Government Motors: US Will Own 60% Of GM
WASHINGTON — General Motors, the humbled auto giant that has been part of American life for more than 100 years, will file for bankruptcy protection on Monday in a deal that will give taxpayers a 60 percent ownership stake and expand the government's reach into big business.
It would be the largest industrial bankruptcy in U.S. history, and the fourth-largest overall. In addition, a GM bankruptcy would be unprecedented as the federal government would pump billions more into the company.
Underscoring the government's extraordinary role, President Barack Obama planned to announce his support for GM's restructuring strategy at a midday appearance at the White House, much as he did in April when Chrysler sought court protection.
GM president and CEO Fritz Henderson planned to hold a news conference in New York immediately following Obama's announcement.
Administration officials said late Sunday the federal government would pump $30 billion dollars into GM as it makes its way through bankruptcy court. That's besides the $20 billion in taxpayers' money that the Treasury already lent to the automaker.
The $30 billion is to help GM through the Chapter 11 proceeding and move it through its restructuring plan. It doesn't have the money to run the business right now. The money would come from what remains of the $700 billion rescue fund for the financial sector.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity in advance of Obama's public remarks, said the administration expects the court process to last 60 to 90 days. If successful, GM will emerge as a leaner company with a smaller work force, fewer plants and a trimmed dealership force. The company will stick with its four core brands _ Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC _ and jettison four others.
The company plans to cut 21,000 employees, about 34 percent of its work force, and reduce the number of dealers by 2,600.
"There is still plenty of pain to go around, but I'm confident this is far better than the alternative," Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said Sunday after being briefed about the developments by the president. "It's a new beginning, it's a rebirth, it's a new General Motors."
The government's ownership stake and huge financial injection represents yet another remarkable intervention into the American private sector. The Treasury has stepped in to help banks, it has taken majority ownership in insurance conglomerate American International Group and it has guided Chrysler through bankruptcy protection proceedings.
Despite its sizable ownership, administration officials said the government intends to stay out of day-to-day management decisions. It says it intends to shed its ownership stakes "as soon as practicable."
The day to day operations will be carried out by GM's management. But a majority of the board of directors will change and the administration will have a hand in helping select them.
"Our goal is to promote strong and viable companies that can quickly be profitable and contribute to economic growth and jobs without government involvement," a fact sheet issued by the White House and the Treasury Department said.
Still, it was Obama who ordered the firing of former GM CEO Richard Wagoner a month ago. And it was the Obama administration that instructed GM to trim itself to a point that it could break even by selling 10 million cars a year. It's current break even point is 16 million cars.
Even as the White House stressed that it would run the day-to-day operation of the car company, the arrangement was fraught with potential conflicts. The Obama administration has proposed tougher fuel efficiency requirements that GM will need to abide by and has pumped billions into the auto company's lending arm and assured consumers that it will backstop GM warranties.
GM plans to name turnaround executive Al Koch to serve as its chief restructuring officer to help the company through bankruptcy protection, said a person familiar with the matter. The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity, was not authorized to speak about the appointment publicly.
Koch, a managing director with AlixPartners LLP, is a veteran turnaround specialist who helped Kmart Corp. through its Chapter 11 reorganization. He will lead the separation of the automaker's assets into a "New GM" and the remaining parts of the company that will form "Old GM." Koch will lead the management team that winds down the "Old GM" company once the automaker emerges from bankruptcy.
A majority of the Detroit automaker's unsecured bondholders have accepted a deal viewed as crucial to reorganization, and Germany agreed to loan $2 billion to GM's German unit, Opel, as part of its acquisition by a Canadian auto parts supplier.
The moves don't change much for GM, but better prepare it for a bankruptcy protection filing, said Rebecca Lindland, an auto analyst for the consulting firm IHS Global Insight.
"The more agreements GM has with its interests, the better the bankruptcy is going to go," she said. "It's not a game changer at all."
It would be the largest industrial bankruptcy in U.S. history, and the fourth-largest overall. In addition, a GM bankruptcy would be unprecedented as the federal government would pump billions more into the company, and take a 72.5 percent interest in the automaker.
On Sunday a group of large, institutional bondholders, representing 54 percent of GM bondholders, agreed to exchange their unsecured bonds for a 10 percent stake in a newly restructured company, plus warrants to purchase a greater share later. They had balked at an earlier offer, that gave them 10 percent of the company without the warrants.
Beyond the bankruptcy announcement Monday, GM is expected to reveal 14 plants it intends to close and name the buyer of its Hummer division. One of those plants, however, will reopen as a new small car factory. The decision to build the new car in the United States appears to address previous labor and congressional concerns that GM was considering importing a small car from its plants in China.
By building the car in the U.S., the share of U.S. produced cars for U.S. sale will increase from 66 percent to more than 70 percent.
In Germany on Sunday, the government agreed to loan GM's Opel unit $2.1 billion, a move necessary for Magna International Inc. to acquire the company.
The Canadian auto parts supplier Magna will take a 20 percent stake in Opel and Russian-owned Sberbank will take a 35 percent, giving the two businesses a majority. GM retains 35 percent of Opel, with the remaining 10 percent going to employees.
The German funds are available to Opel immediately, as it attempts to shield itself from cuts if GM files for bankruptcy protection. Opel employs 25,000 people in Germany, nearly half of GM Europe's work force. Under the deal, four factories in Germany would stay open saving jobs.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who was traveling to China, followed the developments closely. The Treasury on Thursday offered bondholders 10 percent of a newly formed GM's stock, plus warrants to buy 15 percent more to erase the debt. Last week, GM withdrew an offer of 10 percent equity after only 15 percent of the thousands of bondholders signed up.
The current 54 percent acceptance represents only $14.6 billion, but by lining up support in advance of a bankruptcy protection filing, GM is likely to find it easier to persuade a judge to apply terms of the sweetened offer to the rest of its unsecured debt.
It could also help the automaker get through the court process more quickly, said Robert Gordon, head of the corporate restructuring and bankruptcy group at Clark Hill PLC in Detroit.
The company made a huge stride toward restructuring Friday when the United Auto Workers union agreed to a cost-cutting deal.
GM's fate and the federal government's intervention was scrutinized on several Sunday morning talk shows.
"I think the government auto bailout was a big mistake," said Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on CNN's "State of the Union" program. "We could have let these companies go through the bankruptcy process much earlier."
In a typical Chapter 11 bankruptcy case, the company files a plan of reorganization that must be voted on by creditors. In each class of creditors, the plan would have to be approved by holders of two-thirds of the claims and a majority of the number of individual creditors who vote.
But the GM case is anything but ordinary, and it appears the company will sell some or all of its assets to a new entity that would become the new GM, rather than submit a plan to reorganize the old company.
GM's stock tumbled to the lowest price in the company's 100-year history on Friday, closing at just 75 cents after trading as low as 74 cents. In a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, the shares would become virtually worthless.
___
AP Auto Writers Kimberly S. Johnson and Tom Krisher in Detroit and AP Business Writer Harry Weber in Atlanta contributed to this report.
Jack Hidary: General Rick Sanchez calls for War Crimes Truth Commission
In front of a packed audience tonight at the Times theater in New York City, General Ricardo Sanchez, the former commander of all coalition forces in Iraq, called for a truth commission to get to the bottom of of the abuses and torture which occurred there.
The General described the failures at all levels of civilian and military command that led to the abuses in Iraq, "and that is why I support the formation of a truth commission."
The General went on to say that, "during my time in Iraq there was not one instance of actionable intelligence that came out of these interrogation techniques."
I interviewed General Sanchez after the event and asked him to elaborate on why he felt the US needed such a commission. "For the American people to really know what happened, " he replied, "...this was an institutional failure, a personal failure on the part of many...."
"If we do not find out what happened," continued the General, "then we are doomed to repeat it."
The event tonight was moderated by Rachel Maddow and featured General Sanchez, Vince Warren, exec director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and Ron Suskind, the author and reporter. The event tonight also featured Liev Schreiber, John Leguizamo and other actors who portrayed various characters from the topics at hand.
During the panel, Ron Suskind made an impassioned plea for the restoration of "American's moral energy." "It is this alone which can protect us in the future," he said. Suskind called Bush "the ultimate confidence man" who yearned for certainty over the nuanced feeling about of real life.
Maddow injected that this was a "toxic certainty" which distorted the decisions of the Bush-Cheney administration.
I interviewed Rachel Maddow after the event asking her if a truth commission is indeed a political possibility. "We have to rescue our institutions and restore faith in them," she responded. "With every passing day we are hemmoraging moral energy [as Ron Suskind had been discussing]."
I asked her what she thought of General Sanchez coming out with an open call for a truth commission. "He is not shirking the discussion, he wants to be part of it."
I also interviewed Vince Warren, the executive director of the Center for Consitional Rights. On the panel, he took issue with General Sanchez's call for a truth commission if that meant amnesty for those involved in violations of the Geneva Convention and other laws.
In our post-event interview Warrwn stated that "any commission that promises blanket amnesty to those who violated the law we could not support." He said that the case of the truth commission in South Africa was different as that country was going through a change in form of government.
I also interviewed Liev Schreiber. Liev shared that he has been "conflicted" about whether the President should disclose the new set of abuse photos. He said that he has "enormous confidence in the judgement of Barack Obama," and that "the President should be given the opportunity to have a clean slate."
Senator Patrick Leahy has called for a truth commission on the abuses in Iraq and set up a website to collect online signatures in support of the framework - www.BushTruthCommission.com. More than 113,000 people have signed so far since the site's launch in February of this year.
The event this evening was produced by the Culture Project and is intended to be first in a series that combine leading policy figures with top creative talent.
Tonight is the first time a senior military officer from the Iraqi theater has called for a truth commission.
EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT FROM ‘RENEGADE’: Obama On Clinton Pick: “I’m Not Begging Her To Take This Job”
In an exclusive excerpt from Newsweek Senior White House correspondent Richard Wolffe's new book, "Renegade: The Making of a President," Wolffe details the internal debates within the Obama camp over whether to select Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.
Wolffe will discuss his new book on NBC's "Today" show on Monday morning.
Of all his transition choices, none was easier to make, or more complex to execute, than Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. Obama had long wanted his former rival on his team, no matter what his friends and aides said about her aggressive campaign... His staff opposed the idea for the most part, arguing that Clinton would never be truly loyal. But Obama was willing to leave the primaries behind, including his own strong feelings at the time. "I don't hold grudges," he told his aides. "I don't worry about the past. I'm concerned about what happens now. If she can help me and Bill Clinton isn't too much of a liability, we should seriously look at this." ...Obama was under no illusion about the legacy of the long primary season. During one transition meeting, Obama said he wanted to offer Clinton the diplomatic job. "I'm really interested in pursuing this, but I know she has some hard feelings coming out of this campaign." Emanuel and John Podesta, the former Clinton official who ran the transition, assured Obama that she was over those hard feelings now. Obama smiled and said, "Believe me. She's not over it yet."
His decision to offer her the job of secretary of state came surprisingly early. Well before the end of the primaries, when his staff and friends still felt hostile to her, Obama decided that Clinton possessed the qualities to carry his diplomacy to the rest of the world. "We actually thought during the primary, when we were pretty sure we were going to win, that she could end up being a very effective secretary of state," he told me later. "I felt that she was disciplined, that she was precise, that she was smart as a whip, and that she would present a really strong image to the world...I had that mapped out."
Recruiting and managing a team of rivals would not be easy, and Clinton came with her own set of issues. Chief among them was her campaign debt, which she wanted eliminated before she took the job of secretary of state. Would the president-elect go out and help her to do so? "I'm not begging her to take this job," Obama told his senior aides. "If she wants it, I could help. But I'm not willing to go out in these difficult economic times to do a flashy fundraiser in California." As it happened, plenty of people in the Senate were begging Obama to offer Clinton the job. Obama's aides believed that many Senate Democrats thought Clinton had extended her presidential campaign far beyond the point where she had lost the election. Her negative advertising wasted Democratic money, threatened to undermine the party's nominee, and suggested that she was disloyal to the party. They were unwilling to offer the junior New York senator a position ahead of her lowly rank, and she stood little chance of becoming majority leader. "There was a lot of encouragement from inside the Senate to get her into this job," said one senior Obama aide. "They wanted her out of there." ...
As for controlling the uncontrollable Bill Clinton, Obama's aides drew up a series of checks on his fundraising for both Clinton Global Initiative and his work on HIV/AIDS across the world. But they really counted on Hillary to be the ultimate safeguard - against both her husband and her own ambition. "It's in her interests to keep him in line," warned one senior Obama aide. Others in Obama's inner circle said the president-elect believed Clinton needed to demonstrate that she was a team player and to shape her own career and legacy. "There are plenty who don't trust her and think she still harbors something," said another senior adviser. "It's still potentially problematic down the road. Barack's thinking on this is that it's not in her interests to mess with us. She can't win that fight internally and she's smart enough that she won't want that fight publicly."
Several weeks into the administration, even Clinton's internal critics believed the relationship was a success. "They have both worked really hard at it," said one senior White House official. "There's a natural affinity and respect that ironically grew out of being opponents. You get to know someone really well after all that."
EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT FROM ‘RENEGADE’ – Obama On Clinton Pick: “I’m Not Begging Her To Take This Job”
In an exclusive excerpt from Newsweek Senior White House correspondent Richard Wolffe's new book, "Renegade: The Making of a President," Wolffe details the internal debates within the Obama camp over whether to select Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.
Wolffe will discuss his new book on NBC's "Today" show on Monday morning.
Of all his transition choices, none was easier to make, or more complex to execute, than Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. Obama had long wanted his former rival on his team, no matter what his friends and aides said about her aggressive campaign... His staff opposed the idea for the most part, arguing that Clinton would never be truly loyal. But Obama was willing to leave the primaries behind, including his own strong feelings at the time. "I don't hold grudges," he told his aides. "I don't worry about the past. I'm concerned about what happens now. If she can help me and Bill Clinton isn't too much of a liability, we should seriously look at this." ...
Obama was under no illusion about the legacy of the long primary season. During one transition meeting, Obama said he wanted to offer Clinton the diplomatic job. "I'm really interested in pursuing this, but I know she has some hard feelings coming out of this campaign." Emanuel and John Podesta, the former Clinton official who ran the transition, assured Obama that she was over those hard feelings now. Obama smiled and said, "Believe me. She's not over it yet."His decision to offer her the job of secretary of state came surprisingly early. Well before the end of the primaries, when his staff and friends still felt hostile to her, Obama decided that Clinton possessed the qualities to carry his diplomacy to the rest of the world. "We actually thought during the primary, when we were pretty sure we were going to win, that she could end up being a very effective secretary of state," he told me later. "I felt that she was disciplined, that she was precise, that she was smart as a whip, and that she would present a really strong image to the world...I had that mapped out."
Recruiting and managing a team of rivals would not be easy, and Clinton came with her own set of issues. Chief among them was her campaign debt, which she wanted eliminated before she took the job of secretary of state. Would the president-elect go out and help her to do so? "I'm not begging her to take this job," Obama told his senior aides. "If she wants it, I could help. But I'm not willing to go out in these difficult economic times to do a flashy fundraiser in California." As it happened, plenty of people in the Senate were begging Obama to offer Clinton the job. Obama's aides believed that many Senate Democrats thought Clinton had extended her presidential campaign far beyond the point where she had lost the election. Her negative advertising wasted Democratic money, threatened to undermine the party's nominee, and suggested that she was disloyal to the party. They were unwilling to offer the junior New York senator a position ahead of her lowly rank, and she stood little chance of becoming majority leader. "There was a lot of encouragement from inside the Senate to get her into this job," said one senior Obama aide. "They wanted her out of there." ...
As for controlling the uncontrollable Bill Clinton, Obama's aides drew up a series of checks on his fundraising for both Clinton Global Initiative and his work on HIV/AIDS across the world. But they really counted on Hillary to be the ultimate safeguard - against both her husband and her own ambition. "It's in her interests to keep him in line," warned one senior Obama aide. Others in Obama's inner circle said the president-elect believed Clinton needed to demonstrate that she was a team player and to shape her own career and legacy. "There are plenty who don't trust her and think she still harbors something," said another senior adviser. "It's still potentially problematic down the road. Barack's thinking on this is that it's not in her interests to mess with us. She can't win that fight internally and she's smart enough that she won't want that fight publicly."
Several weeks into the administration, even Clinton's internal critics believed the relationship was a success. "They have both worked really hard at it," said one senior White House official. "There's a natural affinity and respect that ironically grew out of being opponents. You get to know someone really well after all that."
Robert Kuttner: A Real Pecora Commission
In 1932 through 1934 the Senate Banking Committee, led by its Chief Counsel Ferdinand Pecora, ferreted out the deeper fraud and corruption that led to the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. The Pecora Committee's findings helped change the political mood, and laid the groundwork for the sweeping financial reforms of Roosevelt's New Deal. Roosevelt himself often conferred with Pecora, encouraged him, and depended on Pecora's work to build the public support for reform. He appointed Pecora to one of the newly created results of his handiwork, the Securities and Exchange Commission, though Pecora was disappointed not to be its chairman.
President Obama has now signed legislation, The Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009, which among other things creates an investigative commission inspired by Pecora.
The new Financial Markets Commission has a sweeping mandate, including subpoena powers, to investigate all the causes of the collapse. The list is as comprehensive as one could wish for.
FUNCTIONS OF THE COMMISSION.--The functions of the Commission are--
(1) to examine the causes of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States, specifically the role of--
(A) fraud and abuse in the financial sector, including fraud and abuse towards consumers in the mortgage sector;
(B) Federal and State financial regulators, including the extent to which they enforced, or failed to enforce statutory, regulatory, or supervisory requirements;
(C) the global imbalance of savings, international capital flows, and fiscal imbalances of various governments;
(D) monetary policy and the availability and terms of credit;
(E) accounting practices, including, mark-to-market and fair value rules, and treatment of off-balance sheet vehicles;
(F) tax treatment of financial products and investments;
(G) capital requirements and regulations on leverage and liquidity, including the capital structures of regulated and non-regulated financial entities;
(H) credit rating agencies in the financial system, including, reliance on credit ratings by financial institutions and Federal financial regulators, the use of credit ratings in financial regulation, and the use of credit ratings in the securitization markets;
(I) lending practices and securitization, including the originate-to-distribute model for extending credit and transferring risk;
(J) affiliations between insured depository institutions and securities, insurance, and other types of nonbanking companies;
(K) the concept that certain institutions are ''too-big-to-fail'' and its impact on market expectations;
(L) corporate governance, including the impact of company conversions from partnerships to corporations;
(M) compensation structures;
(N) changes in compensation for employees of financial companies, as compared to compensation for others with similar skill sets in the labor market;
(O) the legal and regulatory structure of the United States housing market;
(P) derivatives and unregulated financial products and practices, including credit default swaps;
(Q) short-selling;
(R) financial institution reliance on numerical models, including risk models and credit ratings;
(S) the legal and regulatory structure governing financial institutions, including the extent to which the structure creates the opportunity for financial institutions to engage in regulatory arbitrage;
(T) the legal and regulatory structure governing investor and mortgagor protection;
(U) financial institutions and government-sponsored enterprises; and
(V) the quality of due diligence undertaken by financial institutions;
(2) to examine the causes of the collapse of each major financial institution that failed (including institutions that were acquired to prevent their failure) or was likely to have failed if not for the receipt of exceptional Government assistance from the Secretary of the Treasury during the period beginning in August 2007 through April 2009;
It's hard to improve on that. Whether the commission carries out this mandate, Pecora-style, will depend entirely on who its chair and members are, and whether they hire a tough staff. The ten commission members are to be appointed, three by the Speaker of the House, three by the Senate Majority Leader, and two each by their Republican counterparts. The Staff Director is to be hired jointly by the Chair (a Democrat) and the Vice-Chair (a Republican). Interestingly, none are to be appointed by the White House, and President Obama has already issued a signing statement reserving the right to invoke executive privilege in cases where materials or testimony from the executive branch are requested under subpoena.
To get a flavor of what the original Pecora Committee did, consider this observation from Donald A. Ritchie, associate senate historian, in his study, "The Pecora Wall Street Expose""
With the power of the subpoena, his staff would descend upon a banker or broker, and go through is records, file drawer by file drawer, page by page, selecting and photostating documents. Staff lawyers and accountants would assemble this material to reconstruct motivations, discrepancies, delinquencies, and frauds involved. They drew a multitude of charts, tracing every event and statistic. After narrowing down the documentation, they outlined the subject's transactions in chronological narrative on letter-sized sheets with citations in the margins to specific documents which could prove each assertion.
Will the new Financial Markets Commission be this diligent in exposing the facts and kindling public demands for sweeping reform? You can be sure that House Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will be getting friendly calls urging them not to make appointments that will embarrass the administration.
Three names have surfaced in the financial press as possible chairs, supposedly based on leaks from the Democratic leadership: Paul Volcker, 81, the former Fed Chairman, Arthur Levitt, Jr., 78, SEC Chairman during the Clinton era, and retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, 79. Volcker, an honest conservative, has turned against financial deregulation in recent years, and Levitt was a reasonably tough SEC chair, who bucked (and sometimes buckled) in the face of intense Congressional pressure from both parties not to crack down on abuses. Levitt now advises one of the most powerful private equity companies, the Carlyle Group, not exactly a constituency for tough reform.
Here are two better names:
*Paul Sarbanes, the retired Senate Banking Committee chairman. Sarbanes, a well-liked senator with admirers in both parties was both highly expert, incorruptable, and tough. In the fight to get what became the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, cracking down on accounting fraud, he showed real leadership. Sarbanes, now a vigorous 76, stepped down in 2006.
*Harvey Goldschmid, probably the most expert and public-minded SEC commissioner in recent decades. Goldschmid, 69, is now a law professor at Columbia. He was seriously considered by President Obama to chair the SEC, but was passed over in favor of the somewhat weaker Mary Schapiro.
It is important that this investigation be conducted not by a figurehead, but by one with the knowledge, passion, and predisposition to build the public case for sweeping reform, and without fear or favor.
Some Republicans, such as Richard Shelby, the ranking minority member on the Senate Banking Committee, are as disgusted with the Wall Street corruption as progressive Democrats are, though that does not describe the minority leaders in either house, Sen. Mitch McConnell and Rep. John Boehner, who will make the Republican appointments.
This could be one of those rare, historic commissions that changes the course of history -- or it could be window-dressing. Stay tuned.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and a senior fellow at Demos www.demos.org. His recent book is "Obama's Challenge: America's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency".
Cristina Page: The Murder of Dr. Tiller, a Foreshadowing
For those who would like to think today's murder in church of Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider, is an isolated incident, here's the horrifying news: You are wrong. The pattern is clear and frightening.
In March 1993, three months into the administration of our first pro-choice president, Bill Clinton, abortion provider Dr. David Gunn was murdered in Pensacola, Florida. That was the beginning of what would become a five-fold increase in violence against abortion providers throughout the Clinton years.
Today's assassination of Dr. George Tiller comes 5 months into the term of our second pro-choice president. For anyone who would like to believe that this is a statistical anomaly, a coincidence that doesn't portend anything, again, you are wrong.
During the entire Bush administration, from 2000-2008 there were no murders.
During the Clinton era, between 1994-2000 there were 6 abortion providers and clinic staff murdered, and 17 attempted murders of abortion providers (one of these attempts was on Dr. Tiller who was shot in both arms.) There were 12 bombings or arsons during the Clinton years.
During the Bush administration, not only were there no murders, there were no attempted murders. There was one clinic bombing during the Bush years.
One can only conclude that like terrorist sleeper cells, these extremists have now been set in motion. Indeed the evidence is already there. The chatter, the threats, the hate-filled rhetoric are abundant.
In the last year of the Bush administration there were 396 harassing calls to abortion clinics. In just the first four months of the Obama administration that number has jumped to 1401.
And so the execution of Tiller, 67, is not only tragic but ominous. He was born into an era when being an abortion provider meant saving women's lives. And the cold-blooded murder in church and in front of his wife of this stalwart defender of women rights and beloved physician, comes as a message for others, as well as tragic deja vu.
Battered women are at greatest danger of being killed by their abusers when they are most strong -- that is, when they muster the courage to leave. The same phenomenon may be true in the abusive political abortion debate. The pro-choice movement, specifically our abortion providers, are in the greatest danger of violence when we take power. When the anti-abortion movement loses power, their most extreme elements appear to move to the fore and take control. The murder of Dr. Tiller suggests that violence against abortion providers may be far more linked to the power, or lack thereof, anti-abortion groups have politically than to laws designed to increase penalties against such acts.
History has another disturbing lesson for us. The escalation of anti-abortion rhetoric plays a direct role in instigating violence. When anti-abortion groups ratchet up the rhetoric, they know exactly what they're doing and the results it will have. Even if they maintain deniability, as Operation Rescue recently did saying, in effect, we wanted Tiller gone, but didn't want him murdered, they have inflamed the rhetoric. And suddenly people Like Dr. Tiller's murderer become inspired.
Eleanor Bader, author of Targets of Hatred: Anti-Abortion Terrorism, in an article in March for RHRealityCheck.org about clinics bracing for an uptick in violence after the election of Obama wrote, "immediately after Obama's election, Douglas Johnson, Legislative Director of the National Right to Life Committee, called him a "hardcore pro-abortion president." The American Life League dubbed him "one of the most radical pro-abortion politicians ever," and Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life warned that Obama will "force Americans to pay for the killing of innocents." Americans United for Life, the Family Research Council and Operation Save America quickly joined the chorus."
Bader interviewed clinic staff -- many seeing a direct relationship between the pro-choice victory in November and increased aggression against them and their patients. Claire Keyes, of Allegheny Reproductive Health in Pittsburgh, explained:
Right after the election we saw a small upsurge in anti-abortion activity. But since the inauguration, things have gotten measurably worse. There's been an increase in picketing by students from Franciscan University in Ohio. On Saturdays there are 60-plus protesters and there's been an increase in screaming and aggression. We don't have a parking lot so people park on the street. The antis have surrounded cars, trapping the women inside, and in several cases the antis jumped into vehicles and touched or grabbed at them. The police were called but so far they don't seem to be responding appropriately.
Bader also quotes Elizabeth Barnes, Executive Director of the Philadelphia Women's Center, who explained, "When the pendulum swung in the direction of protecting women's rights, we expected something. The way the antis are reacting has changed, they're taking more liberties, pressing the boundaries of legal, civil protest."
Many in the pro-choice movement believed that the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) law, passed in 1994 in response to Gunn's murder, was responsible for reigning in violence against abortion providers. Clearly that is not the case. Based on statistics on violence against abortion providers compiled by the National Abortion Federation, even after the passage of FACE in 1994, there was still considerable violence and threats against clinic personnel, including six murders. As appears clear, the pro-choice movement has looked through rose-colored glasses, assuming or hoping that legalities can restrain terrorists.
In fact, it didn't abate after FACE, as we've seen. It was not until a comforting anti-abortion president did they calm down and stop the murder, bombing and harassment spree.
As we are witnessing now, Bush policies resulted in a surge in abortions. That has failed to inspire introspection from anti-abortion groups. That Clinton presided over the most dramatic decline in abortion rates in the recorded history of our country left them unmoved. That Obama has assigned his senior-most staff to the task of finding ways to reduce the need for abortion has not protected clinics nor providers nor Obama. Holder and his Justice Department should take note of the chatter and move aggressively against this form of domestic terrorism. The hate-filled rhetoric against Obama from the anti-abortion movement is at unprecedented levels, even for this reflexively inflammatory group. They refer to him as the "Most Pro-Abortion President Ever" ignoring the fact that he is the first to extend an olive branch in hopes that together we can make abortion more rare.
Anti-abortion groups will put out carefully worded press statements condemning the murder of Dr. Tiller, as became routine for them during the Clinton years. But unless the rhetoric they choose from now on becomes careful too -- they may be the enablers of murder and terror.
Gail Vida Hamburg: President Obama’s “Spock” Rationale On Iraq War Investigation Untenable
In a recent interview with Newsweek, President Obama mentioned seeing the latest Star Trek movie and that everybody was saying he was Spock. In another interview a while ago, the First Lady said, "The President is a very rational man."
This explains a lot. The President's refusal to investigate the Bush Administration's policies and actions relating to the Iraq War is the embodiment of Vulcan logic, free from messy human emotions and moral obligation.
The President has said he wishes the country to move forward instead of looking back--a nice mantra for our collective denial. Let's nail that to the wall, next to Bush Labor secretary, Elaine Chao's call to Iraqi women after their lives had been reduced to rubble by 'Shock and Awe': "In a democracy, the most important factor is energy." Taxidriver husband in Abu Ghraib? Daughter raped in US custody? Teenage son sodomized with a truncheon? Never mind all that. The cure for your blue funk, citizen of Iraq -- whom we saved from Saddam, (ignore that pesky photograph of your Lion with our Fox, Donald Rumsfeld) - is to move forward, without looking back ... with energy.
Other countries have seen the necessity for truth and reconciliation. In Congo and elsewhere, where perpetrators and victims of human rights violations and atrocities are often known to each other--frequently they're neighbors--truth and reconciliation forums are seen as a necessary instrument, one that allows perpetrators and victims to continue living in the same community.
"Taking into account collective memory and the inadequacies of the justice system, one must set up a mechanism which will help people to express themselves, giving truth its proper place. It would help people to freely discuss, as though in a family, those events in which they were the perpetrators or the victims, thus creating an atmosphere for reconciliation," said Gilberta Tandia, a human rights activist in Congo.
There are those who wish President Obama to release the remaining photographs that show, according to General Antonio Taguba, "torture, abuse, rape and every indecency." I am not one of them. I have lived and traveled in Muslim countries long enough to know that strong notions of modesty, shame, communal and familial judgement, and the fear of honor killings of women believed to have been raped in US custody, would prevent most Muslim men and women from supporting the release of these photographs.
But the Pentagon's recent denial that photographs of Iraqi prisoner abuse do not include images of rape and sexual abuse is a confabulation. Following Donald Rumsfeld's testimony on the Abu Ghraib hearings in 2004, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R. South Carolina) said, "The American public needs to understand we're talking about rape and murder here." Press Secretary Robert Gibbs can thrash the British media and disavow information all he wants, but this isn't 1990 and this isn't Myanmar. There's this hardly worth mentioning, insignificant little archivist and global memory keeper that can call you a liar in less than a New York minute.
Accounts of these atrocities have already been reported in news outlets around the world including Guardian UK and Australia Age, and the images of rape have already been published in various online news outlets such as La Voz de Aztlan and Jihad Unspun, and posted on porn sites including the Norwegian based Sex and War. According to a 2004 article in La Voz de Aztlan, which was accompanied by photographs of the rape of a young girl in US custody, "It is now known that hundreds of these photographs had been in circulation among the troops in Iraq. The graphic photos were being swapped between the soldiers like baseball cards ... Speaking on condition of anonymity, one Mexican-American soldier told La Voz de Aztlan, 'Maybe the officers didn't know what was going on, but everybody else did. I have seen literally hundreds of these types of pictures.' 'Many of the pictures was destroyed last September when the luggage of soldiers was searched as they left Iraq,' he said."
Vice-President Dick 'We have nothing to apologize for' Cheney, and in the last few days, President George 'I will yield when my gut does' Bush, have made their case, with passion free from logic and legality, about the rightness of the Iraq War and US sponsored torture. We may continue to tolerate their justifications for the biggest American foreign policy blunder of all time, with the bewilderment we reserve for incoherent, delusional people. And we can keep lulling ourselves into a stupor with objective American journalism: "President Bush and VP Cheney say sun rises in the west, others disagree," and unquestioning American patriotism that makes no distinction between the honorable men and women who serve in the military, and the thugs and criminals among them.
But, the longer we wait to investigate how and why our government went to war on false premises, and why our military suspended fundamental American rules of war and violated international laws in the process, the more our national security will be compromised by those who are enraged by our actions and conduct.
The American people may not have the stomach for a lengthy war crimes tribunal to assign guilt and mete out punishment in these precarious times, but we should care enough to at least demand the truth. We ought to support a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for the Iraq War that includes Americans and Iraqis. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) has made such a proposal.
The model for truth and reconciliation work and its success is the commission that was established in South Africa to address the horrors of apartheid. According to South Africa's Justice Minister then, "it was a necessary exercise to enable South Africans to come to terms with their past on a morally accepted basis and to advance the cause of reconciliation."
President Obama promised transparency as the bedrock of his administration. He would do well to consider Captain Picard's words in Star Trek: "With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." President Obama's failure to address Bush policies and actions in Iraq makes his administration complicit in the Iraq War, and keeps us from doing repair with each other, with Iraqis, and with the wider world.
Rob Richie: Britain may adopt instant runoff voting for next general election
The "special relationship" between the United Kingdom and its former colony the United States can extend to the countries' respective politics. British prime minister Margaret Thatcher achieved power just before Ronald Reagan was elected president with similar messaging, while in the 1990s Bill Clinton and Tony Blair both won with shared "third way" politics.
Institutionally, however, there are big differences The U.K. has a parliamentary system, far fewer checks and balances and a far less developed federal system of government. But the countries share (with only a handful of exceptions) one key rule for their elected national legislatures: plurality voting in single-member district elections.
That may soon change. Alan Johnson, a leading contender to lead the Labor Party if embattled prime minister Gordon Brown steps aside, on May 25th announced his support for a national referendum on adoption of the "Alternative Vote plus" electoral reform plan recommended in 1998 by a commission led by Lord Roy Jenkins. The "alternative vote" is the British term for instant runoff voting (IRV). Under Johnson's plan for the House of Commons, IRV would be used to elect the bulk of the seats from single-member districts. Additional "top up" seats would be elected based on voters' party preferences to provide more proportional representation within regions - e.g., provided a fairer reflection of voter intent, along the lines of the mixed member system used to elect the Bundestag in Germany and a growing number of national legislatures. Mixed member systems combine guaranteed geographic representation in single-member districts with additional seats to balance out the distortions of winner-take-all and make every vote count for representation no matter wherever it is cast. IRV will better ensure that the winners of district elections reflect majority preference within their district.
Johnson laid out his support for "AV+" on May 25th in the Times of London. Reacting to a scandal involving money in politics, Johnson said, "We need to overhaul the engine, not just clean the upholstery." After describing how instant runoff voting would work for the constituency seats and the role of top-off seats, he argued that: "The adoption of AV+ would shift the political focus currently concentrated almost exclusively on a few swing voters in a handful of marginal seats. It would end the perversity of the party with the most votes nationally forming the opposition rather than the government, as has happened twice since the war." Johnson's argument closely tracks our reform case in the United States for replacing the Electoral College with a national popular vote and establishing a more proportional system for legislative election.
Johnson's position sparked a lively week of commentary and speeches by nearly every major political figure in the United Kingdom. A referendum on proportional voting remains very much on the table, with a new vigorous coalition pushing for it led by Make Votes Count. Regardless of what happens with the referendum campaign, there is more immediate consensus in the governing Labor Party to support instant runoff voting as a start, perhaps in time for next year's election. Here's a sampling of the week's commentary and coverage:
* David Lipsey, a Labour peer and member of the 1998 Jenkins report on electoral reform, in The Independent on May 30th, with a column entitled "Let the public decide on PR"
Electoral reform on the Jenkins model would precisely address the present problems. Jenkins's first major change was to propose the alternative vote (AV) for constituency MPs. Voters would list constituency candidates in order of preference. Those with the fewest votes would be eliminated and their votes would be transferred to stronger candidates until one candidate had 50 per cent plus one votes. ... One solution to this is to adopt the first half of the Jenkins solution, the AV [Alternative Vote], straight away. A bill to this effect would certainly pass the Commons with Lib Dem and most Labour support. It should survive Tory opposition in the House of Lords. For surely even their lordships would not seek to stand in the way of a measure that would so clearly increase the power of the electorate to decide which individuals deserved to represent them in the new parliament.
* * * * *
Former cabinet ministers David Blunkett and Peter Hain in favor of voting reform, a news article in the Guardian, May 29, 2009:
Senior figures in the Labour party are moving towards a consensus on the need to accept voting reform as part of a radical change in the political system. Supporters and opponents of proportional representation, writing in the Guardian tomorrow, appear to be converging on the introduction of an alternative vote (AV) system in single member constituencies, allowing the public to rank candidates in order of preference rather than simply marking a cross against one candidate when electing a new MP.
Former cabinet minister David Blunkett... admits he could "wear the alternative vote system if I had to" provided it is not linked with a top-up system of MPs drawn from party lists.... Peter Hain, another former cabinet minister, who believes the present first-past-the-post system is "appropriate for an era of two-party dominance" nearly 60 years ago, also comes out in favour of AV.....He backs the AV option, saying: "The winner has to have more than 50% of voter support; just a third of MPs currently do so. AV retains accountability through the single member seat and produces a better relationship between the votes cast and seats won than the existing system."'
* * * * *
It's as easy as 1, 2, 3 - Peter Hain's May 28th commentary in the Guardian:
The grubby, self-inflicted disrepute into which parliament has fallen demands not just cleansing MPs' expenses of duck islands, luxury lifestyle items and second home "flipping", but wholesale constitutional reform. There is a yawning democratic deficit and we need to create a politics which is genuinely pluralist and empowering....
AV is much fairer, the single member seat would be retained, and there is less scope for "wasted" votes as electors can express their first preferences which might encourage turnout. There would be less geographic bias which sees either Labour or Tories under-represented in regions where both still have significant support. And it is simple....It is also by far the most practical, and could be introduced quickly in time for the next election. No boundary changes taking years would be required. And it is the only option the Commons has either ever voted for (in 1931), or would now do so, because MPs are unlikely to vote themselves out of their seats - as would certainly be required for PR.
There is one other important plus. Because the AV is an adjustment to the current system, not (like PR) a wholesale change involving abolition of parliamentary constituencies, there is no case for the referendum rightly promised over PR. Electors would hardly thank parliament for indulging in all the costly paraphernalia of a referendum which invited them to state whether they wanted to confine their vote as now to 1 - or have the option of voting 1, 2, 3....
First-past-the-posters in Labour can live with the AV. So can Labour's PR advocates like Alan Johnson. Liberal Democrats wouldn't champion it, but would probably back its parliamentary passage. There is now a window of opportunity for a Great Reform Bill that may not come around again for a generation, if ever. It should be introduced this autumn and taken through in the coming parliamentary session so that it is in place before the next election. Labour should seize this moment now, ideally with all-party support; but if not, then so be it. Our system is broken and, if traditionalist MPs in all parties are allowed long-grass reform yet again, citizens really will not forgive us.
* * * * *
Alan Johnson's proposals to reform voting system win Cabinet support, news analysis in May 26th Times of London
Plans to reform the voting system put forward by Alan Johnson are receiving growing support in Cabinet and could be included in the next Labour manifesto, the Times has learnt. Up to 100 Labour MPs have expressed interest in electoral reform, putting the Health Secretary at the forefront of a popular party campaign. This comes at a critical moment after a torrid few weeks for Gordon Brown and the Labour Party. Some suggest that Mr. Johnson is a future party leader. He has indicated that he might be capable of the top job.
Mr. Johnson wrote in yesterday's Times that the public should be asked whether they wanted a more proportional voting system for elections to Westminster, an idea that appeared to have broad support in government. He said that voters should be asked whether they would support an "alternative vote plus" system for choosing MPs, rather than the current first-past-the-post system.
This would mean voters receiving two ballot papers on polling day. The first would be used to rank their choice of constituency MP in order of preference and the second to state their favoured party. Votes on this second ballot would be added up and those that exceeded a 5 per cent threshold would get a proportionate number of seats. Several members of the Cabinet expressed support for the plan but said that the vast majority of MPs must be linked to constituencies. ...
Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, supports the alternative system, although he rejects any form of proportional representation (PR) that would allow backroom deals and disproportionate power for small parties. Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, is said to have an open mind on the debate but would not lead the charge for PR. John Denham, the Skills Secretary, said: "One of the ways we can reconnect politicians with the voters is to increase the power of the voters. Letting people choose the electoral system would be a huge step forward."
* * * * *
Cabinet minister Andrew Adonis details support for AV plus in The Independent on May 31st:
He [Adonis] is happy to argue the merits of constitutional reform and to defend the nearly forgotten scheme devised by Jenkins. "I strongly support his 1998 report of the 'Alternative Vote plus' system. It is a sensible balance between retaining the primacy of single-member constituencies while allowing an element of proportionality. He regarded it as important to retain the single-member constituency which goes back to the beginning of the representative system in Britain. And I agree with him much more now, having been a minister, than I did before. Constituency MPs who do a conscientious job are a phenomenal powerhouse for their constituents. However, you have to address the fact that first-past-the-post in individual constituencies can produce results that are way out of line with the voting intentions of the public at large, and hence Roy set a 15 to 20 proportional top-up as a fair way of addressing the balance."
* * * * *
Is this all talk or is change really possible? Time will tell, and Labor leaders may ultimately do too little too late. But the House of Commons is the U.K.'s last bastion of plurality voting due to the fact that its leaders over the past dozen years have been far bolder and more innovative with electoral reform than their American counterparts. During Blair's tenure as prime minister, the Labor government enacted the following policy changes affecting voting methods:
* The United Kingdom created regional governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland that are all elected by forms of proportional voting -- mixed member in Scotland and Wales and choice voting (a.k.a, "single transferable vote") in Northern Ireland.
* London established a government with a mayor and city council. The mayor is directly elected by a form of instant runoff voting (candidates must finish in the top two and voters are allowed only two choices). The city council is elected by the mixed member system. The two systems have combined to establish an a likely enduring multi-party politics.
* The UK elects its representatives to the European Parliament by the closed party list form of proportional voting, as will be used in elections this June.
* Scotland adopted choice voting for all its local elections in 2007 and is now expanding its use for more elections.
In the United States, political leaders have been far more cautious, even when confronted with similar incentives to change their rules. In 2004, for example, rather than promote instant runoff voting, then- Democratic National Committee chair Terry McAuliffe offered to help raise funds for Ralph Nader to campaign in safe states if Nader would drop out of contesting the election in swing states. Republicans have lost several key congressional seats due to Libertarian Party candidacies, but generally have shied away from IRV as well.
Prominent reform-minded politicians like Barack Obama, Howard Dean and John McCain have actively backed instant runoff voting, but have not made it a priority. The Vermont state legislature in 2008 passed IRV for congressional elections, but its governor vetoed it. A number of major cities have passed IRV, but its progress in more states and cities has been hindered by our inefficient election administration regime where equipment vendors think about profit first and the public interest second. A growing number of localities have adopted proportional systems to settle voting rights cases, but redrawn single-member districts remain the dominant vehicle for trying to enhance representation of racial minorities.
The sudden burst of attention to reform in the United Kingdom suggests that good solutions will rise to the top when the time comes, however. Reformers need to be ready: building a foundation for reform, making an ongoing case to our political and thought leaders and being ready when opportunities arise - as they most certainly will, given the flaws of current rules -- to show that seemingly "exotic" solutions in fact are just common sense.
Sabria Jawhar: How Obama Can Address the Middle East
President Obama's trip to Saudi Arabia this week to meet with King Abdullah has raised the expectations of Arabs so high that Obama might set himself up for failure.
Obama's five-day swing through Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Germany and France promises to engage the worldwide Muslim community "based upon mutual interests and mutual respect." The White House says he wants to share common goals to fight Islamic extremism and develop a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Already Obama has gone to extraordinary lengths to assure Muslims that the United States is not its enemy. He has put his Muslim credentials on the table, noting his background and the fact his father was a Muslim. He has opened the door to Iran for meaningful dialogue. He wants to celebrate our commonality, not our differences
It's not as if I haven't heard these promises before. President Bush certainly considered himself a friend of Muslims when he wasn't railing against Islamofascism. And his "road map" for peace looked pretty good on paper. I must admit, though, that expectations among Arabs and Muslims were not particularly high with Bush.
Obama, however, is going to have a tough act ahead of him. While his Cairo speech is highly anticipated in the Middle East, there is a whiff ceremonial grandstanding on his itinerary. He will visit Buchenwald to remember Holocaust victims and then on to Normandy to commemorate the 65th anniversary of D-Day. I'm sure that some Saudi ministers will persuade him to join in the traditional Saudi sword dance in Riyadh. It didn't do much for Bush's image, so let's hope Obama pulls it off.
This potential glad-handing makes Arabs nervous and annoyed. It's fine to engage in this protocol and unite the Ummah with an emotional speech. Saudis also appreciate that Obama has chosen Saudi Arabia, the land of the two holy mosques and the heart of Islam, to discuss the Arab agenda before speaking in Cairo. It's a positive step towards reconciling with Muslims.
But Arabs expect substance right out of the gate. The primary issues of Middle East peace, as far as the U.S. is concerned, seem to be shifting away from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and moving towards dealing with Iran's nuclear ambitions, routing the Taliban and stabilizing Iraq.
Yet these three issues simply treat the symptoms of the chaos in the Middle East and not the disease itself. For the Muslim on the street, everything starts with Israel. The saber-rattling we see between Israel and Iran is based on each country's perception of security. Israel's nuclear arsenal and its behavior in Gaza strike genuine fear in the region. If Obama wants to make an impression, he must focus on the core issue of Israel and Palestine. The ripple effect of Palestinian statehood and the right of return will help the U.S. deal with Iran, Iraq and the Taliban.
But now there is talk among Western diplomats that modifications might be sought in the 2002 Arab Peace Plan, which guarantees Arab recognition of Israel if it returns to its 1967 borders and gives Palestinians the right of return. The right of return seems to bother a lot of Westerners and Israel due to internal security concerns. But Arab leaders are not willing to negotiate this aspect of the plan.
Arab leaders rather see pressure applied to Israel to curb its destructive behavior. The habit has been to pressure Arab leaders to behave because the U.S. views the conflict through the lens of Hamas and Hezbollah's conduct. To the West, Hamas lobbing rockets into Israel is not conducive to peace. No, it's not. But neither is the Israel Defense Forces latest incursion into Gaza that left more than 1,000 civilians dead and many more homeless. If Arab leaders are to be held accountable for the actions of Hamas, then the same must be done with Israel. Arabs have given a lot of ground in the past two decades, primarily in watching Israel face international condemnation for its actions, but not held accountable in any meaningful way.
Israeli lobbyists have worked long and hard to protect Israel's interests, as they should. But it doesn't mean that Americans must capitulate to Israel under the threat of anti-Semitism.
If Obama is to reach Muslims, then he must risk this threat, knowing the American public will recognize that such charges are specious, and solve the Israeli-Palestinian issue. He should worry less about negotiating modifications in the Arab Peace Plan and more about how to get a recalcitrant Israel to move towards peace without it alleging anti-Semitism at the drop of a hat.
What Arabs are looking for in the Cairo speech and the visit to Riyadh are tangible statements from Obama that he understands the Arab point of view, willing to convey that message to Israel, and demand that Israel step up to the plate and show some movement to get the plan approved. A timeline that is enforced and doesn't collapse after the first hiccup from Hamas or the next outrageous statement from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a vital component to Obama's road to peace.
More on Barack Obama
Dickipedia: Perez Hilton
Mario Armando Lavandeira (born March 23, 1978), better known by the dick pseudonym--or "dickonym"--Perez Hilton, is a bitchy, narcissistic, star-f**king leech with an active blogspot account and, incredibly, his own TV show on VH-1 (although to be fair, VH-1 gives shows to everyone, even Bret Michaels of Poison... even the girls who get dumped by Bret Michaels of Poison on his VH-1 show). Oh, lest we forget, Perez Hilton is a dick.
His celebrity gossip site, Perezhilton.com, is little more than a collection of illegally re-posted tabloid photos with stupid captions and doodles scrawled all over them. Oh, and sometimes he posts links to homemade sex tapes featuring famous people, many of whom are famous primarily for their appearance in said homemade sex tapes. He also outs various famous people, many of whom, again, are famous primarily for Perez Hilton outing them. Still, the site enjoys incredible popularity, ranking as the 491st most-trafficked website on the Internet (143rd within the U.S.). Of course, he's still getting his ass handed to him by LOLcats, that porno YouTube site, and MILFhunter.com.
It is hard to imagine someone who has done less than Perez Hilton to gain a similar level of notoriety; even Jared Fogle lost several hundred pounds. Maybe the "Can You Hear Me Now?" guy... or Bristol Palin. But that'd be about it.
Also, Perez Hilton nurtures a taste for dying his hair outlandish colors that would only be considered cool by gay men and fourteen-year-old girls, two groups whose tastes, oddly enough, mimic each other's quite closely.
Think of Perez Hilton as a younger, thinner Bruce Villanch, only without any writing talent.
More on Dickipedia