Cindy's Fortune: An Asset And A Liability
Cindy McCain's Fortune Has Benefited Husband's Career But Could Attract Unwanted Attention
Republicans demanded fuller disclosure about the considerable fortune of Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

Now, the GOP is reaping what it sowed.

Having established a recent precedent for increased scrutiny of spousal finances, the party now finds its own presumptive nominee, John McCain, under an unwanted spotlight over his wife Cindy’s fortune.

Already, Democrats have blasted Cindy McCain’s less-than-full financial disclosure, asserting that it calls into question John McCain’s commitment to transparency and suggests that he may be “hiding” information about how his efforts in Congress benefited his family.

Worse though, the burgeoning focus on Cindy McCain’s finances could attract attention to an aspect of the Arizona senator’s family life that is unlikely to be advantageous to him on the campaign trail-the affluent lifestyle and free-spending habits of the McCain clan.

Cindy McCain and the McCain children are the beneficiaries of a beer distributing fortune amassed by her parents and estimated to be worth $100 million or more. Though the McCains maintain separate finances, Cindy McCain’s family fortune has boosted her husband’s political career at critical junctures, helping to fund his inaugural 1982 run for Congress and helping to subsidize his current presidential campaign when it all-but-went broke last year.

In recent years, a Politico analysis found, the McCain family appears to have tapped its fortune liberally.

While Cindy McCain, her dependent children and the trusts and companies they control made as much as $29 million - and likely substantially more - from her family’s business interests from 2004 through last year, data from the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Senate, U.S. Office of Government Ethics and the Center for Responsive Politics also reveals that they spent $11 million purchasing five condominiums for the family, hired additional household help and racked up progressively larger credit cards bills almost every year.

Their credit card bills peaked between January 2007 and May 2008, during which time Cindy McCain charged as much as $500,000 in a single month on one American Express card and $250,000 on another, while one of their two dependent children had an AmEx card with a monthly balance as large as $50,000.

A campaign aide who did not want to be identified discussing the McCain’s personal finances stressed that the credit card balances are “not ongoing debt.”

The aide pointed out that the disclosure forms on which the credit card liabilities were listed ask respondents to indicate ranges for the largest balances owed during the reporting period.

“It has been the McCain’s practice and procedure, as previously indicated, to pay off the balance of credit cards on a monthly basis, so they do not carry credit card debt,” the aide said in a statement.

The aide did not answer questions about what Cindy McCain or their children purchased with the cards and declined to make either she or her husband available for an interview about their finances or spending habits.

Cindy McCain released only the first two pages of her 2006 tax return. She received an extension until October 15 to file her 2007 returns and the aide said “she will make the decision whether to release her 2007 return at the appropriate time.”

During the 2004 presidential campaign, Teresa Heinz Kerry, whose fortune was estimated to be worth more than $750 million, eventually released comparably limited information about her finances after repeated demands from Republicans who asserted the public’s right to know because they said her finances were intertwined with those of her husband’s presidential campaign. The Kerry campaign had benefited from a $6.4 million personal loan Sen. Kerry secured using, as collateral, equity in a Boston townhouse the couple jointly owned.

Likewise, John McCain’s presidential campaign benefited from Cindy McCain’s fortune, using a legal loophole to travel the country in a jet owned by her company for cut-rate fares.

That revelation, combined with recent reports about Cindy McCain’s hefty credit card tabs and nearly $7,000 in unpaid property taxes on a condo owned by a trust she oversees have drawn even closer scrutiny to the McCain family finances.

While McCain’s campaign spending is a matter of public record, his family’s personal spending is not, and for the most part there’s only anecdotal information available.

For instance, in the June issue of Vogue magazine, Cindy McCain said she favors suits made by the German designer Escada, which typically retail for around $3,000-a-pop. If she becomes first lady, she told Vogue she may switch to an American designer, possibly Carolina Herrera, whose suits are comparably pricey.
But one area in which Cindy McCain’s spending - and its impact on her husband’s lifestyle -can be chronicled is real estate.

Property records show that trusts and corporations controlled by her and her children spent nearly $11 million between the summer of 2004 and this February on three condominiums in Phoenix and a pair outside San Diego.

One of the Phoenix condos, a 6,600-square foot unit for which Cindy McCain’s trust paid $4.7 million in October 2006 became Cindy McCain’s primary residence after the trust sold the couple’s Phoenix house, which she had purchased from her father, for $3.2 million in December 2006.

Less than one year later, a corporation controlled by Cindy McCain bought another condo on a lower floor in the same building for $830,000.

And, in between, the corporation plunked down $700,000 for a 1,900-square foot, three-bedroom loft condo for their then-22-year old daughter Meghan McCain, who was moving back to Phoenix after graduating from New York’s Columbia University.

Cindy McCain, through another family corporation, spent about $4.7 million in 2004 and 2008 on two condos in an exclusive building in Coronado, Calif., an affluent San Diego suburb noted for its high percentage of military retirees.

In her recent Vogue interview, conducted from the newer Coronado condo, McCain explained that her husband, a Navy veteran, initially wasn’t keen on the idea of a pied-à-terre in Coronado.

"When I bought the first one, my husband, who is not a beach person, said, 'Oh this is such a waste of money; the kids will never go,'” she said in Vogue. “Then it got to the point where they used it so much I couldn't get in the place. So I bought another one.”

Through her trusts and other corporate entities, Cindy McCain also owns another three properties: a scenic ranch outside Sedona, Arizona, where John McCain has entertained staff, prospective running mates and political reporters; a three-bedroom Arlington, Virginia, condo that’s been John McCain’s Washington-area residence since 1993 and the La Jolla, California, condo on which the back taxes were due.

The McCains increased their budget for household employees from $184,000 in 2006 to $273,000 in 2007, according to John McCain’s tax returns.

The additional cash supports an “increase in the number of employees,” said the McCain aide, who did not say whether the growing staff stemmed from the addition of new properties to the family’s real estate portfolio.

Other than the primary Phoenix residence, the aide said the new condos were “purchased for investment and are available for personal use by the McCain family.”

The recent growth in the family’s credit card bills could stem from furnishing, decorating and moving into the new condos, said Christopher Cordaro, a wealth manager at RegentAtlantic Capital in New Jersey.

After reviewing the McCain’s taxes and disclosures for Politico, he declared their finances in ship-shape and their spending understandable when “put in perspective that the McCains are very wealthy.”

“You certainly wouldn’t see the average person ringing up that large of a monthly balance,” he said. “But, if you’re worth $100 million, the amount they’re spending is not inordinate. I’m sure that at their level, they’re putting lots of stuff on their credit card.”

Judging by their finances and spending, Cordaro asserted the McCains likely qualified for top-tier charge accounts loaded with benefits.

In addition to the American Express cards - which carry no monthly interest charges - Cindy and John McCain jointly hold a credit card through Chase with a steep 25.99-percent interest rate. It had a top balance as large as $15,000 last year.

John McCain has his own credit card, his aide said, but its balance for years has not exceeded the $10,000 threshold that triggers the reporting requirement for listing liabilities on Senate or executive branch personal financial disclosure statements.

The last year John McCain reported holding a credit card with such a balance was 2004, when he had an American Express Platinum card with a top balance of $15,000. Cindy McCain also had a Platinum AmEx that year, with a top balance that was $100,000, as well as a “Business Platinum” account with a top balance of $50,000, and charge cards from Saks Fifth Avenue, MasterCard and Visa with top monthly balances between $15,000 and $50,000 and interest rates between 10.49- and 24.49-percent.

And in 2004, one of their dependent children had an AmEx Business Platinum card with a top monthly balance of $50,000. The McCain aide wouldn’t identify which child got the card, but their oldest, Meghan, turned 20 that year.



http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/02/politics/politico/main4226787.shtml

Vagif Mustafazade DüşÃ¼ncə

a feast for the ears (Ohrenschmaus)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlTxzElSJ7I&feature=related

The violation of our privacy due to media

Dr. Gary Gumpert stated that we live in a complex world where we depend on the other for information and we do it by relying on communication technology. However this technology is used sometimes against our human rights. For instance, the government developed the extremes ability to watch the other. In the U.K. due to fear of terrorism 4.2 million cameras watch 6 million people. The question that pops into the mind is: How does this relate to privacy, free expression, the right to be alone, the trust one place in his/her leaders, governments? It seems like it's the invasion of our privacy even if they do it for security reasons. Besides surveillance cameras are another matter. Usually they are used by police departments in order to collect information. They do it privately and one is never free from observation. It's like as if there was a transperent curtain on all of us. So, from all these it is perceived that technology hinders our privacy considerably without our knowing. It's because the digitalization has led to the manipulation of the mankind.

Electronic reality
Dr. Gary Gumpert focused on the idea of the trust in media in his lecture. The role of technology in our life is changing its dimension. It is entering the limits of people's privacy in addition to its advantages. He questioned if the media with the help of technology tells the truth to the audiences. He mentioned about the protection the government provides with the exchange of freedom. The more we ask for protection the more we lose from our freedom because technology makes the government able to watch people without their realization. Dr. Gumpert calls this system as “social contract”. This contract depends on the bridge of trust. However, the question is who we should or can trust? This contract contradicts with the idea of privacy. In developed countries such as UK and USA, technology has almost eliminated privacy. Satellites are watching people. They are like under surveillance as Dr. Gumpert called.
He supported his arguments with a slide show and showed how live broadcastings are actually not real. There is a considerable amount of time between the moment someone talks in a live program and the moment it reaches you. Meanwhile, there can be made many chances in the live program which we think is absolute truth. Live screens can be delayed or stopped with machines which he calls “magical machines”.
Briefly, he questioned what we see may not be the truth. Technology plays a great role in this irony. Dr. Gumpert underlined that, it has reached its point to violate human rights for privacy in some countries. It makes us feel scary for the future.


http://www.khas.edu.tr/bukalemun/chl_main.html

Oh, thank you for the handsomes' link, dear Jill, I had no idea.

Under the Young Turks about one hundred years ago there were important changes in Turkish domestic politics. I wonder how those times are seen by modern Turks, in the context of the political tensions of today. I would be interested in the perspectives of Turkish citizens about this.
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Name given to groups in Ottoman society who demanded and strove for political and social change in the last several decades of the Ottoman Empire.

"Young Turk" is an expression coined in Europe that invokes three distinct phases of the Ottoman constitutionalist movement: the anti-Tanzimat current better known to historians as the "Young Ottoman" movement; the constitutionalist opposition to Sultan Abdülhamit; and the Second Constitutional Period introduced by the reinstitution of the constitutional regime in 1908. There was at no point a distinct organization called the Young Turks; nor did the groups recognized as Young Turks generally embrace this name. Nevertheless, historians identify the last three decades of the empire in reference to Young Turks, while "the Young Turk period" corresponds more precisely to the decade of their political predominance from 1908 to 1918.

Young Turk activity began in the late 1880s. Until the revolution of 1908, their opposition to Abdülhamit manifested itself both within the empire and abroad. The two spheres of activity were linked together only loosely. When a group of medical students in Constantinople (now Istanbul) founded in 1889 the secret cells of what would develop into the Committee for Union and Progress (CUP), individual intellectuals in exile had already launched a political and journalistic campaign against the Hamitian regime. The best known in the latter group was Khalil Ghanim, a Syrian Christian, who published a journal called La jeune Turquie (Young Turkey).

The Constantinople secret committee spread rapidly in the capital's higher schools and soon became known to the authorities. Reprisals forced many to exile, whereupon an expatriate liberal opposition came together around Ahmet Riza, a French-educated official in the Ministry of Agriculture. Influenced by European positivists, he failed to return from a mission in 1889 and turned into a vocal critic of the Hamitian regime. In 1895, he joined Khalil Ghanim, Alber Fua (a Jew), and Aristidi Paşa (a Greek) to publish Meşveret, which became the leading voice of Young Turks.

The next year, a member of the Constantinople secret committee, Murat Bey, fled to Cairo and later to Geneva. A Russian Turk who taught at the influential Mülkiye (civil service) school, Murat Bey was better connected with the liberal currents in Constantinople. His Mizan outshone

Meşveret, both of which were smuggled into the empire. Murat was an Islamist-Turkist revolutionary, in contrast to Ahmet Riza's elitist and gradualist outlook. The two men were united in their anti-imperialism and denunciation of the Hamitian autocracy. Murat, however, joined Abdülhamit in 1897. Rivalries within the Young Turk movement in exile continued with the publication in Geneva of Osmanh by İshak Süküti and Ahmet Cevdet Paşa, founding members of the CUP in Constantinople. As repression increased in the empire, Young Turk activity shifted almost entirely to Europe and Egypt for a decade. The flight of Damad Mahmud Paşa, the brother-in-law of the sultan, to join the Young Turks in Europe opened a new phase in Young Turk activities.

http://www.answers.com/topic/young-turks

Thanks, Lady in Red!

Why can Turks not watch youtube these days?

Thanks,Yilgun.
He that travels far knows much:
Cok yasayan bilmez cok gezen bilir.

It takes all sorts to make the world:
Insan cesit cesit, yer damar bir agacta guel de biter, diken de. Bes parmagin besi de bir olmaz/degil.

Love is blind:
Asigin gozu kor dur. Asik alemi kor, dort yanini du var sanir.

who hesitates is lost:

Akilli kopru arayincaya kadar deli suyu gecer.