Saturday, May 19, 2012 10:19 AM UTC
By Douglass K. Daniel, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama on Saturday pointed again to the multi-billion-dollar trading loss at JPMorgan Chase as a reason Congress should retain and continue to implement Wall Street reforms to prevent the kinds of practices that he says led to the financial meltdown in 2008.
JPMorgan Chase’s loss, which bank officials disclosed last week, has renewed calls by Democratic lawmakers for tougher rules on major financial institutions.
“Without Wall Street reform, we could have found ourselves with the taxpayers once again on the hook for Wall Street’s mistakes,” Obama said in his weekly media address. He added: “We’ve got to finish the job of implementing this reform and putting these rules in place.”
Obama touted rules that would require big banks or financial institutions to have more cash on hand to cover losses and that would take away big bonuses and paydays from failed CEOs.
The president said financial institutions that “aren’t cheating customers or making risky bets that could damage the whole economy” have nothing to fear from reforms.
“Yes, it discourages big banks and financial institutions from making risky bets with taxpayer-insured money. And it encourages them to do things that actually help the economy — like extending loans to entrepreneurs with good ideas, to middle-class families who want to buy a home, to students who want to pursue higher education,” he said.
In the Republican’s weekly address, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., faulted what he called a “do-nothing Senate” under Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid for the frustrations he said he has felt in his 16 months in Congress.
Noting that the Senate hasn’t passed a budget in three years, Johnson said House Republicans have fulfilled their responsibilities by passing a budget but that Senate Democrats have not fulfilled theirs.
Earlier in the week, the Senate rejected, 99-0, a budget that Republicans offered up based on an Obama proposal in February. Four other budget plans were also rejected by senators.
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Online:
Obama address: www.whitehouse.gov
GOP address: www.youtube.com/gopweeklyaddress
Tuesday, May 8, 2012 2:15 PM UTC
By Douglass K. Daniel, Associated Press
“Havana Requiem: a Legal Thriller” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), by Paul Goldstein: Attorney and novelist Paul Goldstein manages the enviable feat of writing a compelling legal thriller without ever putting his characters in the less-than-thrilling venue of a courtroom.
Instead, the action in “Havana Requiem” takes place in Cuba’s capital in a plot permeated with dangerous, steamy intrigue. The setting fits for a story that turns on notions of freedom of expression and freedom to dream.
New York lawyer Michael Seeley, the leading character in two previous Goldstein novels, is trying to re-establish his career as a top intellectual property lawyer while putting behind him a failed marriage, a drinking problem and a professional meltdown. When Cuban musician Hector Reynoso seeks his help, Seeley sees an opportunity to regain his self-respect as well as assist some deserving artists.
What Reynoso desires is refreshingly unusual for such a story: the rights to the traditional Cuban music he and other elderly composers wrote before the revolution. Sure, there’s money involved — big money — but there’s also the matter of preserving Cuban culture.
Those millions of dollars in fees have been going somewhere, certainly not to the composers, and suggest that Seeley should take more than a little care when rooting around the legal hurdles facing his clients in the U.S. and in Castro’s Cuba. Music has its political dimensions, too, and can undermine authority in the right conditions.
Persuading the aging Cubans to sign on to the effort to get their music back takes Seeley on an almost covert mission to Havana. Trying to perform a simple task puts him at odds with the secret police, ambiguous American officials and a Cuban beauty, Amaryll Cruz, who is as enigmatic as the island nation.
“This is the most subversive music of all,” Amaryll warns. “It makes practical people dream.”
While Goldstein creates a satisfying legal puzzle, it’s his description of a city and citizenry floating through life under Castro that gives “Havana Requiem” its heart and soul.
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Douglass K. Daniel is the author of “Tough as Nails: The Life and Films of Richard Brooks” (University of Wisconsin Press).
Monday, Apr 30, 2012 6:53 PM UTC
By Douglass K. Daniel, Associated Press
“The Solitary House” (Delacorte Press), by Lynn Shepherd: The star of Lynn Shepherd’s intriguing mystery novel is mid-century Victorian London, depicted in all its filthy glory and without a hint of the jolly charm that found its way into the tales of Charles Dickens.
But then charm is hardly the point in “The Solitary House.” Shepherd artfully mixes a tale of murder with elements common to Dickens’ writing, such as the prostitutes, rat catchers and other unfortunates who populate London’s foul, gas-lighted streets and the powerful, selfish gentry who control the lives of so many others.
Shepherd has played off the work of a literary giant before. In her debut novel, “Murder at Mansfield Park,” she placed Jane Austen characters at the center of a murder mystery. In the case of “The Solitary House,” Dickens’ own “Bleak House” is the touchstone, its scheming lawyer Tulkinghorn and police inspector Bucket both pivotal characters in the brutal and bloody story Shepherd unfolds.
Charles Maddox is a “thief taker,” the colorful term for a private detective in 1850. An ex-policeman who had been pushed out of the force, he is following in the footsteps of his great-uncle — and caring for the former detective, now beset with what today would be called dementia. Maddox is hired by the devious Tulkinghorn to determine who has been sending blackmail threats to a leading banker. Unknown to Maddox — but known to readers thanks to a Dickensian narrator who sees all — Tulkinghorn has other plans that could threaten the young detective if he uncovers the whole truth.
Maddox is trying to resolve another case, too, still searching for a young woman born in a workhouse. It’s a nearly impossible task in a day of incredible poverty and flimsy social contracts. Meanwhile, a young ward narrates her own story, its connection to the mystery unclear at first but tantalizing in its obvious purpose — to collide somewhere with the overall narrative.
Those unfamiliar with Dickens’ “Bleak House” need not worry that they won’t enjoy Shepherd’s “The Solitary House.” At its core, Shepherd’s book is a historical mystery with a flavor and character all its own. Her suspenseful story and winning prose ably serve her literary conceit. Fans of Dickens, meanwhile, will find it a treat.
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Online:
http://www.lynn-shepherd.com/
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Douglass K. Daniel is the author of “Tough as Nails: The Life and Films of Richard Brooks” (University of Wisconsin Press).
Monday, Apr 30, 2012 5:16 PM UTC
By Douglass K. Daniel, Associated Press
“The Right-Hand Shore” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), by Christopher Tilghman: “A place like this holds history,” observes Wyatt Bayly, the new master of a vast Eastern Shore estate known as the Retreat. “It drives you back into the past just living here.”
In a different context, a young girl named Beal, descended from slaves on the place, tries to move beyond old customs and laments, “We don’t care about all this history.”
The past has a way of making hearts ache in Christopher Tilghman’s excellent novel “The Right-Hand Shore.” Set in Maryland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, his story explores the desires that drive people to try to overcome the past. Their efforts are all the more difficult because they keep looking back on the paths already traveled instead of the ones ahead of them.
Retreat matriarch Mary Bayly is dying in the family mansion in the late summer of 1920, a circumstance she hardly would have imagined years earlier when she was eager to flee the Eastern Shore. A visit from a distant relative to whom she is considering bequeathing the Retreat leads to a series of recollections about Mary and her parents, Wyatt and Ophelia Bayly, and her younger brother, Thomas, as well as Beal and her brother, Randall.
Tilghman, who directs the creative writing program at the University of Virginia, is a short story writer as well as a novelist. Many chapters in his new book could nearly stand on their own as captivating glimpses into the relationships — white and black, owner and workman, man and woman, parent and child — that revolve around the Retreat.
Those relationships are central to the personal histories that cannot leave the Retreat any more than the land itself. Everything exists in the shadow that fell on that day in 1857 when Mary’s father sold nearly all his slaves because the coming war would free them anyway. Families were broken apart and some considered the Retreat forever cursed.
Then there’s Wyatt Bayly’s quiet fanaticism for planting peach trees, guided by his confidence that science would overwhelm any opposition from nature. And the doomed innocence of Thomas and Randall’s friendship and their in-tandem education, an experiment that Wyatt Bayly oversees without regard for the blight that society is likely to attach to it.
Tilghman’s skill at presenting the clashing points of view for his characters is matched by his ability to evoke their place and time, whether it’s a Catholic girls school in Paris or a black village on the peninsula called Tuckertown. There’s never a false note, either, only poignant and surprising ones that linger long after the last page.
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Douglass K. Daniel is the author of “Tough as Nails: The Life and Films of Richard Brooks” (University of Wisconsin Press).
Wednesday, Apr 4, 2012 10:15 PM UTC
By Douglass K. Daniel, Associated Press
President Barack Obama speaks in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building across from the White House in Washington, Wednesday, April 4, 2012, before he signed the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)(Credit: AP)
A political tip sheet for the rest of us outside the Washington Beltway, for Wednesday, April 4, 2012:
WHAT HAPPENED
ROMNEY VS. HIDE AND SEEK: Mitt Romney has unleashed a strong attack on President Barack Obama’s truthfulness, accusing him of running a “hide-and-seek” re-election campaign designed to distract voters from his first-term record while denying them information about his plans for a second. Addressing an audience of newspaper editors and publishers, Romney said Obama’s recent remarks to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on a second-term arms reduction treaty had called “his candor into question.” Romney, the likely GOP opponent for Obama in November, also accused the president of undergoing “a series of election-year conversions” on taxes, government regulation and energy production. “He does not want to share his real plans before the election, either with the public or with the press,” Romney said. “By flexibility, he means that what the American public doesn’t know won’t hurt him. He is intent on hiding. You and I will have to do the seeking.” Romney himself has been sharply criticized by Rick Santorum and other Republican rivals for changing his own positions on issues ranging from abortion to climate control as part of an attempt to win the backing of conservative primary voters.
DELEGATE UPDATE: Mitt Romney won nearly all the convention delegates available in a three-primary sweep Tuesday, adding to a lead that will be insurmountable without a dramatic shift in the race for the Republican nomination for president. How dramatic? He would have to drop out of the race not to win it. With 95 delegates at stake Tuesday, the former Massachusetts governor picked up 86 delegates in Maryland, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia. His chief rival, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, won the other nine delegates, all in Wisconsin. Romney has won 58 percent of the primary and caucus delegates so far. That puts him on pace to reach the 1,144 delegates needed to clinch the GOP nomination on June 5, when voters go to the polls in five states, including delegate-rich California and New Jersey. Although he vows to stay in the race, Santorum would need 80 percent of the remaining delegates to win the nomination before the party’s national convention in August. That won’t happen as long as Romney stays in the race because most upcoming primaries use some type of proportional system to award delegates, making it hard to win large numbers of delegates in individual states.
THANKS, BUT NO THANKS: Republicans considered to be up-and-comers in the GOP are scrambling to declare a lack of interest in becoming Mitt Romney’s running mate. With Romney poised to win the GOP nomination in June, if not earlier, speculation is growing over who would be offered the No. 2 spot on the ticket. No one is rushing forward and many of the top prospects are trying to shut down the conversation before it begins. Among those declaring they aren’t interested: Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez. However, part of the dance is trying to appear uninterested in the role of designated attack dog and potential GOP front-runner for 2016 if Romney falls short in November. Resisting the veep talk is also a way of preserving a personal brand. After all, campaigning for the second slot and coming up short is embarrassing, as Pawlenty remembers from his unsuccessful effort to become Sen. John McCain’s running mate in 2008.
McCAIN OPENS DOOR FOR SANTORUM: Speaking of endings, Sen. John McCain says Rick Santorum should recognize “it’s time for a graceful exit” from the Republican presidential campaign. McCain also told “CBS This Morning” that there’s a strong field of Republicans who could be the vice presidential candidate. When asked to suggest some names, the Arizona Republican said with a grin: “I think it should be Sarah Palin.” Pressed to elaborate, he said, “I think we have some very qualified candidates,” then cited Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Govs. Mitch Daniels of Indiana, Chris Christie of New Jersey and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. Palin, the former governor of Alaska, was McCain’s running mate in his unsuccessful bid for the presidency four years ago.
DELEGATE COUNT
—Romney: 658
—Santorum: 281
—Gingrich: 135
—Paul: 51
WHERE THEY’LL BE THURSDAY
Romney: Pennsylvania
Santorum: off the trail
Gingrich: Delaware
Ron Paul: California
THEY SAID IT, VEEP EDITION
—”I’m not going to be the vice president.” — Rubio.
—”If offered any position by Gov. Romney, I would say no.” — Haley.
—”I’ve taken myself off the list.” — Pawlenty.
—”It’s humbling, but I’m not interested.” — Martinez.
Friday, Mar 30, 2012 1:45 AM UTC
By Douglass K. Daniel, Associated Press
Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., speaks in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, Tuesday, March 27, 2012, as the court continued hearings on the health care law signed by President Barack Obama. Justices, seated from left are, Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, Chief Justice John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg Samuel Alito and Elana Kagan. (AP Photo/Dana Verkouteren)(Credit: AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) — A website ad from the Republican National Committee edits audio from this week’s Supreme Court hearing on the health care law to exaggerate Solicitor General Donald Verrilli’s struggle to find the words to defend President Barack Obama’s initiative.
The ad shows a photograph of the Supreme Court Building as it plays audio from Tuesday’s arguments on the constitutionality of the mandate that all Americans have health care insurance. As Verrilli speaks, the ad flashes the words: “ObamaCare. It’s a tough sell.”
Verrilli did indeed interrupt his opening remarks to take a drink of water and he did stumble over his words at times in the first two minutes of his presentation, according to the audio released by the Supreme Court. However, the audio in the RNC ad combines and compresses those moments, which makes Verrilli sounds as though he interrupted his opening comments twice in a matter of seconds and stumbled over his words in quick succession.
An email sent to the RNC for comment was not immediately answered Thursday night.
Verrilli is identified in the ad as “Obama’s lawyer” rather than solicitor general, the administration official who represents the U.S. government in litigation before the Supreme Court.
In the RNC ad, Chief Justice John Roberts is heard introducing the case and calling on Verrilli to speak. “For more than 80 percent of Americans, the insurance system does provide effective access.” Verrilli stops speaking, then a tinkling sound is heard as he takes a drink of water from a glass. “Excuse me,” he says before clearing his throat and continuing: “Uh, it, uh, the, b-because the, uh, the, uh, the …” The sound of another drink of water comes and Verrilli again says, “Excuse me.”
The audio posted by the court contains the first “Excuse me,” but the verbal stumbling comes about 40 seconds later after he has resumed speaking. There is no second drink of water, at least for the next five minutes, only Verrilli presenting his argument and answering questions from the justices.
“It seems that Obama’s lawyer hit a bit of a snag trying to defend the constitutionality of Obama’s health care takeover,” the RNC says in a statement issued with the web ad. “Maybe he’s beginning to realize something the American people already know: It’s hard to defend a law that is indefensible.”
The news service Bloomberg first reported on the edited audio.
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Online:
RNC: www.gop.com
Supreme Court audio: http://apne.ws/Hft6z3
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