Henriette-Lucy, Marquise de La Tour du Pin Gouvernet

Henriette-Lucy, Marquise de La Tour-du-Pin-Gouvernet (25 February 1770, Paris – 2 April 1853, Pisa) (also known as Lucie) was a French aristocrat famous for her posthumously published memoirs entitled Journal d'une femme de 50 ans. The memoirs are a first-hand account of her life through the Ancien Régime, the French Revolution, and the Imperial court of Napoleon, ending in March 1815 with Napoleon's return from exile on Elba. Her memoirs serve as unique testimony to much unchronicled history.
Life.
Early life.
Henriette-Lucy Dillon was born into a prominent Irish Wild Geese Jacobite military family in France. She was daughter of Arthur Dillon, colonel-proprietor of the Dillon Regiment, and the lady-in-waiting Thérèse-Lucy de Rothe (1751–1782). Her father had been born in England, so she was often regarded in France as English. However the family, of Norman descent, was linked to the Dillons of Costello-Gallen and the lords of Drumraney in Ireland, who were granted lands in County Westmeath in the thirteenth century.
Following her mother's death and her father's subsequent posting abroad, where he remarried, Lucie lived in the household of her grandmother, Mme. de Rothe, and Arthur Richard Dillon, Archbishop of Narbonne, until marrying and joining the Court of France. She married , later Marquis de La Tour-du-Pin, an army officer and diplomat, in 1787. He was the son of Jean-Frédéric de la Tour du Pin-Gouvernet, a French Minister of War.
Following her marriage, she was given her mother's place as an honorary or apprentice lady-in-waiting ("Dame du Palais surnuméraire") to Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, and served as such every sunday from 1787 until the outbreak of the French revolution in 1789.
During the revolution.
She was present at Versailles during the assembly of the Estates General of 1789 and witnessed the Women's March on Versailles at the outbreak of the French revolution. She also witnessed the peasant uprising called the Great Fear in the countryside.
Between October 1791 and March 1792, her husband served as ambassador to the Dutch Republic in The Hague, where she joined him, returning to France only in December 1792.
During the Reign of Terror of Robespierre in 1793, many of her friends and family were executed, and she fled Paris for the family estate of Le Bouilh in the Gironde region. During the summer of that year, their estate was seized by the government, and her father-in-law was imprisoned and her husband went in hiding separate from her. With the help of Thérésa Tallien, she managed to secure a passport for herself and her husband from Jean-Lambert Tallien, a prominent member of the revolutionary French National Convention.
Directly after having secured their passports in 1794, she and her husband passed into exile for a new life on a dairy farm near Albany in Upstate New York. Although they were never officially listed as émigrés, Frédéric had been living in hiding prior to departure. She regarded this time as the happiest of her life. She vividly described the reality of owning slaves and interactions with the local Dutch families and the few remaining Native Americans of the area.
She was close to Talleyrand during his exile in the United States, and she returned to France as he did after the establishment of the Directorate in 1796. The couple left the United States because her husband wanted to resume his career in public life and shore up the family fortunes.
Later life.
After the French Coup of 1799, which brought Napoleon to power, her husband was able to resume his diplomatic career. She was able to promote his career under Napoleon, who was looking for aristocrats to lend legitimacy to his power and, from 1804, his court. Her memoirs described an insider's view of many events from the Imperial court of Napoleon.
She continued to follow her husband to his various diplomatic appointments after the Bourbon Restoration. They went into effective exile again after their son Aymar became involved in the anti-Orléanist plot of Caroline Ferdinande Louise, duchesse de Berry, in 1831, in the Vendée. Aymar escaped France, but was condemned to death in his absence. The family sold its possessions in France soon after.
Following her husband's death in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1837, she moved to Italy, where she died in Pisa.
Legacy.
Her memoir was written as a letter to her only surviving child after the age of fifty. It remained in the family and was not published until 1906.
She is the subject of a biography by Caroline Moorehead published in 2009.
Bibliography.
Catherine Montfort (Spring 2015). "Madame de La Tour du Pin: An Aristocratic Farmer in America", "New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century", 12.1: 35–47.


Terry Shannon (politician)

Terry Shannon (born 12 June 1962) is an Irish Fianna Fáil politician and a former Lord Mayor of Cork. He has served on Cork City Council since 1999, representing the South East electoral area. Prior to his election to the council, Shannon was a member of the Fianna Fáil National Youth Committee, chairperson of Cork North Central Ógra, and election agent to TD Micheál Martin. Shannon topped the poll in his first city council election with a 14.2% share of the vote. He has been re-elected four times, in 2004, 2009, 2014 and 2019. He was elected to the office of Lord Mayor on 24 June 2011, having previously served as Deputy Lord Mayor in 2009.


Party of National Unity (Czechoslovakia)

The Party of National Unity () was a party created on 21 November 1938 in the Czech part of Czechoslovakia after the occupation of large parts of the country by Germany (Munich Agreement) and Hungary (First Vienna Award) as a last attempt to unify forces to save Czechoslovakia from disappearing. Its Slovak equivalent in the Slovak part of Czechoslovakia was the Hlinka's Slovak Peoples Party - Party of Slovak National Unity created on 8 November.
It included most of all previous Czech political parties - absolute majority of Republican Party of Farmers and Peasants, National Unification, Czechoslovak Traders' Party, National Fascist Community, minor parties like National League, Czechoslovak Christian Social Party, National People's Party and part of Czechoslovak People's Party and Czechoslovak National Social Party
Ideologically the party was corporatist and quasi-fascist. The Party's chairman was the Prime Minister Rudolf Beran.
The party was forcibly dissolved after the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939. A part of the membership created the "Národní souručenství" (in English approx. National Partnership), the only Czech political organization permitted by the Germans in the Protectorate.


Louise Levesque

Louise Levesque, née Cavelier, (23 November 1703, Rouen – 18 May 1745, Paris) was an 18th-century French femme de lettres.
The daughter of a prosecutor at the parlement de Normandie, Louise Cavelier received a good education. At age 20, she married Levesque, a gendarme of the King whom she followed to Paris. Introduced to distinguished writers, these men of letters, of which she made her favorite company and who appreciated the scope of her mind, induced her to write. She therefore devoted her leisure reading and soon indulged herself to poetry. She tried her hand to most varied genres.


Hitoshi Motoshima

 was a Japanese politician. He served four terms as mayor of Nagasaki from 1979 to 1995. He publicly made controversial statements about the responsibility of Japan and its then-reigning Emperor for World War II and survived a retaliatory assassination attempt in 1990.
Biography.
Early life.
Motoshima was born on February 20, 1922 in Shinkamigotō, Nagasaki. During World War II the Japanese authorities suspected Motoshima of espionage because he was a descendant of Kakure Kirishitans and born out of wedlock. When he was twenty-one he was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army and became an artillery officer; he was stationed near Kumamoto and did not see combat before the war ended. Motoshima witnessed the aftermath of the atomic bombing of his hometown when he returned to Nagasaki about six weeks after it was bombed.
He was admitted to the Kyoto University Engineering Department, but due to World War II did not graduate until he was twenty-seven years old. Motoshima worked as a teacher before entering politics.
Political career.
Motoshima served as a Nagasaki Prefectural Legislature representative for five terms (twenty years) before being elected mayor of Nagasaki. While mayor he worked as chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party Nagasaki Prefecture Committee.
Following the mayor's controversial remarks and an attempt on his life, in the 1991 mayoral election the Communist Party did not run their own candidate and essentially supported Motoshima, who won re-election to a fourth term with additional cooperation from other progressive forces. However, facing much criticism, Motoshima lost the 1995 election to Liberal Democratic Party-endorsed opponent, Iccho Itoh, and retired from politics.
Controversy and assassination attempt.
In late 1988 during his third mayoral term, news that the Shōwa Emperor was gravely ill and not expected to live long had put Japan into a somber mood. On December 7 Motoshima was asked in a city council meeting by a council member from the Communist Party his opinion of the Emperor's responsibility for World War II. He answered:
The Liberal Democratic Party Prefectural Committee immediately demanded that he retract the statement, but Motoshima rejected the demand, saying he could not betray his conscience. In response, the Party Prefectural Committee removed him from the post of committee advisor, and many conservative organizations vilified the mayor. Furthermore, many extreme right-wing groups converged on Nagasaki and demonstrated in the streets with more than eighty speaker trucks calling out for divine retribution upon the mayor.
On January 18, 1990, when police had relaxed their guard on the mayor, a member of the right-wing group Seikijuku shot Motoshima in the back, but he survived the assassination attempt.
Retirement.
In 1998 Motoshima again attracted controversy by making statements such as, "It was a matter of course for atomic bombs to have been dropped on Japan, which had launched a war of aggression. Japan does not have the right to criticize the atomic bomb." for Kyodo News's interview. He is also quoted as saying, conversely, that the bombing was "one of the two great crimes against humanity in the 20th Century, along with the Holocaust"
In 2002 Motoshima was awarded both the first Korea/Japan Peace and Fellowship Prize and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. On October 31, 2014, he died at the age of 92.


Zita Linker

Zita Linker (, born 1 March 1917, died 26 January 2009) was an Israeli politician who briefly served as a member of the Knesset for Likud in 1977.
Biography.
Born in Vienna in Austria-Hungary, Linker attended high school in her home city, and university in London. She emigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1934.
She joined the General Zionists, which merged into the Liberal Party in 1959. She became a member of the Board of Liberal Women, and of the party's central committee and executive council, as well as serving as a delegate to various Zionist Congresses.
In 1973 she was on the Likud list (an alliance of the Liberal Party, Herut and several other right-wing parties) for the Knesset elections that year. Although she failed to win a seat, she entered the Knesset on 21 January 1977 as a replacement for Shmuel Tamir, who had resigned his seat after leaving Likud. However, Linker lost her seat in the May 1977 elections.
She died in 2009 at the age of 91.


Statue of John Barry

Commodore John Barry is a bronze statue of John Barry, by John Boyle.
It is located at Franklin Square (Washington, D.C.), 14th Street and K Street N.W. Washington, D.C.
It was dedicated on May 16, 1914.
The inscription reads:

(Base, south face:)

J.J. Boyle

(Base, front:)

JOHN BARRY

COMMODORE UNITED STATES NAVY

BORN COUNTY WEXFORD IRELAND 1745

DIED IN PHILADELPHIA 1803

(Base, east face:)

John J. Boyle

Sculptor

Edward P. Casey Architect
As part of American Revolution Statuary in Washington, D.C. the statue is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.


Do as I Say (Not as I Do)

Do as I Say (Not as I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy () is a book written by author Peter Schweizer and published by Doubleday in 2005. The book profiles contradictions and hypocritical behaviors of several famous individuals in the United States who are liberals. People profiled in the book include Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Ralph Nader, Al Franken, Cornel West, Michael Moore, George Soros, Noam Chomsky, Barbra Streisand and Gloria Steinem. Schweizer contends that many liberals publicly promote liberal values regarding the environment, affirmative action, racism, sexism and finance, but practice the opposite in their private and professional lives.
Summary.
Notable issues that Schweizer addresses in the work are Noam Chomsky's acceptance of money from prominent institutions whose policies he opposes (such as the Pentagon), living in an expensive home, and his visitation of socialist states such as Cuba. Chomsky considers himself an anarchist, not a liberal. Schweizer, in the rest of the work, makes similarly-toned accusations against individuals the book focuses on, particularly surrounding political issues such as environmentalism, labor, and taxation. After the book's publication, Chomsky talked to Schweizer about his creation of a trust fund for his daughters and grandchildren. In Schweizer's follow up discussion with Chomsky, Schweizer reveals that even though Chomsky abhors corporations and refers to them as "fascist", Chomsky's own retirement fund is invested in large capitalization NYSE companies and the TIAA-CREF stock fund. Schweizer points out:
In addition, during his publicity tours, Schweizer spoke of Arianna Huffington's use of private jets for transportation and excessive energy consumption, despite her public pro-environmentalist stance.
Reception.
Schweizer's book was generally well-received, showing up on "New York Times" bestsellers list in early 2006 and garnering praise from pundits such as Bill O'Reilly.
A television station in San Francisco, KGO-TV, reviewed Schweizer's claims against Nancy Pelosi. It found Schweizer's allegation that the workers at Pelosi's vineyard were not union workers to be true. The station also reported that the 1975 California Agricultural Labor Relations Act prevents Pelosi from assisting her workers in forming a union; or discussing a union contract with them unless they unionized on their own. The investigating reporter claimed that Pelosi paid her workers more than the largest union winery in the region. Schweitzer responded, “It's not my responsibility to go and find out how every single particular circumstance is handled on the Pelosi vineyard.”.
Al Franken wrote to the conservative publication "National Review" to dispute Schweizer's claims that he does not hire minorities. He gave several examples of minority employees who have worked on his radio and television shows.


Jean-Serge Brisson

Jean-Serge Brisson (born June 28, 1954) is a Canadian political activist, tax reform advocate, politician, and author. He is a former leader of the Libertarian Party of Canada and gained national notoriety in the 1990s for his opposition to businesses being forced to collect the provincial sales tax (PST) without being remunerated.
Early life.
Brisson was born in Embrun, Ontario, a small village to the east of Ottawa and raised on a dairy farm. He describes his early experiences with jobs and bosses to have put him off from ever being able to work for a boss, wanting to instead start his own business and be his own boss. He first apprenticed as a radiator technician and, in 1974, opened his own company in Embrun, Independent Radiator Co.
Political life.
Libertarian candidate.
Brisson has been a candidate for the Libertarian Party of Canada and the Libertarian Party of Ontario in Glengarry-Prescott-Russell and Ottawa South. He has never been elected provincially or federally.
In 2004, despite being the leader of the Libertarian Party, Brisson did not run in the federal election due to his recent election to municipal council in Russell, Ontario.
Leader of the Libertarian Party of Canada.
Brisson was elected as the leader of the party in 1999 and served until May 18, 2008. Brisson credits himself with organizing the party to be able to re-register itself as an official party with Elections Canada and for running more candidates.
City Councillor.
Following three unsuccessful attempts (including a narrow miss in 2000), Brisson was elected to the municipal council of Russell Township in November 2003 with 1,639 votes. As Councillor he opposed municipal legislation requiring all employees of local government to be proficient in both French and English. He was defeated in his bid for re-election on November 13, 2006 in the 2006 municipal election.
In the 2010 municipal election on October 25, 2010, he unsuccessfully sought election to city council again. With 1,045 votes, he placed ninth out of the nine candidates seeking the four council sets.
Opposition to PST collection.
In the early 1990s, Brisson refused to continue collecting the Provincial Sales Tax (PST) putting forward the idea to the then New Democratic Party of Bob Rae, that collection of any money by small business for any government is slavery. Also the Progressive Conservatives of Brian Mulroney introduced the Goods and Sales Tax (GST) in Canada to replace the manufacturing sales tax. Brisson argues that customers should be sending in their taxes to the Ontario government themselves, the Ontario government mandated that all businesses charge the sales tax when a customer was purchasing a good or service since 1961, then send that money to the government. Brisson said he never agreed to be hired as a tax collector for the provincial government, but if he was going to be doing their work, he expected to be paid the same as other provincial tax collectors, which at the time Brisson's shop rate was approximately $30 per hour. However, the government would not pay businesses for the added responsibilities to the business, which Brisson argued was a form of slavery. Brisson documented his experience in his book titled "Tea Party of One: All Governments Invited". In 1994, Brisson claims to have ceased filing income takes returns.
Personal life.
Brisson is a francophone and advocate for francophone rights. In 2012, his radiator repair shop came under fire for having a sign with its services listed only in French.


Armand Joseph Dubernad

Armand Joseph Dubernad was born 23 November 1741, in Bayonne. He died 9 May 1799, in Morlaix.
Armand Joseph Dubernad was a merchant, a French and Spanish financier, Consul general of the Holy Roman Empire, deputy, mayor, and cofounder of the first Jacobin Club of Brittany.
Biography.
Dubernard was the son of a middle-class man of Bayonne. But, his family originally came from La Bastide-Clairence and before that from Laplume, in the north of Gascony.
Before the Revolution.
Before the French revolution started, Armand Joseph Dubernad traded with China, Europe, Eastern and Western Indies, with Morlaix, Seville and Cadiz. He was one of the principal shareholders of the bank of Saint-Charles and various companies which finance great work and contribute to reduce the Spanish debt. His close cousin, the count François Cabarrus, was Minister of king Charles III of Spain. His cousins, the Lesseps, his father-in-law, his brother-in-law and his brother are diplomatic wealthy persons. Dubernad also plays a part of precursor in the field of marine insurance.
During the Revolution.
In 1788, he was appointed deputy of the Third Estate in Rennes, then appointed Sénéchaussée of Morlaix. In 1789, Armand Joseph Dubernad is listed among the writers of the "Cahiers de Doléances" (= Register of grievances) of the city. In 1790, he is the cofounder of the first Jacobin Club of Brittany, of which he became president.
During The Terror, Armand Joseph Dubernad rebuilt one of the castles of the wife of Philippe Egalité, "La Bourdaisière", near from Montlouis destroyed following a whim of Etienne François de Choiseul.
After Thermidor, in the night of the 14 to 15 Vendémiaire An IV (6 October to 7th, 1795), a poster is placarded with Morlaix, denouncing Dubernad as an "aristocrat, royalist and banker of Charette". It was signed by the brother of the Général Moreau and by others former prisoners of the revolutionary jails.
Dubernad died in 1799, almost ruined because of the English blockade, and loans to help the poor or to finance the revolutionary festivals.
The family.
His father-in-law and then his brother-in-law, Jean and Gaspard Lannux de La Chaume are Consuls of Spain in France, before the Revolution. His son married the daughter of Michel Behic, niece of the first French constitutional bishop, Louis-Alexandre Expilly de la Poipe, and also sister-in-law of the brother of the Général Moreau.
Armand Joseph Dubernad is Consul general of the Holy Roman Empire in Morlaix. His brother, Salvat du Bernad, in the same time, is before the French Revolution, a rich trader and a very important financier of Seville and the Consul of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in France and Spain. But, his brother will be imprisoned as of the entry in war of the Spain to have supposedly wanted to set fire to the manufacture of the tobaccos of Seville. During the Peninsular War, he will be the consular agent of France, in Seville until in 1812.
His granddaughter, Françoise Gaudelet d'Armenonville will marry Auguste de Rambaud, who is the son of Agathe de Rambaud, then in her second marriage to the count Amédée d'Allonville.
His grandson, the captain Henry Dubernad is the nephew of the French Vice Admiral Jacques Bergeret. In 1796, his uncle, Bergeret, as captain of the frigate 'La Virginie', was captured by Sir Edward Pellew in the "Indefatigable". An English offer to exchange him for Sir Sidney Smith was refused by the French. On Smith's escape in 1798, Bergeret was sent home unconditionally by the English.


Peninsular Commons

Peninsular Commons () is a local political group based in Kowloon City founded in April 2020 by a group of young activists. It currently holds two seats in the Kowloon City District Council, Lee Hin-long who is also a Synergy Kowloon member and Tony Kwok Tin-lap of the Democratic Party.
History.
In the pro-democracy primaries for the 2020 Legislative Council election, Peninsular Commons convenor Frankie Fung Tat-chun and Kowloon City District Councillor Lee Hin-long ran in a ticket in Kowloon West. The ticket came fourth and secured the nomination for the general election.


Christian A. R. Christensen

Christian A. R. Christensen (17 December 1906 – 27 January 1967) was a Norwegian newspaper editor. He is known for his work in the Norwegian resistance movement, as editor of "Verdens Gang" and as a historical writer. He also helped shape the Ethical Code of Practice for the Norwegian Press.
Early life.
He was born in Solum as a son of merchant Nils Christian Christensen (1872–1957) and his wife Ellen Kristine Reiersen (1883–1953). He was a brother of Nils-Reinhardt Christensen. Following miscellaneous education, he was hired in "Dagbladet" in 1926. In 1933 he married Else Marie Østvedt (1906–1982). They lived in Vestre Aker. In 1934 Christensen was hired in the publishing house Aschehoug. He also wrote news analyses for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation radio. Also, Christiansen was a deputy member of the Liberal Party of Norway national board.
World War II.
In 1940, Norway was invaded and occupied by Germany as a part of World War II. Christiansen participated for the Liberal Party in early negotiations with the occupying power, but as Germany seized tighter control in September 1940 Christiansen joined the Norwegian resistance, and acted as a middle man between the Norwegian press and the Home Front. He co-founded the written organ of the Home Front, "Bulletinen". A co-founder was Einar Gerhardsen, and editors were Christensen, Olaf Solumsmoen and Olav Larssen. Christensen also wrote news analyses for several illegal newspapers. He was arrested by the Nazi authorities in late February 1941, for "spying", and sat for three months at Møllergata 19 and for five days in Grini concentration camp. While at Møllergata 19 he penned the crime novel "Telefon til myrdede", issued in 1942. He also continued writing news analyses, which were smuggled out of the prison. Upon release in late May 1942, he continued his work. In 1943 he was arrested for the second time. Via Gjerpen and Larvik he was brought to Grini, and sat there from 19 to 31 August.
Later career.
After the war, some members of the Home Front discussed a restart of the newspaper "Tidens Tegn", but this did not go through. Instead a new newspaper with roots in the Home Front was created, with Christensen as editor-in-chief: "Verdens Gang". He remained editor-in-chief until his death. From 1953 he co-edited with Oskar Hasselknippe, and he was succeeded by Vegard Sletten. Despite initial hardships, the newspaper grew influent and has been the largest in Norway since 1981. In 1963 it assumed the tabloid format as the first in Norway, reportedly to Christensen's dismay. Christensen also chaired the Norwegian Press Association from 1958 to 1962, and was instrumental in establishing the Rights and Duties of the Editor code in 1953 and for the revision of the Ethical Code of Practice for the Norwegian Press in 1956. This was the first revision since the code's inauguration in 1936.
He also participated in the non-press sphere after the war; already in 1944 he helped shape the Common Platform ("Fellesprogrammet") which was meant to unite political parties in Norway after the war. In May 1945 he supported Paal Berg, head of Hjemmefrontens Ledelse in his endeavors to create a broad, non-partisan coalition. The road was open as the pre-war cabinet Nygaardsvold resigned, but the increasingly popular Communist Party were particularly skeptical to Berg, and the Conservative President of the Storting C. J. Hambro got his way in reconvening the pre-war Parliament of Norway. Berg faced unexpected opposition from this Parliament, and gave up on 20 June. Instead Einar Gerhardsen formed a cabinet, and also won the first free post-war election.
Christensen was a board member of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and the Norwegian News Agency. In addition, he continued his writing of historical books. Notable works included "Fra verdenskrig til verdenskrig" ('From World War to World War') and "Okkupasjonsår og etterkrigstid" ('Occupation Years and Post-war Era'), volumes eight and nine of the series "Vårt folks historie" ('Our People's History'), both issued in 1961. He died of a heart attack while on a cruise in 1967, in a hospital in Las Palmas.


Henri Lepage (essayist)

Henri Lepage (born 21 April 1941) is a French libertarian essayist.
He is most famous for his book "Demain le Capitalisme" ("Capitalism Tomorrow"), in which, in 1978, he presented an overview of the new libertarian thinkers. The book has been translated into a dozen languages. It is considered important for the early spread of neoliberalism in Sweden. Lepage is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society.


Conservative Republican Party

The Conservative Republican Party (Portuguese: "Partido Republicano Conservador", PRC) was a Brazilian political party founded in October 1910 to represent the Republican and oligarchic ideals of agrarian elites of states discontented with the domination of the states of São Paulo and Minas Gerais ("café com leite") during the República Velha.
Its main representatives were Rio Grande do Sul Senator José Gomes Pinheiro Machado and Marshal Hermes da Fonseca, who was elected president of the republic from 1910 to 1914.
The PRC declined from 1916 with the death of Pinheiro Machado. Like all political parties it was finally abolished by the Estado Novo in 1937.


Ezra Klein

Ezra Klein (born May 9, 1984) is an American journalist, political analyst, "New York Times" columnist, and the host of "The Ezra Klein Show" podcast. He is a co-founder of "Vox" and formerly served as the website's editor-at-large. He has held editorial positions at "The Washington Post" and "The American Prospect", and was a regular contributor to Bloomberg News and MSNBC. His first book, "Why We're Polarized", was published by Simon & Schuster in January 2020.
Klein rose to prominence as a blogger, who became famous for his in-depth analysis on a range of policy issues. By 2007, Klein's blog had gained a substantial following and was acquired by "The American Prospect", where the journalist served as an associate editor. At "The Washington Post", Klein managed Wonkblog, a branded blog that featured his and other reporter's writing on domestic policy.
In 2014, alongside fellow journalists Matt Yglesias and Melissa Bell, Klein co-founded Vox"," a website for explanatory news owned by Vox Media. He served as the editor-in-chief, and later as editor-at-large. Klein also contributed articles to the website, hosted an associated podcast ("The Ezra Klein Show"), and worked as an executive producer for Vox's Netflix series "Explained." In November 2020, Klein announced he would be leaving "Vox" to join "The New York Times" as a columnist and podcast host.
Klein has been described as a "Washington "wunderkind"".
Early life and education.
Klein was raised in a Jewish family in Irvine, California. His father, Abel Klein, originally from Brazil, is a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Irvine; his mother is an artist. Klein attended University High School, where he was a poor student and graduated in 2002 with a 2.2 GPA. Klein attended the University of California, Santa Cruz for two years before transferring to the University of California, Los Angeles, from which he graduated in 2005 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science. While at UCSC, he applied to write for "City on a Hill Press" but was rejected. He said school was never a great fit for him academically or socially.
Career.
Klein worked on Howard Dean's primary campaign in Vermont in 2003 and interned for the "Washington Monthly" in Washington, D.C., in 2004. "The media is as effective and important an agent for change as the legislative bodies, and I think it's where I'm happiest and most effective," Klein said. In 2003, he and Markos Moulitsas were two of the earliest bloggers to report from a political convention, that of the California State Democratic Party. In 2006, Klein was one of several writers pseudonymously flamed by "The New Republic" writer Lee Siegel (posting as a sock puppet called "sprezzatura").
On December 10, 2007, Klein moved his blog full-time to "The American Prospect".
Klein's prolific blogging caught the attention of Steve Pearlstein, "The Washington Post" veteran business columnist. "I was blown away by how good he was—how much the kid wrote—on so many subjects," Pearlstein said. Pearlstein sent samples of Klein's work to managing editor Raju Narisetti. A few weeks after he heard from Pearlstein, "Washington Post" foreign correspondent John Pomfret asked Klein to have lunch with him and financial editor Sandy Sugawara. Narisetti hired Klein to be the Post's first pure blogger on politics and economics. On May 18, 2009, he began writing at the newspaper.
In May 2011, when Bloomberg View launched, Klein became a columnist there in addition to his work at "The Washington Post" and MSNBC.
Klein announced he would be leaving "The Washington Post" in January 2014, with the intent to start a new media venture with several other veteran journalists.
The new media venture was later identified as the politics site "Vox".
Klein had previously "proposed the creation of an independent, explanatory journalism website—with more than three dozen staffers" and an annual budget of more than to remain at "The Washington Post". During negotiations, Post publisher Katharine Weymouth and new owner Jeff Bezos did not make a counteroffer.
Klein was editor-in-chief at "Vox", later editor-at-large, and formerly wrote for and edited Wonkblog at "The Washington Post". He frequently provides political commentary on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show", "Hardball with Chris Matthews", and "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell". He is a former contributor to "Countdown with Keith Olbermann". On March 14, 2013, "The Week" magazine reported that Klein was among those being considered to host MSNBC's yet-unnamed 8 p.m. weekday prime-time show that would replace "The Ed Show". Ultimately, the time slot was filled with "All In with Chris Hayes".
In October 2015, Klein, along with Sarah Kliff and Matt Yglesias, launched "The Weeds", a "Vox" podcast of detailed discussions on public policy. Klein also hosts the podcast "The Ezra Klein Show". Klein is an executive producer of "Vox" Netflix series "Explained", which debuted in 2018.
In October 2019, Klein, along with other reporters from Vox Media, started the podcast "Impeachment, Explained".
Klein joined the "New York Times" in 2020 and became one of their opinion columnists in 2021.
Health care debate.
In December 2009, Klein wrote an article in "The Washington Post", stating that U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman was "willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score", because Lieberman "was motivated to oppose health care legislation in part out of resentment at liberals for being defeated in the 2006 Connecticut Democratic Primary". Klein based his estimate on an Urban Institute report that estimated that 22,000 people died in 2006 because they lacked health insurance. This article was criticized by Jonah Goldberg of the "National Review", who called it a "silly claim". Charles Lane, also of "The Washington Post", described Klein's article as an "outrageous smear". But E. J. Dionne, also of "The Washington Post", agreed with Klein's claim, saying that "Klein is right that there is not a shred of principle in Lieberman's opposition." Klein later said he regretted the phrasing and his position is that despite universal coverage, the social determinants of health are still powerful predictors that, on average, ensure the lower socioeconomic classes die sooner than those with more income and education.
JournoList.
In February 2007, Klein created a Google Groups forum called "JournoList" for discussing politics and the news media. The forum's membership was controlled by Klein and limited to "several hundred left-leaning bloggers, political reporters, magazine writers, policy wonks and academics".
Posts within JournoList were intended only to be made and read by its members. Klein defended the forum saying that it "[ensures] that folks feel safe giving off-the-cuff analysis and instant reactions". JournoList member, and "Time" magazine columnist Joe Klein (no relation to Ezra Klein) added that the off-the-record nature of the forum was necessary because "candor is essential and can only be guaranteed by keeping these conversations private".
The existence of JournoList was first publicly revealed in a July 27, 2007, blog post by blogger Mickey Kaus. However, the forum did not attract serious attention until March 17, 2009, when an article published on "Politico" detailed the nature of the forum and the extent of its membership. The Politico article set off debate within the blogosphere over the ethics of participating in JournoList and raised questions about its purpose. The first public excerpt of a discussion within JournoList was posted by Mickey Kaus on his blog on March 26, 2009.
In addition to Ezra Klein, membership of JournoList included Jeffrey Toobin, Eric Alterman, Paul Krugman, Joe Klein, Matthew Yglesias, and Jonathan Chait.
On June 25, 2010, Ezra Klein announced in his "Washington Post" blog that he would be terminating the JournoList group. This decision was instigated by fellow blogger Dave Weigel's resignation from the "Post" following the public exposure of several of his JournoList emails about conservative media figures.
Klein had justified excluding conservative Republicans from participation as "not about fostering ideology but preventing a collapse into flame war. The emphasis is on empiricism, not ideology."
Awards.
In 2010, he was named Blogger of the Year by "The Week" magazine and The Sidney Hillman Foundation. In 2011, he was named one of the 50 most powerful people in Washington, D.C., by "GQ". His blog was also named one of the 25 best financial blogs by "Time" magazine in 2011. In 2013, Klein won the Online News Association Award for Best Online Commentary. He also won the American Political Science Association's Carey McWilliams Award, for "a major journalistic contribution to our understanding of politics". He appeared as one of 80 men featured in "Esquire" 80th anniversary issue and in a feature in "T" magazine.
Personal life.
Klein is married to Annie Lowrey, an economic policy reporter at "The Atlantic". They live in Oakland, California. They have one child, born in February 2019.


Fort Griswold

Fort Griswold is a former American defensive fortification in Groton, Connecticut named after Deputy Governor Matthew Griswold. The fort played a key role in the early stages of the American Revolutionary War, in correspondence with Fort Trumbull on the opposite side of the Thames River. Griswold defended the port of New London, Connecticut, a supply center for the Continental Army and friendly port for Connecticut-sanctioned privateers who attacked British ships. The 17-acre site is maintained as Fort Griswold Battlefield State Park by the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
History.
Construction of the fort was begun on December 5, 1775 in response to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. It was completed in 1778 and was also called Groton Fort. It is located on a hill with the ability to bombard ships entering the Thames River. About 100 feet below the main fort is a battery for additional guns which was built during the Revolutionary War and improved in the late 19th century.
In September 1781, British troops under Benedict Arnold raided and burned New London. The British were well informed of the layout of Fort Griswold, and Arnold approached the river from such an angle that its guns could not engage his fleet. The British forces divided, some to burn New London and the rest to attack the fort in the Battle of Groton Heights. The British eventually broke into the fort, and Colonel William Ledyard surrendered by handing his sword hilt-first to the commanding British officer—who took it and thrust it through Colonel Ledyard. Arnold abandoned the fort soon after and left New London in flames.
Later use.
The fort was rebuilt and manned in several other conflicts, but the Battle of Groton Heights was its most prominent use. It was used during the War of 1812 by sailors commanded by Commodore Stephen Decatur when Decatur's three-ship squadron was blockaded by a larger British force in 1814. In the 1840s, the fort's lower battery was rebuilt for 20 guns, initially 32-pounder and 24-pounder cannons.
After the American Civil War, the lower battery was redesigned to mount 10-inch Rodman guns. It was a sub-post of Fort Trumbull for most of its use by the Army, although it was never actively garrisoned after the Civil War and had an ordnance sergeant as caretaker. It was in the care of Ordnance Sergeant Mark Wentworth Smith from 1863 to 1879, a Mexican–American War veteran who was wounded at the Battle of Chapultepec. Sergeant Smith died in 1879 at age 76, the oldest active duty enlisted soldier in the history of the Army. Fort Griswold became obsolete after the Spanish–American War, when Fort H. G. Wright was completed in 1906 on Fishers Island as part of the Harbor Defenses of Long Island Sound.
State park.
The State of Connecticut has owned and operated the site as Fort Griswold Battlefield State Park since 1953. This includes the restored earthwork battery, cannons, and a shot furnace and powder magazine. The grounds include several monuments and memorials to state residents who fought in different wars:


Chuck Knipp

Chuck Knipp (born 1961) is an American Canadian (dual citizenship) comedian best known for his controversial vocal characterisations heard on radio – the "Mammy Welfare Queen", Shirley Q. Liquor; histrionic North Dakota Marge; Orangefield resident Delbert Peveto; and the tragic searcher for any kind of spirituality, Betty Butterfield.
Knipp also does radio vocal impersonations of Barbara Jordan, H. Ross Perot, U.S. Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George Bush and Bill Clinton. He is known for radio advertisements in Southeast Texas as well as widespread protests against his performances.
Knipp retired from live performances in 2010 and now is a volunteer Registered Nurse with the American Red Cross.
Support.
Knipp concedes that his performances should make people uncomfortable because "we all are used to treating African Americans as if their skin colour is a disease" and that black people are "more than intelligent enough to discern the nuance" of his performances. He has also said that "many people thought that Harriet Beecher-Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was and still is perceived as racist, despite being the probable artistic genesis of emotional support against slavery in the 19th century."
Criticism.
There have been a number of articles in the media that have taken issue with Knipp and the character.


Sabine Herold

Sabine Herold (born 8 July 1981) is a French classical liberal activist and main spokeswoman of Alternative libérale, a French liberal/libertarian political party.
Biography.
Herold was born in Reims, France. Her parents are both teachers. She is an alumna in public administration from the Institut d'études politiques de Paris and a master of business from HEC Paris.
Since 2002, she has been the editor and spokeswoman of Liberté chérie ("Beloved Freedom"), a French libertarian think tank. Sabine Herold became known in 2003 when she led an 80,000 member protest advocating reforms in France and demanding a responsible attitude from trade unions. Her stand against the unions led to her being described as the 'new Joan of Arc'.
She has often reflected upon the policy implemented by the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and is commonly called "Mademoiselle Thatcher" by newspapers, a comparison that she considers to be a compliment.
She married fellow Alternative libérale leader Édouard Fillias in September 2006. She was a candidate for the 2007 parliamentary elections in Paris against conservative Françoise de Panafieu.


Alexander Gregg

Alexander Gregg (1819–1893), an Episcopal clergyman, was the first bishop of Texas.
Bishop Alexander Gregg was born on October 8, 1819, in Society Hill, South Carolina, Darlington County, South Carolina, in an area historically known as ″the old Cheraws."
Gregg was the first elected Bishop of Texas in 1859. His diocese covered the entire state of Texas. Bishop Gregg presided through the difficult days of the Civil War and Reconstruction, and gave leadership as Texas changed from frontier to settled community. He saw the number of churches in his diocese grow from six to sixty. In 1874, toward the end of his episcopate, Gregg presided over the division of the Diocese of Texas into three dioceses - two new missionary districts of West Texas and North Texas. The Diocese of Texas retained the name of the original diocese in our present boundaries.
In 1867, Bishop Gregg published the history of his native area with a decided emphasis on the Patriot role in the American Revolution.
Bishop Gregg died at his Austin, Texas, home on July 10, 1893, is buried at Saint David's Church in Cheraw, South Carolina.
Currently (2013) there are a total of six separate bishoprics (dioceses) in the state: the Dioceses of Texas, West Texas, Dallas, Fort Worth, Northwest Texas and westernmost Texas attached to New Mexico as the Diocese of the Rio Grande.


List of American liberals

American liberals are proponents of Modern liberalism in the United States. This ideology combines ideas of civil liberty and equality with support for social justice and a mixed economy. According to Ian Adams, all major American parties are "liberal and always have been. Essentially they espouse classical liberalism, that is a form of democratized Whig constitutionalism plus the free market. The point of difference comes with the influence of social liberalism".
Economically, modern liberalism opposes cuts to the social safety net and supports a role for government in reducing inequality, providing education, ensuring access to healthcare, regulating economic activity and protecting the natural environment. This form of liberalism took shape in the 20th century United States as the franchise and other civil rights were extended to a larger class of citizens. Major examples include Theodore Roosevelt's Square Deal and New Nationalism, Woodrow Wilson's New Freedom, Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, Harry S. Truman's Fair Deal, John F. Kennedy's New Frontier and Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society.
In the first half of the 20th century, both major American parties had a conservative and a liberal wing. The conservative Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats formed the conservative coalition which dominated the Congress in the pre-Civil Rights era. As the Democrats under President Johnson began to support civil rights, the formerly Solid South, meaning solidly Democratic, became solidly Republican, except in districts with a large number of African-American voters. Since the 1960s, the Democratic Party has been considered liberal and the Republican Party has been considered conservative. As a group, liberals are referred to as the left and conservatives as the right. Starting in the 21st century, there has also been a sharp division between liberals who tend to live in denser, more heterogeneous communities and conservatives who tend to live in less dense, more homogeneous communities.


J. R. Gach

Jay Robert "J.R." Gach (April 2, 1952 – July 13, 2015) was a controversial talk radio host and shock jock who had prominent on-air roles in Buffalo, New York; Louisiana; and Schenectady, New York.
Gach was born in 1952 to Joseph Harry Gach (1917–2007), a retired army colonel, and Dorothy Louise Shive (1921–2004). He got his start at a couple of stations in Chester, Pennsylvania as "Jay Roberts" in the late 1960s.
Jay worked for KLOU in Lake Charles, LA 1975-1976. In 1989 through 1992, Gach worked for "Kajun 103" in Baton Rouge Louisiana, as a morning show host. In a dramatic foreshadowing of his radio career to follow, Gach spectacularly flamed out in Baton Rouge. In this early era of talk radio, Gach also attempted a midday show on 1300 WIBR in Port Allen, Louisiana. Apparently due to his excessive weight, Gach was often at a loss trying to talk for extended periods on WIBR without use of his cart-based sound effects. Gach would later state his poor performance in Louisiana was an act of deliberate self-sabotage brought on by depressive episodes.
From the summer of 1992 through 1995, Gach worked as a talk radio host on WGR ("J.R. on 'GR") and later WWKB in Buffalo, New York, where a doctor secretly treated Gach's depression with the antidepressant Prozac. Gach famously quipped on the air that he liked the Buffalo area and wanted to stay there so much that, if necessary, he would "drive a bus" in order to earn enough money to stay in the area. However, this promise would be broken as WWKB prepared for one of its many format changes and Gach then returned to Louisiana (this time, New Orleans-based WWL). After WWL he hosted a show from 1998 to 2002 on WGY in Schenectady, NY, the region that he would call home for the next several years. During this time, he briefly held (for a few weeks in February 2001) the late-night host's position at one of America's top news/talk stations, WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio, from which he was fired for referring to Japanese people as "yellow monkeys." As his behavior became increasingly erratic starting in 2001, Gach mysteriously disappeared from the airwaves in August 2002; two months later, his then-wife (Suzie Gach, a radio veteran with whom J.R. would often co-host his shows) announced that he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and had attempted suicide.
After undergoing another round of antidepressants, Gach would later resurface on WRCZ/WBOE "The Bone" (now WYKV) in Albany as that station's afternoon and later morning host; paired with Shawn "Pi" Bolts, he continued to unapologetically make many controversial racial comments and jokes including the harassment of one individual, referring to a restaurant in which she was working as a "genetic mutant restaurant" during a February 15, 2006 broadcast. Said individual sued Galaxy Communications, then owners of WRCZ/WBOE, and the lawsuit was settled for $1,000,000 in December 2007. Gach had been released by WBOE in August 2006.
Gach is also credited as being the first person to voice a radio commercial with a profanity, describing Sinus Buster cayenne nasal spray as "the best shit that ever was" for a commercial on Sirius Satellite Radio. The radio spot was conceived by Wayne Perry, inventor of Sinus Buster and infamous entrepreneur known for his guerrilla marketing tactics.
For most of 2007, Gach hosted his own talk show on Internet radio, paid for by sponsors. It included local advertisements, announcements by nationally-recognized voiceover personality Jim Cutler (also known as the voice of ESPN Radio and many other stations), and weather forecasts for the Albany/Schenectady area, even though the show was based (by Gach's own admission) from a home studio in Florida. Like his previous shows, Gach prominently featured his significant other, although Suzie had long since divorced him and this time, he was with his girlfriend Erica. The show was completely uncensored and frequently used language and euphemisms that would not be allowed on traditional radio. The show aired live on weekdays from 2 PM to 4 PM Eastern Time and looped the rest of the time.
In December 2007, Gach's father and aunt both died. This, coupled with the lawsuit settlement and the late 2000s recession, prompted Gach to pull his show and his Web site offline, at first listing a tribute to his parents and his late aunt, and later only a black screen, with the words "Stay Tuned..." in the center of the screen in yellow lettering. By the end of 2007, the "jrshowonline.com" and "jrgach.com" domains had been taken offline or allowed to expire.
Gach was an avowed libertarian, supported the campaign of the late Harry Browne in 1996 and supported Ron Paul for President.
Gach died July 13, 2015 at his home in New Port Richey, Florida after a lifelong battle with diabetes. He was 63 years of age. JR had become a bit of a recluse after leaving the talk-show circuit. He died without issue and his remains were cremated.


Criticism of Employment Support Allowance

Criticism of the Work Capability Assessment, used by the Department for Work and Pensions in the United Kingdom, to assess and reassess claimants of Employment and Support Allowance or enhanced rate Universal Credit, has been wide-ranging, from the procedure itself, to the financial cost of using both Atos and Maximus to assess claimants. Other criticisms discuss the level of deaths, suicides and high overturn rates at tribunals that the WCA has caused.
Criticism of Atos.
Quality issues with Atos.
On 22 July 2013, the DWP announced that it had recently "directed" Atos to "put in place a quality improvement plan following a DWP audit which identified an unacceptable reduction in the quality of written reports produced following assessments."
The statutory independent report for parliament on the operational performance of the WCA in 2013 dealt with the 'quality improvement plan' in one sentence:
The DWP said it had carried out an unscheduled and "urgent" audit in "April/May [sic] 2013" that looked at reports written over the six months to March, in which time Atos had furnished the DWP with more than 300,000 reports. The DWP said it had found 164 reports that its in-house medical staff had said had scored only a 'C' for quality. However, during the period in question, the 164 reports had been deemed adequate by the department's on-the-ground decision-makers, who had used them to decide on claimants' entitlement to ESA — unacceptable reports are returned to the outsourcer for what the DWP calls "a rework".
The department's press release tried to explain the paradox:
High cost of Atos contract.
The Public Accounts Committee of MPs chaired by Margaret Hodge heard evidence that over the previous financial year, Atos had been paid £112million to carry out 738,000 assessments. At that time, 38% of appeals to tribunals were successful and the committee's view was that too many wrong decisions were being made, only for the decisions to be overturned later (while Atos was paid by the DWP, it was the Ministry of Justice that paid for the tribunal appeals, with £500 million being the potential cost of these appeals over ten years). Hodge said that the DWP got "far too many decisions wrong on claimants’ ability to work...at considerable cost to the taxpayer" and added that this can "create misery and hardship to the claimants themselves". She also remarked: "We saw no evidence that the Department was applying sufficient rigour or challenge to Atos given the vulnerability of many of its clients, the size of the contract and its role as a near monopoly supplier. We are concerned that the profitability of the contract may be disproportionate to the limited risks which the contractor bears" and concluded: "The Department's got to get a grip of this contract!".
The Office for Budget Responsibility found that between 2011 and 2014, no savings at all had been made in the sickness benefit budget, which remained at more than £13 billion a year. Furthermore, because many more claimants than forecast were being placed in the Support Group, the government's fiscal watchdog "raised" its estimate for spending on ESA from 2014 by one billion pounds a year.
Criticism of Maximus.
Failure to meet volume targets.
Within six months of taking over the contract, the DWP expected Maximus to have the capacity to carry out one million assessments a year. This was intended to clear the backlog and then allow the department to order hundreds of thousands of "reassessments" of people who had already been granted ESA, in the belief that many would have recovered from their illness and so could be taken off benefits. Repeated assessments were one of four key tenets of ESA from the very beginning, but the programme had to be put on hold in early 2014.
At the end of October 2015, the DWP's director-general of finance was bullish about hitting this higher target when he appeared before a parliamentary committee, saying: "We are confident that [Maximus] will over-achieve the amounts of work over and above the forecast that was set".
But at the start of November, Maximus's senior management team warned
its shareholders that certain performance metrics, most notably volume targets, were not being met and the challenges with the WCA contract resulted in reduced earnings outlook for fiscal year 2016. For fiscal year 2015, the contract had generated at least 35 million dollars less than expected. The company additionally stated that although recruitment of healthcare professionals had improved, their training and retention was still a problem, with a shortfall of assessors expected to last until the autumn of 2016.
On the same day, the price of shares in the company fell sharply, losing more than 20% of their value.
High cost of Maximus contract.
In January 2016, the National Audit Office (NAO) published its evaluation of the DWP's health and disability assessment contracts. It said the cost of each WCA had risen from £115 under Atos to £190 under Maximus.
The report went on to say that Maximus was facing "significant challenges with staff failing to complete training requirements" and revealed that in July 2015 - less than six months into the new contract - the DWP had been obliged to draw up a 'performance improvement plan' with Maximus because "volume targets were not being met".
The NAO also declared that the DWP had "allowed bidders to make assumptions about staff training that it knew were overly optimistic and difficult to achieve" and implied that the target set by the DWP of one million assessments a year was too ambitious, saying: "One experienced bidder withdrew from the process because it could not meet the required number of assessments". The next month, the most senior official in the DWP told a parliamentary committee that of all the bidders for the WCA contract, only Maximus and one other unnamed firm had submitted bids that anticipated hitting the DWP's ambitious new target.
Criticism of assessment credibility.
Apart from questions arising from the substantial proportion of 'fit for work' recommendations that have been disregarded by decision-makers or overturned by tribunals or by the DWP itself, concerns about the reliability of the WCA as an indicator of fitness for work have arisen from a number of other sources. The Work Programme firms responsible for training people in the Work-Related Activity Group said they had "ongoing concerns about the accuracy of the WCA" and rated earlier improvements to the WCA as only "4 or 5 out of 10".
Outcome targets.
Professor Malcolm Harrington, the first external reviewer of the operation of the WCA, was asked by a parliamentary committee whether he had ever found any evidence that Atos assessors had been put under pressure to reach targets. He replied:
In 2012, a GP posed as a trainee Atos assessor and recorded undercover video footage that was later broadcast by Channel 4's investigative current affairs programme "Dispatches". In the film, trainers warned the NHS doctor that if on average he were to recommend more than one disabled person per day for the Support Group, he would be subject to an increased level of management scrutiny through a mechanism known as "targeted audit". The undercover doctor was told:
An assessor on "targeted audit" would also no longer be allowed to recommend a claimant for the Support Group without asking an authorised colleague for permission to do so. When the doctor asked an experienced assessor where these rules had come from, she replied: "DWP".
Both the DWP and Atos categorically denied ever having had any target for getting claimants "off" sickness benefits. However, both eventually admitted that Support Group "norms" were being used nationwide, though they both denied that the purpose of "targeted audit" was to limit the number of claimants placed in the Support Group. Atos said that the audit process triggered by the breach of a "norm" was intended to ensure consistency across the firm's UK team: if the assessor's reports met the DWP's expectations, the healthcare professional would not be asked to change their recommendations.
In the phase from the inception of the WCA in October 2008 to November 2010, only new claims for ESA were assessed. A 'norm' of 1 in 8 or 12.5% was in use as the benchmark for targeted audit during the Incapacity Benefit reassessment programme, suggesting that the DWP was expecting a very similar proportion of claimants to be recommended for the Support Group overall. However, Professor Harrington has described the set of people making fresh claims as "a completely different group of people" from long-term recipients, who generally have a significantly higher level of disability than new claimants. Moreover, studies of long-term Incapacity Benefit recipients carried out by the DWP before the 'roll out' of the Incapacity Benefit reassessment programme suggested that 31% of established recipients - almost 1 in 3 - would be suitable for the Support Group. Despite this, the 'norm' does not appear to have been adjusted upwards to reflect the more severe disabilities experienced by the people being tested from 2011 onwards.
In 2013, the Work Programme's training providers - outsourcing companies who coach and train people put into the Work-Related Activity Group after their WCA - complained that claimants who were "clearly unfit for any type of work-related activity" were nonetheless being put in the Work-Related Activity Group rather than the Support Group, and that "claimants with terminal cancer, whose life expectancies were shorter than the work-ready prognosis" had been referred to them for pre-employment training.
Much later, a Green Paper provided more evidence that a "de facto" outcome target had been in use. In 2016 the government conceded that:
In December 2016, the DWP released data on outcomes covering the first quarter of that year: then, for the small number of Incapacity Benefit recipients undergoing a WCA for the first time, the percentage being placed in the Support Group after their assessment was 87%, while 39% of "new" claimants qualified for the Support Group immediately after their WCA.
Expert opinion.
When Atos gave its reasons for seeking to exit the contract to carry out the assessment, the firm announced that it had come to the conclusion that "in its current form, the WCA is not working for claimants, for DWP or for Atos Healthcare".
Conversely, Dr Paul Litchfield, who advised the DWP on the performance of the WCA in 2013 and 2014, described the test he had helped to design as "by no means perfect" but nevertheless adequate. However, in 2014 he cautioned that: "We have taken the WCA about as far as it can sensibly go in terms of modification and adjustment".
Professor Dame Carol Black advised the government on back-to-work policy between 2006 and 2016. She said of the WCA: "I don't think anyone thinks it has been a success", describing it as "badly placed" and too far from when the first sick note or fit-note is penned.
United Nations report.
In November 2016, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities published its report on the situation facing disabled people in the United Kingdom. Of the WCA, it said:
The DWP responded by saying that promoting and enabling work for persons with disabilities was a high priority and it described the various ways it was trying to bring this about. The department emphasised its hopes for the future, especially the aspirations outlined in its recent Green Paper.
Politicians' assessments.
In 2015, Iain Duncan Smith complained that the system gave doctors a "binary choice", not an opportunity to deliver a more nuanced opinion on claimants' fitness for work.
In April 2016, the new Welfare Secretary, Stephen Crabb, said that the WCA had "never worked as intended. The WCA was a mess, it didn't recognise mental health issues and other types of disability".
Later the same year, the Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Debbie Abrahams, said the test her party had described as "tough but fair" in 2010 had been "discredited".
In late October 2016, when appearing on Question Time, the president of the Liberal Democrats, Baroness Sal Brinton, described the WCA as "not fit for purpose", adding "this process absolutely fails" and "we need to get rid of it". On the same BBC programme, Keir Starmer QC, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, said:
In September 2016, Damian Green, the latest Welfare Secretary, was asked by the BBC's Andrew Marr about the deaths of specific benefit claimants:
In reply, the Secretary of State acknowledged that "obviously there are individual cases where it looks as though the system is not working". Marr asked once more: "Are you going to look again at the way people have been assessed generally to see if it has been as fair and humane as [...] you would like it to be?" Green replied:
High overturn rate in independent tribunals.
Between 2011 and 2013 around 40% of claimants found 'fit for work' appealed to a tribunal and around 40% of those appeals were successful. The number of external appeals dropped markedly over the course of 2013, although most appellants who do reach the tribunal stage now see their 'fit for work' decision overturned.
During 2012, a parliamentary committee heard evidence from welfare advisors that, in nearly two out of three successful appeals to tribunals against fit-for-work decisions, appellants were seeing their points rise from "zero" in the original assessments – meaning that the original WCA had detected no relevant disabilities at all – to at least 15 points after the tribunals had independently assessed their claims. Parliament's Office of Science and Technology analysed the WCA's performance and found that "the number of fit-for-work decisions being overturned on appeal has led to questions about the reliability of the assessment process".
Confusion between successful appeal figures.
Critics of the WCA often say that more than 50% of appeals are successful, while the DWP suggests that only 15% of decisions are overturned. Both are technically correct. Independent tribunals do now overturn more than half of the appeals that come before them. However, even in the busy years for tribunals — 2011 to 2013 — this only represented 15% of all the 'fit for work' decisions ultimately made by the DWP. The apparent discrepancy arises because some people don't launch an appeal to a tribunal and because some of those who do appeal are unsuccessful.
The tribunal is the very end of the process. Some 'fit for work' recommendations are disregarded by the DWP and some initial decisions are overturned on formal reconsideration by the DWP, which leaves a smaller proportion of lingering 'false negatives' to be overturned by independent tribunals.
A 2012 study of 28,000 tribunal hearings analysed the reasons for overturning the DWP's decisions:
Potential bias.
In May 2013, a doctor who had recently resigned from Atos blew the whistle on biases in the testing process, telling the BBC:
He claimed that:
The news report drew particular attention to misleading interpretations of the test's eligibility criteria that the doctor claimed were being taught to new assessors as off-the-record rules of thumb during their initial classroom training (and used as benchmarks when assessors' reports were audited). An Atos executive interviewed by the BBC acknowledged that the guidance referred to "might seem somewhat odd" but said it had been "taken out of context" and was part of a much bigger set of questions considered during assessments.
On the same day, an Atos spokesperson made it clear that the training curriculum was set by the DWP and duly followed by Atos, stating: "We do not deviate from government guidelines in our training".
Ministerial response.
The Employment Minister was asked by the BBC about the allegations of bias but he replied with a general explanation of the principles underpinning the Incapacity Benefit reassessment programme. Tom Greatrex MP wrote to the Prime Minister to bring to his attention the whistleblower's allegations that the core assessment was "skewed against the claimant". Downing Street made no reply but simply passed the letter back to the DWP, which issued a non-specific statement.
In July, the former assessor gave an interview to "The Guardian". In it, he described how he had first heard trainers advocating the "bogus" interpretations of the test's descriptors in 2011 during a one-day conversion course covering the new version of the WCA and its new criteria. In response to the article's description of auditors instructing assessors — at the point when a report of a face-to-face assessment had been written, but had not yet been sent to the DWP — to alter their reports and reduce the number of points awarded, Atos said:
Reaction from Atos auditors.
Some assessors with several years' experience of carrying out disability assessments were chosen by Atos to audit the work of their colleagues. Their main role was to give feedback to new recruits who had passed their initial classroom training but who had not yet been accredited by the DWP and allowed to 'fly solo'. Auditors would also check the reports of "accredited" assessors, if the assessors were putting more claimants than expected into the Support Group - a process known as "targeted audit".
Although the whole of a report would be broadly scrutinised, the thrust of an audit was to ensure that the report had been written according to the standards stipulated by the firm's customer - the DWP - and largely focussed on three things:
Explanation.
In August, the whistleblower expanded on his allegations in a first-hand account published by the "British Medical Journal". He suggested that the DWP's alleged actions might have been at least partly driven by pressure to "reduce government debt". The DWP's senior doctors made no reply but the clinical director of Atos did respond. In relation to the claim that some Atos assessors had been led to interpret the test's criteria too harshly, she did not deny that the "bogus rules of thumb" had been used in training talks but she said that assessors were expected to follow the "written" guidance contained in the 255-page instruction manual issued to all assessors:
The foreword to the WCA Handbook states:
Lack of appropriateness for Incapacity Benefit reassessment.
The reassessment programme was dogged by problems: handling of the contract was criticised by the National Audit Office and by the Public Accounts Committee, which described the DWP's project management style as "complacent"; the overhaul of the WCA by medically-qualified civil servants produced what seemed to be a more stringent version of the test, but outside experts warned it was flawed; thousands of appeals were launched each month, swamping the tribunals service and leading to long delays; in 2013, accusations of bias, questions about quality and a contractual dispute caused the process to stall; and the DWP's attempts to restart the reassessment programme in 2015 were hampered by a shortage of healthcare professionals willing and able to carry out the test.
During the reassessment programme, more than 50,000 vulnerable people successfully appealed to independent tribunals after wrongly being declared fit for work. The number of people choosing to appeal fell dramatically in 2013, although the summer of that year saw a cluster of well-documented deaths of people who had recently had their benefits cut after being declared fit for work. At inquests, coroners have raised concerns about information-gathering prior to face-to-face assessments, and there is epidemiological evidence to indicate that the 'roll out' of the WCA has been associated with hundreds of deaths.
An independent review undertaken by occupational heath expert Professor Malcolm Harrington, a small team from the DWP, along with an Independent Scrutiny Group that included the National Clinical Adviser to the Care Quality Commission and the chief executive of the mental health charity MIND, gave a negative report of the WCA's usability, with "The Guardian" summarising Professor Harrington's opinion as being that the test was "impersonal", it "lacked empathy" and it was too reliant on "computer systems and drop-down menus". In the executive summary of his report, he wrote that he "found that the WCA is not working as well as it should. There are clear and consistent criticisms of the whole system and much negativity surrounding the process...[but] I do not believe the system is broken or beyond repair. I am proposing a substantial series of recommendations to improve the fairness and effectiveness of the WCA. If adopted, I believe these changes can have a positive impact on the process."
He made 25 recommendations, with his changes he advised to the core assessment being:
Deaths and suicides blamed on WCA.
The DWP accepts that being found fit for work and ineligible for sickness benefit can, in some circumstances, harm a recipient's physical or mental health. For this reason, one of the WCA's eligibility criteria — the non-functional descriptor Substantial Risk — applies where there is, on balance, more than a small risk of harm if the claimant were to be declared 'fit for work'. In these circumstances, the at-risk person should be given the benefit.
Post-mortem case reviews.
The DWP has looked into the deaths of at least 49 benefit claimants. Most died after undergoing a WCA. The department was compelled to publish their findings in May 2016 after a campaign by "Disability News Service". The conclusions of the heavily redacted reports included:
Inquests and media reports.
There have been several media reports of unexpected deaths after assessments where the claimants seem to have been at risk of harm if found fit for work. The most widely reported deaths followed assessments that took place in the seven months from December 2012 to June 2013. The deaths themselves were clustered around the summer of 2013:
Tim Salter.
Tim Salter was visually impaired as a result of brain damage from a previous suicide attempt. He killed himself after being found fit for work. At his inquest, the coroner said: “A major factor in his death was that his state benefits had been greatly reduced, leaving him almost destitute and with threatened repossession of his home”.
Linda Wootton.
Linda Wootton had undergone two heart-and-lung transplants and was left with a weakened immune system caused by the immunosuppressant therapy she was taking to prevent her body rejecting the transplanted organs. She died days after the DWP upheld its decision to declare her 'fit for work' (neither the assessor, the first decision-maker nor the second official who reviewed her case had deemed her to be at substantial risk of harm).
Mark Wood.
Mark Wood was receiving Incapacity Benefit and Disability Living Allowance because of long-term mental health problems, including a "phobia" of some types of food and overvalued concerns about his food's freedom from contamination. He had been losing weight for many months before his WCA. He died, weighing 35 kg, after he was declared fit for work and his Incapacity Benefit and Housing Benefit were stopped (the DWP continued to pay him Disability Living Allowance). His family believes that the stress of his forthcoming WCA and then afterwards the loss of the bulk of his income damaged his already fragile mental state, worsened what the DWP called his "eating disorder" and so contributed to his death.
The Oxfordshire Coroner delivered a narrative verdict in which he said the final pathological event was "unascertained", but he saw no significant evidence of neglect or self-neglect (neglect has a very precise legal definition), suicide, or unlawful killing (for which a high evidence threshold must be crossed before a coroner can deliver it as a verdict).
The DWP carried out a post-mortem case review then admitted that the decision to declare him fit for work had been wrong, but the department denied that its decision had contributed to his death.
In response to the case, Tom Pollard of the mental health charity "Mind" said:
Michael O'Sullivan.
Michael O'Sullivan suffered from long-term depression and anxiety and was receiving sickness benefit in the form of Income Support until it was stopped by the DWP following a WCA. He committed suicide after being on Jobseekers Allowance for six months. After the inquest, the coroner said: "The intense anxiety that triggered his suicide was caused by his recent assessment...as being fit for work". The assessor — a former orthopaedic surgeon — admitted during the inquest that he had not fully explored the risk of suicide at the face-to-face assessment, despite suicidal ideation being described on the claim form.
The coroner wrote to the DWP in January 2014. She was concerned that neither the Atos doctor nor the DWP decision-maker had sought information from Michael O'Sullivan's own doctors. The DWP wrote back, referring to the guidance issued to the Atos healthcare professionals who, before face-to-face assessments, scrutinised the paperwork submitted by claimants — guidance called the "Training and Development ESA Filework Guidelines". The DWP confirmed that suicidal thoughts had been described on Michael O'Sullivan's application form but said "further evidence was not requested in line with the stated policy [in the "Training and Development ESA Filework Guidelines"] where the claimant has referred to suicidal ideation". These policy guidelines say: "Where there is evidence of a previous suicide attempt, suicidal ideation, or self-harm expressed in the [information on the claim form], the healthcare professional must request further medical evidence".
The DWP said the specific action it would take in response to the coroner's concerns was to issue a reminder to the relevant members of staff. Michael O'Sullivan's daughter's MP said:
The case had many similarities with an earlier death following a WCA, where a coroner had also written to the DWP about the lack of an attempt to contact the psychiatrist who had been treating a person with mental health problems who went on to commit suicide.
David Barr.
David Barr suffered from paranoid delusions and had a history of self-harm. He was taking anti-psychotic medication prescribed by his psychiatrist. He jumped from a bridge to his death after a risk assessment — by a physiotherapist — that led the DWP to deny his claim for ESA. The department later admitted that its decision was wrong; it said he should have been categorised as being at substantial risk of harm.
Epidemiology.
A study published in the "Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health" in November 2015 found an independent correlation between the deployment of the Incapacity Benefit reassessment programme in England and an increase in reported mental health problems, higher levels of antidepressant prescribing and 590 additional suicides. The DWP responded by pointing out that association does not imply causation: the rise in mental health issues when the WCA was deployed after 2010 could have been caused by something else entirely and the temporal association with the reassessment programme could just have been a coincidence. The researchers said they had found no other explanation for the rise.
Deaths after WCAs.
In response to a campaign using the Freedom of Information Act, the Information Commissioner ordered the DWP to disclose the number of people who had died in the 12 months after their WCA since May 2010 – the DWP had sought to withhold this information, arguing variously that it was too time-consuming, the department was about to publish it anyway or it would not be in the public interest because the data might be misinterpreted. But in August 2015, the DWP was forced to reveal that between December 2011 and February 2014, 2,380 claimants had died after being declared fit for work. However, as Dr Ben Goldacre has explained, an imprecise question in the original FOI request and an unhelpful DWP response — which Goldacre characterised as "essentially a PDF and an excel spreadsheet full of red herrings" — meant that no firm conclusion could be drawn from these figures alone about whether the death rate of people found fit for work is any higher or lower than expected.
Deaths and claims ending.
DWP figures show that, between January and November 2011, 10,600 sick and disabled people died within six weeks of their benefit claim ending; many disability campaigners believe that these deaths occurred after — and even "because" — the claimants were declared fit for work. "The Daily Telegraph" has questioned this: it posits that the 10,600 deaths include people who happened to die from natural causes, "after" which their benefit payments ceased. The newspaper said that when the DWP states "within six weeks", this "does not mean 'within the following six weeks': it means 'within six weeks either side'. What that means is that the large, presumably overwhelming, majority of those 10,600 people died, and then their claims ended because they were dead."
United Nations report.
In November 2016, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities published its report on the situation facing disabled people in the United Kingdom. Of deaths after WCAs, it said:
The DWP responded by confirming that it did not systematically monitor or investigate deaths following WCAs. It admitted that it had reviewed the deaths of at least 49 claimants, but said it only did this a): when formally notified of a death by "a family member or solicitor", and b): where a link between the death and the DWP's actions has been alleged by the family member or their legal advocate. The department said that an internal review might "make recommendations for possible improvements" but would not "seek out or apportion blame" (internal reviews have though been used by the DWP to "deny" any culpability for deaths following WCAs).
The DWP drew the committee's attention to the role of the coroner in England and Wales.
Inappropriate assessment cases.
As the backlog shrank towards zero and the programme to reassess established ESA claimants got going again, the WCA process attracted more negative headlines in February 2016 after the DWP initiated reassessment proceedings against a military veteran in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's disease.