National Public Radio's (NPR) Washington headquarters is shown in this July 9, 2010 file photo. (Gingold Nicholas/SIPA/Newscom)
NPR and budget scrapes: Public radio has been here before
House Republicans Thursday aimed to strip NPR of federal funds by voting on legislation that would bar the US from subsidizing a public radio network that conservatives believe is biased against them.
GOP ire at NPR rose last week after a hidden camera sting taped an NPR official making derogatory comments about the tea party agenda and acknowledging that the network might be better off without federal funds. The head of NPR, Vivian Schiller, resigned as a result of the uproar.
Right now federal money, which is channeled through local stations for the most part, makes up about 10 percent of the public radio economy, according to NPR data. Losing that cash could hurt – particularly at rural stations without other ready sources of funds.
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But would it be the worst financial crisis in public radio’s history? Nope, far from it. That occurred not in 2011, but in 1983.
National Public Radio suffered a horrendous financial meltdown in the early Reagan era Overexpansion and lax management combined to produce a deficit that nearly sank the public-radio system a few years after its founding.
For NPR, it was a worse crisis than the one it faces today. Yes, today is bad: In mid-March a hidden-camera sting caught an NPR official saying that NPR would be better off without public funds. But in ’83, NPR had to be saved by an infusion of federal cash.
Ironically, the disaster came about in part because of “Project Independence” – an attempt by NPR officials to position their network to make do without federal subsidies.
Back then, NPR got about 70 percent of its money from Uncle Sam, according to a 1983 Congressional General Accounting Office report. (Today, federal funds account for about 10 percent of the total public radio economy.) But that subsidy was ramping back due to concern about the deficit.
At the same time, NPR program hours were exploding. And all those commentators and foreign bureaus and whispery-voiced anchors cost a lot of money. Expenses more than tripled in that period, to $27 million a year.
So NPR’s then-chief, Frank Mankiewicz, came up with the idea of tapping more foundations and corporations for grants, among other cash-generating efforts.
The plan was to get $7.3 million in these grants in 1983. But nobody bothered to tell the newly hired chief fundraiser that they needed that much. And two anticipated big donations fell through.
Uh-oh. By December, National Public Radio needed a loan of $7 million from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to make payroll. Mr. Mankiewicz stepped down and 60 lower-level staffers got laid off.
NPR agreed that from then on the CPB subsidy would go mostly to the stations, which would then pay NPR for programming. That’s the financing structure that’s in place today.
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An exploration of the presidential exploratory committee
What does a presidential exploratory committee do, anyway? Some potential 2012 candidates say they’re close to forming one. The name makes it sound like it outfits Oval Office wannabes with pith helmets and rope.
No, exploratory committees aren’t supported by The National Geographic Society. They’re legal entities that can raise and spend money so candidates can stick a toe in the waters of a presidential campaign and see if the temperature suits them. For instance, they can pay for travel, so potential candidates can discover if anyone in New Hampshire knows their name. They can pay for polls, so candidates can discover how less well-known they are than Sarah Palin.
What can’t they pay for? Yard signs and TV spots that promote someone’s candidacy. Stuff candidates have to do to qualify for ballots. Any concerted political activity as an actual vote nears. And if they want to keep their exploratory committee going, politicians with presidential aspirations have to watch their language when they publicly discuss running.
An individual is no longer in the testing-the-waters phase once he or she “makes or authorizes statements referring to him/herself as a candidate,” according to Federal Election Commission guidelines.
Candidates may opt to form exploratory committees for two main reasons. (They don’t have to, and not all of them do.)
The first is that it’s a legal halfway house between running and not. You can start up campaign bookkeeping without having to disclose where your money is coming from – although you are still subject to federal donation limits.
The second and perhaps more important reason is that it gets you attention. It’s a decision point the press will chew over for weeks. First, you – already knowing full well what your poll numbers are – hint that you might form an exploratory committee. Story! Then you say you’re close to a decision. Another story! Finally, you announce the actual formation. Story No. 3!
Then you go on “Piers Morgan Tonight” to hint about your actual declaration of candidacy, and the whole coy process begins again.
"Pirates on Deck of their Ship" by Niels Simonsen (1807-1885) (akg-images/Newscom)
US military in Tripoli? It's happened before.
Where did U.S. military forces fight their first land battle overseas? And this isn’t just a random history question – it has a connection to current events, as well as a famous song.
Give up?
The answer is... Libya. Or a city-state along the north African coast, which is currently part of Libya, anyway.
IN PICTURES: Somali pirates
Today the problem with Libya is Muammar Qaddafi’s brutality toward his own country’s protesters. But two centuries ago, the problem the West had with Libya was pirates.
Raiders from what Europeans then called the Barbary Coast began preying on US merchant ships in the 1780s. By the early 1800s, the US was tired of paying protection money to the Qaramanli pashas of Tripoli in an effort to get them to leave American trade alone. So the newly formed US Navy sailed to the waters off what is today Libya and began chasing down Tripoli privateers.
Most of these fights went America’s way. Not all of them, though.
In 1804, one skirmish ended with the frigate USS Philadelphia grounded on a reef and its crew captured. So an expeditionary force of US Marines and an army of about 500 Greek, Arab, and Berber mercenaries marched 600 miles across the desert from Egypt to seize the eastern Libyan city of Darnah. This show of force persuaded the Tripoli leadership to agree to ransom the Philadelphia’s sailors and sign a treaty of peace and friendship.
The Battle of Darnah – aka the Battle of Derna, or the Battle of Derne – was not just the first US land battle in a distant country, by the way. It was the first battle on foreign soil for the US Marines, too, and is immortalized in the first verse of the “Marines’ Hymn”:
“From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, we fight our country’s battles in the air, on land and sea.”
IN PICTURES: Somali pirates
Gilbert Stuart's Portrait of George Washington (NY Public Library)
Senate's annual reading of Washington farewell address: wisdom for ages
Quiz time! Which venerated American document other than the Constitution will be read aloud in its entirety in Congress this year?
You probably heard about the Constitution’s audiobook moment. The Republican-controlled House listened to the whole thing on Jan. 6, the second day of the current session. Members of both parties took turns reading lines, so it ended up as kind of a bipartisan activity.
But you may not know this: Every year near the end of February the Senate holds a reading of President George Washington’s 1796 Farewell Address to the People of the United States. Today the Senate will read the letter in which the most Founding Father of all announced that he had had it and was not going to be president for a third term, no how, now way.
The grind of keeping the young country together had worn him down. “The shade of retirement is as necessary to me as it will be welcome,” Washington wrote, somewhat darkly.
Washington intended his address to guide future generations of US citizens. He warned against the divisive nature of sectional rivalries and political factionalism, among other things.
“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension…is itself a frightful despotism,” wrote Washington.
(Keep in mind this was prior to the formation of stable US political parties, and Washington was all about the need for national unity. Still, those are pretty tough words.)
The Senate tradition of reading Washington’s words began as a morale-boosting measure on Feb. 22, 1862, during the dark days of the Civil War. By the late 1800s, it was a permanent event. A senator has read the 7,600-word address aloud in legislative session every year since 1896. Among those who have shouldered this duty are Henry Cabot Lodge, Prescott Bush (George W.’s grandfather), Hubert Humphrey, Ed Muskie, John McCain, and Barry Goldwater. Democrats and Republicans alternate.
One person who never read the address aloud was its author, as Washington’s Farewell Address was delivered by being published in newspapers.
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and the committee's ranking Democrat Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., refer to President Barack Obama's fiscal 2012 federal budget during a hearing in Washington Tuesday. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Federal budget fine print: $85 million to inspect eggs, more for OMB
What’s the budget for white House budget preparation? It’s about $92 million. At least that’s the appropriation for the presidential Office of Management and Budget (OMB), whose main job is to prepare and manage the executive branch budget plans.
How many people are eligible for Pentagon-provided health care? About 9 million, when you add together active-duty troops, their family members, and retirees.
How much does the United States spend inspecting (chicken) “egg plants”? About $85 million – less than OMB’s stipend, we might add.
And where do we find bits of trivia such as these? In the budget appendix, a dictionary-sized tome whose annual arrival Washington wonks celebrate as an early sign of spring.
The budget appendix is where you find out what’s really going on. It’s part of the budget proposal materials the White House submits to Congress every year. News reports focus on the budget top lines – the $3.7 trillion in total 2012 spending that President Obama just requested, and so on. The appendix shows you what’s beneath – far, far beneath. It notes the line-item spending for virtually everything the US government does.
In the appendix you can find out that the Department of Agriculture wants $12 million next year to dispose of brush in National Forests. You can find out that Congress has an attending physician whose office budget is about $3.2 million a year. And you can learn that the Army needs $16.6 billion to pay the salaries of its enlisted force in 2012.
It used to be hard to get a copy of the appendix (because it’s heavy and annoying to carry). But the Internet now makes it available to all.
Some might read it and find many instances of what they consider waste. Others might be reassured the government is hard at work on an array of stuff, most of it fairly reasonable.
Here’s a thought – maybe Congress should read the budget appendix out loud, in session. They did it with the Constitution. Why not the budget? They could go through it and debate the value of every line item.
It would keep them busy the rest of the year. Which might not be a bad thing.
An Egyptian man rides his camel as he looks for tourists next to Giza Pyramids after re-opening for tourism, in Egypt on Feb.14, 2011. Egypt's ruling military council has issued a new communique calling on labor leaders to stop strikes and protests to allow a sense of normalcy to return to the country. (AP/Emilio Morenatti)
US aid to Egypt: What does it buy?
The U.S. has given Egypt a lot of money over the years. How much? More than you probably think.
Since 1979, US assistance to Egypt has averaged about $2 billion a year, according to a new Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on US-Egyptian relations. That adds up to a whopping $64 billion.
In that period, Egypt has been the second-largest foreign recipient of US cash. (Israel is No. 1, in case you’re interested.) In part, that’s a legacy of the Camp David Accords. The United States promised generous aid packages to both Egypt and Israel in return for their making concessions to each other in a peace pact.
The accords’ architect, President Jimmy Carter, and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat got along like a house on fire, by the way. Maybe that had something to do with it – it’s always easier to write checks to people you like.
“In that relationship there was real warmth ... Sadat and the president just meshed well and accommodated each other,” said Carter administration National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski in his exit interview from the White House in 1981.
Here’s another distinguishing thing about US aid to Egypt: The vast majority of it is earmarked for the military. In recent years Egypt has received about $1.3 billion in military aid annually. Of that, about one-third goes to weapons maintenance, one-third to weapons upgrades, and one-third to weapons purchases, according to CRS. You’ve probably seen Egypt’s US-designed M1 tanks in news footage from Tahrir Square. Egypt has also bought American-made Apache helicopters, F-16 jet fighters, and Knox-class frigates.
US aid “covers as much as 80% of the [Egyptian] Defense Ministry’s weapons procurement costs,” estimates CRS.
What about aid to Egypt intended to promote democracy? Oh yeah, that. It’s been cut in recent years, and since 2009 has sat at about $20 million annually. Most of that has gone to Egyptian-approved government-to-government projects.
The bottom line here is that the impact of US democracy efforts in Egypt “has been limited,” in the words of a recent US AID Inspector General report.
[Editor's note: The original version misstated the agency connected with the Inspector General report.]
Valentines poems and sweet nothings from smitten US presidents
Presidents can be softies sometimes. Yes, they wearily shoulder the burden of leading the world’s most powerful nation. But many still find time to pen mushy notes to their snookums.
This Valentine’s Day season, we thought we’d flip through presidential love letters to find the most romantic chief executives. (Spousal love letters – this is a family newspaper.)
Here’s our countdown of the top six Presidents of Luv (original spelling and punctuation preserved):
6. John Tyler. Though his decision to annex Texas led to the Mexican-American War, Tyler had a poet's sensibilities. After his first wife died early in his presidency, he courted the much younger Julia Gardener via verse. In a poem he wrote for her, he contemplated giving love a second chance:
"Shall I again that Harp unstring,
Which long hath been a useless thing,
Unheard in Lady's bower?"
Tyler and Gardiner were married in 1844, in the first wedding for a sitting US president.
5. Woodrow Wilson. Surprised? He wasn’t just a stiff obsessed with the League of Nations. He wrote hundreds of beautiful letters to his first wife, Ellen Louise Axson, who died while he was in office. Then he fell hard for Washington widow Edith Galt. “My pride and joy and gratitude that you should love me with such a perfect love are beyond all expression,” he wrote her. They married in 1915.
4. Andrew Jackson. Old Hickory fought 13 duels, many (at least nominally) over perceived insults to the honor of his wife, Rachel. “May the angelic hosts that rewards and protects virtue and innocence ... be with you until I return,” he wrote her in 1813. Tragically, Rachel died two weeks before Jackson was elected president.
3. Harry Truman. The plain-spoken Truman relied heavily on support from his wife, Bess. They exchanged handwritten letters for 50 years. On July 29, 1945, he wrote her from Germany, where he was attending the Potsdam Conference: “It made me terribly home sick when I talked with you yesterday morning.... I spent the day after the call trying to think up reasons why I should bust up the Conference and go home.”
2. Ronald Reagan. Reagan wrote his beloved Nancy constantly, with special notes for anniversaries. On March 4, 1983, he wrote, “I more than love you, I’m not whole without you.”
1. John Adams. No surprise here – Adams and his wife, Abigail, were famously close. They exchanged thousands of serious, teasing, and loving missives. “Miss Adorable,” Adams once wrote her, “I hereby order you to give [me], as many kisses, and as many hours of your company ... as [I] shall please to demand, and charge them to my account.”
The Federal Reserve holds 9 percent of US debt. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
National debt: Whom does the US owe?
The U.S. owes somebody a whole pile of money. You knew that, right? Years of deficit spending have run up the national debt to a level that defines the word “stratosphere.” By the end of this year, the most commonly used measure of US debt – debt held by the public – will break $10 trillion for the first time.
But who is that somebody the US owes money to? Or who are the somebodies, since there isn’t one person sitting in an island lair plotting to enslave America via IOUs – no matter what Glenn Beck says about financier George Soros.
Well, most of them are US citizens, or US-based institutions. (“Debt held by the public” basically means anything not held by the federal government itself, so institutions count.) At the end of 2010, about 53 percent of US debt held by the public was held domestically, according to a recent study from the Congressional Budget Office.
Within this slice, the largest category is individuals – Treasury notes are good solid additions to any portfolio. US individuals hold 12 percent of the country’s debt. Next under the domestic category comes the Federal Reserve, which holds 9 percent of US debt, then pension and retirement funds, mutual funds, and state and local governments.
Foreigners hold about 47 percent of US public debt. And yes, the largest foreign holder here is China – but only by a hair. Chinese investors are owed 9.8 percent of US debt. Next comes Japan, at 9.6 percent, and the United Kingdom, at 5.1 percent.
Oil exporting nations as a group, including Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, etc., account for about 2.6 percent of US debt. Brazil has 1.8 percent. The rest is split among lots of other countries.
So if anybody tells you that Americans work for China now, since they hold all our T-notes and can yank our fiscal chain, tell them that’s an exaggeration. The vast majority of US debt is owed to non-Chinese, after all. Maybe we should worry about the British instead – that queen of theirs looks like a tough customer.
If anybody’s got an island lair, it’s probably her.
U.S. President Barack Obama delivers his first State of the Union address on Capitol Hill in Washington, January 27, 2010. (REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque)
How does seating at the State of the Union speech work?
At that pregnant moment just prior to a State of the Union speech, US presidents must gaze out on the audience before them in the House of Representatives and think, how did those people get their seats?
OK, maybe they don’t think that. But we did, so we looked into it. It turns out that seating at the State of the Union is by general admission, for the most part.
Traditionally, the State of the Union is delivered in the House chamber, which is bigger than the Senate’s. Senate leaders get a roped-off section down front, as do US Supreme Court justices and some other groups, such as diplomats.
How much do you know about the State of the Union speeches? A quiz.
But House members aren’t so privileged. The leadership gets reserved seats, but places for the rank and file are not assigned. (That’s true for daily sessions, by the way, as well as special ceremonies.) So anytime during the day of a State of the Union address, any representative may claim any chair for the coming evening festivities.
There’s a catch, though. “They must remain physically in the seat to retain their place for the speech,” notes a Congressional Research Service report on the tradition of SOTUs.
So it’s like camping out on the Capitol lawn to get a good spot for the July 4 concert by the National Symphony, apparently. If a member wants to make sure of a seat by the aisle so it’ll be easier to shake the president’s hand, he or she can show up early, carrying snacks and magazines, and settle in.
Of course, a few lawmakers are designated to stay away.It’s long been a tradition that one cabinet officer misses the SOTU. Since Sept. 11, 2001, congressional leaders have also picked two lawmakers from each chamber of Congress, representing both parties, to stay home and watch the speech on television. Just in case.
How much do you know about the State of the Union speeches? A quiz.
Outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California addresses the House after giving newly elected House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio the gavel Wednesday. (Charles Dharapak/AP)
Where did House and Senate's big gavels come from?
Where did the presiding officers of the House and Senate get those gavels they’re whapping on their desks? That’s a natural question that arises from watching the opening day of a new session of Congress.
OK, maybe it’s not a natural question so much as an odd thought that occurs to an inquisitive observer. Look at the hammer Speaker John Boehner has – it’s so big we bet it could whack $100 billion out of the budget all by itself. And the Senate one doesn’t even have a handle. It looks like an hour glass, or maybe an egg cup that majority leader Harry Reid brought from home.
It turns out that House and Senate gavels have very different provenances that speak to the profound differences in the chambers themselves.
The House gavel is prosaic and effective – a matter-of-fact professional’s tool. Most (there have been many) were made in the House carpenter’s shop. Their terms are short, like those of representatives. Some have even been shattered by autocratic House leaders. In 1906, then-Speaker Joseph Cannon hit his desk so hard the head of the gavel flew off and landed between the clerks on the lower tier of the rostrum.
In contrast, the Senate gavel is an artifact steeped in tradition. Until the mid-1950s, presiding officers of the Senate used a gavel reputed to date from the chamber’s first sessions in 1789. This knocker was a handle-free ivory cube carved from a single elephant tooth.
It held up pretty well over the years, but in 1954, during a heated debate on civilian nuclear power, then-Vice President Richard Nixon, who was presiding over the Senate at the time, hammered the gavel down so hard it broke into several pieces.
The newly independent nation of India supplied an ivory replacement. It’s a close replica of the 4-inch-tall original, except for a floral band carved around its center.
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