Politics

The frozen treat he ordered was flavored with melon, cherry and Hawaiian fruit lilikoi

U.S. President Barack Obama began 2015 by treating himself to some shave ice.

Obama, accompanied by his two daughters and a few friends, sampled a three-flavor version of the Hawaiian frozen treat while vacationing near Honolulu, Reuters reports.

The president’s visit to local vendor Island Snow, where he ordered shave ice with flavors melon, cherry and Hawaiian fruit lilikoi, was also attended by more than 40 people eager to catch a glimpse of the First Family.

“Happy New Year. Hope you’re enjoying the weather,” Obama reportedly said while shaking hands with those gathered.

[Reuters]

Cuomo died just hours after his son was inaugurated to a second term as governor

Mario Cuomo, the former New York governor whose fiery, eloquent advocacy of liberal policies made him a key figurehead in the Democratic Party for years, died Thursday. He was 82, and his death was confirmed by the office of his son, current New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Cuomo died just hours after his son was inaugurated to a second term as governor. Andrew Cuomo said during his inauguration Thursday that his father was too ill to attend.

Cuomo’s family said he died “from natural causes due to heart failure this evening at home with his loving family at his side.”

U.S. President Barack Obama paid tribute to “a determined champion of progressive values, and an unflinching voice for tolerance, inclusiveness, fairness, dignity, and opportunity” in a statement late Thursday.

“An Italian Catholic kid from Queens, born to immigrant parents, Mario paired his faith in God and faith in America to live a life of public service — and we are all better for it,” said Obama. “His own story taught him that as Americans, we are bound together as one people, and our country’s success rests on the success of all of us, not just a fortunate few.”

White House spokesperson Eric Schultz said that the President also phoned Andrew Cuomo to personally extend his condolences.

Mario Cuomo served as governor from 1983 to 1994, during which he was twice considered a clear frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination. But both times, in 1988 and 1992, he declined to run.

His keynote speech at the 1984 Democratic convention is remembered as a forceful defense of liberalism—and a searing attack on then-President Ronald Reagan. “Mr. President, you ought to know that this nation is more ‘a tale of two cities’ than it is just a ‘shining city on a hill,'” Cuomo said then.

Cuomo often found his liberal policy ambitions in New York thwarted by a harsh economic climate, but his personification of the Democratic Party’s liberal wing at a time when conservatism was ascendant made him a political player far beyond the state’s borders. The 1984 convention speech was a high-water mark in his political career, and he very publicly flirted with White House runs in the years ahead. In a dramatic moment in December of 1991, Cuomo kept an airplane waiting on the tarmac while he mulled whether to fly to New Hampshire to hand in his application to be on the primary ballot on the day it was due. A budget clash with Republicans in the state legislature kept him from leaving, and he announced that he wouldn’t run.

Had he decided to run in 1992 it’s possible Bill Clinton would have never become president.

“We have lost a true progressive giant with Governor Mario Cuomo’s passing today,” former New York Gov. David Paterson wrote on Twitter. Former New York Gov. George Pataki called Cuomo “a proud son of immigrants, posessed of a soaring intellect [and] a great New Yorker.”

—With reporting by Zeke Miller / Washington

Calculating the cost of a war is a little like finding the true cost of a car

Amid the revelry, did you notice that the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan ended New Year’s Eve at midnight? Now that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are officially over—or merely “paused” as many in the Pentagon believe—it’s a fair time to check the meter to see how much these two conflicts cost the nation.

First rule: there are as many ways to measure the cost of a war as there are to measure the cost of a car.

Suppose, for example, you were a Pentagon war planner with a hankering for a GM Hummer back in 2009 when both wars were rumbling along. That’s the nifty, if not nimble, civilian variation of the U.S. military’s High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (Humvee, for short).

A quick check of Edmunds.com’s True Cost to Own calculator (after plugging in one of the Pentagon’s six Zip Codes) shows you’d pay the dealer $35,752 for the behemoth. But its true cost to own—depreciation, financing, fuel, insurance etc.—would more than double, to $78,616, over five years of ownership.

The analogy’s not precise, but it’s close enough to show that paying for wars doesn’t end when the fighting does. (And not only then: the nation won’t be paying for these wars only over the next five years, but for more than a generation). And while you can no longer buy a new Hummer, there’s always a new war sitting on out the lot, waiting to be waged. But it’s critical to be aware of its total cost.

The Congressional Research Service, for example, just fired up its calculators and concluded that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have cost U.S. taxpayers $1.6 trillion. That’s a fine figure, as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go far enough, and anyone who cites it as the conflicts’ cost is more Hummer salesman than steward of taxpayer funds.

A truer measure of the wars’ total costs pegs them at between $4 trillion and $6 trillion. This fuller accounting includes “long-term medical care and disability compensation for service members, veterans and families, military replenishment and social and economic costs,” Harvard economist Linda Bilmes calculated in 2013.

The Pentagon and its civilian overseers don’t like to talk about war costs, either before or after the shooting. That’s because a high price tag beforehand acts as an economic brake, making war—assuming that’s the goal—less likely. The nation may no longer draft soldiers, but when it wages war it has to draft dollars (borrowed or otherwise). Far better to try to sell a war with a low-cost estimate to mute possible public opposition.

And after the war—especially when victory is MIA—toting up the bottom line is just too depressing.

There are downsides to straying from such dogma. The George W. Bush Administration, for example, forced Lawrence Lindsey to resign as head of its National Economic Council shortly before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, after he said the cost of a war with Iraq might reach $200 billion. A month later, just before the U.S. invaded Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suggested the war’s total cost would be “something under $50 billion.” And the U.S., he added, would share that bill with its allies.

The new CRS report says the war in Iraq ended up costing $814.6 billion. Afghanistan has cost $685.6 billion.

Bilmes, in her 2013 study, said the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have been “the most expensive wars in U.S. history.” That, of course, was before the U.S. entered its third Iraq war in August, and before the U.S. decided to keep troops in Afghanistan through 2016.

But just because those U.S. troops in Afghanistan no longer have a combat mission doesn’t mean they’re a bargain: the CRS report says the cost of keeping a single American soldier there this year is an eye-watering $3.9 million.

"I do not think it is the government's role to decide who is honorable"

Economist Thomas Piketty, whose mammoth work Capital in the 21st Century has sold 1.5 million copies and sparked debate worldwide about growing inequalities, declined a nomination for France’s Legion of Honor award Thursday.

“I have just learned that I was nominated for the Legion of Honor. I refuse this nomination because I do not think it is the government’s role to decide who is honorable,” Piketty told Agence-France Presse. “They would do better to concentrate on reviving (economic) growth in France and Europe.”

Once an ally of France’s socialist president Francois Hollande, Piketty has parted ways with the current administration over a disagreement about the government’s tax policies.

Also on the list of nominees for the award are Nobel economics laureate Jean Tirole and Nobel literature winner Patrick Modiano.

[AFP]

Cutting those ties could be preparation for scrutiny in a Republican primary

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush has resigned all corporate and nonprofit board memberships, his office announced late Wednesday night, signaling that his preparations for a possible run at the White House in 2016 are picking up steam.

If he runs, Bush is likely to be a favorite of the GOP establishment. Divesting himself of his various nonprofit and business interests, some of which have made him quite wealthy, could be part of a strategy to shield him from criticisms similar to those leveled at Mitt Romney during his run in 2012.

Read more at The Washington Post

READ MORE: The One Issue That Will Complicate Jeb Bush’s Campaign

Maryland eliminated the death penalty in 2013

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley has commuted the death sentences for his state’s four remaining death row inmates.

In a statement released Wednesday morning, O’Malley said he hoped that the commutations might bring “a greater degree of closure” for the survivors and their families.

The four inmates will now serve life sentences without the possibility of parole rather than face execution.

The Maryland legislature passed a bill in 2013 that eliminated the death penalty in the state, but it did not commute the sentences for those already convicted on death row.

There are currently 18 states without the death penalty, with Maryland among a recent crop of six states that have banned it since 2007 that includes New Jersey, New York, New Mexico, Illinois and Connecticut.

There is a political angle as well. O’Malley is a likely 2016 Democratic presidential contender. He is being replaced by a Republican governor next term after his lieutenant governor was defeated for the position in November.