To The Point

Warren Olney's To The Point is following the stories beyond the soundbites.

[tothepoint]

Hillary Clinton: Tough, Tested...Trusted?

Photo: Marc Nozell

In 2008, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign focused on toughness. This time around, she has embraced the historic position of potentially being the first woman president. “She feels more available to run authentically as a woman,” says Jay Newton-Small, author of 'Broad Influence: How Women Are Changing the Way Washington Works'.

For a summary, click “Keep reading” below, or…

Listen to the segment: http://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/shows/to-the-point/hillary-clinton-tough-tested-not-always-trusted

However, Hillary Clinton has long fought for global women’s rights, establishing that the violations of women’s rights are also a human rights violation. In 1995, Clinton addressed a special session of the United Nations Fourth World Congress on Women in Beijing. The speech laid the groundwork for her position on women’s rights. “Human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights,” Clinton said. 

Now, her struggle is to share her passion to inspire voters around the country, including young women who are flocking to Bernie Sanders. “Hillary lost millennial women in New Hampshire by 82 percent,” says Newton-Small. “She’s not succeeding in making a case to them about why she’s the one to lead them.” Newton-Small says Clinton is missing out on the opportunity to explain her history as an advocate for women’s rights to the younger generation.  

Clinton also has to face critics who question her ties to Wall Street. And of course there’s the email scandal, which could follow her into her presidency, should she be elected. 

“I’m not sure what we’ve seen is terribly out of the ordinary,” "HRC” author Jonathan Allen says about the emails. However, the FBI investigation could be troubling, he says. “That said I think the bar for prosecuting a presidential candidate in the middle of a campaign is pretty high,” he says. 

Finally, Clinton also has to court the African American community. “Clearly black voters have seen that Hillary Clinton speaks to their issues in a different way,” says Michael Dyson, author of “The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America.” “I think her strength will be addressing the needs of African American communities with a sensitivity that President Obama couldn't necessarily publicly display along with a powerful public policy,” says Dyson. 

[tothepoint]

Ted Cruz: Obstruction as Opportunity

Who is Ted Cruz? This profile of the man behind the candidate is the fourth in a series of To The Point specials on the presidential candidates.

Photo: Michael Vadon

This special episode of "To The Point," takes an in-depth look at Ted Cruz, U.S. senator from Texas and presidential candidate, from his Princeton days to his work as a lawyer on the Bush v. Gore case. Brilliant at spotting an opening, he rode a wave of Tea Party support to office and made good on his promise to obstruct business on Capitol Hill.

For a summary, click “Keep reading” below, or…

Listen to the segment: http://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/shows/to-the-point/a-profile-of-presidential-candidate-ted-cruz/ted-cruz-obstruction-as-opportunity

Ted Cruz has filibustered and even helped shut down the government to demonstrate his refusal to compromise what he calls conservative ideals. We hear about his record in Washington and how he got there from journalists in Dallas and D.C., as well as his law school mentor and an evangelical supporter.

Dana Milbank, political columnist for The Washington Post, first met Cruz while covering George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign in Austin, Texas. His first impression was that Cruz was a young man in a hurry, an “extraordinarily ambitious guy” with degrees from Princeton University and Harvard Law School.

“There was no sign of this fire-breathing conservative. I'm sure he was a conservative, but nothing like what you see today,” Milbank says. Cruz’s marriage to another Bush campaign staffer has been “a subject of some intrigue,” Milbank said. Ted and Heidi Cruz both got jobs in the Bush administration, she on the National Security Council, but left Washington for Texas when he decided to return to his home state. While Heidi Cruz became an investment manager for Goldman Sachs, Ted Cruz became solicitor general in Texas and “found his voice in this emerging Tea Party,” Milbank said. “He saw that this was a movement that was going to take off. It did start to take off and he hitched his wagon to that.”

The 45-year-old senator has not been popular with colleagues since his 2012 election because of his role orchestrating a governmental shutdown in opposition to the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Cruz engaged in a filibuster on the Senate floor in which he memorably filled time by reading from Dr. Suess about green eggs and ham. But Milbank said that only cemented the hatred of other senators that began early in Cruz’s term during the confirmation of Sen. Chuck Hagel to be defense secretary. He said Cruz insinuated without grounds that Hagel was on the take from North Korea. Fellow Republican Sen. John McCain defended Hagel and called Cruz a “wacko.”

Robert George, a professor at Princeton University and mentor to Cruz, says he stood out as a top student at the elite school. Cruz was a very skilled debater who could argue either side of an issue, George says. George was not surprised to see Cruz emerge from law school to become a clerk for William Rehnquist, the chief justice of the United States.

Despite the time he has spent in Washington, Cruz campaigns as an outsider. Milbank says that is credible because Cruz has only been in the Senate a few years and is “among those who would very much like to blow up the system and essentially bring the Senate and the Congress to a halt.” Cruz has pledged that as president he’d repeal Obamacare, abolish the IRS, secure the border, bring back jobs, end “the persecution of religious liberty” and “rip to shreds the catastrophic Iranian nuclear deal.”

Wayne Slater, a longtime Texas political commentator, says Cruz was born in Canada because his parents had business interests there. His father is an immigrant from Cuba who fought with Castro but turned against the communist regime. Cruz went to school in Texas, including a conservative after-school program in which he memorized the Constitution.

Slater says Cruz won the 2012 race for the seat vacated by popular Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison by pulling off an upset in the primary and running as an outsider who was not going to Washington to make friends or make deals.

Bob Vander Plaats, president and CEO of the Christian group The Family Leader and a national co-chair of the Cruz campaign, says Cruz has been inspired and motivated by his father’s immigrant story – “how he was able to realize the American dream because he learned the language, he worked hard, and he discovered opportunity.”

While Cruz has strong support among evangelicals, some have instead voted for Donald Trump. “It just really highlights and illustrates the frustration that the American people have with their government overall, Vander Plaats says, “and evangelicals are not immune to that.”

The Cruz supporter says evangelicals don’t agree with Trump’s past or the way he disparages other people, “but we want someone to go to D.C. and not be politics as usual.”

[tothepoint]

Is Rubio new face of old GOP?

Who is Marco Rubio? This profile of the man behind the candidate is the third in a series of To The Point specials on the presidential candidates.

Photo: Michael Vadon

Some Republicans call Marco Rubio their party's Obama — and they don't mean it kindly. Others call him their best chance of heading off Donald Trump. We hear about the meteoric rise of a Cuban-American in Florida, his brief term in Washington and what happened between him and Jeb Bush.

For a summary, click “Keep reading” below, or…

Listen to the segment: http://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/shows/to-the-point/marco-rubio-the-new-face-of-the-old-gop

In 1998, Marco Rubio was a city commissioner in West Miami. In 2000, he was elected to Florida's House of Representatives. Just six years after that, he became the second youngest House Speaker ever – and the first Cuban-American to hold that position. Now he's a 44-year-old senator in his first term who insists he's fully prepared for the White House.

Susan MacManus, who teaches political science at the University of South Florida, says Rubio is a risk taker, always looking for an opening, when it comes to his political ambitions. She recalls conversations with Rubio earlier in his career. “He intimated to me that one of the reasons that he decided to seek a leadership post was because he thought that that was the best place in the Legislature to be able to affect policy.”

She said Rubio made a broad sweep to collect ideas for initiatives in Florida, and that he takes credit for implementing at least half those plans at some stage before he moved on to the U.S. Senate.

“Probably the areas where he had the most influence were in some of his ideas about education, and less successful were some of his ideas about tax reform,” she said.

Rubio is not politically aligned with the national Tea Party movement but benefitted from its stimulating voter turnout among older Floridians whose adult children were hurt by the Great Recession, MacManus said. Then-Gov. Jeb Bush and Rubio have both acknowledged providing important help to each other in Florida politics, she said, before the two men faced off in the 2016 primaries. A once-proud mentor, Bush attacked Rubio's Senate attendance record, saying he should resign because the campaign was keeping him from showing up for work.

Rubio responded sharply that Jeb Bush had supported Sen. John McCain in 2008 despite similar absences and that he was only turning on Rubio because they were rivals for the 2016 nomination.

Marc Caputo, Florida political reporter for Politico, says Rubio correctly inferred that Bush’s advisers put him up to attacking Rubio. “The people surrounding Bush, running his campaign, were just obsessed with Rubio. They took his candidacy personally.” Caputo says getting Bush to go on the attack, counter to his personality, was terrible advice because “you don't try to get your quarterback to perform plays that he is not capable of doing.”

Florida Republicans were torn between their loyalties, MacManus says. Some want a new face because they “recognize the importance of diversity within the ranks of the Republican Party,” she says. Almost half the registered Republicans in Florida are under 50, she says, a change from when older voters dominated the party.

Manuel Roig-Franzia, a Washington Post writer and author of a biography, The Rise of Marco Rubio, says if Bush’s people were surprised Rubio decided to run for president, “then they would be guilty of a major miscalculation politically.” Rubio has been defying the odds his whole career, says Roig-Franzia. “That's the reason why you can't count him out. Even right now when people want to say that Donald Trump has an unstoppable path to the nomination.”

Rubio has made his family’s story a central part of his political identity, Roig-Franzia says. “Early in his career he talked about being the son of exiles who were forced to leave Cuba because of Fidel Castro. And later it was uncovered that in fact it was the people who came to the United States before the Cuban revolution started.” But he says the family did struggle economically and was part of a group in Florida who felt exiled because they could not return to their homeland.

Rubio was born in Miami and lived there as a small child. His father was a bartender, his mother a hotel maid. They moved to Las Vegas, converted to Mormonism while there, but returned to Miami and Rubio became Roman Catholic again.

Creating a misimpression about when his family immigrated did not hurt Rubio politically as much as did his “flip flopping on immigration,” Roig-Franzia says. In 2010, Rubio said a pathway to citizenship was de facto amnesty, but in 2013 he supported a pathway to citizenship, and he has since insisted that it was not amnesty. Backing off his immigration reform package when it ran into Republican opposition left Rubio without a major accomplishment in the Senate.

Caputo says a longtime friend and ally of Rubio in Florida politics, former Rep. David Rivera, has become an embarrassment, coming under investigation for use of political contributions and state money. Rubio has tried to distance himself from Rivera lately, but their friendship is something that could provide attack material for an opponent like Donald Trump.

Peter Schorsch, a registered Republican who donated to Jeb Bush's campaign and is publisher of FloridaPolitics.com, says Bush supporters in the state seem split 50-50 on whether to back Rubio now because “there are a lot of hard feelings.” Schorsch says traditional attack ads don’t work against Rubio. “He is the Steph Curry of politics,” Schorsch says, referring to the NBA star. While Sen. Ted Cruz has been trying to run to the right of Rubio, Schorsch says there is no ambiguity in Rubio’s conservative positions against abortion, and on taxes and foreign policy. “I think the mistake people make is confusing Rubio's youth with a lack of conservatism,” Schorsch says. “I like the line that someone said Rubio is an old man’s idea of what a young man should be. And that's really how conservative he is.”

Caputo says Rubio’s weakness is that he has been giving basically the same stump speech for years and “scrape away that first layer, there's not much there.” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, before dropping out of the presidential race, roughed up Rubio in a New Hampshire debate for repeating memorized talking points.

Roig-Franzia says that Rubio’s lack of successful major legislation is making it difficult for him and his endorsers to answer questions about his accomplishments. “Donald Trump will be able to point at big buildings with his name on it. What will Marco Rubio be able to point at?”

[tothepoint]

What fires are stoking The Bern?

Who is Bernie Sanders? This profile of the Democratic Socialist is the second in a series of To The Point specials on the presidential candidates.

Photo by Phil Roeder

Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders is nothing if not consistent. From college days in Chicago to Capitol Hill to this year's campaign, he has pursued a single goal: "to fight for a progressive economic agenda that creates jobs, raises wages, protects the environment and provides health care for all" and "to take on the enormous economic and political power of the billionaire class.”

Despite his Socialist leanings, Sanders has worked with Republicans in the Senate. As mayor of Burlington, Vermont, he was praised for fiscal efficiency. Biographers, old friends and former staffers say he's out to change the way Americans are thinking. We hear how a very private man has made himself one of this year's most important public figures.

For a summary, click “Keep reading” below, or…

Listen to the segment: http://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/shows/to-the-point/who-is-bernie-sanders-a-profile-of-the-democratic-socialist/what-fires-are-stoking-the-bern

Close observers of Sanders discuss with host Warren Olney how a very private man has made himself one of this year's most important public figures.

Harry Jaffe of The Washingtonian, who has written an unauthorized biography of Sanders, describes the senator as someone who doesn’t have to listen to handlers because he is focused on a longstanding belief that income inequality is the biggest problem facing this country.

“I think that he is someone who over the years in his political career just has basically spoken the truth as he sees it. It's kind of unvarnished. It's worked for him for 40 years. Certainly it's built a brand in Vermont,” Jaffe says.

Jaffe says Sanders grew up in a close-knit, Jewish immigrant community in Brooklyn, New York that was “very left-wing, I would say, Marxist communist socialist brew.” His family struggled financially. His mother died before fulfilling her dream of moving out of the tenement and having her own house. Sanders doesn’t share much about his tough beginnings but they marked his life, Jaffe says.

Sanders was not an activist in high school, he was an athlete, a long-distance runner and basketball player, Jaffe says. “But he did have this sense especially from his older brother Larry that there was a larger world.” Sanders arrived at the University of Chicago in 1961 at the dawn of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war movements. He led demonstrations and sit-ins, was confronted with police brutality and admittedly almost flunked out of the university.

Scott MacKay is a political analyst for Rhode Island Public Radio and a former reporter for the Burlington Free Press, in Vermont’s largest city. Sanders moved there and improbably was elected mayor, defeating an incumbent by 10 votes in a three-way race. “What happened was the Democratic machine that had run the town for many years ... had grown so rusty that they couldn't steal a 10-vote election,” MacKay says. “Bernie Sanders went door to door, really worked hard” and galvanized people who had felt unrepresented for years.

Jaffe says Sanders was attracted to Vermont by its cheap land after discovering the agrarian lifestyle during months spent on a commune in Israel.

MacKay says the Burlington political establishment thought Sanders would only last one term, and one city council member called at a meeting for Democrats to fight “this socialist fungus.” “The young Bernie Sanders supporters got up and started to chant, ‘Fungus among us, fungus among us,’ and it became kind of their rallying cry.” MacKay said Sanders was able to run the city by forging good relationships with the Republicans, who in Burlington at the time tended to be moderate, “good-government types,” working together on improving infrastructure and snow plowing.

By his fourth term, Sanders made a U.S. News & World Reports magazine list of the country’s top 20 mayors.

One of the people he hired, Christopher Pearson, is now a Vermont state legislator. Pearson recalls going to Sanders’ home to help the then-congressman host a brunch, and finding Sanders vacuuming the living room floor. “He's very much a hands-on guy and very down to earth,” Pearson says. He describes his former boss as compassionate but very serious and not given to making small talk.

Michael Cohen, a columnist for The Boston Globe, says Sanders’ policy proposals, such as single-payer health care and free college education, are politically unrealistic. “It's hard not to look at what he's proposing and sort of raise some serious questions.” The hard line that  Republicans have taken against President Obama filling the Supreme Court vacancy shows they are driven by ideology, not just the influence of big-money donors that Sanders rails against, Cohen says.

Spencer Jackson is a Sanders supporter and currently a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Queensland in Australia. He says the broad excitement for Sanders results from his offering a different vision for the Democratic Party. Jackson says the party went down the wrong path, with deregulation of Wall Street, gutting welfare and maintaining low tax rates, leading to growing economic inequality. “And I think Bernie Sanders is offering the first glimmer of hope that we've had in a long time to seriously tackle this issue.”

Cohen says Sanders is creating false expectations for his supporters. Jackson disagrees, saying Sanders is just fighting for ideas he believes in, and “this is the essence of politics.”

Jaffe said Sanders left most of his hard-core socialist beliefs behind when he got elected mayor of Burlington. But MacKay says a Republican opponent would still have material to red-bait Sanders – including pictures of him visiting Nicaragua in 1985 against the wishes of the Reagan administration, which supported a rebellion against the Cuban-backed Sandinista regime. Still, MacKay says, Sanders’ congressional voting record is not much different from that of other liberal Democrats.

Pearson recalls Sanders encountering a working-class voter while campaigning in Vermont who said, “You know Bernie I disagree with you on just about everything. And I vote for you every time.” Sanders asked why. “The guy says, ‘I know just where you stand. These other people, I don't have a clue.’”

[tothepoint]

Donald Trump: The man behind the candidate

In the first months of campaigning for the GOP presidential nomination, Donald Trump has relied on sweeping generalities, but many want to know more.

Photo: Michael Vadon

We talked with supporters and skeptics about Trump's record and his White House qualifications, in the first of a series on the 2016 presidential candidates.

For a summary, click “Keep reading” below, or...

Listen to the segment: http://bit.ly/1moqhaf

“We are going to make this great, great country even greater.” Donald Trump has relied on promises like that to rally crowds and win support in the polls. A few perspectives on Trump from To The Point guests:

Ernie Bach, CEO of Bach Enterprises, which includes many car dealerships in Massachusetts, thinks Trump is the most qualified candidate, “a proven great manager.” “His company is a tremendous company that takes management skills and one the great things about Mr Trump is he has the ability to surround himself with extremely talented people,” Bach said.

Trump has said often that he doesn't need any money from anybody else to finance his campaign and therefore he won't owe  anybody anything. Bach held a fundraiser for Trump last summer but says he never expected anything back from Trump or the other candidates – Democrat, Republican, or independent – that he contributed to. He said Trump has taken some contributions but much less than the other candidates, and will go down in history as the only presidential candidate who's ever substantially financed his entire campaign.

David Cay Johnston, a law professor at Syracuse University and a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter, calls Trump an enormous welfare recipient. “In one deal alone he got $400 million from the taxpayers of New York City. He has a long history of refusing to pay people who did work for him and there are hundreds and hundreds of lawsuits against him by vendors, contractors, consultants who say that they did the work and weren't paid. He was found by a federal judge to have conspired to cheat about 150 illegal immigrants who were involved in demolishing the Bonwit Teller (department store) building in Manhattan, the site of what is now Trump Tower.” Johnston said Trump was not a great manager because he tends to hire and promote executives who give him the “Yes, sir” he demands. Johnston said Trump has a history of looking the other way on license violations for which low-level employees in the casino industry were removed and even prosecuted, and of borrowing money he doesn't pay back.

Wayne Barrett, a fellow with the Nation Institute and longtime Village Voice investigative reporter, wrote a critical 1992 book about Trump called “The Deals and the Downfall.” “He makes money,” Barrett said. But he said Trump went from being a very successful, meticulous builder to being a brand marketer whose skills at building are long gone.

Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, said there is plenty of time left for voters to decide whether questionable things Trump may have done are are disqualifying or worse than what’s in other candidates’ pasts. “No one’s going to be perfect,” Shermer said. “You just have to kind of look through the field and see who you like, not who is the least worst. I don't think we're in that position. But things I like about Donald Trump: First of all this idea of deal making. And not providing, say, a 14-point plan on every single thing he's going to do – like the boxer who has a plan for every round of the 12-round match and then gets punched in the nose in the first 10 seconds and that's the end of his strategy.” If some Trump positions seem extreme, that’s not unusual in politics or in deal-making, Shermer said. He said Trump gets away with  boastfulness because he does it in a charming and amusing way, so it’s “part of the personality, it’s what comes with the package.”

Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster and strategist, said focus groups and surveys show that Republican voters like the contrast between Trump’s rough, improvised speeches and President Obama’s smooth and scripted style, but also like Trump’s message. “Trump is saying everything's going to be so great and I recognize that it is simplistic. I recognize that is almost jingoistic,” Luntz said. But it appeals to voters who believe America is losing its exceptionalism. They see Trump as genuine and authentic, Luntz said.

Barrett maintained that racial identity issues are at the core of Trump’s appeal. Luntz said that Trump may be the worst Republican nominee to appeal to Latinos but that 15 to 20 percent of his supporters are African-American, three times higher than the usual black Republican vote.

[statedept]

Since the attacks in Paris, many have asked about our process for admitting Syrian refugees into the United States. Learn the facts: http://go.usa.gov/cDxud.

[postgraphics]

The site of Friday’s attacks

[npr]

Many, many more Americans would qualify for income-driven repayment plans, if only they knew about them.

Did You Know You Can Lower Your Student Loan Payments? I Didn’t

Illustration: Chris Nickels for NPR

[tothepoint]

Pentagon paid millions to sports teams for patriotic spectacles

By Jared Morgan When 80 uniformed Georgia Army National Guard soldiers descended on the field of the Georgia Dome in 2013 and unfurled a massive American flag, cheering sports fans didn’t know the performance was bankrolled by the military and not a genuine display of appreciation put on by the Atlanta Falcons, the National Football League or the city.

The New York Jets were paid $10,000 last year for 40 New Jersey Army National Guard soldiers to participate in a military appreciation game and in 2012 the Army paid the team $20,000 to give two soldiers Coaches Club access and recognize them as hometown heroes on the videoboard at each home game.

These are just a few examples of a slew of patriotic events paid for by the Department Of Defense. Other events included even more over-the-top spectacles like flyovers, troops parachuting into stadiums, surprise homecomings and on-court swearing-in ceremonies.

A Senate joint oversight investigation recently put a spotlight on the Pentagon’s practice of  paying millions to have professional sports teams honor American service members at games. Arizona Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake issued their findings Wednesday in a report, “Tackling Paid Patriotism,” and called on the DOD to halt the practice.

Les Carpenter, sports writer for the Guardian US, called the displays acts of vanity and the amount of money spent on them obscene.   

“What are you cheering for?” Carpenter told “To the Point.” “You’re cheering for something that you feel is organic. It’s almost deceitful in a lot of ways beyond a secondary point of being wasteful.”

“Unsuspecting audience members became the subjects of paid-marketing campaigns rather than simply bearing witness to teams’ authentic, voluntary shows of support for the brave men and women who wear our nation’s uniform,” the report read.   

The senators also called on the teams to give back the estimated $6.8 million by donating to veterans organizations like Wounded Warriors. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said the league would perform an audit and refund any inappropriate transactions in full, he wrote in a letter.   

“They obviously should not be doing this,” McCain told reporters. “We appreciate if they honor the men and women in uniform, but not to get paid for it. We could only account for 62 percent of the 122 contracts and 70 percent of the more than $10 million it actually spent.”

Between 2012 and 2015 the DOD spent more than $53 million on marketing and advertising contracts with sports teams – more than $10 million of it, as McCain mentioned, paid to teams in the NFL, the Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League and Major League Soccer, according to the report.   

However, Carpenter said it’s not the Pentagon calling the teams and coordinating the shows, but each state’s individual National Guard units.

“It comes off as an organic thing,” Carpenter said. “I know these things have happened in front of me at games and I’ve thought ‘oh, the team is doing this, that’s nice of them’ and realized, no, the Pentagon is paying the team to do it.”

So does it work for recruitment like military expects it to?

“Chances are you’re not probably finding the potential candidates to join a National Guard at an NFL game where it could be hundreds of dollars (for a ticket),” Carpenter said.

Another justification for the practice is that the military is trying to reach the 18-34 demographic watching the games at home.  

“But the reality is this stuff is going on in the stadium,” Carpenter said. “The exposure is usually not making it home to that kid who is sitting in front of the television. That 19-year-old in front of the TV sees commercials at the same time the people in the stands are seeing the patriotic display.”

The highest paid team was the Atlanta Falcons, which received $879,000 in the past four years, according to the report. Many of the highest paid teams were in the NFL and included:

New England Patriots - $700,000

Buffalo Bills - $650,000

Baltimore Ravens - $534,500

New Orleans Saints - $472,875

San Diego Chargers - $453,500

Seattle Seahawks - $453,500

Indianapolis Colts - $400,000

The Minnesota Wild were the highest paid hockey team at $570,000. The Atlanta Braves accepted $450,000 from the DOD, the most of any other professional baseball team. The Atlanta Hawks were the highest paid basketball team at $225,000. The highest paid soccer team was the Seattle Sounders at $128,000.

As they have done in past years, teams in stadiums across the country will recognize those who served during games near Veterans Day, one key difference this year is the displays of patriotism likely won’t be paid for by the military itself.

As it has done in the past, the NFL said it would donate $1,000 for every point scored during the league’s “Salute to Service” games to the Pat Tillman Foundation, USO and Wounded Warrior Foundation, according to its website. The donation tracker showed a pledge of $658,000 Monday, which marks the end of week 9 in the 15-week season.

[tothepoint]

Great infographic on the unfortunate Syrian refugee crisis.

[tothepoint]

Did one of the world's most powerful corporations deliberately deceive the public and policy makers about the role of its own products in global warming?

Conservatives won some big victories in yesterday’s elections, upsetting the Democratic candidate in Kentucky who was leading in some polls, and defeating marijuana legalization in Ohio and an Equal Rights Ordinance in Houston. In almost all cases the turnout was very low. Reid Wilson is chief political correspondent for the Morning Consult.

Listen: http://ow.ly/Ug250

[tothepoint]

There's supposed to be an unbreachable wall between news stories and advertising, but more and more advertising is designed to look like news. The LA Times is among the financially strapped publications that take money to produce articles that promote special interest groups. They're not written by news reporters, but how's a reader to know? Even if there's clear labeling, will doubts be raised about credibility?

The LA Times, cooperating with the Columbia School of Journalism, recently published a hard-hitting series on Exxon. It exposed the oil giant for casting doubt on climate change and opposing emission controls at the same time its own researchers were proving that climate change was real. But investigative reporting was not all that the Times was up to. It was also creating a website for the California Resources Corporation, formerly Occidental Petroleum, with articles and videos supporting the oil and gas industry. Listen: http://ow.ly/UfWMj

[tothepoint]

Since California voters passed Prop 47 less than a year ago, some crimes are on the increase while arrests are on the decline. Is that a consequence of reducing some non-violent felonies to misdemeanors in order to curb the high cost of over-crowded prisons? Cops and prosecutors are divided. Should Prop 47 be amended or is it too early to tell?

Just last November, California voters approved Prop 47 by an overwhelming 60 percent. Already, there are calls for making change because of so-called "unintended consequences." We hear from Ben Poston of the LA Times and from two prosecutors who disagree about whether the measure’s responsible for an increase in crime.

Listen: http://ow.ly/TXhLw

[tothepoint]

Three weeks of unusually public drama revealed that the Roman Catholic hierarchy is sharply divided between traditionalists and reformers. Pope Francis called the meeting, asking how to reach out to gays and lesbians and to Catholics who divorce and re-marry. Now he alone, can decide what's next.

Bacon, sausage and other processed meats cause cancer. Red meat probably does too. That's according to a research division of the World Health Organization in a conclusion announced today after reviewing decades of research. Peter Whoriskey, who reports for the Washington Post, has more. Listen: http://ow.ly/TUz5w

[tothepoint]

Three weeks of unusually public drama revealed that the Roman Catholic hierarchy is sharply divided between traditionalists and reformers. Pope Francis called the meeting, asking how to reach out to gays and lesbians and to Catholics who divorce and re-marry. Now he alone, can decide what's next.

Three weeks of unusually public drama revealed that the Roman Catholic hierarchy is sharply divided between traditionalists and reformers. Pope Francis called the meeting, asking how to reach out to gays and lesbians and to Catholics who divorce and re-marry. Now he alone, can decide what's next. Listen: http://ow.ly/TUx6m

[newshour]

PHOTOS: Powerful earthquake shakes South Asia

The 7.5-magnitude quake hit the mountainous Badakhshan province in northeastern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border, and shockwaves reached northern Pakistan and parts of India.

[tothepoint]

Pakistan sustained a majority of the 260 casualties felt throughout South Asia after a 7.1-magnitude earthquake rocked the region Monday.

[huffpostpolitics]

Joe Biden Is Not Running For President In 2016

Get the full story here.