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Michael Johns (executive)
Encyclopedia
Michael Johns is an American health care executive, former federal government of the United States
official and conservative policy analyst and writer.
and graduated from Emmaus High School
in Emmaus, Pennsylvania
in 1982. He received a Bachelor of Business Administration
from the University of Miami
in Coral Gables, Florida
, where he majored in economics and graduated with honors in 1986. He is a member of Lambda Chi Alpha
fraternity, being initiated as an undergraduate student at Miami. While attending Miami, Johns was also inducted into Miami's Iron Arrow Honor Society
. He also attended Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
.
corporation Eli Lilly
, in the health care practice of a Philadelphia consulting firm and as vice president of Gentiva Health Services
, a Long Island
-based Fortune 1000
corporation. As part of Gentiva senior management, Johns helped lead a quintupling of the company's market capitalization
and one of the largest health care acquisitions in recent years. Subsequently, since 2003, he managed a division of Electric Mobility Corporation, a New Jersey
-based global medical device company.
Johns was a proponent of the Bush administration's 2006 launch of Medicare Part D
, which expanded the federal Medicare
program to cover pharmaceuticals for the elderly
and chronically disabled
, arguing that Medicare was spending too much on preventable hospitalizations and surgeries
and too little on disease prevention and management. He also has advocated the use of dynamic scoring
in federal and state health care budgeting, which he says would more properly reflect the overall health spending savings that would be realized with adequate investments in preventive medicine
and home care
.
In his health care roles, Johns has supported increased biopharmaceutical
and free market
health care innovation
, while simultaneously defending the need to protect Medicare, Medicaid
and other governmental health programs for the nation's elderly, poor and disabled.
Johns also is a current member of the board of directors for InvesTrend, a global equity research firm
.
," successfully urging the United States to support forces opposing Soviet
-backed and Soviet-aligned nations and one of the first Reagan Doctrine advocates to actually visit the front lines of these hot spots (Angola
, Cambodia, Nicaragua
, and the former Soviet Republics
) with regularity. Johns also was a close advisor to Angola's Jonas Savimbi
, whose Cold War
conflict with Soviet-aligned Angola became a central Cold War sub-plot.
He is credited with helping shift Washington's
intellectual tide away from containment
of the Soviet Union (as advocated by post-war
American leaders, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt
and Harry S. Truman
) and toward a more aggressive approach dedicated to the "rollback
" of global communism.
Johns was one of the most vocal U.S. conservatives in defending Ronald Reagan
's controversial description of the former Soviet Union as an "evil empire
." In a lengthy Policy Review
article, "Seventy Years of Evil: Soviet Crimes from Lenin to Gorbachev," for instance, Johns labeled the Soviet system "history's most sophisticated apparatus of rule by terror" and condemned its "crushing of the human spirit." He offered 208 examples, dating back to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution
, that, he argued, warranted the labeling of the Soviet system as evil
. The article reinforced with some that Reagan's use of the phrase, while criticized as inflammatory by some world leaders, was warranted, with National Review
praising the Johns article as "the tale of a state as brutal as it is petty; as unnatural as it is brutal; as enduring as it is unnatural."
In the final years of the Cold War, Johns and other conservatives helped develop, implement and sustain a vastly more aggressive U.S. foreign policy, in which the U.S. consciously and pro-actively challenged the Soviet Union's global military engagements and alliances in Africa, Asia and Latin America in what columnist Charles Krauthammer
, in a Time
magazine column, first labeled the "Reagan Doctrine." The doctrine, espoused by Johns and other conservative foreign policy experts, was rooted in a belief that Soviet nuclear capabilities
, combined with Soviet global aggression, represented a serious, growing threat to U.S. security that needed to be confronted. Unlike earlier proponents of containment, however, the doctrine's advocates also held that the Soviet Union was overextended globally, beginning to face major opposition at home and abroad and that even one high-profile victory for these anti-communist forces was likely to expose these vulnerabilities, inspiring democratic rebellion against Soviet-supported governments around the world and within the Soviet Union itself. Reagan Doctrine advocates argued that this offered the best opportunity to inspire the emergence of global democracies, or at least non-hostile governments, and end the Cold War without a need for direct U.S. engagement.
Johns maintained close relationships with the leaderships of resistance movements challenging Soviet-backed governments in Afghanistan
, Angola, Cambodia
, Ethiopia
, Laos
, Mozambique
, Nicaragua and other nations, sometimes mitigating these resistance movements' concerns with Washington
, sometimes carrying their messages to key Reagan administration officials.
Johns was influential and heavily engaged in securing U.S. assistance for resistance forces in Angola. After Soviet
and Cuban
military forces were deployed to Angola with the goal of eliminating Jonas Savimbi and his UNITA
resistance forces, a Vietnam War
-era statute that had prevented the Reagan administration from coming to the aid of Savimbi and UNITA was repealed and Johns and other conservatives quickly made a successful case that the U.S. had a moral and strategic obligation to promptly come to Savimbi's defense. Johns visited with Savimbi in his anti-aircraft
-protected compound in Jamba, Angola, where he provided private counsel to the Angolan rebel leader, and while U.S. military aid for Savimbi was kept covert, presumably to protect third party countries such as South Africa, Zaire
and others involved in delivery of it, U.S. aid to Savimbi's forces quickly bolstered UNITA as a major military and political opposition force in the country. In addition to visiting Savimbi in Angola, Johns also was influential in organizing visits by Savimbi to the U.S. As Savimbi's importance as a U.S. ally in the Cold War gained broader recognition, Reagan invited Savimbi to meet him in the Oval Office
during one such visit. Following the meeting, Reagan spoke supportably of Savimbi "winning a victory that electrifies the world," suggesting that a UNITA victory in Angola would raise the spirits and prospects of other anti-communist movements around the world and possibly within the Soviet Union itself that were engaged in resisting Kremlin
-backed communist governments.
As the Angolan conflict escalated, Soviet General Secretary
Mikhail Gorbachev
responded by urging Reagan and then President George H.W. Bush to cease U.S. support for Savimbi. But U.S. aid continued, and Johns returned from Angola to argue that Gorbachev's promises of "new thinking
" in Soviet foreign policy, designed to end such proxy Third World conflicts, were absent in Angola where, Johns argued, Gorbachev was actually increasing Soviet military commitments in the Soviet-supported war against Savmibi and UNITA. "If Mikhail Gorbachev cannot be trusted in Angola," Johns asked in 1990, "can he be trusted anywhere?"
The Angolan conflict was ultimately subjected to multi-party international negotiations, which provided for the removal of Cuban troops from the country. Johns wrote from Angola that Savimbi told him that he had not felt sufficiently consulted on the negotiations. But the negotiations did ultimately lead to an agreement to meet UNITA's long-standing demand for national elections in the country, and Johns and other Savimbi supporters strongly urged Savimbi to run for President, which he did. In the primary election, neither Savimbi nor Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos
obtained the 50 percent of total votes necessary to win the election, and a run-off election was scheduled. Savimbi, however, alleged that the primary election had been tainted by substantial Angolan governmental fraud. In a controversial Savimbi decision, the Angolan resistance leader withdrew from the election process and returned to war, which continued until February 22, 2002, when Savimbi was killed in action in an Angolan military ambush.
Johns also was an advocate for U.S. support to other resistance movements confronting Soviet-backed governments. In Nicaragua, Johns visited regularly with the Nicaraguan contras
, and he made several ultimately successful arguments in support of U.S. aid to the contras, including that Soviet military support for the Marxist Sandinista
government and a neighboring Marxist insurgency in El Salvador
(the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front
, or FMLN) represented Soviet violations of the Monroe Doctrine
and that U.S. support for the contras was justified under the doctrine's self-defense provisions. U.S. aid for the contras was authorized and the Sandinista government, under contra military and global political pressure, ultimately agreed to hold the free and fair elections the contras sought, which the Sandinistas then lost in one of several global indications that the Cold War was dissolving. Two years before his assassination by the Sandinistas in Managua
, contra military commander Enrique Bermúdez
, during a meeting in Tegucigalpa
, asked Johns to author his autobiographical essay, "The Contras' Valley Forge," which is based on extensive discussions between the two and received substantial global media coverage in The New York Times
, The Washington Post
and elsewhere. One of the few first-person contra accounts of the war, it was also Bermúdez's last major commentary on the conflict before his death.
Johns also helped shape U.S. policy in other Cold War conflicts, including in Soviet-backed Cambodia, where the U.S. wished to apply the Reagan Doctrine but was understandably reluctant to support Cambodia's primary opposition movement, which was run by leaders and members of the former Khmer Rouge
government. Johns denounced both the government and the Khmer Rouge resistance, and instead urged U.S. support for a lesser known third Cambodian political and military force, a coalition of the ANS
, run by Norodom Sihanouk
, and the Khmer People's National Liberation Front
, known as the KPNLF and then run by Son Sann
. Johns was one of the few Americans granted access to the Cambodian front lines of the ANS/KPNLF resistance, and he wrote supportably of the coalition, urging the U.S. to aid it in an effort to build a political and national security foundation that could provide Cambodia with a non-Communist, democratic political alternative. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan
and after the nation's fall to the Taliban, Johns was a leading advocate of expanded support to the U.S.-aligned mujahideen
faction led by Ahmad Shah Massoud.
. He was a critic of Mengistu Haile Mariam
's handling of the Ethiopian famine
, alleging that the famine
, which took over a million Ethiopian lives, was almost entirely a product of Mengistu's government-controlled agricultural policies and the Ethiopian leader's refusal to permit the free flow of foreign assistance. In Sudan
, immediately following Omar al-Bashir
's rise to power, Johns strongly urged the George H. W. Bush
administration to work with al-Bashir on regional security
issues and to end the Sudanese Civil War
by granting southern Sudan greater autonomy so that the region's predominantly Christian population could be granted exemption from Sudan's Islamic Sharia
laws in a step toward ending the war.
Johns was in Windhoek
, Namibia for that country's first independent election, and was highly supportive of expanded economic and political liberalization on the continent. He wrote for The Wall Street Journal
that a stable and democratic Namibia was "critical for the strategic and economic composition of the region." While many developing world
economists blame Africa's poverty on the long-term effects of European colonialism
and predict ongoing economic stagnation
in Africa, Johns has been one of several prominent global affairs experts to challenge this argument, responding that Africa's future will be promising if post-colonial
governments abandon statist
and autocratic
policies. This argument has won growing political advocates in recent years, including former U.S. Vice Presidential candidate Jack Kemp
(R-NY) and U.S. Congressman
Donald M. Payne
(D-NJ), both who have written supportably of Johns' arguments in Investor's Business Daily
and elsewhere.
Johns also gained notoriety for his willingness to urge an end to South Africa's since disbanded policy of racial segregation, known as apartheid, at a time when other U.S. and European conservatives, fearing the rise of the South African Communist Party
in a post-apartheid South Africa, were being criticized in the early 1990s for their silence on the issue. After Johns spoke on South Africa at the United Nations in New York City on November 27, 1990, during which he criticized the world body openly for continuing economic sanctions
in ways that he said were hurting South Africa's black majority under the auspices of helping them, William F. Buckley, Jr.
wrote in his December 27, 1990 Universal Press Syndicate
column that Johns' appearance at the U.N. was influential and "did not meet with critical reception because Johns has for many years been a voluble critic of apartheid, so that it was not thought necessary to pass much time on the disavowalist rituals." Buckley wrote: "Johns recited statistics that were not effectively challenged by the U.N. committee. He said that 'combined unemployment and underemployment
figures for South Africa's black majority now stand at 47 percent, largely because South Africa—an export-driven economy—has been denied access to foreign markets.' He then went on to cite the latest Gallup poll addressed to South Africa's black majority: Do you oppose sanctions as a means for ending apartheid? Opposed: 82 percent."
Johns was an early and vocal advocate for enhanced U.S. engagement in the Persian Gulf
. Less than a year before Saddam Hussein
's 1990 invasion of Kuwait
and the ensuing Gulf War
, he warned that the likelihood for strategically threatening conflict in the Gulf region made it important for the U.S. to encourage political stability in Somalia
and to maintain U.S. access to the airbase
s and seaports
of Berbera
and Mogadishu
. Several days following Saddam's invasion and occupation of Kuwait, he was among the first to articulate the neoconservative
principle that the Iraqi occupation was such a globally destabilizing event that it required all nations of the world (including the former Soviet Union) to choose sides in the conflict, standing with the U.S. in its efforts to dislodge Iraqi forces from Kuwait or to be seen, in the eyes of U.S. foreign policy, as siding with America's enemies. "In this critical moment in the evolution of post-Cold War geopolitics," Johns wrote, "Moscow must decide: Is it committed to roiling troubled waters or is it ready to work with the West in opposing aggressors like Saddam Hussein?" This ideology in the U.S.-led war on terror
contributed to the creation of coalitions of the willing
and ultimately evolved into one of the principle foundations for the Bush Doctrine
.
Following the Cold War's end, Johns helped advance pro-active American engagement in the post-Cold War world, running U.S. government-funded international economic and political development programs in post-Gulf War
Kuwait
, Turkey and other nations. While Johns was one of the first and most adamant American advocates for U.S. aid to anti-communist resistance movements in their military uprisings against Soviet-backed governments during the Cold War, he also was quick to encourage U.S. restraint once they ceased being superpower conflicts. In March 1991, with the Cold War nearly over, Johns told The New York Times
that the U.S. State Department
's repeated denunciations of Muammar al-Gaddafi
and threats of military conflict with the Libya
n leader were becoming monotonous and counterproductive and the U.S. would be better served by simply developing "policies to curb his power projection."
Throughout the 1990s, he was a critic of several components of the Clinton administration's
foreign policy. As the United Nations, with support from the Clinton administration, began repatriating
Thailand
-based Hmong
veterans from Vietnam's "Secret War" to Laos
, Johns was one of several influential opponents of the policy, labeling the repatriation a "betrayal." Johns' position on the issue drew support, and the U.N. repatriation ultimately was halted. Tens of thousands of Hmong refugees at Wat Tham Krabok
and various Thailand refugee
camps subsequently were afforded expedited United States immigration rights. Johns also criticized the Clinton administration's alleged neglect of Afghanistan
, which he argues facilitated the rise of the Taliban in that nation. However, when Clinton's decision to participate in a NATO intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina
drew criticism, Johns defended the Clinton decision, arguing that the conflict was a defining moment for U.S. engagement in Europe and that ignoring Serbian
ethnic genocide against Muslim Bosniaks
would prove permanently damaging to U.S. human rights credibility in the Arab world
.
In the late 1990s, Johns was one of several U.S. conservatives who successfully urged the Clinton administration to reverse the U.S. government's long-standing policy of officially denying the existence of the CIA
-supported covert "Secret War" in Laos and to honor the thousands of Hmong who provided support to U.S. air and ground combat operations against the North Vietnamese Army
and Việt Cộng
during the Vietnam War
. On May 15, 1997, in a major reversal of the long-standing U.S. policy of denying the Secret War's existence, the U.S. government officially acknowledged it, recognizing the Hmong's contributions to the U.S. war effort with the opening of the Laos Memorial
, which was dedicated and opened in Arlington National Cemetery
between the John F. Kennedy Eternal Flame
and the Tomb of the Unknowns
.
, and defended the Bush administration's military engagement in Iraq
. "The Iraq War has become the epicenter
in the global war against terrorism
, and the outcome in Iraq will ultimately be a key factor in determining whether September 11, 2001
was the beginning of the end for al-Qaeda
, or whether, conversely, it was just the beginning of an era of global terror that grows in both scope and duration," Johns wrote in a May 4, 2007 essay opposing a timetable for the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq.
Johns also challenged the allegations of some of Bush's harshest critics that the Bush administration consciously misrepresented U.S. intelligence findings on Saddam Hussein
's weapons of mass destruction
to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq
. Johns responded that numerous Clinton administration
officials, including Vice President Al Gore
and National Security Advisor Sandy Berger
, cited nearly identical intelligence conclusions regarding Saddam's possession of weapons of mass destruction in justifying Clinton's four-day 1998 bombing of Iraq, known as "Operation Desert Fox." Johns represents that the Clinton administration's nearly identical intelligence findings regarding Saddam's harboring of chemical and biological weapons is evidence that the Bush administration acted in good faith, and probably was technically correct, in alleging that Saddam was in possession of these weapons when the war was launched in 2003.
"It's certainly an extremely reasonable conclusion that Saddam's political maneuvering around United Nations-ordered inspections
, which ultimately invited this war, were not designed to hide nothing," Johns argued in May 2007.
Johns is one of several U.S. conservatives and other political leaders who, since the September 11, 2001 attacks, have criticized the U.S. news media
's policy not to rebroadcast footage of the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center
because some viewers found the footage unsettling. Johns has countered that the U.S. runs the risk of forgetting the magnitude of the September 11 attacks "because some components of our modern culture seem to want us to forget." And "we should be unsettled. We need to be unsettled."
Johns has been an advocate for revisions to current U.S. energy policy
, arguing that, while alternative energy
sources such as ethanol
may hold long-term usefulness in meeting some or all U.S. energy needs, U.S. access to petroleum is essential in the meantime and too little is being done to address this need, especially given vastly increased petroleum consumption in China
and India
. He has supported the relaxation of some U.S. energy regulations, including simplifying federal and state regulations that currently govern gasoline's formulated and unformulated contents, which the petroleum industry has said raise the cost of gasoline's production. Like other conservatives, he also has advocated expanding the U.S. oil supply
by eliminating several federal and state regulations that currently prohibit petroleum drilling
in various U.S. coastal waters and in the oil-rich portion of Alaska
's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
, known as ANWR.
Johns is one of several national leaders of the U.S. Tea Party movement
in opposition to high federal taxes, increased federal spending in the 2009 federal stimulus legislation
and elsewhere, and a perceived growth in powers assumed by the U.S. federal government that Johns and other Tea Party leaders allege are violations of the U.S. Constitution's 10th Amendment
. In April 2009, Johns was a featured speaker at three of the nation's largest Tea Party rallies to date, held in Boston, New York City and Philadelphia. After President Obama
acknowledged the Tea Party movement in an April 29, 2009 speech in Arnold, Missouri
, saying, "Let me just remind them that I am happy to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care costs down over the long term, how we're going to stabilize Social Security
," Johns was one of 18 national Tea Party leaders who signed a letter to Obama urging him to hold such a discussion. On July 3 and 4, 2009, Johns was a featured speaker at Independence Day
Tea Party events in Dallas, Summit, New Jersey
, and Washington, D.C. On August 22, 2009, he was the headline speaker at the Congressional Recess rally against Democrat-sponsored health care legislation
, held outside the Wilshire Boulevard
offices of the legislation's primary sponsor, Henry Waxman
, in Los Angeles.
In 2009, in multiple speeches he delivered to Tea Party
members, Johns urged Obama to settle questions related to his Constitutional eligibility and to cease concealing his original birth, citizenship and academic records. In a January 25, 2010 interview with Katie Couric
of CBS News
, he argued that federal legislation that had expanded government-ensured mortgage programs had been a contributing factor to the United States housing bubble
and subprime mortgage crisis
. He also averred that if the [investment] banks, i.e. Goldman Sachs
, had better means to communicate with the government officials during years which led to the collapse of financial industry, they [banks] would have been better positioned to express their concerns regarding regulatory rules which impeded the financial institutions to deal with the impending crisis.
and the White House
. In the U.S. Congress
, Johns began his career in the U.S. House of Representatives
as a Lyndon Baines Johnson
fellow with Congressman Donald L. Ritter
, a conservative Republican from Pennsylvania
. He later served in the U.S. Senate
as a senior aide to U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe
, an influential moderate Republican from Maine
, who Time magazine named one of the top 10 U.S. Senators in 2006.
Johns was a senior aide to New Jersey Governor
Thomas Kean
immediately prior to Kean's appointment by President George W. Bush
as Chairman of the 9/11 Commission
. He also was a White House speechwriter to President of the United States George H. W. Bush
.
In the George H. W. Bush White House, Johns was one of several senior Bush aides who helped define and advocate some of the policies that have come to be known as "compassionate conservatism
," focusing on outreach to low and middle-income Americans and nontraditional Republican constituencies. In a June 2007 interview, he echoed a similar theme, saying: "the American dream is a great concept, but it's just that—a dream—if it doesn't touch people's lives in tangible ways." In his federal and state government capacities, Johns has worked exclusively with Republican
s, but he also has been a staunch critic of what he sees as excessive partisanship
in American politics, which he says is precluding greater national unity on critical national issues. He has been praised for his ability to "position conservative ideas in ways that appeal to American moderates and sometimes even liberals."
, 1990, second edition, 1991), and a contributing author to two others, Freedom in the World: The Annual Guide of Political Rights and Civil Liberties (Freedom House
, 1993) and Finding Our Roots, Facing Our Future: America in the 21st century (Madison Books, 1997).
Johns is also a global market and stock columnist for the Wall Street
newsletter Seeking Alpha
. In his May 7, 2007 column, Johns correctly predicted that global demand for petroleum was increasing at such a rate that the price per barrel, then selling at $65 per barrel, was likely to reach $100 per barrel before the end of 2007. In the column, Johns wrote: "With light sweet crude futures
for June currently priced at roughly $65 a barrel, an ambitious short and long-term energy policy that enhances supply becomes important if, for no other reason, than the fact that, at $100 a barrel, the impact on this economy and the American people would be hugely painful. And in such a scenario, which could yet emerge this year or next, ethanol
will not be this nation's salvation." U.S. oil futures increased steadily from there, surpassing the $100 a barrel mark eight months later, on January 2, 2008.
Johns appears on national and local television and radio, usually representing conservative and Republican-leaning views on public policy and politics. He is a regular guest on several Sirius Satellite Radio
shows, including the late Ron Silver
's Indie Talk show.
and Emmaus, Pennsylvania
.
Federal government of the United States
The federal government of the United States is the national government of the constitutional republic of fifty states that is the United States of America. The federal government comprises three distinct branches of government: a legislative, an executive and a judiciary. These branches and...
official and conservative policy analyst and writer.
Biography
Johns was born in Allentown, PennsylvaniaAllentown, Pennsylvania
Allentown is a city located in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is Pennsylvania's third most populous city, after Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and the 215th largest city in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 118,032 and is currently...
and graduated from Emmaus High School
Emmaus High School
Emmaus High School is a public high school located in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, in the United States. The school serves grades 9 through 12 in Pennsylvania's East Penn School District in the Lehigh Valley region of the state....
in Emmaus, Pennsylvania
Emmaus, Pennsylvania
Emmaus is a borough in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is located five miles southwest of Allentown, Pennsylvania, in the Lehigh Valley region of the state.The population of Emmaus was 11,313 at the 2000 census...
in 1982. He received a Bachelor of Business Administration
Bachelor of Business Administration
The Bachelor of Business Administration is a bachelor's degree in Commerce and business administration. In most universities, the degree is conferred upon a student after four years of full-time study in one or more areas of business concentrations; see below...
from the University of Miami
University of Miami
The University of Miami is a private, non-sectarian university founded in 1925 with its main campus in Coral Gables, Florida, a medical campus in Miami city proper at Civic Center, and an oceanographic research facility on Virginia Key., the university currently enrolls 15,629 students in 12...
in Coral Gables, Florida
Coral Gables, Florida
Coral Gables is a city in Miami-Dade County, Florida, southwest of Downtown Miami, in the United States. The city is home to the University of Miami....
, where he majored in economics and graduated with honors in 1986. He is a member of Lambda Chi Alpha
Lambda Chi Alpha
Lambda Chi Alpha is one of the largest men's secret general fraternities in North America, having initiated more than 280,000 members and held chapters at more than 300 universities. It is a member of the North-American Interfraternity Conference and was founded by Warren A. Cole, while he was a...
fraternity, being initiated as an undergraduate student at Miami. While attending Miami, Johns was also inducted into Miami's Iron Arrow Honor Society
Iron Arrow Honor Society
The Iron Arrow Honor Society is a highly selective secret society and honor society at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida for students, faculty, staff and alumni...
. He also attended Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
Gonville and Caius College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. The college is often referred to simply as "Caius" , after its second founder, John Keys, who fashionably latinised the spelling of his name after studying in Italy.- Outline :Gonville and...
.
Health care industry
Johns has served with global pharmaceuticalPharmacology
Pharmacology is the branch of medicine and biology concerned with the study of drug action. More specifically, it is the study of the interactions that occur between a living organism and chemicals that affect normal or abnormal biochemical function...
corporation Eli Lilly
Eli Lilly and Company
Eli Lilly and Company is a global pharmaceutical company. Eli Lilly's global headquarters is located in Indianapolis, Indiana, in the United States...
, in the health care practice of a Philadelphia consulting firm and as vice president of Gentiva Health Services
Gentiva Health Services
Gentiva Health Services , formerly based in Melville,Long Island, New York and now in Atlanta, Georgia, is one of the largest providers of home health care and related services in the United States....
, a Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
-based Fortune 1000
Fortune 1000
Fortune 1000 is a reference to a list maintained by the American business magazine Fortune. The list is of the 1000 largest American companies, ranked on revenues alone...
corporation. As part of Gentiva senior management, Johns helped lead a quintupling of the company's market capitalization
Market capitalization
Market capitalization is a measurement of the value of the ownership interest that shareholders hold in a business enterprise. It is equal to the share price times the number of shares outstanding of a publicly traded company...
and one of the largest health care acquisitions in recent years. Subsequently, since 2003, he managed a division of Electric Mobility Corporation, a New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
-based global medical device company.
Johns was a proponent of the Bush administration's 2006 launch of Medicare Part D
Medicare Part D
Medicare Part D is a federal program to subsidize the costs of prescription drugs for Medicare beneficiaries in the United States. It was enacted as part of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 and went into effect on January 1, 2006.- Eligibility and...
, which expanded the federal Medicare
Medicare (United States)
Medicare is a social insurance program administered by the United States government, providing health insurance coverage to people who are aged 65 and over; to those who are under 65 and are permanently physically disabled or who have a congenital physical disability; or to those who meet other...
program to cover pharmaceuticals for the elderly
Old age
Old age consists of ages nearing or surpassing the average life span of human beings, and thus the end of the human life cycle...
and chronically disabled
Disability
A disability may be physical, cognitive, mental, sensory, emotional, developmental or some combination of these.Many people would rather be referred to as a person with a disability instead of handicapped...
, arguing that Medicare was spending too much on preventable hospitalizations and surgeries
Surgery
Surgery is an ancient medical specialty that uses operative manual and instrumental techniques on a patient to investigate and/or treat a pathological condition such as disease or injury, or to help improve bodily function or appearance.An act of performing surgery may be called a surgical...
and too little on disease prevention and management. He also has advocated the use of dynamic scoring
Dynamic scoring
Dynamic scoring predicts the impact of fiscal policy changes by forecasting the effects of economic agents' reactions to policy. It is an adaptation of static scoring, the traditional method for analyzing policy changes....
in federal and state health care budgeting, which he says would more properly reflect the overall health spending savings that would be realized with adequate investments in preventive medicine
Preventive medicine
Preventive medicine or preventive care refers to measures taken to prevent diseases, rather than curing them or treating their symptoms...
and home care
Home care
Home Care, , is health care or supportive care provided in the patient's home by healthcare professionals Home Care, (also referred to as domiciliary care or social care), is health care or supportive care provided in the patient's home by healthcare professionals Home Care, (also referred to as...
.
In his health care roles, Johns has supported increased biopharmaceutical
Biopharmaceutical
Biopharmaceuticals are medical drugs produced using biotechnology. They include proteins , nucleic acids and living microorganisms like virus and bacteria where the virulence of viruses and bacteria is reduced by the process of attenuation, they can be used for therapeutic or in vivo diagnostic...
and free market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
health care innovation
Innovation
Innovation is the creation of better or more effective products, processes, technologies, or ideas that are accepted by markets, governments, and society...
, while simultaneously defending the need to protect Medicare, Medicaid
Medicaid
Medicaid is the United States health program for certain people and families with low incomes and resources. It is a means-tested program that is jointly funded by the state and federal governments, and is managed by the states. People served by Medicaid are U.S. citizens or legal permanent...
and other governmental health programs for the nation's elderly, poor and disabled.
Johns also is a current member of the board of directors for InvesTrend, a global equity research firm
Investment management
Investment management is the professional management of various securities and assets in order to meet specified investment goals for the benefit of the investors...
.
Cold War efforts
Johns has held high-level posts in American government and public policy. His writings on American foreign policy in the 1980s helped shape and promote the foreign policy of the Reagan administration. He was one of the original advocates of the so-called "Reagan DoctrineReagan Doctrine
The Reagan Doctrine was a strategy orchestrated and implemented by the United States under the Reagan Administration to oppose the global influence of the Soviet Union during the final years of the Cold War...
," successfully urging the United States to support forces opposing Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
-backed and Soviet-aligned nations and one of the first Reagan Doctrine advocates to actually visit the front lines of these hot spots (Angola
Angola
Angola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean with Luanda as its capital city...
, Cambodia, Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...
, and the former Soviet Republics
Republics of the Soviet Union
The Republics of the Soviet Union or the Union Republics of the Soviet Union were ethnically-based administrative units that were subordinated directly to the Government of the Soviet Union...
) with regularity. Johns also was a close advisor to Angola's Jonas Savimbi
Jonas Savimbi
Jonas Malheiro Savimbi was an Angolan political leader. He founded and led UNITA, a movement that first waged a guerrilla war against Portuguese colonial rule, 1966–1974, then confronted the rival MPLA during the decolonization conflict, 1974/75, and after independence in 1975 fought the ruling...
, whose Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
conflict with Soviet-aligned Angola became a central Cold War sub-plot.
He is credited with helping shift Washington's
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
intellectual tide away from containment
Containment
Containment was a United States policy using military, economic, and diplomatic strategies to stall the spread of communism, enhance America’s security and influence abroad, and prevent a "domino effect". A component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet...
of the Soviet Union (as advocated by post-war
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
American leaders, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
and Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...
) and toward a more aggressive approach dedicated to the "rollback
Rollback
In political science, rollback is the strategy of forcing change in the major policies of a state, usually by replacing its ruling regime. It contrasts with containment, which means preventing the expansion of that state; and with détente, which means a working relationship with that state...
" of global communism.
Johns was one of the most vocal U.S. conservatives in defending Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
's controversial description of the former Soviet Union as an "evil empire
Evil empire
The phrase evil empire was applied to the Soviet Union especially by U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who took an aggressive, hard-line stance that favored matching and exceeding the Soviet Union's strategic and global military capabilities, in calling for a rollback strategy that would, in his words,...
." In a lengthy Policy Review
Policy Review
Policy Review is one of America's leading conservative journals. It was founded by the Heritage Foundation and was for many years the foundation's flagship publication. In 2001, the publication was acquired by the Stanford University-based Hoover Institution, though it maintains its office on...
article, "Seventy Years of Evil: Soviet Crimes from Lenin to Gorbachev," for instance, Johns labeled the Soviet system "history's most sophisticated apparatus of rule by terror" and condemned its "crushing of the human spirit." He offered 208 examples, dating back to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
, that, he argued, warranted the labeling of the Soviet system as evil
Evil
Evil is the violation of, or intent to violate, some moral code. Evil is usually seen as the dualistic opposite of good. Definitions of evil vary along with analysis of its root motive causes, however general actions commonly considered evil include: conscious and deliberate wrongdoing,...
. The article reinforced with some that Reagan's use of the phrase, while criticized as inflammatory by some world leaders, was warranted, with National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
praising the Johns article as "the tale of a state as brutal as it is petty; as unnatural as it is brutal; as enduring as it is unnatural."
In the final years of the Cold War, Johns and other conservatives helped develop, implement and sustain a vastly more aggressive U.S. foreign policy, in which the U.S. consciously and pro-actively challenged the Soviet Union's global military engagements and alliances in Africa, Asia and Latin America in what columnist Charles Krauthammer
Charles Krauthammer
Charles Krauthammer, MD is an American Pulitzer Prize–winning syndicated columnist, political commentator, and physician. His weekly column appears in The Washington Post and is syndicated to more than 275 newspapers and media outlets. He is a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard and The New...
, in a Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine column, first labeled the "Reagan Doctrine." The doctrine, espoused by Johns and other conservative foreign policy experts, was rooted in a belief that Soviet nuclear capabilities
Nuclear weapon
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first fission bomb test released the same amount...
, combined with Soviet global aggression, represented a serious, growing threat to U.S. security that needed to be confronted. Unlike earlier proponents of containment, however, the doctrine's advocates also held that the Soviet Union was overextended globally, beginning to face major opposition at home and abroad and that even one high-profile victory for these anti-communist forces was likely to expose these vulnerabilities, inspiring democratic rebellion against Soviet-supported governments around the world and within the Soviet Union itself. Reagan Doctrine advocates argued that this offered the best opportunity to inspire the emergence of global democracies, or at least non-hostile governments, and end the Cold War without a need for direct U.S. engagement.
Johns maintained close relationships with the leaderships of resistance movements challenging Soviet-backed governments in Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
, Angola, Cambodia
Cambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
, Ethiopia
Ethiopia
Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...
, Laos
Laos
Laos Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ Sathalanalat Paxathipatai Paxaxon Lao, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west...
, Mozambique
Mozambique
Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique , is a country in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest...
, Nicaragua and other nations, sometimes mitigating these resistance movements' concerns with Washington
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, sometimes carrying their messages to key Reagan administration officials.
Johns was influential and heavily engaged in securing U.S. assistance for resistance forces in Angola. After Soviet
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
and Cuban
Military of Cuba
The Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces consist of ground forces, naval forces, air and air defence forces, and other paramilitary bodies including the Territorial Troops Militia , Revolutionary Armed Forces , and Youth Labor Army .The armed forces has long been the...
military forces were deployed to Angola with the goal of eliminating Jonas Savimbi and his UNITA
UNITA
The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola is the second-largest political party in Angola. Founded in 1966, UNITA fought with the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola in the Angolan War for Independence and then against the MPLA in the ensuing civil war .The war was one...
resistance forces, a Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
-era statute that had prevented the Reagan administration from coming to the aid of Savimbi and UNITA was repealed and Johns and other conservatives quickly made a successful case that the U.S. had a moral and strategic obligation to promptly come to Savimbi's defense. Johns visited with Savimbi in his anti-aircraft
Anti-aircraft warfare
NATO defines air defence as "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action." They include ground and air based weapon systems, associated sensor systems, command and control arrangements and passive measures. It may be to protect naval, ground and air forces...
-protected compound in Jamba, Angola, where he provided private counsel to the Angolan rebel leader, and while U.S. military aid for Savimbi was kept covert, presumably to protect third party countries such as South Africa, Zaire
Zaire
The Republic of Zaire was the name of the present Democratic Republic of the Congo between 27 October 1971 and 17 May 1997. The name of Zaire derives from the , itself an adaptation of the Kongo word nzere or nzadi, or "the river that swallows all rivers".-Self-proclaimed Father of the Nation:In...
and others involved in delivery of it, U.S. aid to Savimbi's forces quickly bolstered UNITA as a major military and political opposition force in the country. In addition to visiting Savimbi in Angola, Johns also was influential in organizing visits by Savimbi to the U.S. As Savimbi's importance as a U.S. ally in the Cold War gained broader recognition, Reagan invited Savimbi to meet him in the Oval Office
Oval Office
The Oval Office, located in the West Wing of the White House, is the official office of the President of the United States.The room features three large south-facing windows behind the president's desk, and a fireplace at the north end...
during one such visit. Following the meeting, Reagan spoke supportably of Savimbi "winning a victory that electrifies the world," suggesting that a UNITA victory in Angola would raise the spirits and prospects of other anti-communist movements around the world and possibly within the Soviet Union itself that were engaged in resisting Kremlin
Moscow Kremlin
The Moscow Kremlin , sometimes referred to as simply The Kremlin, is a historic fortified complex at the heart of Moscow, overlooking the Moskva River , Saint Basil's Cathedral and Red Square and the Alexander Garden...
-backed communist governments.
As the Angolan conflict escalated, Soviet General Secretary
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the title given to the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. With some exceptions, the office was synonymous with leader of the Soviet Union...
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
responded by urging Reagan and then President George H.W. Bush to cease U.S. support for Savimbi. But U.S. aid continued, and Johns returned from Angola to argue that Gorbachev's promises of "new thinking
Glasnost
Glasnost was the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s...
" in Soviet foreign policy, designed to end such proxy Third World conflicts, were absent in Angola where, Johns argued, Gorbachev was actually increasing Soviet military commitments in the Soviet-supported war against Savmibi and UNITA. "If Mikhail Gorbachev cannot be trusted in Angola," Johns asked in 1990, "can he be trusted anywhere?"
The Angolan conflict was ultimately subjected to multi-party international negotiations, which provided for the removal of Cuban troops from the country. Johns wrote from Angola that Savimbi told him that he had not felt sufficiently consulted on the negotiations. But the negotiations did ultimately lead to an agreement to meet UNITA's long-standing demand for national elections in the country, and Johns and other Savimbi supporters strongly urged Savimbi to run for President, which he did. In the primary election, neither Savimbi nor Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos
José Eduardo dos Santos
José Eduardo dos Santos is an Angolan politician who has been the second and current President of Angola since 1979. As President, José Eduardo dos Santos is also the commander in chief of the Angolan Armed Forces and president of the MPLA , the party that has been ruling Angola since...
obtained the 50 percent of total votes necessary to win the election, and a run-off election was scheduled. Savimbi, however, alleged that the primary election had been tainted by substantial Angolan governmental fraud. In a controversial Savimbi decision, the Angolan resistance leader withdrew from the election process and returned to war, which continued until February 22, 2002, when Savimbi was killed in action in an Angolan military ambush.
Johns also was an advocate for U.S. support to other resistance movements confronting Soviet-backed governments. In Nicaragua, Johns visited regularly with the Nicaraguan contras
Contras
The contras is a label given to the various rebel groups opposing Nicaragua's FSLN Sandinista Junta of National Reconstruction government following the July 1979 overthrow of Anastasio Somoza Debayle's dictatorship...
, and he made several ultimately successful arguments in support of U.S. aid to the contras, including that Soviet military support for the Marxist Sandinista
Sandinista National Liberation Front
The Sandinista National Liberation Front is a socialist political party in Nicaragua. Its members are called Sandinistas in both English and Spanish...
government and a neighboring Marxist insurgency in El Salvador
El Salvador
El Salvador or simply Salvador is the smallest and the most densely populated country in Central America. The country's capital city and largest city is San Salvador; Santa Ana and San Miguel are also important cultural and commercial centers in the country and in all of Central America...
(the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front
Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front
The Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front is, since 1992, a left-wing political party in El Salvador and formerly a coalition of five revolutionary guerrilla organizations...
, or FMLN) represented Soviet violations of the Monroe Doctrine
Monroe Doctrine
The Monroe Doctrine is a policy of the United States introduced on December 2, 1823. It stated that further efforts by European nations to colonize land or interfere with states in North or South America would be viewed as acts of aggression requiring U.S. intervention...
and that U.S. support for the contras was justified under the doctrine's self-defense provisions. U.S. aid for the contras was authorized and the Sandinista government, under contra military and global political pressure, ultimately agreed to hold the free and fair elections the contras sought, which the Sandinistas then lost in one of several global indications that the Cold War was dissolving. Two years before his assassination by the Sandinistas in Managua
Managua
Managua is the capital city of Nicaragua as well as the department and municipality by the same name. It is the largest city in Nicaragua in terms of population and geographic size. Located on the southwestern shore of Lake Xolotlán or Lake Managua, the city was declared the national capital in...
, contra military commander Enrique Bermúdez
Enrique Bermúdez
Enrique Bermúdez Varela was a Nicaraguan who founded and commanded the Nicaraguan Contras. In this capacity, he became a central global figure in one of the most prominent conflicts of the Cold War....
, during a meeting in Tegucigalpa
Tegucigalpa
Tegucigalpa , and commonly referred as Tegus , is the capital of Honduras and seat of government of the Republic, along with its twin sister Comayagüela. Founded on September 29, 1578 by the Spanish, it became the country's capital on October 30, 1880 under President Marco Aurelio Soto...
, asked Johns to author his autobiographical essay, "The Contras' Valley Forge," which is based on extensive discussions between the two and received substantial global media coverage in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
and elsewhere. One of the few first-person contra accounts of the war, it was also Bermúdez's last major commentary on the conflict before his death.
Johns also helped shape U.S. policy in other Cold War conflicts, including in Soviet-backed Cambodia, where the U.S. wished to apply the Reagan Doctrine but was understandably reluctant to support Cambodia's primary opposition movement, which was run by leaders and members of the former Khmer Rouge
Khmer Rouge
The Khmer Rouge literally translated as Red Cambodians was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, who were the ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, led by Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Khieu Samphan...
government. Johns denounced both the government and the Khmer Rouge resistance, and instead urged U.S. support for a lesser known third Cambodian political and military force, a coalition of the ANS
Funcinpec
FUNCINPEC is a royalist political party in Cambodia. Before the 2008 election, FUNCINPEC and the Cambodian People's Party formed a coalition government, although FUNCINPEC's significance has decreased steadily since 1998, when it had an equal relationship with the CPP in the coalition.FUNCINPEC is...
, run by Norodom Sihanouk
Norodom Sihanouk
Norodom Sihanouk regular script was the King of Cambodia from 1941 to 1955 and again from 1993 until his semi-retirement and voluntary abdication on 7 October 2004 in favor of his son, the current King Norodom Sihamoni...
, and the Khmer People's National Liberation Front
Khmer People's National Liberation Front
The Khmer People's National Liberation Front was a political front organized in 1979 in opposition to the Vietnamese-installed People's Republic of Kampuchea regime in Cambodia...
, known as the KPNLF and then run by Son Sann
Son Sann
Son Sann was a Cambodian politician and anti-communist resistance leader. Born in Phnom Penh, he held the office of Prime Minister in 1967-68. A devout Buddhist, he fathered seven children and was married....
. Johns was one of the few Americans granted access to the Cambodian front lines of the ANS/KPNLF resistance, and he wrote supportably of the coalition, urging the U.S. to aid it in an effort to build a political and national security foundation that could provide Cambodia with a non-Communist, democratic political alternative. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan
Soviet war in Afghanistan
The Soviet war in Afghanistan was a nine-year conflict involving the Soviet Union, supporting the Marxist-Leninist government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan against the Afghan Mujahideen and foreign "Arab–Afghan" volunteers...
and after the nation's fall to the Taliban, Johns was a leading advocate of expanded support to the U.S.-aligned mujahideen
Mujahideen
Mujahideen are Muslims who struggle in the path of God. The word is from the same Arabic triliteral as jihad .Mujahideen is also transliterated from Arabic as mujahedin, mujahedeen, mudžahedin, mudžahidin, mujahidīn, mujaheddīn and more.-Origin of the concept:The beginnings of Jihad are traced...
faction led by Ahmad Shah Massoud.
1990s
Johns has advocated expanded U.S. humanitarian engagement in Africa, claiming that the magnitude of the crises facing that continent warrant U.S. assistance and humanitarian aidHumanitarian aid
Humanitarian aid is material or logistical assistance provided for humanitarian purposes, typically in response to humanitarian crises including natural disaster and man-made disaster. The primary objective of humanitarian aid is to save lives, alleviate suffering, and maintain human dignity...
. He was a critic of Mengistu Haile Mariam
Mengistu Haile Mariam
Mengistu Haile Mariam is a politician who was formerly the most prominent officer of the Derg, the Communist military junta that governed Ethiopia from 1974 to 1987, and the President of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia from 1987 to 1991...
's handling of the Ethiopian famine
1984 - 1985 famine in Ethiopia
A widespread famine affected the inhabitants of today's Eritrea and Ethiopia from 1983 to 1985. In northern Ethiopia, famine led to more than 400,000 deaths; over half this mortality can be attributed to human rights abuses that caused the famine to come earlier, strike harder, and extend further...
, alleging that the famine
Famine
A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including crop failure, overpopulation, or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every continent in the world has...
, which took over a million Ethiopian lives, was almost entirely a product of Mengistu's government-controlled agricultural policies and the Ethiopian leader's refusal to permit the free flow of foreign assistance. In Sudan
Sudan
Sudan , officially the Republic of the Sudan , is a country in North Africa, sometimes considered part of the Middle East politically. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the...
, immediately following Omar al-Bashir
Omar al-Bashir
Lieutenant General Omar Hassan Ahmad Al-Bashir is the current President of Sudan and the head of the National Congress Party. He came to power in 1989 when he, as a brigadier in the Sudanese army, led a group of officers in a bloodless military coup that ousted the government of Prime Minister...
's rise to power, Johns strongly urged the George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...
administration to work with al-Bashir on regional security
National security
National security is the requirement to maintain the survival of the state through the use of economic, diplomacy, power projection and political power. The concept developed mostly in the United States of America after World War II...
issues and to end the Sudanese Civil War
Second Sudanese Civil War
The Second Sudanese Civil War started in 1983, although it was largely a continuation of the First Sudanese Civil War of 1955 to 1972. Although it originated in southern Sudan, the civil war spread to the Nuba mountains and Blue Nile by the end of the 1980s....
by granting southern Sudan greater autonomy so that the region's predominantly Christian population could be granted exemption from Sudan's Islamic Sharia
Sharia
Sharia law, is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia is derived from two primary sources of Islamic law: the precepts set forth in the Quran, and the example set by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Fiqh jurisprudence interprets and extends the application of sharia to...
laws in a step toward ending the war.
Johns was in Windhoek
Windhoek
Windhoek is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Namibia. It is located in central Namibia in the Khomas Highland plateau area, at around above sea level. The 2001 census determined Windhoek's population was 233,529...
, Namibia for that country's first independent election, and was highly supportive of expanded economic and political liberalization on the continent. He wrote for The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
that a stable and democratic Namibia was "critical for the strategic and economic composition of the region." While many developing world
Developing country
A developing country, also known as a less-developed country, is a nation with a low level of material well-being. Since no single definition of the term developing country is recognized internationally, the levels of development may vary widely within so-called developing countries...
economists blame Africa's poverty on the long-term effects of European colonialism
Neocolonialism
Neocolonialism is the practice of using capitalism, globalization, and cultural forces to control a country in lieu of direct military or political control...
and predict ongoing economic stagnation
Economic stagnation
Economic stagnation or economic immobilism, often called simply stagnation or immobilism, is a prolonged period of slow economic growth , usually accompanied by high unemployment. Under some definitions, "slow" means significantly slower than potential growth as estimated by experts in macroeconomics...
in Africa, Johns has been one of several prominent global affairs experts to challenge this argument, responding that Africa's future will be promising if post-colonial
Postcolonialism
Post-colonialism is a specifically post-modern intellectual discourse that consists of reactions to, and analysis of, the cultural legacy of colonialism...
governments abandon statist
Statism
Statism is a term usually describing a political philosophy, whether of the right or the left, that emphasises the role of the state in politics or supports the use of the state to achieve economic, military or social goals...
and autocratic
Autocracy
An autocracy is a form of government in which one person is the supreme power within the state. It is derived from the Greek : and , and may be translated as "one who rules by himself". It is distinct from oligarchy and democracy...
policies. This argument has won growing political advocates in recent years, including former U.S. Vice Presidential candidate Jack Kemp
Jack Kemp
Jack French Kemp was an American politician and a collegiate and professional football player. A Republican, he served as Housing Secretary in the administration of President George H. W. Bush from 1989 to 1993, having previously served nine terms as a congressman for Western New York's 31st...
(R-NY) and U.S. Congressman
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
Donald M. Payne
Donald M. Payne
Donald Milford "Don" Payne is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1989. He is a member of the Democratic Party. The district encompasses most of the city of Newark, parts of Jersey City and Elizabeth, and some suburban communities in Essex and Union counties...
(D-NJ), both who have written supportably of Johns' arguments in Investor's Business Daily
Investor's Business Daily
Investor's Business Daily is a national newspaper in the United States, published Monday through Friday, that covers international business, finance, and the global economy...
and elsewhere.
Johns also gained notoriety for his willingness to urge an end to South Africa's since disbanded policy of racial segregation, known as apartheid, at a time when other U.S. and European conservatives, fearing the rise of the South African Communist Party
South African Communist Party
South African Communist Party is a political party in South Africa. It was founded in 1921 as the Communist Party of South Africa by the joining together of the International Socialist League and others under the leadership of Willam H...
in a post-apartheid South Africa, were being criticized in the early 1990s for their silence on the issue. After Johns spoke on South Africa at the United Nations in New York City on November 27, 1990, during which he criticized the world body openly for continuing economic sanctions
Economic sanctions
Economic sanctions are domestic penalties applied by one country on another for a variety of reasons. Economic sanctions include, but are not limited to, tariffs, trade barriers, import duties, and import or export quotas...
in ways that he said were hurting South Africa's black majority under the auspices of helping them, William F. Buckley, Jr.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
William Frank Buckley, Jr. was an American conservative author and commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing was noted for...
wrote in his December 27, 1990 Universal Press Syndicate
Universal Press Syndicate
Universal Press Syndicate, a subsidiary of Andrews McMeel Universal, is the world's largest independent press syndicate. It distributes lifestyle and opinion columns, comic strips and other content. Popular columns include Dear Abby, Ann Coulter, Roger Ebert and News of the Weird...
column that Johns' appearance at the U.N. was influential and "did not meet with critical reception because Johns has for many years been a voluble critic of apartheid, so that it was not thought necessary to pass much time on the disavowalist rituals." Buckley wrote: "Johns recited statistics that were not effectively challenged by the U.N. committee. He said that 'combined unemployment and underemployment
Underemployment
Underemployment refers to an employment situation that is insufficient in some important way for the worker, relative to a standard. Examples include holding a part-time job despite desiring full-time work, and overqualification, where the employee has education, experience, or skills beyond the...
figures for South Africa's black majority now stand at 47 percent, largely because South Africa—an export-driven economy—has been denied access to foreign markets.' He then went on to cite the latest Gallup poll addressed to South Africa's black majority: Do you oppose sanctions as a means for ending apartheid? Opposed: 82 percent."
Johns was an early and vocal advocate for enhanced U.S. engagement in the Persian Gulf
Persian Gulf
The Persian Gulf, in Southwest Asia, is an extension of the Indian Ocean located between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula.The Persian Gulf was the focus of the 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq War, in which each side attacked the other's oil tankers...
. Less than a year before Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
's 1990 invasion of Kuwait
Invasion of Kuwait
The Invasion of Kuwait, also known as the Iraq-Kuwait War, was a major conflict between the Republic of Iraq and the State of Kuwait, which resulted in the seven-month long Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, which subsequently led to direct military intervention by United States-led forces in the Gulf...
and the ensuing Gulf War
Gulf War
The Persian Gulf War , commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.The war is also known under other names, such as the First Gulf...
, he warned that the likelihood for strategically threatening conflict in the Gulf region made it important for the U.S. to encourage political stability in Somalia
Somalia
Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...
and to maintain U.S. access to the airbase
Airbase
An airbase is a military airfield that provides basing and support of military aircraft....
s and seaports
Port
A port is a location on a coast or shore containing one or more harbors where ships can dock and transfer people or cargo to or from land....
of Berbera
Berbera
Berbera is a city and seat of Berbera District in Somaliland, a self-proclaimed Independent Republic with de facto control over its own territory, which is recognized by the international community and the Somali Government as a part of Somalia...
and Mogadishu
Mogadishu
Mogadishu , popularly known as Xamar, is the largest city in Somalia and the nation's capital. Located in the coastal Benadir region on the Indian Ocean, the city has served as an important port for centuries....
. Several days following Saddam's invasion and occupation of Kuwait, he was among the first to articulate the neoconservative
Neoconservatism
Neoconservatism in the United States is a branch of American conservatism. Since 2001, neoconservatism has been associated with democracy promotion, that is with assisting movements for democracy, in some cases by economic sanctions or military action....
principle that the Iraqi occupation was such a globally destabilizing event that it required all nations of the world (including the former Soviet Union) to choose sides in the conflict, standing with the U.S. in its efforts to dislodge Iraqi forces from Kuwait or to be seen, in the eyes of U.S. foreign policy, as siding with America's enemies. "In this critical moment in the evolution of post-Cold War geopolitics," Johns wrote, "Moscow must decide: Is it committed to roiling troubled waters or is it ready to work with the West in opposing aggressors like Saddam Hussein?" This ideology in the U.S.-led war on terror
War on Terrorism
The War on Terror is a term commonly applied to an international military campaign led by the United States and the United Kingdom with the support of other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as well as non-NATO countries...
contributed to the creation of coalitions of the willing
Coalition of the willing
The term coalition of the willing is a post-1990 political phrase used to collectively describe participants in military or military-humanitarian interventions for which the United Nations Security Council cannot agree to mount a full UN peacekeeping operation...
and ultimately evolved into one of the principle foundations for the Bush Doctrine
Bush Doctrine
The Bush Doctrine is a phrase used to describe various related foreign policy principles of former United States president George W. Bush. The phrase was first used by Charles Krauthammer in June 2001 to describe the Bush Administration's unilateral withdrawals from the ABM treaty and the Kyoto...
.
Following the Cold War's end, Johns helped advance pro-active American engagement in the post-Cold War world, running U.S. government-funded international economic and political development programs in post-Gulf War
Gulf War
The Persian Gulf War , commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.The war is also known under other names, such as the First Gulf...
Kuwait
Kuwait
The State of Kuwait is a sovereign Arab state situated in the north-east of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south at Khafji, and Iraq to the north at Basra. It lies on the north-western shore of the Persian Gulf. The name Kuwait is derived from the...
, Turkey and other nations. While Johns was one of the first and most adamant American advocates for U.S. aid to anti-communist resistance movements in their military uprisings against Soviet-backed governments during the Cold War, he also was quick to encourage U.S. restraint once they ceased being superpower conflicts. In March 1991, with the Cold War nearly over, Johns told The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
that the U.S. State Department
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...
's repeated denunciations of Muammar al-Gaddafi
Muammar al-Gaddafi
Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar Gaddafi or "September 1942" 20 October 2011), commonly known as Muammar Gaddafi or Colonel Gaddafi, was the official ruler of the Libyan Arab Republic from 1969 to 1977 and then the "Brother Leader" of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1977 to 2011.He seized power in a...
and threats of military conflict with the Libya
Libya
Libya is an African country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....
n leader were becoming monotonous and counterproductive and the U.S. would be better served by simply developing "policies to curb his power projection."
Throughout the 1990s, he was a critic of several components of the Clinton administration's
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
foreign policy. As the United Nations, with support from the Clinton administration, began repatriating
Repatriation
Repatriation is the process of returning a person back to one's place of origin or citizenship. This includes the process of returning refugees or soldiers to their place of origin following a war...
Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
-based Hmong
Hmong people
The Hmong , are an Asian ethnic group from the mountainous regions of China, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. Hmong are also one of the sub-groups of the Miao ethnicity in southern China...
veterans from Vietnam's "Secret War" to Laos
Laos
Laos Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ Sathalanalat Paxathipatai Paxaxon Lao, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west...
, Johns was one of several influential opponents of the policy, labeling the repatriation a "betrayal." Johns' position on the issue drew support, and the U.N. repatriation ultimately was halted. Tens of thousands of Hmong refugees at Wat Tham Krabok
Wat Tham Krabok
Wat Tham Krabok is a Buddhist temple in Thailand, located in the Phra Phutthabat district of Saraburi Province.The temple was first established as a monastery in 1958 by the Buddhist nun Mae Chee Boonruen. It was upgraded to temple status 17 years later, in 1975...
and various Thailand refugee
Refugee
A refugee is a person who outside her country of origin or habitual residence because she has suffered persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or because she is a member of a persecuted 'social group'. Such a person may be referred to as an 'asylum seeker' until...
camps subsequently were afforded expedited United States immigration rights. Johns also criticized the Clinton administration's alleged neglect of Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
, which he argues facilitated the rise of the Taliban in that nation. However, when Clinton's decision to participate in a NATO intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina , sometimes called Bosnia-Herzegovina or simply Bosnia, is a country in Southern Europe, on the Balkan Peninsula. Bordered by Croatia to the north, west and south, Serbia to the east, and Montenegro to the southeast, Bosnia and Herzegovina is almost landlocked, except for the...
drew criticism, Johns defended the Clinton decision, arguing that the conflict was a defining moment for U.S. engagement in Europe and that ignoring Serbian
Serbs
The Serbs are a South Slavic ethnic group of the Balkans and southern Central Europe. Serbs are located mainly in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and form a sizable minority in Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia. Likewise, Serbs are an officially recognized minority in...
ethnic genocide against Muslim Bosniaks
Bosniaks
The Bosniaks or Bosniacs are a South Slavic ethnic group, living mainly in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a smaller minority also present in other lands of the Balkan Peninsula especially in Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia...
would prove permanently damaging to U.S. human rights credibility in the Arab world
Arab world
The Arab world refers to Arabic-speaking states, territories and populations in North Africa, Western Asia and elsewhere.The standard definition of the Arab world comprises the 22 states and territories of the Arab League stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the...
.
In the late 1990s, Johns was one of several U.S. conservatives who successfully urged the Clinton administration to reverse the U.S. government's long-standing policy of officially denying the existence of the CIA
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
-supported covert "Secret War" in Laos and to honor the thousands of Hmong who provided support to U.S. air and ground combat operations against the North Vietnamese Army
Vietnam People's Army
The Vietnam People's Army is the armed forces of Vietnam. The VPA includes: the Vietnamese People's Ground Forces , the Vietnam People's Navy , the Vietnam People's Air Force, and the Vietnam Marine Police.During the French Indochina War , the VPA was often referred to as the Việt...
and Việt Cộng
National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam
The Vietcong , or National Liberation Front , was a political organization and army in South Vietnam and Cambodia that fought the United States and South Vietnamese governments during the Vietnam War . It had both guerrilla and regular army units, as well as a network of cadres who organized...
during the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
. On May 15, 1997, in a major reversal of the long-standing U.S. policy of denying the Secret War's existence, the U.S. government officially acknowledged it, recognizing the Hmong's contributions to the U.S. war effort with the opening of the Laos Memorial
Laos Memorial
The Laos Memorial is a small memorial in Arlington National Cemetery, located between the path to the JFK memorial and the Tomb of the Unknowns, in Arlington, Virginia, in the United States. The memorial commemorates the veterans of the "Secret War" in Laos....
, which was dedicated and opened in Arlington National Cemetery
Arlington National Cemetery
Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington County, Virginia, is a military cemetery in the United States of America, established during the American Civil War on the grounds of Arlington House, formerly the estate of the family of Confederate general Robert E. Lee's wife Mary Anna Lee, a great...
between the John F. Kennedy Eternal Flame
John F. Kennedy Eternal Flame
The John F. Kennedy Eternal Flame is a presidential memorial at the gravesite of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, in Arlington National Cemetery. The permanent site replaced a temporary grave and eternal flame used during President Kennedy's funeral on November 25, 1963. The site was designed by...
and the Tomb of the Unknowns
Tomb of the Unknowns
The Tomb of the Unknowns is a monument dedicated to American service members who have died without their remains being identified. It is located in Arlington National Cemetery in the United States...
.
2000s
Johns was a proponent of many of the policies of President George W. BushGeorge W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
, and defended the Bush administration's military engagement in Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
. "The Iraq War has become the epicenter
Epicenter
The epicenter or epicentre is the point on the Earth's surface that is directly above the hypocenter or focus, the point where an earthquake or underground explosion originates...
in the global war against terrorism
War on Terrorism
The War on Terror is a term commonly applied to an international military campaign led by the United States and the United Kingdom with the support of other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as well as non-NATO countries...
, and the outcome in Iraq will ultimately be a key factor in determining whether September 11, 2001
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...
was the beginning of the end for al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda is a global broad-based militant Islamist terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad...
, or whether, conversely, it was just the beginning of an era of global terror that grows in both scope and duration," Johns wrote in a May 4, 2007 essay opposing a timetable for the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq.
Johns also challenged the allegations of some of Bush's harshest critics that the Bush administration consciously misrepresented U.S. intelligence findings on Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
's weapons of mass destruction
Weapons of mass destruction
A weapon of mass destruction is a weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to a large number of humans and/or cause great damage to man-made structures , natural structures , or the biosphere in general...
to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq
2003 invasion of Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq , was the start of the conflict known as the Iraq War, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 21 days of major combat operations...
. Johns responded that numerous Clinton administration
Presidency of Bill Clinton
The United States Presidency of Bill Clinton, also known as the Clinton Administration, was the executive branch of the federal government of the United States from January 20, 1993 to January 20, 2001. Clinton was the first Democratic president since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win a second full term...
officials, including Vice President Al Gore
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....
and National Security Advisor Sandy Berger
Sandy Berger
Samuel Richard "Sandy" Berger was United States National Security Advisor, under President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2001. In his position, he helped to formulate the foreign policy of the Clinton Administration...
, cited nearly identical intelligence conclusions regarding Saddam's possession of weapons of mass destruction in justifying Clinton's four-day 1998 bombing of Iraq, known as "Operation Desert Fox." Johns represents that the Clinton administration's nearly identical intelligence findings regarding Saddam's harboring of chemical and biological weapons is evidence that the Bush administration acted in good faith, and probably was technically correct, in alleging that Saddam was in possession of these weapons when the war was launched in 2003.
"It's certainly an extremely reasonable conclusion that Saddam's political maneuvering around United Nations-ordered inspections
Iraq and weapons of mass destruction
During the regime of Saddam Hussein, the nation of Iraq used, possessed, and made efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction . Hussein was internationally known for his use of chemical weapons in the 1980s against Iranian and Kurdish civilians during and after the Iran–Iraq War...
, which ultimately invited this war, were not designed to hide nothing," Johns argued in May 2007.
Johns is one of several U.S. conservatives and other political leaders who, since the September 11, 2001 attacks, have criticized the U.S. news media
United States television news
Television news in the United States has evolved over many years. It has gone from a simple 10- to 15-minute format in the evenings, to a variety of programs and channels...
's policy not to rebroadcast footage of the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center
World Trade Center
The original World Trade Center was a complex with seven buildings featuring landmark twin towers in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States. The complex opened on April 4, 1973, and was destroyed in 2001 during the September 11 attacks. The site is currently being rebuilt with five new...
because some viewers found the footage unsettling. Johns has countered that the U.S. runs the risk of forgetting the magnitude of the September 11 attacks "because some components of our modern culture seem to want us to forget." And "we should be unsettled. We need to be unsettled."
Johns has been an advocate for revisions to current U.S. energy policy
Energy policy
Energy policy is the manner in which a given entity has decided to address issues of energy development including energy production, distribution and consumption...
, arguing that, while alternative energy
Energy development
Energy development is the effort to provide sufficient primary energy sources and secondary energy forms for supply, cost, impact on air pollution and water pollution, mitigation of climate change with renewable energy....
sources such as ethanol
Ethanol
Ethanol, also called ethyl alcohol, pure alcohol, grain alcohol, or drinking alcohol, is a volatile, flammable, colorless liquid. It is a psychoactive drug and one of the oldest recreational drugs. Best known as the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages, it is also used in thermometers, as a...
may hold long-term usefulness in meeting some or all U.S. energy needs, U.S. access to petroleum is essential in the meantime and too little is being done to address this need, especially given vastly increased petroleum consumption in China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
and India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
. He has supported the relaxation of some U.S. energy regulations, including simplifying federal and state regulations that currently govern gasoline's formulated and unformulated contents, which the petroleum industry has said raise the cost of gasoline's production. Like other conservatives, he also has advocated expanding the U.S. oil supply
Oil reserves
The total estimated amount of oil in an oil reservoir, including both producible and non-producible oil, is called oil in place. However, because of reservoir characteristics and limitations in petroleum extraction technologies, only a fraction of this oil can be brought to the surface, and it is...
by eliminating several federal and state regulations that currently prohibit petroleum drilling
Well drilling
Well drilling is the process of drilling a hole in the ground for the extraction of a natural resource such as ground water, natural gas, or petroleum...
in various U.S. coastal waters and in the oil-rich portion of Alaska
Alaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a national wildlife refuge in northeastern Alaska, United States. It consists of in the Alaska North Slope region. It is the largest National Wildlife Refuge in the country, slightly larger than the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge...
, known as ANWR.
Johns is one of several national leaders of the U.S. Tea Party movement
Tea Party movement
The Tea Party movement is an American populist political movement that is generally recognized as conservative and libertarian, and has sponsored protests and supported political candidates since 2009...
in opposition to high federal taxes, increased federal spending in the 2009 federal stimulus legislation
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, abbreviated ARRA and commonly referred to as the Stimulus or The Recovery Act, is an economic stimulus package enacted by the 111th United States Congress in February 2009 and signed into law on February 17, 2009, by President Barack Obama.To...
and elsewhere, and a perceived growth in powers assumed by the U.S. federal government that Johns and other Tea Party leaders allege are violations of the U.S. Constitution's 10th Amendment
Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which is part of the Bill of Rights, was ratified on December 15, 1791...
. In April 2009, Johns was a featured speaker at three of the nation's largest Tea Party rallies to date, held in Boston, New York City and Philadelphia. After President Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
acknowledged the Tea Party movement in an April 29, 2009 speech in Arnold, Missouri
Arnold, Missouri
Arnold is the largest city in Jefferson County, Missouri, United States. The population was estimated to be 20,603 in 2008, slightly more than the 19,965 number reported in the 2000 census.-Geography:Arnold is located at...
, saying, "Let me just remind them that I am happy to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care costs down over the long term, how we're going to stabilize Social Security
Social Security (United States)
In the United States, Social Security refers to the federal Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program.The original Social Security Act and the current version of the Act, as amended encompass several social welfare and social insurance programs...
," Johns was one of 18 national Tea Party leaders who signed a letter to Obama urging him to hold such a discussion. On July 3 and 4, 2009, Johns was a featured speaker at Independence Day
Independence Day (United States)
Independence Day, commonly known as the Fourth of July, is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, declaring independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain...
Tea Party events in Dallas, Summit, New Jersey
Summit, New Jersey
Summit is a city in Union County, New Jersey, United States. At the 2010 United States Census, the city's population was 21,457. Summit had the 16th-highest per capita income in the state as of the 2000 Census....
, and Washington, D.C. On August 22, 2009, he was the headline speaker at the Congressional Recess rally against Democrat-sponsored health care legislation
America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009
The proposed America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 was an unsuccessful bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on July 14, 2009. The bill was introduced during the first session of the 111th Congress as part of an effort of the Democratic Party leadership to enact health...
, held outside the Wilshire Boulevard
Wilshire Boulevard
Wilshire Boulevard is one of the principal east-west arterial roads in Los Angeles, California, United States. It was named for Henry Gaylord Wilshire , an Ohio native who made and lost fortunes in real estate, farming, and gold mining. Henry Wilshire initiated what was to become Wilshire...
offices of the legislation's primary sponsor, Henry Waxman
Henry Waxman
Henry Arnold Waxman is the U.S. Representative for , serving in Congress since 1975. He is a member of the Democratic Party. He is considered to be one of the most influential liberal members of Congress...
, in Los Angeles.
In 2009, in multiple speeches he delivered to Tea Party
Tea Party movement
The Tea Party movement is an American populist political movement that is generally recognized as conservative and libertarian, and has sponsored protests and supported political candidates since 2009...
members, Johns urged Obama to settle questions related to his Constitutional eligibility and to cease concealing his original birth, citizenship and academic records. In a January 25, 2010 interview with Katie Couric
Katie Couric
Katherine Anne "Katie" Couric is an American journalist and author. She serves as Special Correspondent for ABC News, contributing to ABC World News, Nightline, 20/20, Good Morning America, This Week and primetime news specials...
of CBS News
CBS News
CBS News is the news division of American television and radio network CBS. The current chairman is Jeff Fager who is also the executive producer of 60 Minutes, while the current president of CBS News is David Rhodes. CBS News' flagship program is the CBS Evening News, hosted by the network's main...
, he argued that federal legislation that had expanded government-ensured mortgage programs had been a contributing factor to the United States housing bubble
United States housing bubble
The United States housing bubble is an economic bubble affecting many parts of the United States housing market in over half of American states. Housing prices peaked in early 2006, started to decline in 2006 and 2007, and may not yet have hit bottom as of 2011. On December 30, 2008 the...
and subprime mortgage crisis
Subprime mortgage crisis
The U.S. subprime mortgage crisis was one of the first indicators of the late-2000s financial crisis, characterized by a rise in subprime mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures, and the resulting decline of securities backed by said mortgages....
. He also averred that if the [investment] banks, i.e. Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is an American multinational bulge bracket investment banking and securities firm that engages in global investment banking, securities, investment management, and other financial services primarily with institutional clients...
, had better means to communicate with the government officials during years which led to the collapse of financial industry, they [banks] would have been better positioned to express their concerns regarding regulatory rules which impeded the financial institutions to deal with the impending crisis.
Federal government roles
Johns has worked closely with leading American conservatives and moderates in support of numerous domestic and foreign policy initiatives. He also has served in several senior U.S. federal governmental capacities, including both houses of the United States CongressUnited States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
and the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
. In the U.S. Congress
United States Capitol
The United States Capitol is the meeting place of the United States Congress, the legislature of the federal government of the United States. Located in Washington, D.C., it sits atop Capitol Hill at the eastern end of the National Mall...
, Johns began his career in the U.S. House of Representatives
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
as a Lyndon Baines Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...
fellow with Congressman Donald L. Ritter
Donald L. Ritter
Donald Lawrence "Don" Ritter was a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. He represented Pennsylvania's 15th congressional district from 1979 to 1993.-Early life and education:...
, a conservative Republican from Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
. He later served in the U.S. Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
as a senior aide to U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe
Olympia Snowe
Olympia Jean Snowe , née Bouchles, is the senior United States Senator from Maine and a member of the Republican Party. Snowe has become widely known for her ability to influence the outcome of close votes, including whether to end filibusters. She and her fellow Senator from Maine, Susan Collins,...
, an influential moderate Republican from Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
, who Time magazine named one of the top 10 U.S. Senators in 2006.
Johns was a senior aide to New Jersey Governor
Governor of New Jersey
The Office of the Governor of New Jersey is the executive branch for the U.S. state of New Jersey. The office of Governor is an elected position, for which elected officials serve four year terms. While individual politicians may serve as many terms as they can be elected to, Governors cannot be...
Thomas Kean
Thomas Kean
Thomas Howard Kean is an American Republican Party politician, who served as the 48th Governor of New Jersey from 1982 to 1990. Kean is best known globally, however, for his 2002 appointment as Chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, widely known as the...
immediately prior to Kean's appointment by President George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
as Chairman of the 9/11 Commission
9/11 Commission
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission, was set up on November 27, 2002, "to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 attacks", including preparedness for and the immediate response to...
. He also was a White House speechwriter to President of the United States George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...
.
In the George H. W. Bush White House, Johns was one of several senior Bush aides who helped define and advocate some of the policies that have come to be known as "compassionate conservatism
Compassionate conservatism
Compassionate Conservatism is a political philosophy that stresses using traditionally conservative techniques and concepts in order to improve the general welfare of society. The term itself is often credited to U.S. historian and politician Doug Wead who used it as the title of a speech in 1979....
," focusing on outreach to low and middle-income Americans and nontraditional Republican constituencies. In a June 2007 interview, he echoed a similar theme, saying: "the American dream is a great concept, but it's just that—a dream—if it doesn't touch people's lives in tangible ways." In his federal and state government capacities, Johns has worked exclusively with Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
s, but he also has been a staunch critic of what he sees as excessive partisanship
Partisan (political)
In politics, a partisan is a committed member of a political party. In multi-party systems, the term is widely understood to carry a negative connotation - referring to those who wholly support their party's policies and are perhaps even reluctant to acknowledge correctness on the part of their...
in American politics, which he says is precluding greater national unity on critical national issues. He has been praised for his ability to "position conservative ideas in ways that appeal to American moderates and sometimes even liberals."
Author and writer
Johns is the author of one book, U.S. and Africa Statistical Handbook (ISBN 0-891-95228-4) (The Heritage FoundationThe Heritage Foundation
The Heritage Foundation is a conservative American think tank based in Washington, D.C. Heritage's stated mission is to "formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong...
, 1990, second edition, 1991), and a contributing author to two others, Freedom in the World: The Annual Guide of Political Rights and Civil Liberties (Freedom House
Freedom House
Freedom House is an international non-governmental organization based in Washington, D.C. that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights...
, 1993) and Finding Our Roots, Facing Our Future: America in the 21st century (Madison Books, 1997).
Johns is also a global market and stock columnist for the Wall Street
Wall Street
Wall Street refers to the financial district of New York City, named after and centered on the eight-block-long street running from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, or...
newsletter Seeking Alpha
Seeking Alpha
Seeking Alpha is a stock market blog that provides free stock market analysis primarily from money managers, investment newsletter writers, and the general public. Alpha is a financial term referring to a stock's performance, relative to the market indexes used by fund managers. So, fund managers...
. In his May 7, 2007 column, Johns correctly predicted that global demand for petroleum was increasing at such a rate that the price per barrel, then selling at $65 per barrel, was likely to reach $100 per barrel before the end of 2007. In the column, Johns wrote: "With light sweet crude futures
Futures contract
In finance, a futures contract is a standardized contract between two parties to exchange a specified asset of standardized quantity and quality for a price agreed today with delivery occurring at a specified future date, the delivery date. The contracts are traded on a futures exchange...
for June currently priced at roughly $65 a barrel, an ambitious short and long-term energy policy that enhances supply becomes important if, for no other reason, than the fact that, at $100 a barrel, the impact on this economy and the American people would be hugely painful. And in such a scenario, which could yet emerge this year or next, ethanol
Ethanol
Ethanol, also called ethyl alcohol, pure alcohol, grain alcohol, or drinking alcohol, is a volatile, flammable, colorless liquid. It is a psychoactive drug and one of the oldest recreational drugs. Best known as the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages, it is also used in thermometers, as a...
will not be this nation's salvation." U.S. oil futures increased steadily from there, surpassing the $100 a barrel mark eight months later, on January 2, 2008.
Johns appears on national and local television and radio, usually representing conservative and Republican-leaning views on public policy and politics. He is a regular guest on several Sirius Satellite Radio
Sirius Satellite Radio
Sirius Satellite Radio is a satellite radio service operating in North America, owned by Sirius XM Radio.Headquartered in New York City, with smaller studios in Los Angeles and Memphis, Sirius was officially launched on July 1, 2002 and currently provides 69 streams of music and 65 streams of...
shows, including the late Ron Silver
Ron Silver
Ronald Arthur "Ron" Silver was an American actor, director, producer, radio host and political activist.-Early life:...
's Indie Talk show.
Personal
Johns resides currently in Deptford, New JerseyDeptford Township, New Jersey
Deptford Township is a township in Gloucester County, New Jersey, in the United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the township's population was 30,561....
and Emmaus, Pennsylvania
Emmaus, Pennsylvania
Emmaus is a borough in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is located five miles southwest of Allentown, Pennsylvania, in the Lehigh Valley region of the state.The population of Emmaus was 11,313 at the 2000 census...
.
Career
- Divisional head and corporate vice president, Electric Mobility Corporation, Sewell, New Jersey.
- Vice president, Gentiva Health ServicesGentiva Health ServicesGentiva Health Services , formerly based in Melville,Long Island, New York and now in Atlanta, Georgia, is one of the largest providers of home health care and related services in the United States....
(NASDAQ: GTIV), Long Island, New York. - Senior associate, health care practice, S. R. Wojdak & AssociatesS. R. Wojdak & AssociatesS.R. Wojdak & Associates, LP is a lobbying firm in Pennsylvania.Wojdak & Associates was among the first lobbying firms to bring "contract lobbying" to Harrisburg...
, Philadelphia. - Manager, Eli Lilly and CompanyEli Lilly and CompanyEli Lilly and Company is a global pharmaceutical company. Eli Lilly's global headquarters is located in Indianapolis, Indiana, in the United States...
(NYSE: LLY), Indianapolis, Indiana. - Director of research, International Republican InstituteInternational Republican InstituteFounded in 1983, the International Republican Institute is an organization, funded by the United States government, that conducts international political programs, sometimes labeled 'democratization programs'....
, Washington, D.C. - White HouseWhite HouseThe White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
speechwriter to President of the United States George H. W. BushGeorge H. W. BushGeorge Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...
. - Special assistant to former New JerseyNew JerseyNew Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
Governor and 9/11 Commission9/11 CommissionThe National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission, was set up on November 27, 2002, "to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 attacks", including preparedness for and the immediate response to...
Chairman Thomas KeanThomas KeanThomas Howard Kean is an American Republican Party politician, who served as the 48th Governor of New Jersey from 1982 to 1990. Kean is best known globally, however, for his 2002 appointment as Chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, widely known as the...
. - Policy analyst, The Heritage FoundationThe Heritage FoundationThe Heritage Foundation is a conservative American think tank based in Washington, D.C. Heritage's stated mission is to "formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong...
, Washington, D.C. - Assistant editor, Policy ReviewPolicy ReviewPolicy Review is one of America's leading conservative journals. It was founded by the Heritage Foundation and was for many years the foundation's flagship publication. In 2001, the publication was acquired by the Stanford University-based Hoover Institution, though it maintains its office on...
magazine, Washington, D.C. - Advisory board member, InvesTrend (global equity research firm).
- Author of U.S. and Africa Statistical Handbook (ISBN 0-891-95228-4) (The Heritage FoundationHeritage FoundationThe Heritage Foundation is a conservative American think tank based in Washington, D.C. Heritage's stated mission is to "formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong...
, 1990; second ed., 1991) - Contributing author of Finding Our Roots, Facing Our Future: America in the 21st century (Madison Books, Lanham, Maryland, 1997); and Freedom in the World: The Annual Guide of Political Rights and Civil Liberties (Freedom HouseFreedom HouseFreedom House is an international non-governmental organization based in Washington, D.C. that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights...
, New York City, 1993). - He has written for The Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
, The Christian Science MonitorThe Christian Science MonitorThe Christian Science Monitor is an international newspaper published daily online, Monday to Friday, and weekly in print. It was started in 1908 by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist. As of 2009, the print circulation was 67,703.The CSM is a newspaper that covers...
, National ReviewNational ReviewNational Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
, Freedom HouseFreedom HouseFreedom House is an international non-governmental organization based in Washington, D.C. that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights...
's Freedom Review and other publications. - National television appearances include CBS NewsCBS NewsCBS News is the news division of American television and radio network CBS. The current chairman is Jeff Fager who is also the executive producer of 60 Minutes, while the current president of CBS News is David Rhodes. CBS News' flagship program is the CBS Evening News, hosted by the network's main...
, PBSPublic Broadcasting ServiceThe Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
's MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHourThe NewsHour with Jim LehrerPBS NewsHour is an evening television news program broadcast weeknights on the Public Broadcasting Service in the United States. The show is produced by MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, a company co-owned by former anchors Jim Lehrer and Robert MacNeil, and Liberty Media, which owns a 65% stake in the...
and Nightly Business ReportNightly Business ReportNightly Business Report is a Business news television magazine broadcast live Monday to Friday evenings on most public television stations in the United States. Every weeknight, Nightly Business Report distills the essence of what matters in the business world, and provides analysis and reflection...
, CNBCCNBCCNBC is a satellite and cable television business news channel in the U.S., owned and operated by NBCUniversal. The network and its international spinoffs cover business headlines and provide live coverage of financial markets. The combined reach of CNBC and its siblings is 390 million viewers...
, C-SPANC-SPANC-SPAN , an acronym for Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network, is an American cable television network that offers coverage of federal government proceedings and other public affairs programming via its three television channels , one radio station and a group of websites that provide streaming...
, Fox Morning NewsFox Broadcasting CompanyFox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
and others. - Inducted into University of Miami's Iron Arrow Honor SocietyIron Arrow Honor SocietyThe Iron Arrow Honor Society is a highly selective secret society and honor society at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida for students, faculty, staff and alumni...
, 1984.
External links
- Michael Johns articles and essays from Google syndication, Mountain View, California.
- Interview with Michael Johns by Dimpool – Web Based Policy Center, Jul 16, 2011.
- Michael Johns speech to Dallas Tea Party, Southfork RanchSouthfork RanchSouthfork Ranch is a conference and event center located near Plano, Texas; it contains the Ewing Mansion, which was the setting for the 1978 - 1991 television series Dallas. The ranch is located at 3700 Hogge Drive in Parker, Texas.-History:...
, Plano, TexasPlano, TexasPlano is a city in the state of Texas, located mostly within Collin County. The city's population was 259,841 at the 2010 census, making it the ninth-largest city in Texas and the 71st most populous city in the United States. Plano is located within the metropolitan area commonly referred to as...
, July 4, 2009. - Michael Johns speech to Washington, D.C. Tea Party, United States CapitolUnited States CapitolThe United States Capitol is the meeting place of the United States Congress, the legislature of the federal government of the United States. Located in Washington, D.C., it sits atop Capitol Hill at the eastern end of the National Mall...
, Washington, D.C., July 4, 2009. - "Here's how Part B can save Medicare," by Michael Johns, HME News, July 2009.
- Michael Johns speech to Philadelphia Tea Party, Independence Mall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April 18, 2009.
- Michael Johns speech to New York City Tea Party, New York City HallNew York City HallNew York City Hall is located at the center of City Hall Park in the Civic Center area of Lower Manhattan, New York City, USA, between Broadway, Park Row, and Chambers Street. The building is the oldest City Hall in the United States that still houses its original governmental functions, such as...
, New York City, New York, April 15, 2009. - Michael Johns speech to Boston Tea Party, Boston CommonBoston CommonBoston Common is a central public park in Boston, Massachusetts. It is sometimes erroneously referred to as the "Boston Commons". Dating from 1634, it is the oldest city park in the United States. The Boston Common consists of of land bounded by Tremont Street, Park Street, Beacon Street,...
, Boston, Massachusetts, April 15, 2009. - National television appearances by Michael Johns at C-SPAN, 1990–current.
- "Acts of Betrayal," by Michael Johns, National ReviewNational ReviewNational Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
, New York City, October 23, 1995. - "If U.S. Force Is Needed in Bosnia," by Michael Johns, The Christian Science MonitorThe Christian Science MonitorThe Christian Science Monitor is an international newspaper published daily online, Monday to Friday, and weekly in print. It was started in 1908 by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist. As of 2009, the print circulation was 67,703.The CSM is a newspaper that covers...
, Boston, Massachusetts, February 25, 1994. - "Where to Go on South Africa," by William F. Buckley, Jr.William F. Buckley, Jr.William Frank Buckley, Jr. was an American conservative author and commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing was noted for...
, Universal Press SyndicateUniversal Press SyndicateUniversal Press Syndicate, a subsidiary of Andrews McMeel Universal, is the world's largest independent press syndicate. It distributes lifestyle and opinion columns, comic strips and other content. Popular columns include Dear Abby, Ann Coulter, Roger Ebert and News of the Weird...
, December 27, 1990, citing Michael Johns' speech to United Nations on South Africa and economic sanctions. - "With Freedom Near in Angola, This is No Time to Curtail UNITA Assistance," by Michael Johns, The Heritage FoundationThe Heritage FoundationThe Heritage Foundation is a conservative American think tank based in Washington, D.C. Heritage's stated mission is to "formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong...
Executive Memorandum No. 276, Washington, D.C., July 31, 1990; entered in Congressional RecordCongressional RecordThe Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published by the United States Government Printing Office, and is issued daily when the United States Congress is in session. Indexes are issued approximately every two weeks...
, Washington, D.C., October 16, 1990. - "Namibian Voters Deny Total Power to SWAPO," by Michael Johns, The Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
, New York City, November 19, 1989; entered in Congressional RecordCongressional RecordThe Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published by the United States Government Printing Office, and is issued daily when the United States Congress is in session. Indexes are issued approximately every two weeks...
, Washington, D.C., November 21, 1989. - "Savimbi's Elusive Victory in Angola," by Michael Johns, Human Events magazine, Washington, D.C.; entered in Congressional RecordCongressional RecordThe Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published by the United States Government Printing Office, and is issued daily when the United States Congress is in session. Indexes are issued approximately every two weeks...
, Washington, D.C., October 26, 1989.