A policy is typically described as a principle or rule to guide decisions and achieve rational outcome(s). The term is not normally used to denote what is actually done, this is normally referred to as either procedure or protocol. Whereas a policy will contain the 'what' and the 'why', procedures or protocols contain the 'what', the 'how', the 'where', and the 'when'. Policies are generally adopted by the Board of or senior governance body within an organization where as procedures or protocols would be developed and adopted by senior executive officers. Policies can assist in both subjective and objective decision making. Policies to assist in subjective decision making would usually assist senior management with decisions that must consider the relative merits of a number of factors before making decsions and as a result are often hard to objectively test eg. work-life balance policy. In contrast policies to assist in objective decision making are usually operational in nature and can be objectively tested eg. password policy.

A Policy can be considered as a "Statement of Intent" or a "Commitment". For that reason at least, we can be held accountable for our "Policy"

The term may apply to government, private sector organizations and groups, and individuals. Presidential executive orders, corporate privacy policies, and parliamentary rules of order are all examples of policy. Policy differs from rules or law. While law can compel or prohibit behaviors (e.g. a law requiring the payment of taxes on income), policy merely guides actions toward those that are most likely to achieve a desired outcome.

Policy or policy study may also refer to the process of making important organizational decisions, including the identification of different alternatives such as programs or spending priorities, and choosing among them on the basis of the impact they will have. Policies can be understood as political, management, financial, and administrative mechanisms arranged to reach explicit goals.'''

Impact

Intended effects

The intended effects of a policy vary widely according to the organization and the context in which they are made. Broadly, policies are typically instituted to avoid some negative effect that has been noticed in the organization, or to seek some positive benefit.

Corporate purchasing policies provide an example of how organizations attempt to avoid negative effects. Many large companies have policies that all purchases above a certain value must be performed through a purchasing process. By requiring this standard purchasing process through policy, the organization can limit waste and standardize the way purchasing is done.

The State of California provides an example of benefit-seeking policy. In recent years, the numbers of hybrid cars in California has increased dramatically, in part because of policy changes in Federal law that provided USD $1,500 in tax credits (since phased out) as well as the use of high-occupancy vehicle lanes to hybrid owners (no longer available for new hybrid vehicles). In this case, the organization (state and/or federal government) created an effect (increased ownership and use of hybrid vehicles) through policy (tax breaks, highway lanes).

Unintended effects

Policies frequently have side effects or unintended consequences. Because the environments that policies seek to influence or manipulate are typically complex adaptive systems (e.g. governments, societies, large companies), making a policy change can have counterintuitive results. For example, a government may make a policy decision to raise taxes, in hopes of increasing overall tax revenue. Depending on the size of the tax increase, this may have the overall effect of reducing tax revenue by causing capital flight or by creating a rate so high that citizens are deterred from earning the money that is taxed. (See the Laffer curve.)

The policy formulation process typically includes an attempt to assess as many areas of potential policy impact as possible, to lessen the chances that a given policy will have unexpected or unintended consequences. Because of the nature of some complex adaptive systems such as societies and governments, it may not be possible to assess all possible impacts of a given policy.

Policy cycle

In political science the policy cycle is a tool used for the analyzing of the development of a policy item. It can also be referred to as a "stagist approach". One standardized version includes the following stages: # Agenda setting (Problem identification) # Policy Formulation # Adoption # Implementation # Evaluation

An eight step policy cycle is developed in detail in ''The Australian Policy Handbook'' by Peter Bridgman and Glyn Davis: (now with Catherine Althaus in its 4th edition)

# Issue identification # Policy analysis # Policy instrument development # Consultation (which permeates the entire process) # Coordination # Decision # Implementation # Evaluation

The Althaus, Bridgman & Davis model is heuristic and iterative. It is intentionally normative and not meant to be diagnostic or predictive. Policy cycles are typically characterized as adopting a classical approach. Accordingly some postmodern academics challenge cyclical models as unresponsive and unrealistic, preferring systemic and more complex models. They consider a broader range of actors involved in the policy space that includes civil society organisations, the media, intellectuals, think tanks or policy research institutes, corporations, lobbyists, etc.

Content

Policies are typically promulgated through official written documents. Policy documents often come with the endorsement or signature of the executive powers within an organization to legitimize the policy and demonstrate that it is considered in force. Such documents often have standard formats that are particular to the organization issuing the policy. While such formats differ in form, policy documents usually contain certain standard components including:

A purpose statement, outlining why the organization is issuing the policy, and what its desired effect or outcome of the policy should be.

An applicability and scope statement, describing who the policy affects and which actions are impacted by the policy. The applicability and scope may expressly exclude certain people, organizations, or actions from the policy requirements. Applicability and scope is used to focus the policy on only the desired targets, and avoid unintended consequences where possible.

An effective date which indicates when the policy comes into force. Retroactive policies are rare, but can be found.

A responsibilities section, indicating which parties and organizations are responsible for carrying out individual policy statements. Many policies may require the establishment of some ongoing function or action. For example, a purchasing policy might specify that a purchasing office be created to process purchase requests, and that this office would be responsible for ongoing actions. Responsibilities often include identification of any relevant oversight and/or governance structures.

Policy statements indicating the specific regulations, requirements, or modifications to organizational behavior that the policy is creating. Policy statements are extremely diverse depending on the organization and intent, and may take almost any form.

Some policies may contain additional sections, including:

Background, indicating any reasons, history, and intent that led to the creation of the policy, which may be listed as motivating factors. This information is often quite valuable when policies must be evaluated or used in ambiguous situations, just as the intent of a law can be useful to a court when deciding a case that involves that law.

Definitions, providing clear and unambiguous definitions for terms and concepts found in the policy document.

Typologies

Policy addresses the intent of the organization, whether government, business, professional, or voluntary. Policy is intended to affect the 'real' world, by guiding the decisions that are made. Whether they are formally written or not, most organizations have identified policies.

Policies may be classified in many different ways. The following is a sample of several different types of policies broken down by their effect on members of the organization.

Distributive policies

Distributive policies extend goods and services to members of an organization, as well as distributing the costs of the goods/services amongst the members of the organization. Examples include government policies that impact spending for welfare, public education, highways, and public safety, or a professional organization's benefits plan.

Regulatory policies

Regulatory policies, or mandates, limit the discretion of individuals and agencies, or otherwise compel certain types of behavior. These policies are generally thought to be best applied when good behavior can be easily defined and bad behavior can be easily regulated and punished through fines or sanctions. An example of a fairly successful public regulatory policy is that of a speed limit.

Constituent policies

Constituent policies create executive power entities, or deal with laws. Constituent policies also deal with Fiscal Policy in some circumstances.

Miscellaneous policies

Policies are dynamic; they are not just static lists of goals or laws. Policy blueprints have to be implemented, often with unexpected results. Social policies are what happens 'on the ground' when they are implemented, as well as what happens at the decision making or legislative stage.

When the term policy is used, it may also refer to:

Official government policy (legislation or guidelines that govern how laws should be put into operation)

Broad ideas and goals in political manifestos and pamphlets

A company or organization's policy on a particular topic. For example, the equal opportunity policy of a company shows that the company aims to treat all its staff equally.

The actions the organization actually takes may often vary significantly from stated policy. This difference is sometimes caused by political compromise over policy, while in other situations it is caused by lack of policy implementation and enforcement. Implementing policy may have unexpected results, stemming from a policy whose reach extends further than the problem it was originally crafted to address. Additionally, unpredictable results may arise from selective or idiosyncratic enforcement of policy.

Types of policy analysis include:

Causal (resp. non-causal)

Deterministic (resp. stochastic, randomized and sometimes non-deterministic)

Index

Memoryless (e.g. non-stationary)

Opportunistic (resp. non-opportunistic)

Stationary (resp. non-stationary)

These qualifiers can be combined, so for example you could have a stationary-memoryless-index policy.

Types

Company Policy

Communications and Information Policy

Human resource policies

Privacy policy

Public policy

* Defense policy

* Domestic policy

* Economic policy

* Education policy

* Energy policy

* Environmental Policy

* Foreign policy

* Health policy

* Housing policy

* Information policy

* Macroeconomic policy

* Monetary policy

* Population policy

* Public policy in law

* Science policy

* Security policy

* Social policy

* Transportation policy

* Urban policy

* Water policy

Other uses of the term

In enterprise architecture for systems design, policy appliances are technical control and logging mechanisms to enforce or reconcile policy (systems use) rules and to ensure accountability in information systems.

In insurance, policies are contracts between insurer and insured used to indemnify (protect) against potential loss from specified perils. While these documents are referred to as policies, they are in actuality a form of contract - see insurance contract.

In gambling, policy is a form of an unsanctioned lottery, where players purport to purchase ''insurance'' against a chosen number being picked by a legitimate lottery. Or can refer to an ordinary Numbers game

In artificial intelligence planning and ''reinforcement learning'', a policy prescribes a non-empty deliberation (sequence of actions) given a non-empty sequence of states.

In debate, the term "policy" is slang for policy or cross-examination debate.

See also

Mandate (politics)

Overton window

Policy analysis

Policy studies

Political science

Program evaluation

Public administration

Public health

Public policy (law)

Public policy schools

Public services

Social contract

Social welfare

Social work

Think tank

References

Howard, Cosmo. "The Policy Cycle: a Model of Post-Machiavellian Policy Making?" The Australian Journal of Public Administration, September 2005.

Stone, Diane."Global Public Policy, Transnational Policy Communities and their Networks", ''Journal of Policy Sciences'', 2008

External links

Category:Government * Category:Politics by issue Category:Decision theory

da:Policy de:Policy hi:नीति id:Kebijakan it:Policy (politica) nl:Beleid ja:政策 ko:정책 sv:Policy yi:פאליסי zh:政策

name	Peter Hitchens
birth name	Peter Jonathan Hitchens
birth date	October 28, 1951
birth place	Sliema, Malta
occupation	Author, journalist
nationality	United Kingdom
Alma mater	University of York
religion	Anglican Christian
notableworks	''The Abolition of Britain'', ''The Broken Compass: How British Politics Lost its Way'', ''A Brief History of Crime'', ''The Rage Against God''
relatives	Christopher Hitchens (brother)
website	http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk }}

Peter Jonathan Hitchens (born 28 October 1951) is an award-winning British columnist and author. He has published five books, including ''The Abolition of Britain'', ''A Brief History of Crime'', ''The Broken Compass: How British Politics Lost its Way'' and most recently ''The Rage Against God''. Hitchens writes for Britain's ''The Mail on Sunday'' newspaper. A former resident correspondent in Moscow and Washington, Hitchens continues to work as an occasional foreign reporter, and appears frequently in the British broadcast media. He is the younger brother of the writer Christopher Hitchens.

Michael Gove, writing in ''The Times'', has asserted that, for Hitchens, what is more important than the split between the Left and the Right is "the deeper gulf between the restless progressive and the Christian pessimist", and in 2010 Hitchens himself wrote "in all my experience in life, I have seldom seen a more powerful argument for the fallen nature of man, and his inability to achieve perfection, than those countries in which man sets himself up to replace God with the State".

Early life

Peter Hitchens was born in 1951 in Malta, where his father was stationed with the Royal Navy. He was educated at The Leys School, which he left at 15, completing his secondary education at the Oxford College of Further Education before entering the University of York, where he attained a BA in Politics, and is said to have replied 'I was too busy starting a revolution' when asked why he was late for a lecture. He married Eve Ross, the daughter of left-wing journalist David Ross, in 1983.

Career in journalism

Hitchens worked for the ''Daily Express'' between 1977 and December 2000, initially as a reporter specialising in education and industrial and labour affairs, then as a political reporter, and subsequently as Deputy Political Editor. While working for the newspaper in 1992 he broke the story concerning Jennifer's Ear.

Leaving parliamentary journalism to cover defence and diplomatic affairs, he reported on the decline and ultimate collapse of the communist regimes in several Warsaw Pact countries, an assignment which culminated in a stint as Moscow Correspondent, where he witnessed and reported on the final months of the Soviet Union in 1990/91. He became the ''Daily Express'' Washington correspondent soon afterwards. Returning to London in 1995, he became a commentator and, eventually, a regular columnist. Hitchens continued to espouse a conservative viewpoint despite the publication's general move towards the political centre in the mid-nineties, and its decision to support the Labour Party under Tony Blair in the months approaching the 1997 general election. In December 2000, Hitchens announced his departure from the ''Daily Express'' in response to the title's acquisition by Richard Desmond; Hitchens felt that his own moral and religious conservatism was incompatible with Desmond's publishing a string of sex magazines. He joined ''The Mail on Sunday'', where he has a weekly column and weblog in which he debates directly with readers and produces occasional reportage from the UK.

Hitchens has also written for ''The Spectator'', a conservative British magazine, and sporadically for more left-leaning publications such as ''The Guardian'', ''Prospect'', and the ''New Statesman''. He is also an occasional contributor to ''The American Conservative'' magazine.

In 2007 and 2009 Hitchens was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in Political Journalism. He won the prize in 2010 for his foreign reporting.

Foreign reporting

In 2010 Hitchens was described by Edward Lucas in ''The Economist'' as "a forceful, tenacious, eloquent and brave journalist. Readers with long memories may remember his extraordinary coverage of the revolution in Romania in 1989, or more recently his intrepid travels to places such as North Korea. He lambasts woolly thinking and crooked behaviour at home and abroad".

Hitchens first became a roving foreign reporter in the early 1990s while working for the ''Daily Express'', when he reported from South Africa during the last days of apartheid, and from Somalia at the time of the US-led military intervention in the country. He continued his foreign reporting after joining ''The Mail on Sunday'', for which he has written several foreign reports, including from Russia (including Moscow) and the US, Western and Eastern Europe, many of the former Soviet Republics (including a 2008 visit to Minsk in Belarus, and a 2010 report from Sevastopol in Ukraine described by Edward Lucas in ''The Economist'' as a "dismaying lapse"), Astana in Kazakhstan, the Middle East (including Israel, Gaza, a 2003 visit to Iraq in the wake of the 2003 invasion, and an undercover report from Iran, which was described by Iain Dale as "a quite brilliant account"), Africa (including a trip to the Congo in 2008, during which he narrowly avoided being lynched) Cuba, Venezuela, China, Japan, North Korea, Burma and Istanbul. In 2009, Hitchens was shortlisted for Foreign Reporter of the Year in the British Press Awards.

In 2010, Hitchens was awarded the Orwell Prize in recognition of his foreign reporting.

Appearances in the British broadcast media

Hitchens speaks frequently on British radio and television, often debating (typically left-wing) opponents on a variety of social and political topics. He is a regular panellist on ''Question Time'' and ''Any Questions?'' and has been a frequent guest on ''This Week'' with Andrew Neil, ''The Daily Politics'' and ''The Big Questions''. In 2011, Hitchens wrote of his relationship with the broadcast media that "People like me – though still allowed to speak – are allowed on to mainstream national broadcasting only under strict conditions: that we are 'balanced' by at least three other people who disagree with us so that our views, actually held by millions, are made to look like an eccentric minority opinion".

Hitchens has authored and presented several documentaries on Channel 4 and BBC Four, in which he examined Britain's entry into the Common Market, discussed the erosion of civil liberties in the UK, and critically examined the political achievements of Nelson Mandela, and later the career of David Cameron (see ''On the Conservative Party''). In the late 1990s, he co-presented a programme on Talk Radio UK with Labour Party stalwarts Derek Draper and Austin Mitchell. Hitchens was offered the chance to present a programme on his own by the station's then boss, Kelvin MacKenzie, but preferred and suggested an adversarial format with a left-wing co-presenter, believing this to be the best way of achieving broadcast fairness and balance.

June 2011 ''Question Time'' appearance

In June 2011, Hitchens was booed and heckled at length by a ''Question Time'' audience for expressing a socially conservative position on the sexualisation of children, and was the only panel member to adopt this position. During the same programme, chairman and presenter David Dimbleby put to Hitchens that the paper he worked for was "a bigoted, sexist, homophobic comic strip". Shortly after his appearance, Hitchens wrote "Is there any point in public debate in a society where hardly anyone has been taught how to think, while millions have been taught what to think? Sometimes I wonder".

Personal political history

Hitchens studied politics at the University of York from 1970 to 1973. He was a Trotskyist member of the International Socialists from 1969 to 1975, and joined the British Labour Party in 1977, campaigning for Ken Livingstone's unsuccessful candidature for Hampstead in the 1979 general election. Hitchens left the Labour Party in 1983 when he became a political reporter at the ''Daily Express'', thinking it wrong to carry a party card when directly reporting politics. The period also coincided with a culmination of growing personal disillusionment with the Labour movement. In 2010, Hitchens dismissed the "cruel revolutionary rubbish" he promoted as a Trotskyist as "poison".

He joined the Conservative Party in 1997, but left in 2003. Hitchens challenged Michael Portillo for the Conservative Party nomination in the Kensington and Chelsea seat in 1999.

Hitchens believes that no party he could support will be created until the Conservative Party disintegrates, an event he first began calling for in 2006. From 2008, he began frequently advocating in his writing that what would facilitate such a collapse would be for the Conservative Party to lose the 2010 general election: "If they fail to win an election against this awful government, then it is my belief and hope that they will collapse. Many of their MPs and supporters will leave politics altogether, others will go to the Liberal Democrats or Labour, where they belong. Some will be interested in an entirely new party, which will not be the Conservatives and so will be able to appeal to the many patriotic, law-abiding people abandoned by Labour".

Public image

In ''The Guardian'', James Silver describes Hitchens as "the Mail on Sunday's fulminator-in-chief" and his columns as "molten Old Testament fury shot through with visceral wit". Hitchens has said of his reputation: "I know a lot of people consider me to be disreputable or foaming at the mouth, but you have to learn not to care, or at least not to mind. I don't like being called 'bonkers' and I think to some extent it demeans people who use phrases like that. But I take comfort from the fact that most totalitarian regimes tend to classify their opponents as mentally disordered."

Core beliefs

Morality and religion

Hitchens, a former atheist, is a confirmed and communicant member of the Church of England and an advocate of moral virtues founded on religious (particularly Christian) faith. He argues that these have been undermined and eroded by social liberals, and by those he calls cultural Marxists, since the 1960s—a theory he explores in his book ''The Abolition of Britain''.

In support of this thesis, Hitchens cites, among other things, what he describes as serial attacks on marriage by the State. He identifies these attacks as the introduction of no-fault divorce, the removal or redistribution of what were formerly the exclusive privileges of marriage (and the resultant decline in status of the matrimonial state), the abolition of the Christian Sunday, and the growing economic and cultural pressure on wives and mothers to go out to work. He believes that without faith and without strong families, the development of conscience is stunted, private life is diminished and the power of the state increased.

He believes that many of the measures which created the "permissive society" were mistaken or excessive and need to be reexamined, and posits that homosexual relationships should not be granted legal parity with heterosexual marriage.

Hitchens believes that abortion should be illegal at any stage of pregnancy.

Hitchens defends the use of the Church of England's 1662 ''Book of Common Prayer'' and the Authorised (or King James) version of the Bible. Of the latter, he has written "it is not simply a translation, but a poetic translation, written to be read out loud to country people in large buildings without loudspeakers, to be remembered, to lodge in the mind and to disturb the temporal with the haunting sound of the eternal". Hitchens feels that both books are indispensable foundations of Anglicanism's "powerful combination of scripture, tradition and reason", and that they have been undermined as a result of "senior figures [within the Church of England] wishing to dump what they regard as the baggage of a penitential and gloomy past".

Hitchens has often spoken out against the liberal positions of the current Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

Hitchens does not subscribe to a literal interpretation of the Biblical story of Adam and Eve. In a review of his brother's work ''God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything'', he stated that, "many decades have passed since I fancied the story of Adam and Eve was literal truth, if I ever did.

Liberty, security and crime

Hitchens advocates a society governed by conscience and the rule of law, which he sees as the best guarantee of liberty. He believes that capital punishment is a key element of a strong justice system.

He warns that the decline of conscience and morality will inevitably lead to a strong state. He is especially critical of the use of "security" as a pretext for diluting and eroding individual liberty. He argues that increased "security" destroys freedom without necessarily increasing safety, and says that there is no contradiction between maintaining liberty and protecting the realm.

Hitchens is critical of moves towards authoritarian government and the erosion of civil liberties, whether they come from the Right or the Left of the political spectrum. Accordingly, he has been highly critical of the British government's desire for identity cards, its attempts to abolish jury trial, to centralise the police, and its creation of a national law enforcement body in the form of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA). He describes these developments as facets of governmental desire for permanent, irreversible constitutional revolution, and an attack on English liberty in general.

Hitchens is opposed to the relaxation of laws against the possession of illegal recreational drugs. He argues that the law's active disapproval of drug taking is an essential counterweight to the "pro-drug propaganda" of popular culture. He has said that attempts to combat drug use by restricting supply and persecuting drug dealers are invariably futile, unless possession and use are punished as well. He counters claims that the "War on Drugs" has failed by suggesting that the state has made no serious efforts to reduce or eliminate illegal drug consumption for many years. Hitchens has said that the prevailing approach, known as "Harm reduction", is defeatist and counter-productive. He was among the earliest commentators to argue that cannabis presents a major mental health risk to users.

Foreign policy

Hitchens opposed the Kosovo and 2003 Iraq Wars on the grounds that neither was in the interests of either Britain or the United States. He has not, however, associated himself with the Left-dominated anti-war campaigns, not least as he remains a strong supporter of the State of Israel. He also opposes the British military presence in Afghanistan, arguing that it is destined to fail and has no achievable aim. Hitchens made a live appearance on BBC News in November 2009 during which he stated, in a response to Gordon Brown's announcement that more troops would be sent to Afghanistan, that a ridiculous position had been reached in which none of the front bench politicians of any of the three main British parties were prepared to say that the British mission to the country had failed.

On Europe, Hitchens argues that the United Kingdom should negotiate an amicable departure from the European Union, whose laws and traditions he regards as incompatible with the laws and liberties of England, and with the national independence of the United Kingdom as a whole. He also believes that the interests of the European Union are often different from—and in many cases hostile to—those of the UK. Devolution of governmental powers to Scotland and Wales in 1998 was, for Hitchens, not a step towards true independence for those countries, but rather part of an EU-inspired strategy to dissolve the UK into statelets and regions, as a preliminary step to its complete absorption into a European superstate. For the same reason, he has opposed attempts to divide England into regions.

World War II

For most of his career, Hitchens took the view that World War II was "the part of British history which provides the ultimate justification and vindication of this country's existence, its heroic and solitary battle against Nazi tyranny". However, in 2008 he publicly reversed this view, referring in particular to the declaration of war made against Nazi Germany (after the invasion of Poland) which had, in his opinion, disastrous consequences for Britain. A subsequent analysis that Hitchens made of this issue in one of his columns was described by Michael White of ''The Guardian'' as being "as melancholy a cry of pain about the modern world as I have recently encountered". Hitchens has also written critically about the Allied policy of strategic bombing of German cities during the second world war, citing in particular the A.C. Grayling book ''Among the Dead Cities'', which in Hitchens's view makes "the case against the bombing of German civilians unanswerable".

Northern Ireland

Hitchens condemned the 1998 Belfast Agreement as a surrender to the Provisional IRA and a "collapse and a surrender to lawlessness". He believes that the best approach to solving Northern Ireland's problems would have been the full integration of Northern Ireland into the United Kingdom, arguing that creating a Northern Irish Parliament at Stormont impeded this. He believes that the achievements of direct rule over Northern Ireland, not least in removing discrimination against Roman Catholics, have been greatly underestimated. He maintains that Northern Ireland is now only a provisional part of the UK since, under the terms of the agreement, it can be transferred to Irish sovereignty by a single, irreversible referendum.

Education

Hitchens condemns comprehensive education, the Plowden reforms of primary schooling and modern child-centred teaching methods, seeing them as egalitarian political projects with no educational justification and many educational disadvantages. He bases his case on John Marks's ''The Betrayed Generation'', (Centre for Policy Studies 2001), the Engineering Council's survey of changing undergraduate maths skills in 2000, and Durham University's unvarying annual general ability test, and has also cited a 2004 article by Jenni Russell in ''The Guardian'' which draws attention to this issue. Hitchens has also contended that comprehensive education has brought about a general dilution of education and of examination standards, and explores in detail the history and consequences of this development in Chapter Eleven of ''The Broken Compass''—'The Fall of the Meritocracy'. He believes a further consequence of egalitarian schooling is serious damage to the national culture, and fears that lowered standards in technical, scientific and mathematical education, combined with poor teaching of English and the resulting decline in literacy, threaten to leave Britain lagging behind emerging economic powers such as China and India.

As a means of improving standards in the UK, as well as increasing social mobility, Hitchens supports a return to the academically selective grammar school system which has been gradually dismantled by successive British governments since the issuing of Circular 10/65 by Anthony Crosland in 1965 (though Hitchens prefers the German system of selection to the Eleven Plus examination).

As a supporter of orthodox Christian morality, Hitchens opposes sex education in schools. He argues that the general introduction of sex education in schools has incontrovertibly been accompanied by an increase in sexual activity among the young, with a resultant rise in pregnancies, abortions and instances of sexually transmitted diseases—the very things that sex education is ostensibly intended to prevent. He argues that its real purpose is the undermining of Christian sexual morality, based on stable monogamous marriage.

Labour party

Hitchens contends that the modern version of the Labour party was "formed mainly by struggles in the 1980s" and in a programme of "social liberalism, egalitarian education and the sexual revolution" envisaged at the end of the 1950s by figures such as Anthony Crosland and Roy Jenkins; the latter Hitchens has written critically of at considerable length, and has likened his short book ''The Labour Case'' (1959) to "a revolutionary manifesto".

Hitchens was critical of New Labour for what he called "attacks on the constitution", and described its Prime Minister Tony Blair's constitutional reforms as a "slow-motion coup d'état". He has also asserted that the New Labour policy on immigration was a "slow motion putsch". Hitchens believes that the most profound changes brought about by New Labour were designed to concentrate power in the hands of the executive, to debauch civil service neutrality, and to turn Parliament into a mere tool of Downing Street, with Blair himself as Chief Executive. In Hitchens's view, the most significant single action in this programme was the passing of Orders in Council allowing Alastair Campbell and Jonathan Powell, both political appointees, to give orders to civil servants. This signalled, in his view, a general attempt to politicise Whitehall, which has continued ever since. Hitchens claims to have detected a parallel effort to appropriate some of the trappings of monarchy and to diminish the Crown's significance and standing, which he sees as embryonic presidentialism.

Hitchens also often caricatured Blair as "Princess Tony". This was a reference to Blair's use of the expression "The People's Princess" to eulogise Princess Diana after her death. Hitchens has also been very critical of Blair's activity subsequent to his stepping down as Prime Minister. Hitchens described Blair's successor, Gordon Brown, as a "boring, dismal Marxoid", whose public performances were "horribly like Humphrey Bogart's portrayal of the tormented Captain Queeg in ''The Caine Mutiny''". However, Hitchens criticised what he saw as a "prejudiced, shallow" attempt to destroy Brown by the media after the latter became Prime Minister in 2007.

Conservative Party

Hitchens is dismissive of the modern British Conservative Party, frequently deriding the party's leadership as the "useless Tories". He has often been at odds with fellow conservatives, and has argued that the Conservative Party has a consistent record of ill-considered parliamentary acts and policies that cannot be dismissed as accidents or mistakes. He cites as examples: the reorganisation of local government in 1974, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984, the introduction of the GCSE exam, the Criminal Justice Act of 1991, the negotiation and signing of the Single European Act and the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, the severe reduction in defence spending at the end of the Cold War, the privatisation of the UK's railways, the Iraq War and the final abandonment of all attempts to re-introduce grammar schools.

In March 2007 Hitchens wrote and presented a television programme for Channel 4, ''Toff at the Top'', in which he argued this view. Hitchens views Cameron's social, educational, and foreign policies as being indistinguishable from those of New Labour. Cameron, having declined previous interview requests from Hitchens, also declined to participate in the broadcast. Subsequent to the programme's airing the Conservative leader described Hitchens as "a maniac" at a public meeting in Oxfordshire.

Hitchens has called for the establishment of a new political party in the UK, representing the traditionalist conservative strand of opinion that he espouses, and which would, in his own words, be "neither bigoted nor politically correct". He believes that such a movement cannot come into being until the Conservative Party collapses, arguing that many millions of Britons habitually vote for this and other political parties out of tribal loyalty, from which they cannot be detached by reasoned argument.

Poverty and wealth distribution

Hitchens believes there to be a correlation between adherence to strong ethical standards, including conscientious labour, deferred gratification, self-denial and thrift, and middle class status (and the material well-being it generally brings). He has stated that "The middle classes are not good because they are better off. They are better off because they are good." He rejects the belief that any poverty which exists in Britain is anything other than relative. "The British 'poor' of today do not starve, do not freeze, do not go without medical treatment—as truly poor people across the world undoubtedly still do." He argues that the claim that absolute poverty continues to exist in Britain is "a lie the Left uses to destroy the middle class".

Transport

Hitchens has criticised the Privatisation of British Rail in the 1990s, and mocks Conservatives for their belief that road transport, heavily state subsidised, is in some way more conservative than railways. He has also bemoaned the large-scale reductions made to Britain's rail infrastructure in the 1960s, and the subsequent increased focus on the motor car as the central plank of transport policy. Hitchens explores this issue in depth in 'The age of the train', chapter twelve of his book ''The Broken Compass''.

Global warming

Hitchens is sceptical of the alleged extent of man made global warming, has described the fuss surrounding it as "alarmist" and the facts presented as false or misleading or using data selectively. In particular, he praises the Christopher Booker work ''The Real Global Warming Disaster'' as being an effective exposé of many of what he sees as myths surrounding the theory.

Relationship with elder brother Christopher

Hitchens's elder brother is the prominent U.S.-based writer and antitheistic polemicist Christopher Hitchens. Christopher has said that the main difference between the two is their attitudes toward belief in the existence of God. Peter himself has said, "We inhabit separate worlds," and "We're not close. We're different people, we have different lives, we have entirely different pleasures, we live in different continents. If we weren't brothers we wouldn't know each other."

The brothers had a protracted falling out after Peter wrote an article in 2001 in ''The Spectator'' alleging that his brother had said he "didn't care if the Red Army watered its horses at Hendon"—a claim denied by Christopher. After the birth of Peter's third child, the two brothers reconciled, although Christopher said "There is no longer any official froideur, but there's no official—what's the word?—chaleur, either."

Peter's review of ''God Is Not Great'' led to public argument between the brothers but not to any renewed estrangement. In the review, Peter wrote that his brother’s book was misguided, "mostly in the way that it blames faith for so many bad things and gives it no credit for any of the good it may have done. I think it misunderstands religious people and their aims and desires. And I think it asserts a number of things as true and obvious that are nothing of the sort".

In June 2007, the brothers appeared as panellists on BBC TV's ''Question Time'', where they clashed over a number of issues, most notably the intervention in Afghanistan. In April 2008, on US soil, they debated the invasion of Iraq and the existence of God, respectively. Peter Hitchens indicated that the occasion would mark the last time he would participate in such events with his brother, "because of the danger that they might turn into gladiatorial combat in which nothing would be resolved and enmity could be created."

However, in October 2010 at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, the brothers again had a debate—described as a conversation with the press—over the nature of God in civilisation. The two clashed over the main issues, with Peter lamenting the decline in civility to levels "not far from the Stone Age." However, when the subject of Christopher's illness in concert with religion was brought up, Peter defended his brother's choice of beliefs, stating that he thought "it would be quite grotesque to imagine someone would have to get cancer to see the merits of religion."

Publications

Hitchens is the author of ''The Abolition of Britain'' (1999, ISBN 978-0-7043-8140-7) and ''A Brief History of Crime'' (2003, ISBN 978-1-84354-148-6), both critical of changes in British society since the 1960s. A compendium of his ''Daily Express'' columns was published under the title ''Monday Morning Blues'' in 2000.

An updated edition of ''A Brief History of Crime'' (2003 ISBN 978-1-84354-148-6), re-titled ''The Abolition of Liberty: The Decline of Order and Justice in England'' (ISBN 978-1-84354-149-3) and featuring a new chapter on identity cards, was published in April 2004. ''The Broken Compass: How British Politics Lost its Way'' (Continuum ISBN 978-1-84706-405-9), was published in May 2009, and ''The Rage Against God'' (Continuum ISBN 978-1-4411-0572-1), was published in Britain in March 2010, and was due to be published in the US (Zondervan ISBN 978-0-310-32031-9) in May 2010.

In January 2011 Hitchens announced he was working on a new book entitled ''The War We Never Fought'', about what he sees as the non-existent war on drugs.

Bibliography

See also

Conservatism

List of newspaper columnists

Paleoconservatism

Pro-life

Social conservatism

References

Further reading

"Brothers at war over Britain" Article on a debate about Britain's future with brother Christopher Hitchens, 15 October 1999. Includes some short, selected audio clips from the event.

Hitchens on the European Union" – December 2002. Karl Zinsmeister interviews Peter Hitchens at his home in Oxford.

Bulldog" – Guardian interview, 20 September 1999.

External links

;Regular features

Peter Hitchens's ''Mail on Sunday'' blog

;Book Reviews

Reviews of ''A Brief History of Crime'' in: ''The Daily Telegraph'', and ''The Observer''

;TV Reviews ''Reviews of ''Toff at the Top'' in:''

''The Daily Telegraph''; and

''The Times''.

Description of ''Toff at the Top'' on the Channel 4 website

;Video

Interview about ''The Abolition of Britain'' for the Booknotes series ''Pop-up window with embedded RealPlayer plugin''

;Debates

Christopher Hitchens debates Peter Hitchens

;Sermon

Peter Hitchens's address to City New Year Service, The Parish Church of St. Michael's Cornhill, London, January 2005

Category:1951 births Category:Alumni of the University of York Category:British anti-communists Category:British journalists Category:British people of Jewish descent Category:Converts to Anglicanism from atheism or agnosticism Category:Critics of the European Union Category:Daily Mail journalists Category:English Anglicans Category:English bloggers Category:English columnists Category:English people of Polish descent Category:Living people Category:Old Leysians Category:Socialist Workers Party (UK) members Category:Christopher Hitchens

de:Peter Hitchens es:Peter Hitchens

Honorific-prefix	The Right Honourable
Name	Kenneth Clarke
Honorific-suffix	QC MP
Office	Lord ChancellorSecretary of State for Justice
Primeminister	David Cameron
Term start	12 May 2010
Predecessor	Jack Straw
Office2	Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills
Leader2	David Cameron
Term start2	19 January 2009
Term end2	11 May 2010
Predecessor2	Alan Duncan
Successor2	The Lord Mandelson
Office3	Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer
Leader3	John Major
Term start3	2 May 1997
Term end3	11 June 1997
Predecessor3	Gordon Brown
Successor3	Peter Lilley
Office4	Chancellor of the Exchequer
Primeminister4	John Major
Term start4	27 May 1993
Term end4	2 May 1997
Predecessor4	Norman Lamont
Successor4	Gordon Brown
Office5	Home Secretary
Primeminister5	John Major
Term start5	10 April 1992
Term end5	27 May 1993
Predecessor5	Kenneth Baker
Successor5	Michael Howard
Office6	Secretary of State for Education and Science
Term start6	2 November 1990
Term end6	10 April 1992
Primeminister6	Margaret ThatcherJohn Major
Predecessor6	John MacGregor
Successor6	John Patten (Education)
Office7	Secretary of State for Health
Primeminister7	Margaret Thatcher
Term start7	25 July 1988
Term end7	2 November 1990
Predecessor7	John Moore (Social Services)
Successor7	William Waldegrave
Office8	Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
Primeminister8	Margaret Thatcher
Term start8	13 July 1987
Term end8	25 July 1988
Predecessor8	Norman Tebbit
Successor8	Tony Newton
Office9	Paymaster General
Primeminister9	Margaret Thatcher
Term start9	2 September 1985
Term end9	13 July 1987
Predecessor9	John Gummer
Successor9	Peter Brooke
Office0	Member of Parliament for Rushcliffe
Term start0	18 June 1970
Predecessor0	Antony Gardner
Birth date	July 02, 1940
Birth place	West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire, England
Spouse	Gillian Edwards
Party	Conservative
Alma mater	Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
Religion	Church of England }}

Kenneth Harry "Ken" Clarke, QC, MP (born 2 July 1940) is a British Conservative politician, currently Member of Parliament for Rushcliffe, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice. He was first elected to Parliament in 1970; and appointed a minister in Edward Heath's government, in 1972, and is one of Britain's best-known politicians. Since 1997 he has been President of the Tory Reform Group.

Clarke was a minister throughout the 18 years of successive Conservative governments from 1979 to 1997, serving in the cabinets of both Margaret Thatcher and John Major. After the Conservative defeat in the 1997 general election Clarke became a backbencher. He has contested the Conservative Party leadership three times—in 1997, 2001 and 2005—and was defeated each time. Although he was considered popular with the general public, his famously pro-European integration views conflicted with the Conservative Party's scepticism of the EU. Notably, he is President of the Conservative Europe Group and Vice-President of the European Movement UK. Despite this conflict, and his involvement with the tobacco industry, Conservative leader David Cameron returned Clarke to the Shadow Cabinet in March 2009 as Shadow Business Secretary. When Cameron became Prime Minister in May 2010 he appointed Clarke as Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, after appointing Vince Cable, a Liberal Democrat, Business Secretary.

Early life

Kenneth Clarke was born in West Bridgford, near Nottingham, in 1940, and educated at Nottingham High School (then a direct grant grammar school). He went on to study law at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a 2:1 honours degree. Clarke originally had Labour sympathies, his grandfather having been a Communist. However while at Cambridge, he joined the Conservative Party, and was chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association. Controversially, he invited former British fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley to speak, for a second year in succession, leading some Jewish students (including his future successor at the Home Office Michael Howard) to resign from CUCA in protest. Howard then defeated Clarke in one election for the presidency of the Cambridge Union Society, although Clarke was elected President of the Union a year later. In an early 1990s documentary, journalist Michael Cockerell played to Clarke some tape recordings of himself speaking at the Cambridge Union as a young man; Clarke displayed amusement at his own stereotypically upper class accent. Clarke was counted one of the Cambridge Mafia, a group of prominent Conservative politicians who were educated at Cambridge in the 1960s. On leaving Cambridge, Clarke was called to the Bar in 1963 by Gray's Inn and was appointed a Queen's Counsel in 1980.

Member of Parliament

Clarke sought election to the House of Commons almost immediately after university. He began by fighting the Labour stronghold of Mansfield in the 1964 and 1966 elections. In June 1970, at the age of 29, he gained the East Midlands constituency of Rushcliffe, south of Nottingham, from Labour MP Tony Gardner. Labour has not come close to winning the seat since, but even Gardner's 1966 victory was partly due to the unpopularity of the Tory MP whom he defeated. Clarke was by 2005 one of the longest serving of all MPs. In the 55th Parliament, only Peter Tapsell (serving since 1959) has served longer, and Gerald Kaufman, Dennis Skinner and Michael Meacher all entered Parliament on the same day. David Winnick entered Parliament before Clarke (in 1966) but left in 1970 and only re-entered in 1979.

Kenneth Clarke was soon appointed a Government whip, and served as such from 1972 to 1974; he helped ensure Edward Heath's government win key votes on entry to the European Economic Community (now the EU) with the assistance of Labour rebels. Even though he opposed the election of Margaret Thatcher as party leader in 1975, he was appointed as her industry spokesman from 1976 to 1979, and then occupied a range of ministerial positions during her premiership.

Ministerial positions

Clarke first served as junior transport minister, than as Minister of State for Health (1982–85). He joined the Cabinet as Paymaster-General and Employment Minister (1985–87) (his Secretary of State, Lord Young, was in the Lords), and served as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister at the DTI (1987–88), with responsibility for the Inner Cities ("because," as one wag put it, "he looked like he lived in one").

Despite being an ardent pro-tobacco advocate, he was appointed Health Secretary in 1988, in which office he introduced the controversial 'internal market' concept in the NHS,. Just over two years later he was appointed Education Secretary in the final weeks of Thatcher's government, following Norman Tebbit's unwillingness to return to the Cabinet. He was famously the first Cabinet minister to advise Thatcher to resign after her inadequate first-round performance in the November 1990 leadership contest; she referred to him in her memoirs as a "candid friend". He supported Douglas Hurd in the next round.

Clarke came to work with John Major very closely, and quickly emerged as a central figure in his government. After continuing as Education Secretary (1990–92), where he introduced a number of reforms, he was appointed as Home Secretary in the wake of the Conservatives' unexpected victory at the 1992 general election. In May 1993, seven months after the impact of 'Black Wednesday' had terminally damaged Norman Lamont's credibility as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Major forced Lamont to resign and appointed Clarke in his place.

Chancellor of Exchequer

At first, Clarke was seen as the dominant figure in the Cabinet, and at the October 1993 Conference he "defended" Major from his critics by announcing "Any enemy of John Major is an enemy of mine".

In the party leadership of contest 1995, in which John Major won against John Redwood, Clarke kept faith in Major and commented "I don't think the Conservative Party could win an election in 1,000 years on this ultra right-wing programme".

Clarke enjoyed an increasingly successful record as Chancellor, as the economy recovered from the recession of the early 1990s and a new monetary policy was put into effect after Black Wednesday. He was able to reduce the basic rate of Income Tax from 25 to 23%, reduce government's share of GDP, and to halve the budget deficit. Which was £50.8 billion in 1993 and reduced to £15.5 billion in 1997. Labour and Clarke's successor Gordon Brown continued these policies which elminated the deficit in 1998 and allowed Brown to record four years of budget surplus' 1998 - £703 million, 1999 - £12 billion, 2000 - £16.7 billion, 2001 - £8.4 billion. Interest rates, inflation and unemployment all fell during Clarke's tenure at HM Treasury.

Differences of opinion within the Cabinet on European policy, on which Clarke was one of the leading pro-Europeans, complicated his tenure as Chancellor. Whereas other ministers such as Malcolm Rifkind wished to imply that British euro membership was unlikely, Clarke fought successfully to maintain the possibility that Britain might join a single currency under a Conservative government, but conceded that such a move could only take place on the basis of a referendum. When the 'Eurosceptic' Party Chairman, Brian Mawhinney, (allegedly) briefed against him, on one occasion, Clarke memorably declared: "Tell your kids to get their scooters off my lawn" – an allusion to Harold Wilson's rebuke of trade union leader Hugh Scanlon in the late 1960s.

Backbencher

After the Conservatives entered Opposition in 1997, Clarke contested the leadership of the party for the first time. In 1997, a vote exclusively among Members of Parliament, he topped the poll in the first and second rounds. In the third and final round he formed an alliance with Eurosceptic John Redwood, who would have become Shadow Chancellor and Clarke's deputy if Clarke had won the contest. However, Thatcher endorsed Clarke's rival William Hague, who proceeded to win the election comfortably. The contest was criticised for not involving the rank-and-file members of the party, where surveys showed Clarke to be more popular. Clarke rejected the offer from Hague of a Shadow Cabinet role, and became a backbencher.

Clarke contested the party leadership for the second time in 2001. Despite opinion polls showing he was the most popular Conservative politician with the public, he lost in a final round among the rank-and-file membership, a new procedure introduced by Hague, to a much less experienced, but strongly Eurosceptic rival, Iain Duncan Smith. This loss, by a margin of 62% to 38%, was attributed to the former Chancellor's pro-European views being increasingly out of step with the members' Euroscepticism.

Clarke opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. After choosing not to fight for the leadership after Duncan Smith departed in 2003, in the interests of party unity, he returned to fight the 2005 election. He again had large popularity among voters, with 40% of the public believing he would be the best leader. However, he was accused by Norman Tebbit of being "lazy" whilst leadership rival Sir Malcolm Rifkind claimed that Clarke's pro-European views could have divided the Conservative Party if Clarke had won. In the event, Clarke was eliminated in the first round of voting among MPs. Eventual winner David Cameron appointed Clarke to head a Democracy task force as part of his extensive 18-month policy review in December 2005, exploring issues such as the reform of the House of Lords and party funding. Clarke is president of the moderate, pro-European ginger group within the Conservative Party, Tory Reform Group.

In 2006, he described Cameron's plans for a British Bill of Rights as "xenophobic and legal nonsense".

Promotion to the shadow cabinet

Clarke was promoted to Shadow Business Secretary in opposition to the then current Business Secretary, Lord Mandelson. David Cameron described Clarke as the only one able to oppose Mandelson and Brown's economic credibility. Two days later it was revealed that Clarke had warned in a speech a month earlier that President Barack Obama could see David Cameron as a "right-wing nationalist" if the Conservatives maintained eurosceptic policies and that Obama would "start looking at whoever is in Germany or France if we start being isolationist." However, the Financial Times said "Clarke has in effect agreed to disagree with the Tories’ official Eurosceptic line".

Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary

On 12 May 2010, it was announced that Clarke had been appointed Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor by Prime Minister David Cameron in a coalition government formed from the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties.

In June 2010, Clarke signalled an end to short prison sentences after warning it was "virtually impossible" to rehabilitate an inmate in less than 12 months. In his first major speech since taking office, Mr Clarke indicated a major shift in penal policy by saying prison was not effective in many cases. This could result in more offenders handed community punishments. Mr Clarke, who described the current prison population of 85,000 as "astonishing", faced immediate criticism from some colleagues in a party renowned for its tough stance on law and order. He signalled that fathers who fail to pay child maintenance and disqualified drivers and criminals fighting asylum refusals could be among the first to benefit and should not be in prison. The Prison Governors' Association raised questions about the plan, particularly the impact on employment opportunities for the wider population at a time of economic uncertainty: "Is it right at a time of economic crisis that prisoners should be taking work from those law-abiding citizens many of whom are losing their livelihoods?"

In December 2010 Clarke, in a move to cut prison numbers, said that a Conservative Party election pledge that anyone caught carrying a knife illegally could expect a jail term will not be implemented, the BBC has been told. Clarke said he would put sentencing policy in the hands of judges, not newspaper pundits. But he said those guilty of using a knife illegally would face a “serious” jail term. Asked by BBC political editor Nick Robinson whether people caught carrying knives illegally could expect a lesser punishment, Mr Clarke said ministers would not insist on “absolute tariffs”. It means that, as at present, someone caught carrying a knife illegally may not face a custodial sentence, and may be cautioned instead. The government is to try to reform the relationship between the European court of human rights and national parliaments when it assumes chairmanship of the Council of Europe in November after controversial rulings on sex offenders and votes for prisoners.

Clarke, in February 2011 said that the government intended to scrutinise the relationship between the European Court of Human Rights and national parliaments. This follows calls from a large number of Conservative backbenchers for the UK to walk away from the ECHR because they are unhappy with its rulings. MPs recently voted to maintain a ban on voting by prisoners despite an ECHR ruling that it was illegal. Many MPs have also been outraged by the UK supreme court's ruling that the ECHR would uphold the right of sex offenders to appeal against having to register with the police for the rest of their lives.

In May 2011, controversy related to Clarke's reported views on rape resurfaced after an interview on the radio station BBC 5 Live, where he discussed a proposal to shrink the sentences of criminals, including rapists, who pleaded guilty in trial.

Expenses scandal

On 12 May 2009, ''The Daily Telegraph'' reported that Clarke had "flipped" his council tax. He had told the Parliamentary authorities that his main home was in his Rushcliffe constituency, enabling him to claim a second homes allowance on his London home and leaving the taxpayer to foot the bill for the council tax due on that property. However, he told Rushcliffe Borough Council in Nottinghamshire that he spent so little time at his constituency address that his wife Gillian should qualify for a 25% council tax (single person’s) discount, saving the former chancellor around £650 per year. Land registry records showed that Clarke did not have a mortgage on his home in Nottinghamshire, where he has lived since 1987. He instead held a mortgage on his London house, which he had most recently charged to the taxpayer at £480 per month.

Corporate and other work

While a backbencher and shadow cabinet minister, Clarke took a number of non-executive directorships:

Deputy Chairman and a director of British American Tobacco (BAT) (1998–2007), for which Clarke faced allegations relating to activities of BAT in lobbying the developing world to reject stronger health warnings on cigarette packets and evidence that that corporation had been involved in smuggling and targeting children with advertisements.

Deputy Chairman of Alliance Unichem

Chairman (non-executive) of Unichem

Director of Foreign & Colonial Investment Trust

Member from June 2007 of the Advisory Board of Centaurus Capital, a London based hedge fund management company. Clarke is a member of the advisory board of Agcapita Farmland Investment Partnership, a Canadian farmland investment fund. Director (non-executive) of Independent News and Media (UK). Participant at the annual meeting of the Bilderberg Group in 1993, 1998 and 2006–2008.

Media work

Also while a backbencher, Clarke engaged in non-political media work.

Presented several series of jazz programmes on BBC Radio Four, including one on his namesake, bebop drummer Kenny Clarke

Wrote a monthly column for Financial Mail on Sunday (£10,001-£15,000)

Wrote a weekly commentary or interview for Bloomberg Television (£10,001-£15,000)

Undertook occasional lecturing, on a self-employed basis

Personal life

Clarke married Gillian Edwards, also a Cambridge graduate, in November 1964. They have two children—a son and a daughter. He is well known for his enjoyment of cigars, jazz and motor racing. He also likes birdwatching and reading political history, and is popularly known for his love of suede Hush Puppies, a brand of shoes, which have been his "trademark" since his ministerial days.

He also likes watching sport. He is a supporter of Nottingham Forest and is a former President of Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club. He is currently president of Radcliffe Olympic F C. He is a keen follower of Formula One motorsport. He was involved with tobacco giant British American Tobacco's Formula One team British American Racing and has attended Grands Prix in support of the BAR team. BAR was sold to Honda in 2005.

He attended the 1966 FIFA World Cup Final and claims (with a little jest) to have been influential in persuading the man known vernacularly as "the Russian linesman" Tofik Bakhramov (who was actually from Azerbaijan), to award a goal to Geoff Hurst when the England striker had seen his shot hit the crossbar of opponents West Germany, leaving doubt as to whether the ball had crossed the line. Clarke's position in the Wembley crowd was right behind the linesman at the time, and he shouted at the official to award a goal.

Clarke is a lover of Real Ale and has been a member of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA).

His wealth is estimated at over £1m.

References

External links

Kenneth Clarke official Conservative Party profile

;Articles

Profile: Kenneth Clarke ''BBC News'', 15 February 2005

Smoke and mirrors, George Monbiot, ''The Guardian'', 23 August 2005

Conservative Leadership Watch ''BBC News'', 30 September 2005

Lost leaders: Kenneth Clarke, Henry Smith, ''New Statesman'', 5 March 2010

|- |- |- |- |-

Category:1940 births Category:Alumni of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Category:British Secretaries of State Category:British Secretaries of State for Education Category:British Queen's Counsel Category:Chancellors of the Duchy of Lancaster Category:Chancellors of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom Category:Conservative Party (UK) MPs Category:Living people Category:Members of the Bow Group Category:Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom Category:Members of the United Kingdom Parliament for English constituencies Category:Old Nottinghamians Category:People from West Bridgford Category:Presidents of the Cambridge Union Society Category:Secretaries of State for the Home Department Category:UK MPs 1970–1974 Category:UK MPs 1974 Category:UK MPs 1974–1979 Category:UK MPs 1979–1983 Category:UK MPs 1983–1987 Category:UK MPs 1987–1992 Category:UK MPs 1992–1997 Category:UK MPs 1997–2001 Category:UK MPs 2001–2005 Category:UK MPs 2005–2010 Category:UK MPs 2010– Category:Lord Chancellors of Great Britain Category:English barristers Category:Members of Gray's Inn Category:English Queen's Counsel

cy:Kenneth Clarke de:Kenneth Clarke es:Kenneth Clarke fr:Kenneth Clarke it:Kenneth Clarke la:Kenethus Clarke nl:Kenneth Clarke no:Kenneth Clarke pl:Kenneth Clarke ru:Кларк, Кеннет Гарри simple:Kenneth Clarke fi:Kenneth Clarke sv:Kenneth Clarke tr:Kenneth Clarke zh:祁淦禮

Name	Barney Frank
Birth date	March 31, 1940
Birth place	Bayonne, New Jersey
State	Massachusetts
District	4th
Term start	January 3, 1981
Preceded	Robert Drinan
Succeeded	Incumbent
Party	Democratic
Office2	Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee
Term start2	January 4, 2007
Term end2	January 3, 2011
Preceded2	Mike Oxley
Succeeded2	Spencer Bachus
Office3	Member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives
Term start3	1973
Term end3	1981
Religion	Judaism
Alma mater	Harvard CollegeHarvard Law School
Occupation	Attorney, United States Representative
Residence	Newton, Massachusetts
Partner	Jim Ready
Committees	House Financial Services Committee
Website
Relations	Sister: Ann Lewis }}

Barney Frank (born March 31, 1940) is the U.S. Representative for (1981–present). A member of the Democratic Party, he is the former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee (2007–2011) and is considered the most prominent gay politician in the United States.

Born and raised in New Jersey, Frank graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He worked as a political aide before winning election to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1972. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1980 with 52 percent of the vote. He has been re-elected ever since by wide margins. In 1987 he came out as gay, becoming the first member of Congress to do so voluntarily. From 2007 to 2011, Frank served as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, where he remains the ranking Democrat.

Early life

Frank was born Barnett Frank to a Jewish family in Bayonne, New Jersey, one of four children of Sam and Elsie. Frank's father ran a Jersey City truck stop — a place Frank describes as "totally corrupt" — and served a year in prison, when Frank was 6 or 7, for refusing to testify to a grand jury against Frank's uncle. Frank was educated at Harvard College, where he resided in Matthews Hall his first year and then in Kirkland House and Winthrop House, graduating in 1962. Frank's undergraduate studies were interrupted by the death of his father, and Frank took a year off to help resolve the family's affairs prior to his graduation. He taught undergraduates at Harvard while studying for a Ph.D., but left in 1968 before completing the degree, to become Boston mayor Kevin White's Chief Assistant, a position he held for three years. He then served for a year as Administrative Assistant to Congressman Michael J. Harrington. Frank later graduated from Harvard Law School, in 1977, while serving as Massachusetts State Representative.

Career

In 1972 Frank was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives where he served for eight years. Frank made a name for himself in the mid-1970s as a political defender of the Combat Zone, Boston's notorious red light district. Neighborhoods in Frank's district bordered the Combat Zone. As a means of dealing with crime in the area (including violence, police corruption and the infiltration by organized crime), Frank introduced a bill into the Massachusetts General Court that would have legalized the sex-for-hire business but kept it quarantined in a red light district, which would have been moved to Boston's Financial District. The bill, which had the support of Boston's Police Commissioner, never came up for a vote. Later, when Frank was running for Congress, opponents erroneously portrayed him having attempted to permit red light districts in all Bay State communities.

While in state and local government, Frank taught part time at the University of Massachusetts Boston, the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and at Boston University. He published numerous articles on politics and public affairs, and in 1992 he published ''Speaking Frankly'', an essay on the role the Democratic Party should play in the 1990s.

In 1979, Frank was admitted to the bar in Massachusetts. A year later, he ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in the 4th congressional district, hoping to succeed Father Robert Drinan, who had left Congress following a call by Pope John Paul II for priests to withdraw from political positions. In the Democratic primary held on September 16, 1980, Frank won 51.3 percent of the vote in a four-candidate field. His nearest opponent, Arthur J. Clark, won 45.9 percent and finished almost 4,500 votes behind. As the Democratic nominee, Frank faced Republican Richard A. Jones in the general election and won narrowly, 51.9 percent to 48.1 percent.

For his first term, Frank represented a district in the western and southern suburbs of Boston, anchored by Brookline and Newton, Massachusetts. However, in 1982, redistricting forced him to run against Republican Margaret Heckler, who represented a district centered on the South Coast, including Fall River and New Bedford. Although the newly configured district retained Frank's district number — the 4th — it was geographically more Heckler's district. Frank focused on Heckler's initial support for President Ronald Reagan's tax cuts, and won by twenty percentage points. He has not faced significant opposition since, and has been reelected fifteen times.

In 1985 Frank was still closeted. That year he hired Steve Gobie for sex, a male prostitute, and they became friends more than sexual partners. Frank housed Gobie and hired him with personal funds as an aide, housekeeper and driver and paid for his attorney and court-ordered psychiatrist. In 1987 Frank kicked Gobie out after he was advised by his landlord that Gobie kept escorting despite the support and was doing so in the residence. Later that year Gobie's friends convinced him he had a gay male version of ''Mayflower Madam'', a TV movie they had been watching. In 1989 Gobie tried to initiate a bidding war for the story between WUSA-TV (Channel 9), the ''Washington Times'', and ''The Washington Post''. He then gave the story to ''The Washington Times'' for nothing, in hopes of getting a book contract. Amid calls for an investigation Frank asked the House Ethics Committee to investigate his relationship "in order to insure that the public record is clear." The Committee found no evidence that Frank had known of or been involved in the alleged illegal activity and dismissed all of Gobie's more scandalous claims; they recommended a reprimand for Frank using his congressional office to fix 33 of Gobie's parking tickets and for misstatements of fact in a memorandum relating to Gobie's criminal probation record. The House voted 408–18 to reprimand Frank. The attempts to censure and expel Frank were led by Republican Larry Craig, whom Frank later criticized for hypocrisy after Craig's own arrest in 2007 for lewd conduct while soliciting gay sex in an airport bathroom. Frank won re-election that year with 66 percent of the vote, and has won by larger margins until the 2010 Mid-term elections when Frank only won by eleven points.

Committee assignments

Committee on Financial Services (Ranking Member)

Public perception

Frank is known for his quick wit. In one famous quip he said he was unable to complete his review of the Starr Report detailing President Bill Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky, complaining that it was "too much reading about heterosexual sex". In 2004 and again in 2006, a survey of Capitol Hill staffers published in ''Washingtonian'' gave Frank the title of the "brainiest", "funniest", and "most eloquent" member of the House. In 2008 the same survey named him "brainiest", and runner up for "workhorse", and "most eloquent", in 2010 he was named "brainiest", "workhorse", and "funniest". He is also widely considered to be one of the most powerful members of Congress. In his book ''Ripples of Hope: Great American Civil Rights Speeches'', Democratic speech writer Josh Gottheimer describes Frank as "one of the brightest and most energetic defenders of civil rights issues."

Political initiatives and positions

Domestic issues

Civil rights

In 1987, Frank was the Chair of the important House Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative Law and Governmental Relations in the 100th Congress. In this position, he was one of the staunchest supporters of redress and reparations for Japanese American internment during World War II. In 2001 Frank co-sponsored an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to apply equal rights based on gender differences. In 2002 he co-sponsored the "Federal Agency Protection of Privacy Act" (H.R.4561) to require a "Privacy Impact Statement" on new federal rules. In 2002 he was scored at 93% by the American Civil Liberties Union on civil rights issues indicating a pro-civil rights voting record.

In 2006, Frank was one of three Representatives to oppose the Respect for America's Fallen Heroes Act, which restricted protests (notably those of Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church) at soldiers' funerals. He opposed the bill, which passed unanimously in the Senate, on civil liberties and constitutional grounds. Frank said of the vote, "I think it's very likely to be found unconstitutional. It's true that when you defend civil liberties you are typically defending people who do obnoxious things... You play into their hand when you let them provoke you into overdoing it. I don't want these thugs to [make the] claim [that] America is hypocritical." The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People scored him at 100% in 2006 indicating a pro-affirmative-action stance.

In 2007 Frank co-sponsored the "Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act" (S.2521/H.R.4838) to "provide benefits to domestic partners of Federal employees". The same year he co-sponsored the "Equal Rights Amendment" (S.J.RES.10/H.J.RES.40) to "strengthen the ongoing efforts of women across the country to obtain equal treatment." In 2009 he signed bills recognizing the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots and the 100th anniversary of the NAACP.

Drug issues and medical marijuana

In 2001 Frank authored of the States' Rights to Medical Marijuana Act (H.R. 2592), an attempt to stop federal government from preempting states' medical marijuana laws. He has consistently voted for the bipartisan Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment, annually proposed by Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) and Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), that would prohibit the United States Department of Justice from prosecuting medical marijuana patients. In March 2008, he proposed the Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults Act of 2008 (HR 5843), which would have decriminalized small amounts of the drug but died in committee during the 110th Congress. On June 18, 2009 he re-introduced the bill as the Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults Act of 2009 (HR 2943). Commenting on legislation to remove federal criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use, Frank stated "In a free society a large degree of human activity is none of the government's business. We should make criminal what's going to hurt other people and other than that we should leave it to people to make their own choices." In 2003 he was rated "A" by Vote Hemp, indicating a pro-hemp voting record. In 2006 he was rated "+30" by NORML, indicating a pro-drug-reform stance. In 2007 he co-sponsored the "Drug Sentencing Reform & Kingpin Trafficking Act" ((S.1711) 07-S1711) to "target cocaine kingpins and address sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine". In 2008 Frank sponsored "Removing Impediments to Students Education" (RISE) ((H.R.5157) 08-HR5157) to allow rehabilitated drug offenders to get student loans.

In 2009 Frank signed the "Community AIDS and Hepatitis Prevention Act" (HR 179 2009-H179) to "use Federal funds for syringe exchange programs for purposes of reducing the transmission of bloodborne pathogens, including HIV and viral hepatitis" and the Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2009 (H.R.1866 2009-H1866) to "grant each state regulating authority for the growing and processing of industrial hemp."

Crime

In 2000 Frank was rated at 89% by Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants indicating pro-rehabilitation crime votes. He co-sponsored "Innocence Protection Act of 2001" (H.R. 912, S.486) to "reduce the risk that innocent persons may be executed [by examining DNA evidence more thoroughly]" and the "National Death Penalty Moratorium Act of 2001" (H.R.1038, S.233) to limit capital punishment until the National Commission on the Death Penalty reviewed the "fairness of the imposition of the death penalty". In 2001 he also co-sponsored the "Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act" (01-HR1343) to "provide Federal assistance to States and local jurisdictions to prosecute hate crimes." Frank co-sponsored the "Recidivism Reduction and Second Chance Act of 2007" to reducing recidivism. (this became Public Law No: 110-199).

Environment

In 1993 he co-sponsored "Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments" (H.R.3392) to regulate more contaminants under the Clean Water Act. In 2001 Frank co-sponsored the "National Forest Protection and Restoration Act" (H.R.1494) to "prohibiting commercial logging on Federal public lands". In 2003 he was rated 95% by the League of Conservation Voters indicating pro-environment votes. In 2007 he co-sponsored the "Great Cats and Rare Canids Act" (H.R.1464) to "provide financial resources and to foster international cooperation for promoting conservation of rare felids & canids". In the same year he co-sponsored the "Animal Fighting Prohibition Enforcement Act" (S.261/H.R.137) to "strengthen prohibitions against animal fighting".

Economic issues

Technology

Frank is a member of the Congressional Internet Caucus established in 1996 to "promoting growth and advancement of the Internet and advance the United States' world leadership in the digital world". In 2001 he co-sponsored the "Anti-Spamming Act" (01-HR718) to protect people and businesses from "unsolicited and unwanted electronic mail". In 2006 Frank voted for the "Communications, Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act" (Bill HR 5252 Amendment 987) to "establish "network neutrality" (non-tiered Internet)." In 2008 Frank voted against the "FISA Amendments Act" (Bill HR6304) which would give retroactive immunity for those involved in the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy. The same year he co-sponsored overturning FCC approval of media consolidation (S.J.RES.28&H.J.RES.79 2008-SJR28).

===Social issues===

LGBT issues

Frank has been outspoken on many civil rights issues, including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights. In 1987, he publicly came out as gay. In 1990, Frank was instrumental in crafting the 1990 Immigration Act, which restated the reasons for which a person could be denied entry into the country. The act did not include "sexual preference exclusion[s]", reforming earlier immigration law which allowed persons to be excluded for a sexual deviance "afflict[ion]". He said in a 1996 interview: "I'm used to being in the minority. I'm a left-handed gay Jew. I've never felt, automatically, a member of any majority." In 1995, then-Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey famously referred to Frank as "Barney Fag" in a press interview. Armey apologized and said it was "a slip of the tongue". Frank did not accept Armey's explanation, saying "I turned to my own expert, my mother, who reports that in 59 years of marriage, no one ever introduced her as Elsie Fag." In 1998, Frank founded the National Stonewall Democrats, the national LGBT Democratic organization.

In 2006, Frank and incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were accused by Rep. John Hostettler (R-IN) of having a "radical homosexual agenda"; Frank responded "I do have things I would like to see adopted on behalf of LGBT people: they include the right to marry the individual of our choice; the right to serve in the military to defend our country; and the right to a job based solely on our own qualifications. I acknowledge that this is an agenda, but I do not think that any self-respecting radical in history would have considered advocating people's rights to get married, join the army, and earn a living as a terribly inspiring revolutionary platform." Frank's stance on outing gay Republicans has been called the "Frank Rule" whereby a closeted person who uses their power, position, or notoriety to hurt LGBT people can be outed. The issue became relevant during the Mark Foley scandal of 2006, during which Frank clarified his position on HBO's ''Real Time with Bill Maher'': "I think there's a right to privacy. But the right to privacy should not be a right to hypocrisy. And people who want to demonize other people shouldn't then be able to go home and close the door and do it themselves."

In February 2009, Frank was one of three openly gay members of Congress, along with Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Jared Polis of Colorado. In April 2009 Frank was named in the LGBT magazine ''Out'''s "Annual Power 50 List", landing at the top spot.

In 2006 the Human Rights Campaign scored him at 100% indicating a pro-gay-rights stance.

Online gambling

Frank has partnered with Ron Paul in support of online gambling rights. In 2006, both strongly opposed H.R. 4777, the Internet Gambling Prohibition and Enforcement Act, and H.R. 4411, the Goodlatte-Leach Internet Gambling Prohibition Act. To restore online gambling rights, in 2007 Frank sponsored H.R. 2046, the Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act. This bill would have established licensing and regulation of online gaming sites. It provided for age verification and protections for compulsive gamblers. In 2008, he and Paul introduced H.R. 5767, the Payment Systems Protection Act, a bill that sought to place a moratorium on enforcement of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 while the United States Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve defined "unlawful Internet gambling". As a result of these efforts, Frank (who does not gamble) has been praised by poker players and online gamblers, including many Republicans.

Abortion

In 2009 Frank had a 100% rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America indicating a pro-choice voting record. He voted against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, against the Unborn Victims of Violence Act and against restrictions on the transportation of minors across state lines by non-family members to circumvent local abortion laws. In 1993 Frank co-sponsored the "Freedom of Choice Act" (H.R.25) (1993-H25) to "protect the reproductive rights of women". In 2006 he co-sponsored the "Compassionate Assistance for Rape Emergencies Act" (S.3945) 06-S3945), a bill for "emergency contraception for rape victims". In 2007 his co-sponsored the "Compassionate Care for Servicewomen Act" (S.1800 & HR.2064) (07-HR2064) to "providing emergency contraception at military facilities"; the "Prevention First Act" (S.21&H.R.463 2009-S21) to "expand access to preventive health care services that help reduce unintended pregnancy, reduce abortions, and improve access to women's health care".

Military issues

In 1996 Frank co-sponsored the "Federal Law Enforcement Dependents Assistance Act" (H.R.4111. Became Public Law No: 104-238.) to "to provide educational assistance to the dependents of Federal law enforcement officials who are killed or disabled in the performance of their duties." In 2001 Frank co-sponsored "the MX Missile Stand-Down Act" (01-HR2718) to take fifty peacekeeper missiles off of high-alert status and he co-sponsored the Landmine Elimination and Victim Assistance Act (01-HR948). As of December 2003 Frank has a 89% rating by Peace Action, indicating a pro-peace voting record. In 2005 he co-sponsored "Rail Security Act" (S.1379/H.R.153) (05-S1379) giving higher priority to rail transportation security. In 2008 he co-sponsored the "Veterans Suicide Study Act" ( (S.2899/H.R.4204) 08-S2899) designed to study and address suicides among veterans. As of the 111th Congress, Frank is advocating a 25 percent reduction in the overall Military budget of the United States. "The math is compelling: if we do not make reductions approximating 25 percent of the military budget starting fairly soon, it will be impossible to continue to fund an adequate level of domestic activity...," wrote Frank. He claimed that such a significant reduction would have no effect on the United States' ability to defend itself. "If," he said, "beginning one year from now, we were to cut military spending by 25 percent from its projected levels, we would still be immeasurably stronger than any combination of nations with whom we might be engaged." Frank supports having fewer F-35 Joint Strike Fighter planes, but also supports a $3 billion backup engine project that the Pentagon does not want. Frank told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann that he actually wanted to cut the entire F-35 program, but as long as military spending continued he would fight for his district's share of it.

House Financial Services Committee

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

In 2003, while the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee, Frank opposed a Bush administration proposal, in response to accounting scandals, for transferring oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from Congress and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to a new agency that would be created within the Treasury Department. The proposal, supported by the head of Fannie Mae, reflected the administration's belief that Congress "neither has the tools, nor the stature" for adequate oversight. Frank stated, "These two entities ...are not facing any kind of financial crisis ... The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing." In 2003, Frank also stated what has been called his "famous dice roll": "I do not want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness [in the regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] that we have in the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision. I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidised housing."

Frank was criticized by conservative organizations for campaign contributions totaling $42,350 between 1989 and 2008. Bill Sammon, the Washington managing editor for Fox News Channel, claimed the donations from Fannie and Freddie influenced his support of their lending programs, and said that Frank did not play a strong enough role in reforming the institutions in the years leading up to the Economic crisis of 2008. In 2006 a Fannie Mae representative stated in SEC filings that they "did not participate in large amounts of these non-traditional mortgages in 2004 and 2005." In response to criticism, Frank said, "In 2004, it was Bush who started to push Fannie and Freddie into subprime mortgages, because they were boasting about how they were expanding homeownership for low-income people. And I said at the time, 'Hey — (a) this is going to jeopardize their profitability, but (b) it's going to put people in homes they can't afford, and they're gonna lose them.'"

In 2009 Frank responded to what he called "wholly inaccurate efforts by Republicans to blame Democrats, and [me] in particular" for the subprime mortgage crisis, which is linked to the financial crisis of 2007–2009. He outlined his efforts to reform these institutions and add regulations, but met resistance from Republicans, with the main exception being a bill with Republican Mike Oxley that died because of opposition from President Bush. The 2005 bill included Frank objectives, which were to impose tighter regulation of Fannie and Freddie and new funds for rental housing. Frank and Mike Oxley achieved broad bipartisan support for the bill in the Financial Services Committee, and it passed the House. But the Senate never voted on the measure, in part because President Bush was likely to veto it. "If it had passed, that would have been one of the ways we could have reined in the bowling ball going downhill called housing," Oxley told Frank. In an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, Lawrence B. Lindsey, a former economic adviser to President George W. Bush, wrote that Frank "is the only politician I know who has argued that we needed tighter rules that intentionally produce fewer homeowners and more renters." Once control shifted to the Democrats, Frank was able to help guide both the Federal Housing Reform Act (H.R. 1427) and the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act (H.R. 3915) to passage in 2007. Frank also said that the Republican-led Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act of 1999, which repealed part of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 and removed the wall between commercial and investment banks, contributed to the financial meltdown. Frank further stated that "during twelve years of Republican rule no reform was adopted regarding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In 2007, a few months after I became the Chairman, the House passed a strong reform bill; we sought to get the [Bush] administration's approval to include it in the economic stimulus legislation in January 2008; and finally got it passed and onto President Bush's desk in July 2008. Moreover, "we were able to adopt it in nineteen months, and we could have done it much quicker if the [Bush] administration had cooperated."

Chair of the House Financial Services Committee

[[Image:Congressmen Ellison & Frank at Financial Services Field Hearing on Home Foreclosures in Minneapolis.jpg|thumb|Congressmen

Ellison & Frank at Financial Services Field Hearing on Home Foreclosures in Minneapolis.]] As former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, beginning in 2007, Frank was "at the center of power". Frank has been a critic of aspects of the Federal Reserve system, partnering with some Republicans in opposition to some policies. Frank says that he and Republican Congressman Ron Paul "first bonded because we were both conspicuous nonworshipers at the Temple of the Fed and of the High Priest Alan Greenspan."

Frank has been involved in mortgage foreclosure bailout issues. In 2008 Frank supported passage of the American Housing Rescue & Foreclosure Prevention Act, intended to protect thousands of homeowners from foreclosure. This law, , is considered one of the most important and complex issues on which he worked. In an August 2007 op-ed piece in ''Financial Times'', Frank wrote, "In the debate between those who believe in essentially unregulated markets and others who hold that reasonable regulation diminishes market excesses without inhibiting their basic function, the subprime situation unfortunately provides ammunition for the latter view." Frank was also instrumental in the passage of , the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights Act of 2008, a measure that drew praise from editorial boards and consumer advocates. In 2007 Frank co-sponsored legislation to reform the Section 202 refinancing program, which is for affordable housing for the elderly, and Section 811 disabled programs. Frank has been a chief advocate of the National Housing Trust Fund, which was created as part of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 and was the first affordable housing program to be enacted by the Congress since 1990.

During the subprime mortgage crisis, Frank was characterized as "a key deal-maker, an unlikely bridge between his party's left-wing base and [...] free market conservatives" in the Bush administration. Hank Paulson, the U.S. Treasury Secretary for the Bush administration, said he enjoyed Frank's penchant for brokering deals, "he is looking to get things done and make a difference, he focuses on areas of agreement and tries to build on those."

''The New York Times'' noted that the Federal Housing Administration's crucial role in the nation's housing market, providing low-down-payment mortgages during the crisis of 2007–2010 when no mortgages would otherwise have been available, "helped avert full-scale disaster" by helping people purchase or refinance homes and thereby putting a floor under falling home prices. However, due to the tighter flow of credit from the banks, total FHA loans in 2009 were four times that of 2006, raising concern that year that if the economy were to dip back into recession, more Fed funds could be required to keep those loans afloat. Frank's response was that the additional defaults — 2.2% more of the total portfolio in 2009 than the year before — were worth the economic stabilization of the broader policy, noting "It was an effort to keep prices from falling too fast." In that context, he opined, "I don't think it's a bad thing that the bad loans occurred." In fact, the unprecedented number of loans made since 2008 were noted to be performing far better than those in the prior two years.

Personal life

According to Stuart Weisberg's 2009 biography ''Barney Frank: The Story of America's Only Left-Handed, Gay, Jewish Congressman'', Frank dated women in an effort to deny his homosexuality. His last romance with a woman was a nearly two-year long affair with Irish-American Catholic Kathleen Sullivan, the daughter of New England Patriots owner Billy Sullivan, that began in 1974. When the two split up, at Frank's instigation, he admitted to her that he was gay. He was still closeted publicly.

According to Frank, he "realized it was crazy" to try to have a romance with someone he cared for but was not compatible with due to his homosexuality. "That was the last effort to avoid being gay," Weisber quotes Frank as saying. Frank never again dated a woman.

Frank started coming out as gay to friends before he ran for Congress and came out publicly in 1987, "prompted in part by increased media interest in his private life" and the death of Stewart McKinney, "a closeted bisexual Republican representative from Connecticut"; Frank told ''The Washington Post'' after McKinney's death there was "An unfortunate debate about 'Was he or wasn't he? Didn't he or did he?' I said to myself, I don't want that to happen to me." Frank's announcement had little impact on his electoral prospects. Shortly after coming out, Frank met and began dating Herb Moses, an economist and LGBT activist; their relationship lasted for eleven years until an amicable break-up in July 1998. Moses, who was an executive at Fannie Mae from 1991 to 1998, was the first partner of an openly gay member of Congress to receive spousal benefits and the two were considered "Washington's most powerful and influential gay couple." , Frank's net worth is estimated by the Center for Responsive Politics at $1.88 to $4.74 million. His sister, Ann Lewis, served as a senior adviser in Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign.

Books

Weisberg, Stuart ''Barney Frank: The Story of America's Only Left-handed, Gay, Jewish Congressman'', University of Massachusetts Press (2009), ISBN 978-1558497214

Bibliography

''Financing Foreign Aid: A Case Study in the Budgetary Process.'' (1962)

''Budget for a Strong America'' (1989)

''Speaking Frankly: What's Wrong with the Democrats and how to Fix it'' (1992)

Notes

References

External links

Congressman Barney Frank ''official U.S. House site''

Barney Frank for Congress ''official campaign site''

Profile at SourceWatch

Articles

Johansson, Warren & Percy, William A. ''Outing: Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence.'' Harrington Park Press, 1994. pp. 106, 139, 143, 154, 157, 188–9, 228, 231, 235, 291

A Liberal Wit Builds Bridges To the G.O.P., ''The New York Times'', May 13, 2008.

Congressman Frank defends trans-exclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act, ''The Bilerico Project'', September 28, 2007.

The Republicans' Democracy Disorder, ''In These Times'', 2006-02-04

Congressman Barney Frank: A Buzzflash Interview, ''Buzzflash'', July 22, 2003

Monumentally Frank: Interview with Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank ''Metro Weekly'', March 20, 2003.

Frank Discusses U.S. Policy, Attitude Regarding Gay Rights, ''The Hoya'', October 19, 2001.

Category:1940 births Category:Living people Category:People from Bayonne, New Jersey Category:Jewish members of the United States House of Representatives Category:Massachusetts Democrats Category:Censured or reprimanded United States Representatives Category:Gay politicians Category:Harvard Law School alumni Category:Harvard University alumni Category:LGBT Jews Category:LGBT members of the United States Congress Category:LGBT state legislators of the United States Category:LGBT rights in Massachusetts Category:Members of the Massachusetts House of Representatives Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from Massachusetts

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