The Most Ominous Opening to a Scandal in a Long Time
Yeesh. We don't know what Dennis Hastert did . . . According to the indictment, the former House Speaker agreed to pay $3.5 million in 2010 to a person identified only as "Individual 'A," in an effort to "compensate and conceal" Hastert's "prior misconduct." The indictment doesn't reveal details of the misconduct, but it does note the two have known each other for "most of Individual A's life" and that the individual is from the same Illinois town where from 1965 to 1981 "Hastert was a high school teacher and wrestling coach." To conceal the relationship, prosecutors allege that Hastert, over a four year period, withdrew a total of $1.7 million from a number of his personal bank accounts to give to Individual A. According to the indictment, at first, he took out large amounts -- "$50,000 withdrawals of cash" on 15 occasions. But when "bank representatives questioned" him in 2012, "Hastert began withdrawing cash in increments of less than $10,000" because banks are required by federal law to report anything larger. In 2014 the FBI questioned Hastert about his withdrawals, and he allegedly lied, telling agents "Yeah... I kept the cash. That's what I'm doing," explaining that he did not trust the banking system. . . . but whatever Hastert did, we can all take a guess at what kind of a secret is so bad that it's worth paying $3.5 million for and sufficiently damaging that it would destroy the life of a 73-year-old man long removed from political office and enjoying a quiet, lucrative life as a lobbyist. The fact that the indictment pointed out the alleged blackmailer's connection to where Hastert was a high-school teacher and coach sure seems . . . particular. I hope somebody's keeping an eye on him. Blame the Clintons for the Clintons' Greed, Not 'the System' Over at the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof rushes to blame the country as a whole for the Clintons' actions: "The problem is not precisely the Clintons. It's our entire disgraceful money-based political system . . . Most politicians are good people. Then they discover that money is the only fuel that makes the system work and sometimes step into the bog themselves." Whoa, whoa, whoa. Bill and Hillary weren't hitting the $700,000-per-speech-in-Nigeria circuit because they want to self-finance her campaign -- at least, as far as we know. Bill and Hillary don't want that money as "fuel to make the system work." (Jeff Jacoby calculates that the Clintons' average speaking fee is nearly five times what the median U.S. household earns per year.) They want their $30 million per year for themselves -- although we know they don't spend it on private jets, because the Clinton Foundation already pays for all of their travel expenses. A major change from the America of a generation ago is that people who run official nonprofits like charities expect to be compensated on a scale comparable to corporate CEOs. This is true for nonprofit organizations . . . The 25 presidents, CEOs, and other officers on our Highest-Paid Nonprofit Executives List averaged $520,000 in compensation in 2012, the most recent information available for all organizations (Note: Hospitals were excluded from our List) . . . The average compensation for the 100 highest-paid nonprofit executives was $307,818. . . . and university presidents: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute president Shirley Ann Jackson made more than $7 million in 2012 . . . Thirty six college presidents earned over $1,000,000 in 2012 — up one from the previous year — The Chronicle found. On average, college presidents earned nearly $400,000 in 2012, up 2.5% from 2011. The Clinton Foundation's 2012 Form 990 reveals that CEO Bruce Lindsey was paid a salary of $385,046, with $27, 535 in "estimated other compensation." The average American's net worth is below $69,000. By some measuring sticks, these nonprofit salaries actually outpace CEO salaries. If you look at CEO salaries at U.S.-traded public companies or the companies listed on the S&P 500, you get figures from $10 million to $11.4 million. But if you look at everyone with the title "chief executive" in the data of Bureau of Labor Statistics, which includes the hundreds of thousands of non-publicly traded American companies, you end up with average CEO pay of $178,400 in 2013. This is not a new complaint . . . In a letter to Robert J. Bach, the Boys & Girls Clubs board chairman, the senators said they were troubled by some of the group's expenses at a time that it reported a $13-million loss on its 2008 Form 990 informational tax return. The senators complained in a press release that the organization's president, Roxanne Spillett, earned more than $900,000 in compensation in 2008, "even while local boys and girls clubs nationwide close their doors due to budget shortfalls." They also asked about reported spending that year of more than $4-million on travel, $1.6-million on conferences and meetings, and more than $540,000 on lobbying. There was a time when a person running a nonprofit would have felt a sting of public shame for accepting a salary so high. It's a nonprofit. You're not supposed to get wealthy working there. Frank Bruni: So many of the candidates who raise their hands for "public service," in their self-congratulating parlance, aren't at peace with the economic humility that the phrase connotes. For more than a few of them, "public service" is a fig leaf over private cupidity. In many cases, it's a prelude to a lucrative payday that they're counting on. I'm at the Breaking Point with these Hollywood Remakes This week, the pop-culture podcast features a discussion of the inevitable embarrassments of summer swimsuit season, the upsides and downsides of Facebook keeping you in touch with everyone from past chapters of your life, and the worst reality-television offerings (no, we didn't discuss the Duggars). We also take up the seemingly endless trend of Hollywood remakes, and focus upon the recently revealed trailer for the remake of . . . Point Break. No one should argue that the original 1991 Point Break is a genuine cinematic masterpiece, but if you just take it for what it is -- vintage early 1990s action cheese -- it's really a delight. In fact, in the fashion, the haircuts, the sets and the whole look of the film, this might be the most "early 90s" movie of all time. Of course, the movie grabs audiences with the Ex-President Bank Robbers; four bank robbers in masks of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan burst in, grab the cash from the drawers, and run out within 90 seconds. (Unsurprising that Reagan is the leader, no? It's a shame that there's only one brief impression, in which "Nixon," leaving the bank, declares, "I am not a crook!") 
They would be too scared to ever have a robber in an Obama mask today, huh? This was Keanu Reeves's first real action role, and he's genuinely likable in it as the rookie FBI agent. This may have been the last time Gary Busey seemed sane. John C. McGinley chews the scenery as the uptight FBI boss. To make the "undercover FBI agent begins to feel sympathy and connection to the criminals he's pursuing" trope work, a story needs to make the criminals seem not so menacing and the leader particularly charismatic. It's a philosophical seduction story, and the devil has to make the wrong path seem appealing and justifiable. If the audience doesn't feel at least a little envy or sympathy to the bank robbers, then our hero will come across as a putz. Maybe next to Dirty Dancing and Road House, the bank-robbing adrenaline-junkie zen philosopher Bodhi is the late Patrick Swayze's signature role. He's constantly spouting lines like, "If you want the ultimate, you've got to be willing to pay the ultimate price. It's not tragic to die doing what you love" that would sound ridiculous if Swayze didn't throw himself into the part with such relish. Screenwriters are reminded that the villain is always convinced he's the hero of his own story, and Bodhi is a terrific example of this, as he lectures his fellow bank robbers, "This was never about the money, this was about us against the system. That system that kills the human spirit. We stand for something. We are here to show those guys that are inching their way on the freeways in their metal coffins that the human sprit is still alive." We're told the bank robbers, despite terrifying bank patrons, are small-time. When they're not robbing banks or being chased, they surf and skydive, in some really well-shot sequences by director Kathryn Bigelow, who went on to direct The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty. This is that delightful pre-computer-generated-images era, where everything has to be done by stuntmen and daring actors.
You can tell when the actors are enjoying themselves. We could almost sympathize with the bad guys . . . until they shoot someone, and quickly escalate to kidnapping and attempted murder. Anyway, Point Break coasts along on the charisma of its lead actors, and makes the concept of two macho guys having a philosophical battle work. While a bad trailer can misrepresent a film, the upcoming remake looks like a catalog of "gritty reboot" clichés. Our bank robbers now infiltrate planes carrying truck palettes full of cash! They're not just surfers, they're "extreme athletes"! They're "disrupting the world financial markets!" From the beginning "they don't care who gets killed in the process!" (Which makes the moral seduction a lot less plausible or palatable to the audience.) They party on yachts! They use explosives and C-4! It's like the studio felt that the stakes of the first film -- some money, a woman's life, and a man's soul -- weren't big enough, so it had to get turned into a James Bond film. Sigh. ADDENDA: Presuming you've seen Bernie Sanders's . . . er, unusual essay . . .  | 
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