I spent 14 years in the NFL. Here’s why I’m quitting Congress after four. by Jon Runyan

Fourth and So Long
By REP. JON RUNYAN
January 24, 2014


People are constantly asking me how similar politics is to pro football. I spent more than a decade in the NFL before spending the past three years in Congress, and the truth of the matter is the two occupations are more alike than not. Both are contact sports, and you’d better be ready to play when you step onto either field. While it’s tough to say which is more difficult, there have been plenty of times in the past few years when I’ve thought politics was harder. At least in football you know exactly who your opponent is.

When I decided to run for Congress, I saw it as an opportunity to serve the South Jersey community that had become my home after signing to play for the Philadelphia Eagles. I didn’t choose public service out of political ambition or a desire for power, and never once thought of making a career of it. For me, it was simply a chance to give back to my community and the country.

There is no doubt that I am enormously proud of the work I’ve done on behalf of my constituents. We’ve got more than 60,000 veterans and their families in the 3rd District of New Jersey — and not a day has gone by that I wasn’t fighting for them. South Jersey is home to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, one of the finest military installations in the world, and it was my honor to represent the base and all of those who serve there. That’s the stuff that matters to me.

But my frustrations with the ways of Washington have been well-documented. Of course, the things that have bothered me most — the petty ambitions and the misplaced priorities — have frustrated many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. Believe it or not, there are members of Congress who actually want to govern and get stuff done. Unfortunately, there are others whose agendas and strategies serve to advance their own interests and expand their donor base.

I guess, to use another football analogy, there’s no substitute for teamwork — and in Washington, I saw too little of it. I got myself into some trouble very early on when my comments in a closed meeting about the importance of working toward a common goal were leaked before the meeting even adjourned! At the time, we were attempting to pass a spending package to fund the government, and I had noticed that individual personalities and self-serving strategies had become the focus of our attention — a classic example, you could say, of guys playing to get to the Pro Bowl rather than the Super Bowl. In the months and years that followed, I watched repeated marches right up to the very edge of fiscal calamity, even the shutdown of the federal government — all of it leaving me quite frustrated and my constituents scratching their heads in bewilderment. Things seemed dysfunctional, and despite all the accomplished people around me, too often we accomplished less than I would have liked.

***

It was Hurricane Sandy that not only decimated parts of my district but pushed me to the brink of my frustrations with the game of politics. In the fall of 2012, in the immediate wake of Sandy, I suspended my congressional reelection campaign and got to work helping those folks in South Jersey whose lives had been turned upside down by the storm. (My political opponent, well, she ran a radio ad comparing my record to that of the hurricane.)

I returned to Washington ready to fight for emergency aid to help the towns affected in my state and throughout the Northeast rebuild. Governors from both political parties joined ranks and Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) and President Barack Obama famously teamed up to “restore the shore.” Republicans and Democrats from the impacted areas worked together in the House on a clean package to get immediate relief to our constituents.

And what did we get out of the Senate? A bill laden with sweeteners intended to secure yes votes from senators whose states weren’t even impacted by the storm. Things like money for fisheries in Alaska. Pretty soon opposition to the bill developed even as millions of Americans sifted through what remained of their possessions — those who were lucky enough to have something to sift through, that is.

It took weeks for a relief package to reach the floor of the House of Representatives. Even when it was pork-free, that bill garnered 180 “no” votes — including 179 members of my own party. Many of these members had previously requested aid for their own districts following other natural disasters. I actually carried the list of those members in my lapel pocket for weeks following that vote.

I can’t really pinpoint a specific moment when I made the decision not to seek a third term in Congress. It was more like a series of gut-check moments. Like on the third day of a seven-day family reunion vacation — I was leaving the next day to return to Washington — when my youngest daughter sat on the end of my bed and made it very clear to me she did not want me to go back, ever. A month before that, I was at the Detroit airport after dropping my son off at football camp at the University of Michigan. I was headed back to D.C. when I took the call from the head football coach at Michigan (my own alma mater), letting me know that my son was being offered a scholarship to play ball there. I missed the first plane that day to take the phone call, but I really missed being with my son and sharing that moment that you get once in a lifetime.

In each of these moments, I was reminded of a promise I made to myself while still playing football, that once I retired, I would be there for my kids. It became clear to me that there was no way I could do both. I came to Washington to serve my constituents, and I gave it my all. I’m grateful for the trust that my constituents in the 3rd District placed in me, and the opportunity they gave me to serve. Now it’s time for me to take my place on the sidelines.

***

Rep. Jon Runyan has represented New Jersey’s 3rd Congressional District since 2011 and previously played 14 seasons as a Pro Bowl offensive tackle in the NFL.

Live. From new york. Its saturday night.

"Hello. Its louis here. I’m clacking this to you on my phone in my dressing room here at studio 8H, right in 30 rockefeller center, in Manhattan, new york city, new york, america, world, current snapshot of all existence everywhere.

"Tonight I’m hosting Saturday Night Live, something I zero ever in my life saw happening to me. And yet here it is completely most probably happening (I mean, ANYTHING could NOT happen. So we’ll see).

"I’ve been working here all week with the cast, crew, producers and writers of SNL, and with Lorne Michaels. Such a great and talented group of people.

"And here we are in the middle of New York City, which was just slammed by a hurricane, leaving behind so much trouble, so much difficulty and trauma, which everyone here is still dealing with every day.

"Last night we shot some pre-tape segments in greenwich Village, which was pitch black dark for blocks and blocks, as it has been for a week now.

"Its pretty impossible to describe walking through these city streets in total darkness. It can’t even be called a trip through time, because as long as new york has lived, its been lit. By electricity, gas lamps, candlelight, kerosene. But this was pitch black, street after street, corner round corner. And for me, the village being the very place that made me into a comedian and a man, to walk through the heart of it and feel like, in a way, it was dead. I can’t tell you how that felt. And you also had a palpable sense that inside each dark window was a family or a student or an artist or an old woman living alone, just being int he dark and waiting for the day to come back. Like we were all having one big sleep over, but not so much fun as that.

"This is how a lot of the city is still. I know people in queens, brooklyn, Staten Island, new jersey, all over, are not normal yet. And not normal is hard.

"And here at 30 rock, these folks are working so hard this week. There are kids in the studio every day, because members of the crew and staff had to bring them to work. Many people are sharing lodging. Everyone is tired. But there’s this feeling here that we’ve got to put on a great show. I’m sure it feels like that here every week. But wow. I feel really lucky to be sharing this time with these particular good folks here at SNL.

"In about 5 hours we’ll be going on the air. I’ll do a monologue. And we’ll show you some sketches that we wrote and try to make you laugh. I’m gonna look really dumb in some of this stuff. But I don’t care. Its awfully worth it. And I’m really excited.

"Anyway. I just wanted to let you know. If you watch the show tonight, when Don Pardo says my name and you see me walking out, all the shit in this email is what ill be thinking. I’m a pretty lucky guy. I hope you enjoy the show.
Thanks.

"Louis C.K.
Live. From new york. Its saturday night."

- Louis CK, in am email sent Saturday afternoon, Nov. 3 2012

Hurricane Sandy and the Myth of the Big Government-vs.-Small-Government Debate

Thursday, November 1, 2012 by Rolling Stone

by Matt Taibbi

 

Quite a shock the other day to look out my window in Jersey City, and see the Hudson River rushing over what used to be the street in front of my building. For nearly three days my dog and I played Robinson Crusoe and Friday, sleepily watching from our little apartment-island while we waited for hot water, cell service, the internet, even elevators to come back on line.

When I finally got back on the internet and was able to read the news again, I saw that Hurricane Sandy, in addition to being the rare storm to live up to its televised hype, had turned into the last-minute curveball plot twist that always seems to pop up in presidential races.

Some of those twists we hear about – like the sudden appearance of records from George W. Bush's 1976 drunk driving arrest in Maine – while others, like Dick Nixon's apparent secret negotiations with the Vietnamese in 1968, or the more-likely-mythical October Surprise deal involving Reagan and the Iran hostages in 1980, remain secrets until later on.

But this massive hurricane is apparently turning into a boon for Barack Obama on a number of fronts. One, it's allowed him to be seen all over television taking charge and acting presidential, and has even allowed him to brandish bipartisan credentials through the curiously intense bromance that he has developed this week with our own New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (a Romney supporter who, somewhat mysteriously, has gone out of his way to praise the president this week).

On a deeper level, though, the hurricane has seemingly made a powerful argument on Obama's behalf about the role of government in general. The media is casting this as a stark and simple dichotomy. Mitt Romney, the rhetoric goes, is on record as having favored cuts to disaster relief agencies like FEMA ("We cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids," he said in a primary debate last year), while his running mate, Paul Ryan, has been even more hostile to FEMA ("When disaster-relief decisions are not made judiciously, limited resources are diverted away from communities that are truly in need," he said just last March).

Obama, meanwhile, has reportedly embraced FEMA in the past, and is certainly doing so now, with his comments this past week seeming to argue in favor even of an increase in FEMA spending, noting the frequency of "these kinds of storms."

The storm is also purportedly casting in a kinder light Obama's general attitude toward government, until now often described as an electoral weakness. Pre-Sandy, pundits usually raked the president over the coals for openly embracing the role of government in society during a time when anti-government sentiment is at an all-time high. In the first debate, for instance, his answer to a question about his view of the role of government was considered a dud:

I also believe that government has the capacity — the federal government has the capacity to help open up opportunity and create ladders of opportunity and to create frameworks where the American people can succeed.

It's this kind of language that's allowed opponents of Obama to cast him as the "redistributionist-in-Chief": a man who openly believes that government can help provide "ladders of opportunity." That language is particularly annoying to pure free-market ideologues, who have often claimed the "ladders of opportunity" phrase for themselves, but only in the context of their being provided by the private sector.

Anyway, enter Hurricane Sandy. Suddenly, it seems that most of the mainstream press – as if speaking through one voice – has finally decided that the storm has settled the big-government-versus-small-government argument, with Obama coming out the clear winner. There were a number of online columns like the one by USA Today's Amanda Marcotte, who wrote that "Sandy Shows Why Romney's Wrong on FEMA," or by Catherine Poe at the Washington Times, who pitched in with "FEMA to the Rescue: Why Obama is Right and Romney Was Wrong."

But more than a few outlets used the storm to make an even bigger case for government in general. Up north, for instance, the Globe and Mail decreed that "Superstorm Bolsters Obama's Big-Government Argument". But the more striking piece was the uncharacteristically brazen editorial in the New York Times, titled "A Big Storm Requires Big Government," in which the Times harshly criticized George Bush's cavalier attitude toward disaster relief in the years leading up to Katrina, and argued generally for the necessity of a broadly strong government.

The Times headline was instantly mocked by both the Heritage Foundation, who called it "a shameless attempt to politicize Hurricane Sandy," and the Wall Street Journal ("A Big Storm Requires Big Bird"), which used the editorial as an opportunity to wittily attack the Grey Lady:

Some people prepare for natural disasters by stocking up on food, water and batteries. At the New York Times, they stockpile tendentious ideological arguments.

The editorialists at the Wall Street Journal have a lot of balls themselves calling out anyone else for mass-producing tendentious ideology, but that's another argument for another day. The point is that the storm has become a flash-point for a new media meme: Obama is for big government (which is suddenly a good thing), Romney is for small government (and wants to take rafts and blankets away from flood victims), and goodness gracious, aren't we lucky that we got to see such a clear, real-world demonstration of the important philosophical differences between these two candidates in the week before the election.

All year, the press has been banging a similar drum, i.e. that Mitt Romney and his budget-slashing sidekick Paul Ryan are for small government, while the closet socialist Barack Obama and his old-school New Dealer VP Joe Biden are the obvious big-government candidates.

The only problem with this new line of rhetoric is that it isn't really true. The almost certain reality is that we'll end up with a big (and perhaps even a rapidly-expanding) government no matter who gets elected. People seem to forget that this time four years ago, George W. Bush was winding down one of the most activist, expensive, intrusive presidencies in history, an eight-year period that saw a massive expansion in the size of the federal government. Almost exactly four years ago, this is what the conservative Washington Times wrote about the outgoing president:

George W. Bush rode into Washington almost eight years ago astride the horse of smaller government. He will leave it this winter having overseen the biggest federal budget expansion since Franklin Delano Roosevelt seven decades ago.

Bush, it is true, consistently expanded the size of the federal bureaucracies almost across the board during his eight years in office, greatly increasing the size of government just in terms of sheer numbers and volume of spending, but that wasn't all he did.

People forget that he also took a major qualitative step forward in expanding the role of government, when in 2008 his Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, teamed up with then-Fed official and Paulson's future counterpart in the Obama administration, Tim Geithner, to design a series of financial bailouts and state-aided mergers. The bailout program that began under Bush cost trillions of dollars and left the state hopelessly and irrevocably involved in the insurance, banking and auto industries, among other things.

But within a few years, that was forgotten. Forget about the myth that the Republican Party is sincerely interested in reducing the size of government: the real myth is that the American people are in favor of reducing the size of government. And that myth was alive and well again by the summer of 2010, in the runup to midterm elections. Back then, Slate columnist Anne Applebaum described the national self-deception this way:

Americans on both the left and the right have, for the last decade, consistently voted for high-spending members of Congress and consistently supported ever-higher levels of government intervention and regulation at all levels of public life. As a result, the federal government expanded under George W. Bush's administration at a rate that was, at least until President Barack Obama came along, totally unprecedented in U.S. history.

In the abstract, most Americans want a smaller and less intrusive government. In reality, what Americans really want is a government that spends less money on other people.

Hurricane Sandy is a perfect, microcosmic example of America's attitude toward government. We have millions of people who, most of the year, are ready to bash anyone who accepts government aid as a parasitic welfare queen, but the instant the water level rises a few feet too high in their own neighborhoods, those same folks transform into little Roosevelts, full of plaudits for the benefits of a strong state.

The truth is, nobody, be he rich or poor, wants his government services cut. Drive up and down route 128 outside Boston, you'll see a lot of affluent white people waving Romney signs, complaining about entitlement spending. But about four thousand percent of those same people working along the high-tech ring there are totally dependent on the Pentagon contracts that keep doors open at companies like Raytheon and General Dynamics.

Here in the tri-state area, and especially in the lower Manhattan region I'm staring at out my window right now, you'll get much of the same – lots of whining now about deficit spending and the parasitical 47%, but also conspicuous silence a few years ago, when in one fell swoop, taxpayers had to spend about twice the amount of the annual federal budget just to save bonus seasons on Wall Street for the few thousand of our local assholes who nearly blew up the world economy.

And a lot of those same parasite-bashing, Randian pure-market ideologues were in full pucker mode for all of this past summer, while they waited in frank desperation for the Fed to announce a third Quantitative Easing program – in which the Fed will henceforth inject $85 billion of raw, uncut welfare into the financial services industry's bloodstream every month.

Programs like QE are always defended as being necessary to stimulate the economy in general, and who knows, maybe they are – but it's conspicuous that a crowd of people who normally hate "government spending" are suddenly overflowing with praise for the Fed's wisdom and logical explanations for why this massive pseudo-state intervention is necessary.

The point is, we will end up with a big government no matter who wins next week's election, because neither Mitt Romney nor Barack Obama is supported by a coalition that has any interest in tightening its own belt. The only reason we're having this phony big-versus-small argument is because of yet another longstanding media deception, i.e. that the only people who actually receive government aid are the poor and the elderly and other such traditional "welfare"-seekers. Thus a politician who is in favor of cutting services to that particular crowd, like Mitt Romney, is inevitably described as favoring "small government," no matter what his spending plans are for everybody else.

But everyone lives off the government teat to some degree – even (one might even say especially) the very rich who have been the core supporters of both the Bush presidency and Romney's campaign. Many are industrial leaders who would revolt tomorrow if their giant free R&D program known as the federal military budget were to be scaled back even a few percentage points. Mitt's buddies on Wall Street would cry without their bailouts and dozens of lucrative little-known subsidies (like the preposterous ability of certain banks to act as middlemen in transactions when the government lends money to itself).

And if it's not outright bailouts or guarantees keeping the rich rich, it's selective regulation and carefully-carved-out protections from competition – like the bans on drug re-importation or pharmaceutical price negotiation for Medicare that are keeping the drug companies far richer than they would be, in the pure free-market paradise their CEOs probably espouse at dinner parties.

The evolution of this whole antigovernment movement has been fascinating to watch.

People who grew up in public schools, run straight to the embassy the instant they get a runny nose overseas, stuff burgers down their throats without worrying about E. Coli and sleep happily in planes they know have been inspected by the FAA (I regularly risked my life in Aeroflot liners for a decade and know the difference), can with straight faces make the argument that having to pay any taxes at all is tyranny. 

It's almost as if people feel the need to announce that they don't need any help with anything, ever – not even keeping bridges safe or drinking water clean.

It's this weird national paranoia about being seen as needy, or labeled a parasite who needs government aid, that leads to lunacies like the idea that having a strong disaster-relief agency qualifies as a "big government" concept, when in fact it's just sensible.

If everyone could just admit that government is a fact of life, we could probably do a much better job of fixing it and managing its costs. Instead, we have to play this silly game where millions of us pretend we're above it all, that we don't walk on regularly-cleaned streets or fly in protected skies. It shouldn't take a once-in-a-generation hurricane for Americans to admit they need the government occasionally, but that's apparently where we are.

Corporate Media Breaks Climate Silence, Following Undeniable Sandy Superstorm

Thursday, November 1, 2012 by Common Dreams
'Its global warming, stupid'

 

 

As many have now observed, part of the new reality in Sandy's aftermath—whether too slowly, reluctantly or imperfectly—is that many mainstream media outlets, once decidedly resigned to avoid the scientific consensus, are now asking significant questions about the role of human-induced global warming and the impact of climate change and extreme weather.

The most striking example of corporate media's climate change epiphanies, perhaps, is Thursday's Bloomberg Businessweek cover, which boasts: "It's Global Warming, Stupid."

Though the "climate connection to extreme weather was conspicuously absent" from most major coverage in the lead-up and during the storm, Stephen Lacey at ClimateProgress documents how, starting Tuesday afternoon, "there was an increase in climate-related stories, with extensive segments appearing on Al Jazeera, Current TV, MSNBC, and NBC." Even Fox News, he notes, has gotten in on the act.

Even unlikely political pundits such as Chuck Todd, are chiming in. Todd exclaimed on his "Daily Rundown" on MSNBC: "It's the second year in a row the New York Metro area hit by this stuff [sic]... Let's not bury our heads in the sand when it comes to -- something has changed in the Atlantic. The climate has changed. It's called climate change, folks.”

According to a top news story at CNN, Thursday morning, we have now entered the "Superstorm Era" -- a time of relentless weather systems like Hurricane Sandy, that will occur at an increasing rate, a direct result of the exponential process of the climate change feedback loop.

Hurricane Sandy is merely a "foretaste of things to come" Princeton University professor Michael Oppenheimer told CNN. "Bigger storms and higher sea levels" will pile on to create a "growing threat" in the coming decades.

ABC also published a featured article making the same connections:

If the growing trend shown in early data continues, hurricanes will show themselves to be the most tangible impact of climate change....As the globe warms, ice melts, contributing to rising sea levels. This, in turn, makes coastlines more vulnerable to damage caused by storm surges.

In the Businessweek exposé, uncharacteristic of the conservative, pro-business publication, author Paul M. Barrett pulls together voices from the climate science community, some of whom were less likely to speak out about global warming prior to Hurricane Sandy, critiquing this year's presidential candidates for their stubborn silence.

Barrett writes:

In an Oct. 30 blog post, Mark Fischetti of Scientific American took a spin through Ph.D.-land and found more and more credentialed experts willing to shrug off the climate caveats. The broadening consensus: 'Climate change amps up other basic factors that contribute to big storms. For example, the oceans have warmed, providing more energy for storms. And the Earth’s atmosphere has warmed, so it retains more moisture, which is drawn into storms and is then dumped on us.' Even those of us who are science-phobic can get the gist of that. [...]

However, Barrett, continues, "The issue was MIA during the presidential debates and, regardless of who wins on Nov. 6, is unlikely to appear on the near-term congressional calendar. After Sandy, that seems insane."

Barrett again:

An unscientific survey of the social networking literature on Sandy reveals an illuminating tweet (you read that correctly) from Jonathan Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. On Oct. 29, Foley thumbed thusly: “Would this kind of storm happen without climate change? Yes. Fueled by many factors. Is storm stronger because of climate change? Yes.” Eric Pooley, senior vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund (and former deputy editor of Bloomberg Businessweek), offers a baseball analogy: “We can’t say that steroids caused any one home run by Barry Bonds, but steroids sure helped him hit more and hit them farther. Now we have weather on steroids.”

Some political leaders are gaining attention in mainstream press in the aftermath of Sandy on their foreboding statements on the changing climate -- most notably New York Governor Andrew Cuomo who said in a press statement this week,

Climate change is...a controversial subject...people will debate weather or not there is climate change...I want to talk about the frequency of extreme weather situations...the frequency of extreme weather situations is way up. We just went through hurricane Irene just over a year ago, and there is only so long you can say well this is once in a lifetime and it will never happen again. And then it happens again. And then you are sure its not going to happen again. And then it happens again. I joke that every two years we have a one hundred years flood.

Cuomo, among others, are beginning to propose new measures to prepare for the scientific warnings that climate change and extreme weather are here to stay.

However—even as the mainstream media outlets start to end their "climate silence"—politicians and elected officials, most strikingly Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, seem committed to theirs.

Hurricane Sandy's Path of Destruction