A First Draft of History: Week of Feb. 27 – March 5
here are a few important events from this week in history:
1504 - Christopher Columbus used a neat astronomical trick to escape from hostile natives on the island of Jamaica. This incident took place during Columbus’s 4th and final voyage to the New World. He left Cadiz, Spain on May 11, 1502, with four ships. Unfortunately, due to an epidemic of shipworms eating holes in the planking of his fleet, he was forced to abandon two of his ships and finally had to beach his last two caravels on the north coast of Jamaica on June 25, 1503.
Initially, the Jamaican natives welcomed the castaways, providing them with food and shelter, but as the days dragged into weeks, tensions mounted. Finally, after being stranded for more than six months, half of Columbus' crew mutinied, robbing and murdering some of the natives, who, were already getting fed up with provisioning the Europeans.
With famine threatening, Columbus formulated a desperate, ingenious plan. He had in his possession an almanac written by a famous German mathematician and astronomer named Johannes Müller von Königsberg, known by his Latin pseudonym Regiomontanus. Although Regiomontanus had died in 1476, his almanac contained astronomical tables covering the years 1475-1506 and provided detailed information about the sun, moon and planets, as well as the more important stars and constellations by which to navigate. The almanac quickly became a standard part of the equipment used by sailors, so of course Columbus had a copy with him when he was stranded on Jamaica. Flipping through the almanac, he soon discovered that on the evening of Feb. 29, 1504, a total eclipse of the moon would take place soon after moonrise.
Armed with this knowledge, three days before the eclipse, Columbus asked for a meeting with the natives’ chief and announced to him that the Christian god was angry with the natives for no longer supplying Columbus and his men with food. Therefore, he was about to provide a clear sign of his displeasure: In three nights time, he would all but obliterate the rising full moon, which would signify the evils that would soon be inflicted upon all of them.
On the appointed evening, as the Sun set in the West and the moon started emerging from beyond the eastern horizon, it was plainly obvious to all that something was terribly wrong. By the time the moon appeared in full view, its lower edge was missing!
And, just over an hour later, as full darkness descended, the moon indeed exhibited an eerily inflamed and bloody appearance: In place of the normally brilliant late winter full moon there now hung a dim red ball in the eastern sky.
According to Columbus' son, Ferdinand, the natives were terrified at this sight and "… with great howling and lamentation came running from every direction to the ships laden with provisions, praying to the Admiral to intercede with his god on their behalf." They promised that they would gladly cooperate with Columbus and his men if only he would restore the moon back to its normal self. The great explorer told the natives that he would have to retire to confer privately with his god. He then shut himself in his cabin for about fifty minutes.
In his cabin, he used a sandglass and the calculations provided by Regiomontanus' almanac to time the course of the eclipse. Just moments before the end of the total phase Columbus reappeared, announcing to the natives that his god had pardoned them and would now allow the moon to gradually return. And at that moment, true to Columbus' word, the moon slowly began to reappear and as it emerged from the Earth's shadow, the grateful natives hurried away. They then kept Columbus and his men well supplied and well fed until a relief caravel from Hispaniola finally arrived on June 29, 1504. Columbus and his men returned to Spain on Nov. 7.
In an interesting postscript to this story, in 1889, Mark Twain, likely influenced by the eclipse trick, wrote the novel, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. In it, his main character, Hank Morgan, used a gambit similar to Columbus'. Also, the great graphic novelist Georges Remi, the author of the Tintin series, used the same device, allowing his hero to escape death at the hands of the Incas by correcting predicting a solar eclipse. When I read that comic book as a child it struck me as a sort of deus ex machina; I had no idea such a thing had really happened!
1784 - Englishman John Wesley chartered the first Methodist Church in the United States. Despite the fact that he was an Anglican, Wesley saw the need to provide church structure for his followers after divisions emerged between the Anglican Church and many American believers during the Revolutionary War.
Wesley first brought his evangelical brand of Anglicanism to colonial Georgia in 1735, in the company of his brother Charles, with whom he had founded the ascetic Holy Club at Oxford University. This first venture onto American soil was not a great success. However, while Wesley was in Georgia, he became acquainted with some German Moravians, who hoped to establish a settlement in the colony. The meeting proved momentous, as the Moravians’ piety had a profound effect on Wesley
Once back in England, Wesley began taking the advice of fellow Oxford graduate George Whitfield and preaching in the open air when banned from Anglican churches for his unorthodox evangelical methods. By 1739, he had attracted his own group of adherents, known as Methodists. By 1744, the Methodists had become a large enough group to require their own conference of ministers, which expanded to create an internal hierarchy, replicating some of the Anglican Church's ecclesiastical order
Wesley, however, remained within the Anglican fold and insisted that only ministers who had received the apostolic succession--the laying on of hands by an Anglican bishop --could administer the sacraments. But the refusal of the Anglican church to ordain Dr. Thomas Coke to preach to newly independent Americans finally compelled Wesley to ordain within his own Methodist conference in the absence of a proper Anglican bishop. He performed the laying on of hands and not only ordained Coke as the superintendent of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America but also commissioned him to ordain Francis Asbury as his co-superintendent. These new Methodists then promptly settled down to a potluck and to a trustees’ meeting at which they fiercely debated what color the new carpet in their sanctuary should be
1807 - The U.S. Congress passed an act to "prohibit the importation of slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States...from any foreign kingdom, place, or country."
The first shipload of African captives to North America arrived at Jamestown, Virginia, in August 1619. By the middle of the 18th century, slavery could be found in all 13 colonies, and by the time of the American Revolution, the English importers alone had brought some three million captive Africans to the Americas
Slavery was of course a hot-button issue after the Revolution as America’s founders set about establishing a new nation. The Constitution never uses the term “slavery,” although the original text does refer obliquely to the institution three times. One of those sections, Article 1, Section 9, states, “The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight.” In other words, Congress could not abolish the slave trade until 1808. That date was, like so much else in the Constitution, a compromise, allowing the slave trade to continue, but essentially placing an expiration-date upon it.
In January 1807, with a self-sustaining population of over four million slaves in the South, some Southern congressmen joined with the North in voting to abolish the African slave trade, an act that became effective on January 1st, 1808. The widespread trade of slaves within the South was not prohibited, however, and children of slaves of course automatically became slave themselves, thus ensuring a self-sustaining slave population in the South.
Great Britain also banned the African slave trade in 1807, but the trade of African slaves to Brazil and Cuba continued until the 1860s.
1933 – Frances Perkins became the first woman to serve in the president’s cabinet when she assumed the position of Labor Secretary at the start of President Roosevelt's first administration. Perkins was born in Boston and grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts. She attended Mount Holyoke College and Columbia University, where she earned a Master’s Degree in economics and sociology. By 1911, she was working for the Factory Investigation Commission in New York City. In that capacity she witnessed first-hand the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, a horrific disaster in which a fire in a Manhattan sweatshop killed 146 workers, primarily poor immigrant women who had been locked into the building by its owners.
Perkins soon became Commissioner of Labor for the State of New York under Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt who later invited her to be his Secretary of Labor when he won the White House in 1932. Perkins served for 12 years in that capacity, and among other things she helped establish the social security system. She died in 1965.
1993 - At Mount Carmel in Waco, Texas, agents of the U.S. Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) launched a raid against a ranch housing members of a messianic movement known as the Branch Davidians
The ATF agents were investigating reports of illegal firearms. Rather than negotiating with the Branch Davidians, ATF agents stormed the complex. Apparently it never occurred to them that such an action would fit neatly into the Branch Davidians’ expectations of impending apocalypse. Sure enough gunfire soon erupted, triggering an extended battle that left four ATF agents dead and 15 wounded. Six Branch Davidians were fatally wounded, and several more were injured, including David Koresh, the movement’s leader. After 45 minutes of shooting, the ATF agents withdrew, and a cease-fire was negotiated over the telephone. The operation, which involved more than 100 ATF agents, was the one of the largest ever mounted by the bureau and resulted in the highest casualties of any ATF operation.
Following the unsuccessful ATF raid, the FBI took over the situation, handling it, if anything, even more ineptly than the ATF. A standoff with the Branch Davidians stretched into seven weeks, and little progress was made in the telephone negotiations as the Davidians had stockpiled years of food and other necessities before the raid
On April 18, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno approved a tear-gas assault on the compound. A few minutes later, two FBI combat vehicles began inserting gas into the building and were joined by Bradley tanks, which fired tear-gas canisters through the compound's windows and gauged large holes in its walls. Just after noon, a fire erupted at one or more locations on the compound, and minutes later nine Davidians fled the rapidly spreading blaze. Gunfire was reported but ceased as the compound was completely engulfed by the flames
Koresh and at least 80 of his followers, including 22 children, died during the federal government's second disastrous assault on Mount Carmel. The FBI and Justice Department maintained there was conclusive evidence that the Branch Davidian members ignited the fire. Most of the surviving Branch Davidians contested this official position, as have many critics in the press and elsewhere, whose charges against the ATF and FBI's handling of the Waco standoff ranged from incompetence to premeditated murder. In 1999, the FBI admitted that they used tear-gas grenades in the assault, which have been known to cause fires because of their incendiary properties.
International News:
There were more American deaths in Afghanistan this week where four US soldiers were killed, including two killed in yet another attack by an Afghan solider. I mentioned last week how Afghans ostensibly allied with NATO were increasing turning their guns on coalition forces, especially in the wake of the Qur’an burning incident. Unfortunately, it looks like that trend is continuing. In fact, 20% of all coalition deaths in Afghanistan this year have come not at the hands of the Taliban but at the hands of Afghan government forces. Again, this is very troubling, because the Obama administration’s entire strategy of extricating the US from Afghanistan hinges on our ability to cooperate with Afghan forces, which of course won’t work if they’re shooting at us
And in other international news, the Russians pretended to have an election this week. Employing a favorite tool of dictators from Iran to Syria to Venezuela, the ruling junta of Vladimir Putin staged the election in an attempt to establish its legitimacy. Shockingly, the election is widely expected to return Putin to the Kremlin, but opposition leaders and Russian observers say they are seeing widespread fraud and violations.
Putin, who was president in 2000-2008, easily won the Sunday election against four challengers. But if credible evidence of vote manipulation emerges, it would bolster the determination of opposition forces to continue the unprecedented wave of protests that arose in December.
An independent elections watchdog agency Golos said in fact that it has received reports of so-called "carousel voting," in which busloads of voters are driven around to cast ballots multiple times.
In fact, just halfway through the first day of voting, the watchdog group had recorded more than 1,000 complaints of irregularities across the country, ranging from questionable voter registration lists to nonfunctioning web cameras supposed to monitor to polling places.
Allegations of widespread vote fraud in last December's parliamentary elections set off an unprecedented wave of massive protests against Putin, who has remained Russia's paramount leader despite stepping down from president to prime minister four years ago due to term limits.
The protests, the largest public show of anger in post-Soviet Russia, demonstrate growing frustration with corruption and political ossification in Putin's Russia. But despite the increased dismay, opinions polls predicted correctly that Putin could easily defeat four other candidates and return to the post he held in 2000-2008. A mid-February survey by the independent Levada Center polling agency found Putin getting more than 60-percent support — well above the 50 percent needed for a first-round win. The Communist Party candidate, Gennady Zyuganov, got support of about 15 percent, according to the survey. A handful of others were in single digits.
Part of the problem in Russia is that despite discontent with Putin the opposition is fractured and no strong alternative candidate has emerged. Of course with Putin controlling the media, it’s hard for an alternative candidate to get a fair hearing.
Still, protests after the election appear certain.
And speaking of elections…
National News:
Once again this week the contest for the Republican presidential nomination dominated the national headlines. Overall, it was a good week for Mitt Romney, but once again, not quite good enough to allow anyone to say that the race is over. Romney scored three important wins this week. In Arizona, he thrashed his nearest rival, Rick Santorum, winning 47% of the vote to Santorum’s 27%. Newt Gingrich came in 3rd, and Ron Paul 4th. The much more closely-watched race this week, the Michigan primary, was also much harder fought. Romney had long been the presumed front-runner in the Bailout state, I mean the Wolverine state, due in part to the fact that it’s his home state and that his father was a popular governor there. In the end though, he just barely squeaked out a win over Santorum with 41 percent of the vote to Santorum’s 38 percent. Ron Paul placed third in the state, followed by Newt Gingrich.
In the week’s third contest, this one the caucuses in Wyoming, Romney again won, claiming 39% of the counties’ straw poll votes. Santorum again came in second with 33% of the vote, followed by Paul with 20% and Gingrich with 8%
To put these percentages in context though, only about 2,000 people voted in the entire state of Wyoming this year. Wyoming is of course the state with the country's smallest population at just over 500,000 residents. Brutal winters and mountain lion attacks help keep the population down.
In the fourth and final election this week, Mitt Romney once again won, this time in the Republican caucuses in Washington State. Romney claimed 38% of the vote, Paul had 25% and Santorum had 24%. Finishing out the field, Gingrich won 10%.
So, what does all this mean in terms of delegates?
Well, Romney will take all 29 of Arizona's delegates, but he will end up sharing Michigan's 30 delegates with Santorum, more or less 50/50
Counting the results from these most recent contests, the best estimate of the total delegate count is as follows: Romney has 181, Santorum 61, Gingrich 39, and Paul 33. It’s hard to be too precise about this though, because few states have winner-take-all primaries, meaning that in most cases the delegates end up getting divided by very complex formulas. In addition, in many states the primary votes aren’t binding, so the delegates can end up voting for whichever candidate they want at the convention. These are among the reasons why the process has become so drawn-out and why Romney can’t shake Santorum. Ah, for the days of fat-cats rigging the system in smoke-filled rooms
Still, we should have a clearer picture of the race after this week’s so-called “Super Tuesday” contests. The 10 states holding primaries and caucuses on Super Tuesday will award a whopping 437 delegates. It should be interesting. Rick Santorum is leading in most recent polls out of Ohio, while Newt Gingrich is leading in Georgia, the state he used to represent in Congress.
Those two states are the biggest delegate prizes on Super Tuesday. Romney, though, could be looking at an easy pick-up in at least one state. He and Ron Paul are the only candidates on the ballot in Virginia.
Lastly on this theme, I mentioned in other day, in the witty, light-hearted tone I often adopt, that the best way to tell who’s leading the race for the Republican nomination is to see who the NY Times is attacking. I was half-joking at the time, but now I think I’m really on to something. The day after Romney won Michigan and Arizona what should appear on the Times editorial page but a screed attacking him. So there you have it – the true barometer of the race for the nomination. Actually, I think the snarky high schoolers the Times employs to write its editorials probably just sat down and composed a whole stack of pieces attacking Republicans even before the campaign began and just left the names blank to be filled in later
There were two other interesting items of national news this week, both on the theme of healthcare fraud. On Wednesday, law enforcement officials began arresting about three dozen people suspected of belonging to an organized crime ring and operating a health care fraud scheme that netted as much as $250 million
F.B.I. agents and police detectives began taking the suspects into custody around the New York City area. Those arrested were expected to face charges that include racketeering, health care fraud, money laundering, insurance fraud and wire fraud, in connection with a scheme that was said to have spanned several years. Most of the alleged crimes involved what the authorities say were bills for medically unnecessary treatments stemming from auto accident claims. The criminal enterprise focused on the defrauding of Medicare and Medicaid. It’s worth noting that all 36 suspects are immigrants from the former Soviet Union. In fact, they all lived in Brighton Beach, NY, which, along with South Florida, has become an epicenter of healthcare fraud. Some law enforcement agents have speculated that the bizarre, convoluted, and often contradictory laws of the Soviet Union essentially trained people to game the system. This isn’t a commentary on the nature of a certain ethnicity of people, but rather an illustration of the reality that people adapt to their contexts. (More on that in a moment.)
$250 million may seem like a huge amount of fraud, but it pales in comparison to an even larger alleged scheme also uncovered this week, this time in Texas. The Justice Department announced this week that it has indicted a doctor and six others for defrauding Medicare and Medicaid of nearly $375 million stretching over six years. That would be a record amount for medical fraud by single doctors, according to federal authorities.
Prosecutors allege Dr. Jacques Roy used his office as a home healthcare clearinghouse, rubber-stamping approvals in his office basement. According to the indictment, he got home healthcare agencies - some of them allegedly crooked - to go door-to-door and sign people up in exchange for cash or free medical care, or even groceries. He and his co-conspirators allegedly made millions of dollars by recruiting thousands of patients for unnecessary services and billing Medicare for those services. In particular, the alleged fraud involved classifying as homebound 11,000 patients recruited by a network of more than 500 agencies, then billing Medicare for services and home visits that were either not medically necessary or were not provided. One defendant allegedly paid recruiters $50 for each beneficiary the recruiter could deliver from a Dallas homeless shelter. The homeless shelter eventually banned Roy from the premises, but prosecutors say he just went down the street and set up shop in a church, which presumably thought it was helping the homeless get medical treatment.
The scale of the fraud was truly audacious. In 2010, for example, Roy “certified” more than 5,000 patients for home health care; 99 percent of physicians certified no more than 104 people for such care. Roy’s alleged scheme resulted in more than $350 million being fraudulently billed to Medicare and more than $24 million to Medicaid. Again, that would make it the largest home health-care fraud ever committed and the biggest health-care fraud case brought against a single doctor.
Tuesday’s indictment marks the latest in a series of federal Medicare fraud cases. In 2011, health-care-fraud prevention and enforcement efforts recovered nearly $4.1 billion that had been stolen or improperly taken from federal programs, the highest annual amount ever recovered, according to a recent report by the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services.
This is an aspect of the healthcare reform debate that doesn’t get enough attention. Of course no one knows exactly how much healthcare fraud goes on, but it’s certainly in the billions of dollars. And the larger and more complex the system, the more the government tries to micromanage, the more specific mandates it foists on the system, the more room there is for fraud. Already, the handbook of Medicare regulations runs to over 100,000 pages. So remember what I said about those Russian immigrants? Well, as our healthcare system increasingly comes to resemble Russia’s – with a labyrinth of ill-conceived rules handed down by an all-powerful central government – there’s a real danger that Americans will start to act like Russians. And of course all taxpayers will end up footing the bill.
State News:
Some news this week about the race to replace NC governor Beverley Perdue. And this is news to which we should all pay close attention, since apparently in NC the governor can unilaterally invalidate laws he or she doesn’t like, as governor Perdue did this week when she decided to just ignore the new ferry tolls. Of course plenty of folks disliked the proposed new tolls, but still, even they have to concede that the law regarding the tolls was duly passed by our elected representatives. Anyway, since tsarina Perdue will be stepping down after this year, Democrats and Republicans alike are scrambling to take her place.
The candidate-filing period closed at noon Wednesday, with thirteen candidates having filed paperwork to enter the gubernatorial race. Former 2nd District Congressman Bob Etheridge submitted his paperwork to the State Board of Elections on Wednesday morning, becoming the last Democratic candidate to file for governor. He joins Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton, Orange County Rep. Bill Faison, retired doctor Bruce Blackmon, sales manager Gary Dunn and retired auditor Gardenia Henley on the Democratic primary ballot.
On the Republican side, former Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory, who lost the 2008 gubernatorial election, joins Fayetteville businessman Jim Harney, Greensboro businessman Scott Jones, Lincoln County real estate agent Jim Mahan, Charles Kenneth Moss and former judge Paul Wright.
Former Libertarian Party Chairwoman Barbara Howe, who ran for governor in 2000 and 2004, will also be part of the race to succeed Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue.
This level of interest in the governor's race is unusually high. Only nine candidates sought the office in 2008, when former Gov, Mike Easley finished his second term. So, it looks like we’ll have more choices this time around, although something tells me that the people of this fair state will still end choosing someone who’s going to end up being indicted a few years down the road.
Andrew Stern is, among other things, an historian, an Ocracoke resident, and a board member at Ocracoke’s community radio station, WOVV 90.1FM where you can hear his weekly broadcast of “A First Draft of History” every Monday morning at 9am.
