Sea Island sold to coalition of investors

By J. Scott Trubey The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The two competing investor groups looking to buy Georgia’s iconic Sea Island resort spent most of Monday battling each other in a bankruptcy auction before coming together on a joint bid to buy the tony coastal retreat.
At nearly 10 p.m., Monday, a coalition of Oaktree Capital Management, Avenue Capital Group, Starwood Capital and Anschutz Corp. announced a joint bid to acquire the beleaguered Sea Island Co.-- including its luxurious Cloister and Lodge hotels and four golf courses -- for $212.4 million.

After locking horns for more than six hours, the two competing groups pooled their resources in a joint bid that was nearly $15 million more than that offered by Oaktree and Avenue in August. The new deal has the blessing of Sea Island’s secured creditors and the unsecured creditors’ committee.
The deal is not yet final, however. Sea Island’s creditors will meet Oct. 29 to approve the sale, which must also pass muster with a bankruptcy judge at a hearing scheduled for Nov. 4 in Brunswick.
"I am very pleased that the outcome of the auction process resulted in preserved and enhanced terms for our members, employees and trade vendors,” Sea Island Chairman and CEO Bill Jones III said in a statement. “Together the bidders proposed a comprehensive plan that ultimately was higher than either bidder had bid alone."
Sea Island entered bankruptcy Aug. 10 claiming more than $1 billion in debts stemming from an ill-timed ultra-luxury revamp and land development surge. Though it had an agreement in place to be sold to Oaktree and Avenue out of bankruptcy, an auction was required by bankruptcy law.

Oaktree of Los Angeles and Avenue of New York are both specialists in distressed properties. Avenue CEO Marc Lasry owns a condo at the Sea Island Beach Club. Starwood is a $16 billion-in-assets Connecticut-based private equity group that has been buying up distressed real estate. Its CEO, Barry Sternlicht, founded the now independent Starwood Hotels & Resorts Inc., and created the W hotel brand. Anschutz is an owner of sports franchises—including the Los Angeles Kings—and sports arenas around the world.

"Sea Island is a special place with great heritage and a wonderful future," Sternlicht said. "We look forward to a long-term relationship with the company and to its transition to stable and debt-free operations.”

The saga has gripped Sea Island members, employees and residents along Georgia’s coast. The resort is a major economic driver for a region hard hit by the recession.
“We understand how important Sea Island is to the community and to its various stakeholders," Oaktree President and Portfolio Manager Bruce Karsh said. "We are confident that financially strong and well-capitalized owners will establish a new beginning at Sea Island.”
In their proposal to buy Sea Island, the four partners are said to honor Sea Island memberships, keep Sea Island’s 1,400 employees and Jones as its chairman and CEO.
The sale ends more than 80 years of ownership by the Jones family. And the Sea Island empire has already seen other significant pieces sold.

Joan Sutherland, Flawless Soprano, Is Dead at 83

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI NY TIMES
Joan Sutherland, one of the most acclaimed sopranos of the 20th century, a singer of such power and range that she was crowned “La Stupenda,” died on Sunday at her home in Switzerland, near Montreux. She was 83.

Her death was confirmed by her close friend the mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne.

It was Italy’s notoriously picky critics who dubbed the Australian-born Ms. Sutherland the Stupendous One after her Italian debut, in Venice in 1960. And for 40 years the name endured with opera lovers around the world. Her 1961 debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, in Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor,” generated so much excitement that standees began lining up at 7:30 that morning. Her singing of the Mad Scene drew a thunderous 12-minute ovation.

Ms. Sutherland’s singing was founded on astonishing technique. Her voice was evenly produced throughout an enormous range, from a low G to effortless flights above high C. She could spin lyrical phrases with elegant legato, subtle colorings and expressive nuances. Her sound was warm, vibrant and resonant, without any forcing. Indeed, her voice was so naturally large that at the start of her career Ms. Sutherland seemed destined to become a Wagnerian dramatic soprano.

Following her first professional performances, in 1948, during a decade of steady growth and intensive training, Ms. Sutherland developed incomparable facility for fast runs, elaborate roulades and impeccable trills. She did not compromise the passagework, as many do, by glossing over scurrying runs, but sang almost every note fully.

Her abilities led Richard Bonynge, the Sydney-born conductor and vocal coach whom she married in 1954, to persuade her early on to explore the early-19th-century Italian opera of the bel canto school. She became a major force in its revitalization.

Bel canto (which translates as “beautiful song” or “beautiful singing”) denotes an approach to singing exemplified by evenness through the range and great agility. The term also refers to the early-19th-century Italian operas steeped in bel canto style. Outside of Italy, the repertory had languished for decades when Maria Callas appeared in the early 1950s and demonstrated that operas like “Lucia di Lammermoor” and Bellini’s “Norma” were not just showcases for coloratura virtuosity but musically elegant and dramatically gripping works as well.

Even as a young man, Mr. Bonynge had uncommon knowledge of bel canto repertory and style. Ms. Sutherland and Mr. Bonynge, who is four years younger than she, met in Sydney at a youth concert and became casual friends. They were reacquainted later in London, where Ms. Sutherland settled with her mother in 1951 to attend the Royal College of Music. There Mr. Bonynge became the major influence on her development.

Ms. Sutherland used to say she thought of herself and her husband as a duo and that she didn’t talk of her career, “but of ours.”

In a 1961 profile in The New York Times Magazine she said she initially had “a big rather wild voice” that was not heavy enough for Wagner, although she did not realize this until she heard “Wagner sung as it should be.”

“Richard had decided — long before I agreed with him — that I was a coloratura,” she said.

“We fought like cats and dogs over it,” she said, adding, “It took Richard three years to convince me.”

In her repertory choices Ms. Sutherland ranged widely during the 1950s, singing lighter lyric Mozart roles like the Countess in “Le Nozze di Figaro” and heavier Verdi roles like Amelia in “Un Ballo in Maschera.” Even then, astute listeners realized that she was en route to becoming something extraordinary.

In a glowing and perceptive review of her performance as Desdemona in Verdi’s “Otello” at Covent Garden in London in late 1957, the critic Andrew Porter, writing in The Financial Times, commended her for not “sacrificing purity to power.” This is “not her way,” Mr. Porter wrote, “and five years on we shall bless her for her not endeavoring now to be ‘exciting’ but, instead, lyrical and beautiful.”

She became an international sensation after her career-defining performance in the title role of “Lucia di Lammermoor” at Covent Garden — its first presentation there since 1925 — which opened on Feb. 17, 1959. The production was directed by Franco Zeffirelli and conducted by the Italian maestro Tullio Serafin, a longtime Callas colleague, who elicited from the 32-year-old soprano a vocally resplendent and dramatically affecting portrayal of the trusting, unstable young bride of Lammermoor.

Mr. Porter, reviewing the performance in The Financial Times, wrote that the brilliance of Ms. Sutherland’s singing was to be expected by this point. The surprise, he explained, was the new dramatic presence she brought to bear.

“The traces of self-consciousness, of awkwardness on the stage, had disappeared; and at the same time she sang more freely, more powerfully, more intensely — and also more bewitchingly — than ever before.”

This triumph was followed in 1960 by landmark portrayals in neglected bel canto operas by Bellini: Elvira in “I Puritani” at the Glyndebourne Festival (the first presentation in England since 1887) and “La Sonnambula” at Covent Garden (the company’s first production in half a century).

Ms. Sutherland’s American debut came in November 1960 in the title role of Handel’s “Alcina” at the Dallas Opera, the first American production of this now-popular work. Her distinguished Decca recording of “Lucia di Lammermoor,” with an exceptional cast conducted by John Pritchard, was released in 1961, the year of her enormously anticipated Metropolitan Opera debut in that same work, on Nov. 26.

At Ms. Sutherland’s first appearance, before she had sung a note, there was an enthusiastic ovation. Following the first half of Lucia’s Mad Scene in the final act, which culminated in a glorious high E-flat, the ovation lasted almost 5 minutes. When she finished the scene and her crazed, dying Lucia collapsed to the stage floor, the ovation lasted 12 minutes.

Reviewing the performance in The New York Times, Harold C. Schonberg wrote that other sopranos might have more power or a sweeter tone, but “there is none around who has the combination of technique, vocal security, clarity and finesse that Miss Sutherland can summon.”

Even for some admirers, though, there were limitations to her artistry. Her diction was often indistinct. After receiving steady criticism for this shortcoming, Ms. Sutherland worked to correct it, and sang with crisper enunciation in the 1970s.

She was also sometimes criticized for delivering dramatically bland performances. At 5-foot-9, she was a large woman, with long arms and large hands, and a long, wide face. As her renown increased, she insisted that designers create costumes for her that compensated for her figure, which, as she admitted self-deprecatingly in countless interviews, was somewhat flat in the bust but wide in the rib cage. Certain dresses could make her look like “a large column walking about the stage,” she wrote in “The Autobiography of Joan Sutherland: A Prima Donna’s Progress” (1997).

Paradoxically, Mr. Bonynge contributed to the sometimes dramatically uninvolved quality of her performances. By the mid-1960s he was her conductor of choice, often part of the deal when she signed a contract. Trained as a pianist and vocal coach, he essentially taught himself conducting. Even after extended experience, he was not the maestro opera fans turned to for arresting performances of Verdi’s “Traviata.” But he thoroughly understood the bel canto style and was attuned to every component of his wife’s voice.

Yet if urging her to be sensible added to her longevity, it sometimes resulted in her playing it safe. Other conductors prodded Ms. Sutherland to sing with greater intensity: for example, Georg Solti, in an acclaimed 1967 recording of Verdi’s Requiem with the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna State Opera Chorus, and Zubin Mehta, who enticed Ms. Sutherland into recording the title role in Puccini’s “Turandot,” which she never sang onstage, for a 1972 recording. Both of these projects featured the tenor Luciano Pavarotti, who would become an ideal partner for Ms. Sutherland in the bel canto repertory. Ms. Sutherland’s fiery Turandot suggests she had dramatic abilities that were never tapped.

Joan Alston Sutherland was born on Nov. 7, 1926, in Sydney, where the family lived in a modest house overlooking the harbor. The family garden and the rich array of wildflowers on the hillside near the beach inspired her lifelong love of gardening.

Her mother, Muriel Sutherland, was a fine mezzo-soprano who had studied with Mathilde Marchesi, the teacher of the Australian soprano Nellie Melba. Though too shy for the stage, Ms. Sutherland’s mother did vocal exercises every day and was her daughter’s principal teacher throughout her adolescence.

Ms. Sutherland’s father, William, a Scottish-born tailor, had been married before. His first wife died during the influenza epidemic after World War I, leaving him with three daughters and a son. Ms. Sutherland was the only child of his second marriage. He died on the day of Ms. Sutherland’s sixth birthday. He had just given her a new bathing suit and she wanted to try it out. Though feeling unwell, he climbed down to the beach with her and, upon returning, collapsed in his wife’s arms. Joan, along with her youngest half-sister and their mother, moved into the home of an aunt and uncle, who had sufficient room and a big garden in the Sydney suburb of Woollahra.

Although Ms. Sutherland’s mother soon recognized her daughter’s gifts, she pegged her as a mezzo-soprano. At 16, facing the reality of having to support herself, Ms. Sutherland completed a secretarial course and took office jobs, while keeping up her vocal studies. She began lessons in Sydney with Aida Dickens, who convinced her that she was a soprano, very likely a dramatic soprano. Ms. Sutherland began singing oratorios and radio broadcasts and made a notable debut in 1947 as Purcell’s Dido in Sydney.

In 1951, with prize money from winning a prestigious vocal competition, she and her mother moved to London, where Ms. Sutherland enrolled at the opera school of the Royal College of Music. The next year, after three previous unsuccessful auditions, she was accepted into the Royal Opera at Covent Garden and made her debut as the First Lady in Mozart’s “Zauberflöte.”

In the company’s landmark 1952 production of Bellini’s “Norma,” starring Maria Callas, Ms. Sutherland sang the small role of Clotilde, Norma’s confidante. “Now look after your voice,” Callas advised her at the time, adding, “We’re going to hear great things of you.”

“I lusted to sing Norma after being in those performances with Callas,” Ms. Sutherland said in a 1998 New York Times interview. “But I knew that I could not sing it the way she did. It was 10 years before I sang the role. During that time I studied it, sang bits of it, and worked with Richard. But I had to evolve my own way to sing it, and I would have wrecked my voice to ribbons had I tried to sing it like her.”

In 1955 she created the lead role of Jenifer in Michael Tippett’s “Midsummer Marriage.”

During this period Ms. Sutherland gave birth to her only child, Adam, who survives her, along with two grandchildren and Mr. Bonynge, her husband of 56 years.

Immediately after her breakthrough performances as Lucia in 1959, Ms. Sutherland underwent sinus surgery to correct persistent problems with nasal passages that were chronically prone to becoming clogged. Though it was a risky operation for a singer, it was deemed successful.

In the early 1960s, using a home in southern Switzerland as a base, Ms. Sutherland made the rounds, singing in international opera houses and forming a close association with the Met, where she ultimately sang 223 performances. These included an acclaimed new production of “Norma” in 1970 with Ms. Horne in her Met debut, singing Adalgisa; Mr. Bonynge conducted. There was also a hugely popular 1972 production of Donizetti’s “Fille du Régiment,” with Pavarotti singing the role of Tonio.

Though never a compelling actress, Ms. Sutherland exuded vocal charisma, a good substitute for dramatic intensity. In the comic role of Marie in “La Fille du Régiment,” she conveyed endearingly awkward girlishness as the orphaned tomboy raised by an army regiment, proudly marching in place in her uniform while tossing off the vocal flourishes.

Ms. Sutherland was plain-spoken and down to earth, someone who enjoyed needlepoint and playing with her grandchildren. Though she knew who she was, she was quick to poke fun at her prima donna persona.

“I love all those demented old dames of the old operas,” she said in a 1961 Times profile. “All right, so they’re loony. The music’s wonderful.”

Queen Elizabeth II made Ms. Sutherland a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1978. Her bluntness sometimes caused her trouble. In 1994, addressing a luncheon organized by a group in favor of retaining the monarchy in Australia, she complained of having to be interviewed by a foreign-born clerk when applying to renew her passport, “a Chinese or an Indian — I’m not particularly racist — but find it ludicrous, when I’ve had a passport for 40 years.” Her remarks were widely reported, and she later apologized.

In retirement she mostly lived quietly at home but was persuaded to sit on juries of vocal competitions and, less often, to present master classes. In 2004 she received a Kennedy Center Honor for outstanding achievement throughout her career. In 2008, while gardening at her home in Switzerland, she fell and broke both legs, which led to a lengthy hospital stay.

Other sopranos may have been more musically probing and dramatically vivid. But few were such glorious vocalists. After hearing her New York debut in “Beatrice di Tenda” at Town Hall, the renowned Brazilian soprano Bidú Sayão, herself beloved for the sheer beauty of her voice, said, “If there is perfection in singing, this is it.”

‘Victory’ in Iraq and the prize is ... a war to come

Andrew Sullivan Times of London
America may think it is job done but sectarian tensions could still herald a wider conflict. This war, in others words, may not be over
Remember Iraq? If you recall, it’s a country in the middle of the Middle East, next to Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran, among others. Some time ago, the US and Britain and a few other countries invaded to save the West from destruction at the hands of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and now everything’s okay.

It was hard going for a while, but thanks to something called “the surge”, we achieved victory, deposed a dictator, got rid of all the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction he was trying to give Al-Qaeda, and then, since there was no sectarianism left, a democracy sprang up that brought everyone together. And we were able to leave.

Of course, I’m not being serious. When President Barack Obama declared an end to the combat mission just over a month ago, he was sober and balanced. He spoke of no victory. He also promised no total exit for a long time. But his vice-president, Joe Biden, was not so restrained. Earlier this year he declared that the outcome in Iraq “could be one of the great achievements of this administration”. Dick Cheney, the former vice-president, for his part, fought back: “For [the Obama administration] to try to take credit for what happened in Iraq strikes me as a little strange ... It ought to go with a healthy dose of ‘Thank you, George Bush’ up front.”

So this has become Washington’s conventional and convenient wisdom: the surge succeeded in establishing an Iraqi multi-sectarian democracy, and America can all but withdraw with head held high. Yes, the casus belli — those WMDs — had been either a mirage or a lie, depending on your point of view. Yes, the occupation was a fiasco. Yes, hundreds of thousands died in the war itself and in the sectarian bloodbath that followed. Yes, much of Iraq’s middle class fled the country; Baghdad became a warren of concrete walls separating Sunni from Shi’ite; the Kurdistan issue was not settled; the Sunni minority was not integrated into the police or armed forces ... but Saddam Hussein, the dictator, had gone, there was no longer a massive civil war, and so the whole thing could be fought over in Washington as a “victory” to be claimed by both sides. The Washington Post — smug bastion of conventional wisdom — noted last week that “though violence rose over the summer, it tapered off last month. Only 174 Iraqi fatalities were reported across the country — one of the lowest figures of the war”.

There are times when one understands the spluttering rage of the alienated voter. Just because there is no continuing sectarian massacre month after month is not, and never was, a criterion for success in the surge. It was explicitly sold to Congress and the public as providing a breathing space for the various sects to come together to form a national government, forgoing civil war and allowing the US to leave.

This entire war has resulted in a massive strategic victory for Iran in the region at the expense of the US and its allies But last week, after the longest ever period between an election and the formation of a government anywhere, it became clearer than ever that the likely future of Iraq will be one of Shi’ite dominance, with temperamental Kurdish support, and dangerous marginalisation of the Sunnis. The key test of a democracy is the peaceful transfer of power from one elected leader to another. It didn’t happen. Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, has refused to give up his office, and has increasingly adopted authoritarian methods, appealing to the country as a man of law and order.

Last week, in the single most important event since the election, the radical Shi’ite bloc, the followers of Moqtada al-Sadr, swore their allegiance to Maliki, marginalising Ayad Allawi, whose party won the most seats, and who was the only Shi’ite capable of representing the Sunnis. Sadr’s forces, one recalls, are the most sectarian Shi’ites, the most anti-American force in Iraq, and recently claimed credit for a surge in rocket attacks on US facilities, including its vast new embassy. How many wars are fought in order to install into government the militias who were your worst enemies during the occupation?

Sadr, moreover, has spent the past few years in Iran — and although it would be foolish to underestimate Iraqi Shi’ite independence, there is no question that this entire war has resulted in a massive strategic victory for Iran in the region at the expense of the United States and its allies. Thank you, Dick Cheney. Thank you, neo-conservatives.

If I had lost a son in this war, it would not be a victory to know that it was to result in the victory of my son’s killers. And if I were a Sunni who had risked his life to fight Al-Qaeda in Anbar province at the behest of the Americans, I would be asking myself at this point: for what? For the triumphant victory of one of the more virulently anti-Sunni forces around?

The silence in Washington, in other words, was a silence of embarrassment. The Obama administration could scarcely claim success — except in taking swift advantage of a face-saving window to reduce troop levels to a “mere” 50,000, a number unthinkable seven years ago, when the invasion began. The Republicans, on the other hand, still formally beholden to neoconservative ideology, were not exactly in a rush to claim ownership of a war that had killed thousands of young soldiers and seriously injured thousands more, had cost upwards of $1 trillion, had allowed Al-Qaeda into a region where it had not been before, had permanently disgraced the moral standing of the US after Abu Ghraib, and had ended with a victory for Iran. And so ... the quiet chirping of crickets across town.

There is still a chance that Maliki will try to coax some Sunnis into government. But all he needs is the support of the Kurdish parties to form a government with no effective Sunni representation at all. If that were to happen, the chances of Sunni alienation — with the revival of Al-Qaeda in Anbar — are very high. Which means that a resumption of the civil war is a perfectly plausible outcome, even though Iraq remains exhausted with sectarian warfare. The Shi’ites could use oil revenues to finance an army to crush their ancient enemies for good.

With sectarian tensions increasing throughout the region over the prospect of Iran becoming a nuclear power, the temptation for neighbouring states to intervene may also become overwhelming. Saudi Arabia and Jordan are not likely to be happy to see a nuclear Iran essentially co-opt a pliant Shi’ite Iraq and establish itself as by far the largest influence in the Middle East.

This war, in others words, may not be over. In fact, one may wonder whether what we have seen so far is but an overture for the main — and much wider — event

Sea Islanders await auction of famed resort

By J. Scott Trubey Atlanta Journal/Constitution
After two years of doubt, a measure of clarity should come Monday for Sea Island in the form of a bankruptcy auction.
The remaining assets of the bankrupt Sea Island Co. — the five-star Cloister and Lodge hotels and four celebrated golf courses among them— will be sold to the highest bidder at the headquarters of Atlanta law firm King & Spalding.
The auction will be among the final steps in the distress sale of the storied resort, a favorite vacation spot for generations of affluent metro Atlantans.
Sea Island filed for bankruptcy protection in August, claiming more than $1 billion in debts stemming from an ill-timed ultra-luxury revamp and land development surge. The company simultaneously announced a plan to sell itself to a pair of out-of-state hedge funds.
But an auction is required by bankruptcy law, and a competing group of bidders has brought drama to a community known more for tranquil marshes, elegant hotels and plush service.
“We’ll be holding our breaths on Monday,” said Jane Fraser, a Sea Island member and resident.

The partnership of Oaktree Capital Management and Avenue Capital Group won a lengthy bid process to acquire the storied resort for $197.5 million. Its offer, known as a “stalking horse bid,” is said to honor Sea Island memberships, keep Sea Island’s 1,400 employees and retain Sea Island Co. scion A.W. “Bill” Jones III as chairman and CEO.

A competing team made up of Starwood Capital and Anschutz Entertainment is also cleared to bid at Monday’s auction.
Last month, Starwood-Anschutz topped Oaktree-Avenue with a bid of $199 million, but the higher offer was rejected by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John Dalis, who said new offers must be made at auction.
Starwood and Anschutz haven’t revealed a strategy for the resort should they win.
The sale and an exit from bankruptcy must still be approved by Sea Island’s creditors and bankruptcy judge. A hearing is scheduled Nov. 4.
The outcome is hard to predict, an expert in bankruptcy cases told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Earlier this year, Omni Hotels & Resorts snapped up Florida’s Amelia Island Plantation in a bankruptcy auction after outbidding the stalking horse by $20 million.
The final price for Sea Island likely will go up, too.

“It’s a trophy property. It’s high profile,” said Gary Marsh, head of the bankruptcy practice at McKenna Long & Aldridge.
Sea Island listed secured debts to Columbus-based Synovus Financial, Bank of America and Bank of Scotland of about $566 million. They will take most of the auction proceeds.
Unsecured Sea Island creditors — including some vendors and even employees — who are owed nearly $500 million collectively, will net much less.
But an increase in the price could help the unsecured creditor recoup a little more than what’s on the table now, about $3 million in total, according to the bankruptcy filing.
Competing bids are “good for the bankruptcy estate and the (unsecured) creditors,” said Marsh. “The more money bid . . . the more money available to those who are entitled.”
Sea Island started its supercharged expansion and renovation plans in 2001, with the opening of The Lodge. A reborn Cloister and ever-more luxurious real estate development followed.

Late last year, Wells Fargo & Co. foreclosed on the Frederica Township development, and last January, Sea Island announced it was in default. A month later, it retained Goldman Sachs to engineer a sale.
On Thursday, billionaire businessman and former Miami Dolphins majority owner Wayne Huizenga bought Frederica Club, an exclusive golf course and equestrian community on St. Simons Island developed by Sea Island Co.
Herb Kohler, head of the Kohler plumbing products empire, is said to be a potential buyer of Cannon Point, another Sea Island asset foreclosed by Wells Fargo last November.
M. H. “Woody” Woodside, president of the Brunswick-Golden Isles Chamber of Commerce, said the business community is “waiting with anticipation” to see who prevails at auction for the remaining major assets.
Sea Island is a cornerstone of the coastal economy. It hosted the 2004 G-8 Summit, drawing the world to Georgia’s door. It’s also a stop on the state’s annual Red Carpet tour to woo companies to Georgia. The resort company is also a generous donor to charitable causes, Woodside said.
“There’s been a cloud with this for months,” Woodside said. “The community is ready to move forward.”

Jones, the Sea Island chairman and CEO, said in August a sale to Oaktree and Avenue was the best possible outcome for members and employees. Under their plan, the Jones family, which has owned Sea Island for more than 80 years, would lose its ownership stake.
Woodside said most of the business leaders he talks with want the continuity of the Jones family to remain.
Last month, the Associated Press reported several top Sea Island executives were paid lucrative bonuses as the company was plunging into bankruptcy. For instance, company president David Bansmer was paid $222,000 in bonuses over 12 months on top of his $450,000 salary.
The revelations angered many in the community, said Fraser, the Sea Island member. Sea Island laid off about 500 people in 2008, or nearly a quarter of its workforce, as its fortunes faded.

“Ever since those salaries were published there’s been a shift of opinion,” she said.

Up in Their Grill
The Westboro Baptist Church politely shows the court how to be obnoxious.
By Dahlia Lithwick (SLATE)
Members of Westboro Baptist Church protest near a veterans hospital Quick constitutional pop quiz: What do you hate? (And by you, I mean you.)
If you answered: homosexuals, Jews, Catholics, the military, the pope, and more or less everyone except Fred Phelps, who founded the Westboro Baptist Church and is thus your dad/uncle/granddad/third cousin, you are probably one of the 30-plus members of the church, which argued at the Supreme Court this morning for the right to vile, hateful protests at the funerals of fallen soldiers. If you answered: intolerance, incivility, people who glom onto the private grief of military families, or the Westboro Baptist Church, you probably sympathize with Albert Snyder, whose efforts to bury his son, Matthew, who died in Iraq in 2006, were marred by members of the Phelps family wielding signs reading "God Hates Fags," "God Hates You," and "Thank God for Dead Soldiers."
Yahoo! Buzz Facebook Digg RedditStumbleUponCLOSE(Oh, and just for the record: What I hate is tripping over a child holding a sign that reads "God Hates You" as I am trying to get to oral argument at the Supreme Court. There is a special charcoal briquette in hell for parents who teach kids to think that way.)

What—you may be wondering—does the stuff you hate have to do with the First Amendment? Well, ordinarily, nothing. But oral argument proves to be a virtual Mardi Gras of hate this morning, and even the justices reveal that if one truly hates certain speech enough, it can go a long way toward shaping one's view of the law. If the old saying—that bad facts make bad law—is true, it's arguably even more true that pissed off jurists (and bad oral advocates) make for very bad precedent.

The facts of Snyder v. Phelps are probably already familiar to you, which familiarity assuredly delights the members of the tiny Westboro Church. The Phelps clan stages protests at, among other things, military funerals, to make the point that American soldiers are dying because of American tolerance of homosexuality and other assorted sins. Albert Snyder prevailed at a jury trial on claims that the Phelps demonstration at his son's funeral was an invasion of his privacy and an intentional infliction of emotional distress. He won almost $11 million in damages; an award that was halved by the trial court judge and then overturned completely by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which determined that the Phelps protest was protected free speech under Supreme Court precedent. The Supreme Court agreed to take the case. Everyone in America wondered why.

Well, wonder no more, my friends. It appears that at least a few of the justices really, really, really just hate the Phelps family and its manner of protest, and they might even be willing to whip up a little new First Amendment law to prove it.

Sean E. Summers, arguing on behalf of Albert Snyder, opens abruptly: "We are talking about a funeral. If context is ever going to matter, it has to matter in the context of a funeral." But Justice Antonin Scalia breaks in to ask whether the real issue in the case is whether the funeral was disrupted, the harm caused by the video of the funeral that Snyder actually saw, or the emotional distress caused by the so-called "epic" poem addressed to the Snyders that was posted on the Westboro Church Web site. The Phelps family likes to offend across multiple platforms. Scalia, who will spend the morning trying to unravel the precise First Amendment issue in this case, thinks the funeral issue got jumbled up in the lower courts with the emotional harm caused by viewing the epic. He is skeptical that the material posted on the Internet really caused emotional distress because it was Snyder's "choice to watch them."

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg can't understand why concerns over a Phelps-style protest aren't allayed by neutral state regulations about when, where, and how one can protest at funerals. Scalia retorts that the "case involves, at least if we accept your version of it, a protest of the dead soldier who is going to hell and whose parents have raised him to go to hell," and that telling the protesters to stand at a certain distance is "not to say you can have a protest within a certain distance that defames the corpse."

There is a side skirmish over whether the "you" in "God hates you" was directed at Matthew Snyder or the world at large. Justice Samuel Alito suggests, "If you read the epic"—directed at Matthew Snyder—perhaps that sheds light on who "you" is. Justice Ginsburg thinks that since the church repurposes its "God Hates You" signs for every protest, "It sounds like the 'you' was the whole society, the whole rotten society in their view."

Justice Stephen Breyer—who has had a good deal to say about the Internet and incitement and free speech and balancing tests in recent weeks—also wonders whether the interesting part of this case is the handful of signs at Matthew Snyder's funeral, which Albert Snyder never saw, or the television broadcasts and Internet postings that followed. And so he's off: "Do you think that a person can put anything on the Internet? Do you think they can put anything on television, even if it attacks, say, the most private things of a private individual?"

Justice Sonia Sotomayor says she is "trying to tease out the importance of whether the person's a private or public figure," which matters because the Supreme Court held in 1988 in a dispute between Hustler magazine and the Rev. Jerry Falwell that Hustler was not liable for a nasty parody of Falwell, in part because it was hilarious and in part because he was a public figure.

Breyer says that even if the protester said "something absolutely outrageous" on TV or online that "was intended to and did inflict serious emotional suffering," if it was said as part of a protest against war, "at that point I think the First Amendment might not leave this alone." Breyer is looking for a rule. Call it a new rule. But Justice Elena Kagan echoes Ginsburg that a neutral statute barring anyone from disrupting private funerals would achieve the same ends. Alito asks what would happen under these neutral laws "if someone came up to Mr. Phelps at the funeral and spat in his face." But before he can finish, Ginsburg breaks in to observe that spitting at a distance of several hundred feet would be quite an achievement. The chief justice looks grim.

Margie J. Phelps represents Westboro Baptist Church, and yes, before you ask, she hates you, she really hates you. She most likely hates the six Catholics and three Jews up there on the bench, too. But she hides it well. Speaking in the flat, affectless voice of someone who has been either extremely well-coached or exceptionally well-medicated in anticipation of today's festivities, she explains to the justices, "When members of the Westboro Baptist Church entered an ongoing, extensive, public discussion ... in direct connection with the deaths and funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, they did so with great circumspection and an awareness of the boundaries that have been set by the court."

Scalia wonders whether these signs and Web posts could be unprotected words under the fighting words exception to the First Amendment, but Phelps says this protest was never intended to provoke a fight. Channeling Stephen Colbert, she says their message is just this: "Nation. Hear this little church. If you want them to stop dying, stop sinning."

Here's where the justices get to express just how much they hate the Phelps tactics. They call this "posing hypotheticals." Counsel spends the remainder of the day refusing to answer the hypotheticals. It's rapidly become a hate stalemate.

Kagan wonders if a group could follow a wounded soldier around and "demonstrate at his home, demonstrate at his workplace, demonstrate at his church," does he have a claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress?

Alito ups the ante: He envisions a "grandmother who has raised a son who was killed in Afghanistan or in Iraq" who goes to visit the gravesite and is approached by a war protester who says he is so happy her grandson was killed by an IED. "Now, is that protected by the First Amendment?" he asks. Phelps replies that maybe it would incite a violent reaction by the listener, so Alito qualifies, "She is an elderly person, she's not in a position to punch someone in the nose." And Scalia with the assist: "And she's a Quaker, too!"

Margie Phelps tries to suggest that the old Quaker grandma never made her dead grandson a public figure, whereas once Snyder took to the airwaves to ask "when will this senseless war end," he made himself a public figure. And so it came to pass that "a little church where the servants of God are found" heard his question and has an answer: "Our answer is, you have got to stop sinning," she says, making clear that Albert Snyder is responsible for the hate heaped upon his head by their church.

Alito can't quite believe what he's hearing: "Does every bereaved family member who provides information to a local newspaper for an obituary thereby make the deceased person a public figure?" He asks whether harassing African-Americans on the street with racial insults is also a matter of "public concern." Phelps responds: "I think approaching an individual up close and in their grill to berate them gets you out of the zone of protection." She uses the term "up in their grill" several times today. As a legal matter or even a practical one, it makes absolutely no sense as far as I can tell, but it is rather charming when delivered in a dead flat monotone.

Justice Anthony Kennedy jumps in to murmur worriedly about the fact "that all of us in a pluralistic society have components to our identity" and adds that if the Phelps position is that "you can follow any citizen around at any point ... you should help us in finding some line there." Adds Breyer, "We are still so worried about the statements on television and on the Internet and the knowledge there."

The headline writers are going to say that the justices "struggled" with this case. That may be so, but what they struggled with has very little to do with the law, which rather clearly protects even the most offensive speech about public matters such as war and morality. They are struggling here with the facts, which they hate. Which we all hate. But looking at the parties through hate-colored glasses has never been the best way to think about the First Amendment. In fact, as I understand it, that's why we needed a First Amendment in the first place.

Disclosure: I am on the steering committee of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Thomas Jefferson Center for Free Expression, both of which filed amicus briefs on behalf of the Westboro Baptist Church in this case

A promise from the right’s wild-eyed frontier

Andrew Sullivan London Times
The Republicans’ reckless election pledge on tax and cuts is a gift to Obama and could be a chance to stem Democrat mid-term losses

The 1983 Labour party manifesto has gone down in the annals as the longest suicide note in history.
And the 1994 Contract with America, orchestrated by Newt Gingrich, the former Republican congressman, is widely seen as a brilliant, populist document that halted Bill Clinton’s young administration in its tracks.
What, one wonders, will history say of the Republican party’s Pledge to America, just issued as a manifesto for the upcoming mid-term congressional elections? Most of the polls say it is completely irrelevant.

The American public is in such a sour mood that it wants to throw out every politician it can get its hands on.

The majority of those politicians in Congress at this point are Democrats, sitting on big majorities acquired in 2006 and 2008. In normal times, the president’s party sees a setback in the first mid-terms. In this climate the pledge would surely be destined for a crushing victory.

And yet one senses a slight nervousness in the Republican forward march. In the past week Barack Obama has delivered two blistering speeches to huge crowds in Wisconsin and Washington that were striking in their anger and grit. At Wisconsin University the Democrats predicted gamely that 15,000 people would turn up — a little fewer than greeted Obama at the height of his primary campaign in February 2008. Instead, 26,500 packed the campus at the university. Last Thursday night I watched Obama unleash an oration to a partisan crowd in Washington with a passion I had not seen since the peak of the 2008 campaign. More huge rallies are to come.

At the core of Obama’s speech was an attack on the Republican pledge and what he called its looming bill of $700 billion (£442 billion). This is the amount America would have to borrow if the Republicans’ proposal to retain the tax cuts introduced by George W Bush for those earning more than $250,000 a year were adopted.

The pledge offers absolutely no specifics on any spending cuts. In fact, it immediately exempts from cuts anything that affects the elderly or the military, ruling out almost the entire source of the fiscal crisis — entitlements and defence — but coincidentally pandering to the Republicans’ own political base.

Here’s the party’s pathetic proposal in its own words: “By cutting Congress’s budget, imposing a net hiring freeze on non-security federal employees, and reviewing every current government programme to eliminate wasteful and duplicative programmes, we can curb Washington’s irresponsible spending habits and reduce the size of government, while still fulfilling our necessary obligations.”

At some point, the sheer disjunction between Republican policies and rhetoric will surely sink in Try not to burst out laughing.

A net hiring freeze? Merely reviewing programmes?

A good rule of thumb is that when you hear politicians saying they are going to “eliminate wasteful and duplicative” spending, you know they are not serious about the debt.

Compare this claptrap with the brutal and increasingly specific austerity the coalition government in Britain is unveiling — or indeed the tough measures being enacted across Europe — and you see how degenerate and irresponsible American conservatism has become.

Even the Fox News Sunday show last week demanded of John Boehner, the possible future Republican Speaker of the House, how he could be taken seriously as a fiscal conservative when he had already exempted Medicare (the government-run health insurer), social security and defence from any cuts, and refused any tax increases. He said that after the election there could be “an adult conversation” about cuts. Chris Wallace, the interviewer, interjected: “Isn’t the right time to have the adult conversation now, before the election? ... Why not make a single proposal to cut social security, Medicare and Medicaid?” Boehner actually responded: “Let’s not get to the potential solutions.”

At some point, the sheer disjunction between Republican policies and rhetoric will surely sink in. Most serious conservative commentators have savaged the pledge as “Bushonomics on steroids”. Remember who said “deficits don’t matter” while turning an inherited surplus into a massive debt? It was Dick Cheney, Bush’s vice-president, and Karl Rove, the former president’s chief adviser — and yet it is Rove and Mary Cheney, Dick’s daughter, who are helping to fund and co-ordinate the current Republican campaign.

One of the few real conservatives running, Rand Paul in Kentucky, admitted: “We as Republicans need to realise that you can’t just cut off the welfare queen and balance the budget. The only way you’ll ever get close to balancing the budget is if you look at the entire budget.”

Mitch Daniels, the Republican governor of Indiana, is also contemptuous of his party’s manifesto. In an interview with Newsweek, he even mentioned the t-word: “At some stage there could well be a tax increase. They say we can’t have grown-up conversations any more. I think we can.”

The existence of these rare avatars of Republican responsibility merely highlights the cynical recklessness of the rest. They know that if they actually run on cuts in healthcare spending for the elderly, shutting down weapons programmes and military bases, means-testing social security or withdrawing from Afghanistan, their voters — who tend to be older and more connected to the military than the Democrats — will have a fit. So they continue this charade, hoping to ride generalised discontent back to power. And what then?

At least Obama has put together a serious bipartisan debt commission to construct a long-term programme for tax rises and spending cuts. If the Republicans win control of the House of Representatives and continue not to compromise on tax, then Obama should be able to corner them as successfully as Clinton did Gingrich. He can’t be faulted for not imposing immediate austerity on the brink of a potential second depression — and his stimulus package was savaged by the left for not being big enough.

If he sticks to his new message that it is the Republicans who are the greatest danger to America’s fiscal stability (and they are), if he can rally the next generation to save what’s left of their inheritance and if he can show Tea Party supporters they are being conned again, then he might have a chance to stem Democratic losses. I doubt it will be enough to retain the House. But if the losses are less than expected, it might increase Obama’s political leverage so that he can force a bipartisan deal after November that includes some small tax increases as well as serious entitlement cuts.

Listening to him, I sense he is deeply serious about this and that Republican complacency about November’s elections, and beyond, might be just a little premature

Obama's Speech at the Gen44 Summit in Washington
The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
October 01, 2010
Remarks by the President at DNC Gen44 Event
DAR Constitution Hall, Washington, D.C.
September 30, 2010
9:12 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Hello, DC! (Applause.) Thank you! Thank you! (Applause.) Thank you, DC! Thank you so much. (Applause.) I'm fired up! (Applause.) Thank you.

Let me, first of all, thank one of the finest DNC chairmen we've ever had -- Tim Kaine -- please give it up for him. (Applause.) Tim Kaine -- I want to just point this out. Tim Kaine supported me -- he was the first statewide elected official outside of Illinois to endorse my candidacy for President. (Applause.) That's the kind of person -- he supported me when nobody could pronounce my name. (Laughter.) There was nothing in it for him, except he thought it was the right thing to do. And that's the kind of leader that you remember. (Applause.)

I know you heard from David Plouffe -- (applause) -- my former campaign manager and great friend of mine. And I understand B.o.B was in the house. (Applause.) I will not do my version of Airplane. (Laughter.)

AUDIENCE MEMBER: We love you!

THE PRESIDENT: I love you back. (Applause.)

It is good to see this crowd so fired up. (Applause.) I need you to be fired up. I need you to stay fired up. (Applause.) All the way to November 2nd. All the way to November 2nd. Because November 2nd is going to say a lot about your future -– a lot about your individual futures but also about the future of our country.

Two years ago, with the help of a lot of you, some of you getting involved in politics for the first time, you defied the Washington conventional wisdom. I mean, you remember. Folks did not think we were going to win -- let’s face it. Because they didn’t know about you. (Applause.) They said, no, you can’t overcome the cynicism of our politics. No, you can’t overcome the special interests. No, you can’t make real progress on the big challenges of our time. They said, no, you can’t. What did you say?

AUDIENCE: Yes, we can!

THE PRESIDENT: You said, yes, we can. (Applause.)

You proved that the power of everyday people going door to door, neighbor to neighbor, friend to friend, using networks, using the Internet -- that that was stronger than the forces of the status quo. And every single one of you is a shareholder in that mission to rebuild our country and reclaim our future.

So I’m back here today just in case you’ve forgotten what that feels like, to change the country. (Applause.) Because on November 2nd, we face another test -- and the stakes could not be higher.

When I arrived in Washington about 20 months ago -- some of you were there. It was really cold. It was a cold day. (Applause.) It was a cold day, but the spirit was warm. (Applause.) And our hope was that we could pull together, Democrats and Republicans and independents, to confront the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. What we hoped was that we could get beyond some of the old political divides –- red states, blue states –- that had prevented us from making progress for so long. And we came into this with that spirit because we understood that we're proud to be Democrats, but we're prouder to be Americans. (Applause.)

And instead, what we confronted when we arrived was just politics, pure and simple; an opposition party that was still stuck in the same failed policies of the past -– whose leaders in Congress were determined from the start to just let us deal with the mess that they had done so much to create.

Their calculation was simple and cynical. They knew that it was going to take a long time to solve the economic challenges we were facing. It was the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. They understood that because it was going to take a long time people would be frustrated. They’d feel anxious. They’d be fearful. And so what the other side calculated was, you know, if we just sit on the sidelines, we let Obama and the Democrats in Congress deal with everything, then we can do well in the polls. That was their theory.

And that’s what they did for the last 20 months. They’ve said no to just about every idea I've proposed, every policy I’ve proposed –- even ideas they’ve traditionally agreed with. (Laughter.) I'm not exaggerating. I mean, we had situations where they would sponsor bills; I'd say okay; and then they’d say, oh, well, if you're okay with it we must be against it. (Laughter.) Happened a bunch of times. (Applause.) That's true.

And because they understood that folks were going to be anxious and fearful they’ve been tapping into that fear. And now the pundits are saying that the base of the Republican Party is mobilized and energized and excited, and that all of us who worked so hard in 2008, well, maybe we're not as energized, maybe we're not as engaged.

AUD8IENCE: Noooo!

THE PRESIDENT: That's what they’re saying. I'm just the messenger here. (Laughter.) They say that there is an “enthusiasm gap,” and that the same Republicans and the same policies that left our economy in a shambles and the middle class struggling year after year -- that those folks might all ride back into power. That's the conventional wisdom in Washington.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: We cannot let that happen. We cannot sit this out. We can’t let this country fall backwards. The stakes are too high. We have to move this country forward for you and your future. (Applause.) So there better not be an enthusiasm gap, people. Not now. (Applause.) Not this time.

The other side would like you to believe that this election is a referendum on me, or on the economy -- on anything but them. They are counting on amnesia. (Laughter.) They’re counting that folks don't remember them. But make no mistake. This election is a choice. And the choice could not be clearer. For the last decade, the Republicans in Washington subscribed to a very simple philosophy: You cut taxes, mostly for millionaires and billionaires. You cut regulations for special interests -- whether it’s oil companies or banks or insurance companies. You cut back on investments in education and clean energy, and research and technology. And basically, the idea was that if you had blind faith in the market, if you let corporations play by their own rules, if you let everybody else fend for themselves, including young people, including the next generation, then somehow America would grow and prosper. That was the theory.

Now, look, here’s what we know. The philosophy failed. We tested it. We tried it. We tried it for eight years; it didn't work. (Applause.) When they were in charge, job growth was slower than it’s been in any decade since World War II. Between 2001 and 2009, middle-class incomes fell by 5 percent. This is when they were in charge. The cost of everything from health care to college tuition just kept on going up. A free-for-all on Wall Street led to the very crisis we’re still digging out of today. And by the way, we went from record surpluses to record deficits.

These are the folks who say that they care about wasteful spending. They took us from a surplus when a Democrat was in charge to big deficits when they were in charge. That's the truth. Those are the facts. (Applause.)

They're counting on amnesia. They think you all forgot. So I’ve had two main jobs since I was President: to rescue this economy from crisis, and then to rebuild it stronger than it was before -- so that you look forward to the 21st century as being the American Century just like that 20th century was the American Century. (Applause.)

And over the last 20 months, we’ve made progress on both these fronts. There’s no longer a possibility of a second depression. The economy is growing again. Private sector jobs we’ve created for eight consecutive months. (Applause.) There are about 3 million Americans who would not be working today if it weren’t for the economic plan we put in place. (Applause.)

We passed Wall Street reform to make sure a crisis like this never happens again –- no more taxpayer-funded bailouts. (Applause.) We set up reforms that will stop mortgage lenders from taking advantage of homeowners. (Applause.) We reformed credit card practices so they won’t hit you up with hidden fees or jack up your rates without reason. (Applause.)

We’ve started investing again in American research, American technology, homegrown American clean energy -– because I don’t want solar panels or wind turbines or electric cars built in Europe or built in Asia. I want them built right here in the United States of America -- because we’re all about making it in America. (Applause.)

To help middle-class families get ahead, we passed a tax cut for 95 percent of working families in this country. We passed 16 different tax cuts for America’s small business owners. We passed health care reform to make sure insurance companies won’t deny you coverage and you can stay on your parents’ coverage until you’re 26 years old. (Applause.)

We finally fixed up the student loan system so that tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies that were going to banks now go where it should –- to help you get an education. That's what we’re about. (Applause.)

And along the way, we kept a promise that I made on the day I announced my candidacy. We have removed all combat troops from Iraq and we are ending that war. (Applause.)

So that’s the progress that we’ve made. That's a testimony to you. That’s the progress that we worked so hard for in 2008. But we're not done. We’re not close to being finished. (Applause.) The hole we’re climbing out of is a deep one -– deeper than the last three recessions combined. We lost 8 million jobs -– almost all of them, almost all of them -- all those jobs were lost before my economic policies had any chance to take effect. We lost 4 million jobs before I was sworn in, in this recession -- 750,000 the month I was being sworn in.

And on top of that, the middle class has been struggling for more than a decade. So there are millions of families out there who are still treading water –- millions still barely able to make their mortgage payments or pay the bills. I hear about these folks every day because they write me letters, or they tell me when I'm on the road. And people are frustrated, they’re anxious, they’re scared about the future.

And they have a right to be impatient about the pace of change. I'm impatient. But I also know this: Now is not the time quit. Now is not the time to give up. (Applause.) We’ve been through worse as a nation. We've come out stronger -– from war to depression to the great struggles for equal rights and civil rights. (Applause.) It took time to free the slaves. It took time for women to get the vote. It took time for workers to get the right to organize. (Applause.)

But if we stay on focus, if we stay on course, then ultimately we will make progress. It takes time; progress takes sacrifice. Progress takes faith. But progress comes. And it will come for your generation, for this generation –- if we work for it, and fight for it, and if we believe in it. That's something I believe. (Applause.)

The biggest mistake we could make is to let impatience or frustration lead to apathy and indifference -- because that guarantees the other side wins. And if they do win, they will spend the next two years fighting for the very same policies that led us into this recession in the first place; the same policies that left middle-class families behind for more than a decade; the same policies you fought hard to change in 2008.

Just look at the agenda the leaders of the other party -- they unveiled it last week -- called it their “Pledge to America.”

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: That's what they called it. Now, their Pledge was actually written with the help of a former lobbyist for AIG and Exxon-Mobil. So that gives you how much --

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: -- a sense of how much change they intend.

The centerpiece of their pledge is a $700 billion tax cut -- this is their main economic policy, their main jobs program, their main focus -- a $700 billion tax cut for the wealthy that 98 percent of Americans will never see a dime of. I get a tax break under their plan. (Laughter.) That would be good for me. But not for most of you all.

Now, keep in mind, we don't have $700 billion so we’d have to borrow this from China or from some other country. And then we would be giving a tax cut worth an average of $100,000 to every millionaire and billionaire in America.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: Wait, wait, no, hold on, it gets worse. (Laughter.)

When you ask them, well, where are you going to get this $700 billion? Do you have some magic beans somewhere? Are you going to -- (laughter) -- I mean, what’s -- how is this going to come about? They don’t have an answer. Now, they will say, well, we’re going to cut spending. So you say, okay, what are you going to -- what are you going to cut? And then what they say is, well, we’ll cut education by 20 percent. We’ll eliminate 200,000 children from early childhood education programs like Head Start.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: We’ll cut financial aid for 8 million college students.

AUDIENCE: Nooo!

THE PRESIDENT: At a time when the education of our country’s citizens is probably the best predictor of that country’s economic success, they think it’s more important to give another tax break to folks who are on the Forbes 400 list.

Now, I want to ask my Republican friends: Do you think China is cutting back on education?

AUDIENCE: Nooo!

THE PRESIDENT: Do you think South Korea is making it harder for its citizens to get a college education?

AUDIENCE: Nooo!

THE PRESIDENT: These countries aren’t playing for second place. And guess what. The United States doesn’t play for second place. We play for first place. (Applause.)

And I will not allow politicians in Washington to put your future at risk for another tax cut we can’t afford and don’t need. (Applause.) That’s the choice in this election. That’s why you need to be involved. Your future is at stake.

In fact, here’s another thing they want to do to pay for this tax cut for the wealthy. They want to roll back what’s remaining of our Recovery Act that gave a tax break to working and middle-class families, 110 million people out there. So they want to roll back your tax cut to give their buddies a tax cut.

Look, we have a different idea than they do about what the next two years should look like. And it’s an idea rooted in our belief about how this country was built. Government doesn’t have all the answers to our problems. Government doesn’t have the main role in creating jobs or prosperity. Government should be lean and efficient. Look, we’re -- we’ve proposed a three-year spending freeze. We’ve set up a bipartisan fiscal commission to deal with our deficit.

But the first Republican President, my favorite Republican, Abraham Lincoln -- (applause) -- here’s what he said about, government -- here’s what he said about government. He said, I believe that government should do for the people what they cannot do better for themselves. (Applause.) I believe in a country that rewards hard work and responsibility; a country where we look after one another; a country that says, I am my brother’s keeper. I am my sister’s keeper. (Applause.)

I’m going to give a hand up. I’m going to join hands with folks and try to lift all of us up, so we all have a better future -- not just some, but all of us, every child in America. That's what I believe. (Applause.)

I believe in an America that gave my grandfather the chance to go to college because of the G.I. Bill, and that gave my grandparents a chance to buy a house because of the Federal Housing Authority; an America that gave their children and grandchildren the chance to get the best education in the world through scholarships and student loans. That’s the America I know. And that’s the choice in this election. (Applause.)

Instead of giving tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires, we want to make permanent tax cuts for middle-class Americans -– because you deserve a break. (Applause.) Instead of cutting education and student aid, we want to make permanent our new college tax credit -– so that you can get $10,000 worth of tuition relief -- everybody who’s going to four years of college. (Applause.) We want to make clear that in good times or in bad, no young American should have to sacrifice the dream of a college education just because they can’t afford it. That’s what we believe. That’s the choice in this election.

If the other side takes control of Congress, they’ll spend the next two years to preserve tax breaks for companies that create jobs and profits overseas. We want to shut down those subsidies. We want to give those tax breaks to companies that are creating jobs right here in the United States of America. That's what we believe in. (Applause.) To American manufacturers. To clean energy companies. To entrepreneurs who are researching and investing and making it here in the United States of America. That's what we believe. That’s who we want to help. (Applause.)

If the other side takes back Congress, they’ve promised to give back power to the same special interests we’ve been fighting for the last 20 months. We can’t let them do that. We can’t go back to the days when insurance companies can drop your coverage just when you get sick, or credit card companies can jack up your rates whenever they feel like it. We can't go back to a system that results in taxpayer-funded bailouts. We can't allow special interests to take the reins again. We have to keep fighting. There is too much at stake right now. (Applause.)

So, listen, Generation-44. (Applause.) It comes down to this. It comes down to this. Many of the folks in the other party, they’re running to go back to the exact same things they were doing before.

I've used this analogy before -- some of you may have heard it. Imagine they were driving a car -- (laughter) -- and they drove it into the ditch. And I put on my boots, and the Democrats put on their boots, Tim Kaine put on his boots. We all went down into the ditch. We were expecting the Republicans to come help. It’s muddy down there and dusty. And they drove down there. In fact, we pulled some of them out of the car. (Laughter.) Now, they’re standing up on the road, sipping a Slurpee, watching us. (Laughter.)

And we're pushing and we're shoving and we're sweating, and there are bugs flying around. (Laughter.) And we look up and say, how about coming down and helping us out? They say, no, that's all right. But you all should push harder. You're not pushing the right way. (Laughter.)

So we just keep pushing. Finally we get the car up on level ground. It’s a little dented. It needs a tune-up, needs a wash. (Laughter.) Fender is all bent up. But it’s pointing in the right direction. We're ready to move forward. Suddenly we get a tap on the shoulder, and you look back -- and it’s the Republicans. (Laughter.) And we say, well, what do you want now? We want the keys back, they say.

AUDIENCE: Boooo!

THE PRESIDENT: But guess what. You can't have the keys back. (Applause.) You don't know how to drive. (Applause.) We don't want to end up back in the ditch. (Applause.)

We can't afford to go back in the ditch. I don't want to have to push again. (Laughter.) I want us to move forward. I hope all of you notice that when you want to go forward in your car, what do you do? You put it in “D.” When you want to go backwards, what do you do? You put it in “R.” (Applause.) There’s no coincidence there. We got to put it in “D.” We got to go forward. (Applause.) We got to go forward, not backwards. We’ve got to go backwards -- we got to go forwards. We can’t go backwards.

At the end of the day, whether they get the keys back or not will depend on you -- because, look, look, the other side is excited. And thanks to a recent Supreme Court decision, called Citizens United --

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: -- they’re being helped along this year by special interest groups. They are allowed to spend unlimited amounts of money on attack ads. And they don't have to disclose who’s behind these ads. They have these innocuous names like “Americans for Prosperity,” or “Americans for Apple Pie.” (Laughter.) “Moms for Motherhood.” And you look back, and it’s like the Wizard of Oz -- you look behind the curtain and there’s some Republican operative, and it’s insurance companies or the banks or all the folks that were fighting change.

I mean, why do you think they’re giving up all this money? I mean, it’s possible that maybe they're doing it because they want good government.

AUDIENCE: Nooo!

THE PRESIDENT: But I got to admit, I’m kind of skeptical. (Laughter.)

So that's why we’ve got to work even harder in this election. That’s why we’ve got to fight their millions of dollars with millions of voices who are ready to finish what we started in 2008. (Applause.) Because if everybody who showed up in 2008 shows up in 2010, then we will win. (Applause.)

All of you are being tested. All of you are being tested. I know times are tough. I know that we’re a long way from that cold day when we had a couple million people out on the Mall, and everybody felt excitement. (Applause.) But you know what -- that was the easy part. You know, you had the Hope poster. (Laughter.) You had Bono and Beyonce singing at the concert. (Applause.) You know, that was -- that was the celebration. But I told you guys when we were campaigning that change was going to take time; that power concedes nothing without a fight; that it was always going to be hard.

And by the way, you did not elect me to do what was easy. You did not elect me to out there and put my finger out to the wind and figure out how to keep myself in office. You elected me to do what is right. You elected me to do what is true. (Applause.) And you got involved because you believe that this was the moment to do what is right and take on the challenges that had ignored for too long. (Applause.)

So now is not the time to quit. Now is not the time to lose heart. That involvement can’t end in 2008. That election was not just about putting me in the White House. It was about building a movement for change that went beyond one campaign or any one candidate. It was about remembering that here in the United States, our destiny is not written for us; it is written by us. We have the power to shape our future. Our future is in our hands. (Applause.)

And that’s what’s being tested right now -– whether we’ve got the courage to keep going forward in the face of difficulty, in the face of uncertainty. And if you are willing to work hard, and knock on doors and make phone calls, and call up your friends and neighbors and coworkers and family, I promise you, we will not stop until we have finally made the American Dream true for every American out here. (Applause.)

God bless you and God bless the United States of America. (Applause.)