The Roundtable debates the recent June jobs report on 'This Week' Sunday.
MORAN (voice-over): Good morning, and welcome to "This Week."
ROMNEY: This kick in the gut has got to end.
MORAN: Another bleak jobs report.
OBAMA: We've got to grow the economy even faster, and we've got to put even more people back to work.
MORAN: Refocuses the presidential race on the struggling economy. The big questions: Can President Obama turn the economic tide before November? Can Mr. Romney convince voters he can do better? Two governors debate those questions, potential Romney running mate Bobby Jindal and key Obama ally Martin O'Malley. Jindal versus O'Malley, only on "This Week."
ROMNEY: It's a tax. They decided it was constitutional, so it is a tax and it's unconstitutional.
MORAN: More fallout from the Supreme Court's health care decision.
ANNOUNCER: From ABC News, "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos. It's your voice, your vote. Reporting from the Newseum in Washington, Terry Moran.
MORAN: Good morning, everyone. George Stephanopoulos has a well-deserved morning off. Hopefully, he's cooling off somewhere.
Big news this week, that depressing jobs report, new evidence of a struggling economy, truly. And that means more questions about whether President Obama or Governor Romney is the best man to fix things. Our guests are ready to continue that debate, so let's get right to it, Louisiana's governor, Republican Governor Bobby Jindal, and Maryland's Democratic governor, Martin O'Malley.
MORAN: Governor O'Malley, let me begin with you.
MORAN: And let's -- let's not mince words. The economy stinks. Let's take a look at the trend. This is not just a one-month blip. Look at these numbers. There is the first part of the year. The second quarter, 80,000, 77,000, 68,000. That's the worst quarter of job creation in two years.
So, Governor O'Malley, how does President Obama, how do his supporters answer a voter who says, "You inherited a terrible mess, granted. We hired you to fix it, you failed. You're fired"?
O'MALLEY: Well, I think what you have to look at is where the president started from. I mean, we faced the biggest job losses since the Great Depression. That's what George W. Bush and his failed policies left to us.
We've now put together as a nation, under President Obama's leadership, 28 months in a row of private-sector job growth. Would we like it to be happening faster? You bet we would. And we also have to I think admit that the Tea Party Republican Congress has done everything in their power to try to stall this jobs recovery and slow it before the election.
And you know what? Perhaps they might succeed. But our direction remains a direction forward. And no one can argue the fact that last year we created more jobs than were created in all eight years of George W. Bush, and that happened in 2010, as well.
So, look, we need to keep moving forward. And it would be great if the people of our country make a change, get rid of this do-nothing Congress, and put in some people that will work to create jobs, as the president has urged.
MORAN: So, Governor Jindal, what about that point, this is forward motion, it is job creation, and more, overall, than the Bush administration created?
JINDAL: Well, Terry, let's actually look at the facts for the whole four years now, three-and-a-half years where President Obama has been president, we've lost nearly half a million jobs since this president was elected.
JINDAL: You look at his numbers, you look at -- at family income, median family income has now decreased now under this president over $4,000, median family worth, two-decade low. By any measure, his policies have been a failure.
The president himself said at the beginning of his term, he said give us three years. If we can't turn this around, this will be a one-term proposition. President Clinton went to Ohio two years ago, 2010, said give us two years. If we can't turn this around, throw us out of office.
Let's -- look, the president himself, his administration himself said this word that words matter. Let's take them at their word. Their policies aren't working. Albert Einstein said it best. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
He passed an $800 billion stimulus package, promised that unemployment would be below 8 percent. It's been above 8 percent for 41 straight months. If we were where they told us we would be -- they told us we'd be at 5.6 percent unemployment under his stimulus -- you would have 8 million more Americans working today than is actually the case.
Look, kids come out of college, half of them are going to be underemployed, unemployed, 23 million underemployed, unemployed Americans. However you measure this, this economy is not growing. This president's policies simply aren't working.
MORAN: It's tough. And, Governor O'Malley, one of the tough things for the president, as Governor Jindal points out, is that he made promises, so he's had to come before the American people and explain what went wrong. Republicans are having a field day with this. Here's Karl Rove's group, Crossroads GPS, an ad that they have put together with some of those statements. Take a look.
(UNKNOWN): America's jobless rate is still too high. Barack Obama's got lots of excuses for the bad economy.
OBAMA: Headwinds coming from Europe. We've had a string of bad luck. An earthquake in Japan, an Arab spring. An ATM, you don't go to a bank teller. Some things that we could not control. You go to the airport, and you're using a kiosk. We've been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades.
MORAN: You know, Governor O'Malley, obviously, that's political ad, but doesn't Barack Obama own this economy?
O'MALLEY: Well, I think what he owns is the leadership of our country forward. What he owns is the responsibility to do everything in his power to dig us out of the hole that we found ourselves in.
And, look, President Obama is not running against the almighty. He is running against the alternative. And the alternative in this case is Governor Mitt Romney, who had the 47th worst job creation rate as governor and also has a -- a penchant, a talent for offshoring American jobs, sending them overseas, and also maintaining offshore bank accounts in Bermuda, Swiss bank accounts. And so the question he'll have to answer, Terry, is what is his alternative?
I've never known of a Swiss bank account to build an American bridge, a Swiss bank account to create American jobs, or Swiss bank accounts to rebuild the levees to protect the people of New Orleans. That's not an economic strategy for moving our country forward.
O'MALLEY: Because this is a choice, Terry, between two gentlemen. Look, President Obama's talked about what we need to do as a nation. It's what our parents and grandparents did, to invest in our country, to believe enough in her to invest in education, in our infrastructure, and also in innovation. That is not the proposal that Mitt Romney has. He wants to make it even easier for very wealthy people to avoid paying taxes, to offshore American jobs, and to maintain their Swiss bank accounts while our roads and bridges and levees crumble.
MORAN: OK. Let -- let me pick up on some of that with Governor Jindal. Mitt Romney does spend most of his time attacking President Obama. That's the nature of this campaign right now. But when he does put forward his own program, in broad generalities, he talks about cutting taxes, especially for the very rich, cutting corporate taxes, deregulation, especially for the financial sector, because apparently they don't need any more regulation. And what do you say to a voter who says that is the precise recipe that cratered the economy in the first place when Bush and the Republicans were in power and cooked it up and ruined everything in the first place? What's the answer to that?
MORAN: But the question, Governor Jindal, is aren't these policies going backwards? Why won't voters say, "We tried that"?
JINDAL: Absolutely. Absolutely. Listen to the policies he's actually outlined. He has said we need a lower, flatter tax code, so we need to cut individual tax rates 20 percent. We need a corporate tax rate that is competitive in the world. We now have the highest corporate tax rate in the entire industrialized world.
But he's also said, let's take away some of those loopholes, those deductions, especially for high-income earners, so we're not growing our December.
Secondly, he says let's produce more energy at home. Let's approve that Keystone pipeline, over 100,000 jobs there. Let's do more domestic energy production in the gulf and elsewhere in this country. Let's produce more oil and gas, especially from shale plays, already created over 600,000 jobs, could create another 250,000 jobs, will help secure manufacturing jobs in the steel industry, in the plastics, in the fertilizer industries.
Third, he -- he has also said we can't afford all of this spending. You know, President Obama created a new entitlement program, and we can't afford the entitlement programs we've already got. Mitt Romney has said let's repeal and replace Obamacare, get rid of those over 20 tax increases, $500 billion in tax increases, $500 billion in Medicare cuts, a program the president promised to protect, making cuts now that (inaudible) says are not sustainable, not realistic.
JINDAL: So Mitt Romney has already said on the first day he would not only cut taxes, he would also rein in spending and stop all of these regulations that are killing jobs, while at the same time regulating Wall Street in a prudent way.
MORAN: Well, OK, so, Governor O'Malley, this is a forward-looking program, according to Governor Jindal.
O'MALLEY: You mean the health care program that Governor Romney passed?
MORAN: No, the whole economic recipe.
O'MALLEY: Oh, the economic recipe. That would say -- or an economic recipe for disaster. And it's been proven. You want to talk about insanity, doing the same thing over and over again? You know, nostalgia is not want it used to be. I don't think most Americans want to go back to the days of George W. Bush, record spending increases, record deficits, record unemployment, record job losses.
I mean, the fact of the matter is, while we would all like the recovery to be happening faster, unemployment is lower now than it's been in three years, home foreclosures are now lower than they were before President Obama took office.
Look, the direction's clear. We need to move forward. And we need for the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, to reclaim their party from the radical Tea Party Republicans that would rather kill our economy than -- in order to try to score points in this election rather than move forward.
MORAN: It may be a tough sell for voters to say that the economy is doing as well as you point out.
O'MALLEY: No, I'm not saying -- I'm saying, look, this is hard. The economy is moving in a better direction than it was, but it needs -- the acceleration needs to happen, and that requires both parties to work together for the common good.
MORAN: You know, Governor O'Malley, you raised something I want to raise with Governor Jindal, and that is something the Democrats are going to talk a lot about. Voters still aren't really sure of who Mitt Romney is, and this week, there were two major articles, Vanity Fair, Associated Press, taking a look at his fortune. And as you pointed out, he had a secret company in Bermuda. Not a lot of Americans have that, 12 offshore tax haven funds in the Cayman Islands and that Swiss bank account.
Let me go to Governor Jindal. Is it fair for voters to consider, Governor, what Mitt Romney does with his money outside the United States?
MORAN: Got it. Got it.
JINDAL: ... should come in front of them.
JINDAL: Look, I'm happy he's a successful businessman. We've got a president today who's never run a business, never run anything including a lemonade stand before he was president of the United States.
O'MALLEY: Governor, what about the Swiss bank accounts?
MORAN: But what about his money out of the country?
MORAN: Is it OK -- is it OK for voters to consider the amount of money that he's put out of the country in tax havens offshore, in secret Bermuda companies? Does that make sense for voters to consider?
JINDAL: Look, I think -- I think voters will consider all of the distractions thrown out by the Obama campaign. But at the end of the day, this election is about two fundamental choices. It's about President Obama, who wants to continue to spend money we don't have. They incurred now $1 trillion-plus deficit every year he's been president, after he promised we'd cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. He hasn't done that. Promised unemployment would be below 8 percent, hadn't done that, promised he'd reform the entitlement programs, hasn't done that.
JINDAL: But this is about two fundamental choices.
MORAN: Got it. So, Governor O'Malley, it is a distraction, according to the Republicans. This is really just sand in the eyes of the American voter.
MORAN: What's the relevance? What's the relevance?
O'MALLEY: The relevance is this, that Governor Romney can't can claim that his state actually was great at creating jobs when he was governor, so he's falling back and said, look, vote for me, I was a businessman, I created jobs.
You want talk about going the way of Europe? What went the way of Europe were the -- the Swiss bank accounts and the American dollars that Mitt Romney stuffed in that offshore Swiss bank account, jobs that he facilitated companies in moving offshore, out of places like Ohio, out of Pennsylvania and Maryland.
I mean, this is a fundamental disagreement between two different candidates and their vision for our country's future. Barack Obama believes enough in our country to be willing to work for and invest in it. Mitt Romney bets against America. He bet against America when he put his money in Swiss bank accounts and tax havens and shelters and also set up a secret company, the shell company in Bermuda, which, by the way, in order to avoid disclosure, he put in his wife's name right before he became governor of Massachusetts.
These are legitimate questions that a man who is holding himself out as wanting to lead our country forward needs to answer. He doesn't have an economic policy. And his track record in business was to offshore American jobs and to set up secret bank accounts offshore to shelter his own fair share of paying taxes to make our country stronger.
MORAN: All right, I'm going to let Governor Jindal have a brief last word on that.
JINDAL: I need to respond to that real quickly. Three things. Under Governor Romney, they did create jobs in Massachusetts, top 10 states turned around, unemployment below 5 percent. I'd love to see that for the country right now.
Secondly, independent fact-checker organizations have made it very clear these claims are false about the outsourcing of jobs when Governor Romney was at Bain.
O'MALLEY: Oh, I'm not changing the topic.
MORAN: OK. All right, gentlemen, we're going to have to leave it there.
MORAN: That will -- that will be the last words, I guess. And, Governor Jindal and Governor O'Malley, thanks very much for being with us this morning.
MORAN: Well, don't go anywhere. Our powerhouse roundtable is coming right up in just 60 seconds.
(UNKNOWN): Those jobs numbers, and as one economist said today, this country is stuck in quicksand.
(UNKNOWN): Stocks sinking following the weaker than expected June jobs report.
(UNKNOWN): Well, the headline from the June jobs report is disappointing.
MORAN: If you're an incumbent president running for re-election, that's not the kind of joke or headlines you want to hear. Let's talk about it with our powerhouse roundtable. As ever, George Will is with us. Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, who has a new book out, "Our Divided Political Heart," it's called, the conflict between the individualism and community in American politics. Looks very good.
From PBS, the host of "Washington Week," Gwen Ifill is with us. Steve Rattner, former automobile czar in the Obama administration and investor. And Mort Zuckerman, the editor of U.S. News and investors.
Well, so let me begin, George, with you. How bad is it? How bad is it in reality? How bad is it for President Obama?
WILL: It's bad, bad, bad across the board. We're now in the fourth year of a recovery, which if 7 million people had not left the workforce, so the workforce participation is way down, we would have 10.9 percent unemployment and no one would be talking about a recovery.
It's quite clear the president got terrible advice early in his administration. First, his advisers said we'll do this stimulus and it will never reach 8 percent; 41 weeks now -- 41 months over 8 percent. But beyond that, they assured him that this was going to be a V-shaped recovery. Precipitous downturn, but a commensurate upturn. It turned out to be not quite an L-shaped, but more like a hockey stick, so that we're in what is now called properly a growth recession. We're getting some growth, but not enough to accommodate even the growth of the workforce.
MORAN: And let's go to our friends in the business sector, Steve and Mort. Mort, is this the new normal, this kind of struggle?
ZUCKERMAN: Well, it's certainly going to continue for a while. I think whatever has been tried, add a huge amount of deficit spending, has simply not worked, and so this is going to continue, I believe, for quite a while. And I don't see any way of getting out of it, because it's going to be very difficult now to improve the economy through additional fiscal spending. We are on the verge of being broke. You know, I think as some Hemingway novel, there was a guy who said, how did you go broke? He said, first slowly, and then suddenly.
We are -- we have to be very careful that people do not lose confidence in the American dollar, because we have to borrow huge amounts of money. It's not -- it's not sustainable, and it has not worked. So we're going to have to find a whole set of different policies that will work.
MORAN: Hmm. Steve, we're tapped out?
RATTNER: We are tapped out in a sense, yeah. We have to deal with the long-term deficit problem, as Mort said. There's no question about that. But in the short run, there are things that we can and should be doing to fix the economy.
First, I would not take issue with George's facts, but I'd take a little bit of issue with the packaging, in the sense that I would argue that the stimulus program, the financial rescue, the auto rescue all got us in a much better place than we would have been had none of those things happened.
The second point I'd make is you have to remember that a lot of this unemployment is coming from a few very defined sectors: government, which has cut employment, state, local federal; construction, home-building, not surprising. Even things like media, which some of you guys are in, have had flat to declining -- and finance, where Mort and I live, have flat to declining employment.
So when you have roughly a third of your economy either losing jobs or not gaining jobs, it becomes hard. So when you ask the question, is this the new normal, yeah, we face a bunch of headwinds, including the fiscal situation, including Europe, including the factors that I mentioned in those other sectors, including global competition and the effect that it has on our wages. These are massive problems, and we need to address them.
MORAN: And the buck stops, Gwen, with the guy in the office with no corners.
IFILL: Well, it does. The office with no corners, I mean, it's true, because in the end, no one really cares about the numbers and the excuses. That's why that Romney ad is actually kind of useful, because no president wants to be put in the position of always looking like he's on the defensive.
People care about whether they feel anxious or not, and people feel a great deal of anxiety. The choice they're making now isn't between whether they're going to have a job next month or their kids are going to have a job. Their choice is whether either of these guys is going to make their lives better.
And if they don't -- if Romney can't convince them that their lives will be made better, they'll just stick with the one they know. But if Obama seems like he's always on the defensive and can't -- no matter what we keep digging deeper, he is in peril.
So that's -- that's how voters talk to me about this. They don't talk about the numbers. They don't even say, well, you know, he saved the auto industry, unless you live in Ohio or Michigan, in which they think it's a great thing. But otherwise they're thinking, what about me? Did they save my kids' future? And that's not -- that's an open question at this point.
MORAN: You talk about headwinds, E.J., for the president.
DIONNE: Right. Well, you know, I mean, two things. One is, from the beginning, the stimulus should have been bigger. He cut it back partly to get votes in Congress. He had to cut it back further to get those last three Republican votes.
If you had simply the growth in government employment now that you had under Ronald Reagan, the unemployment rate would probably be a point lower. And so ironically, because the Republican control in local government, the pushback in the Congress, and the fact that Obama didn't go big enough at the beginning, you've got the unemployment rate higher.
I think the interesting question is, why is President Obama still ahead in these polls, and especially still ahead in the swing states?
DIONNE: I mean, we've had this sluggish growth. And I think part of the problem for Romney is that he's making a very simple argument, which is things aren't working, Obama didn't fix them, try me.
And if the economy were actually falling, if there's ever a negative number in front of the jobs number, then President Obama is in big trouble. But at the moment, Romney isn't offering much except for tax cuts, cuts in regulation. And there is sort of a feeling that, well, that won't work. And so I think -- and Romney also is in trouble with a lot of switches in positions. So Obama is maintaining a lead in the face of pretty bad economic numbers. That's a really interesting fact about our politics.
WILL: Steve, like God in Genesis, has looked upon his work and found it good. His work (inaudible) was the auto bailout. But without re-litigating that, surely the stimulus was an exercise in faith-based economics. These were all communicants in the Church of Keynes, and they had this touching faith in the multiplier effect of federal spending. Well, it didn't multiply by the standards they enunciated.
DIONNE: All the evidence is that it grew jobs.
RATTNER: That's not really true.
RATTNER: This has been studied -- this has been studied by bipartisan economists, Mark Zandi, Alan Blinder. I know -- the problem Obama has is he's trying to prove a counterfactual. He's trying to prove that without the stimulus it would have been worse. There's no way that we can all agree on that. There's no way that we can come to a consensus necessarily, but it has been studied.
And the fact is, as E.J. said, without the stimulus, you would have had much higher unemployment. Simply, imagine this. A third of that stimulus went to state and local governments that have to balance their budgets. They've already cut hundreds of thousands of workers. If they had not gotten that $300 billion, imagine how many people would have lost their jobs at those -- at the state and local level.
ZUCKERMAN: But the problem with that argument, if I may say, is that if that money had gone into some area of the economy where you would have had a job multiplier effect, which is what it didn't do when you're trying to save the so-called state and local municipal jobs, OK, we would have had a much better economy. That was a payoff, if I may say so, to the public service unions. That's where it was going. It was a political thing. And $400 billion of the $800 billion went to that area.
So I -- I disagreed with it at the time, because I said it was not going to work, and it didn't work. It didn't work well enough, and the president has to be held responsible. The great American job machine has now broken down. We are four years into a so-called recovery, and it is the worst recovery we've ever seen, and now we are -- we are looking at the possibility of a double-dip recession. This would be disastrous.
DIONNE: I just don't think it's true that there's no multiplier. Money in the hands of cops, firefighters and teachers is circulated through the economy. All the studies show the stimulus created jobs.
I think one of the great ironies, you've got a campaign here that's about, well, government is too big. The most interventionist policy -- I don't want to accuse an investment banker of being a statist -- but the most interventionist policy by the Obama administration, the auto bailout, is also the most successful. And I think one of the great ironies of this election is that if Obama wins by carrying Michigan and Ohio, bailing out or rescuing the car industry will be the key to his re-election.
IFILL: Actually, one of the great ironies of this election is that they're -- neither of these candidates is having this debate that we're having at this table. In fact, they're talking in circles around each other. And in the end, for most voters, this is a choice of alternatives. They may think that President Obama could have done more. They may think there should be more jobs created, but Governor Romney still has to prove that he is a reasonable alternative. That's always the choice.
MORAN: And it feels almost as if voters are saying neither one of them has the answer.
RATTNER: Let me just tell E.J. the secret of the auto bailout. The secret of the auto bailout is we didn't have to go to Congress. We did it using TARP money. We didn't have to go to Congress. It never would have happened with Congress. And I think that is a metaphor for the broader problem. Congress is doing nothing. They sit there with their 17 percent approval rating, and they pass nothing, and I think you have to put them in the mix as we debate who's responsible for this problem.
ZUCKERMAN: Let me just say, while I'm sorry to interrupt, this country responds to presidential leadership, not to congressional leadership. With a different kind of leadership, I think we would have had a different kind of stimulus program and we would have different kinds of effects. That is the core issue of our government. It responds to presidential leadership, not to congressional leadership. And that's always been the case in this country.
WILL: E.J. sounds -- and it's an interesting point -- that in spite of all this bad news, it's essentially tied or Obama's slightly ahead. Let me remind you of 1980. A week before the election, when Reagan left to go to Cleveland for the one debate with Carter, ABC had Reagan ahead a little bit, Time magazine had Carter ahead a little bit. Statistical tie. A week later, Reagan carried 44 states. So the country will at some point decide -- they'll throw a switch and say this isn't working or this is the best we can do. I wouldn't be confident.
MORAN: We're going to take a break right now. There's a lot more to come from our roundtable. We're going to talk about the veepstakes. They're heating up.
PAWLENTY: Barack Obama's basic slogan for this campaign is, hey, it could be worse. Mitt Romney's slogan is it will be better.
MORAN: President Obama's campaign pounces on reports of Mitt Romney's offshore bank accounts, as we've heard.
(UNKNOWN): Doesn't it make you wonder what Mitt Romney is trying to hide from the American people?
MORAN: And extreme storms, what's to blame?
OBAMA: Maybe you took a vacation every once in a while. And it wasn't necessarily some fancy vacation at some fancy resort. The best vacation I had when I was a kid was we traveled around the country on Greyhound busses and on t rains and we stayed at Howard Johnsons.
ROMNEY: You know, I'm delighted to be able to take a vacation with my family. I think all Americans appreciate the memories that they have with their children and their grandchildren. I hope that more Americans are able to take vacations.
MORAN: Well, so do I. The battle of the vacations. We're back with more of our roundtable. And, George, this seems silly. Maybe it is. But it does go at something that is at work in this campaign, does it not, which is essentially a class conflict.
WILL: Well, they're trying to make Mitt Romney not likable. Peter Hart -- I've said this before -- Peter Hart over and over says go back -- all of the complicated metrics you want, go back to Truman against Dewey and Eisenhower against Stevenson, the likable guy usually wins. And they're trying to -- and so far has succeeded in making Mitt Romney's core argument, "I'm a business guy," a negative. The country doesn't look upon his business career in a happy way.
MORAN: And what they're doing with that business -- what do you guys think of this -- with the notion of going after his investments abroad, offshore accounts, and making that part of the argument against him?
MORAN: Do you have offshore accounts?
RATTNER: But I have never -- I actually was with a very prominent private equity guy last night who said he'd never heard of some of the things Mitt Romney has done in terms of putting money offshore, in terms of having $100 million IRA, basically getting an interest-free loan from Uncle Sam on the taxes, on all that money, until he brings it home. And I think these are all -- I think these are absolutely fair game.
ZUCKERMAN: Well, I think what is fair game about Romney is that he was a very effective governor of Massachusetts. He was a very effective governor when he came to the Olympics in Salt Lake City. He has done a lot of things that shows that he knows how to manage situations.
And this one of the problems we have with a president who's never run anything. There are astonishing parts to that, including his inability to communicate with the Congress, which is just astounding when you meet people there who say they've never met with him in three-and-a-half or four years, since he's been president. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, with a front-page story in the New York Times, he hadn't had a single meeting or conversation with the president in 18 months. Government doesn't work that way. This president does not know how to work government. And that is critical.
IFILL: Well, you can argue whose fault these non-meetings are, but that's kind of off point. To me, it's 100 degrees in Washington today. I do not begrudge anyone a vacation. I would love to be on vacation on a lake right now.
MORAN: That boat looks nice.
IFILL: That boat looked kind of sweet. But what they are trying to do on the boat is that it was loaded up with his family. They're trying to make Mitt Romney more likable. Every time you see him, he's out -- sure, he's at a lakefront mansion, but he's with his grandchildren, who will obviously adore him. When you see the president talk about his childhood, bouncing up on beds in Howard Johnsons, and when you see him more interestingly in his speeches say, I see my daughters in you, he also is trying to make himself likable and playing up the things which are most normal guy.
This is what they do. Now, when you vacation at an estate in Martha's Vineyard, which the Obamas will not be doing this year, that takes away from this, so they will not be doing it.
MORAN: And windsurfing is a bad idea.
IFILL: And windsurfing, not so good.
DIONNE: One of the most interesting voter interviews I've had at this campaign -- I was with Joe Klein at a Gingrich rally in New Hampshire, way back at the beginning of the campaign, and there was a gentleman there, and we asked him, why are you for Gingrich over Romney? And he said Mitt Romney reminds me of John Kerry.
And I thought of that when I saw all of these -- this focus on the vacation, because we all remember, as you suggested, that the Bush people jumped on the windsurfing thing. Class is always used in American politics. And I think George underscored the essential point, which is Mitt Romney hoped that his experience at Bain Capital would be a political asset. Well, guess what? After all of this argument and all of this advertising, it's turned into a liability.
And it's especially a liability in the swing states. And it's partly because there are different ways of having capitalism in our country, and there are aspects of the way the private-equity business works, the way Mitt Romney's business works that don't sit well with Americans. And that's why we're having this big argument.
MORAN: And putting that on trial. Let's get to an issue, health care. The Romney campaign was all over the map again this week. Take a look at Romney's -- one of Romney's top advisers and then Mitt Romney himself cleaning things up.
PERRY: The fact of the matter is, you're for individual mandates. And you can get up and stand up and talk about, you know, I'm against it now and I'm going to rescind Obamacare, I'm going to repeal Obamacare, but the record is very clear. And the question has been, who can stand on the stage, look Obama in the eye, and say, "Obamacare is an abomination for this country"?
MORAN: All right, well, obviously, that was back in the Republican debates, but it presents the problem that Rick Perry presented very pointedly. Can a guy who had that health care program in Massachusetts take it to the president on this issue? He's having trouble.
WILL: He's having trouble, even with an assist from the chief justice who said -- sorted this out and gave him an intellectual framework for attacking it. He cannot make the case. He has not made the case. He wants to change the subject. And in this regard, he has the president's cooperation, because the president wants to change the subject. Neither side wants to talk about health care, which is a very interesting development.
IFILL: Well, both sides want to talk about taxes. And as long as they can take this health care debate and turn it into a debate about who will raise your taxes, that wonderful, old story that they drag out every four years, then that's what this debate is going to be engaged on. It was interesting this week to see the president actually step out on his campaign to start to defend his health care plan. He actually started to say what it would do and how it would help, instead of being on the defensive. So clearly they think they have an upper hand here.
DIONNE: I think that's right. I think that the Obama campaign now wants to talk more about those aspects of the health care bill that they didn't talk enough about before that are actually popular with people. But this was an amazing moment for Romney, because, you know, he did so many things wrong there. They should have had a position ready before the Supreme Court made a decision. They should have sort of worked this out. Why they had this fight with their own Republican Party was strange. It looked like he switched his position and caved to pressure from the Republican Party. And that plays into another narrative the other side is trying to build, and there -- it's hard to understand how the campaign got to that point.
ZUCKERMAN: But there have been two studies about what they call regulatory insecurity or political insecurity, one by Stanford and one by the University of Chicago. And both of them came to the conclusion that between 2 million and 2.5 million jobs were not created primarily because of the health care program and their concerns about it.
And look at just one thing in the health care program, which I find astonishing. Every company that has 50 employees or more is going to have to take on a new level of health care which is going to raise their costs by $70 a week per worker. Do you know what that's going to do to low-income and low -- sort of restaurants and the very labor-intensive jobs? It's going to be devastating. So nobody things about what the real effects of that health care bill are.
RATTNER: I think that -- and your chagrin -- I think Romney potentially had an issue in health care, that he might have been able to do something with -- notwithstanding Massachusetts. He had had -- he sort of found a line that got him through Massachusetts and allowed him to get to Obama, and I think this past couple of weeks, between the Supreme Court and what he did on the taxes on the mandate, going back and forth and back and forth, over something that amounts to $7 billion in 2019 -- this is a tiny little thing he couldn't get out of his own way on it. I think he's lost his ability to press that issue.
MORAN: And there are Republicans who are very concerned right now about the way the Romney campaign is going. The Wall Street Journal, among others, are just hammering the Romney campaign right now. In an editorial -- this is the gospel of the conservative movement, in some ways -- in the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the Romney campaign thinks it can play it safe and coast to the White House. Mr. Romney promised Republicans he was the best man to make the case against President Obama, whom they desperately want to defeat. So far Mr. Romney is letting them down.
And that's just one place. George, how do you think they're doing?
WILL: Well, to be fair to the Romney campaign, at some point in every campaign, the people who are not included in the campaign, which is 90 percent of Republican activists, say we should be -- we could do it better.
IFILL: That happened a month ago for the Democrats.
WILL: So this is normal. On the other hand, the president does seem -- sorry, not the president -- Governor Romney seems to be risk-averse. He does seem to be in something like a four-corner stall in basketball, which almost killed basketball, and they put in a 30-second shot clock to change that.
But you can't get to the NCAA championship, you can't get to the presidency running out the clock. So he's going to have to do something more than say Obama's not working. And he said to CBS News this week, as long as I keep talking about the economy, I'll win.
IFILL: He did say that.
WILL: It's what you say about the economy and what hope you give to people.
DIONNE: The Wall Street Journal editorial paper attacking the Republican nominee, it's like George Will attacking baseball. This isn't supposed to happen. That's a bad week for a Republican nominee.
And I think, on the one hand, George is right. There is a risk aversion there. He just thinks if he just keeps talking about how bad the economy is, he'll win. But there's also a problem for some of the conservatives making this case, which is they want Romney to go all the way over to the right where they are. In my book, I talk about this radical individualism. And that's where they want Romney to be.
The Romney campaign knows that if they go that far right, they're going to lose some of the middle ground voters that they need to win. So there's a kind of -- they're both right and both wrong about this one.
IFILL: But if you're going to have a bad week, don't you want to have it be Fourth of July week rather than, I don't know, Columbus Day?
RATTNER: But it's a long-term problem for him, because I think it's more than just risk-aversion. I think it's suicide-aversion. Because if Romney actually starts talking about his economic plan and lays out clearly for the American people what he's in favor of, 20 percent across-the-board tax cuts that aren't paid for, privatizing Medicare and turning it into a voucher program, sending Medicaid back to the states as a block grant program, cutting a whole series of programs like food stamps by 33 percent, I'm not sure he's going to win the election if people actually understood what he's in favor of.
MORAN: (inaudible) let's close this up by talking about the vice presidential stakes, the veepstakes. I want to get your thoughts on who's out there. And this is the kind of process where everything goes into the pot for each one of the candidates being vetted and considered, including Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey. And Jake Tapper sat down with him for "Nightline" and talked to him about one of the issues that's probably in the calculation of whether he should be the vice presidential candidate. Take a look.
CHRISTIE: Some people, you know, drink too much. Some people take drugs. Some people eat too much. See, you can go -- live every day without drinking. You can live every day without taking drugs. You can't live every day without eating. And I've struggled with it for the last 30 years, on and off. And I'm trying. It may not look like I'm trying sometimes, but I am.
MORAN: It's a fact, weight is probably an issue, as is everything else. I just want to go around the horn. Who'd you like to see on the ticket? Who do you think will be there?
ZUCKERMAN: I think it'll be either Tim Pawlenty or Rob Portman of Ohio, Tim Pawlenty, of course, of Minnesota. I think Portman is a very strong candidate and may help him carry Ohio, which is a very, very critical state in the election.
RATTNER: I think Mort is probably right about that. I think the only real issue here is whether he picks something that is a mistake, like Sarah Palin, because, frankly, I don't think it matters that much. I think if you look at history, fewer and fewer times has a vice president actually helped a presidential candidate, even in his home state.
IFILL: I'm an agnostic on veepstakes, in part because we're always wrong, and in part -- not always, but often wrong, and part because, you know, Steve's right. It doesn't really matter. People are going to vote for the candidate, not for who it is. But this gives us something to talk about during the summer.
MORAN: It does. And it does tell us something about the candidate. It tells us something about McCain, right?
DIONNE: I could predict with absolute certainty it will not be Sarah Palin. And I think Sarah Palin looms over this whole process, which was why the choices are all safe. Portman is clearly the Washington choice. He may end up being the choice because of Ohio. But I think there's a competition between Pawlenty and Jindal. I still think Jindal is in it, and so he was kind of trying out for it today.
IFILL: ... Chris Christie, huh?
WILL: Steve's right. There's precious little political science evidence that this matters in electoral politics. It matters in American history, because 14 vice presidents have become president. So we ought to be careful about who we put there. Mitt Romney has been risk-averse. Mitt Romney needs an alternative narrative on health care. There are two people who give him that, and that is Bobby Jindal and Paul Ryan.
MORAN: All right. There you have it, those predictions. We'll have more of our roundtable in just 60 seconds, discussing this furnace heat that's out there, the record heat wave, and America's pastime at the All-Star Break. Stay with us.
ZEE: Good morning. I'm meteorologist Ginger Zee in Central Park. What an extreme historic weather week it has been. The heat has been ferocious. Nationwide, around 2,000 record highs set this month alone. The middle of the country hardest hit, St. Louis with 10 consecutive triple-digit days. But it's not just the heat. Across the heartland, droughts and devastating crops prompting comparisons to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and raising the prices you pay at the supermarket.
Out west, wildfires have claimed hundreds of homes and more than 2 million acres this season. And don't forget the storms, like last weekend's derecha windstorm that left more than 20 dead and millions without power.
Now, we know that one week of extreme heat cannot be called climate changes. However, the Associated Press wrote this week, this summer is what global warming looks like. But, Terry, the most important thing is we're finally going to get some relief this week, and that can't come soon enough.
MORAN: (inaudible) Ginger, thanks very much.
What's to blame for this extreme heat? We're back with the roundtable here. The thing that strikes me as odd is that -- is that we don't make neuroscience, brain surgery a political question, but we have made whether or not the climate is changing because of human activities an article of political face on both sides. That seems silly.
ZUCKERMAN: Well, I think there is probably the chance that weather has a broader application than brain surgery. I don't know why I come up to that conclusion.
But it's something that really affects, you know, the vast number of American people, so why shouldn't it be an issue, you know, particularly people losing their home? I mean, the great American dream has long been to have your own home in the suburbs, in particular. I mean, the great American dream may now be getting a job now, but it's still a key factor for every American.
MORAN: Climate change is a political issue.
DIONNE: Well, it is a political issue, because the question is, are you going to do something about it or not? And, you know, during heat waves, belief in global warming goes up, surprise, surprise, in the polls. But what's really -- what we've really seen is wild weather, not only here, but all over the world.
And what I don't understand is why people are so resistant -- why my conservative friends are so resistant in taking out an insurance policy. There is a lot of evidence that human activity is changing the climate. There's not a lot of dispute among scientists about this. Why wouldn't we want to take out an insurance policy to protect ourselves? Because if we go wrong on this, we're making an awfully big mistake.
WILL: You asked us -- how do we explain the heat? One word: summer. I grew up in central Illinois in a house without air conditioning. What is so unusual about this?
Now, come the winter, there will be a cold snap, lots of snow, and the same guys, like E.J., will start lecturing us. There's a difference between the weather and the climate. I agree with that. We're having some hot weather. Get over it.
RATTNER: Well, wait a minute. But wait a minute. But wait a minute. I agree with that. But the 10 hottest years on record have been in the last 12 years. The 20 hottest years on record have been in the last 30 years. There is a lot of science around this. The polar icecaps, everything we've all read, I don't think we can just ignore it, George. And it is an issue, because it's something that our political leaders need to do something about, unlike neuroscience.
MORAN: Is it an issue for voters? Is this salient? Is this even on the radar screen?
IFILL: I come back to my argument in favor of vacations. I believe this is what most voters are thinking about now. I don't think they're getting drawn into scientific or political discussions about climate change. They just want it to stop, and they want their power to stay on.
Now, of course there are -- there are ramifications for this. And none of this comes for free. I don't think that this election is going to be decided on it.
ZUCKERMAN: If we had a heat wave in November of this kind, it'll be part of the election.
ZUCKERMAN: I doubt if that's going to be the case.
MORAN: All right. Well, we do have right now this time of year, it's the All-Star Break, and we're lucky to have one of the great baseball minds with us. George, my Cubs not doing too well, but what do you think of the -- of where the season is?
WILL: Every baseball fan talks about the golden age of baseball, and it's always when he was about 12 years old. I have news for you: This is the golden age. Competitive balance is back. The Pirates haven't had a winning season in 20 years, 1992. They have the best record in the National League. They have the best new ballpark. They have the most exciting player in the National League in Andrew McCutchen in centerfield.
But more to the point, the product is selling. People are coming out as never before. In 1955, the Brooklyn Dodgers win their only World Series, great team, Robinson, Furillo, Hodges, Reese, all those guys. Whole city of New York loved them. They drew 13,500 a game. This year, the average attendance in baseball is 31,000 a game and going up. This is the golden age.
MORAN: The golden age of baseball.
MORAN: We're going to close it off on the Yankees. George Will, E.J. Dionne, Gwen Ifill, Steve Rattner, Mort Zuckerman, thanks very much for being with us.
"Your Voice This Week" is coming right up.
MORAN (voice-over): Three moments from "This Week" history. What year was it?
(UNKNOWN): Somebody, possibly a terrorist, tried to blow up the World Trade Center.
MORAN: Al Qaida targeted the World Trade Center for the first time. The government siege of the Branch Davidian community's Texas compound ended with a fire claiming nearly 80 lives.
(UNKNOWN): How did the victims die? And how did the fire start?
MORAN: Plus, the political discussion.
MORAN: Dominated by talk of the 1 percent and health care.
(UNKNOWN): Is it really possible to give full health care to everyone in the United States?
MORAN: Some things never change. Was it 1993, 1994, or 1995? We'll be back in a moment with the answer.
MORAN: So what year was it? When did Al Qaida first target the World Trade Center and Al Gore make the case for raising taxes on the top 1 percent? It was 19 years ago, 1993.
And now we honor our fellow Americans who serve and sacrifice. This week, the Pentagon released the names of three soldiers killed in Afghanistan.
And in "Your Voice This Week," today's question comes from Gwen Romack, who asks, what are the best sources to get accurate, non-politicized, untwisted information, actual facts put in context, about the candidate's position on key issues?
It's a good question. First place to go, candidates' websites. Go to the horses' mouths. Yes, it's their spin, but it belongs to them, and they own it.
There are some independent sites. C-SPAN has a great resource. PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, Project Vote Smart, they all try to play it right down the middle. And I've got to say this, our own great site at abcnews.com, go to Otus, Otus. It really is a great source for this kind of information.
And that is all for us today. Check out "World News" with David Muir tonight. And tune in tomorrow -- this is exciting -- the debut of "Good Afternoon America," with hosts Josh Elliott and Lara Spencer.
Thanks for sharing part of your Sunday with us. George Stephanopoulos will see you back here next week.


Historian David Glover will give a two-part talk about some aspects of “The Reformation” at Halifax Minster on Friday, November 3 (2pm).
Tickets are £5 via Minster office 01422 355436 or on the door, all funds raised going to the Minster.
David will explore roles played by Calderdale people involved in this important time in history.
Following a brief resume of how the Reformation came about, David will introduce the men who influenced events in Halifax during the critical years of the mid 16th century and explain the feud in which they were caught up.
After that follows the story of the early Protestant vicars of Halifax.
The second part of the lecture will focus on two men with Calderdale connections who helped create the King James Bible of 1611.


LOS ANGELES -- Rodney Dangerfield, the bug-eyed comic whose self-deprecating one-liners brought him stardom in clubs, television and movies and made his lament "I don't get no respect" a catchphrase, died Tuesday. He was 82.
Dangerfield, who fell into a coma after undergoing heart surgery, died at 1:20 p.m., said publicist Kevin Sasaki. Dangerfield had a heart valve replaced Aug. 25 at the University of California, Los Angeles, Medical Center.
Sasaki said in a statement that Dangerfield suffered a small stroke after the operation and developed infectious and abdominal complications. But in the past week he had emerged from the coma, the publicist said.
"When Rodney emerged, he kissed me, squeezed my hand and smiled for his doctors," Dangerfield's wife, Joan, said in the statement. The comic is also survived by two children from a previous marriage.
He tried it at a New York club, and the joke drew a bigger response than ever. He kept the phrase in the act, and it seemed to establish a bond with his audience. After hearing him perform years later, Jack Benny remarked: "Me, I get laughs because I'm cheap and 39. Your image goes into the soul of everyone."
Flowers were placed on his star on Hollywood Boulevard after word of his death, and the marquee of The Improv, a comedy club where Dangerfield often performed, read "Rest In Peace Rodney."
"When you saw Rodney on 'The Tonight Show' sitting on the couch with Johnny Carson, you didn't want it to go to commercial," comic Bernie Mac said in a statement. "He always left you wanting more and I'm going to miss him."
Dangerfield had a strange career in show business. At 19 he started as a standup comedian. He made only a fair living, traveling a great deal and appearing in rundown joints. Married at 27, he decided he couldn't support a family on his meager earnings.
He returned to comedy at 42 and began to attract notice. He appeared on the Ed Sullivan show seven times and on "The Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson more than 70 times.
After his first major film role in "Caddyshack," he began starring in his own movies.
He was born Jacob Cohen on Nov. 22, 1921, on New York's Long Island. Growing up in the borough of Queens, his mother was uncaring and his father was absent. As Philip Roy, the father and his brother toured in vaudeville as a pantomime comedy-juggling act, Roy and Arthur. Young Jacob's parents divorced, and the mother struggled to support her daughter and son.
The boy helped bring in money by selling ice cream at the beach and working for a grocery store. "I found myself going to school with kids and then in the afternoon I'd be delivering groceries to their back door," he recalled. "I ended up feeling inferior to everybody."
He ingratiated himself to his schoolmates by being funny; at 15 he was writing down jokes and storing them in a duffel bag. When he was 19, he adopted the name Jack Roy and tried out the jokes at a resort in the Catskills, training ground for Danny Kaye, Jerry Lewis, Red Button, Sid Caesar and other comedians. The job paid $12 a week plus room and meals.
In New York, he drove a laundry and fish truck, taking time off to hunt for work as a comedian. The jobs came slowly, but in time he was averaging $300 a week.
He married Joyce Indig, a singer he met at a New York club. Both had wearied of the uncertainty of a performer's life.
"We wanted to lead a normal life," he remarked in a 1986 interview. "I wanted a house and a picket fence and kids, and the heck with show business. Love is more important, you see. When the show is over, you're alone."
The couple settled in Englewood, N.J., had two children, Brian and Melanie, and he worked selling paint and siding. But the idyllic suburban life soured as the pair battled. The couple divorced in 1962, remarried a year later and again divorced.
In 1993, Dangerfield married Joan Child, a flower importer.
"It was like a need. I had to work. I had to tell jokes. I had to write them and tell them. It was like a fix. I had the habit."
Even during his domestic years, he continued filling the duffel bag with jokes. He didn't want to break in his new act with any notice, so he asked the owner of New York's Inwood Lounge, George McFadden, not to bill him as Jack Roy. McFadden came up with the absurd name Rodney Dangerfield. It stuck.
Dangerfield's bookings improved, and he landed television gigs. After his ex-wife died, he took over the responsibility of raising his two children. He decided to quit touring and open a New York nightclub, Dangerfield's, so he could stay close to home. A beer commercial and the Carson shows brought him national attention.
His film debut came in 1971 with "The Projectionist," which he described as "the kind of a movie that you went to the location on the subway." He did better in 1980 with "Caddyshack," in which he held his own with such comics as Chevy Chase, Ted Knight and Bill Murray.
Despite his good reviews, Dangerfield claimed he didn't like movies or TV series: "Too much waiting around, too much memorizing; I need that immediate feedback of people laughing."
Still, he continued starring in and sometimes writing films such as "Easy Money," "Back to School," "Moving," "The Scout," "Ladybugs" and "Meet Wally Sparks." He turned dramatic as a sadistic father in Oliver Stone's 1994 "Natural Born Killers."
In 1995, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences rejected Dangerfield's application for membership. A letter from Roddy McDowall of the actors branch explained that the comedian had failed to execute "enough of the kinds of roles that allow a performer to demonstrate the mastery of his craft."
The ultimate rejection, and Dangerfield played it to the hilt. He had established his own Web site ("I went out and bought an Apple Computer; it had a worm in it"), and his fans used it to express their indignation. The public reaction prompted the academy to reverse itself and offer membership. Dangerfield declined.
"They don't even apologize or nothing," he said. "They give no respect at all -- pardon the pun -- to comedy."


Puerto Rico beat the Dominican Republic 3-1 this evening in both teams’ first second-round game. Yadier Molina drove in two runs and five Puerto Rican pitchers kept the WBC’s best offense very quiet. Puerto Rico’s defense came up big all game, starting with Eddie Rosario’s rocket of a throw in the first inning.
Defensive genius Javier Baez manned second base for Puerto Rico and while he went 0-for-3, he scored a run and made a no-look tag on Nelson Cruz in the eighth inning.
Only this man could make tagging someone out into a highlight.


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Ted Leonsis, founder of Monumental Sports & Entertainment, is best known as a Washington sports mogul but recently acquired Baltimore and Washington teams in the Arena Football League.
Baltimore's Arena Football League team has sold 500 season tickets for its inaugural season, but owner Ted Leonsis said it's way too early to be concerned.
"I ask that you have a little patience with us. Let's have some fun together," Leonsis said during a speech Wednesday to the CEO Club of Baltimore. "We've sold like 500 season tickets. I think the arena seats like 10,000 people."
The Baltimore Brigade open its season April 7 against the Washington Valor. Both teams are owned by Leonsis' Washington-based Monumental Sports & Entertainment, and he has said it is exceedingly rare, if not unprecedented, to launch two expansion teams in the same year.
"There are going to be 100 things that bring shame to us where people will say, 'I knew they shouldn't have,' " Leonsis said. "That's how most people are. You want to criticize, as opposed to saying, 'How did we put a man on the moon?' "
Leonsis said he believes the indoor game's pace and high scores will appeal to fans.
Monumental is best known for owning the NBA's Washington Wizards, the NHL's Washington Capitals and Washington's Verizon Center.
In his vision of the region, Ted Leonsis sees Baltimore and Washington growing and merging into a single "super city" that will one day approximate the size and influence of New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
The Brigade, which will play at Royal Farms Arena, has been selling about 30 season tickets a week, according to Jeffrey Bowler, vice president for business operations at Monumental.
Bowler said that pace does not concern him, given that the team has only recently begun its marketing.
The team doesn't even have helmets yet, Leonsis said.
"There is still three-quarters of the city that doesn't know this is happening," Bowler said.
Baltimore's new Arena Football League franchise announced its name — the Brigade — and began the formidable task of trying to turn a collection of football castoffs into a team that feels like the city's own.


West Virginia signs recruit Emmitt Matthews Jr.
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) — West Virginia has signed recruit Emmitt Matthews Jr.
Coach Bob Huggins announced Matthews’ signing Monday.
The 6-foot-7 forward averaged more than 22 points, nine rebounds, two assists and two blocked shots per game last season at Woodrow Wilson High in Tacoma, Washington.
Matthews joins five others in West Virginia’s 2018-19 recruiting class. The others are Derek Culver of Boardman, Ohio; Andrew Gordon of Clearwater, Florida; Jordan McCabe of Kaukauna, Wisconsin; Trey Doomes of Acworth, Georgia; and Jermaine Haley of Vancouver, British Columbia.


The new David Mamet play "The Anarchist" is slated to close after just 17 performances. John Edwards on Lunch Break looks at how this compares with the flops of other Broadway straight plays. Photo: Zuma Press.


How Long Can the NFL Get Away with Asking Future Employees if They're Gay?
Now that National Football League executives are asking players about their sexual orientation — not just wondering in the shadows about Manti Te'o but grilling them in job interviews — it may be time for the commissioner to do something. It may even be breaking the law.
Now that National Football League executives are asking players about their sexual orientation — not just wondering in the shadows about Manti Te'o but grilling them in job interviews — it may be time for the pro sport with the worst reputation about equality in the locker room to finally do something about its big gay problem. It may even be breaking the law.
University of Colorado tight end Nick Kasa, projected to go in the fourth or fifth round of the NFL Draft in April, said in an interview on Tuesday that NFL general managers had been asking more or less outright whether he was gay. "[Teams] ask you like, 'Do you have a girlfriend?' 'Are you married?' 'Do you like girls?'" Kasa told ESPN Radio Denver's CJ & Kreckman. "Those kinds of things, and you know it was just kind of weird. But they would ask you with a straight face, and it’s a pretty weird experience altogether."
This week at the NFL combine, the annual gathering of rookie prospects in advance of the draft in which teams evaluate players' talent, NBC News's Mike Florio reported on "the elephant in the room" for NFL GMs, who "want to know whether Manti Te'o is gay." That ignited a huge firestorm of criticism against the league, which has failed to speak out publicly despite its players making offensive comments about gays in the locker room — even before the fake-girlefriend scandal plagued rookie-to-be Te'o, who has denied that he is gay. But Florio stopped short of saying whether or not teams were explicitly asking Te'o if he's gay or not, and whether it was actually affecting their decisions — "I'm not saying anyone would take Manti Te'o off the board if they suspected he's gay or know he's gay," Florio said, though presumably Te'o might still move up and down the draft position board.
So it's up to the league to decide whether or not it is discriminatory to ask if a would-be employee likes girls, or to snoop around about a former Notre Dame student who had a made-up social-media girlfriend. But the collective-bargaining clause could also be seen as a provision of state law, which the NFL can't govern. The league has no policy on what kind of questions can be asked of players in combine interviews. According to the NFL, teams must adhere to their state's privacy laws. "Teams are expected to comply with the law in terms of any employment interview," NFL spokesman Greg Aiello told Yahoo! Sports yesterday. That sounds like the NFL is passing the buck to state legislation on sexual orientation discrimination, despite their own policy. By that logic, only 13 of 32 NFL teams are barred from asking about a player's sexual orientation, and the rest are free to practice possibly-homophobic hiring practices as the NFL commissioner looks the other way.
According to experts, the confusion over the interviews highlights a larger problem with who or what presides over the NFL combine interviews. "Most likely the company or the team would just have to abide by the laws of the state in which they are based," Western State University sports-law professor Dylan Malagrino told Yahoo! Sports. "Although it highlights the confusion that these gaps in the law can cause – a company from Georgia could ask questions of an interviewee in California that a Californian company could not."
There’s a terrific opportunity here for Goodell. He can make the NFL a zero-tolerance zone for homophobia. He can use the weight of his office and the power he wields because of the player-conduct policy to go after players and organizations that tolerate any form of sexuality discrimination. He could send a clear message the NFL commissioner is a friend to gays and will take every possible action to ensure they’re treated fairly. Goodell can create an environment that entices a closeted gay player to come out and be the hero/role model gay kids, parents of gay children and overgrown idiots need.
And yet, a player's sexual orientation is still an issue. Whether or not the league will choose to act on their existing policy, or whether they will clarify what if off limits in combine interviews in the future, is probably up to Commissioner Goodell.
Update 6:29 p.m.: The NFL is now investigating which teams asked about Kasa or Te'o's sexuality and promises to punish them accordingly.


Miami-Dade County has mismanaged one of its largest contracts, a $208 million deal to provide door-to-door transportation to the disabled, NBC 6 Investigators have uncovered.
At various times, the county paid too much when prices should have decreased, missed deadlines to seek damages from its contractor for alleged substandard performance, and failed to accurately calculate the most basic of contract functions -- cost of living adjustments, or COLAs.
missed deadlines to seek recovery of more than $200,000 in damages from TA for what the county claimed was substandard service.
After being informed of its mistakes by NBC 6 Investigators, the county recalculated the COLAs and – after revising $65 million in inaccurate billings – determined it owes TA about $151,000 through late March.
Despite those shortcomings, the county employees who oversee transit and procurement deny any mismanagement occurred.
"There are numerous checks and balances and controls that detect an instance where an index was applied in a manner that needs to be updated or corrected,” said Miriam Singer, chief procurement officer.
When NBC 6 Investigators pointed out the county did not detect the mistakes until NBC 6 questioned the calculations, Singer continued, “In this case we really appreciated that you raised it and brought it to our attention."
While Singer’s Internal Services Department improperly calculated the cost-of-living adjustments, Miami-Dade Transit employees failed to bill TA for $85,000 in overpayments accumulated over several weeks beginning in November 2013 and November 2014.
"You know, every once in a while adjustments need to be made and this is one of those cases and we’ve made that adjustment,” said transit director Ysela Llort.
The county only billed TA for the amounts in March 2015 -- after NBC 6 Investigators informed county officials of their apparent oversight more than two years into the contract’s term.
Yet, Llort and Singer say they’re confident the county would have eventually uncovered their mistakes.
"We would have found it,” Llort told NBC 6. “There’s a lot of oversight over a contract like this -- audit services, ourselves -- a lot of things would have happened, but we appreciate that you brought it to us sooner than we would have found it on our own. Thank you."
Longtime government observer Daniel Ricker said the county clearly mismanaged the contract and likely would not have discovered its errors on its own.
"I don’t think so. I think that’s kind of a standard bureaucratic line,” said Rinker, who runs the watchdogreport.net website. “That’s their standard get out of jail card: ‘Oh, we would have caught it eventually,’ or whatever."
In a statement to NBC 6, TA attorney Miguel de Grandy said the contractor did nothing wrong in not discovering it was being overpaid at times and voluntarily alerting the county and refunding the money.
“It was the county’s responsibility to invoice TA, or deduct the amount claimed to be owed from an invoice payment,” he said.
It was also the county’s responsibility to properly set TA’s prices, but NBC 6's investigation found it repeatedly used the wrong months to calculate COLAs.
Through March 21, the county now estimates, those cost of living miscalculations resulted in the county underpaying TA by $151,862 since the company began the service in April 2013.
In his emailed statement, de Grandy said, “It is the county’s obligation (not TA’s) to determine the correct methodology for” price adjustments.
The county staffer in charge of paratransit operations conceded in an email to a colleague last July he was “at a loss” when it came to calculating price changes.
His loss, it turns out, will be TA’s gain, based on the recalculated COLAs.
And, if those mistakes weren’t enough, the county also may have lost its right to seek nearly $211,000 more in damages from the company over what the county claims were failures to meet performance standards, because county staff failed to seek those so-called liquidated damages until after deadlines passed.
Exactly how much the mistakes, sloppy oversight and missed deadlines will ultimately cost taxpayers is unknown, as the county and TA negotiate how much liquidated damages should be paid.
It turns out, NBC 6's investigation found, both the county and TA were benefiting at times from the county’s mistakes.
In November 2012, Miami-Dade County Commission unanimously awarded TA one of its biggest contracts with any vendor, a five-year $208 million paratransit deal that, with its five-year option, could bring TA $416 million over 10 years. TA submitted the lower bid and earned higher scores from county staff than its lone competitor, First Transit.
The task for TA and its two subcontractors: deploy nearly 400 vehicles to ferry about 35,000 disabled clients to and from doctors’ offices, grocery stores and wherever else they need to travel.
InvestigativeDid Miami Beach Mayor Go Too Far on Double-Parked Trucks?
Passengers, who are asked to pay a $3.50 fare, are pre-certified as being so disabled they’re unable to use public transportation. Most have diabetes, cognitive impairment or neurological or motor disabilities and 75 percent of them are over 61 years old.
The company’s pay from the county is based on two per-trip prices: one for clients who can walk (currently $23.79); and another one, 45 percent higher, for those in wheelchairs (currently $34.40). The prices are supposed to be adjusted for inflation or deflation every six months, under specific terms of their contract.
But a months-long review of thousands of pages of invoices, contracts and emails by NBC 6 Investigators found those contract requirements were not being followed.
When NBC 6 first raised questions about Miami-Dade Transit’s oversight of the contract in March, transit director Llort said, “We need to go back and look at the contract and how some of these numbers were calculated.” Llort has since announced her resignation, effective next month. Her departure is unrelated to the handling of this contract, the county mayor’s office said.
With $40 million paid to TA for about 1.7 million trips annually, even small discrepancies can quickly add up to big money.
Here’s how the contract was supposed to work: Every six months, prices were to be adjusted based on the percentage change in two components of the most recent consumer price index, or CPI, for the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area.
When the first six months ended on May 18, 2013, the most recent CPI data available to the public was for April 2013 -- data released two days earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But instead of basing the first price adjustment on a six-month change in CPI from October 2012 to April 2013, the county used a four-month period, from December 2012 to April 2013.
TA’s attorney, de Grandy, and the assistant county attorney overseeing the contract, Bruce Libhaber, agree October 2012 could not be used as a starting point for the CPI change calculation because it preceded the contract’s November 2012 effective date.
Because South Florida CPI data is released every other month, the first available CPI figures after the November 2012 effective date were for December 2012, and both sides now agree that month should be the starting point for the first CPI-based price change.
Based on the CPI’s four-month change from December 2012 to April 2013, TA’s first price adjustment was a 1.98 percent increase, effective in May 2013.
But, in what the county now concedes was error, it then based the second price adjustment on an eight-month change in CPI, from April 2013 to December 2013. It compounded that error by basing subsequent price changes on six-month CPI changes from December 2013 to June 2014 to December 2014.
After NBC 6 Investigators questioned the use of four-month and eight-month time periods for the first two price adjustments, TA’s attorney de Grandy wrote a letter to Libhaber arguing that using the April 2013 CPI numbers would be “factually and legally incorrect.” And, he continued, “the analysis for the first CPI increase cannot be conducted over a period of time less than six months."
But the county attorney’s office disagreed on both points, even though de Grandy’s suggested December-to-June-to-December CPI cycle could have led to TA owing the county about $80,000 when the books were reconciled, instead of the county owing TA $151,861.
The months used to calculate CPI are crucial; a change in just one month could shift millions of dollars to or from the county over the course of the contract.
For instance, had the county used an October 2012 to April 2013 CPI change for the first price change, and remained on that six-month CPI change cycle, taxpayers would have saved nearly $850,000 over the first 28 months of the contract.
But – again – attorneys for both the county and TA now agree October 2012 could not be used as a starting point because it preceded the contract’s effective date.
Once NBC 6 started questioning the contract’s CPI cycle, the county determined it erred in calculating three of the contract’s first four price changes.
It then recalculated the prices – continuing to base the first price change on the four-month CPI change between December 2012 and April 2013.
But the next three price adjustments were reset based on six-month CPI changes: April 2013 to October 2013 to April 2014 to October 2014.
When the ledger was finally reconciled -- for all trips provided through March 21, 2015 -- the bottom line came out in TA’s favor by $151,861.92.
In addition to the miscalculated COLAs, NBC 6 Investigators found, the county failed to properly bill TA $85,000 in the weeks after prices decreased, an oversight that stemmed from the county not following its own contract language.
“Prior to the end” of each six-month cycle -- on May 18 and November 18 -- the contract states the county is supposed to set the next cycle’s prices based on “the most recent” CPI.
That would allow everyone to know the next cycle’s new prices by the time the vans started rolling on the mornings of May 19 and November 19.
But the county based three price changes on CPI data released weeks after the new prices were supposed to take effect.
By basing them on CPI changes between June and December, the county created a nearly two-month delay between when the COLAs were supposed to take effect (in May and November) and when the CPI data they were based on were released.
The June CPI data released in mid-July were used to set prices that took effect in May; the December data released in mid-January affected prices that took effect the previous November.
That left a weeks-long lag between when the new prices took effect and when they were reflected in the invoices TA sent to the county.
When the data called for price increases, TA properly billed the county retroactively for the difference between the new, higher price and the prior contract period’s lower price, which it continued to bill until the new CPI data were released.
But when the CPI changes called for a reduction in the price, the county never demanded TA issue refunds or credits for the amounts the company was overpaid for trips it already billed under the prior contract period’s higher price.
The result: the county paid TA the money the company was due when prices increased, but did not seek to recover $84,917 the county was due when the prices decreased, until NBC 6 Investigators pointed out the discrepancies in March.
Miami-Dade Transit, or MDT, staff oversee the contract, while employees from the county’s Internal Services Department (ISD) are responsible for calculating the price changes based on CPI.
Public records reviewed by NBC 6 reveal county staff were sometimes confused about how to calculate and apply price changes.
In July 2014, 13 employees of MDT and ISD engaged in a meandering discussion of which CPI months should be used to calculate the price changes that were to take effect two months earlier, in May 2014.
One MDT staffer sent ISD the CPI release for May 2014 – which does not even include CPI measurements for Miami-Fort Lauderdale. (They are released only for even-numbered months: February, April, etc...).
William Velez, MDT’s paratransit chief, mistakenly said the increase would take effect June 1, though he quickly corrected it to May 19.
Days later, Velez tells the contract’s manager in ISD “the issue of the CPI … was brought to my attention again today” – by whom, he does not say – and asks if it was based on May 2014 CPI data.
Told it was based on the June CPI, Velez asks it be based on the May numbers, adding, “It seems as though my staff’s request was incorrect.” Remember: there is no South Florida CPI data for May.
It’s taxpayers who are at a loss when it comes to the county collecting all of what it has claimed it’s owed in liquidated damages --amounts assessed against TA for what the county claims was substandard performance.
The problem: Miami-Dade Transit often failed to seek payment for liquidated damages until after deadlines set out in the contract had passed.
The county had 180 days to notify TA of its intent to assess damages during the first year of the contract and 120 days thereafter. But a review of records by NBC 6 found about $211,000 in damages appear to have been claimed by the county after those deadlines elapsed.
The county concedes it cannot collect $99,230 in claimed liquidated damages for other reasons.
Just how much TA may wind up paying the county in liquidated damages remains in dispute.
The county says it has sought $904,862 in what it claimed were liquidated damages against TA since the contract began.
As of April, TA attorney de Grandy said, TA was appealing nearly $320,000 in such claims.
TA has paid or had deducted from its invoices $293,391, including about $70,000 the county concedes was improperly assessed.
In February, county officials told NBC 6 more than $400,000 in disputed liquidated damages was being held by TA while the company appeals.
Asked again in April about the status of the liquidated damages dispute, de Grandy said the $400,000 figure provided by the county in February was incorrect.
The county and company continue to argue over how much liquidated damages should be paid.
The county can seek to assess damages whenever it believes TA denies or misses requested trips. Penalties are also allowed for certain late pick-ups, prolonged travel times, and excessive complaints, among other shortcomings.
Liquidated damages are standard provisions in contracts of this type and, the company states, the amounts in dispute do not, in proper context, reflect poor service. De Grandy also noted that, historically, about half of the claimed damages are found to have no merit after the appeals process.
It claims drivers are involved in only about one accident per every 100,000 miles driven, less than the industry standard.
The original contract called for the county to retain all assessed liquidated damages, until TA won any of its appeals of those amounts. But the arrangement was amended in July 2014 by a “standard operating procedure,” allowing TA to keep the money until appeals were resolved.
The key pricing provision of the contract, approved in November 2012 by the county commission, is entitled Article 8 - Pricing.
It states: “Prices shall remain firm and fixed for a six-month period from the effective date of the contract.” Both the county and TA agree the effective date was Nov. 18, 2012, even though a transition period prevented TA from performing any services under the new contract until April 1, 2013.
The contract continues: “Prior to the end of the initial six-month period and for each six-month period thereafter … the county will review price adjustments.” The initial six-month period ended May 18, 2013, meaning the review of adjustments should occur on or before May 18 and November 18 of each contract year.
And the contract goes on to state the adjustments must be based on “the percentage change in the value of the most recent Consumer Price Index.” The most recent value of the CPI, as of May 18, 2013, would have been for the previous month, April 2013, released by BLS two days earlier, on May 16.
The adjustment ultimately is based on a weighted sum of the percentage change in two components of the CPI for the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area: CPI for all urban consumers, not seasonally adjusted, which carries 75 percent of the weight; and the CPI subcategory for private transportation, which carries 25 percent weight.
About 36 percent of the program’s funding comes from the county’s general fund, essentially county property and other taxes; another 36 percent is from a county transportation bond fund; fares and fees cover about nine percent of the costs, and state and federal money fund the rest.
TA earlier this year expanded into Broward County, winning a five-year, $34 million contract to provide half of that county’s paratransit trips.


Pune, 13 Apr 2018: Unity Social & Welfare Foundation, Pimpri, near here, organized camp on caste certificate guidance on the occasion of birth anniversary of Mahatma Jyotiba Phule, at Hotel Dakshin, Sant Tukaram Nagar, Pimpri, near here, recently.
The social activist Kiran Y Suvarna delivered the preliminary address.
Lonavala deputy councilor Sridar Somappa Poojary, Mangaluru taluk panchayat vice president Poornima Ganesh Poojary was the chief guests of the occasion.
Former corporator and Bharat Co-operative Bank (Mumbai) Limited director offered info on how to get caste certificate in Pune.
Persons belonging to castes Billava, Sappaliga, Moolya, Kumbhar have also attended.
Advocate Appu Moolya, Ganesh Anchan, Sridar Poojary, former vice presidents of Billava Sangha were also present on the dais.
Social activist Sangita K Suvarna proposed vote of thanks.


Islamabad - A Saudi organisation ‘King Abdullah’s Relief Campaign for Pakistani People (KARCPP)’ has started distribution of schoolbags with stationery and other necessary items among orphan children studying in different affected areas of Pakistan.
The school bag projects would benefit about 12,333 orphan children completing education in various institutions of Pakistan hit by natural calamity in the recent years, Dr Khalid M Al-Othmani, Regional Director KARCPP, told reporters here.
Giving details of the relief and distribution work being carried out in different areas of Pakistan under the guidance of Prince Muhammad Bin Naif, second Crown Prince and Interior Minister of Saudi Arabia and Petron-In-Chief of the KARCPP, he said that the Organization has started the school bag project costing Rs 21.5 million to help the orphan children completing education in 111 different institutions of Pakistan. Earlier, the organization had distributed thousands of schools bags among the orphan children during its first and second phase programmes, he informed.
He said that all the relief and distribution activities are being completed with Saudi Public donations to express solidarity with the people of brethren country and bring cherishing moments back to the faces of the victims of natural calamity.


Aussie tourist in Hawaii tells..
An emergency alert message warning of a ballistic missile threat sent Hawaii into panic on Saturday morning.
Gabi James, an Australian woman holidaying in Hawaii, was among those who received the message.
This morning she spoke to Ross and John about her reaction to the threat.
“We were fairly chilled about it…some people were very relaxed, some people were panicking and running for shelter,” she said.
Gabi said the text message urged people to seek shelter, but didn’t specify what shelter was.
A follow up message declaring the warning was a false alarm was sent 38 minutes after the first message.
Hawaiian State Governor David Ige has said the false warning was caused by an employee pressing the wrong button, but Gabi is skeptical.
“If indeed it was some person who pressed the wrong button at the wrong time, you feel like you would have got a second message saying it was all a mistake in less than 38 minutes,” she said.
Press PLAY below to hear Ross and John’s full chat with Gabi James.


T-DM1, known as an “empowered antibody,” combines Genentech’s existing antibody drug trastuzumab (Herceptin) with ImmunoGen’s cancer-killing toxin DM1, for an added punch. The FDA stated that the souped-up drug did not meet the requirements for accelerated approval because all other treatments choices had not been exhausted for the patients with metastatic breast cancer who participated in the clinical trials of the drug.
Genentech submitted its application for accelerated approval for T-DM1 in July, based on clinical trial data showing that the drug had helped partially or completely shrink tumors in roughly one out of every three patients, in a group of volunteers who had already received an average of seven different drugs for their cancer. The data was presented in December at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.
ImmunoGen stock had fallen more than 35 percent as of 12:57pm today, to $5.43 per share. ImmunoGen also stated that the financial guidance it previously announced for fiscal year 2011 was no longer applicable due to the FDA “refuse to file” letter.
Following today’s FDA decision, Genentech indicated that it will continue its ongoing Phase III trial of T-DM1, as planned, and expects to submit a new application for the treatment in mid-2012, using a different data set than it had submitted for the accelerated approval application this summer.
“We firmly believe in the potential of T-DM1 as a novel HER2-targeted option and remain fully committed to its ongoing development,” said Hal Barron, Genentech executive vice president of product development and chief medical officer, in a company announcement of the news.
On its own, trastuzumab, which nabbed FDA approval as a breast cancer treatment in 1998, generates more than $5 billion in annual sales worldwide.
well, i think that is a appropriate decision from FDA to protect medical patients.


What Is a Daniel Fast?
All allowable Daniel Fast foods come from plants.
The Daniel Fast is a 21-day diet and lifestyle plan based on the biblical story of Daniel, who was captured by the Babylonians in Jerusalem during the 6th century B.C. During his captivity, he limited his food intake as a way to seek answers from God. Although many who partake in the Daniel Fast do so as a spiritual discipline that includes prayer and self-denial, others follow the fast in an attempt to lose weight or as a challenge to eat more healthfully. Consult your physician before starting this diet.
The foods allowed on the Daniel Fast are based on two biblical stories of Daniel's dietary restrictions while fasting. Although his first fast limited his diet to just vegetables and water, his second period of fasting involved avoiding "choice foods," such as wine and meat. Based on these stories, the Daniel Fast allows only whole grains, nuts, seeds, beans, fruits, vegetables and vegetable oils. The quantity of food you're allowed to eat is not restricted.
Prepare to give up your morning coffee and that glass of wine with dinner, because the Daniel Fast incorporates a strong element of self-denial by prohibiting many enjoyable foods and beverages. Off-limit items include any type of sweetener or sweetened food, preservatives, additives, caffeine and alcoholic beverages. The Daniel Fast is similar to the vegan diet, so no meat, poultry, fish or dairy products are allowed. Water is the only beverage permitted.
Specific cookbooks for the Daniel Fast are available, although they are not necessary if you choose recipes that adhere to the rules. Author Susan Gregory's Daniel Fast cookbook contains recipes for for dishes such as pumpkin black bean soup, Indonesian tofu with peanut sauce, Greek vegetable stew and a potato and green onion frittata. Gregory's list of allowable Daniel Fast snacks includes dried fruit, hummus with flatbread, apple slices with nut butter, fruit kabobs and trail mix made from nuts, coconut pieces, dried fruit, sunflower seeds and raisins.
In a study funded by the University of Memphis, researchers found that subjects who followed the Daniel Fast for 21 days had an improvement in several biomarkers related to cardiovascular and metabolic health. Testing showed significantly lower total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol and blood pressure. The reduction in total cholesterol included a decreased level of beneficial HDL cholesterol, which concerned the researchers. Body weight and body fat were not significantly decreased. The Daniel Fast lacks vitamin B12, a vital nutrient which is only found in foods from animal sources, according to Judi Morrill of San Jose State University. Morrill also said that the quality of the diet depends on what foods you choose to eat.
Gianna Rose is a registered nurse certified in hospice and palliative care, as well as a certified wellness coach. She completed Duke Integrative Medicine's Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course in 2009. Rose also holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Savannah College of Art and Design.
Rose, Gianna. "What Is a Daniel Fast?" Healthy Eating | SF Gate, http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/daniel-fast-3317.html. Accessed 23 April 2019.
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Mr. Xia Zhiyun has been serving as President and Director in Sinoma International Engineering Co., Ltd. since September 16, 2014. He is also Chairman of the Board in Sinoma International Engineering Co., Ltd. (Nanjing), as well as Executive Director in Sinoma International Engineering (Zhejiang) Co., Ltd. He used to serve as Director of the Company, General Manager and Director in two other machinery companies.
Mr. Ni Jinrui has been serving as Chief Financial Officer and Vice President in Sinoma International Engineering Co., Ltd. since November 14, 2017. He is also Executive Director in a Beijing-based trade company.
Mr. Jiang Zhongwen has been serving as Vice President and Director in Sinoma International Engineering Co., Ltd. since November 14, 2017. He is also Executive Director in a Hong Kong-based company. He was Chairman of the Board in Suzhou Sinoma Architecture and Building Materials Design Research Institute Co Ltd.
Mr. Jiao Feng has been serving as Vice President in Sinoma International Engineering Co., Ltd. since August 2005. He is also serving as Chairman of the Board in Chengdu Design & Research Institute of Building Materials Industry Co., Ltd.
Mr. Shen Jun has been serving as Vice President in Sinoma International Engineering Co., Ltd. since March 20, 2004. He is also Chairman of the Board in SINOMA (SUZHOU) CONSTRUCTION CO., LTD. and a Nanjing-based company. He used to be Executive Director in Zhejiang Sinoma Engineering Design & Research Institute Co., Ltd.
Mr. Sui Tongbo has been serving as Vice President in Sinoma International Engineering Co., Ltd. since October 28, 2010. He is also working for Sinoma Research Institute.
Mr. Tong Laigou has been serving as Vice President in Sinoma International Engineering Co., Ltd. since November 14, 2017. He is also Chairman of the Board in a Tianjin-based company and CBMI Construction Co., Ltd.
Mr. Xu Peitao has been serving as Vice President in Sinoma International Engineering Co., Ltd. since September 20, 2010. He used to be Chairman of the Board in TIANJIN CEMENT INDUSTRY DESIGN & RESEARCH INSTITUTE CO., LTD. and a group company.
Mr. Yin Zhisong has been serving as Vice President in Sinoma International Engineering Co., Ltd. since November 14, 2017. He is also General Manager in a Nanjing-based company.
Mr. Song Shoushun has been serving as Chairman of the Board in Sinoma International Engineering Co., Ltd. since September 16, 2014. He is also serving as Vice President in China National Materials Company Limited, as well as Chairman of the Board in an India-based company.
Mr. Gu Chao has been serving as Director in Sinoma International Engineering Co., Ltd. since September 25, 2015. He is also Vice President and Secretary of the Board in China National Materials Company Limited.
Mr. Liu Zhijiang has been serving as Director in Sinoma International Engineering Co., Ltd. since December 4, 2009. He is also Vice Chairman of the Board in China National Materials Group Corporation Ltd., as well as Chairman of the Board and Executive Director in China National Materials Company Limited.
Mr. Peng Jianxin has been serving as Director in Sinoma International Engineering Co., Ltd. since September 15, 2014. He is also President and Executive Director in China National Materials Company Limited.
Mr. Chen Shaohua has been serving as Independent Director in Sinoma International Engineering Co., Ltd. since September 15, 2014. He is also serving as Independent Director in ZTE Corporation, Double Medical Technology Inc. and China United Insurance Holding Company Limited. He used to be Independent Director in Xiamen 35.com Technology Co., Ltd., Fujian Funeng Co., Ltd., Fujian Newchoice Pipe Technology Co., Ltd., Xiamen Meiya Pico Information Co., Ltd., Tianma Microelectronics Co., Ltd. and Fujian Septwolves Industry Co., Ltd. He is also a Professor of Xiamen University.
Mr. Li Gang has been serving as Independent Director in Sinoma International Engineering Co., Ltd. since January 2016. He is also Vice Chairman of the Board in a Zhejiang-based fund management company. He is also an Adjunct Professor of hina University of Political Science and Law.
Ms. Zhang Xiaoyan has been serving as Independent Director in Sinoma International Engineering Co., Ltd. since August 24, 2017. She is also Independent Director in Jianpu Technology Inc. She is also a Professor of Tsinghua University, China.


A prayer vigil and balloon release for three Hardin County teens killed in a weekend wreck has been planned for 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at Praise Church, 8325 Walker Road in Beaumont.
Funeral services for Caringtin Mosley, of Batson, will be Thursday at First Baptist Church of Batson with burial following at Guedry Cemetery.
Services for Alix Neel, of Batson, will be Friday at First Baptist Church in Sour Lake with burial following at Pine Ridge Cemetery.
Services for Garrett Saulters, of Votaw, will be Friday at Cochran Funeral Home in Livingston, with interment following at Blue Water Cemetery in Livingston.
"He was our baby, the joy of our life, my everything," said Michelle Willis, the mother of Saulters, who died in the Sunday evening wreck.
The three 18-year-olds were in a Chrysler 200 driven by Mosley that crashed into a van on FM 787 near Saratoga at about 5:45 p.m. Sunday, according to the Department of Public Safety. The van was halted behind a Nissan Rogue that had stopped to make a left turn.
Initial reports claim the Chrysler 200 rear-ended the van, causing it to spin into oncoming traffic where it was hit by a 2003 Ford.
The fourth passenger was reported to be in critical condition at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Beaumont.
The three who perished all graduated from high school last spring. Saulters and Mosley attended West Hardin County Consolidated ISD and Neel attended Hardin-Jefferson ISD.
The morning after the wreck, yellow police tape remained matted in the grass where the vehicles likely landed. A fractured rearview mirror and a pink bow were strewn on either side of the small farm-to-market road.
"It's still pretty raw for our community," said Jim Armstrong, superintendent of West Hardin CCISD, who described the unincorporated Hardin County communities as family-oriented and tight-knit.
Hailey Trest, who had plans to move in with Mosley and Neel as roommates, said the pair were "the most outgoing, loving souls you could ever be around."
"Alix had this huge love for Jesus that was unimaginable and Caringtin always had a smile on her face," said Trest, a Sour Lake resident. "My heart and prayers go out to each and everyone experiencing hurt from the loss of our angels."
The father of a 2-year-old, Saulters "was a wonderful dad to his little boy," Willis said.
Online GoFundMe efforts launched by family members to pay for funeral expenses and other financial uncertainties collectively raised more than $6,500 by Monday evening.
The fourth passenger in the Chrysler 200, 17-year-old Jaron Benavides of Kountze, was taken by medical helicopter to a Beaumont hospital with critical injuries.
His mother, Heather Yates, said Benavides underwent surgery to remove his spleen and gallbladder and to put a rod in his left leg. He has a fractured right leg and a partially collapsed lung, Yates said.
Benavides woke up at one point, and Yates recalled that a tear rolled down his right cheek.
"We are still here ... just waiting (at the hospital)," said Yates, who said she'd known Mosley and Saulters "their whole lives."
Benavides still doesn't know of the death of his friends "as he is staying sedated," Yates said. "We dread having to tell him this."
"Our hearts are completely broken for our community," she said.
The driver of the van, a 71-year-old man from Beaumont; and the driver of Ford, a 75-year-old man from Thicket, were both taken to St. Elizabeth with serious injuries.