Author: muckety

This post was archived from createpositivechange.org/. View the original on the Wayback Machine.

This post was archived from createpositivechange.org/. View the original on the Wayback Machine.

This post was archived from createpositivechange.org/. View the original on the Wayback Machine.

This post was archived from createpositivechange.org/. View the original on the Wayback Machine.

All directorships are not alike. Just ask Henry Cisneros.

The former secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development makes a lot more money on the board of Countrywide Financial, the giant mortgage lender, but he must be having more fun at Live Nation, the concert promoter and entertainment company. Especially now during the mortgage meltdown.

Countrywide is cutting jobs, writing off bad loans, and dealing with an SEC inquiry into stock sales by CEO Angelo Mozilo. Some are even calling for a much wider probe of the company and its practices.

At Live Nation, meanwhile, the big news is Madonna’s $120 million concert and promotion deal.

Sure, at Countrywide board meetings, Cisneros gets to kick back with former NBA great Oscar Robertson, the Big O, who is a fellow director. But at Live Nation, Cisneros’s fiduciary responsibility extends to Madonna, who was given $25 million in stock.

Cisneros earned compensation worth $358,966 at Countrywide last year and $110,721 at Live Nation, according to company filings.

In September, the San Antonio Express-News noted that Cisneros had sold 5,000 shares of Countrywide for $200,462 (about $40 a share) in May and quoted him saying he was holding onto the rest of his stock to show his “support for the company.” Countrywide shares closed at about $16.50 Thursday.

In 2000, Cisneros helped form a company, now called CityView, which focuses on urban housing. The former president of Univision Communications and a former mayor of San Antonio, Cisneros currently sits on the board of the Broad Foundation.

This post was archived from createpositivechange.org/. View the original on the Wayback Machine.

This post was archived from createpositivechange.org/. View the original on the Wayback Machine.

While CEO Erik Prince has been the public face of Blackwater USA during recent weeks of intense government and media scrutiny, the often outspoken Cofer Black, company vice chairman, has kept out of the limelight.

Black, one of the nation’s eminent authorities on combatting terrorism, is deeply involved in the network of Blackwater-related companies. He also serves as chairman of Total Intelligence Solutions and is CEO of Black Group, LLC.

With more than 30 years of service in the Central Intelligence Agency, Black is known as a superspy. He helped catch the international terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as \”Carlos the Jackal\” and in 1999, was named head of the CIA’s Counter-Terrorism Center.

That role put him in the hot seat on Sept. 11, 2001. Black would later tell the 9/11 Commission that he had lacked the resources to effectively combat the wordwide terrorist threat.

An August 2007 report by the CIA’s inspector general said bureaucratic breakdowns at the agency enabled the 9-11 hijackers to evade authorities and complete the attacks. The report criticized Black by title, but not by name.

Black left the State Department in November 2004. Three months later, he joined Blackwater.

He also serves as senior adviser for counterterrorism and national security issues with the Mitt Romney presidential campaign. Romney declined to comment about Blackwater after company guards shot and killed at least 11 Iraq civilians in September.

Although Black brings a wealth of experience and connections to Blackwater, his persona evidently does not match the image that the company is now trying to project.

Prince is young and clean-cut, while Black is middle-aged, jowly and gray. Prince, a former Navy SEAL, has a ramrod military bearing. Black is a rather frumpy bureaucrat.

After seeking advice from public relations experts at Burson-Marsteller, Prince provided cool, professional testimony to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He did a media blitz that included interviews with 60 Minutes, Wolf Blitzer, Charlie Rose and Newsweek.

Black’s most publicized appearance in recent weeks was a speech at the Texas Tech International Cultural Center in Lubbock, Texas.

\”As you know, my company as been in the news a little bit,\” he said then, according to a report in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.

Black, on the other hand, seems to be doing his best to stay out of the news.

This post was archived from createpositivechange.org/. View the original on the Wayback Machine.

The script has changed.

Pointing to Al Gore, parents throughout the country may be telling their children that if they study hard, lead good lives and not become president they could be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Gore is the co-winner of this year’s Peace Prize for sounding the alarm on global warming. He shares the prize with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

While Gore may have fashioned a grand comeback, a look at the post-defeat careers of other recent unsuccessful presidential wannabes shows that there can be life, a good life at that, after losing. All have found things to do, sometimes lucrative things, and many have held elective office, most often in the U.S. Senate.

And if Gore should ever want to try again for the presidency, he can take hope from Richard Nixon, a true comeback artist.

Like Gore, Nixon served as vice president for eight years.

Like Gore, he lost a close race for the presidency.

And then, eight years later, Nixon was elected president.

But a look at the list of presidential losers from the major parties since 1960 shows that Gore has many models to follow.

2004: John Kerry, Democrat. After losing to George H.W. Bush, he has remained in the U.S. Senate. First elected to that body in 1984, he won a fourth term in 2002.

2000: Al Gore, Democrat. He won the popular vote, but lost the electoral vote to George W. Bush. Since losing, he has taught journalism in college, served on corporate boards (Apple) and starred in the award-winning documentary on climate change, An Inconvenient Truth.

1996: Bob Dole, Republican. He gave up his seat in the Senate to concentrate on the presidential race, which he lost to Bill Clinton, a Democrat. After his defeat, Dole has practiced law and given speeches. He has been a spokesperson for various products and causes and a TV commentator.

1992: George H.W. Bush, Republican. Vice president under Ronald Reagan, he served one term as president and lost a re-election bid to Clinton. Since leaving the presidency, he has raised money for various causes and, like Clinton, given many speeches.

1988: Michael Dukakis, Democrat. Governor of Massachusetts when he lost to Bush, he served the final two years of his third term. Since then he has been a professor of political science at Northeastern University and a visiting professor at UCLA. He also served on the board of directors of Amtrak.

1984: Walter Mondale, Democrat. A former senator from Minnesota and a former vice president, he lost to President Ronald Reagan. Since losing, he has practiced law and taught. He was ambassador to Japan from 1993 to 1996. He has remained active in party politics and in 2002 stood in for Paul Wellstone on the ballot in Minnesota after Wellstone died in a plane crash just 11 days before the election.

1980: Jimmy Carter, Democrat. After losing his bid for re-election, he has devoted himself to humanitarian and diplomatic causes. In 2002, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1976: Gerald Ford, Republican. He served a little more than two years as president after Nixon’s resignation. After losing to Carter, Ford retired, moved to California, served on corporate boards and gave speeches. He died in 2006.

1972: George McGovern, Democrat. After losing to Nixon, he remained in the Senate until January 1981. From 1998 to 2001, he was the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. agencies for food and agriculture in Rome. In 2001, he was named a U.N. global ambassador on world hunger.

1968: Hubert H. Humphrey, Democrat. After losing to Nixon. He was elected to the Senate from Minnesota in 1970, returning to a body in which he had served for 16 years. He died in 1978 while in office.

1964: Barry Goldwater, Republican. He was finishing his second six-year term in the Senate in 1964 and did not seek re-election. After losing to Lyndon Johnson, he ran for the Senate from Arizona again in 1968 and won the first of three more terms. He died in 1998.

1960: Richard Nixon, Republican. He lost to John F. Kennedy after serving eight years as vice president under Dwight Eisenhower. He was elected president in 1968, re-elected in 1972 and resigned in 1974, in the wake of the Watergate scandal. He died in 1994.