To Fill Vacancies, Mall Owners Test Experimental Waters

Abstract: In these desperate days in American retailing, mall owners are seizing on a new gimmick: wave-making machines. A half-dozen malls across the country are planning to install a huge contraption called the Flowrider in vacant retail space. Where once people shopped for three-packs of underwear or sheet sets, they are now turning up in flip-flops and shorts to surf an artificial patch of ocean. However good a business that turns out to be for the company controlling the Flowrider, it is also a sign of the times. With major retail chains like Linens ’n Things and Circuit City closing stores or disappearing altogether, mall and shopping center vacancies are soaring, forcing landlords to find new ways to lure traffic and stave off decline. Downscale chains that landlords once kept out of shopping centers are suddenly being shown the welcome mat. Temporary stores are popping up. Once-small retailers are being invited to take over big spaces, while the strongest national chains are seizing the moment to move into new cities at low rents. And vast mall spaces formerly occupied by department stores may soon be carved up or turned into community colleges and dance studios. “Landlords are scared,” said Suzanne E. Mulvee, a real estate strategist with Property & Portfolio Research. “Part of the reason they’re scared is dark space doesn’t pay.” When the nation’s stores report March sales results this week, the numbers are likely to be down yet again — especially for department stores and mall chains, which have been the weakest performers for months. That does not bode well for mall owners. As more stores have closed, mall vacancies are at their highest point in almost a decade, according to Reis, a research company, which said the vacancy rate at the end of 2008 was 7.1 percent, compared with 5.8 percent at the end of 2007. Other analysts have slightly lower figures, but all agree that vacancies are rising. For some retailers, the brutal environment means new opportunities. That is especially true for the one major retail category faring well nowadays — discounters, like dollar stores and Big Lots, that are suddenly moving into more prominent locales. “They were shunned for five years by the landlord community,” said Spence J. Mehl, senior vice president at RCS Real Estate Advisors. “And now everybody’s knocking on their door and they’re cutting incredibly aggressive deals, because they can.” Of all the vacant spaces, the most difficult to fill are anchors — those big stores at the periphery of a mall. In recent months, Macy’s, Sears, Dillard’s, Mervyns and Steve & Barry’s have closed big mall stores. Last week, the bankrupt Gottschalks department store chain began liquidation sales. Greg Maloney, president and chief executive of the retail group at Jones Lang LaSalle, a real estate brokerage firm, said that to fill empty anchor spaces, landlords were getting creative and were considering bringing in grocery stores, medical facilities, dance studios and even community or technical colleges. “I think you’re going to see a lot more of that,” Mr. Maloney said. Several schools — like New River Community College in Virginia and Hagerstown Community College’s Center for Continuing Education in Maryland — have been holding classes in malls for years. But industry professionals say the trend is likely to accelerate. With Americans buying less, many chains are asking mall owners for rent reductions, and are sometimes receiving them. That adds to the malls’ financial woes. One of the nation’s largest mall owners, General Growth Properties, is laden with more than $25 billion of debt, has missed payment deadlines on its bonds, and is trying to avoid filing for bankruptcy protection. Landlords are willing to lower rents for their best retailers — but only those that can prove financial distress. The landlords may not be able to play hardball for long, though. More major chains are expected to file for bankruptcy this year, leaving behind empty stores. In this economy, few chains need spaces as large as the ones coming onto the market. “I talk to landlords and they’re taking an old Dillard’s box and putting a Best Buy on the top level and a Dick’s Sporting Goods on the bottom,” said Joseph Feldman, a retailing analyst with the Telsey Advisory Group. Researchers who study land use point out that while the recession set off the latest round of vacancies, the problems faced by mall owners and developers have been building for more than a decade. “There was really no relationship between development and the increase in consumer spending,” said Stacy Mitchell, a senior researcher with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, an advocacy group. Between 1990 and 2005, consumer spending per capita rose 14 percent, adjusted for inflation, yet retail space per capita in the United States doubled, said Stacy Mitchell, a senior researcher at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, an advocacy group. In her view, that created too much store space even for a good economy, and then retailers were hit by the recession. “All of this overdevelopment has pulled the rug out from under them,” she said. While mall owners may be batting around plenty of unusual ideas, the Flowrider — a 10-feet-tall wave machine that sends 35,000 gallons of water gushing over a slope at more than 30 miles an hour — is among the most unusual. The device is the centerpiece of a cult sport that got its start in water parks and on cruise ships. Lately, a retail chain called Adrenalina, which sells gear for extreme sports like skydiving and kite-surfing, transferred the concept to retail stores. Because the machines can draw enthusiastic crowds, Adrenalina is getting sweet deals from landlords. Adrenalina executives said some mall owners were paying to install the Flowrider, upwards of $2 million, just to get the extra traffic. “They know that we’ll pull people from a further distance than their regular tenants,” said Jeffrey Geller, president and chief operating officer of Adrenalina. An Adrenalina store that opened last month at the Shops at Willow Bend in Plano, Tex., is already a popular destination. Steven Coyne, an Adrenalina district manager in Dallas, said that in the few weeks the store has been open, the Flowrider has garnered repeat customers — and stupefied gawkers who cannot believe people are riding waves inside a mall. “The funniest question I’ve ever had,” he said, “was, ‘Are those real people?’ ”

Office Buildings and Commercial Properties


Hillary Clinton Again Looks Upstate for Win in New York

Abstract: Hillary Clinton’s political ascent can be traced to the time in 1999 when she expressed her support for dairy farmers in the upstate New York village of Endicott. And the summer that year when she shunned Martha’s Vineyard to vacation in Skaneateles, and promised voters in the depleted industrial city of Schenectady that as a New York senator she would revive the upstate economy. The strategy helped Mrs. Clinton win her 2000 Senate race by double digits, a victory fueled by the unlikely support of white working-class voters in upstate New York who had previously voted Republican but were won over by the first lady’s attention to their underserved area. Now, 16 years later, Mrs. Clinton is again promising to bring jobs back to the region as she courts the people who helped secure her first election victory. But this time her message is colliding with a surprisingly potent threat from the left and doubts about her ability to deliver. Her current effort, which advisers say is critical not just to winning the New York primary on April 19 but to swaying voters nationwide to Mrs. Clinton’s style of pragmatic problem solving, comes as she looks to rebound after losing six of the last seven primary elections to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. In most of those contests, including his 14 percentage-point victory in Wisconsin on Tuesday, Mr. Sanders has attracted wide support from white voters, particularly those who said the economy was the most important issue. His advisers say he plans to campaign aggressively in economically battered parts of western New York, where he will criticize Mrs. Clinton’s past support of trade deals and ties to Wall Street. Of all the battles this primary season, this will be the most personal. As Mrs. Clinton contemplated a Senate run, upstate represented her test as to whether a polarizing first lady not from New York could win over skeptics in traditionally Republican areas. In 2016, the region once again represents a test of whether Mrs. Clinton’s message can resonate, this time among voters who have gravitated to Mr. Sanders’s brand of economic populism. “Her work as senator in upstate New York can serve as a blueprint for how she would seek to create the good-paying jobs of the future as president,” said Mrs. Clinton’s senior policy director, Jake Sullivan. Spanning vast territory north of New York City and its suburbs, the region has long suffered from the decline in American manufacturing, with jobs disappearing and residents deciding to leave. Image Hillary Clinton, with her husband, President Bill Clinton, and daughter, Chelsea, drank milk during a campaign stop at the New York State Fair’s dairy exhibit in Syracuse in 1999. Credit Paul Hosefros/The New York Times At a rally on Monday in Cohoes, north of Albany, Mrs. Clinton recalled working to obtain funding to invest in the nanotechnology industry in the area. “That’s what we need to do across upstate — indeed, across America,” she said, vowing to be the “president who brings manufacturing back to upstate New York and America.” While Mrs. Clinton will continue to campaign in New York City, to solidify her strength among minority voters, recent polls show that the fight to win New York could be waged in places like the Rochester area and Buffalo, where she plans to campaign on Friday. She leads Mr. Sanders by 12 percentage points in New York, but among upstate voters he fares significantly better than Mrs. Clinton in a matchup against the leading Republican candidate, Donald J. Trump, according to a Quinnipiac University poll in late March . A victory in the area is psychologically important for her as well. Mrs. Clinton harbors an emotional attachment to upstate, even making sure that her State Department office always had a fresh shipment of New York apples and putting wine ice cream from the Finger Lakes on the dessert menu at official dinners. Campaigning in Depew on Tuesday, former President Bill Clinton said her years in the Senate working to help New Yorkers were “the happiest she ever was.” But Mrs. Clinton’s critics say that she failed to deliver on the centerpiece of her 2000 push — a promise to bring 200,000 jobs to New York — and many cities upstate have higher unemployment than when she became a senator. The number of private-sector jobs in upstate New York remained virtually stagnant in the eight years Mrs. Clinton served in the Senate, according to state Department of Labor statistics. Her 2000 Republican Senate opponent, Rick A. Lazio, called Mrs. Clinton’s jobs promise “a cynical play to attract voters in the hard-hit areas” and likened it to the unrealistic vows made by Mr. Trump in his presidential campaign. “The people were desperate for hope, and some voters embraced the false promise,” Mr. Lazio said. To combat Mr. Sanders’s message, Mrs. Clinton and a lineup of influential New York surrogates, including Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, plan to take voters down a memory lane of proposals, from the quirky to the conventional, that she advanced to spur the upstate economy. Representative Louise M. Slaughter told a crowd in Rochester on Tuesday that Mrs. Clinton “brought Japanese businessmen here by the planeload to help us rebuild our economy.” In Depew, near Buffalo, on Tuesday, Mr. Clinton provided an extemporaneous laundry list of her efforts upstate, including a partnership with eBay that trained craft makers in mill towns on the Erie Canal to sell their goods online, and efforts to transform a vacant car dealership in Buffalo into an artist’s work space, funnel federal funding to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus and protect the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station. How the Rest of the Delegate Race Could Unfold An interactive delegate calculator that lets you simulate how the 2016 Republican nomination process could unfold. “She worked so hard to get you all that money — for things that may seem small,” Mr. Clinton said, “but if you did it in every city in America, it would make a huge difference.” Defending her economic record, Mrs. Clinton has said the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Great Recession and a Republican administration prevented her, as a freshman senator, from fulfilling her jobs promise. “We had a very difficult situation with the Bush administration,” she said Monday in an interview on “Capital Tonight,” an upstate cable news program. Robert Hockett, a professor of law at Cornell who specializes in financial regulation and is supporting Mr. Sanders, said his anti-trade message would resonate as it has in other economically ravaged areas. “Upstate New York is the classic Rust Belt on the one hand and the classic working-poor rural population on the other hand,” Mr. Hockett said. “The things Bernie wants to do are things this population generally agrees with.” Christopher Ryan, president of the Communications Workers of America Local 1123, which represents Verizon and American Red Cross workers in Syracuse, said that he backed Mrs. Clinton in 2000 but that the area had been eviscerated by jobs moving overseas. He plans to vote for Mr. Sanders, whom the union has endorsed. “You see the weeds growing through the parking lots at factories,” he said. Arlene Maynard, 73, a retired school bus driver from Greece, near Rochester, said Mr. Sanders was too far to the left. She plans to vote for Mrs. Clinton, but thought she would be hurt by the frustration some voters are feeling. “Although they say everything’s good, a lot of people don’t think it’s that good,” she said. Unlike voters in other primary states, many people in upstate New York have met Mrs. Clinton. Joan Shearin, 65, a retired respiratory therapist from Batavia, like many local Democrats, spoke fondly of Mrs. Clinton’s time in the Senate. “When something needed to be done, she was doing it,” she said. “She never hid herself.” “We have a friend that was a dairy farmer, and they were having all kinds of troubles with different regulations,” she said, adding that Mrs. Clinton showed up and “went through the barn. “She took a tour of everything,” Ms. Shearin said. “It wasn’t anything beneath her.”

Hillary Clinton
New York
Voting
Economy
Primaries
Democrats
2016 Presidential Election
Bernard Sanders,Bernie Sanders


For the C.E.O. of Macy’s, Shopping Is Part of the Job

Abstract: This interview with Terry J. Lundgren , chief executive of Macy’s, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant . Q . How do you stay in touch with people throughout the company? A. I just go and pop into a store. I have the cellphone number of every store manager, and I call them and 95 percent of the time they’re there. And they have a little small heart attack at first and I pick ’em up off the floor. And sometimes they say, “This isn’t Terry Lundgren, come on, who is this?” And I say, “No, it really is. Just come on down to the floor, and I’ll say hello.” But people now know that I do this a lot. I literally do it every week somewhere. And so we walk through the floor, and they have had no time to prepare for my questions, they’ve had no time to prepare the store. Ultimately, they view it as a good experience. I always make it a good experience. If I have my issues or concerns or my complaints, I generally don’t take it out on that store manager. I would take it back to management, you know, about what we’re doing to the store to not make it as good a shopping experience as it needs to be. But most of the time, it’s just a good experience. I learn as much by going through a store as anything I do, much more than sitting in my office at my computer or holding a big meeting here, because I’m learning and seeing exactly what our customer is seeing. Over time, while people get a little nervous the first moment they hear I’m in the store, it’s become a real positive for our store’s organization to know that I’m out there, to know that I’m listening and to know that I want to see it like our customer sees it. Q. And you’ll do that once a week? A. I’m on the road two or three days a week normally. Q. What else do you do, besides store visits, to stay in touch with people throughout the company? A. Every month I do a webcast for 55,000 people, and it’s a great tool, great communication vehicle. People feel like they know me in this gigantic company of 170,000 people. And I walk through stores and they know me, you know, even if I haven’t been in the store in five years in Tulsa, Okla., or wherever, and they know me because of these webcasts and because of other communications that we do, like TV videos that we blast out to them. And so, I think it’s very important just to get out there. And when I do these webcasts, I say: “Look, it’s only 30 minutes. I’m busy, you’re busy. I’ll find 30 minutes every single month to talk to you guys. But here’s my plan, I’ll speak for 15 minutes about current events, what’s the most important things that are happening that you need to know about, and then I’m going to take your questions for the next 15. And you just e-mail me your questions, and I’ll give you an instant response.” And I always get more than I have time to answer. Q. What things, as a manager, do you want to do more, or less? A. As much time as I spend in the stores — and I probably spend more time than most C.E.O.’s in the stores — I want to spend more time in the stores because I never come back saying: “Boy, that wasn’t a good use of my time. I need to spend more time in my office.” Q. Anything more specific in the “less” department? A. I read so much data. There’s so much information that comes my way. And there’s got to be a way for me to delegate more. I think I delegate fairly well, but I think there’s even more that I can delegate, and I need to figure out what pieces of my daily activities I can do that with, so I can push it to other parts of the company that can make those decisions, and I don’t have to look over their shoulder. Q. How do you handle time-management challenges? A. I think you just have to work harder. My father worked two jobs. He assembled speakers during the day and then he sold real estate at night and on weekends. And then he eventually, when he was in his mid-50s, became a full-time real estate salesman. But he always said, when I was first starting out in work, that “if the guy next to you works 40 hours a week and you work 60 hours a week, then after 10 years he’s got 10 years of experience and you’ve got 15.” And I thought that was pretty straightforward. That works with me because I think I use my time productively. I think you just learn more if you put more into your job. Q. How do you run meetings? A. First of all, and people know this about me, the meeting’s at 8. You’re not here at 8:01, you’re here at 8, because the meeting’s going to start at 8. And I’ve had to tell a couple of people that now and then: “You have a tendency to be an 8:02 person or an 8:03 person, and it’s not good by me. So, from now on, I would like you to be here at 7:55. Everybody else will be here at 8, but you need to be sitting in your chair five minutes before that just because you haven’t demonstrated to me that you can do that.” And it’s just amazing that people, they don’t even get it. And they’re not, these are not bad people. These are just busy people that can’t get off the last phone call or can’t finish the last e-mail to get there, discipline themselves to be there on time. But I will tell you this: Eevery time that I have told a person this, it’s solved. Because when I look ’em in the eye and tell ’em, “You got an issue,” you know, they don’t even realize it until you just hit ’em over the head with a frying pan and say: “You got an issue. You’ve got a tardiness issue, and it doesn’t work with me because you’re wasting my time and the time of those around us who are here on time. Be on time.” And so I think that’s just one thing. You do that once, it’s over. They are there from that point forward, and they’re on time. The second thing is, I like to end on time. I like to have an agenda that we think through, and we say, “This meeting’s gonna go for two hours,” that we really are finished in two hours and that we force ourselves to carve through the agenda. Q. In the speeches that you give to schools, do you have favorite passage? A. When I was a trainee at Bullock’s, and then I was moved into my first assistant buying job, the guy I was working for, you know, I didn’t love him, frankly, and he had me doing what I thought were stupid jobs. I was working hard, but I was literally hand-writing transfers of furniture from one store to another store, and I wondered, “Is this a really good use of my time, or is there something else I could do?” I happened to get called up by the guy who recruited me off of campus, who I just had total admiration for, a guy named Gene Ross. And I told him, “Well, you know, it’s not really going that great, and I was wondering, you know, if I could go move in another department, I think I could do more.” And he just nodded his head and looked at me, and he pointed in his office over his shoulder to a poster. It had a little tree in a pot, and it said, “Bloom where you’re planted.” And I thought, “O.K., I get it.” And he said: “You’re not going to do this forever. There’s a finite amount of time you’re going to be doing this. Do this really, really well. And if you do this really, really well, everybody will see that, and they’ll move you onto the next thing. And you do that well, and then you’ll move.” And that was fantastic advice for me. Q. Anything you would like business schools to teach more? Less? A. In our business, there’s not enough emphasis on math. Coming out of college, we really like to have kids who like math, study math and get it. And so I’d like to make sure that there is an emphasis on math. I think there is a strong emphasis on marketing already, and we want that and we need that. But to me, the math piece is weak in most business school educations, and I’d like to have more emphasis on that. Q. But somebody might say, “That’s what calculators are for.” A. And that’s exactly the problem. Because when, at least when I was in school, we didn’t have the computer technology that we have today to do a lot of the work for us. And so I think there’s logic that has to go into this. And I don’t think you should actually have to have a calculator for every decision that you make that has numbers attached to it. Some of that should just come to you quickly, and you should be able to quickly move to your instincts about that being a good or not good decision. And I think that just knowing how to manage people for the situation and individually, managing them differently — what I would call situational management — is really important. You really have to have some instincts there to adjust to get the most out of people and the most out of different situations. I don’t know how you teach that; I just want to make sure that it’s known that it has to be different, and you have to make adjustments. Q. Any job-seeking advice for college grads? A. No. 1, don’t be so specific about what you want in this environment. Don’t be so choosy. You should get your résumé out there to a fairly broad number of companies and businesses to give yourself a chance. No. 2, use every single contact you can come up with. Use your friend’s father’s uncle who knows somebody who’s an assistant to the college recruiter. Use whatever contact you have to try to get your résumé read. That’s the most important thing — just to get it in front of people. Because we’re all flooded with, of course, thousands and thousands of résumés in a company of our size, and getting your résumé read is not an automatic. And so do what you can do to get it in front of the people who matter who will read it. It’s not the C.E.O. typically, by the way; it’s the H.R. person or the head of recruiting or head of training or whatever. Third, don’t stop there. Don’t just do it online, because it’s easy to do it online. Do it online and then put it in an envelope and send it to the top company that you’re interested in pursuing. And then follow up with a phone call, and talk to the assistant and say: “I just want to make sure that my résumé’s getting read. I’m very interested in your company, and it’s really important to me. And I just want to know — can you give me advice? — is there anything that I can do to get my résumé in front of your boss?” Whatever you have to say, just to show the most important thing — that you’re hungry. And to convince them, maybe you use a little of your acting skills. And I’ll probably relate it to college dating — you know, use a little, “I’m really interested in you” — to say: “This is the company I want to work for. Yours is the company that I want to work for.” And then once you get, hopefully, more than one opportunity, you’re back in charge to say, “Where do I want to go and where do I want to work.”

Lundgren Terry J
Executives and Management
Shopping and Retail


Australia’s Plan for Migrants Draws Warning

Abstract: Australia ’s plan to reopen detention centers on remote Pacific islands for asylum seekers and migrants who arrive by sea could violate their human rights and harm their mental health, the United Nations warned on Friday. Both the United Nations’ refugee agency and human rights office said they were studying the plan, announced Monday, to reopen immigrant detention camps in Nauru and Papua New Guinea. The plan was announced after a report said 964 asylum seekers had died since 2001 while making the dangerous journey. “While applauding the goal to protect the lives of the migrants and asylum seekers who seek entry to Australia, we are concerned that a reopening of offshore detention centers could result in violations of human rights,” said a United Nations human rights spokesman, Xabier Celaya. Australia receives a small number of the world’s asylum seekers each year.

Human Rights and Human Rights Violations


With Rules in Flux, It’s a Tough Time for Tax Strategies

Abstract: WASHINGTON FACING enormous budget deficits, high unemployment and a weak economy — not to mention midterm elections and the imminent expiration of major tax cuts — the Obama administration and Congress have difficult choices ahead. For taxpayers, unfortunately, financial planners say that there are myriad issues to ponder but relatively few strategies that can be undertaken with confidence, at least until the legislative process takes shape. A big immediate hang-up is the unresolved status of the estate tax , which Congress allowed to lapse at the end of 2009 but which is considered likely to be restored, on as-yet-undetermined terms. “I don’t think there’s anything more significant than the estate tax,” said Catharine V. Fairley, a tax planner and partner at Draper & McGinley in Frederick, Md., citing its wide implications for wills, gifts and trusts. “No one saw this coming — that they let the estate tax sunset.” Another unknown is what will happen to the large tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, enacted under President George W. Bush. The cuts produced current income-tax rates of 10 to 35 percent that are due to expire at the end of this year. While it seems a good bet that they will not be extended permanently, the Obama administration proposes to keep them in place, at least temporarily, for all but higher-income taxpayers. Individuals earning more than $200,000 — $250,000 for married couples — would revert to top-bracket rates of 36 and 39.6 percent, from today’s 33 and 35 percent. They would pay 20 percent on capital gains and dividends, instead of 15 percent. But the legislative outcome is highly uncertain. How much will Congress want to raise taxes, even on the rich, when economic recovery is so fragile and unemployment still near double digits? At the same time, the parlous state of the nation’s finances makes it likely that a variety of taxes must rise before very long. To recommend ways to cut budget deficits, the president has pledged to appoint a bipartisan panel to make recommendations, presumably after the midterm elections. “You’ve got to believe that future tax rates are going to be significantly higher than current maximum marginal rates — and that you’re going to be subject to them,” said Bruce J. Berno, president of Berno Financial Management, a financial planner in Cincinnati. And David A. Stockman, a former head of the Office of Management and Budget for President Ronald Reagan, predicted recently that “we’re going to be in the tax-raising business for the next decade.” The administration has already proposed a $90 billion “financial responsibility fee” — which some would call a tax — on banks, and reducing the value of itemized deductions and personal exemptions for the wealthy. Other possibilities that might be considered, but are rarely discussed openly, include full or means-tested taxation of Social Security benefits and applying the Medicare payroll tax to investment income. WITH the demise of the estate tax on Dec. 31, 2009, planning has become “a nightmare,” Ms. Fairley said. “It’s just limbo,” she added, until the government decides what to do about restoring the tax, which Democrats have said they support and which directly affects the existing gift tax and the way the capital gains tax is levied. “You have to wait and see” what happens, said Robert J. DiQuollo, president of Brinton Eaton Wealth Advisors in Madison, N.J. He noted the possibility of a drawn-out constitutional challenge if the estate tax were to be brought back retroactively to, say, Jan. 1. While those who sought abolition of the estate tax say it is unlikely that its repeal will be permanent, supporters of the tax don’t imagine that the exemption amount and rate will revert to the levels of 2001 — $1 million and 55 percent — when a convoluted phase-out was enacted. “Politically, that’s not feasible,” said Chuck Marr, director of federal tax policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities . He supports the targets advocated by the Obama administration — a return to the 2009 regime, which would mean a $3.5 million exemption ($7 million for couples) and a 45 percent rate for larger estates. “I wouldn’t make any drastic moves” in anticipation of what might happen,” Mr. DiQuollo warned. He did suggest, though, that in coming months investors might want to “harvest” capital gains before the rate on them rises, perhaps even selling those qualifying for long-term treatment and buying them right back. The so-called wash sale rule applies only to losses. Analysts also offered the usual “accelerate income, defer deductions” advice in situations of likely rate increases. Then there are gift taxes. The weak job market and diminished assets might make some people less inclined to make gifts to certain relatives and noncharities this year. But the 2010 gift tax rate, after a $1 million lifetime cap, is 35 percent, compared with 45 percent last year and a probable 55 percent in 2011. “This is the year to do it,” Mr. DiQuollo said. Ms. Fairley concurred in this sit-tight strategy, citing the uncertainty. “How do you know, when you update your will, whether to put in a bypass trust?” she asked. This means not only risking a wrong decision but “you’ve just unwound someone’s estate plan that they’ve paid a thousand dollars for.” And remember that some states have their own estate taxes with exemption amounts that are more limited than those of the expired federal version. Closely tied to the estate tax is a higher levy on capital gains, which was devised in 2001 to replace revenue that would be lost from estate taxes. Traditionally, the value of securities and other assets is stepped up at death, in effect wiping out any tax liability on profits. The heir then starts with a clean slate. Beginning this year, though, under what is called carryover basis, or modified step-up, the heir is subject to a 15 percent tax, using the deceased’s original cost or the asset’s price at the date of death, whichever is lower, when he or she sells it. Assuming that the provision stands, the effect is mitigated by exemptions of $3 million for spouses and $1.3 million for children and other inheritors. But it will surely mean more record-keeping — and it has already prompted some consternation among executors. Much more certain, however, is that the suspension of required minimum distributions from I.R.A. ’s for 2009 will not be repeated. CONGRESS is likely to apply yet another one-year patch to the alternative minimum tax , to prevent legions of additional middle-class households from becoming ensnared by it. The Obama budget proposes indexing that tax to inflation, a move that could make the annual patches far less urgent. Late last year, the House passed a bill extending for one year a grab bag of some 50 tax provisions that were to expire at the end of 2010. The Senate, however, didn’t take action. The House bill included research-and-development credits for corporations, as well as provisions that would crack down on the use of certain foreign bank accounts to evade taxes and would levy “carried interest” as ordinary income rather than capital gains. Carried interest is profit earned by managers of private equity funds acting as general partners in the buying and selling of companies. Amid the uncertainty, Ms. Fairley and others contend that some tax prospects, like raising the 15 percent rate for stock dividends, justify at least modest portfolio adjustments for investors. “I’d be very surprised if they didn’t do that,” she said. As a result, she added, investors “are looking again to the growth side,” favoring stocks of companies that reinvest in the business instead of paying profits out as dividends. But such shifting should probably be kept to a minimum, Mr. Berno says, because one’s mix of stocks, bonds and other assets is the most crucial investment decision. He says that for a tax-rate difference of perhaps 10 percentage points, investors “really shouldn’t be changing their allocation.”

Finances
Income
Taxation
Law and Legislation
Inheritance and Estate Taxes
Federal Taxes (US)


A Life Insurer Projects Calm During the Storm

Abstract: WITH the credit and housing markets in turmoil, insurance was, until recently, an overlooked piece of the financial picture. That changed when the government shored up the American International Group , the nation’s largest insurance company, with an $85 billion emergency loan two weeks ago. Edward J. Zore runs Northwestern Mutual, the largest direct provider of individual life insurance in the country with 3.3 million policy owners and more than $1 trillion of insurance in force. Mr. Zore recently discussed the changes that might be afoot in the industry, his company’s traditional approach to business and why he resists becoming a publicly owned company. Q. With the announcement of the federal bailout of A.I.G., how is the insurance industry holding up? A. The insurance industry is holding up very, very well. Our company had less than one-half of 1 percent of assets exposed to subprime markets at year-end. As the hedge funds were liquidating their subprime mortgages and the banks were trying to raise capital, the industry was in a positive cash flow position and was there to provide support to the market back in March. Q. Has there has been any fallout for your company or any of your competitors? A. There has been no fallout for our company. I think we look better in the marketplace when people are looking at options in the life insurance industry either as a place of employment or to place their money to buy a product. I don’t think we will have any negative reverberations due directly to A.I.G. A.I.G. has brought the industry to the attention of the federal government and the regulators. The industry has been lobbying for a federal regulator. Right now, we’re regulated by 50 states. I think what will happen with the A.I.G. takeover by the government is that it will force them to focus on the industry, realize we’re part of the financial fabric and need a voice in Washington. We will be part of a new regulatory regime. Q. A.I.G. is going to put some of its properties up for sale. Are you going to buy something? A. We’re always interested in looking for bargains, but I do not believe A.I.G. has a business unit that would fit with Northwestern Mutual. We’re not going to be in the mix. Q. As the credit markets weakened and interest rates fell, to what extent have you seen renewed interest in whole life policies as forced savings? A. Whole life insurance sales are up about 5 percent for the first eight months of the year. Our current dividend rate on unborrowed cash values is 7.5 percent, which looks pretty good in today’s environment. Q. Have A.I.G.’s troubles reordered your priorities? Do you have a more immediate concern for your company and the industry than you did a couple of weeks ago? A. No. The A.I.G. issue is part of a bigger systemic problem that the financial industry and the economy face. It has to do with the deleveraging that has started to occur and will be occurring for some time. As a financial institution, we are more cautious because the risks are higher out there. Q. As the population ages, some seniors are selling life insurance policies to raise cash. The Life Insurance Settlement Association estimates that $12 billion to $15 billion in death benefits changed hands in 2007. Companies like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are reported to have invested in these products. Why all the attention now? And what’s your take on where this is headed? A. Life settlement transactions involve selling existing life policies to unrelated parties for more than their cash value or, if they have no cash value, for some value — usually policies with face amounts over $250,000 owned by people who are at least 65 years old or have life expectancies that range from 2 to 12 or 15 years. It’s a market that is growing. It’s bad business if somebody owns a policy on your life who has an interest in your death and gets a financial reward if you die. Because of demographics, the settlement market is a market that’s here. I think it should be regulated so that life insurance isn’t used by speculators. Q. For a century you’ve had a Policyowners’ Examining Committee and you give its members free rein every year to examine your operations and write a report. How do you choose the committee? What insights do policyholders provide that consultants might not or you might not do for yourself? A. We find these people through references from our field representatives and we find them on our own. They might be chief executives of organizations, lawyers, consultants or business owners. We bring them in for a week and give them free rein to learn more about the company, make some assessments of what we do and give us some ideas. When they are here they are committing probably 15 hours a day to do the job. We pay them $17,500 plus expenses for seven days. We get great consulting at a reasonably good price and we end up getting professionals in different parts of the country that appreciate the company even more. Q. You’ve resisted moving from a mutual company collectively owned by policy owners to a stock company owned by shareholders. Why has this been important to you? A. We’re a triple-A-rated company. I don’t have to worry about meeting the ideals of a Wall Street analyst or some hedge fund manager who has a 60-day time horizon. I don’t have to worry about short-sellers. Our investment portfolio is very well balanced, very well diversified. It’s a portfolio I could not have as a stock company. The earnings effect of what we have would be less predictable than what would be required by stockholders. So we couldn’t do what we do. We have no intention to become a stock company.

Insurance
American International Group
Northwestern Mutual
Zore Edward J.
Subprime Mortgage Crisis


Senior Executive Is Leaving Cisco Systems

Abstract: Cisco Systems ’ chief development officer, Charles H. Giancarlo, widely seen as a top candidate for chief executive, announced on Thursday that he was quitting the company, leaving the race for leadership wide open. Mr. Giancarlo, 50, said he would leave at the end of the month and start working in January at the private equity firm Silver Lake as a managing director. “It’s been a very difficult decision for me to leave Cisco,” Mr. Giancarlo told reporters in a conference call, reflecting on 14 years at the company, which is now the top maker of routers and other network equipment. Giancarlo, who goes by Charlie, said he made the decision with his next 10 years in mind. Mike Volpi, who was also seen as a potential successor to the chief executive John T. Chambers , quit earlier this year to join the Internet video service Joost. His departure was seen as clearing the way for Mr. Giancarlo to take on the top job. Mr. Chambers said the company had plenty of talent left to ensure a smooth transition. The company also announced a management reorganization and said it would not replace the chief development officer’s position. Mr. Giancarlo oversaw technology development for the company, including routing and switching, as well as digital video and other emerging technologies. Earlier in his career, he led acquisitions and helped organize alliances with companies like I.B.M. and Microsoft. Mr. Chambers said he would likely decide who would be the next chief executive in three to five years. He denied the company was losing leadership talent, saying the post would “most likely be filled from someone within.”

Cisco Systems Inc
Appointments and Executive Changes
Executives and Management
Chambers John T


Dyson’s Nine Steals Help UConn Upend St. John’s

Abstract: Jerome Dyson tied a team record with nine steals and A. J. Price scored a career-high 25 points as Connecticut beat St. John’s, 81-65, on Tuesday in the Huskies’ Big East home opener. Jeff Adrien had 20 points and 14 rebounds, and Stanley Robinson added 15 points and 8 rebounds for Connecticut (11-3, 2-1 Big East). Dyson finished with 12 points. Price made all four of his 3-point shots, and had seven assists and four rebounds. The freshman Justin Burrell led St. John’s (7-7, 1-2) with 17 points. Connecticut Coach Jim Calhoun left the bench in the second half and did not return. Team officials said Calhoun, who had a recent death in his extended family, was fighting stress and exhaustion. KANSAS 90, LOYOLA (MD.) 60 Sherron Collins scored 18 points and host Kansas finished the first half on a 15-2 run after an outburst by Coach Bill Self. When Gerald Brown made a 3-pointer to cut Kansas’ lead to 26-22 with about five minutes left in the half, Self called a timeout and yelled at his players. No. 3 Kansas (15-0) responded with a 29-5 run to take a 55-26 lead early in the second half. GEORGETOWN 70, DEPAUL 60 Roy Hibbert had 17 points and 11 rebounds and No. 7 Georgetown routed host DePaul. MICHIGAN ST. 78, PURDUE 75 The reserve Kalin Lucas scored 16 points and Travis Walton had his only 4 points in the final 22 seconds to help No. 6 Michigan State survive a scare against visiting Purdue. AROUND THE NATION D. J. White scored 21 points and had 22 rebounds as No. 10 Indiana won its ninth straight, 78-64 over host Michigan. ... Dan Fitzgerald hit a 3-pointer in the final seconds as No. 15 Marquette beat host Seton Hall, 61-56. ... Travis Pinick scored 5 points in a row late in the second half as visiting Yale beat Longwood, 78-73. ... Pat Magnarelli’s 21 points led Harvard past visiting Colgate, 77-57. ... Pat Kiscaden scored 13 points and Josh Johnson added 13 rebounds as host Presbyterian (2-19) beat Army, 52-35. Women RUTGERS 65, MARQUETTE 61 Essence Carson scored 17 points and Epiphanny Prince added 5 of her 17 points on free throws down the stretch to lead No. 5 Rutgers past host Marquette for its seventh straight victory.

St John's University
Basketball
College Athletics


Mortgage Modification Plan Was Ineffective, Panel Says

Abstract: The Treasury Department ’s loan modification program, which has been criticized as ineffective almost since its inception, came in for another battering in a Congressional report released Tuesday. Only about 750,000 households will be helped by the Home Affordable Modification Program, which pays banks to modify loans under Treasury guidelines. That is far fewer than the three million or four million modifications promised in early 2009 by the Obama administration, the Congressional Oversight Panel said. The panel’s report calls the program a failure, although former Senator Ted Kaufman, a Democrat from Delaware who was chairman of the panel, declined to go that far in a conference call with reporters. “The program has turned out to be a lot smaller and had a lot less impact on the housing market than we thought,” Mr. Kaufman said. One reason: the loan servicers, who act as middlemen between the distressed homeowners and the investors who own the mortgage, often find it more profitable to foreclose than modify. The modification program provides incentives for servicers to participate in the program but no penalties for their failure to do so. The oversight report estimated that the modification program would spend only about $4 billion of the $30 billion approved for it. With the deadline for reallocating the money having passed, “an untold number of borrowers may go without help,” the panel said. Tim Massad, acting assistant secretary for financial stability, said at his own press briefing that the criticism was “somewhat unfair.” Aside from the borrowers directly helped by the modification program, Mr. Massad said, many others have been helped indirectly, as servicers used the government standards in proprietary modifications. The program “is having a real impact on the ground, even though I certainly acknowledge there are a lot of challenges and a lot of difficulties,” he said. One of the challenges is a persistently weak housing market. Many households that have won permanent modifications are still heavily in debt, which leaves them vulnerable to redefaulting. If the redefault level rises significantly, Mr. Kaufman said, “that’s a lot of taxpayer money down the drain with no effect.” Other members of the oversight panel include Damon Silvers, director of policy and special counsel to the A.F.L.-C.I.O., and Richard H. Neiman, New York superintendent of banks.

Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan


Goldman Told to Pay Some Bayou Fund Losses

Abstract: Goldman Sachs has been ordered to pay $20.58 million to creditors of a failed hedge fund to settle claims that the bank helped the fund perpetrate a Ponzi scheme . The award represents the first time that a bank has been held accountable for a Ponzi scheme because of its role as a middleman. Goldman cleared trades and lent money to the Bayou Group, a Connecticut hedge fund that collapsed in 2005, when state and federal investigators said the firm defrauded investors of hundreds of millions of dollars. The Bayou fraud resurfaced in 2008 when its founder, Samuel Israel III, faked his own suicide after being sentenced to 20 years in prison for fraud. He later turned himself in and is now serving 22 years. Bayou’s creditors filed a complaint against Goldman two years ago, saying the bank either knew or should have known of Bayou’s fraud. Goldman, the complaint said, had access to Bayou’s trading records, which showed losses, as well as its marketing materials, which showed profits. The award, in a decision by an arbitration panel of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority issued on Thursday, may put other banks on notice to better scrutinize their hedge fund clients’ activities. “This case shows that you can’t just stick your head in the sand when a fraud is going on in your shop,” said Ross B. Intelisano, a lawyer at Rich & Intelisano, who brought the arbitration against Goldman. The bank “argued that you could, and the panel disagreed.” A Goldman spokesman pointed to the bank’s filing in the case, which questioned whether the creditors could use bankruptcy laws to hold Goldman accountable for the $20.58 million of investor money that Bayou transferred among its Goldman accounts. The money was never actually conveyed to Goldman, the bank said, so it should not be considered a fraudulent transfer. The arbitration panel does not determine whether wrongdoing occurred, but merely decides on compensation. “We are disappointed with the award and are considering our options,” said Ed Canaday, a spokesman for Goldman. Goldman has limited grounds for vacating an arbitration award, however. The award to Bayou’s creditors is yet another legal woe for Goldman. The bank is also the target of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation of its mortgage operations before and during the financial crisis, and Goldman is fighting an S.E.C. complaint and private lawsuits about mortgage securities it created. Goldman has defended its actions in the mortgage market and said the parties that purchased its mortgage deals should have known what they were dealing with. Although the Bayou case dates long before the financial crisis and has nothing to do with mortgage bonds, Goldman made similar claims in its reply. The bank, for instance, said the creditors of Bayou were “highly sophisticated investors.” Goldman also said it had no duty to monitor the “honesty and the finances” of its account holders. Goldman served as Bayou’s main prime broker from 1999 to 2005, meaning that the bank had a wide view of the hedge fund’s activities, according to the creditors’ complaint. In that role, Goldman was the custodian of Bayou’s assets and a lender to the fund. Goldman also prepared Bayou’s account statements, the creditors said. The award represents the amount of money that was put into the Bayou funds held at Goldman between March 2003 and June 2005. It accounts for just over 8 percent of the $250 million in losses that Bayou investors incurred in the fraud. If this award is included in the total recovered by Bayou investors, it will rise to more than half of their losses. Bayou began losing money long before it went bust, for more than $88 million in losses during its association with Goldman. At the same time, Bayou told prospective investors that it had positive returns. During those years, Bayou marketed its relationship with Goldman as a mark of legitimacy, the creditors said. Goldman was aware that Bayou was losing money, the creditors said. In 2004, Goldman’s risk managers created a list of the top 10 money losers among its clients. The No. 1 loser was a Bayou fund, and two other Bayou funds were ranker lower. The list, the complaint said, was circulated among Goldman executives. A month after that list was circulated, Goldman requested and received a copy of Bayou’s marketing materials, which falsely claimed positive returns. Goldman also was warned about Bayou by an outside firm in 2002, the complaint said. Goldman’s employees, the complaint said, “have repeatedly claimed that they had no obligation to concern themselves with what had occurred at the Bayou Hedge Fund at anytime.”

Hedge Funds
Ponzi Schemes
Bayou Group
Goldman Sachs Group


After Sexual Abuse Case, a Hasidic Accuser Is Shunned, Then Indicted

Abstract: Sam Kellner is a man twice shunned and living in a deepening shadow. Five years ago, this gray-bearded and excitable man with a black velvet yarmulke spoke out about the sexual abuse of his 16-year-old son by a prominent Hasidic cantor. As Mr. Kellner helped investigators with the Brooklyn district attorney’s office search for other young Orthodox victims of this man, the Orthodox establishment grew ever angrier at him. The rabbi at his Hasidic synagogue in Borough Park, Brooklyn, denounced Mr. Kellner as a traitor and forbade parishioners to talk with him on the street. Yeshivas barred his sons. His businesses dried up — he pawned his silverware to meet his bills. And he still fears that he will never find a marriage match for his son. “I felt murdered and abandoned,” Mr. Kellner said. “I’m ruined.” This, however, was a prologue to a worse situation. In April 2011, after the district attorney’s office gained a conviction against that cantor, Baruch Lebovits, the prosecutors turned around and obtained an indictment of Mr. Kellner. They said, based on a secret tape and the grand jury testimony of a prominent Satmar supporter of Mr. Lebovits, that he had tried to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars from Mr. Lebovits. District Attorney Charles J. Hynes has shown great deference to the politically powerful Hasidic community over the years, and it has rewarded him with large margins on election days. Even his heralded crackdown on Hasidic sexual abuse was a velvet glove wrapped around a velvet fist, as he took the unusual step of refusing to publicize the names of defendants — even the convicted. Mr. Hynes extended no such courtesy to Mr. Kellner. “We allege that Kellner sent emissaries to Lebovits’s family telling them that he controlled the witnesses against Baruch Lebovits,” the district attorney said at a 2011 news conference, “and that in return for $400,000, he would ensure that the witnesses would not testify.” This indictment stunned the small, embattled community of Hasidic whistle-blowers. Mr. Kellner, to their view, took enormous risks in a righteous fight. That he could sit in the dock next month is a message not lost on anyone. “If he’s convicted, no one will ever come forward again,” said Rabbi Cheskel Gold, a member of a rabbinical court in Monsey, N.Y., that gave Mr. Kellner religious permission to investigate Mr. Lebovits. “No one.” Mr. Kellner posted $25,000 bail. And to pile legal insult atop injury, Mr. Lebovits’s lawyers used his indictment and other technicalities to persuade a state appeals court to overturn his conviction. Even today, Alan M. Dershowitz, one of Mr. Lebovits’s lawyers, portrays Mr. Kellner and other prominent whistle-blowers as extortionists. “We see Kellner as a leader of a major extortion ring,” he said in an interview. “He is not a do-gooder.” I talked with Brooklyn prosecutors about the case against Mr. Kellner. By way of throat-clearing, the prosecutor Nicholas J. Batsidis demanded to know if I’d read the indictment. As it was five pages long and contained little detail, I allowed that I had managed to stumble through. Image Sam Kellner, 50, spoke out about the sexual abuse of his son, 16, and others in the Hasidic community. Now he is charged with trying to extort the abusers. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times He pointed to the key evidence, a secretly taped, rambling and excited conversation between Mr. Kellner and Meyer Lebovits, the cantor’s son. Mr. Kellner is also accused of paying witnesses to testify against Mr. Lebovits. “When you have an audiotape where Kellner is warning him that he’s going to bring other victims, it speaks for itself,” Mr. Batsidis said. That explanation sounds better than the tape itself. The transcript reveals a conversation soaked in ambiguity, and rendered in overwrought language. It depicts Mr. Kellner as a tortured father trying to find justice. The younger Mr. Lebovits at times seems to accept that his father committed some acts of abuse. Hella Winston of The Jewish Week has profitably plowed the fields of this case, exposing its many weaknesses . Ms. Winston notes that, far from persuading fake witnesses to testify, Mr. Kellner worked closely with a rabbinical court in Monsey, and with a Brooklyn assemblyman, each of whom helped him find alleged victims of Mr. Lebovits. Two weeks ago, I talked with the three-member rabbinical court — known as a Beit Din — in Monsey. These rabbis rarely grant interviews, but spoke now of their moral obligation. Their community for too long has resisted coming to grips with sexual abuse. They view Mr. Kellner as a brave pioneer. He did not seek out witnesses at random; rather their court, with the help of local leaders in Williamsburg, gave him the name of a victim. “Lebovits is known to have a long history” of sexual abuse, Rabbi Chaim Flohr said. But Mr. Lebovits has powerful supporters, and people are fearful, he added. Mr. Lebovits’s lawyers maintain that he is innocent of all charges. The rabbis frowned at talk of extortion. Mr. Kellner spoke to them of being offered bribes, and of his determination not to let abusers buy him off. “We are not aware of Mr. Kellner ever asking for money,” Rabbi Flohr said. Mr. Kellner takes pain to insist that he is no saint. He wanted only justice for his son. Now, though, he hears from more and more Hasidic families, with their own stories of more abuse, and asking for his help. If I win my case, he asked, what should I do? “I’m not clear how this happened,” he said, his voice keening. “I got into this to avenge my son. Do I have the strength to go on?”

Baruch Lebovits
Charles Hynes
Rape
Extortion and Blackmail
Judaism
Child Abuse


California: Migrants Stage Another Border Protest

Abstract: In a protest against the Obama administration’s deportations policy, about 30 foreigners without legal visas who have families in the United States went to the Mexican border near San Diego to ask the authorities to allow them into the United States. The migrants had previously been formally deported or left to avoid deportation, and they asked American border officials to admit them on humanitarian grounds to join close relatives here. It was the third protest since July in which migrants have tried to challenge the administration by attempting to enter without documents through a border station.

Deportation
San Diego
Immigration
Mexico


Harvard’s Victory Sets Up Ivy League Showdown Against Penn

Abstract: Harvard Coach Tim Murphy says he is still looking forward to the day when he can pour himself a cup of coffee, saunter into the Crimson’s locker room and tell his team it played a perfect game. Saturday was not exactly that day, but Harvard seems to be getting closer. Harvard scored three touchdowns in the first quarter and cruised to a 34-14 victory over host Columbia. Later Saturday, Penn routed Princeton, 42-7, setting up a showdown next Saturday in Boston between the Crimson and the Quakers; both teams are 5-0 in the Ivy League and 6-2 over all. “This next game is the biggest of our lives,” said Harvard linebacker Jon Takamura, a senior from Honolulu. The annual game against Yale, which has become known as simply The Game, is usually the biggest of the season for the Crimson. This year’s Harvard-Yale game on Nov. 21 will be even more meaningful if the Crimson can muscle past Penn and its relentless, smothering defense. Harvard was efficient enough Saturday against Columbia (2-6, 1-4), which played without quarterback M. A. Olawale and running back Ray Rangel, who were injured. The Lions scored their touchdowns in the last seven minutes of the game. “The outcome of today’s game was very much a surprise to me,” Columbia Coach Norries Wilson said. Corey Cameron, a senior linebacker for the Lions, had a somber perspective. “We couldn’t stop them when we needed to,” he said. “They wanted it more.” This season, the Crimson has relied on an experienced offensive line, anchored by the 6-foot-5, 295-pound left tackle James Williams, a senior who has already made the all-Ivy League first team twice. The Crimson pounded out 151 yards rushing against Columbia, and the junior quarterback Collier Winters completed 19 of 30 passes for 219 yards and a touchdown. His scoring pass, in the first quarter, came right after Lions punter Michael Williamson fumbled a snap at the Columbia 12. “My job is just to throw to the open guy,” Winters said. His pass to the freshman tight end Kyle Juszczyk gave Harvard a 14-0 lead only 5 minutes 24 seconds into the game. An interception by Ryan Barnes, the Crimson’s strong safety, led to a 6-yard touchdown run by Gino Gordon with 2:02 left in the quarter. Gordon, a junior tailback, ran for only 63 yards a week after becoming the first Harvard player to have 100 yards rushing and 100 yards receiving, in a victory against Dartmouth. Gordon said his line deserved most of the credit for his two touchdowns Saturday. “Our touchdowns were just the happenstance of good execution than my skills,” Gordon said. Harvard, which has won or tied for the Ivy League championship in three of the last five years, appears to be the class of the league — at least until another team proves otherwise. Murphy, in his 16th year at Harvard, said he was pleased with this team’s toughness and resiliency. Because Ivy League teams do not participate in the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs, Murphy equated the Crimson’s last four games to the postseason. Harvard has beaten Dartmouth and Columbia, but two much tougher opponents await. “We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Murphy said.

Ivy League
Football
College Athletics
Harvard University
Columbia University
University of Pennsylvania
Princeton University


Man Fatally Shot by Officer in Brooklyn

Abstract: A man was fatally shot by a New York City police officer late Thursday night in Brooklyn, the police said. The police did not immediately provide details about what led to the shooting, but did say that three people were taken into custody and that a gun was recovered at the scene. An officer was treated for a minor injury, although the police would not say how he was hurt. The shooting took place shortly after 10 p.m. near West Ninth Street and Hamilton Avenue in Carroll Gardens, the police said.

Police Department (NYC)
Carroll Gardens (NYC)


Romney’s Mormonism in Convention Spotlight

Abstract: After years of largely resisting public discussion of his Mormon faith, Mitt Romney will embrace it on Thursday night when the Republican convention will stage a carefully chosen tableau of speakers who are expected to offer accounts of the candidate as a man of compassion, character and deep beliefs. For most of his political career, Mr. Romney has said that his life in the church has nothing to do with politics, and he has offered only clipped discussions of his religious views, privately worrying about the impact of his faith on his electability. But he has changed course because of an urgent problem: voters who find him distant and unlikable have become a greater threat to his political fortunes than those who may be biased against Mormonism. In his speech on the climactic night of the convention, Mr. Romney will testify about how faith has guided his life, according to Eric Fehrnstrom, a campaign strategist. Other speakers are expected to relate stories that could pack emotional wallops: how Mr. Romney helped church members whose children were sick or dying — crouching by a disabled infant’s crib to pray for her survival, helping a teenager with incurable cancer write his own will. When the young man, David, was dying, his mother, Pat Oparowski, said, “Mitt pulled out a yellow notebook, like lawyers use, and sat down with David and wrote down everything David wanted.” “Maybe some people who are very rich or on top of the world look down on us peons, but he doesn’t,” she added, sounding the precise notes that others — fellow Republicans, fellow Mormons — have been urging Mr. Romney to share. Whether or not to address his faith has been a source of disagreement inside the Romney campaign for months, with many family members (and other Mormons) arguing that Mr. Romney needed to disclose more about his life inside the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and political advisers, few of whom are Mormon, reluctant to take that risk. But in recent weeks, Mr. Romney has decided to speak more about religion, according to aides. He has mentioned God and Jesus several times in recent interviews, telling CNN during his trip to Jerusalem: “I believe in the mission of Jesus Christ. Believe he walked the very streets that we’re walking.” His advisers shifted from castigating reporters who asked about his faith to inviting them to church services, and in her Tuesday night speech in Tampa, Fla., Mr. Romney’s wife, Ann, used the word “Mormon” instead of the usual euphemisms like “church” or “faith.” In interviews, several among the sizable number of Mormon delegates in Tampa said they were excited by the shift. “We are happy to have attention brought to the church; we have nothing to hide,” said Denise Nielsen, 52, a mother of seven from Thousand Oaks, Calif., who serves as a regional chairwoman of Mr. Romney’s campaign. Mr. Romney’s friends, colleagues and old classmates — women and men, Republicans and even some Democrats — have remarked throughout the campaign that they do not recognize the aloof, seemingly callous man that has been depicted by the Obama campaign. To counter the argument that he is an indifferent elitist who hides his religious beliefs, the Romney campaign has invited Kenneth Hutchins, an old friend from church who is a retired police officer and is suffering from cancer, who will offer a Mormon prayer from the podium. Pam Finlayson, a church member who used to belong to Mr. Romney’s congregation in Belmont, Mass., is expected to tell Americans how he cared for her family after the birth of her daughter Kate, who was born prematurely, suffered from hydrocephalus and died two years ago at the age of 26. Mr. Romney hovered over her tiny body in the hospital after she was born, praying for her recovery, Mrs. Finlayson said. On a Thanksgiving morning when Kate was an infant, he made an impromptu appearance at the Finlayson home. “I realized you’d be running over to the hospital, so we made you Thanksgiving dinner,” Mr. Romney told her. Mrs. Finlayson suspected that Mr. Romney’s wife had cooked the turkey dinner — but no, Mrs. Romney told her later, Mr. Romney had come up with the idea and done it all himself. “I think every day of their life, there was an aspect of their life where service to others was involved,” Mrs. Finlayson said in an interview. But the Mormonism that Mr. Romney is expected to share on Thursday night will almost certainly be a carefully edited version, scrubbed of anything that might raise theological issues — especially among evangelical Christians . No one is likely to mention that as a church leader, Mr. Romney enforced policies like excommunication or limiting leadership positions for women. “What they will do, I expect, is simply present Mitt Romney as Mike Huckabee, a pastor who has used religion as a vehicle who served his community,” said Matthew Bowman, author of “The Mormon People,” speaking of the former Arkansas governor. Mr. Huckabee, speaking to convention delegates on Wednesday night, played down the issue of Mr. Romney’s faith. “I care far less as to where Mitt Romney takes his family to church than I do about where he takes this country,” he said. Rather than offering a distinct Mormon moment, Thursday’s appearances could seem like more of the volleys of testimonials and speeches from the Romney and Obama campaigns. In an interview in Tampa, Representative Jason Chaffetz, a Republican from Utah and a Mormon, expressed relief that his church had received less attention this year than it did in Mr. Romney’s 2008 primary fight. “I’m proud of my country so far,” he said. “I thought the religious question would be out in front more than it has been.”

Mormons (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints)


Cucumbers Recalled in Salmonella Outbreak

Abstract: A California distributor has begun recalling cucumbers imported from Mexico after they were linked to a salmonella outbreak that has killed one woman and sickened at least 285 others, health officials said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the cucumbers were most likely the cause of an outbreak of salmonella poona that began July 3 and has reached 27 states. The bacteria killed a 99-year-old San Diego woman and sent 53 people to the hospital, the federal agency said, and more than half of those infected have been younger than 18. The agency said multiple investigations had linked the outbreak to cucumbers distributed by Andrew & Williamson Fresh Produce. The company, based in San Diego, announced a recall on Friday that covers cucumbers grown in northern Mexico and sold under the company’s “Limited Edition” label from Aug. 1 to Thursday. Consumers were advised to return the cucumbers or to dispose of them. “The safety and welfare of consumers is the highest priority for our company,” Fred Williamson, the company president, said in a statement . “We are taking all precautions possible to prevent further consumption of this product and are working to learn if and how these cucumbers are involved in the ongoing outbreak.” The cucumbers were shipped to 22 states, 18 of which have reported infections: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas and Utah. Infections were also reported in Missouri, Nebraska, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming, though the products were not shipped to those states. Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi and New Jersey also received cucumber shipments, but health officials in those states have not reported infections. The San Diego woman was one of 19 cases reported in the county, and 51 reported statewide as of Thursday, according to the C.D.C. Arizona is among the hardest hit, with 66 cases reported in six counties, according to the state’s Department of Health Services. Of those, 75 percent have involved children 17 and younger, the agency director, Dr. Cara M. Christ, said in a blog post . People who are infected with salmonella usually experience diarrhea, fever and stomach cramps about 12 to 72 hours after they eat something contaminated with the bacteria, Dr. Christ said. Most people are sick for four to seven days and can get better without treatment.

Cucumber
Salmonella
California
Food Safety


TARP Cost Will Be Less Than Once Thought

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Even as voters rage and candidates put up ads against government bailouts, the reviled mother of them all — the $700 billion lifeline to banks, insurance and auto companies — will expire after Sunday at a fraction of that cost, and could conceivably earn taxpayers a profit. A final accounting of the government’s full range of interventions in the economy, including the bailouts of the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is years off and will most likely remain controversial and potentially costly. But the once-unthinkable possibility that the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program could end up costing far less, or even nothing, became more likely on Thursday with the news that the government had negotiated a plan with the American International Group to begin repaying taxpayers. The rescue of the troubled insurer included $70 billion from the bailout program that was enacted two years ago, at the height of the global financial crisis late in the Bush administration, initially to prop up big banks. At the White House on Thursday, the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, briefed President Obama about A.I.G. and about the broader outlook for the expiring rescue program, putting the projected losses at less than $50 billion, at most. Yet neither the White House nor Congressional Democrats are likely to boast much in the month remaining before midterm elections. For most voters, TARP remains a four-letter word. Brian A. Bethune, the chief financial economist in the United States for IHS/Global Insight, while critical of parts, called the program over all “a tremendous success. Now obviously, they can’t go out on the campaign trail and say that, because certainly, for a lot of voters, it’s just not going to resonate.” The “bank bailout” was the first big issue, before the Obama administration’s roughly $800 billion stimulus plan and its health insurance overhaul, to stoke the rise of the Tea Party movement . After supporting TARP, several Republicans have lost elections largely because of their votes. For many Americans, TARP is more than a vote; it is a symbol of big government at its worst, intervening in private markets with taxpayers’ billions to save Wall Street plutocrats while average Americans struggle through the recession those financiers spawned. Fewer than three in 10 Americans say they believe the program was necessary “to prevent the financial industry from failing and drastically hurting the U.S. economy,” according to a poll in July for Bloomberg News. “This is the best federal program of any real size to be despised by the public like this,” said Douglas J. Elliott, a former investment banker now associated with the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “It was probably the only effective method available to us to keep from having a financial meltdown much worse than we actually had. Had that happened, unemployment would be substantially higher than it is now, the deficit would have gone up even more than it has,” Mr. Elliott added. “But it really cuts against the grain for a public that is so angry at banks to think that something that so plainly helped the banks could also be good for the public.” After Sunday the Treasury can no longer commit money to new initiatives or recycle repayments to other purposes. The Treasury never tapped the full $700 billion. It committed $470 billion and has disbursed $387 billion, mostly to hundreds of banks and later to A.I.G., the car industry — Chrysler, General Motors, the G.M. financing company and suppliers — and to what is, so far, a failed effort to help homeowners avoid foreclosures. When Mr. Obama took office, the financial system remained so weak that his first budget indicated the Treasury might need another $750 billion for TARP. The administration soon dropped that idea as Mr. Geithner overhauled the rescue program and the banking system stabilized. Still, by mid-2009, the administration projected that TARP could lose $341 billion, a figure that reflected new commitments to A.I.G. and the auto industry. The Congressional Budget Office, which had a slightly higher loss estimate initially, in August reduced that to $66 billion. Now Treasury reckons that taxpayers will lose less than $50 billion at worst, but at best could break even or even make money. Its best-case assumptions, however, assume that A.I.G. and the auto companies will remain profitable and that Treasury will get a good price as it sells its corporate shares in coming years. “We’d have to be very lucky to have both A.I.G. and the auto companies pay us back in full,” Mr. Elliott said. Also, the best result for taxpayers could mean bad results for squeezed homeowners. Treasury has been ready to use up to $50 billion to help modify mortgages for people facing foreclosure, but its initiatives have been such a failure that little has been spent. Whatever the final losses from housing, auto companies, A.I.G. or smaller banks, those will be offset by taxpayers’ profits from the big banks that have been the focus of their ire since 2008. They have repaid their loans and Treasury has collected about $25 billion more from dividends and proceeds from the sale of warrants held as collateral, officials say. Many smaller banks hold on to their loans, however, reflecting their weakness and the desire of some others to keep the money given its advantageous terms. Scores are behind on dividend payments to the Treasury. By any measure, TARP’s final tally will be less than expected amid the crisis. But the program remains a big loser politically. On Wednesday, four days before its expiration, House Republicans nonetheless unsuccessfully forced a vote on legislation to end TARP. “We would be much better served if private institutions would either fail or be successful on their own,” said Representative Erik Paulsen of Minnesota, in an interview. Among those who voted for the program in 2008, several Republicans have lost nominating contests for re-election or for another office, and others are on the defensive in fall races. Senator Robert F. Bennett of Utah was “Bailout Bob” to Republicans who refused to re-nominate him for a fourth term. “For those who were screaming at me — and screaming was the operative word — ‘You’ve just saddled our children and grandchildren with $700 billion,’ I said, ‘No, I haven’t,” Mr. Bennett said in an interview. “My career is over,” he added. “But I do hope that we can get the word out that TARP, number one, did save the world from a financial meltdown and, number two, did so in a manner that, I believe, won’t cost the taxpayer anything. And even if it did not all get paid back, it was still the thing to do.”

Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (2008)


At Steinbrenner Field, Heisman Winner Is Star Attraction

Abstract: TAMPA, Fla. — The Yankees have had encounters with college football stars, including one who played at Florida State University. That was Deion Sanders, nicknamed Prime Time, who signed his minor league contract with a dollar sign for the S in his name, as General Manager Brian Cashman recalled. The Yankees also signed a quarterback from Stanford named John Elway and another quarterback, Drew Henson, from Michigan. Even the patriarch of the Chicago Bears, George Halas, played 12 games for the Yankees in 1919. On Tuesday, the Yankees crossed paths with another football star from Florida State. Jameis Winston, the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback, brought his celebrity buzz and virtually took over the Yankees’ camp, a reminder of how difficult it is for other sports in Florida to compete with the allure of college football, even at George M. Steinbrenner Field. Winston, who led the Seminoles to the national title over Auburn in January, is also an outfielder and the closer on the baseball team, the Yankees’ first spring training opponent. The stands were awash in garnet-colored shirts, and a clear majority of the 7,708 fans — at least one of whom wore a feathered headdress — supported the team from Tallahassee while doing their one-armed war chant. Winston entered the game in the fifth inning as a substitute left fielder and went 0 for 2 with a groundout and a strikeout as the Yankees won, 8-3. But Winston could do no wrong in the eyes of his fans. When he broke his wooden bat in his first plate appearance, they roared their approval with one of the biggest cheers of the day. That salute amused Cashman. “If you play in New York long enough,” he said, “that changes.” Playing in New York for the Yankees would be a dream come true for Winston. He attended Hueytown High School in Alabama, playing both football and baseball, and was drafted by the Texas Rangers in the 15th round of the 2012 amateur draft. He turned down the Rangers to attend Florida State, with the promise that he could play both sports. Last season he hit .235 with three triples and went 1-2 with a 3.00 earned run average in 17 appearances, before turning to football. In the fall he was the focus of accusations that he raped a woman nearly a year earlier, but charges were not filed. Image Jameis Winston, who won the Heisman Trophy and a national title for Florida State this past season, is also an outfielder and closer for Seminoles baseball team. Credit Chris O'Meara/Associated Press Winston has said he planned to return to Tallahassee to play football this season, and gave no indication that he is giving up on baseball, either. “I’ve had more success in football,” he said. “But baseball is a passion of mine and I want to play as long as I can.” He described himself as a devoted Yankees fan, with a special affinity for Derek Jeter, whom he met, along with Jorge Posada, outside the visitors’ clubhouse. That was especially meaningful for Winston, who played shortstop growing up and wore No. 2 in honor of Jeter. “Derek Jeter has been a huge influence on my life,” he said. Having gained immense fame, Winston said he can recognize the faces of fans who are overwhelmed when they are about to meet one of their idols. On Tuesday he wore that face. “I was kind of star struck,” he said. “But I just kept telling him it was an honor to meet him, and it was. Sometimes it feels like when I talk to little kids and they are speechless, and that’s how I was with Mr. Jeter.” In his second at-bat, Winston struck out looking, and he acknowledged that he needed to do some work on his hitting. Still, Winston has drawn more attention to the Florida State baseball team, which is 6-0 and ranked No. 6 by Baseball America. He has become a huge draw at most of the stadiums the Seminoles visit, especially in Florida, and at a recent F.S.U. baseball fan day he signed autographs for two and a half hours, an hour longer than scheduled. He may have assumed that he would not be the center of so much attention at the Yankees’ spring training field. But even with Jeter, C. C. Sabathia and Mark Teixeira in uniform, though they did not play, most people seemed to be there to see a quarterback play baseball. “I enjoyed the day,” Winston said. “I was shocked to be out here in front of these guys and be on the same field with them.” INSIDE PITCH The Yankees were one of several teams to watch Johan Santana, the former Mets and Twins pitcher, throw from the mound at Fort Myers High School. Santana, who is recovering from 2013 shoulder surgery, hopes to be able to pitch in games later this summer. ... Manager Joe Girardi said that Masahiro Tanaka, C. C. Sabathia and Hiroki Kuroda will all make their spring debuts in the same game Monday.

Yankees
College football
Florida State University
Jameis Winston
Baseball


From an ‘Undocumented’ Boyhood to a Doctorate

Abstract: As Dan-el Padilla Peralta toggled fluidly between worlds for much of his life — ancient and modern, poor and privileged, Dominican and American — there were times when he managed to forget he was a child without a country. He found refuge in New York’s libraries, the Greek and Latin texts speaking to him even before he could speak their language. He would copy entire orations, memorizing for inspiration. But always, the fear would return: He could be deported. His mother brought him to the United States from Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, when he was 4, and they overstayed their tourist visas. He has wrestled with the consequences ever since. “The drumming of papeles was the background music to my life,” Dr. Padilla said, intoning the Spanish term for legal documents. Now he hopes that by telling his life story, he will be able to further the discussion on immigration policy, which has become a contentious issue on the presidential campaign trail. In “ Undocumented: A Dominican Boy’s Odyssey From a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League ” (Penguin 2015), he recounts the extraordinary arc from poverty to the all-boys Collegiate School in Manhattan, to Princeton, then Oxford, where he earned a masters in philosophy, and Stanford, where he earned a doctorate in classics. At age 30, Dr. Padilla is at Columbia as a postdoctoral fellow in humanities, and next summer, he will return to Princeton as an assistant professor of classics. He has a work visa, but is not yet a citizen, a status he hopes will soon change because in March, Dr. Padilla married a woman from Sparta, N.J., whom he had dated for six years. He is still waiting for his green card application to be considered. Dr. Padilla said that his wife, Missy, a social worker, was teasing him recently that he still could not enjoy his success. To explain his pessimism, Dr. Padilla cited Homer’s Iliad, where two jars stood on the floor of Zeus’ palace, one containing bad things, and the other a mixture of good and bad. There was no vessel of all good things. Image Isaac Scott, 35, one of Dr. Padilla’s students at Columbia this summer, said, “He loves when we catch on to something.” Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times “I live, in part because of the conditioning of my childhood and adolescence, in this state of expectation that something really bad is about to come our way,” Dr. Padilla said. His mother, Maria Elena Peralta, came to New York for the end of her high-risk pregnancy when she was carrying Dr. Padilla’s brother, Yando. The boys’ father, frustrated by his low-paying jobs, returned to the Dominican Republic three and a half years later. She risked staying illegally when she saw how her oldest son was already excelling in school. “It was when his teacher started speaking with me and saying what he was doing in the classroom, I began asking myself, ‘How could I ever return?’ ” Ms. Peralta, 54, said in Spanish with Dr. Padilla translating. When Ms. Peralta struggled to find work because of her undocumented status, the family had little to eat and lived in homeless shelters and subsidized housing. But her oldest son was happy if he was learning. He rescued books from trash bins, she recalled. At age 8, after finishing “Peter Pan,” he tried to retell the plot, lecturing his 3-year-old brother. A volunteer art teacher at a homeless shelter in Bushwick, Brooklyn, had noticed young Dan-el reading a book about Napoleon. Impressed and charmed, the teacher, Jeff Cowen, befriended him and steered him to his alma mater, Collegiate. “He strove for the very best for us, and he did it without any expectation of return,” Ms. Peralta said of Mr. Cowen. “He wanted Dan-el to flourish.” When Dan-el started Latin as an eighth grader at Collegiate, his teacher, Stephanie Russell, was taken aback at how he had not only read Plato, but also had thoroughly absorbed it. She did not know his background, nor did she care. “His intellectual gifts were what jumped out at me,” Dr. Russell said, adding that he was well-liked for his easy generosity. Image Dan-el Padilla moved to the United States when he was a child. “He spread an influence around that we were all the better for,” she said. “And all of this while obviously leading a split, double life.” It is a dichotomy that Dr. Padilla describes in his memoir by mixing slang and earnest prose. He is as fluent in the Fugees as he is in the Fates and recently wrote a weighty article about antiquity’s influence on hip-hop artists ( “From Damocles to Socrates” ) for the online classics journal Eidolon. Dr. Padilla can go from opining on Plato to opining on Pedro — as in Pedro Martinez, the Dominican Hall of Fame pitcher. He entertained working for a Major League Baseball team or writing for the analytical-heavy Baseball Prospectus. Instead, he chose an academic career in one of the more esoteric disciplines. He has spent this summer at Columbia teaching previously incarcerated adults the relevance of the ancient texts. He has not talked about his own story. “He loves the texts, I mean, I don’t see any time for anything else,” one student, Isaac Scott, 35, said. “He loves this stuff, reading, literature, the ideas, the questioning, the doubts, the ambiguity. He loves when we catch on to something.” Dr. Padilla did not “come out” as undocumented until his senior year at Princeton, when he told his friends and posted on a Princeton message board, in advance of an article that was later published in The Wall Street Journal. In 2006, he joined an immigrant advocacy movement even as his lawyer, Stephen Yale-Loehr, was trying to find a way for him to be able to return from studying at Oxford. Mr. Yale-Loehr has petitioned for his client’s status at every academic stage. For Dr. Padilla, the strangest stage may be an actual one. A new musical inspired by his life, “ Manuel Versus the Statue of Liberty ,” written and produced by a Princeton alumna, Noemi de la Puente, will be performed this week in Manhattan. The other day, Dr. Padilla met his mother to give her a signed copy of the book, which he dedicated to her. In her confident and petite elegance, it was clear where he got his determination. Ms. Peralta said she began writing her own memoir soon after he was born. “I said at the time, If I don’t ever finish this, Dan-el will write the story,” Ms. Peralta said. “I would have liked for the narrative to have been one with less suffering, for there to have been less in the way of pain.”

Dan-el Padilla Peralta
Dominican Republic
Immigration
Ivy League
Books
Illegal Immigration


Ex-Brooklyn Prosecutor Charles J. Hynes Accused of Misuse of Funds

Abstract: A New York City Department of Investigation inquiry has implicated Charles J. Hynes, the former Brooklyn district attorney, in the improper use of money seized from drug dealers and other criminal defendants to pay a political consultant more than $200,000 for his work on Mr. Hynes’s unsuccessful re-election campaign last year. The report , which has been referred to the state attorney general and several other agencies, concluded that Mr. Hynes could face larceny charges for the misuse of public funds. The investigation also found that a widely respected jurist, Barry Kamins, the administrative judge for New York City’s criminal courts , violated the judicial code of ethics by advising Mr. Hynes on his campaign, offering legal advice and discussing matters that the district attorney’s office was actively prosecuting. Justice Kamins has been relieved of all administrative duties on Monday, a state courts spokesman said. The 27-page report, which was obtained by The New York Times, found that Mr. Hynes potentially violated the City Charter and conflict of interest board rules; violations of the City Charter can be charged as misdemeanors. Mr. Hynes’s conduct may have also violated the state penal code section on official misconduct. And payments from the office to the consultant, Mortimer Matz, may have violated the larceny provisions in the penal code. Under the code, any larceny of more than $1,000 is a felony. In 2012 and 2013, Mr. Matz’s firm was paid $219,824 for “public relations and communications services rendered.” Investigators said that during that period, Mr. Matz “provided few if any actual public relations and communications services to the office,” adding that the consultant served “primarily if not exclusively as a political consultant to Hynes personally.” The investigation found that in 2013, the office typically issued two or three checks each month to Mr. Matz’s firm from state asset-forfeiture funds; from 2003 through 2013, investigators said, the district attorney’s office paid the firm about $1.1 million from those funds. State law requires that asset-forfeiture funds be used only for law enforcement purposes. The inquiry, which began in November, included the review of about 6,000 emails sent to or from Mr. Hynes’s official email address for the 18-month period before the 2013 general election. Mr. Hynes’s emails paint a picture of a man who, after two dozen years in office, used staff members, colleagues and whatever resources he could tap to help shape what was an ultimately unsuccessful campaign against Kenneth P. Thompson . In one example, Mr. Hynes asked Justice Kamins for suggestions on how to attack Mr. Thompson on his qualifications. “Lack of experience in supervising a large number of attorneys,” the justice replied. “Until he puts forth a plan or set of goals, one must assume that he is not qualified to run the office.” In another exchange, Justice Kamins told Mr. Hynes that he believed that the structure of a planned debate between Mr. Hynes and Mr. Thompson would favor Mr. Hynes. The justice wrote in the email that the debate would “focus on the nitty-gritty of what the D.A. does each day to run the office — of course Thompson has no clue and that will come out.” The debate, he continued, “may focus on budget issues as well. Will try to get more info.” The report by the Department of Investigation, the city agency responsible for investigating corruption, fraud waste and abuse, is yet another recent blemish on Mr. Hynes’s long career as a prosecutor in Brooklyn, a tenure that has become clouded by questions about wrongful murder convictions. Efforts to reach Mr. Hynes were unsuccessful. Justice Kamins’s lawyer, Paul L. Shectman, called his client one of the city’s finest public servants. “Joe Hynes and Judge Kamins have been good friends for 40 years and have talked politics for much of that time,” he said. “Anyone who knows Barry knows that he would not abuse his judicial position.” Justice Kamins has long been known as a straight-arrow player, and he had overseen New York criminal courts before being given the additional role of the head of policy and planning for New York State’s courts this year. The New York City Department of Investigation’s Findings on Charles J. Hynes The inquiry reviewed about 6,000 emails to and from Mr. Hynes before the 2013 election. David Bookstaver, a spokesman for the state’s Office of Court Administration, said that Justice Kamins had been relieved of all of his administrative responsibilities, both as chief of policy and planning and in his oversight of New York City’s criminal courts. Under New York State’s Constitution, the Commission on Judicial Conduct investigates allegations of judicial wrongdoing and is the only body that can recommend punishment or removal for a State Supreme Court justice. The commission makes its recommendations to the State Court of Appeals; while the commission can publicly admonish a judge, only the Court of Appeals can remove one. “We are hoping that this matter is resolved as expeditiously as possible,” Mr. Bookstaver said, adding that Justice Kamins went on annual leave on Monday. The judicial commission’s counsel and administrator, Robert H. Tembeckjian , declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the state attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, also declined to comment; the report was referred to Mr. Schneiderman’s office for possible criminal prosecution. The investigation began after complaints were received from two government entities, the report said. The inquiry continued this year under Mark G. Peters, the new commissioner of the Department of Investigation. Mr. Peters also has a connection to Mr. Hynes; he challenged him in the 2005 election, but lost. The review of Mr. Hynes’s emails uncovered “several thousand campaign-related emails” leading up to the 2013 election, and the report said several senior staff members “appeared to have assisted Hynes in his re-election campaign,” often corresponding about the campaign during the business day. Mr. Hynes, the report said, asked staff members to pick campaign stops, plan regular Thursday meetings with various labor, community and religious leaders, and check in on topics like when The Carib News would publish an endorsement of him. During this time, while Mr. Matz was supposedly acting only as a public-relations consultant to the district attorney’s office, the report cited emails showing Mr. Matz scheduling an NY1 appearance, preparing information for Mr. Hynes to use in his submissions to newspaper editorial boards as they considered endorsements, and assessing what Mr. Thompson had spent on consultants. Mr. Matz, who is nearly 90 and had long advised Mr. Hynes on public relations, was well known to many reporters who covered his office over the years as a source who could be trusted to provide accurate information on crimes and some issues involving the office. He declined to comment. The emails also provide insight into Mr. Hynes’s aggressive campaign, in which he described one opponent in the Democratic primary, Abe George, as a “nebish” and another opponent, presumably Mr. Thompson, as “this Turkey,” and rendered the Brooklyn neighborhood Bushwick as “Bushwhack,” in an apparently sincere error. “Thompson’s campaign sold some trash to a blog called Failed Messiah. I will be asked about it today,” Mr. Hynes wrote to a political consultant from his office email address. “Find out before 10:30 whether Thompson” filed financial-disclosure forms. As for Justice Kamins, the report found that he had advised Mr. Hynes on his campaign, making suggestions about his public statements, talking to others on Mr. Hynes’s behalf, and providing information on opponents. The justice “engaged in political activity” and “used his office to advance Hynes’ political career,” the report found. Of Mr. George, the onetime candidate for district attorney, Justice Kamins wrote that “as a trial assistant, George was about average,” according to an email cited in the report. “It would be good at some point to get his record of trials,” Justice Kamins wrote, “not for negative campaigning but to present an incredibly stark comparison for voters.” The report said Justice Kamins also “used his apparent connection” to editors of The New York Times and The New York Law Journal “to further Hynes’ political interest.” It said the justice had suggested changes in a letter Mr. Hynes was planning to write to a Times editorial-board member. And it said he told Mr. Hynes about a conversation with a New York Law Journal reporter in which “I suggested he look at the negative literature being sent by Thompson and his mediocre record as an A.U.S.A.” Justice Kamins also held “discussions regarding pending criminal matters and investigations,” the report said. After an editorial criticizing Mr. Hynes on his record prosecuting sex-abuse cases among ultra-Orthodox Jews, Justice Kamins said, “Is it time to have the news conference that Morty suggested — with victim advocates at your side?” Justice Kamins gave advice on how to respond to questions about Jabbar Collins, a man Mr. Hynes’s office had convicted and whose conviction had been vacated by a federal judge; and about how to respond to a rising number of claims of wrongful convictions under his watch. The justice delved into providing legal advice, too, as he guided Mr. Hynes on a lawsuit from Mr. George over a reality show at the district attorney’s office, and on whether a New York Post story that Mr. Hynes did not like met libel standards. It did not.

Brooklyn
Barry Kamins
Mortimer Matz
DA Elections
Department of Investigation NYC
Charles Hynes
Campaign finance
NYC
Ethics Misconduct Malfeasance