We are proud to announce that our own contributing RP, Jeff Smith, has been asked to join “The Arena,” Politico’s daily debate with policymakers and opinion shapers.
Jeff’s first piece was in response to the group’s discussion of the state of the economy:
Using the absolute number of jobs created as a gauge of employment trends can be deceiving for a couple simple reasons.
1) The economy needs to add somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 jobs per month just to keep up with population growth. So the first couple hundred thousand jobs added generally won’t reduce unemployment because of a growing denominator…
In the spirit of “You get what you pay for,” out of the 20 RP contributors who offered their handicapping skills…and among the 13 different horses predicted by these same contributors…and including the more than a dozen commentors here at the RP and on the RP’s Facebook page…not a single person correctly picked Animal Kingdom to win the Run for the Roses.
Bad news: I lost my shirt at the Derby. (It only cost $5.) Good news: I don’t have to buy anybody any mint julep mix for winning our prediction contest!
I know one person who actually picked the winner. And on Thursday, we will feature her as brand new Friend of RP. Of course, she’s a month shy of 15 years old. You will have to stay tuned to read her wisdom.
Until then, if you want some good laughs, re-read our KY Derby post. And stay to the very end to read the prediction of the winner of a box of chocolate bourbon balls for the funniest one-liner.
By Robert Butkin, on Mon May 9, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET
When asked to provide a post for a website called “The Recovering Politician,” I tried to figure out what in the blazes I’m supposed to be recovering from. In fact, in the six years since I left my position as Oklahoma State Treasurer, I have never looked back or regretted either the time I spent in elective public service or my decision to leave after a decade in office. I left when I determined that I had accomplished all that I had set out to do when I first ran for the job.
That’s not to say that there is not much still to be done with the agency, and in fact my successors have developed new initiatives that have improved the operations of the office. I had accomplished everything that I had set out to do. Despite my concern about the advisability of term limits, I do believe that all of us who are privileged to serve in elective office should be willing to limit our own terms and turn our offices over to energetic– and hopefully idealistic– successors when we have accomplished our mission. One should never be a “placeholder” when holding an office of public trust.
In many ways, I was the most unlikely of political candidates. Nobody in my family had ever run or thought of running for political office, but like many who came of age in the 1960s and the 1970s, I was convinced that elective public service was the highest calling a democracy could offer. A chance meeting with a candidate for Oklahoma Attorney General in 1986 gave me an opportunity several months later to join his staff to serve as an Assistant Attorney General, and in that capacity I had the opportunity to serve as the people’s advocate in utility rate proceedings and to represent Oklahoma in a landmark Clean Water Actcase, Arkansas v. Oklahoma, that I argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1991.
In 1993, I began to think seriously about a race for political office. We had had a bi-partisan tradition in the Oklahoma Treasurer’s office –a bi-partisan tradition of crumminess. Democrats and Republicans alike had been beset by scandals, investigations and indictments. Confidence in our state’s ability to manage our finances with integrity was at an all time low, and as somebody who believed in public investment, I knew that if the citizens of Oklahoma could not trust where and how their tax dollars were managed, they would not be willing to come together to invest in better schools, roads, and health care.
We won narrowly in 1994, a victory that truly would not have been possible had not dozens of volunteers, who normally pay no attention to elections for offices like state treasurer, cared enough about the need to restore integrity to the office that they joined our cause. And I would not have been successful without an outstanding staff who every single day put the interests of our state first. Many of our earlier accomplishments were far from glamorous, involving new accounting controls and speedier processes to convert cash to investable funds. But when I began giving taxpayers a running total of how much money we had saved or earned through cost saving efficiencies without a need for tax increase, they responded, and I believe our work has played a role in the willingness of Oklahomans to support new investments in education and health care over the last decade.
Read the rest of… Robert Butkin: Leaving Politics With No Regrets
Beginning Monday, we will introduce the final set of inaugural contributing RPs. While more will join us in the future, next week’s Big 3 will round out our Sweet Eighteen — the first, the proud, the literary.
Next week’s gang will include two former Congressman, one GOP and one Democrat. On Monday, you will meet someone who held the most powerful position in the land (at least in the RP’s household): State Treasurer. He has no regrets of leaving politics, and he talks about how easy his recovery has been.
On Tuesday, we have a particularly fun RPTV Fifteen Minutes of Fame, featuring a real Renaissance Woman, both a nationally-respected advocate for corporate governance and a popular family movie critic. And she’s got a great sense of humor.
So enjoy your Derby weekend. And remember, if you are looing for a good pick — or at least a good laugh, read what 20 RP contributors have to say about the Run for the Roses.
By Grant Smith, RP Staff, on Fri May 6, 2011 at 3:00 PM ET
The Politics of Wealth
The confusing politics of the Sport of Kings: jockey Calvin Borel and Kentucky Derby 137. [ESPN]
The Magical Mystery Tour II: Did Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando really take a road trip together to escape New York in the aftermath of 9/11? [The Guardian]
Wal-Mart tops the Forbes 500 list for the second year in a row. [Fortune]
The world’s richest supermodels: comparing their assets. [Forbes]
Lifestyles of the rich and infamous: how Bin Laden’s million dollar compound lacked luxury. [Bloomberg]
By Jonathan Miller, on Fri May 6, 2011 at 2:15 PM ET
Tomorrow is a quasi-religious holiday in my home state — the one day we put aside our obsession with college basketball, and focus on something truly spiritual: a two-minute race, involving about 20 three-year-old thoroughbred horses and a bunch of vertically-challenged guys riding on top of them.
Wherever you are, you might have an opportunity to place a small wager on the race, or to select a horse’s name on a piece of paper from a punch bowl at a Derby party. Because The Recovering Politician‘s mission is to serve our readers with critical information at timely moments like this, our Contributing RPs, the Friends of RP, and even the RP staff have been asked to share their expertise and give you their recommended picks.
(OK, they’ve been bribed: Winning entries from the RP team will receive a bottle of mint julep mix; the funniest pick wins a box of delicious chocolate bourbon balls.)
So, with all the obvious disclaimers (adults only; gamble in moderation; if you wager at a track, consider your bet a contribution to Kentucky’s struggling horse industry; picking a horse by its color or name is often as effective as studying the Daily Racing Form; females, be sure to wear an outrageous hat to your Derby party–see an example to the right), here is the deeply-educated, passionately-considered handicapping of the RP team:
The RP: My brother-in-law, Clark Mandel, is a chiropractor who works with horses, and a very serious handicapper. His picks are in this order: Archarcharch, Pants On Fire, and Soldat. I will follow his advice, putting my big money ($5) on Pants On Fire because of Jeff Smith’s comment at the bottom of this post.
John Roach: If the track is dry, I like Mucho Macho Man and Nehro. For longshot plays, I like Twice the Appeal and Master of the Hounds.
Grant Smith (RP Staff): I’m going with Twice the Appeal. Not only is Calvin Borel the jockey, the horse’s position at Gate 3 only increases the odds that Calvin “Bo Rail” will be able to pull off his famous rail-riding antics all the way to victory.
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend: I am going with Twinspired…I like the cleverness of the name…and I have two sets of twins as nieces and nephews, and they inspire me with their grace and ability!
Kristen Hamilton (RP Staff): I love Calvin Borel, but if I were to pick one based on a name, it would be Archarcharch, because that is exactly what I said after taking finals. :/
Andrei Cherny: I say Mucho Macho Man in honor of Arizona’s Hispanic heritage.
Stephanie Doctrow (RP Staff): My favorite Derby horse has to be Stay Thirsty… I don’t know much about the horses this year, but as an upperclassman at a Big Ten university, I feel obligated to pick the one with that name!
Loranne Ausley: I was going to go with Watch Me Go as a Florida bred with a female trainer (only 2 female trainers tomorrow making them the 14th and 15th in history of Derby), but I am going with Pants on Fire. Not Florida bred, but ridden by a female jockey…..if they win, Rosie Napravnik would be first woman jockey to win the Derby! Only 5 previous female jockeys in the history of the race. Here is a link to a story in the St. Pete Times Politifact (yes, Politifact has opined on this because “Pants on Fire” is a term of art in their political fact checking world!)
Antics in the Derby infield
Zack Adams (RP Staff): Twice the Appeal. I’m betting on Calvin Bo-rail, winner of 3 of the last 4 Derbys.
Steven Schulman (Who attended the Derby infield with the RP while in high school): From personal experience, I can’t say there are horses at the Derby. But I will pick Mucho Macho Man. Of course.
Carte Goodwin: When I was living in Atlanta, a radio station used to periodically have a contest called Rock Band or Racehorse. The DJs would read a name, and callers would have to identify it — say Veruca Salt as a band, or Unbridled as a horse. So in honor of that contest, Santiva sounds like a good band name (or at least better than Pants on Fire.)
By Chris Schulz, RP Staff, on Fri May 6, 2011 at 1:30 PM ET
Taking organic farming to the next level, some small producers and ditching their tractors and harnessing their oxen. [nytimes.com]
Not all non-native species wreak havoc on an ecosystem, sometimes they can restore it. [yahoo.com]
Tilapia consumption has drastically increased in the US, but the health and environmental drawbacks may make you think twice about eating it. [nytimes.com]
The greenest places in America are actually the most urban places. [time.com]
If you read contributing RP Carte Goodwin‘s inaugural piece on Wednesday, you learned that the first vote he cast in his brief four month tour of duty as a U.S. Senator was one of his most important. Indeed, Carte was the deciding vote to break a fillibuster in order to extend unemployment benefits to some of the nation’s most needy citizens.
Today’s RPTV Friday Flashback memorializes that epic moment in Carte’s life:
