Aqueduct Cancels Racing Because of Weather

Abstract: Aqueduct canceled a second straight day of racing, calling off Saturday’s card because of the winter storm in the New York area. The track and Belmont Park will remain open for wagering on out-of-town races. Racing is scheduled to resume on Sunday.

Aqueducts
Weather
Horse racing
Aqueduct Racetrack


Armenian Groups Are Increasingly Focused on Reparations for Genocide

Abstract: Behind the Turkish government’s denials of the century-old Armenian genocide lurks the possibility that survivors and their descendants could be deemed legally entitled someday to financial reparations, perhaps worth tens of billions of dollars or more. The Turkish authorities take the position that there is nothing that needs to be repaid. Moreover, no judicial mechanism exists in which claims of such magnitude, from events 100 years ago, could be litigated. But Armenian activists have nonetheless increasingly focused on the issue of compensation in recent years. The activists have pressed smaller-scale lawsuits against Turkish and other defendants, in Turkey and elsewhere. They have followed precedents set by victims of other atrocities of modern history, most notably Holocaust-era claims against Germany. They have drawn parallels between their struggle for reparations and those of Native Americans and African-Americans. They have commissioned studies to evaluate plundered and seized assets, including land that is now part of Turkey. Many have also been energized by what they see as an increasing acknowledgment — mainly outside Turkey but also among some Turks — that from 1915 to 1923, in the tumult of World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, as many as 1.5 million Armenians were killed in a genocide committed by members of the generation that created the modern Turkish state. “My parents and grandparents used to say, ‘We’ll never see justice done,’ ” said Nora Hovsepian, an American lawyer of Armenian descent from Encino, Calif., and the chairwoman of the Western Region of the Armenian National Committee of America , an advocacy group for the Armenian diaspora. With more international acceptance that genocide was committed, she said, “I think the tide is turning.” For human rights historians, the Turkish government’s outrage at recent calls to acknowledge the genocide from Pope Francis, the European Parliament, Germany and Austria is intertwined with the reparations question. Such an acknowledgment by Turkey, such historians say, would not only reverse a century of denials, but would also weaken Turkey’s legal defenses from compensation claims. “If you deny something, it is not given existence by you,” said Jermaine McCalpin , a scholar of transitional justice at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. “If it’s not given existence, there’s nothing to resolve.” Mr. McCalpin, who was invited to deliver a speech on Friday at genocide centennial commemorations in Yerevan, the Armenian capital, served on an international panel that completed a large-scale study last month on calculating Armenian reparations. He said the reparations question was challenging partly because the events happened so long ago. “But that doesn’t mean we should do nothing,” he said in a telephone interview. “You’re talking about a long historical trend of denial,” Mr. McCalpin said of Turkey. “To admit or recognize a genocide also requires acknowledging a wrong, and that is where reparations come in. You acknowledge, and then you move to repair.” The study by the panel, the Armenian Genocide Reparations Study Group , was funded in part by Armenian advocacy organizations. It includes recommendations and formulas for determining the components of a possible reparations package, including inflation-adjusted compensation for property, death and suffering, based in part on historical precedents. Depending on the method of calculation, the total could exceed $100 billion. The chairman of the panel, Henry C. Theriault , a genocide scholar and the chairman of the philosophy department at Worcester State University in Worcester, Mass., said the question of reparations was “obviously a pretty central one.” Remembering the Armenian Genocide Descendants of survivors - Turks and Armenians - share their families' stories. He also said an official Turkish acknowledgment of genocide, while not critical for reparation claims, was still important. “It has symbolic value, for getting the history right,” he said. “The fact that many people in Turkey aren’t willing to use the word, the resistance to using it, doesn’t promote reconciliation.” Other Armenian groups have said Mr. Theriault’s panel vastly understated what was lost. Armenian Genocide Losses 1915, a website established by researchers in Armenia to estimate damages after the passing of 100 years, uses broader measures for calculating values, which are correspondingly higher than the panel’s. They include determinations for irreversible harm, such as death and destruction, and reversible harm, such as restoration of damaged churches, sea access, water and land resources, an apology and genocide education. They also include a calculation for “delay damages,” which reflect deprivation of access to ancestral homelands and emotional distress. Under the website’s formulas, at least nine countries gained indirect benefits from the genocide, including the United States and much of present-day Europe. But Turkey gained more than any other, as “chief beneficiary and main cause of delay in proper redress of the crime.” The website estimated the total value of reparations at approximately $3 trillion, of which it said Turkey owes about $1.64 trillion. Many Armenians, of course, say reparations on that scale are highly unlikely, even if Turkey were ever to concede that reconciliation should include financial compensation. But there is no indication Turkish leaders are prepared to discuss that possibility. While the Turks have said atrocities were committed, they have denied that Armenians, almost all of them Christian, were intentionally and systematically killed because of their identity, part of the definition of genocide. The Turks have also said that many Turkish Muslims were killed, and have sought to portray all victims of that period as regrettable casualties of conflict. And they have cited agreements made in the aftermath of World War I that were meant to settle claims and Ottoman-era debts. “To undo these agreements would be unthinkable,” said G. Lincoln McCurdy, president of the Turkish Coalition of America , an advocacy group in Washington. “We would hope that Turkey and Armenia instead could look forward to reconciliation without the necessity of re-litigating venerable and time-honored agreements,” Mr. McCurdy said in a statement. “And what about the losses of millions of Ottoman Muslims, who were driven out of their ancestral homes in the Balkans, the Caucasus and Russia and suffered during a century of war at the hands of the great powers and their proxies?” Armenians have managed to win some money in the courts, though not from Turkey. In one well-known case , the New York Life Insurance Company was sued for refusing to pay the life insurance policies of thousands of Armenians who died in the genocide. The case, brought in California where many descendants of genocide victims live, was settled in 2004 for $20 million, plus $3 million for nine Armenian church and charity groups. Last September, leading Armenian clerics announced they were suing Turkey in that country’s highest court, seeking restitution for church properties destroyed during the genocide, notably the Great House of Cilicia in Sis, near the Turkish city of Adana. If the lawsuit fails, advocates say, an appeal is planned at the European Court of Human Rights. Ms. Hovsepian said the focus on litigation to redress genocide losses partly reflected a generational shift in the Armenian diaspora, as many of the survivors have died and their children have taken up the cause in a less emotional and more pragmatic way. “It’s history passed down,” she said. “Of course we still mourn the dead, but it goes beyond that. You can see the evolution. It’s become a time of demands.”

War Crimes,Genocide,Crimes Against Humanity


Afghans See a Collapse of Tradition in a Spate of Devious Attacks

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — Abdul Latif of northern Kunduz Province vowed he would get even with the Taliban who killed his father, so he volunteered to join one of their units and spent two months trying to win their confidence. A few days ago he and a friend shot 13 of them to death, mostly while they slept, he and the police said. He was hailed as a hero by the police, who confirmed that Mr. Latif was under their protection after he had infiltrated the insurgents. In the early morning hours Thursday, two Taliban infiltrators at the other end of the country, in the southern province of Helmand, joined the police, and were stationed with a 10-man unit. They dosed the dinner with crushed sleeping pills, then shot to death the other eight policemen in their sleep, local officials said. The Taliban boasted about the attack on their website. In a country that has long prided itself on “Pashtunwali,” a strict code of conduct that most famously gives guest privileges even to enemies, a lot of Afghans have begun to view the spate of such devious infiltrator attacks as yet another sign of moral decline caused by nearly four decades of war, and no real end in sight. The attack in Helmand appeared to be the fifth insider killing of policemen in the past month, most drugged and killed in their sleep, in two cases by guests who were enjoying the policemen’s hospitality. Many Afghans find it hard to reconcile such attacks, especially in the Pashtun heartland of Helmand, with Pashtunwali, which prizes hospitality, righteousness, bravery in battle, loyalty and respect for self and others. “Decades of war have not only cost us thousands of lives, but it has spiritually damaged our people and left behind an unfortunate, hostile culture,” said Zubair Shafeeq, director of the Wesa newspaper in Kabul, reacting to reports of the latest insider attacks. “Afghans famous for respecting the core values of Pashtunwali have forgotten what our cultural and traditional ethics are.” In Kunduz, Mr. Latif said he spent two months in the company of a Taliban unit in Imam Sahib district, a Pashtun area that has long been an insurgent stronghold, but is also heavily contested. His father was among villagers who had joined an uprising to throw the Taliban out of their area and was killed for doing so, leading his 20-year-old son to plot revenge. As he traveled with the insurgents, Mr. Latif was in regular cellphone contact with Afghan police and intelligence officials, he said in a telephone interview Thursday. His opportunity came after the Taliban unit of 16 men returned from lying in wait for two days and nights in the hopes of ambushing a government convoy. Mr. Latif said he warned the police so they could avoid the trap, and his unit members returned to their hiding place exhausted and fell heavily asleep. “I was looking for a good place to do it and finally got a chance, so I called the police and said, ‘Hey, today I’m going to do it, and they gave me the green flag so I did it,’” Mr. Latif said. He had a confederate in another young man, Ghullam Hazrat, 19, who had joined straight out of religious training at a madrasa and, as Mr. Hazrat told it, was appalled at the Taliban fighters’ immoral behavior, including the practice of bacha bazi, in which young boys are forced to dress as girls, dance and engage in sex with the older men. The two infiltrators overpowered their commander, Mullah Baz Mohammad, killed him and then leveled their rifles on their sleeping comrades. Some woke up at the commotion, but most of them were shot to death in their sleep; one man escaped, Mr. Latif said. Mr. Latif defended his actions: “There was no chance of bringing them in as prisoners,” he said. “The whole area was Taliban.” The Kunduz provincial police chief, Gen. Mohammad Qaseem Jangalbagh, confirmed that Mr. Latif and Mr. Hazrat had killed the Taliban, and then fled to government positions, carrying 14 weapons and the unit’s supply of ammunition. “Both of them are currently under our protection,” he said. The Taliban insider attack in Helmand Province took place in Garmsir District, according to Mohammad Asif, a member of the district council there. After the two infiltrators put sleeping drugs in the evening’s dinner Wednesday night, they opened the police post to Taliban in the early morning hours, helping them kill the other eight who were sleeping. They also cut off the police commander’s head, hanging it on a post, he said. “It is entirely against Pashtunwali and humanity that when you host someone with kindness they turn into a snake and bite you,” said Mr. Shafeeq, the newspaper director. Just a week earlier, also in Garmsir District, in what was apparently the fourth insider attack in Helmand Province in the past month, a police commander defected to the Taliban and killed his cook when he refused to defect with him, Mr. Asif said. “We could say the flock of sheep are being eaten by their own watchdogs,” said Hajji Abdul Ghani, the head of the security committee in Garmsir District. He attributed the insider attacks to poor morale among police officers, who suffered shortages of weapons and supplies, rampant drug abuse in the ranks, and commanders more concerned about making a corrupt income than fighting. “It seems like people are too weak now for Pashtunwali,” Mr. Ghani said. Pashtunwali as an ethical system demands openness and fairness, said Hajji Atta Mohammad Ahmadi, the head of the peace council in Kandahar. “You have to be straight towards both friends and enemies,” he said. “By no means are you allowed to drug and kill defenseless people, or kill someone when sleeping. These things that are happening now in Afghanistan totally violate the principles of Pashtunwali.”

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Lobbyists Object to Proposed Limits on Courting Officials

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Tough new limits proposed on the way special interests could court executive branch officials have prompted a fierce counterattack from lobbyists who fear they will end a cherished Washington ritual: hosting federal workers at events like conferences, cocktail parties, galas and movie screenings. Filmmakers and farmers, gun makers and real estate agents, and people in dozens of other industries say the rules under consideration by the Obama administration would choke off their ability to have a mutually beneficial dialogue with government officials. As a result, they say, public policy would be made in a vacuum, and federal rules would be more unrealistic and unworkable. The proposal would extend restrictions now on political appointees to more than two million government workers. Federal employees could no longer accept “gifts of free attendance” at the many seminars, receptions and other social gatherings held by registered lobbyists and lobbying organizations as a matter of course in Washington. In issuing the proposal under instructions from President Obama , the Office of Government Ethics said lobbyists often used such events to curry favor with federal employees. The ethics office, which is now weighing the response to the proposal it made last September, said lobbyists had used these gatherings not only to discuss business with federal employees, but also to “foster a social bond that may be of greater use in the long run.” The problem, it said, is “not the brazen quid pro quo, but rather the cultivation of familiarity and access that a lobbyist may use in the future to obtain a more sympathetic hearing for clients.” The American League of Lobbyists, a trade group, denounced the proposal as excessive, and leaders of other groups branded it as demeaning and dismissive of the role that industry experts can play in formulating sound public policy. The Motion Picture Association of America, the trade group for major Hollywood studios, strenuously objected to a suggestion by the ethics office that movie screenings were social events where lobbyists built good will, thus enhancing their influence with federal employees. The association said that movie screenings at its headquarters two blocks from the White House “are not purely social events akin to sporting events or theatrical and musical events, but rather serve as educational opportunities,” allowing federal employees to learn about moviemaking techniques and “challenges facing the industry.” Ronald L. Phipps, former president of the National Association of Realtors, said the restrictions would “perpetuate the problem of the Beltway bubble,” isolating regulators from the industries they regulate. The USA Rice Federation, the lobby for rice growers, called the proposal insulting. The administration, it said, appears to view lobbyists as predators and federal employees as “weak, unprincipled victims.” Under current rules, federal employees can accept free invitations to certain “widely attended gatherings,” and they often do so. Under the proposal, they could no longer accept such “gifts” from registered lobbyists and lobbying organizations. Administration officials are still reviewing the comments, and it is unclear when a final decision may be made on whether to impose the new rules. But the Obama administration defended the proposal as a way to curb the influence of special interests, just as Mr. Obama did in 2010 when he told federal officials not to appoint registered lobbyists to advisory committees, boards and commissions. Special interests can drown out the voices of ordinary Americans by deploying “lobbyists who have special access that is not available to all citizens,” Mr. Obama said then. Mr. Obama promised to run the most ethical and transparent administration in history. While berating lobbyists in public, the administration has worked with them in private. White House officials have often met with lobbyists at coffee shops near the White House, so the meetings do not show up in White House visitor logs. Despite a pledge not to take money from registered federal lobbyists, Mr. Obama has relied on people active in the lobbying industry to raise millions of dollars for his re-election bid. The proposed rules are aimed at lobbyists who work for trade associations. The new restrictions would not apply to institutions of higher education or to certain nonprofit groups like professional associations, scientific organizations and learned societies. While these entities may lobby, the ethics office said, they pose less risk of “ethical harm,” and they can promote the professional development of government scientists and other federal employees. By contrast, it said, professional education is usually not the primary concern of trade associations. This distinction infuriated lobbyists for trade associations. Groups like the American Frozen Food Institute, the American Hospital Association and the Edison Electric Institute said they engaged in both lobbying and educational activities, with training as a major part of their mission. However, watchdog groups like the Project on Government Oversight , the Government Accountability Project and Common Cause welcomed the proposal, saying it would help break up the cozy relationships between federal regulators and regulated industries. Lobbyists said such relationships were essential at a time when the government regulates almost every corner of the economy and federal officials are continually promoting public-private partnerships to create jobs. The Consumer Electronics Association, which holds a giant trade show each year, said the new restrictions would “drive a wedge between policy makers and job creators” and lead to a “drastic dumbing-down of government.” The National Shooting Sports Foundation said the proposal would make it far more difficult to have “a constructive and mutually beneficial dialogue” between its members — manufacturers of firearms — and federal officials who regulate the industry. Several members of Congress share the critics’ concerns. In a letter to the ethics office, nine House Democrats, including Representatives Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and James P. Moran of Virginia, said the rules could disrupt “the necessary flow of information between the public and private sectors” and adversely affect their constituents, including businesses and federal employees. Civil servants say the rules could impose onerous new obligations on them. The rules suggest that federal employees check a searchable online database of lobbyists, maintained by Congress, to see if an invitation comes from a registered lobbyist or lobbying organization.

Office of Government Ethics
Lobbying and Lobbyists
United States Politics and Government
Obama Barack
Government Employees
Ethics (Institutional)


Labor Board Plans Suits Against Two States Over Union Election Rules

Abstract: The National Labor Relations Board has told state officials that it will soon file federal lawsuits against Arizona and South Dakota in seeking to invalidate those states’ constitutional amendments that prohibit private sector employees from choosing to unionize through a procedure known as card check. In a letter sent on Friday, the labor board told those states that it would invoke the United States Constitution’s supremacy clause in asserting that the state constitutional amendments conflict with federal laws and are pre-empted by those laws. One federal official said the lawsuits would be filed in the next few days. The Arizona and South Dakota constitutional amendments were promoted by various conservative groups worried that Congressional Democrats would pass legislation allowing unions to insist on using card check in organizing drives, meaning that an employer would have to recognize a union as soon as a majority of workers signed pro-union cards. Under current law, private sector employers can insist that secret ballots be used when unions are trying to organize. Unions like using card check because it makes it easier to win unionization campaigns. Organizers can gather signature cards quietly until they get a majority of workers, making it more difficult for an employer to mount an opposition campaign. Congressional Republicans blocked passage of the card-check bill. In January, the labor board threatened to sue four states , including South Carolina and Utah, which also have constitutional amendments barring card check. But in a letter sent on Friday to the four states’ attorneys generals, N.L.R.B. officials said they were suing just two states to conserve legal resources. The labor board’s acting general counsel, Lafe Solomon, said the government reserved “the right to initiate a suit against the other two states at the appropriate time.” N.L.R.B. officials evidently hope that victories in the Arizona and South Dakota cases would serve as precedents to invalidate the South Carolina and Utah prohibitions. In an interview, Tom Horne, Arizona’s attorney general, criticized the board’s planned suit, saying, “I find it shocking that they do not believe in the fundamental principle of democracy that people have a right to a secret ballot.” He said that while federal pre-emption might apply to laws passed by Congress, it should not apply to the labor board’s decision allowing card check to be used in some unionization campaigns. South Dakota’s attorney general, Marty J. Jackley, said he respectfully disagreed with the board’s analysis, adding that he did not believe the agency “has the authority under circumstances like this to sue a state.” Last week, the N.L.R.B. infuriated South Carolina officials when it announced that it was bringing a case against Boeing that seeks to press the company to move an airline production line from a nonunion plant in South Carolina to a unionized facility in Washington State. The labor board said that Boeing had unlawfully moved the production line, originally planned for Washington, to retaliate against unionized employees there for engaging in repeated strikes.

National Labor Relations Board
Arizona
South Dakota
Organized Labor
Law and Legislation


Telmex Offer Does Little for Shareholders

Abstract: The Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helú’ s $6.5 billion tender offer for Telmex offers little for shareholders in his América Móvil , the large cellphone carrier, to be happy about. América Móvil is buying out the remainder of Telmex, the country’s shrinking landline business, at a premium valuation relative to its own. That looks like a bad exchange. As a landline operator, Telmex’s best days lie behind it. Customers are going mobile, disconnecting lines and making fewer calls. Data services are growing, but not fast enough to offset declines elsewhere. Revenue at Telmex peaked in 2007 and has fallen steadily since. By contrast, América Móvil is growing, even if Latin America is not the virgin market it once was. Revenue was up 8 percent last year. Yet América Móvil’s offer for the 40 percent in Telmex it does not already own comes at an 11 percent premium to where the stock has traded over the last 30 days. That’s equal to about 12 times Telmex’s estimated 2012 earnings. América Móvil, on the other hand, trades at 11 times. There are some benefits. Telmex should generate about $2 billion of free cash flow this year. While América Móvil already consolidates Telmex’s results, full ownership would mean it does not have to cede big dividends to outside shareholders. Moreover, since debt is cheap and América Móvil is paying in cash, the acquisition could slightly lower the company’s cost of capital. Finally, even though the two companies already work together closely, there may be some operational benefits. Redundant managers can be let go and bundles of services may eventually be offered to existing customers. If cost savings do not appear, it will take many years of the extra cash flow to compensate for the billions América Móvil is paying. Indeed, if Telmex keeps losing business, which seems inevitable, América Móvil may never reap an acceptable return on its investment. The $5 billion fall in América Móvil’s market value on Tuesday suggests minority investors would have preferred a dividend. But with Mr. Slim running the show, it does not really matter what other investors want. Growing Pains It’s not easy being a Japanese company. The home market is not just economically stagnant, it is expected to shrink by a million consumers a year for the next two decades. So, the logic goes, Japanese corporations must expand abroad. But as the beer giant Kirin’s latest takeover of an overseas asset attests, that’s a poor story for shareholders. Kirin is paying 3.95 billion reais ($2.6 billion) for a 50.45 percent stake in Schincariol, Brazil’s distant No. 2 brewer after Anheuser-Busch InBev. According to Schincariol’s published financial statements, the group made 54 million reais last year. Valuing the whole of the Brazilian group’s equity at 7.9 billion reais means Kirin is paying around 146 times earnings. Oh, and those earnings fell 28 percent in 2010 from the previous year. Kirin spins a different case using more flattering accounting. It gives a valuation of around 16 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. But even that looks like an extravagance. It’s about a third more expensive than the average beer deal, and it’s also about double the multiple that Kirin fetches for its own earnings. That might be defensible if Kirin had an edge, like the ability to cut costs or assist in geographic expansion. Kirin has neither. Indeed, until now the company had made clear its desire to focus on Asia and Oceania. Kirin’s president, Senji Miyake, on Monday suggested Schincariol was just too good an opportunity to pass up. But even if Brazil’s beer market is growing 10 percent a year, his comments smack of adventurism, not focus. And without overlap, there are no obvious cost savings to be realized from the deal. That stands in marked contrast to the other industry deal currently fermenting, SABMiller’s unsolicited $12 billion bid for Australia-based Foster’s. SAB offered just 12 times Ebitda partly because it is only able to extract a few hundred million dollars of savings. So Kirin is overpaying, has no obvious mechanism to extract value and is drifting from its geographic strategy. That pretty well sums up what it’s like to be a Japanese company shopping overseas. Of course, there is an alternative. Two years ago, Kirin nearly merged with a domestic rival, Suntory. The projected cost savings would have been worth nearly as much as Kirin’s current $14 billion market capitalization. That would have been a party worth going to.

Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures
America Movil SAB de CV
Slim Helu Carlos
Kirin Beverage Corp
Telefonos de Mexico SAB de CV


Coming Soon: Heroes of the Higgs

Abstract: Physicists get to discover a new particle once in a generation, if they are lucky. In 2006, it occurred to David Kaplan, a physics professor at Johns Hopkins, that his generation’s time was at hand. Scientists and engineers at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, were putting the finishing touches on the Large Hadron Collider, the largest science machine ever built, with the aim of finding the Higgs particle, allegedly responsible for the masses of other particles in the universe. No one knew if they would find it. But whether they did or not, nothing would ever be the same. “How often can you see something like this coming,” Dr. Kaplan asked recently, “when an entire field hinges on a single event?” And so was born “Particle Fever,” a new documentary that follows a handful of scientists at CERN: living and working, partying and studying, in their quest for the so-called God particle. The movie, produced by Dr. Kaplan and directed by Mark Levinson, arrives at Film Forum in New York on March 5 after having won accolades at film festivals. This is one of those rare movies in which scientists are the heroes — not trying to rule the world, just trying to figure out how it works. If that sounds less than entrancing, you’ve never seen the glow on the face of Monica Dunford, a young postdoc from the University of Chicago, as she explains what it is like to get new data for the first time in a generation; or played Ping-Pong with Nima Arkani-Hamed at the Institute for Advanced Study; or wandered the labyrinths of the Large Hadron Collider outside Geneva, which look like outtakes from the wildest imaginings of a James Bond villain. Neal Weiner, a theoretical physicist at New York University who appears in one scene, said that watching the movie he relived the tension of the last few years. Of course, it has a happy ending. The discovery of the Higgs boson , announced on July 4, 2012, made headlines around the world and led to a Nobel Prize for its eponymous theorizer, Peter Higgs. Video It was the longest, most costly manhunt in science for an elusive particle that was said to be key to the workings of the universe. For a generation of physicists, it was an appointment with history. Credit Credit Denis Balibouse/Reuters Dr. Kaplan was in some sense fulfilling his own date with destiny. He spent two years studying film at Chapman University in Southern California before earning a bachelor’s degree at the University of California, Berkeley, and a doctorate at the University of Washington. At first, he thought about writing a book on the new collider, but the prospect of writing it alone was too painful. It eventually become clear, he said, “that I wanted to make a movie.” He bought a video camera and began interviewing prominent physicists about the new collider’s importance, but soon realized he needed help and money. A friend of his sister’s helped him make an eight-minute short to promote the project. Through his mother, who lived in Los Angeles, Dr. Kaplan was invited to pitch his idea to a meeting of “angel” investors. There he met Mr. Levinson, who was there to pitch his own idea. He had trained as a particle physicist, getting a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, before going to Hollywood as a sound editor on films like “The English Patient” and “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” He signed on as Dr. Kaplan’s director. Another huge break came when Walter Murch agreed to edit the film. A Hollywood legend, Mr. Murch won Oscars for sound mixing on “Apocalypse Now” and for both film editing and sound mixing on “The English Patient.” He had bonded with Mr. Levinson during a previous movie over their interest in string theory. Mr. Murch said that making a feature film was a bit like doing science. “The screenplay is the theory,” he explained during a respite in his editing room in Chelsea last year. “The play is like the experiment. Basically you are trying to avert disaster.” Dr. Kaplan said he had raised about $2 million for the film over all, including money for distribution and marketing, by cold-calling potential investors and borrowing from his mother and her boyfriend, among others. On early scouting expeditions to CERN, the filmmakers picked a few people to follow, including Fabiola Gianotti, the Italian physicist and conservatory-trained pianist who led the Atlas team of scientists, and Dr. Dunford, a rower, cyclist and unabashed experimentalist. In the end, both the Atlas team and a rival at CERN, CMS, found the Higgs simultaneously; the movie does not include any CMS representatives. Counterposed to the CERN scientists and constituting a sort of Greek chorus commenting on the action and its meaning are Dr. Kaplan and Dr. Arkani-Hamed, a theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study whom Dr. Kaplan describes as “the star of my generation.” At one point, they face off in Ping-Pong to contest competing views of the universe, bouncing the ball off a nearby wall. In another scene, they rearrange the jigsaw-looking pieces of granite and slate in a sculpture garden at the institute. “I think you’re allowed to move it around,” Dr. Arkani-Hamed says before concluding there is no pattern to the pieces and walking off. Also appearing is their mutual mentor, Savas Dimopoulos of Stanford, who is waiting to find out if the Higgs boson will destroy or strengthen the case for a theory he helped put forward 30 years ago. If worse comes to worst, he tells an older colleague, he still has time to start over. “Jumping from failure to failure with undying enthusiasm is the secret of success,” he says. The cameras were there (with some help from CERN) on Sept. 10, 2008, when scientists first sent protons around the collider, a 17-mile underground tunnel, and when the connection between a pair of superconducting magnets vaporized a week later, shutting down the whole operation. Mr. Levinson and his crew were back again in 2010, when the collider finally started working, the screens in the control rooms lit up with subatomic collisions, and Dr. Dunford exclaimed, “Data!” Mr. Levinson admitted that they had no exit plan for the movie. At one time, they would have been happy just to see the collider going, but one thing led to another. He recalled being asked at CERN when they were going to finish their film. “When are you going to finish your experiment?” he responded. Or as Mr. Murch put it: “In regular movies, the director is God. In a documentary, God is the director.” So they were still filming when Dr. Gianotti announced the discovery of the particle in an auditorium full of scientists, and Dr. Higgs walked in, to a standing ovation. “When they discover the Higgs, people should cry,” Dr. Kaplan said. The story may end happily for the CERN scientists, but the fate of the universe is still unsettled. Dr. Dimopoulos’s theory is neither confirmed nor destroyed. We don’t know yet if there is a secret pattern to the jigsaw pieces in the sculpture garden. The movie ends with images of cave art; superimposed on them is Dr. Arkani-Hamed writing particle diagrams on a blackboard. Why do people do science? Dr. Dimopoulos muses. Why do they do art? He answers his own questions. “The things that are least important for our survival,” he says, “are the very things that make us human.”

Physics
CERN
Large Hadron Collider
Documentaries
Movies
Mark Levinson
Higgs Boson
David E Kaplan


Referendum on Europe Gains Support in Germany

Abstract: BERLIN — It has become the buzzword of the summer in Berlin: referendum. The foreign and finance ministers as well as opposition leaders have all come out in favor of allowing Germans to have a direct say in whether to give up more power to European Union institutions. Although the idea of a referendum is for the moment more notional than concrete, it is gaining currency in Germany ’s political debate. Approving it would amount to the exceptional step of a national vote to change the Constitution to allow Germans to relinquish some executive authority to Brussels. Proponents say that if such a referendum were approved, it would send a strong signal of Germany’s commitment to the euro. It would also streamline the steps needed to save the common European currency, they argue, and appease mounting complaints by Germans that even as they are being asked to pay more to bolster or bail out their troubled euro zone partners, they have no say in where their taxes are flowing or how they are being spent. Such a referendum comes with the built-in risk that Germans could vote against Europe, with potentially damning consequences for the common currency and the future of the European Union. Chancellor Angela Merkel has consistently promoted a vision of “more Europe” as the answer to the euro crisis, meaning tighter integration but also stricter oversight of European fiscal policy. Currently, steps in that direction have ended up in Germany’s highest court, facing legal challenges from opponents who say that handing over more money and authority to the European Union violates the country’s Constitution. On Sept. 12, the high court is poised to rule on the constitutionality of the fiscal pact arduously negotiated among European Union members that is the cornerstone of Ms. Merkel’s plans. It will also rule on the legality of Germany’s $27 billion commitment to back up a permanent bailout fund for the union. Should the challenge prevail, and German support be withdrawn, it would almost certainly doom the project of greater integration and send a potentially calamitous signal to financial markets looking for urgent steps to buttress troubled euro zone economies. Both measures passed the German Parliament by a clear two-thirds majority on June 29, but they were immediately challenged in court by dissenting lawmakers, delaying them from taking effect as envisioned on July 1. Proponents of a referendum argue that changing the Constitution would avoid such delays, and the frustrations that accompany them. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble first broached the idea in June, suggesting that the Constitution be changed to allow for increased European integration sooner rather than later. Two weeks ago, Sigmar Gabriel, leader of the opposition Social Democrats, and several members of Ms. Merkel’s governing coalition also came out in support of a plebiscite. “Only through more transparency and civic participation can we overcome the crisis of confidence vis-à-vis European institutions,” Horst Seehofer, leader of the Bavarian sister party to Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democrats, told the Sunday edition of the daily newspaper Die Welt last week. Polls have consistently shown that a strong majority of Germans believe they should have a say in whether more authority should be granted to institutions in Brussels. Yet handing the decision of a highly complex issue, like the future of fiscal power for Europe, to the citizens after years of denying them any direct say in the creation of the European project carries a danger that politicians should be careful not to underestimate, said Christian Pestalozza, a retired professor of constitutional law at Berlin’s Free University. Mr. Pestalozza supports the idea of plebiscites but fears the latest discussion is an attempt to pass the buck. “It looks as if someone simply doesn’t want to take responsibility,” he said. Indeed, critics say that calls for a vote underline the political perils that may well accompany further efforts to resolve the debt crisis in the euro zone, which shows few signs of resolution well into its third year despite a series of bailout packages. “It is perhaps a sign of the helplessness,” Mr. Pestalozza said. “Nobody really knows what to do anymore, so they are asking themselves, ‘Who could make a decision?’ ” The idea that Europe’s strength lies in its ability to stand as a unified entity in a globalized world was championed by Ms. Merkel at the European Union summit meeting in June and was a consistent refrain in her speeches to lawmakers and business groups throughout the spring. The chancellor, who returned from her summer vacation on Monday, has not made any public statement on the issue of a referendum, but she has cautioned that change must come “step by step,” not in leaps and bounds. Germany has never held a national referendum, as the German Constitution allows a national plebiscite only as a necessity to alter its basic laws, which have not been changed since after World War II . Referendums are allowed by most of the country’s 16 states, however, and have become popular in recent years, Mr. Pestalozza said. Mr. Schäuble envisioned that Germans would be asked to cast ballots on whether more decision-making authority should shift from Berlin to Brussels, where it would fall to the hands of a European Union president and finance minister elected by voters across the bloc. An important part of that shift would be to create a shared fiscal policy, at least for all 17 countries using the euro, Mr. Schäuble told Der Spiegel in its June 25 edition. Other voices have come out in favor of a vote as well. “The people of Europe must learn that only together will they be able to assert their civic model of a social state and the national diversity of their culture,” wrote the philosopher Jürgen Habermas in a joint essay in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung with Peter Bofinger, a leading economist, and Julian Nida-Rümelin, a former government cultural adviser. Those opposed to the idea of a referendum on Europe caution that Germany’s Constitution already contains language providing enough room for more authority to be shared between the state and European institutions, without requiring changes to the basic law. Handing more power through a constitutional change, critics argue, could require revamping and expanding Germany’s existing agreements with Brussels, which would mean going through the lengthy process of securing the approval of all 27 European Union members. But outside economists and others have warned that the urgency of Europe’s crisis and the pace of the demands of financial markets may not allow European leaders the luxury of time.

Referendums
Germany
European Union
Merkel Angela
European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- )
Politics and Government
Schauble Wolfgang


Florida Kick Returner Out for Season

Abstract: The Florida senior Andre Debose will miss the season after tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee. Debose, who owns a university record with four kickoff returns for touchdowns, injured his knee during a noncontact drill in practice Tuesday. ¶ The Military Bowl is extending its relationship with the Atlantic Coast Conference. The game will get the fifth choice among A.C.C. bowl-eligible teams from 2014 to 2019. The A.C.C. team will face a team from the American Athletic Conference, the splinter conference formed from the old Big East. (AP)


Houston’s Astrodome May Be Dirty and Dated, but It Is Irreplaceable

Abstract: It is one of our enduring family photos from youth baseball: my sister dutifully in attendance, my father in a tie, my mother with a confectionary meringue of a bouffant. She looks like Peggy from “Mad Men,” and she is holding neither peanuts nor Cracker Jack but a can of bug spray. Then the Astrodome opened in 1965, and we took a couple of eager vacation trips to Houston from south Louisiana, where the temperature and humidity seemed surpassed only by the cholesterol count. We were excited and astonished to sit in air-conditioning to watch a baseball game, free of the need for any lotion, suntan or calamine. Finally, we could satisfy our itch for big-league ball without the itch of swarming mosquitoes. The Eighth Wonder of the World, as the Astrodome was nicknamed, with its 200-foot-tall roof and nine-acre footprint, became the most important, distinctive and influential stadium ever built in the United States. It gave us domed, all-purpose stadiums and artificial turf and expansive scoreboards. It gave us seminal respect for women’s sports when Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs at tennis in 1973. It gave us the inventor of the end zone dance in 1969, Elmo Wright of the University of Houston. It gave us the first prime-time national television audience for a regular-season college basketball game, with the famed 1968 meeting between Houston and U.C.L.A. So it was despairing to hear that the vacant Astrodome might be torn down and its site paved over as Houston prepares to host the 2017 Super Bowl. Demolition would be a failure of civic imagination, a betrayal of Houston’s greatness as a city of swaggering ambition, of dreamers who dispensed with zoning laws and any restraint on possibility. A recent drive past the abandoned Astrodome at night revealed it to be unlit. It has been closed since 2008. The stadium was visible in silhouette, like a waning moon. In daylight, however, beneath the dust and neglect, the Astrodome’s silvery exterior continues to summon a city’s innovative past and futuristic promise. By contrast, Reliant Stadium next door is a dull football arena, designed with all the imagination of a hangar to park a blimp. Image Reliant Stadium, home to the Houston Texans, will host the 2017 Super Bowl. Credit David J. Phillip/Associated Press James Glassman, a Houston preservationist, calls the Astrodome the city’s Eiffel Tower and the “physical manifestation of Houston’s soul.” New York could afford to tear down old Yankee Stadium, Glassman said, because the city had hundreds of other signature landmarks. Not Houston. Along with oil, NASA and the pioneering heart surgeons Michael E. DeBakey and Denton A. Cooley, the technological marvel of the Astrodome put a young, yearning city on the global map. “There was a confluence of space-age, Camelot-era optimism, and we were right there,” said Glassman, founder of the Web site Houstorian.org. “It really set us on the road for a go-go future.” Houston’s best ideas bring clever solutions to tricky problems. The weed whacker was invented there in 1971 by a dance instructor and developer named George Ballas. He got the idea from whirling brushes at a car wash. His prototype consisted of an edger and fishing wire threaded through a can of popcorn. The Astrodome was built to solve a vexing conundrum: How to bring major league baseball to a city where the temperature could match the league leaders in runs batted in? For our first family trip, my sister got new clothes, including a red vinyl hat that made her look like the world’s youngest hotel doorman. “Honey, I had to get a new outfit,” she said. “We were going to the big city.” On an August weekend in 1966, we saw Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale pitch for the Dodgers against the Astros. We marveled at the animated scoreboard that celebrated home runs with a snorting bull and a pistol-firing cowboy. We screamed along with the bugling rally cry of “Charge!” We brought home a pennant, a souvenir batting helmet, pens in the shape of baseball bats. We also saw something no child should, our father pushed aside by another man while chasing a batting-practice home run. “Y’all were so put out,” my mother said. The Astrodome was the brainchild of Roy Hofheinz, a Barnumesque former mayor of Houston and county judge. He kept a stadium apartment that featured a putting green, a shooting gallery, a puppet theater and a bowling alley. A tour guide once described the décor to Sports Illustrated as “early whorehouse.” In Hofheinz’s view, invention was nothing without flamboyance. Mickey Mantle hit the first home run at the Astrodome in an exhibition game, causing the scoreboard to flash “Tilt.” Judy Garland, the Supremes, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson played concerts there. Muhammad Ali retained his heavyweight title. Evel Knievel jumped 13 cars on his motorcycle. Memorable Moments at the Astrodome 8 Photos View Slide Show › Image Associated Press The Republicans nominated President George H. W. Bush for re-election there in 1992. Robert Altman directed a movie called “Brewster McCloud” in the Astrodome. In 1986, the Mets and the Astros played 16 marathon innings in what was then the longest postseason baseball game. In 2005, a magnanimous civic gesture provided shelter for thousands of evacuees after Hurricane Katrina. What happens next for the Astrodome is anyone’s guess. As Houston sought the 2017 Super Bowl, Roger Goodell, the N.F.L. commissioner, did not call for the wrecking ball. But he said in March that additional parking for nearby Reliant Stadium could be “a very positive change” in Houston’s bid. The game was awarded to Houston last week . The Houston Texans and the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo say the Astrodome could be imploded and replaced with 1,600 parking spaces for $29 million. Other officials say demolition would cost more than twice that much. What a dreary possibility, a stadium that hinted of the Jetsons bulldozed for a Super Bowl that may or may not feature the Jets. Demolition “would symbolize that we’ve just decided to quit,” said Ryan Slattery, whose master’s thesis in architecture at the University of Houston offers a different alternative. Slattery’s plan, which has gained traction, involves a vision of green space. He would strip the Astrodome to its steel skeleton , evoking the Eiffel Tower of sport, and install a park. It could be used for football tailgating, livestock exhibitions, recreational sports. Other ideas have been floated through the years, some more realistic than others: music pavilion, casino, movie studio, hotel, museum, shopping mall, indoor ski resort, amusement park. All private proposals for the Astrodome are due by June 10 to the Harris County Sports and Convention Corporation, which oversees the stadium. Legitimate debate can be had about whether the Astrodome’s innovations ultimately enhanced or detracted from the broader sporting experience. Whether indoor stadiums lend sterility. Whether artificial turf leaves players more vulnerable to injury. Whether we need scoreboards to tell us to cheer. Whether basketball played in giant arenas is an abomination. But the Astrodome is too essential to become a parking lot. Slattery is right when he says that Houston should not demolish the memory of its past but reimagine it for the future.

Houston
Super Bowl
Astrodome Houston
Stadiums Arenas


Charge the Rent, but Only if You Don’t Need To

Abstract: SEVERAL credit card companies have introduced programs over the last year allowing homeowners and renters to pay their monthly housing bills with a credit card. For the cash savvy, the program is a potential windfall, allowing users to rack up rewards points that qualify them for free trips and other perks. But, financial experts say, those who are already in credit trouble should generally steer clear. They worry that cash-short homeowners, squeezed by falling house prices, rising interest rates and a general credit tightening, could use their credit cards as a short-term fix to avoid losing their house — and this could ultimately push the homeowner into even deeper credit problems. Both American Express and Visa offer programs allowing people to pay their mortgage or rent using a credit card. American Express first started offering the initiative in 2003, when it teamed up with a residential developer, Related Companies, to allow tenants to pay rent at 16 of its rental buildings in New York and San Francisco. At the time, housing was booming and landlords were jockeying for ways to lure people away from homeownership and into rental properties. David J. Wine, vice chairman of Related Companies, said the program had been hugely successful. “Rents in Manhattan are among the highest in the country and when you’re paying $4,000 or $5,000 in rent for an apartment, its nice to get something back” through the credit card rewards programs, he said. American Express has since extended the program to about 200 cities in 35 states. In May 2007, American Express expanded the concept to mortgages. It formed partnerships with American Home Mortgage (which has since filed for bankruptcy protection) and IndyMac Bank to allow cardholders to make their mortgage payments with credit cards if they closed a mortgage with one of the two partners. Sarah Meron, a spokeswoman for American Express, emphasized that the program caters to people with strong credit and payment histories and does not include subprime mortgages. She said efforts were under way to seek more banks to participate in the program. Visa started offering similar rental and mortgage payment programs this year. Steven Altman, who is 38, enrolled in Visa’s program at his Manhattan rental building, Tribeca Green, in February. “I signed up for it as soon as they offered it,” said Mr. Altman, who has lived in the building since 2005. “It’s easy, it’s automatic and it’s convenient.” Mr. Altman, a financial adviser at Merrill Lynch, said the program suited him because he always paid his rent on time and always paid off his credit card in full. “If you pay your rent on time, you might as well do it this way and get the points,” said Mr. Altman, who estimated that his monthly rent would accumulate enough points to qualify for several free airline tickets a year. “You’re just writing the check to a different place.” Mr. Altman said he would definitely sign up for the mortgage option if he purchased a home. “Who doesn’t love points?” he asked. For homeowners with no liquidity problems, the credit card program is similar to an interest-free loan, said Nessa Feddis, a lawyer with the American Bankers Association. “Basically, you’re paying your mortgage with your credit card on one date, and then you don’t have to actually have to pay it off until a couple of weeks later.” The program could also be a short-term solution for homeowners and renters facing temporary money problems because of an illness or unexpected expense, Ms. Feddis said. “It’s useful in an emergency.” But, said Paul Miller, managing director at the FBR Group, those who are not making a payment out of their income will probably default on the loan at some point. “If you need a credit card to make a house payment, you’re a very distressed borrower and most likely you’re going to run into trouble.” Anthony L. Ebers, IndyMac’s chief operating officer, emphasized that his bank offered the mortgage credit card program only to people with high credit scores and solid track records for paying their rent or mortgage on time. Since teaming up with American Express, he said, about 50 people have signed up for the program and none have defaulted on their payments. But Mr. Ebers said he continued to monitor the program closely. He said his company planned to meet with American Express on April 2, 2008, to assess the pilot program. Although the credit card mortgage programs try to weed out people with poor credit records, they do not eliminate them entirely. “You can always do a cash advance on your credit card and pay a mortgage that way,” said Vicki Vidal, senior director of government affairs at the Mortgage Bankers Association. “A lender can’t control that.” Statistics in Britain show that homeowners have already been tapping their cards. A British poll released in October indicated that more than a million households had used a credit card to make a monthly mortgage or rental payment in the last 12 months. The poll, conducted by British marketing research firm YouGov for Roof magazine, indicated that 6 percent of all households had used credit cards, with the highest percentage, 7.5 percent, among young people, age 18 to 24. In the United States, outstanding balances on credit cards rose 6 percent on average in the second quarter, which is double the quarterly average increase from 2002 to 2006, said Dennis Moroney, senior analyst at TowerGroup, a financial services research and advisory firm. This indicates people are either using their credit cards more often or they are using the cards for bigger expenses like mortgages and rents, he said. Mr. Moroney estimated that the average household currently holds six or seven credit cards. “There’s an enormous amount of credit cards out there that are held, but are not necessarily used right now,” he said. Consumers may start to take advantage of that, he added. Christopher J. Spoth, assistant director of supervision at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, said that it is important for credit card companies to monitor credit card balances and rescore people regularly. “There are a lot of people walking around with 16 credit cards in their wallet,” he said. “That’s clearly a potential risk and why credit card providers need to monitor that.”

Credit
Housing
Mortgages
Credit and Money Cards
Renting and Leasing
Banks and Banking
Finances
American Express Company
Visa International Inc


Muni Bond Issuers, Too, Need Help After Sandy

Abstract: IT’S going to take a long time to get over Sandy. For homeowners, towns, hospitals, school districts — on and on — the recovery is painfully slow. Everyone wants the rebuilding effort to go faster. But that takes money — something that many communities have precious little of. Sandy is likely to weigh on local governments and authorities that are already struggling. You might think that lightening this burden would be a top priority for Washington. But given our enormous federal deficit, dollars are scarce. Of course, the federal government will send cash to cover emergency costs. But if this turns out to be even more expensive than we thought, local resources will be depleted. Compounding the distress, economic activity is also likely to slow after the storm. Measuring the financial impact of an event like Sandy is imprecise. But a 2008 study by Eric Strobl, a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn, Germany, provides one benchmark. His analysis , “The Economic Growth Impact of Hurricanes: Evidence from U.S. Coastal Counties,” studied effects of storms going back to 1975. Analyzing 409 coastal counties in 19 Eastern and Southern states, he concluded that counties hit by a hurricane experienced a 0.8 percent decrease in annual economic growth initially. The year after a storm, Mr. Strobl said, these areas typically rebounded by about 0.2 percent. The net economic impact of these events, therefore, is a decline of 0.6 percent. That’s no small hit, he argued, because the average annual growth rate in these counties is around 1.68 percent. As economic activity slows, of course, state and local debt issuers that rely on revenue — think bridge and tunnel authorities and transit systems — experience lower cash flows. While an analysis by Fitch Ratings of 23 such issuers in Sandy’s path concluded that most have enough cash to cover potential shortfalls, Fitch also noted that federal emergency money could not be tapped to cover costs of improvements beyond predisaster status. And insurance policies don’t necessarily cover flood damage. MUNICIPAL finance experts say that larger cities and bigger debt issuers will be less imperiled by Sandy over the long term. But small towns could find it hard to bounce back because their tax rolls may be permanently reduced by the storm. That’s the view of Richard P. Larkin, director of credit analysis at Herbert J. Sims & Company in Iselin, N.J. “In some of these smaller towns that really got whacked, it may not make sense financially for everyone to rebuild,” he said. “When a small town loses a significant portion of its tax base, you wonder what will be left for it to pay its bills. There’s nothing on the books that says if a city is destroyed the state will assume the debt.” Municipalities clearly need all the help they can get right now. And John R. Mousseau, director of fixed income at Cumberland Advisors , an asset management firm in Sarasota, Fla., has three ideas for how to deliver much-needed assistance. First, Mr. Mousseau said, Congress should bring back Build America Bonds, the temporary program created during the credit crisis to raise money for new infrastructure projects. Almost $200 billion of these bonds were issued from April 2009 to the end of 2010 to build bridges, schools, public hospitals and housing. The federal government paid 35 percent of the interest on the bonds, and public debt issuers saved an estimated $20 billion in borrowing costs, the Treasury Department said. “Post-Sandy, you’re building and rebuilding a lot of stuff,” Mr. Mousseau said. “Maybe you don’t do it at a 35 percent subsidy, but it’s an effective way to lower costs for municipal governments. And the economic multiplier is far larger than that of any transfer payment.” Mr. Mousseau also urged Congress to lift the restriction barring issuers from being able to refund bonds now that mature in the years to come. This would let issuers shave costs by locking in today’s lower interest rates. By law, issuers can raise money to refund noncallable bonds only once before those bonds mature. During the financial crisis, however, Congress relaxed this law, letting issuers pay off so-called refunding issues a second time. “If the Port Authority years ago issued 5.5 percent bonds to refund an older 7 percent issue, those bonds may have years till they mature,” Mr. Mousseau said, referring to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. If Congress changed the law so that the Port Authority could refund that issue again today at 3 percent, it would save a significant amount in debt service costs. FINALLY, Mr. Mousseau said the storm’s effect on public finance issuers underscored the appeal of municipal bond banks that allow small towns or school districts to raise money faster and less expensively than through usual channels. States organize bond banks as independent authorities that combine numerous local debt issues into a single large deal. Bond banks have their own overseers, and ratings agencies analyze the banks’ creditworthiness, grading issues accordingly. In pooled deals, smaller issuers don’t have to pay for their own bond counsels and underwriters, reducing their costs. The offerings can come to market more quickly as well. Roughly a dozen states have bond banks — Maine , Vermont and Virginia are three. New Jersey and New York do not have a bond bank; if they did, smaller debt issuers would have an easier time raising money after Sandy, Mr. Mousseau said. “In these last days of a lame-duck Congress, I hope we’ll see them reach across the aisle, not only on the fiscal cliff but also on this problem that needs addressing,” Mr. Mousseau added. “People have been wiped out by Sandy, and it should not be business as usual. If things need to be sped up, whether it’s issuing bonds or getting utility trucks in place, we’ve got to do it.”

Local Government
New Jersey
Municipal Bonds
Hurricane Sandy (2012)
Disasters and Emergencies
New York State
House of Representatives
Senate
New York Metropolitan Area


If Plastic Surgery Won’t Convince You, What Will?

Abstract: PRAGUE — When Petra Kalivodova, a 31-year-old nurse, was considering whether to renew her contract at a private health clinic here, special perks helped clinch the deal: free German lessons, five weeks of vacation, and a range of plastic-surgery options, including complimentary silicone-enhanced breasts. “I would rather have plastic surgery than a free car,” said Ms. Kalivodova, who opted for cosmetic breast surgery that would normally cost €2,600, or about $3,500, as well as liposuction on her thighs and stomach. These were physical enhancements, she said, that she could not afford on her €1,000 a month salary. “I feel better when I look in the mirror,” she added. “We were always taught that if a nurse is nice, intelligent, loves her work and looks attractive, then patients will recover faster.” Critics lament the plastic surgery inducement, saying it is the most drastic sign of an acute nursing shortage that health officials say is undermining the Czech health-care system. In the past year alone, nearly 1,200 nurses have migrated to countries like Germany or Britain in search of better wages, according to the Czech Nurses Association. Health analysts estimate that this has contributed to a shortage of 5,000 nurses in an already overstretched public sector. The nursing shortage is part of a worrying global trend that doctors and nurses say is hurting patient care and potentially risking lives. In Britain, hospitals have been forced to temporarily eliminate dozens of beds because of the dearth of nurses, while in the United States, the government predicts there could be a shortage of one million nurses by 2016. In the Czech Republic, the lack of qualified nurses recently forced a hospital in Brno, the country’s largest city after Prague, to shut its intensive care unit. It is not just private clinics that are offering creative benefits in a country where the average monthly nurse’s wage, about €900, is less than that of a bus driver. Na Bulovce, a large state-funded hospital in Prague, lists incentives on its Web site that include lunch vouchers, child day care and “aesthetic operations at reduced prices.” Institutions across the country are offering incentives to attract nurses but the more expensive and exotic efforts have been largely limited to Prague, the capital. The offer of plastic surgery has infuriated some advocates for women’s rights, including Jirina Siklova, a gender studies expert and sociologist, who argued that motivating nurses with offers of breast implants amounted to turning them into “prostitutes.” “If any institution offers this incentive, then it has lost all credibility,” she said. “I would expect such behavior from an erotic salon — not from an institution devoted to health care.” While the plastic surgery perk does not appear to have been embraced in other European countries, in the Czech Republic — which has an obsession for female beauty pageants and where decades of communism shielded the Czechs from the political correctness that has prevailed in the west — the offer of free tummy tucks or remodeled breasts is considered by many of both sexes to be a generous inducement no different from offering a free trip to the Bahamas. Jiri Schweitzer, managing director of Iscare, the private surgery clinic where Ms. Kalivodova works as a surgical nurse, said there was nothing sexist about helping women look beautiful. He said that after months of struggling to attract qualified nurses, the plastic surgery offer had helped increase applications by 10 percent over the past three months. Under the incentive plan at Iscare, nurses can choose from an assortment of cosmetic surgical procedures, ranging from a €1,425 tummy tuck to a €1,300 face lift, in return for signing a three-year contract. Mr. Schweitzer said the cost of the surgical makeovers was less expensive than raising overall salaries. Of the 50 nurses working at the clinic, Mr. Schweitzer said 10 had opted for plastic surgery, while several more were considering it. One male doctor is also looking at getting liposuction. The incentive, Mr. Schweitzer added, had proven to be far more popular than the free German lessons. “It helps to improve the morale of both our employees and our patients,” he said. He noted that the need to recruit nurses to staff the plastic surgery department had become particularly acute because of a surge in demand for cosmetic procedures by women who said they hoped to improve their job prospects during the financial crisis. That contrasts with the trend across the Atlantic, where a recent report by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons noted that the recession had contributed to a nine percent decrease in plastic surgery procedures last year in the United States, including declines in breast augmentation, liposuction, eyelid surgery and tummy tucks. Irena Pejznochova, spokeswoman of the Czech Nurses Association, said she saw nothing wrong with hospitals offering free plastic surgery. “There is nothing degrading in this kind of benefit,” she said. She argued that innovative incentives were being introduced because nurses worked 12-hour shifts, were underpaid and could not even prescribe an aspirin without a doctor’s permission. “The problem is that the public still perceives nurses as they were represented in communist-era television shows: as low-level workers who emptied bed pans and cleaned hospital rooms,” she said. Whether undergoing plastic surgery will help improve their image is debatable. But nurses insist they are under enormous pressure to look good in a society where attractiveness is often as highly prized as clinical skills. Ms. Kalivodova recalled that at a recent interview for a nursing job, the male recruiter asked her to walk in a straight line, as if modeling on a catwalk. She argued that, since the Velvet Revolution that overthrew communism in 1989, women had ascended the corporate ladder. But she said this empowerment had also been accompanied by added social pressures — fanned by women’s fashion magazines and television — to be thin and attractive. She insisted, however, that the breast augmentation had been her choice alone. “People of my mother’s generation look down on me for getting the surgery,” she said. “I see it in their eyes. But I don’t care. I did this because I wanted to and I didn’t ask anyone’s permission, including my boyfriend.” Dr. Patrick Paulis, head of plastic surgery at the clinic, who himself recently underwent liposuction on his hips, said he had no reservations about offering the perk. He said he studiously warned patients about the potential side effects of plastic surgery — which can include leaking breasts and scar tissue — and stressed that nurses, more than most, were aware of the risks. “If you want to have good employees, you have to have good incentives, and we are offering free breasts,” he said. “Others could offer free Mercedes.” Dana Juraskova, the Czech minister of health and a former nurse, said in an interview that she would not favor free plastic surgery becoming a nationwide incentive. She said there were other ways to motivate nurses: for example, the recent introduction of a €1 fee for visiting a doctor — which spawned a national outcry in a country accustomed to free health care — had resulted in cost savings that were now being passed on to nurses, she said. Some nurses at the clinic said they were torn about whether to opt for surgery or something more pragmatic. “We all want to be sexy and to look good,” Linda Havranova, 33, said. But she added: “Surgery is cutting into the body, and there are risks. So for now, I would rather get a Peugeot car.”

Plastic Surgery
Czech Republic
Nursing and Nurses
Feminist Movement
Medicine and Health


Moktada al-Sadr Returns to Iraq

Abstract: BAGHDAD — Moktada al-Sadr , the populist cleric who emerged as the United States’ most enduring foe in Iraq , returned Wednesday after more than three years of voluntary exile in Iran in a homecoming that embodied his and his movement’s transition from battling in the streets to occupying the halls of power. “Long live the leader!” supporters shouted as a grayer Mr. Sadr made his way from the airport in the holy city of Najaf to his home and then to prayers at the gold-domed Shrine of Imam Ali, one of the most sacred places in Shiite Islam. Supporters there hailed his return as another show of strength for a movement that is now more powerful than at any time since the United States invaded in 2003. “We’re proving to everyone that we’re an important part of Iraq and its politics,” said Jawad Kadhum, a lawmaker with Mr. Sadr’s movement. Simply by setting foot in Iraq, the mercurial and enigmatic Mr. Sadr complicated the nation’s byzantine politics. He is the rare Iraqi figure who can compete in stature with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki , and the dealings between Mr. Maliki, the arch politician, and Mr. Sadr, the rabble-rousing cleric, may prove a compelling political drama in the year ahead. Mr. Sadr’s return certainly adds another challenge for the United States, given its fear of his movement’s influence and his steadfast opposition to American policies . Symbolically, at least, his arrival serves as a resonant climax to the resurgence of a movement whose demise has been forecast as often as rain in Iraq’s winter. Claiming the legacy of Mr. Sadr’s revered father , Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, who was assassinated in 1999, the group forged a martial culture and became one of the most implacable enemies of the American occupation, fighting the United States military twice in 2004. Four years later, the movement was at a nadir: With Mr. Sadr in exile and his militias blamed for some of the war’s worst sectarian carnage, the Iraqi military, with decisive American help, vanquished the group in Baghdad and Basra, Iraq’s second largest city. The divided movement itself seemed a spent force. But in local elections in 2009, it made impressive gains, foreshadowing the remarkable discipline it showed in national elections last year. The 40 seats it won — second only to Mr. Maliki’s bloc among the Shiite majority — brought it to the center of Iraqi politics and, to its supporters at least, signaled the group’s transition from a militia force to a mainstream political group. Mr. Sadr’s surprise decision in August to support Mr. Maliki, his longtime antagonist, for a second term as prime minister effectively decided the election in Mr. Maliki’s favor. Mr. Sadr’s followers exacted repayment in critical government posts. “His presence in Iraq, it will strengthen the resolve of our Sadrist brothers to serve the people of Iraq,” said Muhammad al-Khafaji, a former bodyguard of Mr. Sadr’s who won a seat in the election. Mr. Sadr is a vastly different figure than when he left in 2007 to pursue his clerical studies — and to avoid an arrest warrant for the killing of a rival cleric in 2003. In his early days, he was often derided as too young, even dimwitted, and his physical appearance — he is squat and pudgy — did little to inspire confidence. The man who appeared on Wednesday had aged, with gray streaking his beard, and he seemed to stride with more confidence. In recent public statements, it appears that he has overcome the awkwardness he displayed in 2003. He now delivers his speeches in a refined, if simple and deliberate Arabic. It was unclear whether Mr. Sadr would still face criminal charges. Mr. Kadhum, the Sadrist lawmaker, said there was no warrant for the cleric’s arrest. “That was just from the previous government to target the Sadrists, to take us away from the political process,” Mr. Kadhum said. Hussain al-Saffi, a lawmaker from Mr. Maliki’s bloc, said the government had “no intention or inclination to raise any legal issues related to Mr. Moktada.” There were conflicting reports, too, about whether Mr. Sadr’s return was permanent or merely a visit. Even some of his own supporters seemed unsure. “It’s up to His Eminence to stay permanently in Najaf or go back to Iran,” said Balqis al-Khafaji, who was a Sadrist candidate. Mr. Sadr’s return from Qum, a seat of Shiite scholarship in Iran, had long been rumored. In the weeks before the elections, many of his supporters were convinced that it was imminent. There was no advance word of his trip on Wednesday, and many of his followers learned of his arrival from television reports. If he stays in Iraq, his impact on politics, at least in the short term, may be more symbolic than real. The movement has performed well in his absence, with its delegates impressing even the movement’s critics with their skills in the negotiations that led to the formation of the government last month. One analyst suggested that the success of an emerging Sadrist leadership inside Iraq might have motivated Mr. Sadr to come back. “The return has major political significance,” said Hazem al-Amin, a writer with the Arabic newspaper Al Hayat in Beirut. “His party is becoming stronger and bigger, and the need for him to preside over it has grown, especially since there is fear that new leaders within the party could surpass him.” At the very least, Mr. Sadr becomes one of the few national leaders with the grass-roots support to compete with Mr. Maliki, whom Mr. Sadr’s supporters had derided only recently as an heir to Saddam Hussein and an American lackey. Mr. Sadr’s support for the prime minister came with a high price : hundreds of his followers were released from prison, and the movement was given leadership of a province, positions in the security forces and control of some ministries. The Sadr-Maliki rivalry may become more intense as the deadline nears for all United States troops to withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2011. Some American officials have suggested that Mr. Maliki would be open to an extension for at least some troops — a position that Mr. Sadr would almost certainly refuse. The perception of Mr. Sadr as a wild card has led some of his supporters to worry that his return may incite strife. And while, for many, he captured the voice of populist anger against the American occupation, he remains — especially to Iraq’s Sunni minority — synonymous with the black-clad death squads of 2006-7. “I don’t think Moktada will bring good with him to Iraq,” said Muhammad al-Adhami, a government worker in Adhamiya, a largely Sunni area in Baghdad.

Iraq
Sadr Moktada Al-
Shiite Muslims
Maliki Nuri Kamal al-
Politics and Government


Sabathia Flirts With Perfection Before Settling for 15th Win

Abstract: David Cone was in the Yankees ’ clubhouse Tuesday afternoon, showing a group of fans around as part of some charity work. Everywhere he went, he was greeted warmly, with players and coaches and staff shaking his hand and smiling. Cone was part of four championship teams with the Yankees, but he is remembered, as much as anything else, for his one day of perfection: July 18, 1999, when he retired all 27 Montreal Expos he faced in pitching only the third perfect game in franchise history. For much of Tuesday night, it felt like that tiny club might grow by one. Hours after Cone’s tour, C. C. Sabathia did not allow a base runner through six and a third innings before ultimately settling for establishing a career high with 14 strikeouts as the Yankees beat the Seattle Mariners , 4-1 , in a bizarre game where the weather may have been the biggest opponent of all. From the beginning, the game appeared to be like the worst kind of boxing mismatch: Sabathia played the role of the heavyweight, bidding for his league-leading 15th victory of the season, while the Mariners were the overwhelmed featherweights, flailing away as they desperately tried to avoid their 17th consecutive defeat. The tale of the tape proved true as Sabathia shredded the Mariners hitters, throwing 37 of his first 44 pitches for strikes and striking out four in the first three innings. The Mariners were not just failing to get hits; they were struggling to even make solid contact off Sabathia. “He looked unhittable,” third baseman Eric Chavez said. Sabathia was only warming up. He struck out the side in the fourth and fifth innings, then struck out Mike Carp leading off the sixth, his seventh strikeout in a row, one short of the American League record. As Greg Halman settled into the batter’s box, however, a light rain suddenly turned heavy and the third-base umpire Jerry Layne waved his arms to signal a suspension of play. The fans booed, but Sabathia accepted the decision quietly, walking off the mound with only a cursory glance over his shoulder. History was still on his side; after all, Cone sat through a 33-minute rain delay during his perfect game , and he did it after Don Larsen had thrown out the ceremonial first pitch that day. With Cone already having made an appearance, perhaps the rain would only add to the symmetry for Sabathia. It did not. Manager Joe Girardi said he never considered removing Sabathia during the first delay, and so Sabathia returned to the mound after a 30-minute wait only to see the magic leave him shortly thereafter. He retired the first two hitters after the stoppage to end the sixth, but after striking out Ichiro Suzuki leading off the seventh, Sabathia fell behind, 2-0, for the first time all game before Seattle shortstop Brendan Ryan lined a clean single to left field for the Mariners’ only hit. Catcher Francisco Cervelli hesitated when asked if he second-guessed the pitch selection that led to the hit, but Sabathia said he was comfortable with throwing a two-seam fastball in that situation and had no regrets. For his part, Ryan admitted he felt fortunate. “He’s always got Sabathia stuff, but today, that was by far the best I’ve ever seen him pitch,” Ryan said. “I almost feel disrespectful saying that, because we all know what he’s capable of. But when you’re locating the fastball and the way he was throwing that slider, stealing strikes with curveballs here and there. I mean, he was absolutely filthy.” Sabathia’s teammates agreed, and several did not hesitate to say that they believe the rain played a significant role in denying Sabathia a place in history. “Since the first inning, I had in my mind, ‘no-hitter, no-hitter,’ ” Cervelli said. Chavez added: “There’s no doubt in my mind. If he could have gone right through, he would have thrown a no-hitter.” It was not to be. When Ryan’s hit landed, the fans at Yankee Stadium groaned. Derek Jeter, who saw the ball sail high over his glove, slumped his shoulders. And Sabathia, typically unflappable, yanked at the bill of his cap. He would not become the third major league pitcher this season to throw a no-hitter and, unlike many pitchers who say they are unaware of how many hits they have allowed, Sabathia was not afraid to concede that he knew it. “It’s hard not to,” he said. “You know you haven’t pitched out of the stretch. Anyone who says they don’t know is lying.” As it turned out, Sabathia did not even record the second complete-game one-hitter of his career. The rain returned during the seventh-inning stretch, and another delay — this time a brief 14 minutes — ensued. With a 3-0 lead courtesy of Curtis Granderson ’s 28th home run and runs batted in from Chavez (playing his first game since May 5) and Jeter, it seemed reasonable to assume that the second stoppage would end Sabathia’s night; sitting for long periods between action is unnatural for pitchers. Girardi, however, had other ideas. He said the shortness of the second delay was akin to Sabathia waiting through a long inning, and so Sabathia returned to the mound in the eighth. He promptly walked the bases loaded, turning what had been a comfortable game into something less savory for the Yankees. Girardi was then forced to pull Sabathia, who trudged off the mound to lusty cheers but with the game still in the balance. The right-hander Dave Robertson did well to retire all three hitters he faced, and Mark Teixeira restored the three-run advantage for the Yankees with a home run in the bottom of the eighth, helping to ensure that such an impressive performance from Sabathia would not be ruined. Still, when Mariano Rivera followed Robertson’s clean inning with a one-two-three ninth of his own, it was, in some ways, a bit of a cruel coda: For on a night where it had seemed for so long that Sabathia would be perfect, he finished the game as the only Yankees pitcher who was not.

Seattle Mariners
Baseball
New York Yankees
Sabathia C C
Teixeira Mark
Granderson Curtis


After Cubs, Baker Feels the Love in Cincinnati

Abstract: CINCINNATI — For a certain segment of Cubs fans, a look at the National League Central standings early last week was doubly distressing: The Cubs were in fifth place, seven games under .500 and closer to last place than to first, and the Cincinnati Reds held the division lead. The Reds? Is there a problem? They’re one of baseball’s proudest organizations — you don’t have to be a geezer to recall the Big Red Machine — and in some quarters the Reds’ rise is a feel-good story. They’re a small-market franchise, nine years without a winning season, and they hadn’t sampled first place in mid-May since 1996. But now their manager is Dusty Baker , the former Cubs skipper, whose approval rating took a Blagojevich-like dive during the four years he spent as a Wrigley Field lightning rod for the team’s fluctuating fortunes. His critics out-shouted his fans by the time he was let go after the 2006 season. “I don’t miss Chicago at all,” Baker said during a recent conversation in his office at Great American Ballpark. “I’m a man, and I understand that criticism comes with the job. But it got personal with me, from a lot of people who didn’t even know me.” Baker spoiled Cubs fans with early and unexpected success. In 2003, he took over a 67-win team and guided it to a division title and a victory over the Braves in the division series playoffs, the Cubs’ first taste of postseason success since 1908. “In Dusty We Trusty” T-shirts were in vogue throughout Wrigleyville. But it started going bad against the Marlins in the eighth inning of Game 6 of the National League Championship series. With the Cubs just five outs away from their first World Series since 1945, the foul-ball incident — for which the spectator Steve Bartman is chronically and wrongfully blamed — instigated a two-night collapse that was the beginning of the end for Baker. Despite the addition of Derrek Lee and Greg Maddux, the Cubs missed the playoffs in 2004 as petty sniping at broadcasters and umpires punctuated another late-season collapse. Lee’s broken wrist sabotaged the 2005 season, and the Cubs were too feeble, top to bottom, to challenge in ’06. Mark Prior’s fragile shoulder, Corey Patterson’s puzzling decline, Joe Borowski’s total flameout, Todd Walker’s iron glove — Baker was blamed for all of it. And some even say he pitched that privatized parking scheme to Mayor Richard M. Daley on his way out of town. Baker spent 2007 as an ESPN analyst. He enjoyed the work but missed the competition and was eager to get back in the dugout when the Reds called before the 2008 season. Cincinnati can be hard on managers: the Reds had been through eight since Lou Piniella’s departure in 1992. But Baker saw a chance to restore the reputation he built as a three-time manager of the year in San Francisco, where his Giants were consistently in contention and the fans ate up his California-cool persona. “Some guys never got another chance after Chicago,” Baker said. “The criticism there tends to stick, for some reason.” Baker will be 61 next month. His hair is a little grayer, his demeanor slightly more guarded than it was in Chicago — the experience there burned him. His father died in November, and he misses Johnnie B. Baker Sr.’s wise counsel. But he’s fully engaged with a team he believes in and enjoys being around as it exceeds expectations. “We’ve been trying to build something for a couple of years,” Baker said. “Everybody wants it built right now, but it takes time.” Chicago critics faulted Baker for being illogically loyal to older players — hello, Neifi Perez — and for a cavalier approach to fundamental baseball. He scoffs at the stereotypes. Old hands Scott Rolen and Orlando Cabrera provide needed stability, but the engine driving the Reds is an under-30 nucleus of Joey Votto, Jay Bruce, Drew Stubbs and Brandon Phillips. Starting pitchers Homer Bailey, Johnny Cueto and Mike Leake are 20-somethings as well. The Reds recently went 11 games without committing an error and have the National League’s highest fielding percentage. They run the bases with effective aggression, best in the league at going from first to third on singles. “Dusty has set a good tone for this team,” said left fielder Jonny Gomes, whose three-run, eighth-inning homer beat Milwaukee on Monday night. “We’re playing hard, but we’re playing loose and relaxed and getting good results.” The schedule hasn’t been easy — 18 of the Reds’ first 37 games were against the Cardinals (9), Cubs (6) and Dodgers (3). They moved into first place by taking two out of three from St. Louis last weekend, securing Saturday’s win by throwing out the tying run at home plate on the final play of the game. On Tuesday, Rolen’s two-run pinch-hit homer off closer Trevor Hoffman tied Milwaukee in the ninth inning, and Votto followed with a game-winning double. Baker, a veteran of eight postseason campaigns as a player and manager, knows better than to get carried away in May. “We don’t know how good we are because we haven’t played everybody,” Baker said. “But we’re enjoying this. It’s been exciting, very exciting.” Baker was referring to the Reds’ 10 victories in their final at-bat, but excitement cuts both ways. They lost in Atlanta Thursday on a pinch-hit walk-off grand slam and fell out of first place. It’s a long season.


A Mark on Baseball That Continues to Grow Darker

Abstract: An aide could have called Commissioner Bud Selig on Friday and said, “Sir, I have good news and bad news for you.” “Let me have the good news first,” Selig might have replied. “I could use some good news today.” “O.K., Mr. Selig. The good news is the feds in San Francisco have nailed a former Mets clubhouse kid as a big-time steroids distributor to major league players, and as part of his plea agreement with the government, he will cooperate with George Mitchell’s investigation and give him the names of the players he sold steroids to.” “That’s a big break for Mitchell,” Selig replied. “Now tell me the bad news.” “The feds in Frisco have nailed a former Mets clubhouse kid as a big-time steroids distributor to major league players, and as part of his plea agreement with the government, he will give George Mitchell the names of the players he sold steroids to.”  The conversation never took place, but even fictionally it reflects the quandary facing Major League Baseball. The last thing Selig wants is a Kirk Radomski to come forward and name names of players past and present whom he supplied with steroids. Even if the names don’t surface — the government, it should be noted, has never disclosed or leaked any names in any investigation — the stain is there, indelibly embedded in the game’s fabric. In his consideration of Pete Rose’s application for reinstatement from the permanently ineligible list, Selig has always had to be concerned about the possibility that as soon as he lifted the ban, a new development would come to light about Rose’s baseball betting, embarrassing baseball all over again. With steroids, Selig might have hoped the incriminating evidence would end with Balco and Barry Bonds. That was bad enough because it focused on the man who will soon become the career home run leader. But in these matters, there is always a Kirk Radomski lurking in the weeds. Someone was quoted Friday as saying that after Balco, Radomski was the man to see about steroids and other performance-enhancing substances. But like the baseball cocaine cases in the 1980s, it is highly likely that other Kirk Radomskis are in other patches of weeds, and just when baseball would think it was safe to go outdoors again, another would pop up. Is there any reason to think a former clubhouse kid — and baseball has plenty of clubhouse kids — from another clubhouse didn’t build himself a business of selling stuff to players? Give Radomski credit. He did it the American way. He worked in the Mets’ clubhouse for a decade and made enough contacts that he could go into business for himself and use those contacts to create a potentially flourishing business. Stick with it long enough, and maybe the competition will encounter problems and go out of business. This is the entrepreneurial spirit. America was built on such things. Give the kid a pat on the back and send him on his way — except don’t stop at Go but go directly to jail. You don’t get a get-out-jail-free card, but you do get a card that will let you out of jail earlier if you provide a list of your customers. On the other side of the steroids coin, the Mitchell investigation has its first big break. Mitchell and his people have been quiet about their efforts, but it is believed that they have had difficulty getting players to talk to them. It’s understandable that players would be reluctant to talk to Mitchell. Even if a player never used a performance-enhancing substance, the Mitchell men would ask if he knew of any player who did. If the player did know of such players, he would be reluctant to name them. In getting names from Radomski, on the other hand, Mitchell isn’t guaranteed anything. The Radomski list will give Mitchell leads, but why should those players talk to Mitchell? He can’t force them to talk because he has no subpoena power, and they would only be putting themselves in jeopardy with the law. Yes, the feds have the names, but there’s a difference between having names, and even checks, and a person’s admission that he used. That’s why the United States Attorney’s office has not indicted Bonds and is still waiting for his former trainer to tell what he knows about Bonds’s alleged use of steroids.  Anything a player would tell Mitchell would subject him to a subpoena by the government. Players who tell Mitchell of their purchase and use of steroids would be incriminating themselves before the law. If the Radomski-named players refuse to talk, Mitchell could threaten to take the matter to a Congressional committee, which does have subpoena power. Then baseball’s dirty laundry would be out in public for all to see. That’s not what Selig wants, but it’s what he could get.

Baseball
Steroids
Major League Baseball
Athletics and Sports
New York Mets
Selig Bud
Mitchell George


Four Wounded in Upper Manhattan Shooting

Abstract: Three men and a woman were shot in and around an Upper Manhattan deli on Wednesday afternoon, the police said. The gunfire erupted just before 3:30 p.m. inside the Twenty Stars Deli on 132nd Street near Madison Avenue, the police said; a 17-year-old man was shot in the upper torso and a 25-year-old man was grazed in the neck and left arm. Outside the deli, two more people were struck by bullets, the police said: A 43-year-old man was hit in the neck and cheek, and a 24-year-old woman was grazed in the arm. All of the victims were taken to Harlem Hospital Center , the Fire Department said. The Police Department said late Wednesday that the four victims were in stable condition. No arrests had been made as of Wednesday night. The police said it was not immediately clear how many gunmen had been involved. The four floors above the deli, the windows covered with plywood, appeared abandoned. A group of residents of the Lincoln Houses, across the street from the deli, had been seated in an interior courtyard of the housing development when they said they heard a half-dozen gunshots. A moment later, they said, a man came running into the courtyard. The residents scattered as the man collapsed. Several police precincts in northern Manhattan have seen a rise in shootings this year though the 25th Precinct, where the shooting occurred on Wednesday, had recorded only four shootings through Sunday, down from eight over the same period in 2014. Gun violence across the city has increased for a second consecutive year . Savasia James, who lives near the site of the shooting, said she was in her apartment when she heard four gunshots, then a pause, then three more. Ms. James, 40, said she knew one of the victims, a lifelong resident of the neighborhood. “He’s a sweet, sweet guy,” she said. “I’m very hurt,” she added. I’m very distraught.” The deli where the shooting occurred is a local hangout, according to residents. They said that turf-related violence frequently occurs on that corner. A woman driving by the scene on Wednesday night shouted out her car window to ask what had happened. Someone standing in the crosswalk called back, “Shooting.” The woman responded, “Again?”

Manhattan
Police
Harlem
Murders and Homicides
Assault
Fire Department NYC
NYPD
NYC