{"id":204,"date":"2009-03-29T11:53:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-29T11:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2009\/03\/29\/204\/"},"modified":"2011-08-06T16:52:22","modified_gmt":"2011-08-06T21:52:22","slug":"204","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=204","title":{"rendered":"Let Us Now Praise Famous Men"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let us now praise famous men<\/span> (Sirach 44:1). I’ve lived my life mostly “under the radar” of important political happenings. So, I never got to rub elbows with any presidents or ambassadors or anyone else who might be interviewed by Barbara Walters or George Stephanopolos. I’m like most everyone else — I’ve seen a famous person from a distance (Jimmy Carter, Sen. Everett Dirkson, Jane Fonda), or I’ve talked to someone who knew famous people (the daughter of former Sec. of State Cyrus Vance, a former savings and loan bank president who knew Paul Volker), or I’ve gotten to shake hands with someone who was once in the news (former HUD Secretary Cisternos, former HEW Secretary Joseph Califano). But I don’t have Rahm Emanuel on speed-dial on my cell phone (I don’t even have a cell phone!).<\/p>\n

However, I have had occasion to spend a few hours with certain people who occasionally show up in the news. So I’m going to give them a mini-tribute here, because all three of them seemed like good people who are doing mostly good things. <\/p>\n

First honoree: Nicholas P. Retsinas<\/a><\/p>\n

Mr. Restinas is currently the Director of Harvard University\u2019s Joint Center for Housing Studies. He’s been interviewed by the press a lot lately about the mortgage crisis and the agonies of the housing market. I just heard him talking on Bloomberg radio the other day. Back in the 1990s, Retsinas served as HUD Assistant Secretary for Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner. One day he came up to Newark for a tour of New Community, and I was selected as his chauffeur for the day. He was gracious enough, even to me, and he asked the big wigs some very good questions. I think that I answered a question or two from Mr. Restinas at an odd moment when the Board Chairman was otherwise distracted. I never saw the guy again, but I got some pretty good vibes from him that day. He seemed like a seriously smart guy doing his best to make the federal government run better. Now he’s at Harvard and I’m sure that he’s still doing good things. So hats off to you, Nicholas Restinas.<\/p>\n

Second honoree: Carol Lamberg<\/a><\/p>\n

Ms. Lamberg was and still is the Executive Director of the Settlement Housing Fund<\/a>, a non-profit affordable housing developer based in New York City. Settlement Housing has been responsible for developing over 55 developments with approximately 8,600 apartments, housing over 25,000 New York City residents in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan. The organization currently owns 42 buildings with 2,260 rental units. Besides rentals, Settlement Housing has developed cooperatives, condominiums, and two-family homes. I got to meet Ms. Lamberg in circumstances similar to my day with Nick Restinas; she was visiting New Community for a tour (but this time I was one of the guides, and not the van driver). Again, she seemed like a highly dedicated person, truly interested in bettering the lives of struggling people and families. I hope that she’s still managing to get more affordable housing built despite all the economic turmoil we’re now in. (Especially in a politically tangled situation like New York City!). So hats off to you
too, Ms. Lamberg. <\/p>\n

P.S., according to a campaign contribution disclosure<\/a> site, Ms. Lamberg was for Hilary Clinton in 2007, then got on board with a donation to the Obama campaign in 2008.<\/p>\n

And last but not least: Harold Pachios<\/a><\/p>\n

I got to know Hal (as we called him) in the mid \/ late 1980s, when I was working for an insurance industry rate-setting group and Hal was representing the industry in its rate increase litigation in Maine. He was and still is a partner<\/a> in one of the most influential law firms in the State of Maine (the insurance industry wouldn’t hire any old hack!). I went along on many of the trips to the state capitol (Augusta) as I was working in the economics department and I helped to crank out the rate-of-return calculations that were presented to the State. Hal was a great story teller, as he worked in Washington back in the Lyndon Johnson years (Assistant Secretary of Transportation and Associate White House Press Secretary under Bill Moyers). He also served on the presidential campaign of Edmund Muskie. And he still has his hands in politics, serving recently as Maine State Counsel for the Obama Campaign. <\/p>\n

Unlike the intellectual Nick Restinas and the Mother Theresa-like role of Carol Lamberg, Hal Pachos was and is more of a political wheeler-dealer. As the main partner in a big law firm, he takes a lot of money from big business. But I knew and still know that at bottom, Hal is a very good man, a fellow who got into politics to do some good. So Hal, this blog’s for you. I’ll never forget those dinners that my boss and I had with you on Commerce Street in Portland, eating really good seafood (back before I became a vegetarian), drinking Geary’s Ale, and laughing at your great stories about LBJ, Hubert Humphrey, Ed Muskie, Bill Moyers, et al.<\/p>\n

P.S., I also once met former NJ Governor Jim McGreevey, in an Episcopal church. But I’m not going to brag about that!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let us now praise famous men (Sirach 44:1). I’ve lived my life mostly “under the radar” of important political happenings. So, I never got to rub elbows with any presidents or ambassadors or anyone else who might be interviewed by Barbara Walters or George Stephanopolos. I’m like most everyone else — I’ve seen a famous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2252,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions\/2252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}