Q. & A. With Stuart Elliott

Abstract: Stuart Elliott, the advertising columnist, answers questions from readers each week. Questions can be sent to stuarte@nytimes.com . Q. My question regards the TV commercials for the Kia Soul . Could you please find out why the ad uses stuffed rodents — hamsters? ferrets? — driving the vehicle? I love the I Can Has Cheezburger? animals , but at least they’re real animals for the most part. I cannot figure out why an advertiser would think that seeing a stuffed, obviously fake rodent driving the subject vehicle would encourage me to buy it. Every time I see that ad, I just shake my head. A. Thanks, dear reader, for your comments regarding the campaign for the Kia Soul, which is created by an agency named David & Goliath in Los Angeles. What follows is a response to your remarks from Michael Sprague, executive vice president for marketing and communications at Kia Motors America. “We launched the Soul urban passenger vehicle in 2009 to appeal to the young and young-at-heart with an emphasis on positivity, creativity, fun and optimism,” Mr. Sprague writes in an e-mail. “The original spot depicted city and suburban streets inhabited exclusively by hamsters who mindlessly run in place inside their exercise wheels until a molten red Soul pulls up to a stoplight and the passenger window rolls down to reveal a trio of music-loving hamsters who have discovered ‘A new way to roll,' ” Mr. Sprague says. “The follow-up campaign carried the stand-out-from-the-crowd metaphor forward with the hamsters driving through city streets and cleverly comparing “ 'This,’ the funky and uniquely styled Soul, to ‘That,’ a number of boring and mundane appliances on wheels, cardboard boxes or hamster wheels.” “From the beginning, the hip hamsters have had their paws on the pulse of pop culture and emerging music trends and have starred in some of the most-watched viral videos in the world over the last four years,” Mr. Sprague says. “In 2011, the Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame named the hamsters as their first-ever ‘Rookie of the Year,’ and the Soul’s ongoing popularity is a driving force behind increased awareness and consideration for the Kia brand as a whole.” In other words, dear reader, the campaign seems popular and successful with the intended target audience of younger car buyers, which means you will probably be seeing the hamsters for a long time to come. As for your references to the hamsters as “stuffed,” although Mr. Sprague did not address that, I believe they are intended to be perceived as living, breathing hamsters, albeit in anthropomorphic form. Perhaps the fact they move somewhat stiffly led you to think of them that way. Q. This is in reference to the reader who wrote in recently to criticize the Volkswagen Passat commercial with the father and son. I must agree that it’s awkward and nearly incomprehensible. I remember the ad and remember the product but each time I see it, I need to remind myself of the point of the ad — and frankly, I don’t take away from the ad what the executives at Deutsch L.A. say I should. I thought it was about … ummm, really not sure. A. Thanks, dear reader, for sharing your opinion. I received several other e-mails commenting on the executives’ explanation of the spot and, like you, those readers remained puzzled or confused about the point of the commercial. I guess we’re all going to have to agree to disagree about this one — or wait until the 2014 model year to begin, when perhaps VW will switch spots.


After 14 Years, Murdoch Files for Divorce From Third Wife

Abstract: For the last several years, friends of Rupert and Wendi Murdoch had noticed that the couple seemed to live separate lives. Mrs. Murdoch developed an interest in producing movies, and Mr. Murdoch busied himself steering his $73 billion media conglomerate, News Corporation. By most accounts the couple had grown apart and spent long stretches away from each other, but people close to the Murdochs did not expect the 82-year-old mogul to divorce his wife of 14 years. Too messy financially. It wouldn’t be good for their daughters, Grace, 11, and Chloe, 9, said these people, who would only discuss the couple’s marriage anonymously. But on Thursday, Mr. Murdoch filed for divorce in New York State Supreme Court. The filing said that the “relationship between husband and wife has broken down irretrievably.” The couple were in New York at their Fifth Avenue penthouse on Thursday when news of the divorce, said to be Mr. Murdoch’s decision, emerged. A spokeswoman for News Corporation confirmed the divorce filing, which was first reported by Deadline Hollywood , and said the divorce would have no impact on the company. The Murdoch family trust controls 38.4 percent of News Corporation’s voting shares. Mrs. Murdoch has no financial stake in the company. Image In a parliamentary subcommittee meeting on the phone hacking scandal in July 2011, Wendi Murdoch, center, defended her husband from a protester. Credit Parbul TV, via Reuters Ira E. Garr of the law firm Garr Silpe will represent Mr. Murdoch, and Pamela M. Sloan of Aronson Mayefsky & Sloan L.L.P. will represent Mrs. Murdoch, 44, in what could prove a highly contentious divorce. Mr. Murdoch’s divorce in 1998 from his second wife, Anna, cost $1.7 billion, including $110 million in cash. The divorce filing comes as Mr. Murdoch readies News Corporation for a split into two companies on June 28. Entertainment assets like Fox Broadcasting, Fox News and the Hollywood studio will form a company called 21st Century Fox. Publishing assets including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post and Harper Collins and a handful of Australian TV assets will form a company called News Corp. Two years ago, Mrs. Murdoch’s image experienced an unexpected boost. In July 2011, as Mr. Murdoch testified in front of a British parliamentary subcommittee about a phone hacking scandal at the company’s News of the World tabloid, Mrs. Murdoch, wearing a pink blazer, instinctively lurched toward a protester to protect her husband from a pie attack. Mrs. Murdoch’s protective urge became a viral sensation. “Nothing can characterize her more than that, protective and strong and fierce and not afraid,” the fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, a friend of Mrs. Murdoch’s, said in an interview last year. Mr. Murdoch first met Wendi Deng in 1998 on a business trip to China. A recent graduate of the Yale School of Management, Ms. Deng was working at Star TV, a unit of News Corporation with a new headquarters in Hong Kong. Mr. Murdoch hosted a town hall and fielded a tough question about his company’s China strategy from an eager and well-prepared Ms. Deng. Image Mr. Murdoch and his second wife, Anna, with their daughter, Elisabeth, in 1969. Credit Chris Ware/Keystone, Hulton Archive, via Getty Images That same year Liz Smith announced in The New York Post that Mr. Murdoch and his wife of more than three decades, Anna, had separated. The couple had three children, Lachlan, James and Elisabeth. Mr. Murdoch divorced his first wife, Patricia, in 1967. They had one daughter, Prudence. In 1999, Mr. Murdoch married Ms. Deng in front of 82 guests on board his 155-foot yacht, the Morning Glory, in New York Harbor. The newest Mrs. Murdoch tried to find a place for herself in the family and the family business, with varying degrees of success. As head of Star TV, James Murdoch worked with Mrs. Murdoch to help build News Corporation’s presence in China. Mrs. Murdoch, whose friends describe her as energetic with a passion for business, slowly began to win over James’s respect, according to a person close to the Murdoch family. In 2006, a marital battle erupted after Mr. Murdoch declared in a TV interview with Charlie Rose that while Grace and Chloe would have an economic interest in the family’s trust, they would not have the same voting rights as his four children from previous marriages. That was the first time Mrs. Murdoch had heard about the arrangement. Mr. Murdoch’s six children have equal shares in the company through a family trust, but only Prudence, Lachlan, James and Elisabeth have the right to appoint trustees for the trust, which will give them control over the company when Mr. Murdoch dies. Video A man disrupted the parliamentary committee hearings during the testimony of Rupert and James Murdoch. Several people close to the Murdochs pointed to the battle over Grace’s and Chloe’s inheritance as a sign that future battles could ensue over how Mr. Murdoch’s net worth — $11.2 billion, according to Forbes — is divided. “That led to an extremely difficult weekend at the Murdoch household,” one person close to the family who was not authorized to publicly discuss their relationship said of that fight. “That had the potential for a breakup at that point,” this person added. Born in humble circumstances as Deng Wen Ge in Jiangsu Province in eastern China, Mrs. Murdoch has recently taken on a wider range of professional endeavors, including producing the movie “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.” The movie was released by News Corporation’s Fox Searchlight division in July 2011. But its release was soon eclipsed when news surfaced that Mr. Murdoch’s British tabloid News of the World had hacked into the voice mail of Milly Dowler, a missing teenager who, it turned out, had been killed. As the scandal in Britain has somewhat subsided, Mr. Murdoch has readied for the split of his company with what confidants describe as giddy anticipation and the chance to build up his newspaper empire. “I have been given an extraordinary opportunity most people never get in their lifetime: the chance to do it all over again,” Mr. Murdoch said in a May 28 investor meeting for the new News Corporation.

Divorce
Wendi Deng
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
News Corp
Rupert Murdoch


Seasons Are Ending, but the Drama Isn't

Abstract: LONDON — Shortly before Manchester City’s emotional ride to the English league title held a television audience of half a billion people in thrall, Pastor Maldonado became the first Venezuelan to win a close Formula One race in Spain. The two events are symbols of globalization. City’s team, loaded with talent from all over the globe, is financed by petro-dollars from Abu Dhabi, while Maldonado, racing for a British team, is backed with the millions brought in by his sponsorship from a Venezuelan oil company. What kept viewers in suspense right to the end Sunday was not the money, however, but that nothing is certain until the winner actually crosses the line. The unpredictable nature of sports will be there as long as they depend upon human qualities. Soccer certainly does that across the spectrum of Europe’s leagues, and while the 2011-12 seasons are wrapping up, that does not mean the drama is over. Spanish Liga Real Madrid has broken the spell of Barcelona’s domination in the domestic league, but they play in a virtual league of just two teams. The rest, denied equal shares of their vast television monopoly, struggle to stay afloat. This is sadly reflected by Villarreal. The small-town club, affectionately known as the Yellow Submarine, went down to the Segunda División on Sunday. Its fate was decided by a headed goal scored moments before the final whistle by Radamel Falcao, a Colombian playing for Atlético Madrid. Before Christmas, Villarreal was mixing it up with Manchester City, Bayern Munich and Napoli in the Champions League. Villarreal, ravaged by injuries and without the wealth to stockpile players in reserve, has sunk since the beginning of the year. The team will be missed because it always tried to play with a style and a swagger. Italian Serie A Juventus remained unbeaten throughout the season, but the final game Sunday turned into an homage to Alessandro Del Piero. Now 37 and with almost two decades of beautiful performances and rare loyalty to one team behind him, Del Piero signed off with a goal of typical subtlety and vision, then followed that up with a long and lingering lap around the new Juventus Stadium. As players, fans and even the staff of both Juve and Atalanta threw tokens of affection his way, some shed tears. Juventus is back atop the Serie A, but it will be a very long time before the club sees his like again. It was the end of an era not just in Turin, but also in Milan. Again there was more sentiment than sporting combat in the San Siro, where A.C. Milan , second in the league, called time on four of its legends: the Dutchman Clarence Seedorf and the Italians Alessandro Nesta, Rino Gattuso and Pippo Inzaghi. And, characteristic of Inzaghi, there was a suspicion of his being offside when he lurked on the shoulder of the last defender, controlled a pass from Seedorf on his chest and volleyed the ball beyond the keeper. The goal stood, making his final contribution to Milan 126 goals in exactly 300 appearances. French Ligue 1 All is not over yet, as France resists the inevitability that money, in the final analysis, buys the biggest prize. The Qatari cash that is fueling Paris Saint-Germain will make it the unrivalled power of French football, next season if not this one. But resisting that trend is Montpelier, three points clear with one game to go. Its president, and owner since 1974, is Louis Nicollin. Its coach, René Girard, has tried for months to say that a title can’t happen, that Montpellier is just a modest little runner in front of a petroleum-propelled supertanker coming down from Paris. Girard’s players are not buying it. Like Lille last season, they know that this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to go all the way and capture the title. Fittingly enough, while a Brazilian, Nenê, was scoring a hat trick for P.S.G. against Rennes on Sunday, Montpellier dug out a 1-0 home victory over Lille in the Stade de la Mosson. The goal was scored by a substitute, Karim Aït-Fana, and set up by Monpellier’s most consistent match winner this season, Olivier Giroud. And, like the Manchester City winner Sunday, it came four minutes into injury time. English Premier League The ongoing party in the blue half of Manchester might even be loud enough for Sheik Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan to be wakened in his palace in the Emirates. His billion-dollar investment has put City on the map and wrested the crown of English soccer from its neighbor, Manchester United. Now, presumably, the sheik will pay more to make his team competitive in Europe and further advance his vast sporting ambitions. As City’s stock rises, Blackburn Rovers’ falls. Before City became a usurper, Blackburn was the English team to shake up the big four — Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool — when a self-made steel magnate, Jack Walker, lavished his fortune on helping Blackburn win the Premier League in 1994-5. Though Walker lived in tax exile in Jersey, as a boy he had slipped beneath wire fencing to watch Rovers. His spending was considerable, but it still was a drop in the ocean compared to what the billionaires from Russia, the Gulf and the United States throw at English soccer today. In London, Tottenham Hotspur waits anxiously for the Champions League final on Saturday between Bayern Munich and Chelsea. Spurs finished fourth in England, which normally qualifies for a shot in the Champions League. This time, however, Tottenham could miss out. If Chelsea, which finished only sixth in England, wins in Munich, it will be invited to defend the trophy next season, but only four clubs per country are allowed to take part. Tottenham’s team manager, Harry Redknapp is an uncle of Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard, but Redknapp is now rooting for Bayern. “It gets more difficult every year,” Redknapp said. “Man United and Man City are not going to be out of the top four; that’s impossible. So you are looking for two places. Chelsea? I don’t think Mr. Abramovich will stand for them finishing outside the top four again.” Redknapp widens the picture: “A Russian could come along and buy someone like Wigan and then they will be pushing for the league. That’s how it works, isn’t it?”

Soccer
Serie A
English Premier League
Villarreal (Soccer Team)
Milan (Soccer Team)
Juventus (Soccer Team)
Blackburn Rovers (Soccer Team England)
Tottenham Hotspur (Soccer Team)


Cuomo Endorses Senator Roy McDonald, Republican, in Possible Third-Party Bid

Abstract: New York’s Democratic governor, Andrew M. Cuomo , offered an emphatic endorsement on Wednesday to an upstate Republican state senator who lost a primary this month that became a referendum on the senator’s vote in favor of same-sex marriage . The senator, Roy J. McDonald of Saratoga County, will appear on the ballot in November as the endorsed candidate of the state’s Independence Party. Many in the gay-rights movement have been urging him to continue his re-election bid as a third-party candidate, with some vowing to spend generously in support of his candidacy, but Mr. McDonald has not indicated his plans. The governor’s backing added a major new variable to the race, providing the imprimatur of New York’s most popular politician to a candidate whose political career appeared to be hanging by a thread. “You stood up for your principles, for equality and for a population long victimized,” Mr. Cuomo wrote in a two-page letter to Mr. McDonald. “It is now evident that you paid a political price for your convictions. You should not be left to stand alone now.” Mr. Cuomo said he did not know if it would be viable for the senator to run as a third-party candidate. But, the governor added, “if you decide to go forward with your campaign, you will have my full endorsement.” Mr. McDonald was one of four Republican senators who voted last year to legalize same-sex marriage — two won their primaries, and one decided not to seek re-election. Mr. McDonald’s political fate is being watched closely, as partisans on the marriage issue have looked at the three senators seeking re-election as tests of whether Republican voters would tolerate their elected officials’ voting to allow gay men and lesbians to marry. Mr. McDonald’s Republican opponent, Kathleen A. Marchione, the Saratoga County clerk, declared victory on Tuesday after hundreds of absentee ballots were counted. She said on Wednesday that she had not spoken to Mr. McDonald and added that it was “completely up to Roy” as to whether he stayed in the race. But the senator’s supporters in the gay-rights movement, including groups backed by the billionaire hedge fund manager Paul E. Singer and the philanthropist Tim Gill, promised to back him if he competed in the general election. He would face Ms. Marchione and a Democrat, Robin Andrews, a town supervisor. “Roy has been a champion of ours,” said Kirk Fordham, the executive director of Gill Action, one of the country’s leading political organizations that support gay rights. He added that gay-rights supporters would not abandon Mr. McDonald just because “a few narrow-minded primary voters wanted to punish him for standing up for the freedom to marry.” A political action committee, New York Unity PAC, has spent more than $200,000 to support the Republican senators who voted for same-sex marriage. The group, which was founded by Mr. Singer, is prepared to support a continued bid by Mr. McDonald, according to Jeff Cook, a senior adviser. The group, which is also backed by the hedge fund manager Daniel S. Loeb and the former Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman, planned to publicize a new poll on Thursday that it said showed Mr. McDonald in a strong position to win re-election as the Independence Party’s candidate. Mr. Cook said the senator would appeal to a broad coalition of mainstream Republicans, as well as independents and many Democrats. “I think there’s a very clear path to victory for Roy McDonald,” he said. Mr. McDonald still faces a number of complications, including the fact that the local Republican establishment appeared to be coalescing behind Ms. Marchione. A prominent McDonald backer who has left his camp, Jasper Nolan, the Republican chairman in Saratoga County, said he was concerned that Mr. McDonald’s presence in the race could make it harder for a Republican to keep the seat; he added that he hoped Mr. McDonald would “look at the reality of the situation” and drop out. The Republican majority in the State Senate supported Mr. McDonald in his primary, but on Wednesday, a spokesman declined to comment on which candidate the party would support in November. Perhaps no one faced a foggier picture than Ms. Andrews, the Democratic candidate, who is a lesbian and was married last year. She said she was eager to have the race turn to subjects other than same-sex marriage, and did not begrudge gay-rights advocates or Mr. Cuomo for supporting Mr. McDonald. “We all appreciate the vote that Roy cast,” she said.

Same-Sex Marriage Civil Unions and Domestic Partnerships


EBay Gives Up Control of Skype to Investors

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — With its sale to private investors, the online calling service Skype has thrown off the last of the shackles that limited its growth and potential as a unit of eBay . Now its challenge is to turn its global popularity into bigger profits. EBay announced on Tuesday that it was selling Skype to a group led by Silver Lake Partners, a private equity firm in Silicon Valley. As part of the deal, which values Skype at $2.75 billion, the buyers agreed to pay $1.9 billion in cash, which includes a loan from eBay of $125 million, for 65 percent of the company. EBay, which is based in San Jose, Calif., will retain a 35 percent stake. Skype offers free software for computers and smartphones that lets people make free voice and video calls to other Skype users over the Internet. It makes money primarily by charging for calls to landlines and cellphones around the world, although its rates are generally far below those of traditional phone companies. When it acquired Skype in 2005, eBay said it hoped the service would support its auctions and its PayPal payment service by letting buyers and sellers discuss transactions. But eBay users were not so chatty. The deal announced Tuesday would essentially allow Skype to go back into start-up mode. For example, it will be able to conceal investments in projects and new technologies from the public — and from rivals — instead of disclosing them in eBay’s public regulatory filings. The company will also be able to lure new employees with its own stock, which could become valuable if Skype’s buyers decide to sell shares in an initial public offering. “This gives us a great set of investors who are going to add a lot of value to the business,” said Josh Silverman, Skype’s chief executive. “And as a stand-alone company we are focused solely on communications, and there is always benefit to focus.” The group buying Skype includes the London venture capital firm Index Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, a new venture capital firm co-founded by Marc Andreessen, the Netscape co-founder. The deal completes a journey that began early last year, when Meg Whitman , eBay’s longtime chief executive, left the company and her deputy, John Donahoe, took over. Mr. Donahoe moved Mr. Silverman over from Shopping.com, another eBay division, and gave Skype, which is based in Luxembourg, wide latitude to operate independently. “All the previous presidents had a really short leash back to San Jose, and the company was basically a bureaucratic mess,” said Phil Wolff, editor of Skype Journal , a blog covering the service. “With the changes last year, the company got a strong leadership team and a strong sense of direction.” The result has been steady, solid growth, even as competing Internet calling services like Google Voice came on the scene. Skype, which had 276 million registered users in the first quarter of last year, ended July with 480 million. Revenue rose to $170 million in the second quarter of this year from $136 million in the same quarter a year earlier. EBay does not break out Skype’s profits but says it has been profitable for 10 consecutive quarters. In a sign that Skype may have discovered new opportunities outside the personal computer, the Skype application for the iPhone has been one of the most popular programs for the device since it was released in March. Skype has also struck deals to place its service on Nokia phones. Egon Durban, managing director at Silver Lake Partners, said the iPhone application was “a great example of what we feel are the attractive opportunities for the company to develop.” “This is one of the leading Internet franchises with terrific growth prospects,” Mr. Durban said. He gave no specifics on features Skype might offer, but said it was easy to imagine possibilities. He also said the buyers had no plans for a public offering. Some of Skype’s newest features may suggest directions for the company. The latest version of its software, released this year, emphasizes face-to-face video chats. Skype now says that 34 percent of calls between Skype users include video, and such chats have become a popular way for people around the world to connect with one another. In addition to working on allowing outside programmers to weave Skype’s features and infrastructure into their own programs or Web sites, the company is also working on replacing the service’s underlying peer-to-peer technology. That is partly out of legal necessity. The rights to that technology remain with Skype’s founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who have sued eBay in a British court over some changes eBay made to it. That case is to go to trial next year. For eBay, selling Skype — particularly at a valuation higher than many analysts had thought possible — offers partial redemption for a deal that many Internet analysts said was an awkward fit. EBay paid $2.6 billion for Skype, and performance incentives lifted the final price to $3.1 billion. “The purchase was a serious mistake by Meg Whitman. It was an attempt to buy growth, which investors saw through instantly,” said Jeffrey Lindsay, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. The new eBay management found ways for Skype to generate revenue, he said, “and now they sold it at a great price.” Mr. Donahoe said eBay did not regret having bought Skype when company executives believed eBay was in a mortal struggle with Google, which was also pursuing the service. He said the spinoff would allow eBay to focus on its core e-commerce and online payment businesses and avoid extra distractions. “We don’t regret having done this at all. We compete in a dynamic market, and you have to move quickly and take risks,” Mr. Donahoe said. “When we bought Skype we thought it had synergies with our other two businesses, and it turns out it did not. But it also turned out that it’s a great stand-alone business.”

Silver Lake Partners
Skype Technologies
eBay Inc
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures
Internet Telephony
Whitman Margaret C
Donahoe John
Zennstrom Niklas
Friis Janus


Key Senate Democrat Announces Opposition to Iran Nuclear Deal

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee and a prominent Jewish voice in Congress, said on Friday that he would oppose the Iran nuclear deal, increasing the chance that President Obama will have to use a veto to prevent it from being scuttled. While the president has been working to gain enough support to block a vote on a resolution to disapprove the deal and thus avoid a diplomatic embarrassment, Mr. Cardin’s announcement puts opponents close to securing enough votes to overcome any filibuster. Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, said on Friday that it would be “outrageous” for Democrats to prevent a vote. “The president has said he would probably veto it,” Mr. McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, said of the Iran resolution. “We ought to give him the opportunity to do that.” With Congress returning from its August break next Tuesday, Mr. McConnell said in an interview that the Senate would begin debate on the Iran deal on Wednesday afternoon after party meetings. He said no committee hearings would be held next week so that senators could give the resolution their full attention. And he said he did not anticipate amendments that could complicate the fight. “This is a proposal that ought to be voted on in its entirety the way the president submitted it,” Mr. McConnell said. Mr. Cardin, of Maryland, became the third Senate Democrat to say he would oppose the agreement, joining Chuck Schumer of New York, the party’s No. 3 leader in the Senate, and Robert Menendez of New Jersey. Mr. Cardin’s closely watched decision did not put the nuclear accord in jeopardy because enough Democrats have already announced that they would not vote to override any presidential veto of the legislation blocking the deal. Besides the three current Democratic opponents, at least two other Democrats have indicated that they will vote with 54 Republicans on a procedural effort to break any filibuster, even though they support the agreement. That puts opponents within one vote of the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster, with five Democrats yet to indicate how they will vote. Republicans would much prefer that Mr. Obama be forced to veto the measure because that would make it clear that the agreement was saved by a minority in the House and the Senate that sustained a veto over the objections of a bipartisan majority. Mr. Cardin, whose strong advocacy on humanitarian issues and more than two decades of service on the United States Helsinki Commission have made him a voice of moral authority on Capitol Hill, said he would push for legislation to put strict controls on how the Iran accord is carried out, including a sharp response to any violations. Other Democrats have said that they, too, would back such legislation after an agreement is in place. The Iran Deal in 200 Words A short overview of highlights from the Iran nuclear pact. But Mr. McConnell said the Democrats’ proposals amounted to an effort to find political cover after they had sided with the president on an agreement that even some of its supporters have called flawed. “I predict every Democrat who votes against this bill is going to be introducing Iran-bashing bills right and left in great numbers to get well after supporting a deal that only the ayatollah could love,” he said. On Wednesday, Mr. Obama secured enough votes to prevent a veto override when Mr. Cardin’s Maryland colleague, Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, also a Democrat, announced her support of the deal. That made Mr. Cardin’s opposition all the more striking — a reflection of how lawmakers have been confronted with an extraordinarily complex and divisive issue, with potentially heavy political repercussions. One of those who will have to navigate the repercussions is Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, who also said on Friday that he supported the deal. Mr. Bennet potentially faces the most difficult re-election bid of any Democratic incumbent. “Our primary objectives are to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon, make sure Israel is safe and, if possible, avoid another war in the Middle East,” Mr. Bennet said. “This agreement represents a flawed, but important, step to accomplish those goals.” Mr. McConnell said he thought it was telling that Mr. Cardin and Mr. Menendez, the two most senior Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee, both opposed the deal. In an interview, Mr. Cardin said, “I recognize the numbers, believe me, I do,” sounding anguished about opposing Mr. Obama, whom he normally supports. “It was a close call, and I acknowledge it was a close call,” Mr. Cardin said. On the agreement, he said, “It allows Iran a legal path to have such a sophisticated enrichment program,” as well as “additional financial resources after sanction relief has been granted.” He added, “Iran is going to do whatever it needs to do to get around this agreement.” Mr. Cardin said his legislation would focus on authorizing the Obama administration to use all options in responding to any violations of the agreement by Iran, as well as to any Iranian support for terrorist activities. Such options would include a military strike, he said. “My point is this debate will come to an end,” Mr. Cardin said, “but it’s important we work in a united way so that America will have the strongest hand possible internationally.” The Democratic senators who had not yet announced their position on the agreement were Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Maria Cantwell of Washington, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, Gary Peters of Michigan and Ron Wyden of Oregon.

Senate
Iran
Congress
Nuclear weapon
Benjamin L Cardin
US Politics
Embargoes Sanctions


When Gluttony Dons Racing Shoes

Abstract: Six of the world’s largest and most prestigious marathons — in Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago and New York City — band together and call themselves the World Marathon Majors. Some people try to run all six in the same year. Dean Bell is among them. He spent last week in Amsterdam attending to his job as a partner at the auditing firm KPMG before flying back to New York to finish his sixth marathon of the year — the year he turned 40. He was followed in Central Park on Sunday by a trickle of other six-major finishers, like the sommelier Brian Cronin, who has completed 42 in all. They came from Italy and Spain, China and Denmark, amounting to 1,200 runners over all. They were led by Michael Wardian, an ultra runner so prolific that for him, finishing the six majors was akin to a 5K on the local circuit for an ordinary runner. Wardian finished the New York City Marathon in 45th place, and he set a record for average pace running the majors in a calendar year — a little less than 2 hours 31 minutes. Sunday’s race was Wardian’s ninth marathon of 2016. He supplemented them with 10 ultra marathons. He is 42. “I know it’s not typical, but with every race I do, I’ve just always wanted to see if it’s possible,” Wardian said. “I’ve never wanted someone else to dictate what I’m capable of.” Video Join runners on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, near the start of the 40th New York City Marathon, which travels through all five boroughs of the city. Credit Credit Benjamin Norman for The New York Times. Technology by Samsung. If Wardian and Bell are any indication, people who do this kind of thing have some qualities in common — a penchant for the extreme being central to all. They archive their races in spreadsheets (Wardian) and résumés (Bell). They get up at 4:45 a.m. and go for their runs in the suburbs (Arlington, Va., for Wardian; Greenwich, Conn., for Bell), supplementing them with a lunchtime run at work in the city when they can. Both are in their early 40s, and they balance their running around their families: in this case, wives and two young children. Both issue claims that they are not as unusual as they sound. “Of course I know all the running is, on some level, crazy, but mostly I’m an ordinary guy,” Bell said. “And there are worse vices.” Wardian also maintains that his lifestyle is largely ordinary, just augmented by a marathon or 100-miler every other weekend or so. “I think I’m a pretty normal — well, some people would say maybe not — but I have a family, a full-time job, I take my kids to Cub Scouts and soccer practice, I’m part of civic organizations, I do all this stuff normal people do, but at the same time I don’t think we need to be limited by what is considered normal behavior,” Wardian said. “I just have a really incredible interest in establishing about what’s possible for me and then shattering that.” Certainly, the schedule is unforgiving. A marathon in Berlin in late September. For October, Chicago. And then a month later, the New York City Marathon. All very fast. Image Dean Bell, who has been running for only a little more than five years, said: “I know all the running is, on some level, crazy, but mostly I’m an ordinary guy. And there are worse vices.” Credit Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times Bell has been running for only a little over five years. He gave himself a year to plan the logistics around the races but did not change his training. Since he began running marathons in 2011, he has amassed 20, including Sunday’s. He tends to run his races between 3:10 and 3:15, save for a run this year in Berlin with a bad back. For him, it is a call to constantly push the boundaries of his limitations. “You start with ‘I want to run a marathon,’ then you want to run Boston, then it’s ‘I want to run a certain time,’ then I wanted to run the majors,” Bell said. “As we enter this stage of life, we’re missing competition, it’s us against the clock, but that’s the biggest opponent you can have, yourself.” Wardian ran his first marathon in 1996 so he could qualify for the Boston Marathon, and he quickly moved on to 50-mile races from there. When he decided to improve his speed, he qualified for the 2004, 2008 and 2012 men’s Olympic trials, still relishing the day when he led the first 10K of the 2008 trials through Times Square, immortalized in a widely circulated photograph. Now he is focusing on frequency and longer distances. Wardian was a varsity lacrosse player at Michigan State before he began running his junior year. He and his wife, Jennifer, who met at a fraternity party in Maryland, accommodate each other’s training needs. When watching the kids in the morning, he will run on the treadmill at home while she goes to a Jazzercise class. She was fine with his running 48 miles through the Grand Canyon for their 12th anniversary last month — but she has her limitations. “She lays the law down,” he said. “I’m not allowed to go do Everest until the kids are 18.” Despite an unusual gluttony, and talent, for both volume and speed, Wardian has remained largely injury-free for the entirety of his 20 years of running except for August 2012. He developed five stress fractures in his pelvis and five hernias, all at once, and was sidelined for two months. (He attributed the injuries to the time his youngest son developed epilepsy, when he and his wife slept no more than half-hour intervals.) A Day of Finishes Both Dramatic and Determined 20 Photos View Slide Show › Image Christian Hansen for The New York Times “Normally,” he said, “I sleep four hours, and I’m fine.” The Wardians take their children to his races around the world — they have been to 14 countries on four continents, waiting for their father to finish a 100-mile race through the Alps or the Outback. Wardian follows the wholesome lifestyle common to many ultra runners, having refrained from eating chicken since he contracted salmonella poisoning from a fast-food meal in college. From there, he stopped eating fish and then went vegan, aside from a fondness for egg whites and honey. Some friends he met at a race in Japan take a rice steamer with them for prerace meals, and he has taken up the habit of eating white rice and honey for breakfast and, before dinner, visiting sushi restaurants, where he will eat cucumber-avocado rolls. He drinks “twice every 18 months” and counts an almond-butter maker and a salad company among his sponsors. “I’m one of those guys,” he said. “But I think it helps me in recovery. It’s clean energy.” Wardian spends his days as an international ship broker, arranging oceangoing transportation for food aid. Some of his race-field competitors have been on the receiving end of his efforts: At a dinner for Wardian’s clients, the former marathon champion Paul Tergat spoke of how he would receive the shipments while growing up in Kenya and how they changed his life. (Wardian contracted the ship Maersk Alabama, which was hijacked by Somali pirates in 2009, learning the news only when he returned from running the weeklong Marathon Des Sables through the Sahara and regained phone access.) Wardian and Bell finished their streaks Sunday despite the logistical impediments bound to affect races that happen almost every week or month. For Bell, he had managed to run each time under his Boston qualifying standard — until Berlin, where he was hampered by a back injury. Wardian’s trips were wrought with timing hurdles: He would continue running after the race back to his lodgings to collect his luggage and go straight to the airport, often still in racing clothes. Bell’s family watched the race at 102nd Street and First Avenue, a block from where they used to live. They celebrated after the race with friends who live in their old building but headed back to the suburbs before it grew too late. He had a 7 a.m. flight to Washington the next day. Wardian said he would go to Las Vegas next weekend. He has another marathon record in mind: running the fastest one ever while dressed as Elvis.

Marathon
Dean Bell
Michael Wardian
NYC Marathon


An Iowa Town’s Landmark, Leveled by Explosion, Is Rebuilt by Friendships

Abstract: BALLTOWN, Iowa — The morning before Christmas 2007, an explosion rocked this village of 70 people on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, just north of Dubuque. Within minutes, Breitbach’s Country Dining had burned to the ground. One of the oldest restaurants in Iowa, Breitbach’s began serving breakfast to farmers in 1852. Mementoes destroyed in the fire displayed connections to people as diverse as President Millard Fillmore and Frank and Jessie James. The day of the explosion, one of Breitbach’s customers drove 100 miles from Davenport and stuffed a hundred-dollar bill into the shirt pocket of the restaurant’s owner, Mike Breitbach, whose great-great-grandfather bought the place in 1861. Neighbors came carrying minced ham sandwiches and apple pies to feed the hundreds of people gathered in the snow to mourn. The cause of the explosion is under investigation, but officials say foul play is not suspected. “I never knew what Breitbach’s meant to me, until it was gone,” said Helen Schmitt, 69, whose earliest memory is walking there with her father to buy penny candy. She was 4. For weeks, Mr. Breitbach, 58, and his wife, Cindy, 51, debated whether to retire or rebuild. “I came this close to walking away,” Mr. Breitbach said. Rebuilding began in March, and contractors told Mr. Breitbach that he would be lucky if it was finished before the October corn harvest. Then the volunteers began showing up. They poured the concrete foundation, hoisted the roof and built all the furniture by hand (For the first time in 156 years, Breitbach’s will have matching chairs.) Children carried buckets of nails. Amish carpenters carpooled 40 miles to frame the walls. Those too old for physical labor baked pies. Thanks to the volunteers, Breitbach’s Country Dining will reopen Saturday, four months ahead of schedule. “I’ve been inspecting buildings for 39 years, and I’ve never seen a building this big go up so fast,” said an Iowa state health inspector, Dean Siems, 59, “Without all of these volunteers, they never could have done it.” Mr. Breitbach said simply, “This kind of thing don’t happen no more nowhere.” The rebuilding was not only an expression of support for a local landmark and its owner, but also for the ethos of hard work and communal effort that some residents feared was being lost to the steady tugs of television, the Internet and jobs in big cities. “I never realized this place had so many friends,” said Mikey Breitbach, 19, Mike’s son who works in the restaurant. “This fire jolted us back into a community again.” At 5 feet 3 with a shiny bald head and more energy than a high school football team, Mr. Breitbach is not your ordinary businessman. Seven or eight of his customers have keys to the restaurant. The first person to arrive in the morning opens the doors and starts the coffee. One early-morning regular, Jerry Sahm, spent two weeks in the hospital last winter. While he was away, Mr. Breitbach and his sons shoveled Mr. Sahm’s driveway every day. “That’s why so many people came to help,” said Mr. Sahm, 64. “They feel like they are just paying Mike back.” Tony Duehr, an auto-body shop owner, lost a brother in a car accident, another brother to heart surgery and his father to cancer. After each death, Mr. Breitbach hurried to the Duehr family home, his arms loaded with cooked meat and cans of soda. After Breitbach’s burned, Mr. Duehr volunteered his time and his workers to paint and seal all the metal parts in the new restaurant. “I’m doing this because, whenever my family has a problem, Mike is always the first person to help,” Mr. Duehr said. “This is what friends do.” Some people who volunteered did so because they feared that without the restaurant, their town, a cluster of 22 houses and the St. Francis of Assisi Roman Catholic Church, might surrender its long war against the Iowa wind and blow away. “Without Breitbach’s, there’s nothing left to look forward to,” Mr. Duehr said. But the rush to rebuild was not all nostalgia and fuzzy kindness. Breitbach’s is a business as well as a social hall, and Mike Breitbach is respected for his Midwestern practicality as much as his spicy prime ribs. During the summer, thousands of motorcyclists ride twisty, two-lane Balltown Road to the overlook at the north edge of town, one of the best views in the upper Mississippi Valley. In autumn, busloads of tourists cram the roads to see the changing leaves. Breitbach’s is a favorite stop; Mr. Breitbach rushed to complete the building before his customers forgot him. Don Quinn, who owns a heating and air-conditioning company in Zanesville, Ohio, discovered Breitbach’s in 1991 on a motorcycle trip. By the time lunch was over, he and Mr. Breitbach were friends. Mike Breitbach said he never knew what Mr. Quinn did for a living until the day of the fire, when Mr. Quinn called and offered to help. In April, Mr. Quinn and his son filled a trailer with ductwork for the new restaurant. They drove 612 miles to Balltown, unloaded the metal, turned around and drove home. The only payment they would accept was a cup of coffee. “Mike and all the people in Balltown, they’re not regular people,” said Mr. Quinn, 66. “They’re family.”


Trump Irate Over Rules for Restaurant on Ocean

Abstract: WANTAGH, N.Y., Dec. 6 — Donald J. Trump exercises his usual restraint in describing Trump on the Ocean, the 100,000-square-foot restaurant and catering hall he is building at Jones Beach State Park. It exists at “the best corner of Jones Beach,” or, for the more citified, at the “57th and Fifth of Jones Beach.” That may be, though there are complaints that Mr. Trump has come up with an odd mixture of Palm Beach aesthetic and Atlantic City commercialization. For right now, the building is simply waiting. Mr. Trump began planning the restaurant, his first project on state land, in 2006. During the last year, the undertaking has been marked by wrangling over such things as the size of his name on the facade and environmental permits. And the wrangling has led to sporadic outbursts: Mr. Trump has railed against government bureaucracy, traded insults with local officials and endured “Dump Trump” demonstrations by nearby residents who say his glossy marketing campaign cheapens an iconic public amenity. No sooner did Mr. Trump begin the foundation for the restaurant, on the site of the old 49,800-square-foot Boardwalk Restaurant, than he had to stop work. Officials told him he needed additional variances and permits from the state to build a basement. “It’s just ridiculous — I’ve been waiting for three weeks to build,” he said in an interview on Wednesday. “You don’t let us start a construction job and then tell us later, ‘By the way, we need more permits.’ My pile driver gave up three other jobs to start this and now he’s calling me asking why he can’t start.” But Eileen Larrabee, a spokeswoman for the State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, said Mr. Trump was aware of the necessary permits and that the contract required him to comply at his own expense. “The Trump Organization does have lawyers, contractors and engineers that are familiar with these types of permits,” Ms. Larrabee said. “This was all in the contract, that they’re responsible for all permits.” The vast new hall, which Mr. Trump says will cost more than $30 million, is to include a formal 350-seat restaurant as well as space for catered events accommodating 2,000 people, officials at the Trump Organization said. Valet parking and concierge service will also be provided. Not everyone is enthralled. The chairman of the Nassau County Board of Assessors, Harvey B. Levinson, called Mr. Trump’s project at the renowned oceanfront park, created by Robert Moses in 1929, a “raping of the beach.” As Mr. Levinson put it, state officials “got blinded by his hairdo” and celebrity status and handed Mr. Trump a sweetheart deal that will shortchange local municipalities about $1 million and indulge the wealthy over the middle class. “A place that offers $250-a-plate events does not serve the public purpose,” he said. In turn, Mr. Trump has repeatedly proclaimed Mr. Levinson a self-promoting “loser.” There is also the clash of the notoriously glittery Trump aesthetic with the public mission and traditional Art Deco style of the park’s two bathhouses and landmark water tower. Mr. Trump agreed to use limestone for the restaurant, but his choice of a polished variety, critics say, does not conform to the general rough-hewn look of other park buildings. “It has a more luxurious look, a softer finish,” Mr. Trump said. “I want it to be gorgeous and they don’t want it to be gorgeous.” Then there is the clash over the Trump name, which the developer envisioned writ large on the 28-foot-tall building. In one rendering, the name seemed to glisten in letters that were four feet tall. But state officials said the size violated the beach’s longstanding sign limitations and moved to reduce them to less than two feet in height, which enraged Mr. Trump. “My name adds tremendous value,” he said. “If it didn’t have my name up there, the project wouldn’t even work and wouldn’t be the success it is. We’re signing people up right and left, for weddings, bar mitzvahs and other events.” Mr. Trump’s deal was negotiated during the administration of Gov. George E. Pataki, whose parks commissioner, Bernadette Castro, is a friend of Mr. Trump’s and who called the project “a gift from God” for her agency. But Ms. Castro’s successor, Carol Ash, has been less effusive and more stringent in holding Mr. Trump to particulars, including incorporating environmental elements into the design, and redesigning the hall so that restaurant patrons as well as catering clients can enjoy the ocean views. Mr. Trump lamented that Mr. Moses, the imperious master builder, never faced such problems. “In the days of Moses, you didn’t have all these environmental impact statements and community boards,” he said. “Getting something approved was 500 percent quicker. If you wanted to build Jones Beach today, they’d have you arrested for interfering with the sand movement. “Listen, it’s a very small job for me, and I have other places to invest $40 million,” he said. Mr. Trump began marketing the Jones Beach restaurant this summer at Hamptons polo matches, and has already booked events on the assumption that building will be finished by March 2009, though now, he said, he has had to cancel some. “The state is building up damages,” he warned. “We’re canceling weddings for every day they’re delaying us.” Ms. Larrabee said the contract “clearly came from a prior administration, and where the new commissioner could get improvements — like making sure it is green-certified or ensure that the public customers will have views of the ocean and not the parking lot — she will make sure they adhere to the contract, on behalf of the public.” Mr. Trump and his partner in the project, Steven Carl, a Long Island caterer, are leasing the property from the state for 40 years, and must pay an annual rent of $200,000 and a percentage of gross receipts after it has been operating three years. Mr. Levinson said they were not required to pay local property taxes because they are building on state land, so the local school district and the fire department charged with responding to emergencies at the park will not benefit. Mr. Levinson sees this as unjust and is calling for the state and Mr. Trump to make a payment in lieu of taxes to the village of Wantagh. Asked about the claims, Mr. Trump said, “He’s an idiot — why didn’t this loser come forward earlier with his complaints?” For his part, Mr. Levinson responded, “I’d expect to hear that from an 11-year-old, not a sophisticated developer. “Jones Beach is meant for the middle class and Donald Trump is commercializing Jones Beach,” he said. “I’m sure Robert Moses is turning over in his grave.”

Restaurants
Long Island (NY)
Trump Donald J


Federal Appeals Court Declines to Hear Appeal of BP’s Liability

Abstract: A federal appeals court has refused to reconsider its 2014 ruling that BP cannot avoid federal penalties for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill by blaming another company’s failed equipment. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit released its ruling on Friday. BP was majority owner of the well where the leased Deepwater Horizon rig exploded. BP and its minority partner, Anadarko Petroleum, had argued that they should not face federal Clean Water Act penalties. A trial is set for later this month to determine those penalties. United States District Court Judge Carl J. Barbier already has found that the oil giant acted with “gross negligence” in the tragedy, a ruling that could mean some $18 billion in penalties.

BP
Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill
Clean Water Act
Oil and Gasoline
Fines


Mayor de Blasio Adopts Old Trick: ‘Dumping’ News When It Might Go Unnoticed

Abstract: On the afternoon before Thanksgiving, City Hall officials in New York released about 1,500 pages of email correspondence with outside advisers. The timing seemed curious, if not suspect: Reporters would have scant time to digest the material, and the depictions of the often cozy relationship between city officials and outside consultants would get little notice as New Yorkers tucked into their turkeys the next day. The week before, city officials waited until 5:34 p.m. on Thursday to release the November financial plan update, a yearly adjustment of spending projections. And on the day before the presidential election, City Hall let drop two pieces of news: that the chief executive of the problem-plagued NYC Health & Hospitals was leaving , and that the city had spent over $5 million on outside legal fees related to a series of state and federal investigations focusing on Mayor Bill de Blasio’s fund-raising and other matters. Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, has acknowledged his struggles in dealing with the news media, and his approach has evolved as he nears the end of his third year in office. He now typically schedules only one “off-topic” news conference per week, during which reporters may ask questions of their choosing, rather than be restricted to the topic of his choosing. He also tends to favor structured one-on-one interviews, agreeing to appear regularly on WNYC radio and on the local news channel NY1. And, it seems, Mr. de Blasio has adopted an old trick used by mayors, governors and other politicians: the so-called Friday news dump , when potentially negative news is released late in the week, before a holiday weekend or at other times when it is likely to garner slight attention from a distracted public. “Each one is different; there are different circumstances for each one,” Mr. de Blasio said at a news conference on Tuesday when asked about how his administration releases information. “You’re asking the question now because they’re all made public and they’re all part of the public discussion. It’s absolutely normal.” There is no indication Mr. de Blasio has used the tactic more than previous mayors. Robert J. Freeman, executive director of the State Committee on Open Government, said Mr. de Blasio’s behavior seemed typical of those before him, and of governors. “They wait until the time when an issue is likely to receive, let’s say less coverage, and that’s an old trick,” Mr. Freeman said. But of the pre-Thanksgiving release of emails, he allowed, “This time it was fairly stark.” But the timing of the releases jars with the mayor’s repeated pledge to adhere to a policy of transparency, and it meshes with a pattern that has emerged of an embattled administration that often seems distrustful of the press. The pre-Thanksgiving email release came after months of denying reporters’ requests for those documents and many more. City officials contended that the emails were privileged, arguing that outside advisers should be considered “agents of the city,” which would make their consultations with City Hall subject to the same disclosure restrictions as municipal employees. The emails, which were selected by city officials and contained many redactions, provided examples of the close relationship between the mayor’s staff and his outside advisers, who include public relations consultants with clients that do business with the city. City Hall had previously released two other batches of similar emails, but there are many it continues to withhold. The email release last week was timed to coincide with the filing of papers in a court case brought by The New York Post and NY1 seeking access to correspondence with the so-called agents of the city. Mr. de Blasio’s press secretary, Eric F. Phillips, initially suggested in a Twitter post and conversations with reporters that the timing of the release was dictated by the court case. But while the city was required to file papers on that date, it was free to release the emails at any time before or after. In one Twitter exchange with a reporter who criticized the city for dumping the emails on the eve of the holiday, Mr. Phillips defended the action , writing: “What qualifies as ‘dump’ timing is loose. We put out a lot of stuff. Can’t all be at 11 a.m.” Of course, politicians, like other people, tend to emphasize the good over the bad. The news conference on Tuesday was called for the mayor to discuss his Vision Zero initiative aimed at reducing traffic deaths. Mr. de Blasio called the effort a great success, highlighting a new program to step up enforcement during autumn when it gets dark earlier and drivers’ ability to spot hazards may be hampered. Officials presented data showing that there were 14 deaths related to vehicle collisions from Oct. 27 to Nov. 27, down from 30 in the same period last year. They also acknowledged, only after questioning by reporters, that traffic deaths over all had barely changed — 204 this year, compared with 209 in the same period in 2015. Pedestrian deaths, whose prevention is a prime focus of the initiative, have increased.

Mayor
NYC
Bill de Blasio
News media,journalism


Seeking Truth, Not Always Beauty

Abstract: The exhibition “Sprawl” at the Jersey City Museum does not set out to prove that parts of the New Jersey landscape are ugly. But it is hard to escape that conclusion after seeing the show. Still, the exhibition, curated by Rocio Aranda-Alvarado, the museum’s curator of contemporary art, is both pertinent and engrossing. It gathers together artworks by 41 artists, mostly young, all living and working in the state. For viewers, the art can be tough. The artists present a humorous, at times melancholy, but always faithful vision of industrial landscapes, housing projects, roadside motels, interstates and abandoned buildings. Each has the honesty of journalistic photography. Most of the places depicted in these works are impossible to pinpoint, and they are not labeled. But all of them resemble certain familiar landscapes; you get a curious sense all the time in this show of having your memory jogged and yet not quite being able to remember. Frequently, these works also reminded me of the early writings and art projects of Robert Smithson, an influential 1960s conceptual artist who was born in Passaic and was one of the first Americans to address urban sprawl and its effects. His 1967 essay “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic” argues that a disrupted, shabby New Jersey landscape embodies a certain postindustrial truth and beauty. It is truth rather than beauty that dominates the current show. Tough to love, even to like, these artworks nevertheless have the documentary photographer’s gift of leading viewers into a deeper consideration of the world in which we live. An immediate drawback is that the show is overstuffed, the artwork crammed into three upstairs rooms. Painting and drawing does fine in this sort of environment, but video and installation suffer. These media need room to breathe. Predictably, photography dominates. There are two main approaches, each represented by numerous examples. First there are street scenes by Anna-Mária Vág, Roger Tucker, Jonathan Glick and Megan Maloy. Then there are urban landscapes by Bryony Romer, Roger Sayre, Gregory Maka, Owen Kanzler and Brendan Carroll. There is an unexpected connection among the photographs here. A good many of them have a desultory casualness, even a snapshot quality, giving the appearance of having been shot on instinct rather than preplanned, as if the artist chanced upon the image one day. They are curbside mementos of daily life. Like almost everyone else, artists have been affected by the prevailing fashion for environmentalism. An undercurrent of remorse at diminishing urban parkland can be detected in images here by Patrick Grenier, Susan Evans Grove and Jason Burch. Darker forces cloud other, related imagery, suggestive of environmental catastrophe. Many of the exhibits were commissioned especially for this show. Immediacy and topicality are thus forcefully evident, notably in Debbie Reichard’s “Pisces” (2008), a fountainlike installation made of plastic garden hoses, pumps and a bucket of water, and whose message is clear: Fresh water is a precious resource now idly wasted. Nearby is Rebecca Feranec’s “Pump Me Up #2” (2006), a partly tongue-in-cheek illustration of a gas pump nozzle that leaves you with an air of foreboding; rather than saying anything concrete, it captures a widespread feeling of gloom at ever-rising gas prices. Ms. Feranec’s drawing is so impressively executed that it seduces the viewer just a little. I could say the same for Ben Polsky’s “Site 21.06” (2003), an intensely detailed illustration of a building, its side smashed, revealing a tangle of metal used to reinforce concrete. An eerie light brings drama to an image that might otherwise have been a bit dull. A catalog provides basic caption information and images but little in the way of commentary on the artworks. There is not even a proper essay. This is regrettable, as I suspect many of the younger artists will not be familiar to visitors; I know several were new to me. Not that it matters in the end. The lasting impression is of the many memorable, thought-provoking images in this show.


For Victims, an Overloaded Court System Brings Pain and Delays

Abstract: It had gone on for almost four years, Maxima Allen said as she sat on a hard bench in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn over the summer. She did not need notes to remember the date — Dec. 20, 2011 — that her son Alfredo was stabbed with scissors on the basketball court of Erasmus Hall High School, causing irreversible brain damage. Ms. Allen just wanted the case to end. Once the criminal case against Chevoy Nelson, the boy accused of stabbing her son, was over, she could sue the city and the Department of Education for money to help pay for Alfredo’s care, which comes to roughly $1,000 a day. But the case, like so many others, had been delayed. It is not news that cases can take a long time to wind their way through the court system in New York, or that lawyers use delay tactics. But to look closely at the Nelson case is to see this phenomenon played out to an extreme, and to understand the pain it can cause to a victim’s family. This is a story of an overloaded system, where the schedules of judges and lawyers, records requests, medical examinations and simple errors can stretch cases out over years. For victims, family members and defendants, the obligatory court appearances and inevitable postponements create “incredible pressure,” said Jocelyn Simonson , an assistant professor at Brooklyn Law School and a former public defender in Brooklyn. She ticked off a list of how multiple court dates can affect those involved: lost wages, lost jobs, losing a place in drug-treatment programs because of missed sessions, child care issues. For defendants, open cases can cause problems with housing, child custody and professional licenses. And for defendants in jail, a postponement is devastating, Ms. Simonson said. In Brooklyn, where Alfredo was assaulted, the State Supreme Court is trying new ways to address the backlog. It took an average of 307 days in Brooklyn last year from the time a felony indictment was handed up to the end of the case, up 26 percent from 243 days in 2012. Image Alfredo Allen, right, in an undated family photo. In Brooklyn and the other boroughs, once there is an indictment, a case requires an average of 11 court appearances to come to a close, according to the state’s Office of Court Administration. Mr. Nelson’s case, which required 41 court dates, provides an up-close look at what goes wrong — why delays stretch from weeks to years, and how little delays can build to big ones. A History of Violence Ms. Allen, now 55, was at work as a home health aide the day of the attack. When she heard that Alfredo, who was then 15, had been stabbed, she assumed it was in his arm. “I never thought, for a moment, that it would’ve caused so much damage, because it happened in a school,” she said, speaking through a Spanish interpreter. But when she arrived at Erasmus, police officers and the principal walked toward her. “I became aware of just how bad the situation was,” she said. Alfredo had already been sent to Kings County Hospital Center. He had multiple fractures, he was hemorrhaging and his brain, according to medical records, was “actively oozing out” from his skull. She said doctors told her Alfredo would “have a 50-50 chance of life or death.” He would require six brain surgeries. Before the attack, Alfredo, the baby of six siblings, was mischievous and physically confident. He started playing football at 6 and, after his mother became worried about gangs at his school, he transferred to Erasmus for its football program. He was always up to something: He would buy sneakers at flea markets and resell them online at a premium. Once, when his mother was visiting Honduras, he begged her over the phone for a dog. She said no way. “When I came home the next morning, he said, ‘Mommy, I’ve got a surprise for you,’” she said, and there was a Yorkie mix, Siki, that he paid for by selling an Xbox online. Image Maxima and Alfredo Allen, who shares the same name as his son, leaving State Supreme Court in Brooklyn. Credit Kevin Hagen for The New York Times That December day at Erasmus, everything changed. Mr. Nelson, who was 16, said he had been called into the dean’s office that day and reprimanded for “play-fighting,” according to police reports and court filings. He headed to the gym, where Alfredo and some other boys were playing basketball. According to the Allens’ lawyer, Laura Gentile, Mr. Nelson, a special-education student in the 10th grade, was assigned to a different section of Erasmus and was not supposed to be in Alfredo’s area. While he had an aide assigned to him during classroom hours, he did not have one during the lunch break. He had a history of violent and aggressive behavior, Ms. Gentile wrote in a lawsuit, including writing “Kill Them All” on his hand in September of that year and fighting. He was barred from a social studies class earlier in December because the teacher “felt intimidated,” according to the lawsuit. In the gym, the boys would not let Mr. Nelson join their game, and Mr. Nelson said he and one of the boys — apparently Alfredo — pushed each other. “I said iz does not end here in my mind,” Mr. Nelson wrote in a statement to the police, titled “My story,” which was full of grammatical and spelling errors. “So I went into the hall way and saw some guys I ask them If they had any wepon they said No so I went in the science lab and asked for some acid the teacher said he did not have any.” The teacher did not ask why Mr. Nelson wanted acid, and no staff members or teachers appear to have asked what Mr. Nelson was doing in the wrong part of Erasmus, which would become a key point in the civil case. Mr. Nelson wrote that while the teacher was distracted, he took a pair of scissors. He “went back to the gim and I wated unt the boy was two feet away from me and then I stab him repeatedly,” he wrote. It was a quick case for the police. Mr. Nelson was pulled away by onlookers, confessed immediately to school safety officers, and gave videotaped and written statements at the Police Department’s 70th Precinct station house. He was arraigned the next day on charges of second-degree attempted murder and first-degree assault, and indicted two days later. Then everything slowed down. Mounting Costs Ms. Allen and her husband, also named Alfredo Allen, slept on a hospital conference room floor for three months. “You do everything for your kids,” she said, crying, and paused. “This is not comprehensible. He was attacked from behind.” Image Chevoy Nelson, right, at a sentencing hearing in July in State Supreme Court. Credit Kevin Hagen for The New York Times After a few months, the hospital, saying it could do nothing more for him, discharged the young Alfredo to a nursing home in Queens. “One of the nurses told me they basically sent him there to die,” Ms. Allen said. After three months, he was sent to a Camden County, N.J., nursing home that specialized in children. For the Allens, who live in East New York, Brooklyn, it was about a two-hour drive each way to the nursing home in New Jersey, which meant Ms. Allen could work only part time as a home health aide. Because she had taken six months off from work to care for Alfredo, her employer required that she start as a new employee when she returned and attend unpaid training again. She earned about $250 a week working three 10-hour shifts. The nursing home cost about $825 a day. In March 2012, the Allens filed a lawsuit against the city and the Department of Education, alleging negligence, among other claims. However, the Brooklyn district attorney’s office asked the civil court to postpone adjudicating the suit until the criminal case was finished, saying a parallel civil investigation by the Allens’ lawyer could interfere with the prosecution. The Allens’ costs kept rising and their income kept declining. (Alfredo Allen Sr., who is 79, is retired from the United States merchant marine.) The Allens, who could not pay rent for five months, were taken to court by their landlord and had to borrow $5,000 to stop an eviction lawsuit. Meanwhile, the criminal case meandered on. The delays were partly logistical. Mr. Nelson’s lawyer, Frank Paone, wanted to put on a defense arguing mental illness, which takes more time because it requires records and examinations by both sides. Mr. Paone did not respond to multiple requests for comment. It took almost a year to get Mr. Nelson’s medical records from Jamaica, where he had lived until mid-2011. And Mr. Nelson sometimes refused to go to court. Other delays were because of errors or minor scheduling issues. One hearing was rescheduled because Mr. Paone had a doctor’s appointment. Another was postponed when prosecutors announced that the detective on the case, who was supposed to testify, was not available. At a third, a psychiatric report that was sent was for an entirely different client. On some dates, the lawyers would appear in court simply to pick a date for the next hearing. Or they would appear in court to say they were still waiting for reports. Or they would show up to say they were not ready. Some court records offered no explanation and simply noted another date for everyone to appear. In October 2014, Ms. Allen got Alfredo moved to a nursing home in Harlem. The daily cost increased to $992, but the shorter distance meant she could return to working seven days a week, doubling her weekly take-home pay to $530. (She since has scaled back to five days a week.) Image Ms. Allen holds the hand of her son Alfredo in December. Credit Andrew Renneisen for The New York Times After she finishes work at 5 p.m., she takes the train to Harlem to see Alfredo, before returning home to Brooklyn around midnight. She spends her little spare time arguing with insurance companies — it took seven months to get a helmet for Alfredo, which Medicaid would not cover. He still does not have a wheelchair that fits him, and Medicaid covers only two hours of physical therapy a week when he needs two hours a day, according to Ms. Gentile, the lawyer. Sentencing Day In an interview, Ms. Allen showed photos and videos of Alfredo today, a beefy 19-year-old with vacant eyes, his tongue between his lips, his mouth moving but no sound coming out. He is on a ventilator for most of the time and does not move from his bed on most days. “He knows that I’m there because sometimes I’ll drop something and he’ll respond,” she said. “Some days he’s laid back and some days he’s very agitated.” The wait, Ms. Gentile, said, had been burdensome on the family. “We were ready to try this case a long time ago, but it was unduly delayed because the defense had to gather medical records and evaluate the defendant’s competency,” among other issues, said Charisma L. Troiano, a spokeswoman for the Brooklyn district attorney, Ken Thompson. “Despite the delays, justice was done in this case.” Matthew J. D’Emic, the administrative judge for criminal matters in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, said he recently began addressing court delays himself in all of the cases older than a year in which defendants were at the Rikers Island jail complex. He quizzes defense lawyers and prosecutors in his chambers about moving the case to a trial or a plea. “Everybody deserves their day in court at the earliest possible time, and in some ways the system got away from that,” he said. By January 2015, more than three years after the attack, Mr. Nelson’s case was approaching trial. Records were gathered, motions decided and a judge set a trial date. On May 21, Mr. Nelson pleaded guilty to first-degree assault, agreeing to a sentence of 17 and a half years. Mr. Paone picked a sentencing date about a month away. “Too long,” Justice Neil Jon Firetog responded, and scheduled an earlier date. But on June 11, the day of the scheduled sentencing, the sentencing reports were not in. On July 7, the reports again were not in. On July 31, Mr. Nelson was sentenced and the case was closed. Now, legally, the Allens could pursue the civil case. The city made a settlement offer that was made final in September. The Allens accepted. Ms. Allen hopes to bring her son home someday, with all the medical equipment and the costs that would require. While Medicaid will cover a portion of his care, the Allens will need to pay for much of it. “If there were only some way, some treatment, to someday help the young man have a life,” she said. The Allens will receive $9 million, according to court documents. A life planner the Allens hired to review their son’s medical records estimated it will cost $16.7 million to $33.3 million to care for Alfredo for the rest of his life.

State supreme court
Brooklyn
Chevoy Nelson
New York
Assault
Alfredo Allen
NYC
Judiciary


A Home Network Where Your TV Talks to Your Fridge

Abstract: BERLIN — Across the consumer electronics industry, leading players are revamping their audio and video equipment for a future centered around the Internet, a world in which televisions, stereos and computers — even dishwashers and refrigerators — can communicate with each other over a wireless home network. Expanded lines of networked entertainment equipment will take center stage this week at the Internationale Funkausstellung in Berlin, the largest consumer electronics convention in Europe, with 1,200 exhibitors and 200,000 visitors. Sony plans to introduce plug-in adapters to enable some of its Bravia television sets to connect to the Internet wirelessly. The Dutch consumer electronics maker Philips will demonstrate a line of stereo systems that can wirelessly tap into music stored on personal computers or laptops in other rooms, streaming music through the house. Pioneer, Samsung and Sharp will present flat-panel TVs that hook up to the Internet, some with wires, some without. Hewlett-Packard ’s MediaSmart L.C.D. TV will wirelessly stream high-definition video. Some industry executives say the new focus on Internet content and wireless networks reflects a fundamental shift in home entertainment. “The Internet is so massive,” said Tim Page, technology marketing manager at Sony Europe. “So are the opportunities for electronics makers, content providers and consumers to get connected.” The convergence of telecommunications, consumer electronics and computing is bringing together a new set of competitors. Telecommunications operators, seeking to increase their revenue from data traffic, are actively promoting home Internet access that is both easier and more sophisticated. One way is through so-called residential gateways, boxes that combine an Internet router with a modem and software than can wirelessly shuttle video and audio among devices in a home. France Télécom has sold six million of its Livebox gateways through 2007, according to Parks Associates, a research firm in Dallas. Major online businesses also view the living room as a potentially lucrative new location for their services, with consumers turning to their TVs instead of PCs to reach the Internet. Google and Yahoo have said they will jointly produce software to make it easier to display Internet content on TV screens. But the development of wireless home networks will require a shift in consumer thinking. “Consumers really aren’t driving the trend toward networked devices, the device makers are,” said Steve Wilson, an analyst at ABI Research in New York. “The companies are pushing this to try to build a new business, to offer new services. It is really a matter of getting the infrastructure in place.” While networked devices like Internet-ready TVs, set-top boxes, residential gateways and game consoles are increasingly common, the truly networked wireless home is still a few years off, industry experts say. By the end of this year, 370 million homes worldwide will have broadband Internet, Parks Associates estimates. But only 5 percent, about 17 million, will have residential media gateways. The technology already exists to enable many home electronic devices, including kitchen appliances, to communicate over a wireless network, said Alon Ironi, the chief executive of Siano, an Israeli company that makes video receivers for devices like digital picture frames. The problem, Mr. Ironi said, is that most devices are unable to communicate with other manufacturers’ products because of different technological standards. Although most major consumer electronics makers — Samsung, Sony, Philips, Panasonic, Pioneer, Sharp, Toshiba — belong to the Digital Living Network Alliance, a consortium whose common protocols ensure that their devices communicate with one another, that has not stopped some from hedging their bets. In July, Sony, Samsung, Sharp, Hitachi and Motorola joined the Israeli company Amimon in a new standards group for wireless communication, called Wireless High Definition Interface, which is working to produce a new HD video standard. “What this means for consumers is that some people may bring products home and discover that they can’t communicate with others on their networks,” said Kurt Scherf, a senior analyst at Parks Associates. “We are just starting to see the first networked products roll out and a shakeout in standards is inevitable.” Still, manufacturers clearly think the appeal of a new information age centered on the living room couch will be strong enough to win over consumers who may be unimpressed by the early results. That is one reason that the former cordless telephone business of Siemens is starting to think about combining its phones with the Internet. Siemens sold 80.2 percent of the telephone unit, which makes Gigaset cordless phones, to Arques, a private equity firm in Munich, on Aug. 1. Although the transaction will not be completed until Oct. 1, the company is already considering plans to combine its phones with audio players and a wireless home network. “Very soon, I don’t think there will be any consumer electronics device on the market that isn’t connected to the Internet,” said Jochen Eickholt, the chief executive of the Siemens unit.

Electronics
Internationale Funkausstellung
Television Sets
Wireless Communications
Berlin (Germany)
Computers and the Internet
Telephones and Telecommunications


Human Rights Watch Report Says Kazakhstan Abuses Oil Workers

Abstract: MOSCOW — A human rights group on Monday accused three oil companies and the government of Kazakhstan of abusing and repressing workers in the country’s oil fields. A report published by Human Rights Watch, a nongovernmental group based in New York that monitors abuses around the world, is the most comprehensive examination of events last winter in Zhanaozen, an oil town in western Kazakhstan, where 12 people were killed when the police fired on striking oil workers. Three other people died from burns or other injuries during the clash, and two others were killed in related violence, including outbursts by strikers who burned down the offices of the mayor and an oil company. Human Rights Watch said that a local company partly owned by the Italian oil giant Eni colluded with the Kazakh government to crush what it said appeared to be a legitimate industrial action. Western energy companies are heavily invested in the region, where substantial reserves could help the United States diversify its supplies of oil away from the Middle East. The rights group’s report, though, focused mainly on local operators whose labor practices have drawn more criticism. Western companies have so far brushed off the unrest as characteristic of the poor management of older, Soviet-style enterprises. The Kazakh government has blamed political opponents of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, the long-serving leader, who they say sent agents to provoke violence by oil workers as a way to destabilize the country. The Human Rights Watch report, which draws on interviews with dozens of workers, pointed to broad shortcomings in labor-management relations in the Kazakh oil regions and the use of the same police force that suppresses political dissent to quell labor unrest in an industry that is partly Western-operated. Episodes of abuse and protests created a climate that led to the shooting on Dec. 16, 2011, the report says. “It’s risky to partner with a government that intimidates, harasses and jails workers who stand up for their rights,” said Mihra Rittmann, Central Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch and the report’s author. “Companies and governments that are interested in Kazakhstan because of its oil resources need to be aware of the human rights problems and take steps to make sure that workers’ rights are respected and avoid abuses,” she said. The Kazakh government said it welcomed a role for nongovernmental organizations in investigating the unrest. “We acknowledge that the failure of the authorities and company management to resolve the dispute with striking workers set the context for the outbreak of violence,” said Altay Abibullayev, a government spokesman. Kazakhstan has since amended the labor code and prosecuted and fired police officers and civil servants for mishandling the strikes. In trials that ended in June, 13 strikers and five police officers received prison terms. Other cases are pending against an opposition politician and union activists. The report comes as a consortium of oil companies, including ExxonMobil and Eni, is commencing a huge investment in a new field just offshore in the Caspian Sea, called Kashagan. The report , “Striking Oil, Striking Workers,” did not implicate Exxon. It identified a local company partly owned by Eni, Ersai Caspian Contractors, among three that violated the rights of workers. It said that workers who called to speak with their bosses later were interrogated by the police, in the company’s offices. Ersai issued a statement through Eni’s press office saying that its employees were not directly involved in the violence, and that its policy was to respect collective bargaining rights and comply with Kazakh labor law.

Human Rights and Human Rights Violations


Hillary Clinton, Pressed on Race, Issues Her Own Challenge

Abstract: The video is visceral and raw: Hillary Rodham Clinton — the presidential candidate so often faulted for insulating herself from voters and critics alike — in a tense, awkward, unscripted moment. A Black Lives Matter activist, Julius Jones, demands , at great length, that Mrs. Clinton acknowledge her culpability for supporting criminal justice policies put in place by her husband’s administration that wound up harming black Americans — and say how she would change “hearts and minds” to address what he calls a virulent strain of “anti-blackness” that reaches all the way back to slavery. Hillary Clinton Talks With BlackLivesMatter | EXCLUSIVE | Part 1 | GOOD Credit Credit Video by GOOD.IS Mrs. Clinton, after listening and nodding for several minutes, responds calmly that her life’s work has been helping the nation’s poorest children, many of them black, before turning the tables on the much younger man and demanding instead to know how he plans to turn his deeply felt emotions into meaningful, lasting change. “You can get lip service from as many white people you can pack into Yankee Stadium and a million more like it who are going to say: ‘We get it, we get it. We are going to be nicer,’ ” she says. “That’s not enough, at least in my book.” It was a forthright statement by Mrs. Clinton, whose advocacy work dates to the 1960s. But her confrontation with a black activist in his 30s showed how, for all her decades of effort on behalf of civil rights, there is a generational divide between those who appreciate that résumé and those to whom she has to prove herself all over again. The combination of patience and gentle scolding with which she responded seemed a distillation of Mrs. Clinton’s worldview: that movement politics gets you only so far, and that activists must pave the way for those in office to act. All in all, the encounter seemed to signal that racial justice will retain its potency in the Democratic primary contest — and potentially beyond, given the importance of black voters to a Democratic victory in November 2016. But it also showed Mrs. Clinton as even her admirers lament that she is seldom seen: spontaneous, impassioned and seemingly unconcerned about potential repercussions. The exchange, taped Aug. 11, came after Black Lives Matter activists tried unsuccessfully to disrupt one of Mrs. Clinton’s events in Keene, N.H., as they have managed to do at campaign stops by other presidential contenders. Mrs. Clinton agreed to speak privately with the group’s representatives. They have since described her remarks to reporters, but released excerpts from the video for the first time this week. The full conversation was released Wednesday. Image Protesters performing a “die-in” at Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Aug. 9 for the anniversary of Michael Brown’s death. Credit Eduardo Munoz/Reuters In the video, Mrs. Clinton shows little of the soft-edged, convivial but careful persona she often displays at her staged campaign events. She is animated, serious and forceful, jabbing her finger at Mr. Jones, who is from Boston, as if she were arguing with a classmate back at Wellesley. She seems to listen intently, her hands folded in front of her. She concedes that there were unintended negative consequences from her husband’s crime bill, but declines to say there was any racial undertone to that. Mr. Jones seems to press Mrs. Clinton to bare her soul: “Now that you understand the consequences, what in your heart has changed?” he asks. “How do you actually feel that’s different than you did before?” Mrs. Clinton calls it a “very thoughtful question” but demurs. “This country has still not recovered from its original sin,” she says, but adds that the “next question” is, “So what do you want me to do about it?” She urges Mr. Jones to help her come up with a specific “vision and plan.” “That’s what I’m trying to put together,” Mrs. Clinton says, “in a way that I can explain it, and I can sell it — because in politics, if you can’t explain it and you can’t sell it, it stays on the shelf.” She shrugs off Mr. Jones’s efforts to elicit a more heartfelt response. “I don’t believe you change hearts,” Mrs. Clinton says, summarizing her basic view of social policy movements. “I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate.” At another point, Mrs. Clinton pushes back, and provocatively. When Mr. Jones tells her that she is “victim-blaming” and that the violence he wants to counteract is a “white problem,” Mrs. Clinton retorts, “Respectfully, if that is your position, then I will talk only to white people about how we are going to deal with a very real problem.” For any white Democrat, the Black Lives Matter movement poses problems, but for Mrs. Clinton, it is particularly fraught. She and her husband were stung by allegations of racism that arose in her 2008 primary contest with Barack Obama. “If you watch the millennial reaction to Hillary, it’s a very different reaction, because a lot of us came up during the ’08 elections,” said Elon James White, an activist and founder of the website “This Week in Blackness.” “There is a very clear line in the sand.” Mrs. Clinton has the backing of many African-American leaders, including important members of the Congressional Black Caucus. But her support falls mainly on the older side of an increasingly pronounced generational divide, between long-familiar figures like the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson and a newer contingent that has begun to assert itself during the Obama administration. “The racial justice community has changed over time,” said Marc H. Morial, the president of the National Urban League. He described the raw anger of the current movement as a result of a combination of several factors, including frustration at years of rhetorical head-pats from white political leaders about changing a policing and economic system that disproportionately affects African-Americans. Mrs. Clinton seems cognizant of that divide. Speaking in the video with Mr. Jones, she alludes to her involvement in the civil rights movement in the “old days.” Indeed, she comes to the issue with a great deal of credibility among African-American advocates and politicians of a certain age for using the existing systems to bring changes. She has told of being inspired by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a high school student, when she heard him speak in Chicago, and of being drawn into working for the Children’s Defense Fund by Marian Wright Edelman, her Yale law mentor. As the first lady of Arkansas, she worked to improve one the nation’s poorest school systems, in which many of the students were black. As the nation’s first lady, she fought for health insurance for poor children. Even now, in her second presidential bid, Mrs. Clinton — often accused of being too cautious — has used some of her boldest language on issues of racial justice. Mr. Morial favorably cited Mrs. Clinton’s speech before the Urban League in July, when she talked about inequities that have lingered despite other advances. “Race still plays a significant role in determining who gets ahead in America and who gets left behind,” she said then. “And yes, while that’s partly a legacy of discrimination that stretches back to the start of our nation, it is also because of discrimination that is still ongoing.” In another speech shortly after the massacre of nine black churchgoers in South Carolina, Mrs. Clinton said that racism was not merely the province of “kooks and Klansmen.” Minyon Moore, a longtime close friend and adviser to Mrs. Clinton, said that her credentials on race could not be questioned, and suggested that the younger cohort of activists be willing to have more of a dialogue. “She was one of the first leaders out there on race,” said Ms. Moore, one of several African-American women among Mrs. Clinton’s innermost circle of friends and advisers. “What presidential candidate has asked the question, ‘Imagine for one second if you were a black man and the police stopped you? Imagine.’ If that’s not in a person’s heart, I don’t know what is.” Mr. Jones, in an interview on Tuesday, acknowledged having a different point of view, but he sounded a hopeful note. “I think that there is a generational element to it, but I don’t know if it’s a divide in that it’s uncrossable,” he said. “I think that what’s happening is Hillary Clinton’s saying, ‘We tried to change hearts, and it didn’t work.’ ” In Mr. Jones’s view, the way forward is “actually taking a frank, honest look at the premises of bigotry and what they’re tethered to in the American creed.” But judging from their videotaped meeting, Mrs. Clinton seems unlikely to be persuaded that extensive self-examination will accomplish much. “If that’s all that happens,” she tells Mr. Jones in the video, with a certain world-weariness, “we’ll be back here in 10 years having the same conversation.”

Hillary Clinton
Julius Jones
Democrats
Discrimination
Black People,African-Americans
2016 Presidential Election
Video Recordings
Downloads and Streaming
US Politics
Race and Ethnicity


When a Tolerable Solitude Turns Intolerable, Help Arrives

Abstract: For the last several years, Lester Futernick has lived alone inside his childhood apartment in Brooklyn with little more to keep him company than faded old pictures of his parents, the giant portrait of himself at his bar mitzvah, some fantasy baseball guides and an overweight cat named Matzoh. He is divorced, an only child. His parents passed away some years ago; his daughters, Meredith and Rebecca, are off at colleges upstate; and Matzoh’s fellow cat, Spooky, died suddenly of heart disease not long ago. At first, the loneliness was bad but not awful. Then, in May, Mr. Futernick, 60, took a turn for the worse. At a routine visit to the doctor for complaints of lower back pain, he was told that he had suffered two so-called silent heart attacks. Within a week, he underwent quadruple bypass surgery. His daughters and his former wife were on a cruise ship in Alaska, so he went through the procedure much the same as he woke up: utterly alone. “I was by myself,” Mr. Futernick said the other day in an interview at his apartment. “I had no money, no job, I was in physical pain and wasn’t able to do much of anything at all.” What Mr. Futernick could do, and did do, was call the Catholic Charities of Brooklyn and Queens, one of seven agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund . “All I can say is thank God they were there,” he said. “Without them, I honestly have no idea what I would’ve done.” Mr. Futernick, whose resources were depleted from child support and alimony payments stemming from his divorce, called the agency from his hospital bed and arranged for help when he got home that included, as he put it, “just about everything.” The agency brought him lunch and dinner through a Meals-on-Wheels program; gave him $750 to pay a month’s rent; and also put him in touch with other organizations that could help defray the costs of living since, because of his surgery, he had to resign from his job. That job, ironically, had been caring for other people as the chief operating officer of the Jewish Community Center on Manor Road on Staten Island. For more than 30 years, Mr. Futernick had worked in numerous positions in the field of substance abuse therapy. His claim to fame, as noted in an article in The Daily News about him in 2006, was pioneering programs that helped patients deal with their addictions to drugs and alcohol by playing golf. Now the roles had been reversed. The helper was in need of help; in fact, he was a patient. “I’d always been on the other side of things,” Mr. Futernick said, “helping other people. Knowing that someone, some organization, was there to help me; well, it’s been great.” It’s been five months since his surgery, and there are good days and bad. The heart itself is fairly strong, despite an occasional arrhythmia. The winter cold bothers him, which makes it hard to go outdoors. He suffers from spinal stenosis (a narrowing of the spinal canal) and is housebound many days, with limited activity on others. When Mr. Futernick was healthy he was active, going to Jets and Mets games, visiting museums, making annual pilgrimages to the Six Flags amusement park in New Jersey and, of course, playing golf in Marine Park or Dyker Heights. There may come a time when he can do all that again, but it is still in the future. “I can’t even look at my golf clubs in the closet,” he said. So instead he looks at pictures of his family that are taped up on the armoire above the little jutting shelf that hold his pills. His couch is broken, and the linoleum tiles are worn through on the floor. Matzoh runs by. The radiator coughs. The F train rattles by on its track beyond the wall. This is home, and yet he isn’t really sure how he arrived here. “It’s hard being home because there’s so many memories,” he said. “I thought I’d maybe be here for a year. And here I am with seven years gone by.”

Catholic Charities
New York Times Neediest Cases Fund
Medicine and Health
Brooklyn (NYC)