Richard S. Schweiker, Former Senator and Reagan Confidant, Dies at 89

Richard S. Schweiker, a former United States representative and senator from Pennsylvania who was the secretary of health and human services during the first term of President Ronald Reagan, died on Friday in Pomona, N.J. He was 89.

His son Richard Schweiker Jr. said on Monday that Mr. Schweiker had died of complications of an infection at AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center after spending a week with his family at his home in Ocean City, N.J.

Mr. Schweiker was president of a Washington-based lobbying and trade group for the life insurance industry for more than a decade after leaving the Reagan administration in 1983.

An enigmatic Republican who looked conservative to many liberals and liberal to many conservatives, Mr. Schweiker went to Washington in 1961 and served for two decades in Congress and two more years in the White House in an era of assassinations, war and sweeping social changes.

As a House member for eight years, he was known as a moderate conservative. He was one of labor’s closest allies, but opposed gun control and the use of federal funds for abortions. He also supported prayers in public schools and in later years voted against busing to integrate schools.

But in his 12 years in the Senate he became known as something of a liberal, a defender of financing for health agencies and medical research. In 1974, he sponsored landmark legislation to finance the National Commission on Diabetes, which created a long-term plan to fight the disease. He also worked closely with Senator Edward M. Kennedy, his Democratic counterpart on labor and public welfare committees.


In 1976, Senators Schweiker and Gary Hart, Democrat of Colorado, issued a report on the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, casting doubt on the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman in Dallas. The report said that the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had withheld critical information from the commission.

For refusing to side consistently with the left or right, Mr. Schweiker was often distrusted at both ends of the political spectrum. Conservatives were especially stunned in 1976 when Reagan, running for the presidential nomination and seeking a ticket-balancer, chose Mr. Schweiker as his running mate — an empty gesture, since President Gerald R. Ford won the Republican Party nomination and the Democrat, Jimmy Carter, won the election.

But Mr. Schweiker’s allegiance was not forgotten, and when Reagan won the presidency in 1980, he named the senator to be secretary of health and human services, the sprawling $270 billion agency that encompassed Social Security,Medicare and other programs affecting millions of Americans.

Mr. Schweiker carried out Reagan policies for cutting funds, or the growth of outlays, for health, welfare and social services. But constituents admired him anyway for making reductions as judiciously as possible, and for overturning proposed cuts for the National Institutes of Health, the Public Health Service and Head Start, the program of services for poor preschoolers.

When Mr. Schweiker resigned, Senator Kennedy praised him. “Dick Schweiker has been a good friend and colleague for many years,” he said. “As secretary of health and human services he has too often been a lonely voice of compassion and humanity. The country may never know how much greater the damage to social programs would have been without Dick Schweiker as secretary.”

Richard Schultz Schweiker was born in Norristown, Pa., on June 1, 1926, the son of Malcolm Schweiker and the former Blanche Schultz. After high school he joined the Navy and served on an aircraft carrier during World War II. He graduated with honors from Pennsylvania State University in 1950, and over the next decade rose in business to become president of the American Olean Tile Company.

In 1955, he married the former Claire Coleman, a television personality in Philadelphia. She died in 2013. Besides his son Richard, he is survived by another son, Malcolm; three daughters, Lani Shelton, Kyle Hard and Kristi Carey; a sister, Sylvia Strasburg; 23 grandchildren and one great-granddaughter, most of whom spent time with Mr. Schweiker in the week before his death, his son Richard said.

Mr. Schweiker recently sold his house in McLean, Va., and had been living with a daughter in Herndon, Va.

He won his first race for Congress in 1960, representing a district near Philadelphia, and was re-elected three times. In 1968, he defeated a popular Democrat, Joseph S. Clark, for a Senate seat, and was re-elected in 1974. When he retired from the Senate in 1980, he was succeeded by Arlen Specter, a Republican.

As a cabinet member from 1981 to 1983, Mr. Schweiker was involved in some of the most bitter disputes of the early Reagan years. He tightened welfare eligibility and cut Medicare and Medicaid funds and food stamp grants to states. But he defended health and medical research programs and opposed cuts in Social Security benefits for early retirees.

Mr. Schweiker resigned to become president of the American Council of Life Insurance, now the American Council of Life Insurers, and was succeeded by former Representative Margaret M. Heckler, a Massachusetts Republican.






He later said his most lasting accomplishment would be fixing the amounts Medicare pays for specific medical treatments, instead of leaving costs open-ended. In the long run, he told The New York Times, “that will have the greatest impact of anything I was able to do.”

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Suge Knight is arrested in the US over fatal hit-and-run

Marion 'Suge' Knight has been arrested for murder in connection to a "fatal traffic incident" the Los Angeles County Sheriff has confirmed.

He is being held in West Hollywood on bail of $2m (£1.3m).

The record producer had earlier surrendered to police after he was declared a suspect in a hit-and-run where one man died.

Another man was injured and although he is currently in hospital, his condition is not yet known.

Around 3pm (2300 GMT) on Thursday, a man fitting Knight's description drove to a burger shop and began rowing with two people, said Lt John Corina of the LA County Sheriff's Department.

The driver then backed into one of the victims, before running them both over.

The Death Row Records founder is said to have left the scene in a red Ford pickup truck, the police said.

Knight, 49, was involved in an earlier fight with the pair at a different location, Corina added.

One of the victims died in hospital, according to the Sheriff's Department statement - while the condition of the second victim, who was also taken to the hospital, has yet to be confirmed.

A lawyer for the rap music legend seemed to confirm Knight had been driving at the time, but claimed it was an accident and he was running away from attackers.

"He was in the process of being physically assaulted by two men and in an effort to escape he unfortunately hit two (other) individuals," James Blatt said.

"He was in his car trying to escape."

Knight founded Death Row Records in the 1990s, but later declared bankruptcy and the company was auctioned off.

He helped launch the careers of artists including Dr Dre, Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg.

Last August he was shot six times at a nightclub in Los Angeles. No arrests have been made.

In November, he pleaded not guilty to a robbery charge filed after a celebrity photographer accused him of stealing her camera in Beverly Hills.

He could face up to 30 years in prison because of prior convictions.

The music boss has previously been convicted of armed robbery and assault with a gun.

He has also served time for violating probation.

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Future Fernvale Lea residents mostly relieved over no-go for commercial columbarium

Future residents of Fernvale Lea were mostly relieved after being told that the building of a commercially run columbarium close to their new homes will not be happening now.

But some were still uncomfortable with the idea that the eventual Chinese temple in the estate might still include a resting place for the dead, if its trustees decide to include niches for ashes.

Since last December, more than 1,000 people have signed an online petition to "say no to a columbarium next to our future home". The Build-to-Order project will be ready for people to move into this year.

Some even went as far as to demand a refund from the Housing Board during a dialogue earlier this month with Dr Lam Pin Min, MP for Sengkang West.

Yesterday, it was made clear in Parliament that the site was never meant to be used for a for-profit columbarium, and that the Government is in talks with winning bidder Eternal Pure Land to ensure that the land is used for a Chinese temple.

"With this development, residents' fears should be allayed and there will not be a need to return the flats to HDB," Dr Lam told The Straits Times, adding that many residents had expressed their relief to him.

Ms Josephine Soh, a 29-year-old human resource executive, said: "I was pretty worried about noise pollution that might come from funeral processions. At least a temple just has periodic noise from festivals or big dinner events - usually occasions to celebrate and not something to do with someone passing away."

Sales manager Tan Wei Leong, whose Fernvale Lea flat faces the Chinese temple site, said: "If there really has to be a columbarium, then at least it should not be a commercial one, which will have a lot more niches.

"I hope that the current tender will be void and a religious group will win the bid."

Minister for National Development Khaw Boon Wan said yesterday that the eventual temple there has the choice of whether to run columbarium services for its devotees. "We cannot make the assumption that (there will be such services)," he said.

But even if there is a columbarium, it is not an uncommon practice. Other temples, such as Puat Jit Buddhist Temple and Nanyang Thong Hong Siang Tng Temple - both in Anchorvale - and some churches already include columbariums.

But that still upsets Mrs Gladys Goh, a 33-year-old order management specialist. She said that she had asked HDB several weeks ago about the possibility of getting a different unit in Sengkang or other estates.

"I wouldn't mind living elsewhere, as long as it is not where, every day, I would walk past a place which includes a columbarium," she said.

Dr Lam, while receiving many thanks on his Facebook page after posting about yesterday's development, was also criticised for seemingly "defending" Eternal Pure Land's plans earlier this month.

He had assured residents that the columbarium would be out of the public's view and will take up, at most, only a fifth of the Chinese temple it will be housed at.

He highlighted the modern look of the temple, which he said will be the first in Singapore to have an automated columbarium. There will be other features to reduce noise and parking issues, he said.

Religious groups yesterday highlighted that sites reserved for places of worship are not meant for commercial entities.

Said Mrs Parvathi Annanth, the chief executive and legal counsel of Sree Maha Mariamman Temple in Yishun: "Land released to commercial entities with no religious affiliation is an invasion of our rights."

The president of the Singapore Buddhist Federation, Venerable Seck Kwang Phing, said land is scarce here and commercial entities should go for sites zoned for those purposes.

Singapore Management University law professor Eugene Tan also suggested that bids for worship sites by joint ventures involving a religious organisation and a commercial firms should be subjected to extra scrutiny.

This is "to ensure that profit- making companies do not use religious groups as a front to make money from a site designated for religious purposes".

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