freeh delivered the scathing report on his eight-month investigation of the Jerry Sandusky child abuse scandal. But Triponey sensed only a deep sadness.
Photos: Paterno as Penn State coach
Penn State students take to the streets
The inquiry, commissioned by the board of trustees, exposed how the personal failings of Paterno and three other Penn State leaders -- along with the university's football-first culture -- empowered an assistant football coach who molested fatherless boys for more than a decade.
"There's no joy," Triponey told CNN as she sat down for an interview Friday, the day after the Freeh report was released. She said she found solace in the public recognition of Penn State's "culture of reverence for the football program," as the report phrased it, and that it is "ingrained at all levels of the campus community." Freeh found that the culture contributed to the Sandusky scandal.
Penn State community still admires Paterno, wants to move forward
She agrees with Freeh's suggestion that the university's trustees lead an effort to "vigorously examine and understand" Penn State's culture, why it's so resistant to outside perspectives and why it places such an "excessive focus on athletics."
"It's comforting to know that others can now understand," Triponey said. "It didn't have to happen this way."
Her former boss at Wichita State University described Triponey as "a dedicated, ethical professional" who was devastated by her experience at Penn State.
"Vicky knew that she had attempted to do the right thing in disciplining the football players, but she was unable to do so in the Penn State environment," said Gene Hughes, a president emeritus at Wichita State and Northern Arizona University.
At Penn State, Triponey was among the few who stood up to Paterno, the legendary "JoePa" who for 61 years was synonymous with a football program that pumped millions of dollars into Penn State. And she paid dearly for it. At the end, nobody at the top backed her. And it didn't seem to matter to anyone whether she was right, or even if she had a point.
Bowden: Paterno statue should go PSU victims' attorney: Report devastating Jay Paterno: Freeh report is not the end Buzz Bissinger on Joe Paterno
At the heart of the problem, the Freeh report stated, were university leaders eager to please Paterno above all else, a rubber-stamp board of trustees, a president who discouraged dissent and an administration that was preoccupied with appearances and spin.
Triponey has been saying that since 2005.
Sandusky, as the mastermind of college football's legendary "Linebacker U," enjoyed insider status and used Penn State's sporting events and athletic facilities to lure victims even after he retired in 1999. When he was indicted and arrested in November, the report said, Sandusky still had his keys to the Penn State locker room.
Triponey, a slim blonde who dresses preppie and carries herself with the reserve of an academic lifer, was always an outsider at Penn State, even though she grew up in central Pennsylvania. She was not involved in the Sandusky matter; she says she never met him. But she is keenly aware of the campus culture that allowed him to prey on boys for years, virtually unchecked.
"The culture is deep," she said. "The culture is making decisions based on how others will react, not based on what's right and wrong." It focused on the interests of those at "the top of the chain," she added. "Others at the bottom didn't matter."
Triponey was just one of the 430 witnesses who spoke with Freeh's investigators; her story, which she laid out for them over several hours in March, was supported by e-mails uncovered among the 3.5 million electronic documents the investigators examined.
"When I visited with them, that's when I started to be more hopeful," she said. "They got it, and they were determined to expose it. They found evidence of the culture that allowed Jerry Sandusky to exist.
More storms loom for Penn State in wake of Freeh report
"Now I can articulate it," she said. "That is what I was railing against."
Triponey is not named in the 267-page report; her experience is laid out in a footnote at the bottom of pages 65 and 66. The section deals with the janitors who were afraid they'd lose their jobs if they reported they'd seen Sandusky molesting a boy in the showers in 2000.
"I know Paterno has so much power that if he had wanted to get rid of someone, I would have been gone," one janitor told investigators. "Football runs this university."
"If that's the culture at the bottom," Freeh told reporters, "God help the culture at the top."
The Triponey footnote sheds some light on the top. "Some individuals interviewed identified the handling of a student disciplinary matter in 2007 as an example of Paterno's excessive influence at the university," the footnote stated. It described "perceived pressure" to "treat players in ways that would maintain their ability to play sports," including reducing disciplinary sanctions.
"I wasn't part of the evidence. I was confirmation of the evidence," Triponey told CNN. "This is not about me. This is about what Jerry Sandusky was allowed to do."
Penn State can learn from its mistakes, she believes, but needs new leadership, fresh blood -- someone from outside Happy Valley.
"It's a cocoon. It's a bubble. That's why those inside the bubble are really struggling. They're afraid; they're embarrassed; they're struggling with what to do," she said.
"Now the question is, 'do you face reality?'"
Opinion: The end of 'Joe Paterno University'
'The Penn State way'
Vicky Triponey grew up in a working-class household and was the first person in her family to attend college. Her father was a rabid Penn State football fan, but she chose to go to the University of Pittsburgh, commonly known as Pitt. She got her bachelor's degree in psychology and continued with post-graduate studies, pursuing a career in higher education. She earned her doctorate at the University of Virginia.
She worked at several colleges and universities before encountering her mentor, James Rhatigan, who developed the division of student affairs at Wichita State University. Rhatigan introduced her to Mike Meacham, a young man who had been student body president and worked for the alumni association. They married 21 years ago.
She left Wichita in 1998 for the University of Connecticut, where she helped coach Randy Edsall build up the football program. Edsall, who is now head coach at the University of Maryland, told CNN that they worked hard to ensure that football players lived by the same rules as other students.
"We always taught our guys they weren't better than somebody else," Edsall said. "My whole thing was, we told our guys up front that there was a student code of conduct they had to adhere to. If they violated it, there would be consequences."
Penn State recruited Triponey in 2003. She quickly figured out she was the leading candidate when the university brought on its A game for her interview. Her campus visit coincided with the weekend of "The Thon," a popular dance marathon that students hold to raise money for charity.
"I liked what I heard during the interview," she recalled. "It was a truly impressive place, and I considered it a fabulous next step in my career."
She also heard the expression "the Penn State way" for the first time that weekend. Had she understood its significance, she said, she would have "quickly run in the other direction."
Still, she enjoyed a long honeymoon. She felt she had the support of Penn State's president, Graham Spanier, who unabashedly sang her praises when she was hired and later at professional conferences they both attended.
"I arrived there and was supported, encouraged, and really for the first two years I thought we were doing good things," she said. "We were moving in some good directions. But that second year, in the fall, I started going home and telling Mike, 'They're not getting it. They're not embracing conversations about change.'"
There were controversies about her decisions to cut off funding to a student radio program and revamp the student government.
Spanier assured her that she was right to stick to her guns, but she was "hitting the brick wall in student discipline." Looking back, she says, "I was putting my neck out and taking a stand, but there weren't many people with me."
And then one day in late 2004, as disciplinary sanctions were being considered against a member of the football team, she received a visit from Paterno's wife, who had tutored the player.
He's a good kid, Sue Paterno said. Could they give him a break?
Triponey realized then that she wasn't in Kansas anymore. Or even Connecticut.
By the next year, 2005, she was battling Paterno himself over who controlled how football players were disciplined. Paterno also chafed over enforcing Penn State's code of conduct off campus.
Spanier called a meeting at which Paterno angrily dominated the conversation, Triponey recalled. She summarized the meeting in an e-mail to Spanier, Athletic Director Tim Curley and others, complaining that Paterno "is insistent that he knows best how to discipline his players" and that her department should back off.
Opinion: Penn State report is a warning to all of of us
She noted that Paterno preferred to keep the public in the dark about player infractions involving violence, and he pushed for not enforcing the student code of conduct off campus. She added that having "a major problem with Coach Paterno should not be our concern" in making disciplinary decisions.
"I must insist that the efforts to put pressure on us and try to influence our decisions related to specific cases ... simply MUST STOP," she wrote. "The calls and pleas from coaches, board members and others when we are considering a case are indeed putting us in a position that does treat football players differently and with greater privilege ... and it appears on our end to be a deliberate effort to use the power of the football program to sway our decisions in a way that is beneficial to the football program."
Curley, who once played for Paterno and according to the Freeh report was widely considered his "errand boy," responded to Triponey by explaining "Joe's frustrations with the system" and the "larger issues that bother him."
Triponey wrote back, complaining about Paterno's "disregard for our role and disrespect for the process." She added, "I don't see how we can continue to trust those inside the football program with confidential information if we are indeed adversaries."
She followed up with another e-mail to Spanier on September 1, 2005, stating her objection to Paterno's attitude and behavior, which she called "atrocious." She said others, including students and their parents, were mimicking him.
"I am very troubled by the manipulative, disrespectful, uncivil and abusive behavior of our football coach," she wrote. "It is quite shocking what this man -- who is idolized by people everywhere -- is teaching our students."
Paterno clearly seemed to resent "meddling" from outsiders, even if Triponey was simply doing her job. She saw the dangers of special treatment that placed football players under a softer standard than other students lived by. She said it wasn't right. But it was a battle she couldn't win.
Paterno ridiculed her on a radio show as "that lady in Old Main" who couldn't possibly know how to handle students because "she didn't have kids."
Tensions reached the breaking point in 2007 over how to discipline half a dozen players who'd been arrested at a brawl at an off-campus apartment complex. Several students were injured; one beaten unconscious.
Triponey met with Paterno and other university officials half a dozen times, although she preferred to remain neutral as the appeals hearing officer.
At the final meeting, Triponey urged the coach to advise his players to tell the truth. Paterno said angrily that he couldn't force his players to "rat" on each other since they had to practice and play together. Curley and Spanier backed him up on that point, she said.
Triponey recommended suspensions; Paterno pushed for community service that included having the team clean up the stadium for two hours after each home game.
In the end, four players were briefly suspended during the off-season. They didn't miss a game.
By then it was clear she no longer enjoyed Spanier's support. He began making noises about whether she really embraced "the Penn State way." He told her during an annual review that she was too confrontational, too aggressive. Triponey knew her days at Penn State were numbered when he advised her to think hard about whether she had a future there.
Paterno defended football, Penn State in letter before his death
Back from the ashes
When it all fell apart, Triponey felt completely alone.
She received threatening phone calls at home when her husband was traveling and was savaged on student message boards. Her house was vandalized and "For Sale" signs were staked in her front yard. By the time police installed surveillance cameras, she was already on her way out.
Spanier came to her home and sat in her living room after Paterno lost his temper at the meeting about the players involved in the brawl. She said he told her, "Well, Vicky, you are one of a handful of people, four or five people, who have seen the dark side of Joe Paterno. We're going to have to do something about it."
She shakes her head, recalling that conversation now. "'Doing something about it,'" she says, "ended with me being gone."
Citing "philosophical differences," Triponey resigned under pressure as the 2007 football season got under way. Unlike Sandusky, convicted last month of 45 counts of molesting young boys, she did not receive a $168,000 golden handshake, prime football seats for life or keys to the locker room.
She was no longer invited to events. She was shunned.
She sold her big house in State College and moved into a condo in Bellfonte, the quaint county seat where Sandusky was tried, while her husband, a Penn State professor, looked for a job at another university. It took two years, but he finally found a spot at the University of South Carolina's medical school in Charleston.
Opinion: After Penn State report, it's time to look at Second Mile
She stopped going to Wegman's, a favorite upscale supermarket outside State College, because "the Penn State people went there." They recognized her and without fail turned their backs and walked away, she recalled.
Former colleagues who did want to reach out held back. Later, they explained that they were afraid of losing their jobs, too.
That, she says, was "the Penn State way" as she knew it.
It had been corrupted by success.
"Winning became more important," she said, along with a strong desire "to avoid bad publicity." So many people were invested in the football program, they felt they had "to protect something that they had created, a grand experiment that was so perfect that they didn't dare let anybody know there were blemishes."
There was no accountability. Board meetings were scripted to avoid controversy. It was a point of pride that nobody ever argued. The leadership was "grounded in the spin, the image, the 'too big to fail.' It became a business dependent on the money and contributions," she said.
As for Paterno, who died of lung cancer in January, Triponey does not judge him harshly.
"Joe Paterno was an incredibly principled person," she said, recalling how, at the beginning, he made sure his athletes were successful students, as well. "That was at his core," she said, "but the pedestal became so high, he lost that somewhere."
She thought she had left academia forever, following her husband to Charleston and getting involved in charities and community work.
"At the time, it destroyed my career. I couldn't go back into higher education after what happened at Penn State. I had to leave the work I had done for 30 years. What enabled people to take a chance on me was when the Sandusky story broke."
Sandusky was indicted in November and accused of molesting 10 boys over 15 years. Spanier and Paterno were dismissed and Curley and another Penn State vice president, Gary Schultz, were charged with lying to a grand jury about what they knew about the Sandusky affair.
"The world of higher education started seeing me as a more credible person," Triponey said. "I did get messages and kudos."
Reporters started calling, and then so did people at other schools. Among them was R. Barbara Gitenstein, president of the College of New Jersey near Trenton. The Division III school focuses on liberal arts and had an opening in student affairs.
Triponey started in February and plans to stay at least until December as the interim director.
"Actually, she's not doing just fine," Gitenstein said. "She's doing great." She is well liked by the students, staff, trustees and other department heads, she added.
Penn State leaders 'empowered Sandusky'
"I think she's open, she accessible," Gitenstein said. "She's thoughtful, and she has knowledge about student affairs. She's also very responsible in terms of budget. She knows how to bring others along, to make them feel part of the enterprise."
Triponey says she's now working in a place where it's not just acceptable to speak truth to power, it's encouraged.
"I never though I'd be back doing work in higher education," she said. "I also never thought I'd see the day where public opinion is at the place where folks are saying Penn State's culture has got to change."
Edsall, her former colleague at UConn, says Triponey stands in contrast to the other officials at Penn State and the choices they made. "She lost her job, but she never lost her principles, her values or her morals," he said. "When you see a friend, a colleague, go through what she went through, it's good to see that things have come to light.
"I tell my players there are two things in life," he added. "You've got your name and you've got your reputation. And you know what? Vicky still has her name and she still has her reputation."
She took a stand for what she believed in, Edsall said, but the leadership at Penn State didn't want to change.
"They wanted to continue with the status quo, and look where it got them."
Triponey views the Freeh report as "my trigger that it's OK to start speaking out," she said.
"Maybe it's an opportunity for me to take the experience, take the pain, take the pain of other victims, and help change the culture," she said. "Maybe not at Penn State, but other coaches, other presidents around the country are in a position now to see the danger in a culture like this."
It has all left her "saddened, disgusted and horrified, but also hopeful," she said.
It has brought new life to the teacher in her.
Sunday, July 15, 2012
City councilwoman charged with battery of former colleague -- her ex-lover
The San Fernando, Calif., councilwoman at the center of an affair scandal with a council colleague was charged Friday with vandalism and battery of her former lover during a breakup last month, according to a misdemeanor complaint filed by the LA County District Attorney’s office.
Maribel De La Torre allegedly attacked Mario Hernandez, with whom she served on the San Fernando City Council, and destroyed his laptop and a picture frame during a June 28 incident, according to the complaint.
De La Torre, 41, and Hernandez, 47, took out restraining orders against each other after the incident and were ordered to stay 100 feet apart.
San Fernando City Council members and residents have criticized the pair for letting their personal lives invade City Hall and have demanded their resignations.
Hernandez – who announced the couple’s relationship during a city council meeting last fall with his wife in the audience – stepped down from his post Tuesday, hours before the council was set to meet.
"I want to apologize to the community for the inconveniences caused by my personal life," Hernandez said in a statement at the time.
Stay informed with the latest headlines; sign up for our newsletter
Hernandez, De La Torre and Mayor Brenda Esqueda – accused of having a relationship with a police official while voting on police matters – face a recall election in the fall.
San Fernando Mayor Pro Tem Antonio Lopez said Tuesday that the pair has caused "enough damage" and it was time for the city of 23,000 to get its government in order.
Maribel De La Torre allegedly attacked Mario Hernandez, with whom she served on the San Fernando City Council, and destroyed his laptop and a picture frame during a June 28 incident, according to the complaint.
De La Torre, 41, and Hernandez, 47, took out restraining orders against each other after the incident and were ordered to stay 100 feet apart.
San Fernando City Council members and residents have criticized the pair for letting their personal lives invade City Hall and have demanded their resignations.
Hernandez – who announced the couple’s relationship during a city council meeting last fall with his wife in the audience – stepped down from his post Tuesday, hours before the council was set to meet.
"I want to apologize to the community for the inconveniences caused by my personal life," Hernandez said in a statement at the time.
Stay informed with the latest headlines; sign up for our newsletter
Hernandez, De La Torre and Mayor Brenda Esqueda – accused of having a relationship with a police official while voting on police matters – face a recall election in the fall.
San Fernando Mayor Pro Tem Antonio Lopez said Tuesday that the pair has caused "enough damage" and it was time for the city of 23,000 to get its government in order.
Quiet neighbourhood bars
What are some quiet neighbourhood bars that you guys like? I'm always in search of friendly watering holes in the neighbourhood that don't get too crowded and noisy. Can be pretty difficult to come by in EV.
Burp Castle is quiet - the last time I was there, the bartender even "shushed" people when laughing too loudly.
d.b.a.'s backyard is great during the summer - usually not too packed. Their bloody mary is one of the best on the weekends.
Dorian Gray is casual and a great neighborhood spot to relax too.
Try to avoid most of St. Mark's on a weekend night - can get so rowdy! But, on weeknights, there are some great bars there that aren't too loud or crowded.
Burp Castle is quiet - the last time I was there, the bartender even "shushed" people when laughing too loudly.
d.b.a.'s backyard is great during the summer - usually not too packed. Their bloody mary is one of the best on the weekends.
Dorian Gray is casual and a great neighborhood spot to relax too.
Try to avoid most of St. Mark's on a weekend night - can get so rowdy! But, on weeknights, there are some great bars there that aren't too loud or crowded.
Thunderstorms halt lawn chair balloon flight
An Oregon gas station owner and an Iraqi adventurer trying to fly from Central Oregon to Montana were forced to abort their flight to Montana on Saturday due to thunderstorms.
About six hours into their flight, Kent Couch and Fareed Lafta started to descend from an altitude of 10,000 feet because of the weather, flight organizer Mark Knowles told The Associated Press.
The website tracker showed them about five miles south of the town of Prineville, about 30 miles northeast of their starting point. The pair initially floated about 40 miles north before winds sent them back south, then east, the direction they wanted to go.
"Thunderstorms are around them," Knowles said by cellphone. "We've got visual contact. I can't see their faces."
About 90 volunteers and several hundred onlookers counted down and then cheered as the pair lifted off from Couch's Shell gas station. The duo safely cleared a two-story motel, a coffee stand and a light post. They floated about 30 miles north, then winds pushed them back to the south, before sending them to the east, the direction they wanted to go.
"The interesting thing is, anybody can do this," Couch, the veteran of several lawn chair balloon flights, said before the flight. "They don't have to sit on the couch thinking, 'I should have done it.' They can do it."
Lafta, a mountain climber and sky diver, said he had shared Couch's childhood dream of floating like a cloud. He sent Couch an email two winters ago after reading accounts of Couch's earlier flights.
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"I want to inspire Iraqis and say we need to defeat terrorists," Lafta said. "We don't need just an Army. We need ideology and to just have fun."
Track the couch balloon flight here
Volunteers filled 350 5-foot diameter red, white, blue and black balloons with helium and tied them to Couch's homemade tandem lawn chair rig. The balloons were arranged in bunches to represent the colors of the U.S. and Iraqi flags. An American flag flew from the bottom of the framework supporting the chairs.
Just before liftoff, they had to ask children in the crowd to return four balloons to provide extra lift.
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The rig included 800 pounds of ballast — red Kool-Aid in 40-gallon barrels. Besides a GPS, navigation gear, satellite phone, oxygen, two-way radios, eight cameras, and parachutes, they were carrying two Red Ryder BB rifles and a pair of blowguns to shoot out enough balloons to come to earth when the time is right.
"The landings are very tough," Couch said. "I don't think about the landings until I have to land. That's how I do it."
Expecting to float at 15,000-18,000 feet, where temperatures drop to near zero, they packed sleeping bags to stay warm.
Electronic gear was powered by a solar panel. A flare gun was tied onto the framework for emergencies. They also carried the ashes of a family friend to spread over the high desert.
Lance Schliep, an appliance repairman, helped Couch with the latest design, made entirely from items bought at local hardware stores and junk from Couch's garage.
"It's about as redneck as you can get," Couch said.
Couch said their biggest challenge was finding enough helium to fill all the balloons. They sent as far as the Midwest for bottles. Each balloon that popped on inflation represented a $50 loss, but Couch would not divulge the total cost.
The two men hoped to fly through the night across the mountains of Idaho and touch down Sunday morning somewhere in southwestern Montana.
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The flight was a warm-up for plans to fly a tandem lawn chair balloon rig in Baghdad sometime in the future.
"My target is to inspire young people, especially in the Mideast," Lafta said. "I want to tell them, 'I didn't give up. Keep standing. Smile. This is the way to defeat terrorists.'"
Couch said receiving Lafta's email in the dead of winter, at a time he was bored, inspired him to go aloft again.
"I never really thought I would do it again," Couch said. "I thought I had had enough excitement.
"I started thinking, it sounds fun. It takes six months after you land for your brain to get over the fear and just the emotions."
Staff / Reuters
Fareed Lafta and Kent Couch (L) lift off from Couch's Stop & Go Mini Mart in Bend, Oregon, July 14, 2012. The two men, sitting in lawn chairs tied to a cluster of 350 helium-filled balloons lift-off in a bid to break the Guinness World Record for the longest two-man cluster balloon flight. REUTERS/Dan Cook (UNITED STATES - Tags: SOCIETY)
They planned to fly over Iraq last year, but ran into problems getting permission from the government.
About six hours into their flight, Kent Couch and Fareed Lafta started to descend from an altitude of 10,000 feet because of the weather, flight organizer Mark Knowles told The Associated Press.
The website tracker showed them about five miles south of the town of Prineville, about 30 miles northeast of their starting point. The pair initially floated about 40 miles north before winds sent them back south, then east, the direction they wanted to go.
"Thunderstorms are around them," Knowles said by cellphone. "We've got visual contact. I can't see their faces."
About 90 volunteers and several hundred onlookers counted down and then cheered as the pair lifted off from Couch's Shell gas station. The duo safely cleared a two-story motel, a coffee stand and a light post. They floated about 30 miles north, then winds pushed them back to the south, before sending them to the east, the direction they wanted to go.
"The interesting thing is, anybody can do this," Couch, the veteran of several lawn chair balloon flights, said before the flight. "They don't have to sit on the couch thinking, 'I should have done it.' They can do it."
Lafta, a mountain climber and sky diver, said he had shared Couch's childhood dream of floating like a cloud. He sent Couch an email two winters ago after reading accounts of Couch's earlier flights.
Advertise | AdChoices
"I want to inspire Iraqis and say we need to defeat terrorists," Lafta said. "We don't need just an Army. We need ideology and to just have fun."
Track the couch balloon flight here
Volunteers filled 350 5-foot diameter red, white, blue and black balloons with helium and tied them to Couch's homemade tandem lawn chair rig. The balloons were arranged in bunches to represent the colors of the U.S. and Iraqi flags. An American flag flew from the bottom of the framework supporting the chairs.
Just before liftoff, they had to ask children in the crowd to return four balloons to provide extra lift.
Only on msnbc.com
Joe Paterno's halo erased from Penn State mural
Kerry Kennedy denies impairment after crash
Obama in pouring rain pours criticism on Romney
New sketch released of suspect in lesbian teen couple shooting
Surfer presumed dead in Australia shark attack
Stay informed with the latest headlines; sign up for our newsletter
Sylvester Stallone's 36-year-old son found dead
The rig included 800 pounds of ballast — red Kool-Aid in 40-gallon barrels. Besides a GPS, navigation gear, satellite phone, oxygen, two-way radios, eight cameras, and parachutes, they were carrying two Red Ryder BB rifles and a pair of blowguns to shoot out enough balloons to come to earth when the time is right.
"The landings are very tough," Couch said. "I don't think about the landings until I have to land. That's how I do it."
Expecting to float at 15,000-18,000 feet, where temperatures drop to near zero, they packed sleeping bags to stay warm.
Electronic gear was powered by a solar panel. A flare gun was tied onto the framework for emergencies. They also carried the ashes of a family friend to spread over the high desert.
Lance Schliep, an appliance repairman, helped Couch with the latest design, made entirely from items bought at local hardware stores and junk from Couch's garage.
"It's about as redneck as you can get," Couch said.
Couch said their biggest challenge was finding enough helium to fill all the balloons. They sent as far as the Midwest for bottles. Each balloon that popped on inflation represented a $50 loss, but Couch would not divulge the total cost.
The two men hoped to fly through the night across the mountains of Idaho and touch down Sunday morning somewhere in southwestern Montana.
Advertise | AdChoices
The flight was a warm-up for plans to fly a tandem lawn chair balloon rig in Baghdad sometime in the future.
"My target is to inspire young people, especially in the Mideast," Lafta said. "I want to tell them, 'I didn't give up. Keep standing. Smile. This is the way to defeat terrorists.'"
Couch said receiving Lafta's email in the dead of winter, at a time he was bored, inspired him to go aloft again.
"I never really thought I would do it again," Couch said. "I thought I had had enough excitement.
"I started thinking, it sounds fun. It takes six months after you land for your brain to get over the fear and just the emotions."
Staff / Reuters
Fareed Lafta and Kent Couch (L) lift off from Couch's Stop & Go Mini Mart in Bend, Oregon, July 14, 2012. The two men, sitting in lawn chairs tied to a cluster of 350 helium-filled balloons lift-off in a bid to break the Guinness World Record for the longest two-man cluster balloon flight. REUTERS/Dan Cook (UNITED STATES - Tags: SOCIETY)
They planned to fly over Iraq last year, but ran into problems getting permission from the government.
Zimmerman’s cop connection in Trayvon Martin case
It’s been perhaps the biggest mystery of the Trayvon Martin murder case saga: George Zimmerman’s cop connections.
An aspiring police officer, Mr. Zimmerman has been accused by prosecutors of play-acting as a police officer the night he pursued, shot and killed Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla. after pegging him as a suspicious young black man roving the neighborhood. The case turned national when police initially chose to believe the neighborhood watchman’s self-defense claims, leaving a special state prosecutor to instead level murder charges 44 days later.
But questions about whether Zimmerman had actual connections with police or justice system higher-ups that may have influenced the early decision to not charge him were piqued this week with the release of new evidence in the closely-watched case, including an observation by one detective that Zimmerman’s take on the shooting seemed “scripted.”
How 5 young black men see the Trayvon Martin case
Documents from the FBI and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement suggest indirectly that Zimmerman’s closest adviser in the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin shooting has been a federal agent – a US air marshal and former Seminole County sheriff’s deputy identified by the Miami Herald as a man named Mark Osterman.
Mr. Osterman was at Zimmerman’s side as he returned to the scene of the crime the day after the shooting to go over what happened with detectives.
The Herald also reported that Zimmerman and Osterman were shooting buddies and that, as the Trayvon Martin story broke and the whole country was talking about what George Zimmerman and the Sanford police had done, the neighborhood watch captain took refuge for six weeks at Osterman’s house in Lake Mary.
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Throughout the investigation, Trayvon’s family have wondered whether Zimmerman had an inside adviser. Some had pointed fingers at Seminole State Attorney Norm Wolfinger, because of his decision to let Zimmerman go. Mr. Wolfinger stepped aside when Gov. Rick Scott sought to appoint a special prosecutor to the case. That role eventually fell to Duval County state prosecutor Angela Corey.
And then there was speculation that Zimmerman’s father, Robert Zimmerman, a retired magistrate judge from Virginia, was somehow helping his son through the justice system.
Lingering suspicions perked up again this week after prosecutors released evidence that showed an email connection between Zimmerman and now-fired Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee, where the two exchanged amicable notes about the resolution of a case where a previous chief refused to charge the son of a police lieutenant for the beating of a homeless black man.
Moreover, Mr. Lee, who spent 30 years at the Seminole County Sheriff’s Department, may have known Osterman since their tenures at the department overlapped. At any one time, the Seminole County Sheriff’s Department has more than 500 employees.
More US news from the Christian Science Monitor
Zimmerman wants to toss trial judge
Osterman was fired from the sheriff’s office in 1998 in the midst of a scandal where he and a fellow officer were duped into off-duty security gigs by a con man claiming to be a famous baseball star named Juan Diaz. Osterman took the job without getting permission from the sheriff, which compounded the embarrassment and led to his firing.
Osterman has since worked as a beach guard and since the early 2000s as a federal air marshal, which were hired in large numbers after 9/11 to provide covert security on flights.
In his April interview with the FBI, Osterman claimed Zimmerman was estranged from his parents until the shooting, and that he had feared the New Black Panther Party, which put a $10,000 bounty on Zimmerman after the shooting.
“Zimmerman is very concerned with all the negative reaction from the press and others and wants more evidence released to show what really happened,” Osterman told the FBI.
But Osterman denied having any influence on Zimmerman other than as a friend and confidante, according to documents obtained by the Herald. During his conversations with Zimmerman, Zimmerman “never asked … what not to say during his interviews with the police,” according to the FBI. Osterman “stated Zimmerman did not understand the process and his only advice to Zimmerman was to tell the truth.”
How 5 young black men see the Trayvon Martin case
Zimmerman, on at least one occasion, did not heed that advice. He was remanded back to jail by Judge Kenneth Lester in June after it was revealed he had conspired with his wife, Shellie, to keep $135,000 worth of donations out of the court’s eye, in order to win a low bond. Shellie was charged, booked and released on a perjury charge after the initial bond was revoked.
Most recently, the judge’s suggestion at a recent bond ruling that Zimmerman had “flaunted the system” and engineered “deception upon the court” became Zimmerman’s basis for a motion to remove Judge Lester, filed Friday. The motion chided Lester for “words crafting an order that was harsh and morally indignant” while failing to address the self-defense claims.
While Zimmerman’s lawyer Mark O’Mara explained at that hearing that Zimmerman was young, confused, and distrustful of a system that seemed to be discounting clear evidence of self-defense, Judge Lester articulated another view of Zimmerman: as a knowing manipulator who – based on lies about the money and a second passport Zimmerman had procured – was planning to flee the country to avoid a trial.
After rapping Zimmerman for his behavior, Lester released him on a $1 million bond earlier this month. Zimmerman is currently in hiding somewhere in Seminole County.
This article, "Trayvon Martin case’s mystery man: George Zimmerman’s cop connection," first appeared on CSMonitor.com
An aspiring police officer, Mr. Zimmerman has been accused by prosecutors of play-acting as a police officer the night he pursued, shot and killed Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla. after pegging him as a suspicious young black man roving the neighborhood. The case turned national when police initially chose to believe the neighborhood watchman’s self-defense claims, leaving a special state prosecutor to instead level murder charges 44 days later.
But questions about whether Zimmerman had actual connections with police or justice system higher-ups that may have influenced the early decision to not charge him were piqued this week with the release of new evidence in the closely-watched case, including an observation by one detective that Zimmerman’s take on the shooting seemed “scripted.”
How 5 young black men see the Trayvon Martin case
Documents from the FBI and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement suggest indirectly that Zimmerman’s closest adviser in the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin shooting has been a federal agent – a US air marshal and former Seminole County sheriff’s deputy identified by the Miami Herald as a man named Mark Osterman.
Mr. Osterman was at Zimmerman’s side as he returned to the scene of the crime the day after the shooting to go over what happened with detectives.
The Herald also reported that Zimmerman and Osterman were shooting buddies and that, as the Trayvon Martin story broke and the whole country was talking about what George Zimmerman and the Sanford police had done, the neighborhood watch captain took refuge for six weeks at Osterman’s house in Lake Mary.
Advertise | AdChoices
Throughout the investigation, Trayvon’s family have wondered whether Zimmerman had an inside adviser. Some had pointed fingers at Seminole State Attorney Norm Wolfinger, because of his decision to let Zimmerman go. Mr. Wolfinger stepped aside when Gov. Rick Scott sought to appoint a special prosecutor to the case. That role eventually fell to Duval County state prosecutor Angela Corey.
And then there was speculation that Zimmerman’s father, Robert Zimmerman, a retired magistrate judge from Virginia, was somehow helping his son through the justice system.
Lingering suspicions perked up again this week after prosecutors released evidence that showed an email connection between Zimmerman and now-fired Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee, where the two exchanged amicable notes about the resolution of a case where a previous chief refused to charge the son of a police lieutenant for the beating of a homeless black man.
Moreover, Mr. Lee, who spent 30 years at the Seminole County Sheriff’s Department, may have known Osterman since their tenures at the department overlapped. At any one time, the Seminole County Sheriff’s Department has more than 500 employees.
More US news from the Christian Science Monitor
Zimmerman wants to toss trial judge
Osterman was fired from the sheriff’s office in 1998 in the midst of a scandal where he and a fellow officer were duped into off-duty security gigs by a con man claiming to be a famous baseball star named Juan Diaz. Osterman took the job without getting permission from the sheriff, which compounded the embarrassment and led to his firing.
Osterman has since worked as a beach guard and since the early 2000s as a federal air marshal, which were hired in large numbers after 9/11 to provide covert security on flights.
In his April interview with the FBI, Osterman claimed Zimmerman was estranged from his parents until the shooting, and that he had feared the New Black Panther Party, which put a $10,000 bounty on Zimmerman after the shooting.
“Zimmerman is very concerned with all the negative reaction from the press and others and wants more evidence released to show what really happened,” Osterman told the FBI.
But Osterman denied having any influence on Zimmerman other than as a friend and confidante, according to documents obtained by the Herald. During his conversations with Zimmerman, Zimmerman “never asked … what not to say during his interviews with the police,” according to the FBI. Osterman “stated Zimmerman did not understand the process and his only advice to Zimmerman was to tell the truth.”
How 5 young black men see the Trayvon Martin case
Zimmerman, on at least one occasion, did not heed that advice. He was remanded back to jail by Judge Kenneth Lester in June after it was revealed he had conspired with his wife, Shellie, to keep $135,000 worth of donations out of the court’s eye, in order to win a low bond. Shellie was charged, booked and released on a perjury charge after the initial bond was revoked.
Most recently, the judge’s suggestion at a recent bond ruling that Zimmerman had “flaunted the system” and engineered “deception upon the court” became Zimmerman’s basis for a motion to remove Judge Lester, filed Friday. The motion chided Lester for “words crafting an order that was harsh and morally indignant” while failing to address the self-defense claims.
While Zimmerman’s lawyer Mark O’Mara explained at that hearing that Zimmerman was young, confused, and distrustful of a system that seemed to be discounting clear evidence of self-defense, Judge Lester articulated another view of Zimmerman: as a knowing manipulator who – based on lies about the money and a second passport Zimmerman had procured – was planning to flee the country to avoid a trial.
After rapping Zimmerman for his behavior, Lester released him on a $1 million bond earlier this month. Zimmerman is currently in hiding somewhere in Seminole County.
This article, "Trayvon Martin case’s mystery man: George Zimmerman’s cop connection," first appeared on CSMonitor.com
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