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Top Stories
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Ominous Failure at “Too Big to Fail” JPMorgan Chase
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Tuesday, May 15, 2012
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The self-styled “Masters of the Universe” have done it again. Just three-and-a-half years after Wall Street’s best and brightest lost billions of dollars on bad bets and crashed the global economy, mega-bank JPMorgan Chase lost more than $2 billion (with perhaps more than another billion to come) on the same sort of risky trading. Earlier this spring, the bank bet heavily on derivatives instruments whose prices are tied to the value of corporate bonds. When the value of such bonds tanked in late March, losses began to mount, and the bank pulled the plug and went public with the debacle last week.
As of Monday, it was estimated that at least three executives will lose their jobs, although golden parachutes will doubtless limit their pain to the emotional realm. One of those, Chief Investment Officer Ina Drew, “retired” on Monday. Her total calculated compensation as of FY 2011 was $15.5 million, according to Bloomberg.
Ironically, JPMorgan Chase, through its CEO and mouthpiece Jamie Dimon, has been fighting tooth and nail against a regulatory change that would have prevented this latest disaster. The “Volcker Rule,” named for Paul A. Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chair who proposed it, would restrict banks whose deposits are federally insured from trading for their own profit, thus keeping high-rolling gamblers in banks from risking the federally insured deposits of average banking customers.
Although President Barack Obama proposed the Volcker Rule as part of Wall Street reform in January 2010, JPMorgan and Dimon have successfully lobbied to weaken it. As Dimon wrote in the company’s annual report, he believes the Volcker Rule would have “huge negative unintended consequences for American competitiveness and economic growth.”
As it turns out, it is the lack of the Volcker Rule that threatens the world economy, and JPMorgan Chase is now facing an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission into its recent activities. -Matt Bewig
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Federal Reserve Allows First Chinese Government Takeover of U.S. Bank
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Monday, May 14, 2012
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In a “watershed moment” for the U.S. banking industry, the Federal Reserve has approved the first takeover of an American financial institution by the Chinese government.
Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. (ICBC), which is owned by the Communist government of China, will buy a controlling stake (80%) in the U.S. unit of Hong Kong-based Bank of East Asia Ltd., giving it ownership of 10 branches in California and three in New York.
“The deal is insignificant to ICBC’s operations but the implications are profound as it opens up the U.S. market to further expansion from ICBC,” Mike Werner, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., told Bloomberg News.
Werner called the decision by the Fed, which required approval from the U.S. Department of Justice, “a watershed moment, as it makes possible greater participation from other Chinese banks” in the U.S. banking sector.
ICBC has assets totaling $2.5 trillion and subsidiaries or branches throughout Asia as well as in Germany.
ICBC is one of the largest banks in the world, with $238 billion in market capitalization. But its strength and stability may be questionable, according to Bloomberg columnist Jonathan Weil.
“Much of [ICBC’s] capital consists of the remnants of bad loans dating to the 1990s,” wrote Weil.
“Either the Chinese government has become extremely skilled at lending in a very short time, and Chinese borrowers have become even better at repaying. Or the numbers are too good to be true, in which case the quality of the bank’s capital matters a great deal, as a gauge of its ability to absorb losses,” he added.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
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Campaigns Shift Negative Ads from Candidate Funding to “Independent” Groups to Avoid Backlash
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Sunday, May 13, 2012
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Candidates who go negative during a political campaign run the risk of a backlash from voters.
But if a so-called independent group can sling your mud for you, then going negative is a much more successful strategy, according to two professors at Dartmouth College.
In their study published by the American Politics Research journal, Deborah Jordan Brooks and Michael Murov say it is better for an independent expenditure committee to pay for negative commercials because voters can’t really identify who’s behind such nastiness. Such groups often have innocuous names like Restore Our Future (pro-Mitt Romney) or the Red White and Blue Fund (pro-Rick Santorum).
“The fact that the public cannot identify the contributors to so many of these groups thus makes it easier for these groups to go on the attack,” Brooks and Murov wrote.
Independent advertising in this year’s presidential campaign has skyrocketed compared to 2008—by 1,600%, according to the Wesleyan Media Project. And more than 85% of these ads have negative messages.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
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Unusual News
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Billion-Dollar City without Residents to be Built to Test New Technology
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Thursday, May 10, 2012
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A bricks-and-mortar version of Sim City is going up in New Mexico, where a technology development firm will spend $1 billion to build a full-scale city just for scientists and engineers to tinker with.
Construction of The Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation (CITE) will begin next month, says Pegasus Global Holdings LLC, the company behind the idea. Located on 15 square miles near the town of Hobbs, CITE will include a downtown, suburban neighborhoods and outlying rural areas.
No residents will live at CITE, which will include both new and aging structures. The only people seen moving around it will be experts and staff testing out new technologies for advances in energy, telecommunications and transportation “without the complication and safety issues arising from having residents.”
-Noel Brinkerhoff
To Learn More:
Pegasus Chooses Hobbs For $1 Billion Mock City (by Steve Ramirez, Las Cruces Sun-News)
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6 California Legislators have Recent Arrest Records
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Thursday, May 10, 2012
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It’s been 20 years since California politics witnessed so many lawmakers getting arrested.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was Shrimpscam that got so many legislators into trouble, after federal agents conducted a sting operation to root out influence peddling at the state capitol.
More recently, half a dozen assemblymen and senators have made the news for getting busted for a variety of reasons.
State Senator Roderick Wright, a Democrat from the Los Angeles area, faces eight felony counts, including voter fraud and perjury, for allegedly lying when he said he lived in his Senate district representing Inglewood.
Former state senator and assemblyman and current City Councilman Richard Alarcon, another Democrat from Los Angeles, has been charged with 18 counts for lying about where he lived and voting fraudulently.
Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, a Republican from San Bernardino, pled no contest last month to two misdemeanor charges for attempting to take a loaded handgun onto a commercial airliner.
Democratic Assemblyman Roger Hernandez of West Covina was charged last week with drunk driving. Another assemblyman, Republican Martin Garrick of Carlsbad, was charged with a DUI last summer.
Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi (D-Hayward) pled no contest in January to shoplifting clothes worth $2,500 from Neiman Marcus in San Francisco.
Wright, Alarcon, Donnelly and Hernandez are all running for office this year. Garrick and Hayashi are not because of California’s term limit law, but both have said they plan to run again in 2014.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
To Learn More:
Tim Donnelly Gets Fine, Probation After Plea On Gun Charges (by Michael J. Mishak, Los Angeles Times)
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Can Murder Viewed on iPad Video Chat be Introduced as Evidence?
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Wednesday, May 09, 2012
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A gruesome murder case in Burlington, Massachusetts, may open the way for online video to serve as evidence in convicting a man accused of stabbing his ex-girlfriend to death while a young boy watched from his home computer.
Christopher Piantedosi faces a murder trial for killing Kristen Pulisciano in her home. After chasing Pulisciano into their 15-year-old daughter’s bedroom, Piantedosi repeatedly stabbed Pulisciano, an act that was witnessed remotely because the daughter had her iPad’s video chat in operation. This allowed the daughter’s friend to observe the killing as it took place even though the daughter had left the room because of the argument.
“This is a very, very difficult case. And it wouldn’t surprise me if we see more of them. In this day and age of video chatting and Skyping, this is the next logical step,” attorney William Korman told the Boston Herald.
Korman said it was unclear if the footage of the killing was saved. If not, the prosecution would have to rely on the testimony of the daughter’s friend to tell the court what she witnessed, as opposed to showing the jury firsthand how Pulisciano died.
Piantedosi had been released from a mental health treatment facility the day before the murder after attempting suicide on April 29.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
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Where is the Money Going?
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It’s Legal to Regulate the $300 Trillion Swap Market, but Regulators Don’t Have Budget to Do It Right
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Tuesday, May 15, 2012
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The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has been told by Congress to do more with less, taking on the responsibility of regulating the multi-trillion-dollar swaps market while having its funding frozen at an inadequate level, according to the agency.
In addition to overseeing the trading of futures, the CFTC must keep tabs of the $300 trillion market for swaps. Market swaps are complicated loan exchanges in which borrowers “swap” different types of loans, such as fixed rate loans and floating rate loans. Each party in the swap is hoping that the loan he has gotten has an advantage (i.e., creating capital losses to avoid taxes).
To watch over all this, the agency has to get by with a budget of a little more than $200 million.
CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler said that at this level, his agency can employ 710 staffers, which is only slightly larger than its team during the 1990s.
Gensler has told lawmakers the CFTC needs another $102 million to properly do its job.
A group of consumer and public interest groups wrote to Congress recently urging it to increase funding for the CFTC.
“Failing to provide the additional $102 million requested in the President’s budget to enable proper supervision of hundreds of trillions of dollars in derivatives and commodity markets would not save money,” the letter reads. “It would instead protect a broken and dangerous status quo, undermine effective oversight of our financial markets, and leave our economy at risk.” -Noel Brinkerhoff
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RBS Citizens Bank Accused of Profiting from Customer Math Errors
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Thursday, May 10, 2012
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RBS Citizens bank is being sued for allegedly taking advantage of customers when they mistakenly low-ball the amounts of their deposits, resulting in the bank keeping the difference.
In a federal class action lawsuit, lead plaintiff Todd Bowers Inc., a chiropractic office, cited one example in which the customer inadvertently recorded a deposit totaling $1,448.57, when in fact the amount was $26.50 more ($1,475.07). But instead of crediting the difference to Bowers’ account, the bank put the money into another account not controlled by the plaintiff.
“Citizens Bank affirmatively masks or hides the actual amount deposited and retains and diverts customer funds into at least two accounts Citizens Banks [sic] maintains and control,” the complaint states.
Bowers’ suit added: “Citizens Bank developed a policy and employs a practice whereby customer funds are being diverted daily for the benefit and use by Citizens Bank without the knowledge, consent or approval of the customer.”
The civil case comes just days after the bank agreed to pay $137.5 million to resolve another class-action lawsuit that alleged Citizens and other banks increased the amount they could collect in overdraft fees by processing the most expensive charges first rather than processing them in the order in which they were received..
Citizens Bank is part of Citizens Financial Group, which is a unit of the Royal Bank of Scotland, which is in turn owned (84%) by the government of the United Kingdom.
Citizens Republic bank received a $300 million bailout from the U.S. government in 2008 and RBS took £45.5 billion ($62.4 billion) in bailout money from British taxpayers.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
To Learn More:
The Real Wall Street Bailout Totaled $29 Trillion (by David Wallechinsky and Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
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High Cost of Execution: $700 Million in California if State Kills All on Death Row
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Wednesday, May 09, 2012
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For California to execute the more than 700 murderers on death row, the state would have to spend about $700 million to do so, according to the Bay Area News Group.
The review of capital punishment cases revealed just how costly, and time consuming, state executions have become.
Since reinstating the death penalty in 1978, the state has executed only 13 prisoners, due to lengthy appeals in state and federal courts that can drag on for years if not decades.
The cost of these appeals totaled almost $1 million for Stanley “Tookie” Williams, co-founder of the Crips street gang, who was executed in December 2005. That amount could have covered tuition for about 76 University of California students for a year.
Appeals costs for Clarence Ray Allen, the last man to be put to death in California, was $761,635.
Since Allen’s execution in January 2006, California has not executed any prisoners due to legal challenges to the use of lethal injection.
Opponents of capital punishment will likely use these findings to bolster their argument for voters to adopt an initiative (the so-called SAFE California Act) slated for the November ballot that would repeal the death penalty.
Critics point out that in some cases, it’s less expensive to sentence a convict to life without parole than it is to execute them. The Bay Area News Group investigation found the average cost of life-without-parole appeals is about $17,000, while the clemency appeal costs alone for Williams and Allen were $30,000 and $53,000, respectively.
Last year, another study by U.S. 9th Circuit Judge Arthur L. Alarcon and Loyola Law School professor Paula M. Mitchell concluded that California had spent more than $4 billion on capital punishment since 1978, which averaged out to about $308 million for each of the 13 executions performed. The costs of capital trials and of keeping someone on death row add $184 million to California's budget, and that price is just going to grow with time.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
To Learn More:
Support for Death Penalty Hits 39-Year Low (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
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Controversies
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More and More Americans Finding Health Care Unaffordable
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Friday, May 11, 2012
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Americans with and without health insurance are increasingly finding health care too expensive to see a doctor in a timely manner, according to a new study.
In 2000, one out of eight adults said they had “unmet medical” needs due to cost issues. As of 2010, the ratio had increased to one in five Americans.
Among the 41 million uninsured, about one third of them delayed getting care due to costs in 2010, compared to 25% in 2000.
The study, published in Health Affairs, also reported people were having a harder time accessing dental care.
The federal health care reform law, which faces a legal challenge before the U.S. Supreme Court next month, “won’t necessarily solve all those access problems,” wrote Kaiser Health News. This is due to the fact that the law “may not alter the trend toward private insurance policies with larger deductibles and higher co-payments or address some of the barriers within public coverage.” -Noel Brinkerhoff
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After 50 and 70 Years of Voting, Two 93-Year-Olds Sue to Keep Right to Vote without Photo ID
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Friday, May 11, 2012
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Viviette Applewhite, 93, of Philadelphia has become the face of a civil liberties lawsuit against the state of Pennsylvania for requiring voters to show identification before voting. The new requirement was signed into law by Republican Governor Tom Corbett on March 14.
The wheelchair-bound Applewhite says she has voted since 1960, but won’t be able to do so this November because of the new legal requirement. She doesn’t possess a driver’s license and is unable to obtain a birth certificate from the state, she says, making it impossible for her to show the requisite ID at the polls.
Another 93-year-old plaintiff, Bea Bookler, first voted for Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1940. She has the documents needed to obtain a valid photo ID, but state law requires that she present them in person and she is too frail to do so.
Representing Applewhite, Bookler and eight other plaintiffs are the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Color People. They contend the law will disenfranchise tens of thousands of eligible Pennsylvanians who lack ID.
A 2006 survey by the Brennan Center for Justice concluded that about 13 million adult American citizens lack the kind of proof needed to comply with voter ID laws. -Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky
To Learn More:
New State Laws Could Reduce Voter Lists by 5 Million (by David Wallechinsky, AllGov)
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Air Force Drones Allowed to Record U.S. Citizens in U.S.
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Thursday, May 10, 2012
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Like the rest of the U.S. military, the Air Force isn’t supposed to spy on Americans. But the secretary of the Air Force, Michael Donley, has decided the service’s drones can conduct “nonconsensual surveillance” of people in the U.S. for a limited time.
An April 23 document uncovered by Secrecy News revealed the Air Force’s top official authorized unmanned aircraft to collect imagery of Americans on the ground. The service can also store this data for 90 days. Although the directive was written to limit surveillance of innocent Americans, it contains a loophole that does the opposite.
“In other words, if an Air Force drone accidentally spies on an American citizen, the Air Force will have three months to figure out if it was legally allowed to put that person under surveillance in the first place,” wrote Spencer Ackerman at Wired.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
To Learn More:
Air Force Instruction 14-104 (Secretary of the Air Force) (pdf)
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U.S. and the World
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For the Big Food Industry, Lobbying Pays Big Dividends
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Tuesday, May 15, 2012
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Even with First Lady Michelle Obama pushing hard for healthier food choices for children, Washington has failed in key battles against the processed food industry, according to a special report from Reuters.
The news wire service reviewed federal, state, and local efforts in recent years to improve nutritional standards and concluded “the food and beverage industries won fight after fight during the last decade.”
“They have never lost a significant political battle in the United States despite mounting scientific evidence of the role of unhealthy food and children’s marketing in obesity,” wrote Duff Wilson and Janet Roberts for Reuters.
For example, industry lobbying resulted in Congress deciding that pizza should be categorized as a vegetable so it could remain in school lunch programs. Lawmakers also refused to adopt a plan by four federal agencies to reduce sugar, salt, and fat in food marketed to children.
The investigation further uncovered that soft drink manufacturers managed to prevent two dozen states and five cities from passing “soda taxes,” which would have discouraged consumption of such beverages.
Money played a large role in the victories for industry. In just the last three years, the food and drink industries more than doubled their lobbying expenditures in Washington, reported Reuters.
Meanwhile, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which advocates for healthier food choices, spent about $70,000 on lobbying in 2011—an amount equal to what industry doled out in just 13 hours of opposition campaigning. -Noel Brinkerhoff
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House Votes to Prohibit National Science Foundation Funding of Political Science Research
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Tuesday, May 15, 2012
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Republican Jeff Flake of Arizona considers the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) funding of political science research “meritless” and wants Congress to eliminate all funding for such work.
By a vote of 218-208, the House of Representatives last week adopted an appropriations amendment authored by Flake that would prohibit the NSF from spending any of its 2013 funds on its political science program.
The program in question consumed about $11 million in federal funds this year.
Flake went after the poli sci program only after he failed to convince his colleagues to significantly cut overall funding to the NSF by $1 billion. Unable to gain the necessary votes for this cause, he decided the agency at least should “not waste taxpayer dollars on a meritless program.”
The Republican lawmaker took exception to most of the poli sci grants going to what he said were wealthy universities, and for research he considered a waste of time.
For this study, Lawless will survey 4,000 high school and college students to gauge their interest in running for office and to determine why so many young people fail to get involved in politics.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
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Deadly Drivers: Teens with Other Teens in the Car and No Adults
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Tuesday, May 15, 2012
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Teenaged drivers + teenaged passengers = deadly combination.
In cases where a teen driver was accompanied by someone younger than 21 (and no adult passengers), the risk of a fatal crash jumped 44% (compared to accidents involving teens driving alone).
When two passengers under 21 were present in a car driven by a teen, the risk of fatality doubled.
Having three or more passengers younger than 21 resulted in a quadrupling of a teen driver’s risk of being killed in a crash.
On the other hand, adding a single adult (35 and older) to a car resulted in a 62% decrease that a 16- or 17-year-old driver might die in an auto accident.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
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Appointments and Resignations
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Ambassador to Pakistan Resigns: Who Is Cameron Munter?
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Sunday, May 13, 2012
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On May 7, U.S. Ambassador Cameron Munter announced to his embassy staff in Pakistan that he’d be quitting in the summer after serving less than two years on the job. Tensions have been rising between the United States and Pakistan recently, but an embassy official denied that Munter is resigning because of poor relationships between the two governments.
However, during his tenure Munter, who was sworn in on October 6, 2010, has had to contend with a series of incidents that have upset the Pakistani population. On January 27, 2011, CIA contractor Raymond Davis was arrested after he shot to death two people on the streets of Lahore. After difficult negotiations, the Obama administration managed to secure Davis’ release on March 16 of last year. The very next day, a CIA drone strike killed 50 civilians in North Waziristan. Then, on May 2, 2011, U.S. Special Forces entered Pakistan and killed Osama bin Laden, allegedly without consulting the Pakistani government.
The son of Helen-Jeanne and Leonard Munter, Cameron Munter was born in Claremont, California, in 1954. Munter attended Claremont High School, where he distinguished himself as a distance runner on the cross-country and track teams. His college education took place at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and universities in Freiburg and Marburg in Germany. He received a doctoral degree in modern European history in 1983 from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.
Munter began his career as a college professor, teaching European history at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1982-1984. He directed European studies at the Twentieth Century Fund in New York (1984-1985) before joining the Foreign Service.
His first overseas assignment took him to Warsaw, Poland (1986-1988). He returned to Washington, DC, in 1988 to serve as a staff assistant in the State Department’s Bureau of European Affairs and then as country director for Czechoslovakia. In 1991, he was a Dean Rusk Fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.
The following year he was sent to Prague in the Czech Republic, serving there until 1995. It was then onto Bonn, Germany (1995-1997), before becoming chief of staff in the NATO Enlargement Ratification Office.
In 1998, Munter was director of the Northern European Initiative and then executive assistant to the counselor of the State Department (1998-1999). He served as director for Central Europe at the National Security Council until 2001.
Beginning in 2002, Munter began taking on larger roles in U.S. embassies, first as deputy chief of mission in Warsaw until 2005 and then in Prague from 2005 to 2007.
In 2006, he led the first Provincial Reconstruction Team in Mosul, Iraq.
His first ambassador assignment was in Belgrade, Serbia, from 2007 to 2009. The posting was not without difficulties, as Serbian rioters upset over the American position on Kosovo, set fire to the embassy on February 21, 2008. The protests sparked a strong response from Munter, who warned the Serbian government not to allow any more attacks on the diplomatic mission.
He returned to Iraq in 2009, this time at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. He served as political-military minister-counselor, then as deputy chief of mission for the first half of 2010, directing strategic planning and American civil-military coordination during the military pullout.
Munter’s wife, Marilyn Wyatt, is the author of A Handbook of NGO Governance. She has served as Director of Communications at the Aspen Institute and Director of Global Programs as BoardSource. The couple has a son, Daniel, and a daughter, Anna. -Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky
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Acting Director of Defense Media Activity Retires: Who Is Melvin Russell?
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Sunday, May 06, 2012
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Melvin W. Russell, who created a stir in military circles in January when he proposed moving the Pentagon-funded but editorially independent newspaper Stars and Stripes from downtown Washington, DC, to rural Fort Meade, Virginia, served as acting director of the Defense Media Activity (DMA) from October 2009 until he retired on April 30, 2012.
DMA, formerly known as the American Forces Information Service, is the communications media propaganda arm of the Department of Defense, employing 2,400 active duty military, civilian, and contract personnel at 8 U.S. locations and 33 permanent overseas sites.
Born circa 1939, Russell earned a B.S. in Chemistry and Secondary Education at Texas A&M University in 1961, and an M.A. in Television and Film Production at the University of Texas in 1970.
Commissioned in the U.S. Army through the ROTC program in 1961, Russell served more than 22 years as a Signal Corps officer. Early career assignments included Fort Hood, Texas; Naples, Italy; and Hue, Vietnam. After earning his M.A. in TV and film, Russell was assigned to the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he ran the television, film, and radio facilities for the next three years and made the first Army conversion form black-and-white to color.
From 1973 to 1975, Russell served in an exchange program with the British Army, where he established the first television facility at the engineering department of the Royal Signals School. After serving two years at the Pentagon as a senior staff officer responsible for Army audio visual activities, in 1977 Russell took command of the Army Audio Visual Activity, which he ran for almost five years. In 1981, Russell became the assistant director of the American Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS), serving in this position until his military retirement in 1983, when he became the operations manager for D-K Associates, an audio-visual firm in Rockville, Maryland.
In 1984, Russell returned to AFRTS, this time as director, and became acting director of DMA in October 2009. He also served as the senior manager of Department of Defense visual information, web, print, new media and broadcasting.
Russell counts among his most satisfying achievements arranging for members of the military abroad to see live television broadcasts from the United States, including sports events, beginning in the 1980s, eventually reaching Navy ships at sea in 1997. Today AFRTS provide eight TV channels and twelve radio services.
“The bottom line for me,” he said in a farewell interview, “is that when you go overseas, you don’t leave the States behind. You need to feel that connection. So if you are in Afghanistan at an outpost, you should be able to watch a live NFL game.”
“I’ve been unbelievably lucky in life,” he concluded, “being allowed to do what I love doing and getting paid for it. I don’t see how you can beat that. You just can’t.”
-Matt Bewig, David Wallechinsky
Face of Defense: Official Recalls AFRTS Milestones (by Donna Mills, Armed Forces Press Service)
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Superintendent of Arlington National Cemetery: Who Is Patrick Hallinan?
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Saturday, May 05, 2012
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A Vietnam Era veteran who started his cemetery career as a day laborer has risen to be the number one man at Arlington National Cemetery, the crown jewel of the national cemeteries, which conducts about 27 funerals per day. Patrick K. Hallinan was appointed acting superintendent of Arlington National Cemetery on June 10, 2010, in the wake of a scandal involving lost remains, mismarked graves and financial irregularities that severely tarnished Arlington’s reputation. The appointment was made permanent as of October 10, 2010.
Arlington National Cemetery is the nation’s largest national cemetery, and the only one administered by the Army; all others are administered by the National Cemetery Administration (NCA) of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. Arlington is also the only national cemetery that routinely holds graveside services and provides full military honors for eligible veterans.
Born in 1956, Hallinan served as an infantry squad leader with the Marine Corps during the Vietnam Era. Hallinan joined the NCA as a temporary laborer at Long Island National Cemetery in New York in 1977. At the same time, Hallinan attended college under the G.I. Bill, earning an associate’s degree in liberal arts at Suffolk Community College in Long Island, and a B.A. in Social Science (pre-law).
Rather than attending law school, however, Hallinan decided to build a career in the national cemeteries system. In September 1978, he was one of the original 37 employees who opened Calverton National Cemetery in Long Island, New York. Over the next 16 years, Hallinan gradually advanced at Calverton, from day laborer to work supervisor to assistant cemetery director. In August 1994, Hallinan was named director of Calverton National Cemetery.
In June 2003, Hallinan left Calverton to join VA headquarters in Washington, DC, as associate director of the Office of Field Programs, and he was promoted to director on October 20, 2008. As director, Hallinan had oversight responsibilities for five Memorial Service Network offices and 131 national cemeteries.
Hallinan and his wife Doreen reside in Bristow, Virginia. They have a son, Matthew, and a daughter, Rachel.
-Matt Bewig
Army Names New Superintendent for Arlington National Cemetery (by Christian Davenport, Washington Post)
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