The NRA Vs. America

(By Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone, February 14, 2014)

Eleven days after the massacre, Wayne LaPierre – a lifelong political operative who had steadied the National Rifle Association through many crises – stood before an American flag and soberly addressed the nation about firearms and student safety: "We believe in absolutely gun-free, zero-tolerance, totally safe schools. That means no guns in America's schools, period," LaPierre said, carving out a "rare exception" for professional law enforcement. LaPierre even proposed making the mere mention of the word "guns" in schools a crime: "Such behavior in our schools should be prosecuted just as certainly as such behavior in our airports is prosecuted," LaPierre said.  This speech wasn't delivered in an alternate universe. The date was May 1st, 1999, at the NRA's national convention in Denver. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's rampage at Columbine High School in nearby Littleton, Colorado, had just killed 13 students and teachers, shocking the conscience of the nation.

The disconnect between the NRA chief's conciliatory address on that day 14 years ago and his combative press conference in the aftermath of the slaughter of 20 first-graders in Newtown, Connecticut, could hardly be more jarring. In his now-infamous December 21st tirade, LaPierre ripped the gun-free zones he once championed as an invitation to the "monsters and predators of this world," advertising to "every insane killer in America that schools are their safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk."  LaPierre then offered what he called a "proven" solution to school gun violence – one that would open a lucrative new market for the gun industry while tidily expanding the power of the NRA itself. "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," LaPierre insisted, before proposing that armed, NRA-trained vigilantes should patrol each of the nation's nearly 100,000 public schools.

The shift in LaPierre's rhetoric underscores a radical transformation within the NRA. Billing itself as the nation's "oldest civil rights organization," the NRA still claims to represent the interests of marksmen, hunters and responsible gun owners. But over the past decade and a half, the NRA has morphed into a front group for the firearms industry, whose profits are increasingly dependent on the sale of military-bred weapons like the assault rifles used in the massacres at Newtown and Aurora, Colorado. "When I was at the NRA, we said very specifically, 'We do not represent the fi rearm industry,'" says Richard Feldman, a longtime gun lobbyist who left the NRA in 1991. "We represent gun owners. End of story." But in the association's more recent history, he says, "They have really gone after the gun industry."

Today's NRA stands astride some of the ugliest currents of our politics, combining the "astroturf" activism of the Tea Party, the unlimited and undisclosed "dark money" of groups like Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS, and the sham legislating conducted on behalf of the industry through groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council. "This is not your father's NRA," says Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center, a top gun-industry watchdog. Feldman is more succinct, calling his former employer a "cynical, mercenary political cult."  The NRA's alignment with an $11.7 billion industry has fed tens of millions of dollars into the association's coffers, helping it string together victories that would have seemed fantastic just 15 years ago. The NRA has hogtied federal regulators, censored government data about gun crime and blocked renewal of the ban on assault weaponry and high-capacity magazines, which expired in 2004. The NRA secured its "number-one legislative priority" in 2005, a law blocking liability lawsuits that once threatened to bankrupt gunmakers and expose the industry's darkest business practices. Across the country, the NRA has opened new markets for firearms dealers by pushing for state laws granting citizens the right to carry hidden weapons in public and to allow those who kill in the name of self-defense to get off scot-free.

The NRA's unbending opposition to better gun-control measures does not actually reflect the views of the nation's gun owners or, for that matter, its claimed 4 million members. A May 2012 poll conducted by Republican pollster Frank Luntz revealed surprising moderation on behalf of NRA members: Three out of four believed that background checks should be completed before every gun purchase. Nearly two-thirds supported a requirement that gun owners alert police when their firearms are lost or stolen. "Their members are much more rational than the management of the NRA," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, co-chair of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, tells Rolling Stone. "They're out of touch."

That's by design. Today's NRA is a completely top-down organization. It has been led since 1991 by LaPierre, its chief executive, who serves at the pleasure of a 76-member board that is all but self-perpetuating. Only one-third of the board's membership is up for re-election in any given year. Voting is limited to the NRA's honored "lifetime" members and to dues-payers with at least five consecutive years of being in good standing. Write-in candidates occasionally pepper the ballot, but in practice, the tiny slice of eligible members who bother to vote rubber-stamp a slate of candidates dictated by the NRA's 10-member nominating committee – one of whose members is George Kollitides II, CEO of Freedom Group, which manufactures the Bushmaster semiautomatic that Adam Lanza used to slaughter children in Newtown.

The NRA's board is stocked with industry brass. Pete Brownell, president of Brownells – an Internet arms superstore that features "ultrahigh-capacity magazines" – campaigned for his seat touting the importance for the NRA to have "directors who intimately understand and work in leadership positions within the firearms industry." Another board seat belongs to Ronnie Barrett, CEO of Barrett Firearms Manufacturing, whose company produces .50-caliber sniper rifles capable of piercing armor from nearly a mile away. Barrett's firm also sells scope-mounted ballistics computers that enable clueless civilians to hit targets like they were special-forces snipers. The ammunitions side of the industry finds a voice in board member Stephen Hornady, whose company peddles armor-piercing bullets and trades on the slogan "Accurate. Deadly. Dependable."  These NRA directors are representative of a firearms sector that knows lethality sells. "The industry has changed," says Tom Diaz, former Democratic counsel to the House subcommittee on crime, a longtime gun-violence policy analyst and author of a forthcoming book on the industry, The Last Gun. "In terms of what sells and what is marketed most successfully, we're now talking about guns that are derived directly from military design."

Of the top 15 gun manufacturers, 11 now manufacture assault weapons, many of them variants of the AR-15 – derived from a military rifle designed to kill enemy soldiers at close-to-medium range with little marksmanship. The industry loves these "modern sporting rifles" because they can be tricked out with expensive scopes, loaders, lights and lasers. "Most of the money is in accessories," says Feldman.  As one gun rep recently boasted to an industry publication: "The AR platform is like Legos for grown men." And a 2012 report from Bushmaster's parent company boasted that the industry's embrace of these guns has led to "increased long-term growth in the long-gun market while attracting a younger generation of shooters." The campaign certainly seems to be working. Twenty-year-old Adam Lanza used a Bushmaster. Twenty-five-year-old James Holmes, the Aurora shooter, was in many ways the dream customer of the surging industry. He bought an AR-15 .233-caliberSmith & Wesson assault rifle – a category the company's CEO bragged was "extremely hot" – tricked it out with a 100-round ultrahigh-capacity magazine and then purchased thousands of rounds from BulkAmmo.com, spending nearly $15,000 on his greater arsenal.  The changes in the industry are underscored by dispatches from industry websites and publications, like this one from Shooting Wire, in which the NRA is an advertiser: "The net of all the numbers is that if you're a company with a strong line of high-capacity pistols and AR-style rifles, you're doing land-office business. If you're heavily dependent on hunting, you are hurting."

The NRA insists in its publications that it is "not a trade organization" and that it is "not affiliated with any firearm or ammunition manufacturers or with any businesses that deal in guns and ammunition." That is a lie. NRA's corporate patrons include 22 firearms manufacturers, 12 of which are makers of assault weapons with household names like Beretta and Ruger, according to a 2011 analysis by the Violence Policy Center. The report, drawn from the NRA's own disclosures, also identified gifts from dozens of firms that profit from high-capacity magazines, including Browning and Remington. Donors from the industry and other dark reaches of the corporate world – including Xe, the new name of the mercenary group Blackwater – had funneled up to $52 million to the NRA in recent years.  More disturbing, the NRA receives funds directly from the sales of arms and ammunition. The "Round-Up" program, launched by arms retailer Midway USA, encourages customers to increase their purchases to the nearest dollar and sends the extra coin to the association. Midway customers alone have contributed nearly $8 million in this way to support NRA's lobbying division, the Institute for Legislative Action.

In 2011, Ruger set out to be the first gun company to "build and ship a million guns in one year." So it ginned up a promotion that would give a dollar to the NRA for every weapon sold between the 2011 and 2012 NRA annual meetings. The company broke its own sales goal, sending $1,254,000 to the NRA-ILA. Glock – whose pistols have been used in at least six mass murders since 1991, including the Virginia Tech and Gabby Giffords shootings – has been shipping an offer for discounted NRA memberships with its handguns. In 2007, the NRA thanked Glock for helping it recruit 10,000 new members.  Top corporate patrons are treated like royalty. Those whose giving to the NRA reaches $1 million or more are inaugurated into an elite NRA society called the "Golden Ring of Freedom" in a ceremony where they're presented with a silk-lined golden blazer with a hand-embroidered crest. Industry honchos seen in "the million-dollar jacket" include the heads of Ruger, Beretta, Midway and Cabela's, an outfitter that sells 12 models of semiautomatic rifles.  Much like elite funders of a major political party, these Golden Ringers enjoy top access to decision-makers at the NRA. Their interests, not the interest of the $35-a-year member, rule the roost. "They've got this base of true believers that they mail their magazines out to," says policy analyst Diaz. "But the NRA is really about serving this elite."

In more than three decades of service to the NRA, Wayne LaPierre has done more than any other man alive to make America safe for crazed gunmen to build warlike arsenals and unleash terror on innocents at movie theaters and elementary schools. In the 1980s, he helped craft legislation to roll back gun control passed in the wake of the Kennedy and King assassinations. And since the late 1990s, twice he has destroyed political deals that might have made it hugely difficult for accused killers like Holmes and Lanza to get their hands on their weapons.  A predecessor once characterized the NRA as being "one of the world's great religions," and 64-year-old LaPierre is a strange fit to be its pope. LaPierre did not come from gun culture. He wasn't a hunter, a marksman, a military man or a Second Amendment activist. "He's not a true believer," says NRA biographer Osha Gray Davidson. "He's the first NRA chief you can say that about."  According to NRA legend, LaPierre is actually a menace with a gun. NRA's PR team once thought it would be sexy to film LaPierre at a firing range. "It was a nightmare," an NRA staffer told Davidson. LaPierre was aiming downrange for the camera when an engineer called for a sound check. To answer the man, LaPierre swung around, but he failed to lower his rifle, aiming it directly at the engineer – before someone took the gun away from LaPierre. The incident, terrifying at the time, became a dark joke at NRA headquarters. Staffers behind on their projects were threatened that they'd have to "go hunting with Wayne." (The NRA's press office did not reply to Rolling Stone inquiries.)

Between 1978, when LaPierre was hired as a lobbyist, and 1991, when he took over as CEO, the NRA had been on a historic roll. In those early days, LaPierre served at the knee of a revolutionary NRA executive named Harlon Carter, who transformed an old-time shooters club into a political powerhouse – an "NRA so strong," Carter boasted, "that no politician in America mindful of his political career would want to challenge [our] goals." The NRA started grading politicians on guns – a process Bob Dole kvetched was "a litmus test every five minutes" – rewarding allies with campaign cash and subjecting foes to the backlash of millions of rabid, single-issue gun-owning voters. In 1980, the NRA made its first-ever presidential endorsement with Ronald Reagan, and by 1986 had the Gipper's signature on legislation, overseen by LaPierre, that would usher in a new era of unregulated gun shows.

By the late 1990s, however, the once mighty NRA was reeling on LaPierre's watch: It had suffered stinging legislative defeats – the passage of the Brady Bill in 1993 and the Assault Weapons Ban a year later. Despite being credited by President Clinton for the GOP takeover in the House in 1994, the association was riven by factionalism and money troubles that had many writing the association's obituary.  Instead, LaPierre orchestrated a stunning turnaround, rebuilding the NRA's power, this time as the voice of the industry. In so doing, he destroyed a historic gun-control effort.  Cities around the country, emboldened by the success of the legal action that had humbled Big Tobacco, had begun suing gun manufacturers, claiming that the industry was liable for the social costs of gun violence. These suits argued that firearms manufacturers had negligently marketed guns to criminals and profited from illicit gun sales by turning a blind eye to their distribution networks. The Clinton White House, in an initiative driven by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo, announced its own class-action, suit over gun violence in the nation's housing projects.

"The liability fight was an existential threat to the firearms industry," says Feldman. "They thought that if those lawsuits continued, let alone were successful, it would drain the industry." In the industry's moment of peril, LaPierre saw an opportunity to expand the NRA's power: The NRA would get out in front of gunmakers and, through its membership, lead their fight. Charlton Heston, then NRA's president, brought a stark message to the industry's biggest trade show in 1999: "For a century, we have thrived independently," Heston said. "But now your fight has become our fight." Under LaPierre, the NRA went to work at the state level, securing bills that would ban localities from suing gun manufacturers. It also began to draw up a national campaign to get Congress to immunize gun manufacturers from liability for their deadly products.

Smith & Wesson, at the time America's biggest handgun manufacturer, was hesitant to bank on the NRA's legislative moonshot, deciding that the best way to limit the damage would be to negotiate a settlement with Cuomo. "We have to save the business," said CEO Ed Schultz." So we're talking, instead of hiding our head in the sand like the National Rifle Association."  In exchange for immunity from product liability lawsuits, Smith & Wesson agreed to make safer guns and to clean up distribution networks. The measures included changes to the guns themselves, such as internal locks, triggers that couldn't be operated by kids and making new guns incompatible with old, high-capacity magazines whose manufacture was now illegal thanks to the Assault Weapons Ban. Smith & Wesson also promised to ship only to dealers who ran background checks at every sale, including at gun shows, and who refused to sell grandfathered assault rifles. With Smith & Wesson on board, Cuomo was confident that other manufacturers would fall in line.  But LaPierre would tolerate no defections. Determined to kill off any comprehensive gun-control agreement, he decided to hurt Smith & Wesson like the NRA had punished so many wayward politicians, by riling up the membership and organizing a consumer boycott that left the company reeling. Cuomo's negotiations with the industry soon collapsed.

So too did the effort to pass new gun restrictions in the aftermath of Columbine, underscoring the NRA's resurgent power. Three guns used in the Columbine massacre had been picked up at a gun show, where, thanks to a loophole in the Brady Bill, the purchases weren't subject to background checks. The Senate quickly passed an amendment to close the gun-show loophole, with Al Gore casting the decisive vote. But the NRA made its stand in the House. A month later, when the amendment came up for a vote, it got stomped, 193 to 235. Democrats, mindful of the punishment of 1994, contributed 49 nay votes.  The dual defeats left Cuomo disillusioned. He gave a speech in June 2000 that was stunningly bleak. "If we engage the enemy in this town, we will lose," he said. "They will beat us in this town. They are too strong in this town. Their fortress is within the Beltway."

LaPierre had helped gunmakers dodge two bullets as the Clinton years drew to a close. But to lock in these gains, the NRA needed an ally in the White House.  The NRA backed Bush to the hilt in the 2000 race. According to one tally, one in three dollars spent by outside groups to support the Bush ticket was spent by the NRA, and in the end Bush beat Gore among gun owners by 25 points. "The gun issue cost Al Gore the White House," says Feldman. "Forget the couple of hundred chads in Palm Beach. Absent the gun issue, he would have won Tennessee, Arkansas and West Virginia."  The Bush administration rewarded the NRA as few could have imagined. Bush appointed NRA favorite John Ashcroft as attorney general, who, in May 2001, announced that for the first time in the nation's history the Justice Department had adopted the view, long championed by the NRA, that the Second Amendment confers an individual, not a collective, right to bear arms.

In the aftermath of 9/11, when other constitutional protections were being trampled, nothing would shake this conviction, not even the fact that a jihadist training manual found in Afghanistan instructed Al Qaeda operatives living in the United States on how to, legally and without arousing suspicion, "obtain an assault weapon, preferably an AK-47 or a variation." The Bush administration continued to press the NRA's expansive vision of the Second Amendment until it was even adopted by the Supreme Court in 2008.  It wasn't only restrictions on the sale of military-grade weaponry that the NRA fought. It also fought to keep Americans in the dark about the relative dangers of such guns. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms compiles detailed records about what firearms are used in what types of crime, and even published a list of the top 10 crime guns. To block the release of that data, Todd Tiahrt, a GOP congressman from Kansas and an NRA ally, tacked a rider onto a 2003 appropriations bill that forbids ATF from spending any money to share the data it collects with the public – or even with Congress. "If you wanted to know how many Bushmasters have been used in what kinds of crime for the last five years, that information is in ATF's files," says Diaz. "But it can't be released because of the Tiahrt Amendment."

With Bush in the White House and the public now blindered to the perils of semiautomatic weapons, the Assault Weapons Ban was on a glide path to expire in 2004. And the NRA, hellbent to free the gunmakers and dealers from any responsibility resulting from the use of these dangerous weapons, continued to press ahead in its fiercest fight: a federal bill immunizing the industry from liability.  In 2004, the NRA had gathered its forces in the Senate and pushed them to bring a liability bill to the floor. A gun-control group, Americans for Gun Safety, made the decision that it was willing to stop fighting the bill, whose passage seemed all but certain, if it could somehow force the NRA to accept renewal of the Assault Weapons Ban and the closure of the gun-show loophole in the bargain.  The compromise bill had a clear path to victory. The gun-control activists believed they'd backed the NRA into a corner. Their thinking, says Jim Kessler, who directed policy for AFGS, was that the NRA would say, "OK, we gotta take this because who knows what will happen in 2005. John Kerry could be president."  Then something extraordinary happened: The NRA blew up the deal, letting senators know that any votes for the bill would be recorded as votes against the NRA. "You could see them on the Senate floor looking at their BlackBerrys and changing their votes," says Kessler. The bill died by a vote of 8 to 90.

This was becoming a pattern. Just as he'd done by upending the White House settlement talks with the industry in the late 1990s, LaPierre had once again cut the bottom out of a hard-fought political compromise to impose meaningful gun restrictions. "There is not a middle ground with the NRA," says Diaz. Indeed, LaPierre had laid this strategy in a 2002 speech to his membership: "We must declare that there are no shades of gray," he said. "You're with us or against us."  Bush rolled to re-election, and the NRA continued to roll up victories. The Assault Weapons Ban expired in 2004, reopening the market for the high-capacity magazines favored by mass murderers. And in 2005, the NRA finally secured clean passage of a law immunizing manufacturers, importers, distributors and dealers from any civil liability. After President Bush signed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act that October, LaPierre called it "the most significant piece of pro-gun legislation in 20 years." Who did it benefit? LaPierre made no pretenses: "History will show that this law helped save the American firearms industry."

The NRA, severely weakened just years earlier, seemed once again an invincible force in Washington. And Democrats, tired of losing elections on the issue, made gun control the new third rail of Washington politics. In the 2006 election cycle, two longtime foes of the NRA, Rahm Emanuel and Charles Schumer, were responsible for recruiting and funding attractive Democratic candidates. And they decided to drop guns as an issue altogether. "People didn't care about what your position was on guns," says a top Democrat. The party would support you either way.  They recruited pro-gun candidates who won the kind of races Democrats usually get trounced in. Among the ranks of the 2006 class of gun-friendly Blue Dogs was one Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona. The gun lobby welcomed its new amigos with open arms. "I always bent over backwards to help Democrats," says Feldman, the former lobbyist. "A Democrat who was supportive of my issue was worth 10 Republicans."  Though Barack Obama had campaigned on modest gun-control proposals, he ducked any fights over the issue. "His view was never that we shouldn't move on these things," political strategist David Axelrod says. "His view was that such moves would be largely symbolic because of the power of the gun lobby to stop them."

Bloomberg doesn't buy that excuse. "The first two years of the Obama administration, the Democrats had the White House, the Senate and Congress," says Bloomberg. "And they did nothing." In early 2009, after Attorney General Eric Holder casually mentioned that renewing the Assault Weapons Ban was a priority, Rahm Emanuel, then the president's chief of staff, sent a characteristically profane message to Holder on the gun issue: "Shut the fuck up."  In fact, Obama moved to expand gun rights as though Bush were still in office. He signed laws to allow guns in checked baggage on Amtrak trains and to allow conceal-carry permit holders to pack heat in national parks. In 2009, the Brady Campaign gave Obama a report card with seven F's.  While Jared Loughner's assassination attempt on Giffords was met with a national presidential address and tearful pieties, the aftermath stopped short of meaningful legislative or executive action. "In response to a horrific series of shootings that has sown terror in our communities, victimized tens of thousands of Americans and left one of its own bleeding and near death in a Tucson parking lot, Congress has done something quite extraordinary," Giffords wrote in January. "Nothing at all."

Like every other element of today's modern conservative machinery, the NRA works in the background to expand corporate power – while pretending in public to advance the interests of the little guy. The NRA continues to put forward its members as the face of the organization. But dues from members bring in less than half of the association's yearly expenses, which include spending heavily on a sophisticated telemarketing campaign to sustain its membership.  To stay afloat, the NRA relies on tens of millions in grants and gifts – increasingly linked to the gun industry. Such funds totaled $71 million in 2010 and have been growing twice as fast as membership dues have. And the NRA, looking to bring in even bigger bucks, is now fishing for donors with Koch-size wallets. On its website, the NRA lists a donor tier for those who give $25 million or above, which it calls the "Charlton Heston Society."

The Citizens United decision has fundamentally transformed the way the NRA operates politically. The NRA can now tap into unlimited donations from individuals and corporations to engage in direct political advocacy – running TV advertising calling for the defeat of individual candidates. The NRA gets to play like a Super PAC. But unlike groups that sprang up to support Mitt Romney (Restore Our Future) or Barack Obama (Priorities USA), the NRA does not have to disclose the names or contributions of its donors.  That's because the rifle association is incorporated under the same provision of the tax code that shelters Karl Rove's "dark money" operation, Crossroads GPS. "The NRA is a 501(c)(4) organization," it advertises to potential donors, "which enables it to be involved in political processes including lobbying and political campaign activities." Such groups must be primarily engaged in "social welfare" activities. While that's a source of legal concern for groups like Rove's, the NRA has so many tentacles – from shooting clubs to youth education programs to magazines – that it's perfectly positioned to benefit from the dark-money boom.  The NRA's traditional, regulated PAC is as strong as ever. It spent $16.6 million in national political races in 2012. But it was joined by a newly empowered NRAILA, which kicked in an additional $7.4 million from undisclosed sources, making the NRA the eighth-largest dark-money group in the country. In a startling collusion among right-wing powerhouses, NRA-ILA's efforts were actually funded by a $600,000 grant from Rove's GPS group.

The NRA is not simply working for the industry on the national stage. In 1987, only 10 states had "right-to-carry" laws permitting citizens to pack heat. By 2010, the NRA celebrated its efforts in converting the 40th state. A former NRA lobbyist once crowed to The Wall Street Journal: "The gun industry should send me a basket of fruit – our efforts have created a new market."  Yet for many gun owners, carrying a gun in public has been a source of anxiety. It's one thing to keep a weapon in the nightstand to guard against intruders. It's quite another to take a gun out in public. That's where the notorious "stand your ground" law comes in. The brainchild of former NRA president Marion Hammer, stand-your-ground makes it legal for a person who is attacked in public to use lethal force as a first resort. The first such measure was passed in 2005 in Florida – championed by an ambitious state legislator named Marco Rubio and signed by then-Gov. Jeb Bush.

At the time, LaPierre said Florida was just the beginning – the "first step of a multistate strategy." To keep its efforts below the radar, the National Rifle Association partnered with the American Legislative Exchange Council to steer similar laws through other state legislatures. Since 2005, the NRA, through ALEC, has taken stand-your-ground nationwide, helping to pass laws in 24 other states. At least 10 of those laws are all but identical to the language of the Florida legislation.  Conceal-carry and stand-your-ground laws do nothing to suppress crime, but they do boost gun sales. "This now expands the scope of where people are going to be carrying guns," says Diaz. "And you're more or less insulated from liability if you feel like you have to kill somebody." In Florida, Trayvon Martin's home state, "justifiable homicides" tripled between 2005 and 2011. A new study out of Texas A&M found that by "lowering the expected costs associated with using lethal force," these stand-your-ground laws "induce more of it" – driving an eight percent increase in murders and manslaughters.

These numbers are profoundly disturbing to most Americans. But to LaPierre and his allies in the gun industry they add up to something else: opportunity. "We live in the most dangerous of times," LaPierre warned the gathered activists at the NRA's 2012 convention in St. Louis. America has been infiltrated by terrorists and Mexican drug criminals, he said, who "are lurking and plotting to murder us." LaPierre railed against "the Obama crowd" for "conspiring with the world's dirty-handed, thug governments" and telling "lies" about the "coming realities" – catastrophic events that he insisted could "freeze our transportation systems, black out our cities, shut down our distribution of fuel and food" and bring an "unprecedented breakdown of social order." LaPierre told his flock, "Americans are facing the reality that they're on their own."

But like any good preacher, LaPierre did not simply paint a lurid portrait of hell – he also laid out a path to salvation: "We are the millions of Americans who have found faith in the Second Amendment," he said. "People are anticipating dangerous times and are responding in the only sensible, logical way possible – they're buying guns!"  With a twinkle in his eye, LaPierre added that "America's women are leading the way! . . . The more women who buy and own and shoot guns, the safer and better off we'll all be!"  Twenty tiny coffins have again put the NRA on the defensive. In the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, which Adam Lanza perpetrated with his mom's arsenal, public support of new gun-control laws is overwhelming. Today, 92 percent of the country support background checks for gun buyers, and 63 percent support limiting the capacity of gun magazines. "If there's a conflict for some members of Congress between their politics and their conscience, they should ponder that 92 percent number," says Axelrod.

There's also new leadership in the gun-control movement. Bloomberg tells Rolling Stone that his mayors' group will be bringing local pressure on national elected officials and orchestrating coordinated visits by the nation's mayors to congressional and Senate offices, with delegations of voting constituents in tow.  "These people want to get re-elected," says Bloomberg of Congress. "If they think the public wants gun control, they'll do it. If they think the NRA is more powerful than the public, they'll follow the NRA. We've got to convince them that the NRA is not that powerful."  To beat the NRA in Washington, however, the gun-control crowd is going to need more than constituent visits. It's going to need money. In the 2012 election cycle, the NRA spent more than $24 million in both regulated and dark money. Compare that to just $3,000 in campaign spending by the Brady Campaign. And such yawning disparities don't begin to account for the NRA's advantage in organizing activists at the level of every congressional district in the country. "If you think about politics as a tug of war," says Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, "when all the strength is on one side, it's not surprising where the rope ends up."

Republicans who control the House have already declared that gun control is off the table. Even newly elected Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of gun-loving North Dakota has called the president's push for new gun laws "wrongheaded."  Andrew Cuomo's bleak declaration – "If we engage the enemy in Washington, we will lose" – may hold as true today as it did in 2000. But Cuomo himself is demonstrating that there's another path to victory that doesn't rely on a cowed Congress. In January, Cuomo, now governor of New York, passed the nation's strongest gun-control law, limiting magazine clips to seven rounds, strengthening the state's ban on assault rifles and requiring mental-health professionals to notify police about patients who threaten violence – before they go postal.  Cuomo is fulfilling the prediction he made as a 42-year-old HUD director: "We're going to beat them state by state, community by community, because we have the ultimate weapon with us, the American people."  The NRA wins because Americans lose focus. Because our outrage fades after each new heartbreak. Because by November 2014, most of us won't be thinking about the victims of Newtown. Most of us won't be thinking about guns at all – while millions of activists, riled by Wayne LaPierre and the NRA, will be thinking of nothing else. If this time is going to be different, Americans have to act different, give different, vote different. In his speech laying out his gun-safety agenda in January, President Obama was absolutely right: "This will not happen unless the American people demand it."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-nra-vs-america-20130131

Hostess Issues & Analysis

Hostess Bakery: Behind The Pillaging And Sacking Of Another Famous Brand

(By “BlueBeaumont Boyz, DailyKos.com, 18 November 2012)

 

The purpose of this diary is to explore the economic and financial background of those pillaging and burning a (formerly) great American brand.  Hostess Bakery created several American comfort foods including Ding Dongs, Ho Hos, Wonderbread, Suzy Qs, Dolly Madison Zingers, and Drake's Ring Dings.  The fact that Hostess Bakery was the 2012 version of 2008's General Motors and Ford Motor Company is beside the point of this diary.  However, let me note that Ding Dongs, Ho Hos, etc. do not mesh well with diet-conscious cuisine.  Since moving to California ten years ago, I am not sure I have had more than two or three doughnuts during this period.  Carbs and sugar and calories, oh, my!  Nevertheless, Hostess is now a great American tragedy, in no small part related to venture capitalists and corporate raider.  This diary is the story of what has become normal in American business history and unfettered capitalism since 1865 and the end of the American Civil War.  The robber barons came to the fore and such American luminaries as Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, and others earned their fortunes at the misfortune of others.  Sometimes, this misfortune was facilitated by the very people who later benefited from the 'distressed events.'  More recently, Michael Milken, Carl Icahn, Monarch Alternative Capital LP, and Silver Point Capital LP have taken up the mantle of the robber baron.  The venture capitalists see opportunity in the recession and swoop in to take advantage.

For an interesting filmaic history of the robber barons, the History Channel now has some fantastic historical background on the rise of the robber barons in 'The Men Who Shaped America.'  Modern day robber barons and their admirers provide commentary (think Donald Trump, GE's former-CEO Jack Welch, Time-Warner's former-CEO Richard Dean Parsons, CNBC Mad Money's Jim Kramer, etc.).  According to the History Channel, Vanderbilt reportedly attempted to sell railroad rights of way into New York City to various railroads only to be rebuffed.  'Sell' in this case might be synonymous with 'extort.'  When the railroads refused to open their purses to Vanderbilt, he blocked them from crossing the Albany Bridge towards New York City, causing a financial panic.  Seeing opportunity in the misfortune of others that directly resulted from his own actions, Vanderbilt purchased as many shares of the New York Central on the New York Stock Exchange as he could at firesale pricing.  Vanderbilt parlayed his investment into the control of the New York Centeral and into purchase of other railroads in similar fashion.

To further his transportation empire, Vanderbilt financed the early kerosine industry based in Eastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania.  The direct beneficiary of Vanderbilt's efforts to fill his freight trains was an upstart oilman by the name of John D. Rockefeller.  Eventually, Rockefeller bankrupted hundreds of refinery owners as he solidified his hold on the kerosene and oil industry.   When Tom Scott, head of the Pennsylvania Railroad attempted to build his own oil pipeline to compete with Rockefeller, Rockefeller closed his Pittsburgh refineries, costing Scott fifty percent of his freight revenue.  Rockefeller's actions lead Scott's laying off thousands of workers and decreasing the wages of the remaining workers.  The rioting that ensued nearly destroyed the Pennsylvania Railroad (full disclosure, at least three generations in my family worked for the PRR).  Needless to say, today's vulture capitalists, including Monarch Alternative Capital and Silver Point Capital, are merely a stone's throw morally away from Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Carnegie et al.  Today, when you discuss the new robber barons, famous American company names like Blockbuster, the Texas Rangers, the Dallas Stars, Muzak, and Hostess Bakery enter the conversation.

When you think about Hostess Bakery, you need to explore the financial underpinnings of the company.  Apparently, the Monarch Alternative Capital LP and Silver Point Hedge Funds are the primary culprits. The machinizations of Monach and Silver would make Vanderbilt and Rockefeller proud.  These two hedge funds are known as distressed debt investors, purchasing the debt of troubled companies at steep discounts.  When Hostess Brands announced that it would close up its operations, the forces most responsible for that decision were two hedge funds that control hundreds of millions of Hostess debt and which have finally decided they won't squeeze any more filling into the Twinkie.  The funds, Silver Point and Monarch, are what are known as distressed debt investors. They buy the debt of troubled companies—usually at steep discounts. Some consider them white knights who are willing to take make risky investments in companies on the verge of failure. Others say they are “vulture funds.”  Only Silver Point and Monarch could have kept Hostess out of liquidation and kept the Twinkie bakery ovens firing. But they were, ultimately, unable to reach a deal with the unions that represents the workers who make and deliver products like Twinkies, Wonderbread and Ding Dongs. Without large union concessions- what some would say, total union capitulation- the hedge funds decided Hostess would have to die.

Of course, like diarist bluebarnstormer points out, Monarch and Silver Point could not be trusted to work in the best interests of the union members, their families and their pension funds.  The hedge fund managers' only interest lies in pulling as much capital out of Hostess Bakery and putting in as little as possible.  Profitability is not the issue.  They pillaged as much of the pension funds as possible and now walk away, leaving thousands of employees and their families shattered.  Interesting of course that this all came to fruition the week following the election rather than during the week prior.  Just wondering what would have happened had Monarch and Silver Point done the deed in October 2012.

Now to the Monarch and Silver Point Hedge Funds and their principles.  Bloomberg's BusinessWeek has profiles on each of these Vanderbilt and Rockefeller personifications.  Monarch Alternative Capital LP is a privately owned hedge fund sponsor. The firm invests in the public equity and fixed income markets across the globe. It primarily invests in debt of bankrupt and distressed companies. The firm also invests in equities received in connection with the conversion of such debt into equity. It employs a fundamental analysis to make its investments. The firm conducts in-house research to make its investments and it was formerly known as Quadrangle Debt Recovery Advisors.  Monarch has approximately $5.0 billion in assests under portolio management and is based in New York with an office in Israel.  Monarch's corporate website self-describes its approach as research-oriented and 'event-driven.'  Research-oriented suggests a proactive approach and vision.  Event-driven suggests a more reactive approach.  Kind of like sharks in the water.  In 2010, Monarch became involved in the messy bankruptcy of the Texas Rangers baseball team and the Dallas Stars hockey team when it purchased the debt of Hicks Sports Group LLC.  Monarch then threatened the 'involuntary bankruptcy' of its Texas Rangers holdings if Commissioner Bud Selig did not play by Monarch's rules and attempted to seize the team for sale to an acceptable bidder.    

Still no word from Major League Baseball concerning its imminent seizure of Your Texas Rangers in order to expedite the sale to Chuck Greenberg and Nolan Ryan's Rangers Baseball Express. But, finally, there's been direct contact with Monarch Alternative Capital, the main lender holding up the deal with Hicks Sports Group: The New York Times has gotten hold of an e-mail Monarch's managing principal, Andrew Herenstein, sent to MLB owners gathered in New York City this week for owners' meetings.  He more or less reiterates what Sports Business Journal reported this week and what Bloomberg News noted in mid-April: Should Bud Selig make a move, so too will Monarch -- straight to the federal courthouse, involuntary bankruptcy papers in hand.

It all comes down to the numbers. Tom Hicks last year defaulted on $525 million in loans. Greenberg's offer has long been believed to be between $570 and $575 million. The creditors claim that "additional costs, including unpaid interest," as The Times notes, have pushed Hicks's debt closer to $600 million. The creditors, right now set to get about half of the sale proceeds (unless MLB steps in and nullifies their claims completely), want their money. So too does Hicks, which is why, sources say, he's been hoping to bring Houston's Jim Crane and his higher offer back to the playing field. Greenberg's stuck in the middle and staying quiet, though Monarch says now that "the Greenberg-Ryan group had rejected 'various modifications' in the sale agreement that would increase the proceeds to the lenders," according to Times writer Richard Sandomir. 

Long story short: If MLB steps in, Monarch's suing. And it'll get "costly, distracting and messy," writes Herenstein. "It would be a bad result for the Texas Rangers, M.L.B. and the banks." And, don't forget, the fans.  In February 2011, Monarch was connected to Carl Icahn in an attempt to purchase Blockbuster for $300 million following the latter's bankruptcy filing.  Did I mention that Monarch and Icahn were Blockbuster creditors who helped finance the actual bankruptcy filing, thus having access to the internals?  Creditors including billionaire Carl Icahn and Monarch Alternative Capital LP are targeting Blockbuster Inc., the bankrupt movie-rental company, in a possible buyout for less than $300 million, a person familiar with the matter said. Icahn and Monarch are Blockbuster creditors who helped to finance the bankruptcy, making them potential candidates to buy the company, said the person, who declined to be identified because the discussions are private.

Silver Point Capital LP is a privately-owned hedge fund sponsor based in Greenwich, CT.  Interestingly, the corporate website has less than limited information available to the public.  Silver Point Capital L.P is a privately owned hedge fund sponsor. The firm manages hedge funds for its clients. It invests in the public equity, fixed income, and hedging markets of the United States. The firm primarily invests in securities of distressed, large-cap, and Mid-cap companies; bank debts; bonds; and trade claims. It specializes in credit analysis and diversified credit-related investments. Silver Point Capital is based in Greenwich, Connecticut.  Silver Point's corporate officers include Edward A Mule, Co-founder and Partner, age 50, Robert J. O'Shea, Co-founder and Partner, age 48, David Steinmetz, Chief Financial Officer, Michael A. Gatto, Principal, age 45, John M. Gannon, Principal, and Richard Parisi, Board Director.  Mule and O'Shea are alums of our friends at Goldman, Sachs.

Some of Silver Point's 'distressed events' include Kripsy Kreme, Moneygram, Herbst Gaming, Dana Holdings, Torch Energy Royalty Trust, Cooper-Standard Holdings, and FiberMark.  Silver Point also has investments in Sage Telecom, Granite Broadcasting and Communications Corporate of America.  In April 2011, Silver Point was involved in the attempts of Mood Media Holdings to merge with Muzak, a provider of music, messaging and video for businesses.  Cleary Gottlieb is representing Silver Point Capital, a private equity firm, and Muzak Holdings, a premier provider of music, messaging and video for business, in connection with the proposed acquisition of Muzak by Mood Media Corporation, a leading in-store media specialist. Under the terms of the merger agreement, a subsidiary of Mood will merge with and into Muzak, with Muzak unitholders receiving cash and contingent consideration in exchange for their units in Muzak. The transaction values Mood at approximately $345 million on an enterprise basis.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/18/1162822/-Hostess-Bakery-Behind-the-pillaging-and-sacking-of-another-famous-American-brand

 

Who Killed Hostess Brands and Twinkies?

(By Helaine Olen, Forbes, 16 November 2012)

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I’m sure you have, by now, heard the news. Hostess Brands, the company that gave us such remembered childhood treats as Twinkies, Ding Dongs, Devil Dogs and other baked foodstuffs that have fallen into disfavor in our more gourmand age, announced today that it would be closing for business, effective immediately.  More than a few observers say they know who to blame for the demise of the iconic company: the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International union, which represents thousands of striking Hostess Brand workers who have refused to accept a new contract that would do everything from slash their salaries to their retirement benefits.  

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Time for a reality check.  Hostess has been sold at least three times since the 1980s, racking up debt and shedding profitable assets along the way with each successive merger. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2004, and again in 2011. Little thought was given to the line of products, which, frankly, began to seem a bit dated in the age of the gourmet cupcake. (100 calorie Twinkie Bites? When was the last time you entered Magnolia Bakery and asked about the calorie count?)

As if all this were not enough, Hostess Brands’ management gave themselves several raises, all the while complaining that the workers who actually produced the products that made the firm what money it did earn were grossly overpaid relative to the company’s increasingly dismal financial position.  So now an estimated 18,500 workers will join the nation’s unemployment rolls. But while Hostess Brands might soon become a forgotten name from the past, it’s unlikely such a fate awaits such signature products as Twinkies. Company executives have already asked for bankruptcy court permission to begin the process of selling off their famed product lines to other companies.

Finally, a personal note: A few years ago, my husband picked our children up from a playdate at a home where, he said, it seemed like more food was banned than allowed, there was no television, and it was all too politically correct in the way all too many middle class childhoods are today. My husband’s response? Before bringing the boys home, he stopped in at a local grocery and introduced our ecstatic children to fine products of Hostess Brands. “Yodels,” he told me, “never tasted so good.”

Addendum: Since this has come up in the comments, I need to remind everyone that Hostess Brands acquired Drake’s Cakes in one the many of the misbegotten mergers it was involved in.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/helaineolen/2012/11/16/who-killed-hostess-brands-and-twinkies/

 

Alternatives to Twinkies & Other Hostess Brands

Little Debbie is a strong competitor of Hostess. For most of the Hostess products, Little Debbie makes an alternative. Little Debbie makes Cloud Cakes, their answer to Hostess Twinkies.

Alternatives to Ho-Hos and Yodels

Drake's, the company that makes Yodels (among other snack cakes) is owned by Hostess and will also be going out of business. Little Debbie has Swiss Rolls as an alternative to Ho-Hos and Yodels.

Alternatives to Hostess Cupcakes, Yankee Doodles, Ring Dings, and Ding Dongs

Of course there are Little Debbie Alternatives to Hostess cupcakes (the Little Debbie cupcakes may be more famous), but they also makes alternatives to Ring Dings and Ding Dongs. Tastykake has their own cream-filled cupcakes.

Alternative to Funny Bones

Drake's makes a chocolate cake filled with peanut butter cream and covered with chocolate frosting. It's not exactly the same, but Tastykake makes a cake covered in chocolate and peanut butter.

Alternatives to Zingers

Zingers are made by Dolly Madison, owned by Hostess, so Dolly Madison will likely be shutting down, too. Tastykake makes good alternatives to Zingers called Krimpets. I could only find Butterscotch Krimpets, but their Kandy Kakes look like a good alternative to the chocolate Zingers.

Alternatives to Devil Dogs and Suzy Q's

Once again, Little Debbie has an alternative to these Hostess and Drake's products. Little Debbie has Devil Cremes that are the Devil Dog knock-offs.

Alternatives to Drake's Coffee Cake

Drake's has coffee cake snack cakes. I love coffee cake, and Tastykake has some coffee cake snack cakes that can replace the Drake's coffee cake.

Donettes

These mini doughnuts are a staple at convenience stores. While Donettes may be the most well-known mini doughnut, other brands make mini doughnuts that are just as good. Little Debbie, Tastykake, and Duchess have versions of the powdered sugar variety, and Duchess has mini chocolate doughnuts.

Fruit Pies

Hostess makes convenient little fruit pies that you can pick up at a convenience store. Fortuantely Tastykake makes a wide variety of small fruit pies, including pumpkin pie.

http://www.squidoo.com/alternatives-to-hostess-snack-cakes

My Name Is Jehovah, and I’ll Be Taking Care of You Tonight

(By Brian Palmer, Slate.com, 05 February 2013)

A 2012 Zagat survey found that the average restaurant tip has risen to 19.7 percent, while another recent survey found that donations by mainstream Christians to their churches have fallen to 2.38 percent of their annual income.  When Applebee’s tried to impose an automatic 18 percent tip last week on the bill of Atlanta pastor Alois Bell, she crossed it out, reduced the tip to zero, and added the note, “I give God 10%, why do you get 18?” A waitress posted the receipt online, earning Bell nationwide derision and the server a pink slip for violating Bell’s “right to privacy,” according to Applebee’s. Over the weekend, the restaurant chain suffered an avalanche of criticism. More than 20,000 angry Facebook commenters responded to the company’s attempts to explain its decision to fire the offending waitress.

Equating tipping with tithing is absurd, of course. Traditional tithing is a fraction of one’s annual earnings, while tipping is a percentage of a restaurant bill. If you tip a waiter 18 percent and your preferred deity 10 percent, waiters can only out-gross God if Americans spend more than one-half their income at restaurants. (In fact, the average American spends around $2,500 annually eating out, which is less than 10 percent of average per capita income.) The more apt comparison is between tithing and taxes, but presumably Alois Bell lacks the courage to scribble, “I give God 10 percent, why does the government get 17.4?” on her Form 1040EZ.  Bell’s spurious comparison, nevertheless, does require some attention. Tipping and tithing are both largely unenforced social norms. If you fail to tip a server between 15 and 20 percent, restaurants don’t force you to wash dishes. Likewise, few Christian churches banish tithing delinquents from the congregation. And yet, they’re trending in opposite directions. 

Tipping had an inauspicious start in America. When the practice migrated from Europe, many consumers considered it bribery. The Anti-Tipping Society of America, a lobby group of traveling salesmen, pushed many states to ban the practice. When the laws were struck down or repealed under pressure from restaurant and hotel owners who profited in saved wages, members of the media suggested that a tip should total no more than 10 percent. Since then, the national tipping rate seems to have risen inexorably. Guides from the 1960s suggest that an appropriate tip ranged from 10 to 20 percent, with 15 percent representing the average. Tipping a server 10 percent is now widely considered a serious offense, and a Zagat survey from 2012 found the average restaurant tip has risen to 19.7 percent.

America’s churches should be so lucky. When the Christian research group Empty Tomb began tracking tithing in 1968, mainstream Christians gave 3.3 percent of their income to a church. Those donations have steadily dropped, falling to a mere 2.38 percent in the most recent survey. Evangelicals like Bell typically give more, but their donations have also fallen by around 30 percent since the late 1960s. Churches could really use the cash, too. Only 10 percent of U.S. congregations have an endowment that exceeds their annual operating budget. Even the Mormon church, the international tithe-collecting champion, fails to pressure the faithful into a full 10 percent tithe. There’s little data on U.S. contributions, but Canadian Mormons pay about 8 percent of annual income to the church. (Fortunately for Mormons, the church hardly needs the money.)

Why do Americans increasingly prefer to donate money to waiters than to God? One potential explanation is simple awareness. Most studies on tipping show that a fair proportion of bad tippers or nontippers don’t know—or at least claim not to know—that they’re expected to leave 15 to 20 percent. Between 1987 and 2000, the likelihood that an average American would eat at a restaurant in any given week increased 40 percent. The more people dine out, and the more they hear servers moaning about their pitiful baseline wages, the more the tipping norm sinks in. God is experiencing no such awareness surge. Different methodologies yield different church attendance numbers, but most studies find that the proportion of Americans who attend church regularly has stayed nearly constant for decades.

There may be a better explanation than simple awareness, though: the rise of the megachurch. Lakewood Church in Houston packs 43,500 people into its seats per week, and several other churches count congregations in the tens of thousands. The average churchgoer now attends service with 400 others. Getting big makes sense for any individual church. Entrepreneurial pastors get their own television shows and crank out book after dreary, repetitive book, amassing huge fortunes in the process.  The growth in congregation size, however, may be bad for churches’ collective income. God looks increasingly like an institution, and 21^st-century Americans don’t like institutions. Trust in banks, schools, and Congress has slid steadily for 40 years. Churches have suffered from the same cynicism. The proportion of Americans who express a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in organized religion dropped by one-third between 1973 and 2012—the same as the drop in the average Christian tithe. Modern megachurches look a lot more organized than the little community chapels of yesteryear.

A 2012 Pew survey on trust in government should be of particular note to America’s churches. One-third of Americans have a favorable view of the federal government, while 52 percent view state government favorably, and 61 percent express satisfaction with local government. The message couldn’t be clearer: Big is bad.  Rather than sending minions like Alois Bell to nudge us, God should watch and learn from America’s eminently relatable waitstaff. Your waiter’s first move is to tell you his name, although you have absolutely no use for it. They get close, sometimes disturbingly so. They take individual responsibility for “taking care of you.” That promise doesn’t just have the same effect when sent down from on high or from a stage in a football stadium

There’s one other problem for the Christian God: He has a flock full of cheapskates. Long before Alois Bell stiffed her server on religious grounds, American waiters complained about the Sunday afternoon crowd leaving Bible quotes in lieu of cash tips. A 2012 study by Cornell University tipping expert Michael Lynn showed that Jews and people with no religion tip better than self-identified Christians. (To be fair, the overwhelming majority of Christians tip between 15 and 20 percent, just lower in the range than nonbelievers and Jews.) This phenomenon is difficult to explain, but it’s possible that Christians think their devotion to the next life exempts them from such social niceties as tipping in this one. That confidence in their ultimate salvation may also diminish their sense of financial obligation to God. Perhaps churches need to modify their appeal to something like “faith alone, plus 10 percent.”

Washington Rated The Worst For Traffic Congestion- Again

                                (By Ashley Halsey III, Washington Post, 05 February 2013)

When it comes to traffic congestion around Washington, even the good news is bad, and it goes downhill from there.  The city that so hungers to be No. 1 at something — usually on a gridiron or diamond-shaped field — has again risen to the top as the most congested metropolitan area in the United States, a place where the average driver burns 67 hours and 32 gallons of gas each year sitting in traffic.  The No. 1 ranking is the good news. The bad news is that it’s going to get worse.  The annual crunching of numbers by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute projects that unless something is done about traffic, the economic recovery will put more wheels on the road and create more congestion. By 2020, analysts say, the average U.S. driver will spend an additional seven hours in traffic each year and waste six more gallons of gas.  The Institute’s calculations are based on data from transponders on millions of moving vehicles. It comes from Inrix, the commercial network that also provides much of the information used in traffic reports on radio, television and the Internet.  After Washington, the four most congested metro areas in the nation were among the perennial contenders: Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Boston. Raleigh-Durham rated as the easiest major city to get around.  Rankings are relative and don’t say much about your personal commuting misery, unless there’s perverse pride in being No. 1 or you’re looking to move some place where congestion isn’t so bad. (Traffic is light in Bakersfield, Calif.)

For the first time this year, the Institute came up with a new metric to salt the wound that is traffic congestion around Washington. It calculates the true meaning of an expression often used on traffic radio reports- “allow a little extra time”- a polite way of telling drivers that their traffic nightmare meter has hit the red zone.  The Institute calls it the Planning Time Index, and this is how Tim Lomax, one of the study’s authors, explains it: “It’s predicated on the notion that your boss will let you be late to work one time a month and you’d better be on time the other 19 days.”  So, the new index compares the time it would take to make a trip in light traffic with the time you need to allow if you want to be punctual for work (or anywhere else) 19 days out of 20.  It’s a new index that tells an old story: No place is worse than Washington, which rates 5.72 and is behind metro Los Angeles and New York. Baltimore ranks 15th among large cities with a 3.81, while Salt Lake City is at the bottom with a 2.02.  What does that mean?  If you had a 20-minute trip in light traffic, 20 times 5.7 is almost 2 hours that you ought to allow for a really important trip in the middle of rush hour,” Lomax said. “That’s the combined effect of weather and bad crashes and special events and construction, and in y’alls cases, presidential motorcades. It’s everything rolled together.” 

The Institute provided a plan for addressing congestion that applies to the Washington region and the rest of the nation. It was a collection of ideas, many of which are already in use.  It included addressing immediate traffic problems- such as having tow trucks poised to sweep away wrecks and stalled vehicles, and using metered freeway on ramps to modulate traffic flow — and obvious goals of increasing capacity, encouraging transit use and embracing flexible work schedules.  “You should be able to call the boss and say ‘Traffic’s bad today, how about if I telecommute for now and come in two hours later?’ ” Lomax said. “And you need to take advantage of those options when they make sense for you. Don’t just get stuck in the rut of ‘I drive my car to work every day because that’s just what I do.’”  Pete Ruane, the blunt-spoken president of the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, said the area had a double-barreled problem.  “Washington, D.C., has the dubious distinction of being number one in two areas. It is the capital of partisan gridlock, and now traffic gridlock,” he said. “The real news in the report is the projection that traffic congestion costs will balloon another 65 percent by 2020 if we maintain the status quo. The number of hours of lost time will also skyrocket 55 %.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/washington-rated-the-worst-for-traffic-congestion--again/2013/02/04/125be724-6ee3-11e2-8b8d-e0b59a1b8e2a_story.html?wpisrc=nl_buzz

Bearing With Coke: Soft Drinks, Hard Choices

I agree with a lot of what is being said here, out of context though because I don't think there is a direct connection between the manufacturing of Coke and the plight of polar bear habitats.  And has the writer of the piece never heard of Cherry Coke Zero?

Bearing With Coke: Soft Drinks, Hard Choices

(By David Katz, Huffington Post, 26 January 2013)

Responding to our justifiably increasing preoccupation with widespread obesity, the Coca-Cola Company has released a masterful television ad on the subject. They characterize their own efforts, and invite us all to "come together" to combat this scourge. The whole "come together" concept receives great emphasis, with evocative images from the (presumably) good old days of: "I'd like to buy the world a Coke..."  Predictably, the collective response of my friends and colleagues in public health has been less than warm and bubbly. Sensing a blend of propaganda, evasion, hypocrisy, and desperation in Coke's efforts, my clan has largely reacted with their own blend of dismissal, derision, and disgust. In essence, they have invited us all to lose this lunch, and roll our eyes.  I confess, I am sorely tempted to join them. But before we can lose our lunch, we are perhaps obligated to chew on it. And before rolling our eyes, we may need to read the writing on the wall -- fine print, and all.

Before that chewing and reading begins, I do want to insert a disclaimer. I am the furthest thing from a food industry apologist. I have devoted years of my life to the development of programs for children and adults alike that reveal the all-too-often lamentable truth about the so-called "food" supply. At every opportunity, I have highlighted the fact that "betcha' can't eat just one" was far more than a clever ad campaign; it was a threat to public health, backed up -- at least in the case of Kraft -- by nutritional biochemists and neuroscientists using functional MRI scans to determine how to maximize the number of calories it takes for us to feel full. And I have noted repeatedly, as I will continue to do, that as we got fat and our kids got diabetes -- somebody was chuckling about it all the way to the bank.

Nor do I have even a little love for the Coca-Cola Company. I consider their flagship offering a chemistry experiment in a cup. I haven't had a soda in some 35 years since I first saw that light. Coca-Cola has systematically opposed public health campaigns to reduce soda consumption, deflected criticism, denied epidemiologic truths, and distorted their own contributions to epidemic obesity. I have -- at least in moments of private rage -- considered them an evil empire. Regarding my brief encounter with their CEO, I can only say I felt the dark side of the Force was strong with him.  And when it comes to polished and compelling ads that obscure any semblance of truth, Coca-Cola has an impressive track record. They have given us polar bears enjoying Coke as they frolic in their winter wonderland.

This is wrong in so many ways it's hard to know where to start. For one thing, polar bears don't drink soda. For another, that's not likely to help them much -- because we are blithely destroying their winter wonderland. And guess what? Concocting chemical potions in factories to drink out of plastic bottles when a glass of water would do nicely is part of the reason -- as such industrial activity contributes to global warming and the melting of Arctic ice on which the livelihood of real polar bears depends. So, no -- Coke is not offering polar bears a drink. It's part of the reason they may have nothing left to eat. But, of course, only part of a much bigger reason.

Reacting to Coke's misleading depiction of polar bears, the Center for Science in the Public Interest engaged musician Jason Mraz, to give us the "real" bears. I fully support this campaign to show what might happen if polar bears actually did drink Coke. But of course, these aren't "real" bears -- because as noted, polar bears don't drink soda. So, the "real" issue is that we may not be smarter than the average bear after all. Bears are still eating and drinking what bears should eat and drink -- to the extent we aren't making it impossible for them. We, on the other hand, have been drinking Coca-Cola out of ever-larger containers.  This just isn't about bears and the choices they make. It's about us, and the choices we make. And we apparently have some hard ones. We have water, but choose to drink Coke. We have broccoli, but choose to eat bologna. There are no bears involved. We have met the enemy -- and it is us.  Yes, we are also the victim. Yes, the food industry really has manipulated us with foods engineered to specifications born of functional MRI scans. But come on: Does anyone think Coke is good for them? Does anyone not living under a rock think you can drink a gallon of that stuff daily and not suffer any consequences? Is there really anyone left who has not heard the rumors about sugar? And does anyone bemoaning the unbearable (pun intended) burden of a soda tax truly not know where to find a water fountain?

Coke is quite right about one thing: We are all in this together.  Consider that when McDonald's -- another good contender for the food industry's evil empire award -- gave us McLean Deluxe, we didn't buy it. The product expired not for want of supply, but for want of demand. Folks, that's not McDonalds' problem. It's yours, and mine. It's our kids' problem.  Similarly, remember Alpha-Bits cereal? If you haven't seen it lately, here's why -- courtesy of some inside information. Post reduced both the salt and sugar content, actually making the product more nutritious -- and people stopped buying it. Sales plummeted from about $80 million a year, to $10 million.  Most product reformulations that allegedly give us better nutrition are actually lateral moves -- fixing one thing, breaking another. Salt is reduced, but sugar is increased. Sugar is reduced, but trans fat is increased -- and so on. I have an intimate view of all this, courtesy of my work with the NuVal program, which has established a detailed nutrient database for over 100,000 foods it has scored. All too often, banner ads implying better nutrition are entirely misleading. Low-fat peanut butter is substantially less nutritious than regular. Multigrain breads may or may not be whole grain.

But on those rare occasions when the food industry actually gives us better products, we don't buy them.  Which brings us back to Coke: What, exactly, do we want from them?  As I see it, against a backdrop of a growing burden of national and global chronic disease in which they are complicit, Coke has four options. They can (1) ignore the public health problem, and keep on keeping on; (2) acknowledge the public health problem, but say it's not their problem -- and keep on keeping on; (3) confess their corporate sins and absolve themselves with ceremonial suicide; or (4) change.  Choices one and two have pretty much run their course. Shareholders are unlikely to bless option three. Which leaves us with option four: change. Change their product formulations. Change their inventory. And change their messaging. Stop talking about frolicking polar bears, and start talking about obesity. And while we have cause to be suspicious about Coca-Cola's motives, that's just what the new ad appears to be doing.

Yes, they sell us chemistry experiments in a cup. Yes, they help us become fat diabetics. But they are also a large company, employing a lot of people. If we simply want to drive a stake through their corporate heart, the result would be a lot of newly-unemployed people, still prone to obesity and diabetes while drinking Pepsi, or Mountain Dew, or Dr. Pepper, while perusing the want ads.  And yes, the new ad about obesity is only in response to mounting pressure from a concerned public, and restive federal authorities. But is it bad or surprising that supply-side changes are responsive to a changing demand? The business of business, after all, is business -- and keeping the customer satisfied.  If we want truly meaningful changes in the quality of our food and drink, we will in fact require changes in both supply and demand. It won't help if they build it, and we don't come. There are ways to propagate a shared taste for change, and such a course might allow for substantial improvements in the public health without blowing up the Fortune 500.

Admittedly, the new Coke ads addressing obesity are slick. Stunningly slick. In other words, they are just plain good -- working over the chords of emotional response exactly as intended. A testimony to what really deep pockets and top advertising talent can do. This could be just another reason to hate Coke, I suppose.  But on the other hand, the simpler times when Coke was an innocent pleasure are not a Madison Avenue fabrication; they actually happened. We baby-boomers lived through them. There was a time before ultra-uber-gulps and widespread childhood obesity, and soda seemed an innocuous pleasure -- whether or not it ever really was. If that has changed over time, then so must we -- and so must Coca-Cola.  What would such change look like? Probably something like the new ad.

As a closing aside, I attended the meeting of my local school district wellness committee this week, as they took on the task of complying with Connecticut nutrition standards. The gentleman who runs the high school store noted that by complying with the new regulations, he would lose business to the array of fast-food outlets accessible to the students just across a parking lot. And, I suspect he's exactly right.  I share my colleagues' visceral opposition to everything Coke. But I think we may be letting our abdominal viscera get the better of vital organs situated higher up. Soft drinks do exist; they are big business. Doing something about that involves hard choices.  Change -- incremental change -- is the most promising and plausible of them. So we have to allow for it if what we want is progress. If we won't accept change without calling it hypocrisy, then we don't really want progress. We want revenge.

 

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