Nonfiction Curriculum Enhanced Reading Skills in New York City Schools

Abstract: Children in New York City who learned to read using an experimental curriculum that emphasized nonfiction texts outperformed those at other schools that used methods that have been encouraged since the Bloomberg administration ’s early days, according to a new study to be released Monday. For three years, a pilot program tracked the reading ability of approximately 1,000 students at 20 New York City schools, following them from kindergarten through second grade. Half of the schools adopted a curriculum designed by the education theorist E. D. Hirsch Jr. ’s Core Knowledge Foundation . The other 10 used a variety of methods, but most fell under the definition of “balanced literacy,” an approach that was spread citywide by former Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein , beginning in 2003. The study found that second graders who were taught to read using the Core Knowledge program scored significantly higher on reading comprehension tests than did those in the comparison schools. It also tested children on their social studies and science knowledge, and again found that the Core Knowledge pupils came out ahead. Citywide, budget cuts and the drive to increase scores on the state reading and math exams have led many elementary and middle schools to whittle down their social studies and science instruction. “This data shows a promising option for principals to consider,” said Josh Thomases, the deputy chief academic officer for the city’s Education Department . He said the new curriculum could be useful in helping achieve the new learning targets, known as the Common Core, that New York and most other states have adopted. “As we align curricula and materials with the new Common Core Standards, we look forward to working with this group and others toward a higher standard,” he said. The pilot program and study were started in the 2008-9 school year by Mr. Klein, who worried that students suffered from what he called a “knowledge deficit.” The study was conducted by the Education Department and paid for with $2.4 million in private donations raised by the Fund for Public Schools, a charity that supports department initiatives. But city officials said it was not an indication that balanced literacy methods should be abandoned. And several proponents of the longstanding approach, including Carmen Fariña, a former deputy chancellor, said the study focused on too few schools to be used in policy decisions. “I think it’s a very problematic study,” said Lucy Calkins, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College and an architect of the city’s balanced literacy program. “As far as I can tell, they gave resources to 10 schools to support content literacy and then they tested all of the schools on content literacy,” she said, adding that there was no way of knowing with what fidelity the 10 comparison schools were using a form of balanced literacy. Dr. Hirsch is the author of a number of books on education, including “Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know,” a best seller based on the idea that American schools were teaching children to read in a vacuum, without introducing the background knowledge the children would need to digest higher-level material. The book drew criticism for its insistence that having a common body of knowledge was the basis for America’s national culture. When he introduced the Core Knowledge pilot program, Mr. Klein said he hoped it could be used to raise eighth graders’ reading scores, which were lagging behind the fourth graders’ gains. The study found that for each of the three years, students in the Core Knowledge program had greater one-year gains on a brief reading test than their peers in the comparison schools. The difference was most pronounced in kindergarten, when the scores of children following Dr. Hirsch’s method showed increases that were five times those of their peers. By the third year, they were still posting higher scores, but the differences were not as wide. Between the fall and spring of last year, their scores rose 2.5 scale score points, compared with an average gain of 0.9 points in the comparison group. The scale score is based on the number of questions answered correctly, combined with the degree of difficulty of those questions. On the TerraNova standardized tests on social studies and science, the Core Knowledge students outperformed the comparison group, but on a test of oral reading comprehension and vocabulary their scores were not significantly different. Under the balanced literacy approach, which was used by seven of the comparison schools and remains the most popular method of teaching reading in the city’s schools, children are encouraged to develop a love of reading by choosing books that are of interest to them. Teachers spend less time directing instruction, and more time overseeing students as they work together. Reading nonfiction writing is the key component of the Core Knowledge curriculum, which is based on the theory that children raised reading storybooks will lack the necessary background and vocabulary to understand history and science texts. While the curriculum allows children to read fiction, it also calls on them to knowledgeably discuss weather patterns, the solar system, and how ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia compare. The curriculum may have a particular appeal for city schools beginning to adopt the Common Core standards, which emphasize nonfiction reading and will go into effect in 2014. The Education Department plans to solicit bids from companies interested in creating textbooks, for students of all grades, that will be based on the standards. Of the teachers and administrators who were surveyed about the pilot program, 72 percent said they were “very satisfied” or “somewhat satisfied” with the curriculum. “I like balanced literacy, I do; I think that it works well, especially for children who are coming into school having been read to every single day,” said Katie Grady, principal of Public School 104 in Far Rockaway, Queens. Her school began using elements of Core Knowledge in 2006, under Kathleen M. Cashin, a veteran superintendent who was an early adopter of Dr. Hirsch’s approach, with its heavy emphasis on basic knowledge. “For my children, who are economically disadvantaged, they needed something more, and the Core Knowledge pilot had it,” Ms. Grady said. Of the nearly 700 students enrolled at her school last year, 88 percent met the city’s definition of poverty.

New York City
Core Knowledge Foundation
Education (K-12)
Reading and Writing Skills
Klein Joel I
Hirsch E D Jr
Tests and Examinations
Education Department (NYC)
Bloomberg Michael R


Yankees’ Masahiro Tanaka Throws

Abstract: Yankees pitcher Masahiro Tanaka, who had arthroscopic surgery to remove a bone spur from his right elbow in October, threw off a bullpen mound in New York.

Yankees
Masahiro Tanaka
Baseball
Sports injury


Indiana Will Allow Entry to Medicaid for a Price

Abstract: WASHINGTON — After a lengthy back-and-forth, the Obama administration has agreed to let Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, a Republican, expand Medicaid on his own terms, including some that have not been allowed before under federal rules. The plan will extend coverage to an additional 350,000 Indiana residents with incomes of up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level — about $16,100 for a single person and $27,310 for a family of three — starting next month. As in the 27 other states that have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government will cover the entire cost through this year and at least 90 percent in future years. But Mr. Pence, like several Republican governors before him, insisted on adding a conservative twist to the expansion, mostly by requiring beneficiaries to pay something toward their coverage. Under his plan, most people will have to pay monthly premiums equaling 2 percent of their household income — between about $3 and $25 a month for a single childless adult — for coverage that includes dental and vision benefits. At the Obama administration’s insistence, people who earn less than the poverty level will not have to pay premiums. But if they do not, their coverage will be downgraded to exclude dental and vision benefits. And they will owe co-payments for medical care, including $4 for a doctor’s visit and $75 for a hospitalization. “There are a lot of first-in-the-nation aspects to this,” Mr. Pence said in an interview. “It gives Hoosiers the dignity to pay for their own health insurance, and that transaction is important to starting people on a path toward really embracing greater ownership of their health care.” In another unusual concession, the Obama administration will let Indiana lock some people out of coverage for six months if they stop paying monthly premiums. This provision will not apply to people earning less than the poverty level or to those deemed “medically frail.” Still, it is a first for Medicaid coverage, which has not permitted lockout periods until now. Advocates for the poor said they feared the concessions granted to Indiana would prompt other states to seek similar requirements for Medicaid enrollees. Robert Restuccia, the executive director of Community Catalyst, a health care advocacy group based in Boston, said the Obama administration should “wait for conclusive evidence of the impact of these policies in Indiana before deciding whether or not to approve them in other states.” Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families, called the Indiana plan “enormously complicated” and questioned the fairness of withholding dental and vision coverage from those who cannot come up with premium payments. “It’s terrific that Indiana is moving forward and extending coverage,” she said, “but the structure of this agreement means that many eligible poor adults won’t be able to access all the services they need.” Still, advocates of the Affordable Care Act said the agreement was a win for the Obama administration, not least because Mr. Pence is a high-profile Republican and possible presidential candidate whose decision to accept Medicaid expansion funds under the divisive law could give other conservative states cover to do so. Mr. Pence’s plan is actually a modified version of an existing state health insurance program, the Healthy Indiana Plan, which uses a mix of state and federal money to cover about 60,000 residents who live below the poverty line but are not eligible for Medicaid. Until now, unless they were disabled or pregnant, adults qualified for Medicaid in Indiana only if they had young children and earned less than 25 percent of the poverty level, or about $4,500 a year for a family of three. A handful of other states have won federal permission to charge premiums to people in the Medicaid expansion population. In Iowa, those above the poverty line are expected to contribute $10 a month in premiums; those making 50 to 100 percent of the poverty line are supposed to pay $5 a month. In Michigan, those making more than the poverty level have to pay 2 percent of their income in premiums. The Republican governors of Tennessee, Utah and Wyoming are also pushing for alternative Medicaid expansions that would charge premiums to some enrollees. “It’s just common sense that when people take greater ownership of their health care,” Mr. Pence said, “they make better choices.”

Indiana
Medicaid
Mike Pence
Health Insurance
Obamacare,Affordable Care Act


A Private Equity Tax Tactic May Not Be Legal - High & Low Finance

Abstract: “ Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one’s taxes.” — Judge Learned Hand, 1934 That quotation has become sacred to opponents of taxes, and has often been invoked this year to rebut criticism of Mitt Romney for paying relatively low tax rates. But nothing in it says the government is required to make it possible to avoid paying taxes. Nor does it provide that all efforts to avoid taxes are legal. In fact, the appeals court ruling by Judge Hand concluded that the taxpayer — who had concocted an elaborate scheme to convert ordinary income into capital gains, and therefore pay less in taxes — had violated the law. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld Judge Hand’s decision . Certainly there is a rule saying that a motive to avoid taxes is permissible, wrote Justice George Sutherland, but that was irrelevant because the strategy used by the taxpayer “upon its face lies outside the plain intent of the statute. To hold otherwise would be to exalt artifice above reality and to deprive the statutory provision in question of all serious purpose.” There is no evidence that Mr. Romney has violated the law. The principal means he used to pay low taxes on his hundreds of millions of dollars in income was the technique known as carried interest, which allows managers of private equity funds to treat most of the fees they receive for running the funds as capital gains rather than ordinary income. The technique strikes some — including President Obama — as outrageous, but it is legal under current law. Unless and until the Congress changes the law, Mr. Romney has every right to take advantage of the technique. But there is a related tactic to avoid taxes that is used by some private equity firms, including Bain Capital, whose legality is less clear. The Internal Revenue Service has not challenged it — at least not publicly — but some legal scholars say it is not justified, and some private equity firms have not chosen to use it. The fact that Bain uses the technique became public last month when the Gawker Web site posted annual reports from a number of Bain funds in which Mr. Romney, or his family trusts, have interests. It is clear that some Bain partners saved hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes from its use, but the Romney campaign says he did not benefit from it personally. The technique is complicated — I’ll get to the details later — but the effect is not. It concerns the management fees that sponsors of private equity funds, such as Bain Capital, are paid. Those fees are separate from the fund profits that the managers are able to treat as carried interest. Instead of paying ordinary income taxes on those fees, the partners and employees of the fund sponsors pay taxes at much lower capital gains rates. In fact, they do even better than that. In some cases, they defer paying those capital gains taxes for years, itself a substantial benefit. How good a deal is that? Annual reports from 2009 for four Bain funds showed that over the years the funds converted $1.05 billion in management fees from ordinary income into capital gains. That directly benefited the Bain partners who shared in the management fees. Assuming they paid the capital gains tax of 15 percent, rather than the ordinary income tax rate of 35 percent, they saved about $210 million in income taxes and $28 million more in Medicare taxes. And that reflects what happened at a few funds run by one manager. All told, it is likely that private equity and venture capital fund managers save billions each year. They do this through the technique of waiving the management fees and converting them into a preferred profit standing in the funds. The deals are structured so that they are all but certain to get the payout, assuming the fund makes money in any quarter, even if it loses money over all. If they took the money out then — and some do — they would pay capital gains taxes immediately. But even that is more than many managers are willing to do. At many private equity funds, managers are required to put up more money, along with other investors, whenever the fund makes an acquisition. The managers use the waived management fee to make the required investment, and defer paying any taxes on it. When that investment eventually is withdrawn, perhaps years later when the fund liquidates, the manager owes taxes on the management fee, but at the low 15 percent capital gains rate. Some tax experts think the I.R.S. could win if it challenged the practice. “It is not legal,” said Victor Fleisher, a tax law professor at the University of Colorado, in an interview this week. He noted that different money managers used variations, some of which he said were less likely than others to withstand an audit. “Bain,” he said, “is on the aggressive end of this.” In an article that appeared in the journal Tax Notes in 2009 , Gregg D. Polsky, a tax law professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law who formerly worked in the I.R.S. office of chief counsel, said he believed the I.R.S. had good arguments that would be likely to prevail in court. In a statement issued by the Romney campaign, Brad Malt, the trustee for Romney’s blind trusts, said the tactic was “a common, accepted and totally legal practice,” although Mr. Romney had never used it personally. One manager of private equity funds, Apollo Global Management, wants to have it both ways. As a public company, it wants to persuade investors that it has steady fee income. So it shows the waived management fees as ordinary income in the financial statements it files with the Securities and Exchange Commission. But those same reports disclose that it passes the deferred fees on to its partners and employees, who take advantage of the tax benefits. It is quite possible that the maneuver is legal under current tax law, and that Bain and Apollo acted completely appropriately to arrange their affairs to make the taxes owed by their partners and employees as low as possible. Even if the I.R.S. and the courts eventually concluded otherwise, that would not indicate the funds had done anything wrong in asserting the position. But it is hard for me to see the difference between that and an arrangement under which my employer invested, on my behalf, money that it would otherwise have to pay me for writing this column. Then I would tell the I.R.S. that I owed no taxes until I liquidated the investment, and even then would pay only capital gains rates. If I tried that, I could not get away with it. If the law lets those who work in private equity do it, Congress should change the law. At the same time, it should end the carried-interest dodge. Managers are being paid for their services when they receive a share of profits from the fund. The amount may be based on profits, but that is no different from the situation at normal companies that pay bonuses based on company earnings. It is compensation, and should be taxed as such. Mr. Romney’s former colleagues in private equity may come to regret his candidacy, whether or not he wins. Few in the public understood this particular maneuver before the Bain reports were disclosed. Now many do. If and when Congress decides to reform the tax law, this area is likely to be a prime target.

Private Equity
Income Tax
Capital Gains Tax
Romney Mitt
Presidential Election of 2012


In New York, Concern the Mob May Seek a Cut of the Stimulus Pie

Abstract: Everybody is looking for stimulus money. From bridge builders to food stamp recipients, from roofers to subway riders, from teachers to housing project residents, people are eager to feel some part of a tidal wave of federal dollars in their lives. The mob is eager, too. Federal and state investigators who track organized crime believe that some members have geared up to take advantage of the swift and enormous cash influx — if they have not already — looking, as the old Sicilian expression goes, to wet their beaks. Nimble, innovative and with a seemingly boundless appetite for the taxpayer’s dollar, the mob’s more sophisticated cadre has plundered municipal, state and federal coffers for generations. So the F. B. I. office in New York has conducted an extensive analysis of the money flowing into the area to create a blueprint of its vulnerabilities, a process, an official said, that is being continually updated. Also, some of the 28 inspectors general who have oversight of the federal agencies receiving stimulus money are considering having federal agents sit in on selected screening interviews of contractors to tell them that if they lie to a federal officer, they could be charged with a crime, officials briefed on the matter said. “Because there is so much money involved, criminals will look to exploit the system,” said Guy Petrillo, chief of the criminal division in the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, referring to the New York area’s five Mafia families. Because the money is being widely dispersed — flowing to federal agencies, then to states and localities and then to contractors and smaller groups — opportunities for fraud abound at a level rarely seen. And despite recent improvements, the screening of contractors sometimes still presents a challenge for local, state and federal agencies, which time and again have failed to halt the flow of public money to companies accused of having ties to organized crime or having otherwise troubling histories. Indeed, even with the mob’s power waning, some members have profited handsomely in the past few years on projects large and small. They have benefited from new baseball stadiums for the Yankees and the Mets, the city’s $3 billion water filtration plant and the post-9/11 cleanup at ground zero, as well as from work on federal buildings, state highways and city schools and playgrounds. The audacity and accomplishment exhibited by some contractors seem to match the gusto they have for government work. One mob associate, convicted in 1994 in a case stemming from organized crime’s control of lucrative Housing Authority window replacement contracts, pleaded guilty nearly a decade later in a case involving window replacement work on city schools. After serving nearly three years in prison, he got in trouble again last year for improprieties involving another window replacement contract, this one at the same federal courthouse where he was convicted in 1994. In another case, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s pet project to spruce up City Hall Park was delayed because two successive concrete contractors were found to have ties to organized crime . The mob also had long cornered the market on the city’s lucrative emergency snow removal contracts, as well as controlling city school bus contracts. The distinctiveness of the immediate challenge surrounding the stimulus money is owed in part to the bill’s twin imperatives: Get a lot of money out and get it out as fast as possible. And it is compounded by the fact that law enforcement agencies like the F. B. I. and prosecutors’ offices are hip deep in the competing priorities of counterterrorism and the explosion of corporate and mortgage fraud cases. Making matters worse, the money is flowing into familiar territory for those with a history of feeding at the public trough. Two of the largest portions of the stimulus pie in the New York City area are going to sectors of the economy — Medicaid and infrastructure projects — where the mob and Eastern European crime groups have flourished for decades, perfecting old schemes and developing new ones. And it is not just criminals who are causing concern. Several officials noted that in an area where close to two dozen state and city legislators have been indicted in recent years, the flow of stimulus funds through government agencies will provide ample opportunity for corrupt public employees. Marc La Vorgna, a spokesman for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, whose administration will dole out nearly $1 billion for infrastructure projects and $2.5 billion in Medicaid and social service money, played down concerns about the vetting of contractors. The amounts to be awarded, he said, are far from astronomical for a city with a $60 billion budget and “robust fraud- and waste-prevention measures,” which include a staff that has doubled in eight years and an additional layer of review for stimulus contracts. Mr. La Vorgna added, “The notion that the city’s vendor integrity mechanisms will somehow be taxed is false.” State officials said they, too, were comfortable with their vetting procedures. Gov. David A. Paterson appointed a panel last month to coordinate the state’s antifraud efforts. And Congress has appropriated about $220 million in additional money to assist 23 of the 28 federal inspectors general involved in overseeing stimulus money, said Ed Pound, a spokesman for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board , the federal stimulus watchdog. But despite these measures, the speed with which the program has been put in place, along with what many officials have called insufficient oversight, has left some in law enforcement with grave concerns. “It’s coming out without the internal controls in place,” said a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly. “It’s like putting a bank robber in a toll booth.”

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (2009)


Venezuela Devalues Currency and Raises Price of Gasoline

Abstract: Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, on Wednesday devalued the currency by 37 percent and raised fuel prices for the first time in 17 years. The measures are meant to help shore up the nation’s finances as dropping oil prices and a collapsing state-led economic model have left the country with a severe recession, high inflation and product shortages. The price of premium gasoline will rise to 6 bolívars from 0.097 bolívars a liter, but fuel is so heavily subsidized that filling up a small car will still cost about 23 cents, based on the black market exchange rate.

Venezuela
Currency
Nicolas Maduro
Oil and Gasoline


Israeli Settlers Use the Web to Push Back on Boycott

Abstract: ELI, West Bank — Among the most ardent advocates of labeling products made in Israeli settlements are Gedaliah and Elisheva Blum, American-born religious Jews raising four children high on a hilltop here, in the heart of what most of the world envisions as the future Palestinian state. The Blums have since 2009 run a website promoting small businesses — mechanics, real estate brokers, caterers, etc. — in the settlements generally viewed as illegal under international law, and last fall they unveiled an online boutique selling settler art. Their approach is an attempted antidote to the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” movement that has been gaining ground lately — buy local, invest, celebrate. “We wanted to use that same tool everybody else is using against us, for us,” said Mr. Blum, 35. A recent Israeli government report estimated there are 600 Israeli-owned factories in the West Bank, and $250 million in annual exports — 0.55 percent of the national total — from the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, territories the international community generally considers illegally occupied. Further details about the settlement economy are something of a state secret: An official at a large West Bank industrial park declined to provide numbers because she did not “want to awaken any demons.” South Africa issued regulations in 2012 requiring the labeling of settlement products, and British supermarket chains are among those that use ZIP codes to delineate items made in Israel proper from those in the West Bank. A Dutch pension fund recently withdrew funds from five Israeli banks because they do business in the settlements. David Alhayani, head of the Jordan Valley settlers’ council, said recently that Europeans were shunning his farmers’ herbs and vegetables, though some in Saudi Arabia and Qatar want their dates — so long as they are not labeled. Tzipi Livni and Yair Lapid, centrist Israeli ministers, have been sounding the boycott alarm. “The status quo will hit each of us in the pocket,” Mr. Lapid warned this month. “We are export-oriented, and this depends on our global standing.” The Blums have not been deterred. Their operation is admittedly small bore and symbolic. The “Orange Pages” — the color is taken from the campaign opposing the 2005 evacuation of Gaza Strip settlements — gets 1,000 hits a day. It lists 2,000 businesses, 700 of which pay about $14 a month for more prominent play. Mrs. Blum, who is 30, said some settler leaders told her “don’t promote us, just keep quiet,” but that only a handful of companies had ever declined to be listed. The new art boutique has sold a dozen prints and one original, totaling $4,500. Profits are put into the Orange Pages — as Mr. Blum put it, “a man from Alabama buys a painting from Hebron and enables a plumber from Shilo to get more exposure.” Like many settlers, the Blums think Israel should annex the West Bank. “If you created a time machine and you went back 2,000 years, the center of Jewish life was here, it was Judea and Samaria, it wasn’t Tel Aviv,” Mr. Blum said, using the biblical names for the territory. “If we don’t want to fight for this land — I mean fight as in living and building — we’re erasing our history.” Mrs. Blum moved at age 5 to Efrat, a settlement south of Jerusalem. Mr. Blum grew up secular in New Jersey, and came to Israel in 2000 on the first free trip for young diaspora Jews run by Birthright. When he came back with Birthright in 2003, she was one of two Israeli volunteers greeting the plane with rugelach from the famed Marzipan bakery. He decided that day they should marry. They run the websites from their modest home, where Mrs. Blum’s paintings — of an archway in Safed and a Kabbalistic interpretation of creation — adorn the walls and the children, ages 2, 4, 6 and 8, wander in and out. “The message for our children is, you see something wrong, you fix it,” she said. “We saw a boycott, we see injustice, then you do something about it. Even if it’s just one little baby step.”

Boycott
Israeli settlement
Israel
Divestment and Sanctions BDS


Digital cameras that minimize shutter lag

Abstract: DIGITAL cameras are amazing. Even compact digital cameras selling for less than $100 take photographs with great resolution. The point-and-shoot cameras are great, that is, as long as the subject of the photo is not moving very fast. But if the photographer is trying to catch the moment that the little soccer player kicks in his first goal or when the black Labrador leaps in the air to snag the Frisbee, then he may find a picture of an empty field or a blue sky. The compact digital camera can take so long to react after you snap the shutter release button that the moment has passed and the desired image is never captured. The problem is called shutter lag. “It’s the No. 1 dissatisfier that we hear about,” said Bob Gann, Hewlett-Packard ’s digital imaging systems architect. But avoiding it, or minimizing it in the next camera you buy — well, that is a tricky problem. About 65 percent of camera buyers are buying their second or third digital camera, but this time they probably will not be focusing on the number of megapixels as they did in past purchases. (Anything over 5 megapixels is going to provide the resolution any amateur photographer needs.) Instead, they might want to think about how well that camera takes pictures, including the action shots. The problem is, camera makers do not want to tell consumers too much about that. It is not that they have anything to hide; it is just that shutter lag is too difficult a concept to communicate in ads or marketing materials in stores. “No kidding, I am trying not to geek out,” said Jerry Magee, product manager at Kodak. It still is much easier to sell consumers on a camera’s price, style, color, image-stabilization abilities, wireless ability or even its many preset shooting modes like fireworks, underwater or dining. “Our emphasis is on finishing their pictures and making them as good as possible right in the camera,” said Steve Heiner, a senior technical manger at Nikon. That said, “there is a little bit of a war for a camera that can take a picture quicker,” Mr. Magee said. The first problem is that shutter lag is not really shutter lag at all, but processor lag. (Feel your eyes glazing over already?) When the photographer begins to push down the button to snap the picture, sensors in the camera begin to take a series of measurements. The processor calculates the distance to the object, determines the amount of light needed and even does some balancing for color and whiteness. The processor may also have special software to focus on faces, so those calculations are run. In effect, the processor is analyzing a series of images as the button descends. Then the image is captured on the processor and sent into memory. That can take almost as long as one second. So any consumer who wants to buy a fast-acting camera merely has to look at the specification sheets, right? Well, no. Many cameras’ spec sheets do not list any number that would help a consumer make a choice. The Nikon Coolpix S500, which the company said was one of its best performers for action shots, gave no clues. The Hewlett-Packard $230 Photo Smart R837, its best contestant, lists only “shot-to-shot time” of 1.5 seconds. (Some reviews said it had “shutter lag” of 0.37 second.) The Kodak EasyShare Z712 IS has a “click-to-capture” speed of 0.26 second. The specifications surrounding lag are not standardized and can be interpreted in various ways. Indeed, there is not even one standard. For instance, one might measure shutter lag in auto focus and another with manual focus, which will be much less. For example, Nikon brags that its S500 has shutter lag, in “release priority mode” — that is, from the time the button is half-pressed down to the point it is completely depressed — of just 0.005 second. A shopper might find shutter speed listed. But that alone is not very helpful. “Shutter speed is just one element,” said Chuck Westfall, a spokesman for Canon. “As long as it is reasonably fast, it doesn’t make much difference.” Better proxies for estimating shutter lag are autofocus lag and shutter-release lag if you can find that data. A conscientious shopper may find the information in reviews in camera magazines or camera Web sites. (Hint: Google the camera name and the words “shutter lag.”) (If you already have a camera, a rough do-it-yourself test is available at www.shooting-digital.com/columns/schwartz/shutter_release_test/default.asp . But it is influenced by how fast your reflexes are.) Another measurement that plays into catching action shots is ISO. It is a term that was transported over from silver halide film, when it measured the fineness of the grains on the film, hence its sensitivity to light. A higher ISO could capture action better in low-light conditions. So the higher a digital camera’s ISO settings, the more able it is to nail the action shot. The $300 Kodak Z712 IS, for example, goes up to 3200. “It might not be shutter lag, but it could be the camera system may not be robust enough to capture it,” Mr. Magee said. If true, that presents an even bigger problem for consumers: they have to evaluate the quality of the chip inside the camera, a difficult job because information about the type and maker of the processor is not readily available. Some camera magazines refer to the processor, but camera buffs who write for them tend not to be electronic engineers who can describe the advantages of a Texas Instrument chip over a Zoran chip. “I’m not sure the customer needs to know that much about the processor,” Mr. Heiner of Nikon said. The shutter-lag problem is not true of all digital cameras. The digital single-lens-reflex (S.L.R.) cameras do not have a problem with shutter lag. Indeed, if someone takes a lot of action photos and is really bothered by shutter lag, the solution is to spring for a more expensive digital S.L.R. model. The good news is that the lowest end of this category has touched the upper end of the compact camera category. The Nikon D40, that maker’s cheapest digital S.L.R., sells for about $530. A Sony DSCH9/B, a 7-megapixel point-and-shoot, albeit a pretty fancy one, goes for about $480. Photographers offer a few tips on capturing action shots with point-and-shoot cameras. If you can anticipate a shot — for instance, the birthday cake candles about to be blown out — then push the shutter-release button down halfway. Priming the auto-focus gets the process started early. When you push the button down all the way, the camera can process the information more quickly. Another trick is to point the camera to where the action will occur, push halfway, and when the action occurs, push it all the way. That means you do not follow the subject, you follow the event. In other words, if you are tracking a downhill skier slaloming through a series of flags, aim at the flags, not the skier. Camera makers also suggested using the burst mode, which quick-fires a series of photos. Shoot the first one in advance of the event and then you probably will capture the significant moment. Many cameras have a pets or children mode to capture those things that will not stand still when instructed. “It works pretty well when you have enough light,” Mr. Westfall said. As cameras simultaneously drop in price and add more features, concerns about shutter lag will diminish. “Give us a few more years and you won’t be hearing about it,” Mr. Gann of Hewlett-Packard said. “But it adds costs. We know how to make it faster, but it would cost money.”

Cameras
Computers and the Internet
Hewlett-Packard Co
Nikon Corp
Sony Corp


Ought to Be a Law? Try These

Abstract: Hauppauge FOLKS who believe that Suffolk County already has enough laws to rein in its citizenry — there are 180 sections of the county charter and laws devoted to local or regulatory laws, and another 110 sections that spell out pesky rules and regulations — may be unenthused to learn that their county executive, Steve Levy , is now hawking a program that encourages county residents to dream up more. In the mood to invent a law? Consider this an open invitation: Legislation as a civilian participation sport! “Hey, we have a lot of bright people out there in Suffolk County with a lot of ideas to share, and sometimes you can find a gem among the, uh, among the rest,” Mr. Levy said this week. “Don’t be so cynical about this,” he said in response to a reporter’s muffled snicker. “We might end up with a proposal that improves the quality of life for county residents, or even something that saves the county some money.” Give Mr. Levy props for relentless optimism. His Ought to Be a Law initiative, which kicked off this spring with a link on the county’s Web site, has already yielded nearly 100 proposals from the voting public and 50 others from schoolchildren. The prospective laws range from the merely irate (noisy ice cream trucks are perceived as agents of the devil by a Selden resident) to the potentially ingenious (prevent unfinished/discarded prescription medications from polluting the ecosystem), with a dollop of the borderline inane sprinkled in. In Ronkonkoma, universal sanitary shields for toilets are a concern, while in Miller Place there is support for countywide feral cat sanctuaries. In Sayville, the issue is the surge of freebie community newspapers that clog mailboxes and landfills. Mr. Levy intends to pick a winning idea from the pile before summer’s end — actually, he will select two winners, as there is a separate suggestion box for schoolchildren — and crank up the machinery necessary to transform the idea into a bill for proposed legislation or, at the very least, issue an executive order recognizing the proposal. There is no cash prize — only, as Mr. Levy put it, “the satisfaction that comes with being a good citizen.” The potential laws that are beyond the county’s purview to establish or enforce will not, he said, be ignored. “Even if it’s something that has to come from a state or federal level, if we think the idea is good, we can always use our bully pulpit,” he said. Mr. Levy and his team are already investigating the feasibility of a suggestion from Willard Christy, 60, of East Islip, that would make it illegal to dump unused or expired prescription medications in the trash or flush them down the toilet. Mr. Christy, a labor negotiator with an interest in environmental issues, included ample research with his proposal (conservation officials found human antibiotics in a dead bird in Alaska; the State of Illinois has a contract with two pharmacies that accept obsolete medications) as well as some suggestions about making it easier for citizens to redeem unused medications. Pharmacies, police stations and the county’s Health Department could all be part of the solution by agreeing to accept unwanted pharmaceuticals, Mr. Christy said in an interview. “This is about protecting the environment, and when you live on an island with a shallow water table like we do, what goes into your groundwater becomes more important and you have to do the right thing and take a stand for yourself and your neighbors and the wildlife,” he said. “The situation reminds me of the 1960s, when there was finally a move to take the lead out of gasoline because it was so bad for the ecosystem.” Paul Stroessner, a senior at Kings Park High School, came up with the idea for his proposed law — no smoking in cars with closed windows if children are aboard — while stopped at a light on Main Street in his hometown. “I looked over at the car next to me and saw a woman lighting a cigarette with the windows rolled up and two little kids in the back seat,” said Mr. Stroessner, at 17 a confirmed nonsmoker as well as a chronic peruser of the county’s Web site. “I turn 18 soon and want to be an educated voter,” he said. “I also think that in this day and age, when you know the consequences of secondhand smoke, my law would make a good addition to society.” Mr. Levy, who has childhood memories of being squired around the Island in the smoke-filled family car (his father indulged), said Mr. Stroessner’s law makes perfect sense — except to civil libertarians. “While everybody would agree that smokers, if they must smoke while minors are the car, should at least open the windows, this is a thorny one. You have a health issue going up against a personal freedom issue,” Mr. Levy said. He asked citizens to keep those laws coming, though he did have a word of warning for small fry legislators: “No more laws about four-hour recess, pizza every day, and no homework on Monday-Wednesday-Friday,” he said. “Not gonna happen, kids.”

Law and Legislation
Long Island (NY)
Levy Steve


Failure of Obama’s Trans-Pacific Trade Deal Could Hurt U.S. Influence in Asia

Abstract: TOKYO — With President Obama’s trade agenda in jeopardy in Congress, the nations of Asia are weighing the potential impact of a failed deal on local jobs and exports, but also something else: American influence in the region. For many here, the defeat of a sweeping trade and investment pact being negotiated between the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim nations would weaken Washington’s already strained claim to leadership in Asia and undermine a commitment by Mr. Obama to devote more attention and resources to a group of countries contending with the growing power of China. Congress rejected legislation on Friday that is crucial to completing the trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, throwing its future — and its potential to bind together countries friendly to American interests — into doubt. “If this collapses, Pacific Rim countries will be aghast,” said Shunpei Takemori, a professor at Keio University in Japan, the largest economy in the would-be trade zone after the United States. “China is pushing, and if the U.S. just stands aside, it would be a tragedy.” The White House and its Republican free-trade allies in Congress are searching for ways to revive a bill that would extend aid to workers displaced by global trade agreements. By rejecting that measure on Friday, Mr. Obama’s fellow Democrats in the House effectively scuttled legislation granting him the power to negotiate trade deals that cannot be amended or filibustered by Congress. Without such trade promotion authority, analysts in the region said, it may be impossible for Mr. Obama to persuade governments to make the concessions needed to close a deal that would affect 40 percent of the global economy. The death of the Trans-Pacific Partnership would be a new setback for American economic diplomacy in Asia after a failed attempt to thwart a Chinese state-run infrastructure investment fund that some see as a competitor to American-dominated institutions like the World Bank. The Obama administration has also struggled to respond to blunter assertions of Chinese power, such as Beijing’s efforts to strengthen its territorial claims by building islands out of reefs in the South China Sea. “If you don’t do this deal, what are your levers of power?” Singapore’s foreign minister, K. Shanmugam, asked in Washington on Monday. “The choice is a very stark one: Do you want to be part of the region, or do you want to be out of the region?” He argued that “trade is strategy” and that without economic leverage, the United States was left with only military clout in Asia, “and that’s not the lever you want to use.” “It’s absolutely vital to get it done,” he added, referring to the bill’s passage. In Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has presented the imperiled trade pact as key to his nation’s ambitions, and he has pushed back with unusual vigor for a Japanese leader against the country’s influential farm lobby, which has long opposed lower barriers to imports of rice and other agricultural products. He has made the case that Japan needs trade liberalization to bolster its stagnant economy, but his arguments have been as much about diplomacy as economics. “It is also about our security,” he said of the proposed trade deal in a speech during a joint meeting of Congress in April. “Long term, its strategic value is awesome.” Ichiro Fujisaki, a former Japanese ambassador to the United States, described the Trans-Pacific Partnership as “economic glue to cement ties with like-minded countries,” including emerging economies such as Vietnam that are only partly integrated into the global economic order shaped by the United States. “It’s an important time for rule-making in Asia, and T.P.P. is central to establishing the right rules,” Mr. Fujisaki said. China is conspicuously absent from the list of 12 countries negotiating the agreement. The group comprises Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Mexico, New Zealand and Peru, as well as Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam. But the Chinese government has taken pains not to criticize the deal, and has even suggested it may eventually ask to join. For now, the pact’s wide-ranging rules on intellectual property, investor protections and workers’ rights are seen as a step too far for the ruling Communist Party in China. “China knows that T.P.P. is one of the pillars of U.S. rebalancing strategy in the Asia Pacific, and it is trying to create a club that excludes China,” said Song Guoyou, a professor at the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai. The collapse of the deal, he added, would be “a huge blow to Obama’s effort to build an integrated trade system” in the Asia-Pacific region. Professor Song said the United States should work with China to offer a “more ambitious and more inclusive” agreement, and he held up as an alternative the separate, less comprehensive regional trade deal that China is negotiating with countries in Southeast Asia as well as Japan, South Korea and other nations. Negotiations over that pact could gain momentum if the Trans-Pacific Partnership fails, as could potential bilateral deals, including one between Japan and the European Union that Tokyo deferred while it focused on the Trans-Pacific trade deal. South Korea, a crucial American ally and one of China’s top trading partners, has expressed interest in joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks, but its enthusiasm has been muted. Some have accused the government of trying to use the Chinese proposal to secure better terms from the United States. A bilateral trade agreement with the United States that came into force in 2012 set off large, prolonged protests, and the South Korean government has been wary of entering another grueling round of politically charged trade talks with Washington. In terms of tangible economic benefits, the stakes are higher for some nations than for others. Countries like Australia and Singapore already have highly open markets and bilateral trade deals with important trading partners, meaning the potential for gains is relatively small, experts said. At the other extreme is Vietnam, the only Communist country in the group. Vietnam has played an outsize role in the debate over the deal in the United States, with Mr. Obama arguing that Vietnam would be required to improve worker safety and to allow the establishment of independent labor unions, something it currently forbids. The region’s smaller economies are increasingly bound to China’s. China is the largest trading partner for countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, for instance, accounting for 14 percent of the bloc’s external trade last year, almost twice as much as the United States. In Japan, the failure of the Trans-Pacific Partnership would relieve pressure on Mr. Abe to open up the agricultural sector and other protected industries. Japanese negotiators had sought to preserve import barriers on some politically delicate farm products, including rice — a battle that had been the biggest obstacle to a deal until the House Democrats revolted. Japan was nonetheless preparing for painful concessions. A collapse in the talks could thus offer a political silver lining for Mr. Abe. “The agricultural lobby would have been furious,” Professor Takemori of Keio said.

Asia
Trans-Pacific Partnership
Barack Obama
International trade
US


Seeing Frazier Beyond His Combative Side - George Vecsey

Abstract: There was a funeral after a snowstorm. Most of us were able to get to the synagogue on a peninsula on Long Island, but we knew it would be tough, driving from Philadelphia. The service was over when a car pulled up. Joe Frazier and his son Marvis got out, dressed in black. They had driven a long time to pay their respects to their friend Ellen, who had become a listening post, a telephone friend, for the champ in his pensive moments. I can still see the snow on Joe Frazier’s shoes, the solemn look on his face. The two men stayed a long time, as I recall, mingling, at the reception. This is the Joe Frazier I began to mourn as soon as I heard the bad news about the liver cancer . “Hmmmph,” I could hear him say. “At least that guy didn’t get me.” Whether the rivalry was in feud mode or rapprochement mode, Smokin’ Joe always compared himself to Muhammad Ali . He took Ali’s slurred speech from Parkinson’s disease as the ultimate verdict from their three bouts. People thought Frazier slurred, too, but mostly that was the Gullah dialect from his childhood home in coastal South Carolina. He could make his points with a solid thud, just as Ali, in his verbal prime, could float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. A few personal images of Frazier came flooding in. I was never a boxing fan or a boxing writer. In fact, I am an abolitionist — deplore the sport, love the people. People have mixed feelings about Frazier, triggered both ways by the cruel way Ali felt the need to characterize him as the Gorilla. Up close, he was something so much more, a man whose life did not always run a smooth course but who could be warm and thoughtful and likable. Here are some of my memories of him: NEW YORK, FEB. 16, 1970 While Ali was suspended for refusing to register for the draft, Frazier had to compete with pretenders like Jimmy Ellis . That night in Madison Square Garden, Ellis could not come out for the fifth round, making Frazier a more legitimate champion. From many rows away, you could hear him shout, “Free at last!” the words Martin Luther King Jr. used at the end of his speech in Washington in 1963 . Ali had mocked him as a simian, but now Frazier was a champion, waiting for Ali. Was he ever free at last? COLUMBUS, OHIO, NOV. 8, 1971 I was invited to join the Phil Donahue show inside the maximum-security prison. Frazier, wearing a long violet leather topcoat, was now the champ, having beaten Ali in their fabled first meeting in March. The gates made their ominous clang as they locked shut, and the inmates, some of them Black Muslims, like Ali, began calling Frazier “the great white hope.” Frazier was not unprepared, saying he had earned his title, but the inmates said Ali’s three-year layoff had been a plot by white America. Frazier took the punches well, but I could sense the pain and confusion. What did people want of him? CHICAGO, DEC. 4, 1981 Frazier’s ill-advised comeback, after five and a half years in retirement, ended with a spurious draw with Jumbo Cummings. Frazier hurt too much to wage much of a protest that he had not been beaten. Marvis was there, soon to tell his father it was time to retire. The longer the writers hung around, the more Frazier became his combative self. “Champ,” I said, “I’d like to introduce you to my daughter.” He asked what Laura did, and she said she was in college. What college? the champ asked. Laura hesitated — never a good idea with Joe Frazier. She was matriculating at Sarah Lawrence back east but doing her junior year in the Midwest. She wasn’t sure which college to mention first. “Hmmmph,” Smokin’ Joe snorted. “You go to college, but you don’t know the name?” He started to laugh. Then Laura started to laugh as she felt the left hook in her psychic ribs. I think it was that moment when she realized being a sports columnist was cool, if that raffish life involved sitting in lobbies with Smokin’ Joe and Marvis. PHILADELPHIA, FEB. 24, 1996 The 25th anniversary of the first Frazier-Ali fight was approaching. Frazier was 52, divorced from Florence, his childhood sweetheart. I went to the Frazier gym in North Philly and was immediately brought back into the bitterness. Out in public, he and Ali were reconciled, but in the inner depths of his own gym and his own soul, Frazier still hurt from the gorilla business. “I won that fight,” he said. “Guess I won the other two, also. I’m here talking to you, right?” He was pointing out the deterioration in his old foe, who had won the second and third fights. “He called me a Tom,” Frazier continued. “I did things to help him get back in the ring. I can see him now. He was living in Philly at the time. He’d come into this room. Wasn’t as nice as it is now. He’d sit there, and we’d plan stuff together. Promotions. Then he called me a Tom. He was right. I ‘Tommed’ for him.” Marvis, the preacher, too gentle to have stayed a boxer for long, was there that morning. So was the champ’s daughter, Jacquelyn Frazier-Lyde , a college basketball player, later a boxer, now a lawyer. “I wish my father and Ali were more friendly,” Frazier-Lyde said, as she and Marvis lovingly told their father he had to get over his bitterness, which he never really did. But he was also a man who could drive in the aftermath of a snowstorm, to pay his respects to a friend.

Boxing
Ali Muhammad
Frazier Joe (1944-2011)
Frazier Joe


ING May Have to Repay Billions of Euros to Dutch Government

Abstract: PARIS — ING, the large financial services group, faced the unwelcome prospect of having to pay back as much as several billion euros to the Dutch state after European regulators said Tuesday that they were considering whether a bailout of the bank had been too generous. The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, said in Brussels that it would extend an investigation into whether the Netherlands had violated state aid rules in providing security for a $39 billion pool of illiquid assets. The investigation hinges on whether the government’s agreement with ING, which is based in Amsterdam, properly valued troubled assets and shared the burden fairly between the bank and taxpayers. “The commission supports member states’ efforts to stabilize financial markets by dealing with banks’ impaired assets,” Neelie Kroes, the E.U. competition commissioner, said in a statement. “However, state aid in the form of impaired-asset relief has to be properly remunerated and should not give undue advantages to banks.” The review comes as the commission moves toward a ruling on whether similar bailouts in Britain, to Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group, were in violation of E.U. policy. The rules on helping financial institutions with their illiquid investments leave the details to the individual governments, but requires that principles of fair competition be respected. With credit markets frozen, the Dutch government had bought 80 percent of a portfolio of U.S. residential real estate securities from ING at a 10 percent discount to face value, gaining the right to 80 percent of the cash flows from the investments. The portfolio is backed by 590,000 mortgages, mostly rated Alt-A, a level between prime and the lowest rated subprime. The commission said it suspected the government paid too much, in effect giving the bank a subsidy not enjoyed by its competitors. The investigation does not necessarily mean the commission will seek changes to the deal. But a decision against ING could require the bank to repay the government some of the cost. Dirk Peeters, a banking analyst at KBC Securities in Brussels, said the way the deal was structured — ING was to pay the Dutch Government an annual fee valued at about €600 million, or $877 million, while receiving from the government a management fee with a value of about €700 million — meant that the bank was able to transfer 80 percent of the portfolio risk to the Dutch government at a cost “close to zero.” He said ING would most likely end up facing a bill of “somewhere between several hundred million euros and several billion.” “It’s up to the Dutch government to show that this is correct and fair pricing and not straight assistance to ING,” he added. ING also received a €10 billion capital injection from the Dutch government in October 2008, which it must eventually repay. The bank had a balance sheet valued at more than €1.3 trillion at the end of last year. ING shares fell 2.2 percent Tuesday. Lies Weitenberg, a spokeswoman for the Dutch Finance Ministry, and Raymond Vermeulen, an ING spokesman, said that discussions with regulators would continue, but declined to comment further. In March, Brussels authorized the deal for six months, “for reasons of financial stability,” pending a review. On Tuesday, the commission said it had extended the clearance for another six months, as the investigation proceeds.

European Commission
ING Groep N.V
Banks and Banking


Deputy Finance Minister Is Charged in Russia

Abstract: MOSCOW, Nov. 23 — Russian prosecutors charged a deputy finance minister who was the country’s chief sovereign debt negotiator on Friday with conspiring to embezzle $43.4 million in a politically tinged case seen as undermining the position of liberals in the Russian government. Until his arrest last week, the official, Sergei A. Storchak, had helped oversee Russia ’s $148 billion oil windfall fund, one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, and served as Russia’s chief liaison with financial organizations like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Mr. Storchak was a leading liberal in President Vladimir V. Putin ’s government. His departure is seen as a sign of instability in Russian economic policy-making and has led to an open breach between the finance ministry and security agencies. “The government needs to make some major decisions about how to manage its oil wealth,” Rory MacFarquhar, a director in Goldman Sach’s Moscow office, said in a telephone interview Friday. “This case could cause the finance officials to take a much more risk-averse approach to investment.” Over years of high oil prices, Russia has salted away billions in oil money in its Stabilization Fund. In January, Moscow will split it into two funds: the Reserve Fund and the Fund of National Prosperity, the latter intended for state investments. How this money will be invested, and who will make those decisions, is in contention. Russian media have interpreted Mr. Storchak’s arrest as an effort by security services to influence decisions by the finance minister, Aleksei L. Kudrin, who is also a deputy prime minister, and who has favored a more conservative economic policy. Mr. Kudrin is a chief proponent of saving the bulk of the country’s oil profits in a sovereign wealth fund to offset inflation and any future downturn in world oil prices. Mr. Storchak, who last year negotiated the early repayment of Russia’s Paris Club debt, spent the week in a cell with five other inmates in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, according to his lawyer, Igor Pastukhov. Mr. Pastukhov said in a telephone interview that his client was innocent. “He acted correctly in the interests of the state,” Mr. Pastukhov said. On Friday, Mr. Storchak was formally accused of taking part in a complex embezzlement scheme. The investigating committee of the prosecutor general’s office, a new agency within the prosecutor’s office that was formed in September and is headed by a Putin loyalist, accused Mr. Storchak of forming a criminal group to embezzle funds from a Russian bank that had served as an intermediary in Algeria’s sovereign debt payments to Russia in the 1990s. No money was actually taken. Prosecutors said Mr. Storchak had fraudulently arranged to repay a debt to the bank, though Russia has written off Algeria’s debt in exchange for a pledge to purchase Russian weapons. Two people in the private sector, said to be accomplices, were also charged. Mr. Storchak was denied bail. The case is unusual for the large scale of the supposed corruption, even by Russian standards. It is also remarkable because Mr. Kudrin, the finance minister, has defended his deputy in public even as the charges were being leveled — an open breach between the prosecutor’s office and finance ministry within Mr. Putin’s typically monolithic government. Mr. Kudrin called the initial arrest incomprehensible. And on Friday he argued against Mr. Storchak’s continued detention. “The finance minister will vouch for the defendant’s appropriate behavior,” Mr. Kudrin’s press secretary, Pavel Kuznetsov, told journalists after the charges were filed Friday, the Interfax news agency reported. Mr. Kudrin would convey his personal guarantees to the prosecutors, Mr. Kuznetsov said.

Finances
Russia
Embezzlement
Third World and Developing Countries
Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
Putin Vladimir V


It’s Privacy vs. the People in the Battle for Martin’s Beach

Abstract: HALF MOON BAY, Calif. — The Pacific Ocean glistens in the distance, past the rolling bluffs that rise beyond the electric gate that blocks off Martin’s Beach Road. The road leads to Martin’s Beach, once a revered hideaway for surfers, fishers and beachgoers drawn by its isolation, dramatic cliffs and sweep of soft sand. But these days, the future of this hidden beach on the San Francisco Peninsula is being fought in a courthouse 25 miles away, in a battle that has become the latest class-charged standoff involving a wealthy entrepreneur in this polarized part of California. Vinod Khosla, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, paid $37.5 million in 2008 for a 53-acre parcel of ocean land that includes the beach and the road — and proceeded to close the gate, posting armed guards and signaling that he was prepared to spend what it takes to keep the public off what he contends is private land. “People are saying, ‘Talk about entitlement: Rich people think they can get away with anything,’ ” said Rob Caughlan, the former president of the Surfrider Foundation , the nonprofit organization that brought the suit. “All we want is to get Khosla to follow the same law as everyone else does.” Mr. Khosla, who is best known as a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, declined a request for an interview. One of his lawyers, Jeffrey Essner, said the have-and-have-not argument had hijacked, at least in public perception, what he described as a cut-and-dried case about private property rights. “It’s being sensationalized in the media to focus on populist sentiments and the 1 percent,” he said. Image Vinod Khosla, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, is being sued for access to Martin’s Beach. He bought the land in 2008 and cut it off from the public. Credit Jason Henry for The New York Times California is a state with many beautiful beaches and almost as many millionaires who want their own beachfront homes, and this is hardly the first fight to be fought over an ocean view. But by every measure, this one has taken on added resonance, taking place against the backdrop of tensions in San Francisco caused by the influx of high-paid Silicon Valley executives and embodied by the Google buses that take them to work each day. The lawsuit being fought at the San Mateo County Courthouse — a decision is expected in the summer — signals the latest stage in a five-year flurry of litigation, protests, civil disobedience, indignation and arrests, aimed at forcing Mr. Khosla, who does not live on the property, to let people back on the beach (which is variously called Martin’s Beach and Martins Beach). His opponents contend he is defying the State Constitution, state law and the mind-set of “the beach belongs to everyone” that is fundamental to many Californians. Compelled by a judge to testify, Mr. Khosla said on the stand: “If you’re asking me why any gate is locked, it’s to restrict public access. That’s a general statement about gates.” While the previous owner of Martin’s Beach gave people access to the beach for a fee, Mr. Khosla has put up a forbidding gate, albeit a low one that can be sidestepped. While a few surfers and bathers do trespass and use the beach, some have been arrested, the surfers say, though fewer recently as the dispute has heated up. The fight has moved to Sacramento as well. Last month, the California Senate approved a bill that would permit the state to use the power of eminent domain to seize enough land to provide a public passageway to the beach. Next, the bill will be considered by the Assembly, where it faces an uncertain future. “The coast is protected, and when somebody does something that’s going to affect that, there’s going to be a reaction — and a strong one,” said the sponsor of the bill, Jerry Hill, a Democratic state senator from San Mateo. An earlier court challenge to Mr. Khosla failed when a San Mateo judge ruled that the Constitution, which declares that all property below the mean tide line is public, and a 1976 law mandating that property owners provide access to these beaches were superseded by the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The treaty ended the Mexican-American War by requiring that the United States recognize Mexican land grants, including one that awarded rights to this plot well before the Constitution was adopted. This latest case is in some ways more narrow: The Surfrider Foundation contends that under the Coastal Act of 1976, Mr. Khosla was required to obtain a permit from the California Coastal Commission before he blocked access to the beach. “This is not a rocket-science case,” said Joe Cotchett, the lawyer representing the Surfrider Foundation. “This is a case all about arrogance. This is a case where a multibillionaire — not a millionaire, a billionaire — has just decided to build a castle on that beach, and the public is going to be barred.” Mr. Khosla said at the trial that he did not have a plan in mind for the property. Dori L. Yob, another of his lawyers, called the case “a property right issue just like any other — just like you or I would want to protect our private property rights.” She added, “Just because where your house sits used to be a public beach doesn’t mean people can walk through your backyard while you are having breakfast.” The presumption of opening the beach is powerful in California. About six miles up the road from the beach, the Ritz-Carlton, a lush complex of golf courses and high-end living overlooking the Pacific, provides free “coastal access” parking and a marked trail leading to the beach. Image Mr. Khosla’s gate cuts off access to Martin’s Beach, once a revered hideaway for beachgoers on the San Francisco Peninsula. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times Down south in Malibu, outside Los Angeles, beach advocates fought successfully with David Geffen, the billionaire who owns a home on Broad Beach, to force him to open a gate leading down to the ocean. Jenny Price, one of the leaders of that coastal access battle, said, “It’s tricky, because I realize this is private property, but the Constitution requires that the public have access to the public beach.” A walk down Martin’s Beach Road reveals about 40 or more weathered beach shacks nestled around the water, most of them leased through 2021, with names like Cozy Cabin and Casa Blanca. On a recent morning, there was not a person in sight on the beach. “It’s a gem; it’s beyond compare,” said Pete McCloskey, a Republican former member of Congress who represented the area and is involved in the court battle. Although Mr. McCloskey and others said they assumed that Mr. Khosla had bought the land intending to bulldoze the cottages and build something newer and grander, he testified that was not necessarily so. “I bought the beach, but I had no plan for the beach,” Mr. Khosla said. To some, Mr. Khosla’s actions seem particularly surprising because he has been closely identified with advocating green technology. “I thought Khosla was going to be a good guy,” said Mr. Caughlan of the Surfrider Foundation, who once posed with Mr. Khosla for a photograph in an environment issue of Vanity Fair with a group of men on the California coastline. “When he bought Martin’s Beach, I thought, ‘Oh great, an environmentalist bought that beach.’ And then he cut off access to everyone and we went, ‘What? Where did that come from?’ ”

Beach
Half Moon Bay
California
Vinod Khosla
Lawsuits
Eminent domain
Legislation
Land use
San Mateo CA


Liazon’s Chief, on Tossing Out the Rulebook

Abstract: This interview with Ashok Subramanian , chief executive of Liazon, an employee benefits company, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant . Q. Were you always interested in being an entrepreneur? A. No. I was not the prototypical 12-year-old who had three businesses. I got to it a little bit late. I spent some time in consulting, and I enjoyed helping people figure out thorny issues. What I missed was actually calling the shots, and building the team and structure and process to execute the plan. Q. What were some dos and don’ts you learned from consulting for other companies? A. What struck me was that as companies get larger and larger, the communication gap between folks in the executive offices and people on the ground grows over time. What I’ve seen in some of those situations is a complete lack of trust among decision-makers and their people. So I came away saying that I wanted to create a culture with complete transparency, openness and communication. Q. Where did you get your drive? A. There were a couple of key influences. My parents are immigrants. My dad came to this country with a good education, but literally less than $10 in his pocket. And he taught us that, regardless of what you have or don’t have, you can’t let others outwork you. I think the second influence was where I grew up: Buffalo. It’s a town that’s been hit pretty hard. You get kicked in the teeth pretty good when you come from a place like Buffalo. There was a cohort of us at business school who all grew up in the Rust Belt, and we all sort of bonded. There’s a certain work ethic, a certain attitude, a certain humility. Q. Tell me about how the culture has evolved at your company. A. We’re at about 90 people today. When we hit the 20-employee number, someone gave me the grand idea that you need to hire an H.R. consultant to write a handbook. I didn’t know any better, so we did. We came out with a 50-page handbook that had policies on things I’d never heard of before. As we added more people, their first introduction to the company, in many ways, was this handbook. I realized that these folks were getting the completely wrong impression of the kind of company I wanted to build. So about a year and a half ago, I stood up at a company event and threw the handbook in the trash. And I said: “We’re not going to be governed by a culture that defines a set of rules. We’re going to be governed by a culture in which we hold ourselves accountable for great performance, and for understanding that we trust each other enough that people are going to make good decisions because they’re here for the right reasons.” Q. What was the reaction? A. Standing ovation. It’s not that all the blame could be placed at the foot of the handbook. It was a symbol of something we weren’t. It was something that companies are supposed to do when they get bigger in order for them not to get sued. Image Ashok Subramanian,C.E.O. of Liazon, an employee benefits company, says he once stood at a company event and tossed its handbook into the trash. “We’re not going to be governed by a culture that defines a set of rules,” he said. Credit Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times Q. How do you hire? A. I try to focus on some of the things that are tied to the values we’ve talked about. I’m looking for people who will appreciate, and can thrive in, an environment that’s not about “Here’s a cookbook,” but who want to actually figure out how to write their own cookbook. Is this someone who’s smart and can think through all the problems and challenges that we have not yet encountered? And do they have the work ethic that, at the end of the day, makes them want to come into work saying, “I’m going to do a great job,” and they’re going to leave every day saying, “I did the best I could”? We also look for diversity. And the diversity is less about the traditional definition of diversity, and more about diversity of thought and experience. In a changing market, for us to stay ahead, I want people internally to be challenging the way we do business, before someone outside in the market challenges the way we do business. A lot of it is gut feel. How do I feel about the vibe of this person I might be working with every day? But I also ask a lot of “why” questions like: “So your résumé says you did X. How did you do that? Why did you do it the way you did it? Did you think about other ways to achieve that objective? Why did you choose not to do something? Why did you choose to do something? Are there things you would do differently if you could do them over again?” Self-awareness and being reflective are hugely important characteristics. Q. What are your thoughts on innovation? A. I think you either stand for being innovative or not. The way that we stand for being innovative is that I always say: “If we are to be disrupted, let’s be the ones disrupting ourselves. Let’s not be disrupted by someone else out there.” We’ve done a couple of things like that. We’re a growing company, and we’ve attracted some good venture capital. Two months after we closed our largest funding last year, I went to our board of directors and said: “Everything we’ve been doing the last four years, from a distribution perspective, is wrong. I apologize if you feel that you invested based on this thesis. But I actually think unless we change how we go to market, we run a major risk of being disrupted. And so let’s disrupt ourselves.” If you want to be innovative, you’ve got to practice it, and you’ve got to lead it and embody it in everything you do. It can’t be this sort of isolated thing off to the side of the company, where we’re going to be innovative every so often. Q. How do you make sure people are thinking the right way about risk and failure? A. We’ve tried to address that by celebrating failure. We will, in front of the whole company, talk about all the things we’ve failed at. The idea is to demonstrate that you have air cover, as an individual, if you fail. We’re celebrating it, not hiding it. I also do some mapping of how those failures may have felt like failures at the time, but led to little moments of learning that, if you patch them together, actually get to another breakthrough. If you can’t embrace the idea that little failures are a prerequisite to big successes, then you’re probably in the wrong business.

Liazon
Ashok Subramanian
Careers and Professions
Management


Supreme Court Hears Arguments in Generic-Drug Case

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Two years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that makers of brand-name drugs may be sued under state law for failing to warn consumers about the risks associated with their products. That decision, Wyeth v. Levine , was based in large part on the fact that such drug companies can sometimes change the labels on their products without permission from the Food and Drug Administration. On Wednesday, the justices heard arguments in a follow-up case that presented an interesting wrinkle: May the makers of generic drugs, whose products must use the same warning labels as the corresponding brand-name drugs and who cannot alter those labels, also be sued for failing to warn users about the risks posed by their products? The answer to the question will have enormous financial consequences, said Jay P. Lefkowitz, a lawyer for the drug companies. “This would totally change the way generics do business,” he said of a ruling against his clients. The three consolidated cases the court heard on Wednesday, including Pliva Inc. v. Mensing, No. 09-993, were brought by women who took the generic equivalent of Reglan for stomach ailments and developed a serious neurological disorder. Appeals courts ruled against the drug makers , saying that the federal regulatory regime did not block claims under state law. Mr. Lefkowitz said the rulings put his clients in an impossible position. “Generics can’t simultaneously comply with a federal duty to be the same and a state duty to be different,” he said. He said the makers of generic drugs are in a fundamentally different business from the companies that created the original medications. “Brand companies do safety and efficacy testing; generics do sameness testing,” Mr. Lefkowitz said. “Generics are required to make copies of the drugs and by definition make copies of the labels, because it wouldn’t make any sense to go into a drugstore to buy Advil and to see 15 different generic ibuprofen and to have 15 different sets of warnings.” Justice Antonin Scalia echoed that point, likening the makers of generic drugs to “this guy who graduated from high school.” “He doesn’t know anything about science,” Justice Scalia said. “He knows how to replicate this pill exactly. That’s all he really knows.” But a lawyer for the plaintiffs, Louis M. Bograd, said that it would be odd to hold the two kinds of companies to different standards. “The position that the generics are proposing here is one in which they would be immune from liability for selling a product with inadequate warnings,” he said, “even though the name-brand company selling the same drug with the same warnings would be liable.” Mr. Bograd added that 70 percent of prescriptions were filled with generic drugs and that a third of generic drugs had no brand-name competitors. “If generics are not responsible,” he said, “in many of these cases no one is responsible.” Several justices said makers of generic drugs could take steps short of changing their labels, including urging the F.D.A to take action. “You could propose a revision of the label, and if you did that, then you would be home free,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told Mr. Lefkowitz. “You would not be subject to the state suit.” But Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. seemed skeptical of lawsuits based on what he called “a duty to lobby the F.D.A.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she doubted that Congress had intended a two-track system. “Do you think Congress really intended to create a market in which consumers can only sue brand-named products?” she asked Mr. Lefkowitz. “Because if that’s the case, why would anybody ever take” a generic medicine? Later in the arguments, Justice Alito proposed an answer to that question. “I don’t know whether this is a good idea or not,” he said of allowing state suits, “but it does seem to me that it may significantly increase the costs for generic drug manufacturers, and therefore counteract one of the objectives of the statute, which was to provide generic drugs at a low cost.”

Supreme Court
Drugs (Pharmaceuticals)
Generic Brands and Products
Labeling and Labels


North Korea Reports ‘Serious’ Collapse at Building Project Believed to House Dozens

Abstract: SEOUL, South Korea — A 23-story apartment building that may have housed more than 90 families collapsed last week in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, a South Korean government official said Sunday after the North reported a “serious” accident at a construction site. Earlier Sunday, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency reported that the accident occurred Tuesday in the Pyongchon district of Pyongyang, blaming “sloppy building” and “irresponsible supervision and control.” It said there were “human casualties” but did not give figures. An official at the Ministry of Unification in Seoul, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Sunday that “a considerable number of people” might have died. The North Korean news agency said the government had organized a major rescue operation. It also reported that senior government and ruling Workers’ Party officials had apologized to bereaved families and district residents. In a rare admission of a government failure, Choe Pu-il, the minister of the people’s security, consoled the families, holding himself and his agency responsible for an “unpardonable crime,” according to the North Korean news media. The South Korean official said that the building was under construction but that as many as 92 families were believed to be living there already. In the North, families often move into an apartment building before it is completed, the official said. According to the North Korean news agency, the rescue operation ended Saturday. On Sunday, Rodong Sinmun, the main party newspaper, and other North Korean news media carried photographs showing senior officials bowing in apology — another rare gesture of public contrition for the North’s ruling elite — before what appeared to be a crowd of district residents gathered at a construction site. Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, “sat up all night, feeling painful after being told about the accident,” the North Korean report said, quoting Kim Su-gil, a senior party secretary in Pyongyang. Since taking over as the country’s top leader after the death of his father in late 2011, Kim Jong-un has poured resources into revamping Pyongyang, the home to those most loyal to his government, setting off a building boom in the showpiece city. Other projects around the country include a ski resort and amusement parks. Although recent visitors to Pyongyang have testified to the city’s face-lift under Mr. Kim, outside analysts say the young leader has spent resources on projects that have yielded quick results, aimed largely at pleasing the country’s elites while much of the population has suffered chronic food shortages. Following the examples of his father and grandfather, Mr. Kim has pushed for the rapid completion of the construction projects, setting deadlines and exhorting soldiers and workers at the sites to finish their tasks ahead of time. Although defectors from the North have reported frequent building accidents, it is rare for the government to report them. The South Korean news media speculated that the North’s swift reporting of the accident might indicate a high death toll. The last time North Korea acknowledged a major accident was in 2004 when an explosion at a train station in Ryongchon, near the border with China, killed or injured hundreds of people. Mr. Kim, whose father, Kim Jong-il, was considered more reclusive, has been casting himself as a hands-on leader who is more concerned about the people’s well-being. The North’s state-run news media often shows him meeting citizens and pointing out mistakes committed by the local government and party officials. South Korean news media speculated on Sunday that by acknowledging the disaster and making his government quickly apologize, Mr. Kim was trying to pre-empt criticism of his policies and sending a message to his people that he is different from the South Korean president, Park Geun-hye. Ms. Park’s government has been under growing public pressure for failing to prevent and mishandling the response to the sinking of a ferry on April 16 that left 304 people dead or missing, the vast majority of them high school students, and she was criticized for a tardy apology over the disaster.

North Korea
Pyongyang
Construction
Kim Jong-un
Accidents and Safety


Prosecutor in Etan Patz Trial May Participate in Retrial, Judge Rules

Abstract: A judge has ruled that the lawyer who prosecuted the murder trial of a man accused of killing Etan Patz in 1979 may participate in the retrial. The prosecutor, Joan Illuzzi , worked for the Manhattan district attorney’s office last year and prosecuted Pedro Hernandez in the missing boy case. It ended in a mistrial after one juror declined to convict. Ms. Illuzzi then ran unsuccessfully for Staten Island district attorney. She has returned to the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Mr. Hernandez’s lawyers wanted Ms. Illuzzi banned from being in front of a jury because of comments she made about the case during her campaign. They argued that the comments could bias a jury. Justice Maxwell Wiley of State Supreme Court in Manhattan disagreed. Etan, 6, who lived in SoHo, vanished on his way to school on May 25, 1979.

Etan Patz
Joan Illuzzi
Manhattan
Pedro Hernandez
Murders and Homicides
Decisions and Verdicts


‘Main Street Suffolk County’ Exhibit Runs Through Dec. 18

Abstract: Riverhead, N.Y. WENDY FEINBERG, 64, looked puzzled when asked if she thought her photo of downtown Port Jefferson was representative of Suffolk County’s Main Streets. That, after all, was the theme of the exhibition in which the shot had just won second place. Hmmm. A typical Main Street? “Not really,” said Ms. Feinberg, who lives in South Setauket. “Most of the Main Streets on Long Island are more New Englandy.” That might be debatable among both exhibitors and visitors. The show, “Main Street Suffolk County,” sponsored by the Suffolk County Historical Society , made it clear that the subject was more of a personal concept than a bricks-and-mortar reality. “I was pretty sure we’d get a parade and some buildings, but I really didn’t know what to expect,” said Wally Broege, the director. The exhibition did, in fact, get photos of parades and buildings. But the 46 entries also included shots of everything from a Westhampton theater to a Montauk street scene of a dog on a parked motorcycle. Robert Dohrenwend, 47, of Miller Place, the third-place winner, decided Main Street was an antique truck in Yaphank. Peter Dicke, 65, of Huntington, who took fourth place, chose to depict it as suburbia’s quintessential hunting-and-gathering place: — a mall, specifically, the Walt Whitman Mall in Huntington Station. “If you’re a shopper on Long Island, a mall is Main Street to you,” he said. Started three years ago, the competition was created to encourage community involvement with the society, Mr. Broege said. Agriculture was the subject of the first event. Last year’s contest had a maritime theme. At the opening, the entrants, mostly amateurs, nibbled on cheese and crackers while discussing their work, which included color and black-and-white shots. Winners received ribbons. The photos will be displayed at the society’s Riverhead headquarters, 300 West Main Street, through Dec. 18. For historical perspective, the society also displayed some selections from its collection of glass-plate negatives by Hal B. Fullerton alongside the contestants’ entries. Mr. Fullerton was a special agent for the Long Island Rail Road in the early 20th century who took pictures throughout the island to encourage rail traffic. The seven shown are street scenes, including a loaded hay wagon traveling down a prototypical Main Street — a dirt road. Ray Germann , of Huntington, the judge of the competition and a documentary photographer whose work has ranged from New York street scenes to landscapes of the American West, was impressed by the entries. “It wasn’t easy picking prize winners,” he said. His top choice was a night shot of the Stony Brook post office, which he liked because of its technical detail and visual impact, he said. The winner, Virginia Bushart, 65, flushed with embarrassment at the attention, said she almost did not attend the event because she did not like competitions. But, she added, she is proud of her photo, which shows off the building’s illuminated facade and the warm glow of lights from adjoining shops on either side. In the opinion of Ms. Bushart, a longtime Stony Brook resident, the setting is a Norman Rockwell painting come to life — a community focal point where people sit on the steps eating ice cream and where tethered dogs await their owners picking up the mail. “I’ve taken my kids and now my grandchildren there over the years,” she said. “I think what I love about it is its reliability.” Taking a different view was Diane Tucci, 40, a fourth-generation Riverhead woman who worried about the sustainability of Main Streets in America, especially her own. She saw it changing in front of her eyes, and not necessarily for the better. The photo she entered in the contest shows an elderly man walking in downtown Riverhead while peering into the closed storefronts. His hands are clasped behind his back, and Ms. Tucci imagines him remembering better times. “Why is it we have such a beautiful setting for this town right on the Peconic River and yet nothing thrives here?” she said. Ms. Tucci has taken this very stroll herself, she said, and has had many of the same forlorn thoughts she imagined her subject having. She gestured at the historic Fullerton photos on display, then back at her own. “Maybe one day this picture will be the only thing left” of Main Street, she said. “It’ll be like one of those shots of a horse and carriage.”


In Call, Obama and Merkel Discuss ‘Cooperation’ on Intelligence

Abstract: WASHINGTON — In their first telephone conversation since revelations of American spying activities jarred relations between the United States and Germany, President Obama and Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday discussed what White House officials described as “ways to improve cooperation” in the wake of the scandal. The officials described the call as “friendly and cordial,” though they provided few details about what was discussed. But a brief description in a White House statement left no doubt that the subject of spying came up. “The president and the chancellor also exchanged views on U.S.-German intelligence cooperation, and the president said he’d remain in close communication on ways to improve cooperation going forward,” the statement said. Relations between the United States and Germany have been frosty since documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, showed that Ms. Merkel’s personal cellphone had been tapped. The recent revelations that the United States had recruited spies in the German defense and intelligence agencies prompted Germany to expel the C.I.A. station chief from Berlin. The potential damage to the relationship between Germany and the United States comes at a time that the two allies are seeking to work together to resolve several international crises. On Tuesday night, Mr. Obama and Ms. Merkel reiterated their position that Russia must take steps to de-escalate the situation in eastern Ukraine, and agreed to remain “closely coordinated” on measures that could impose further economic costs on Russia, White House officials said. Mr. Obama and Ms. Merkel also discussed negotiations with Iran about its disputed nuclear program, officials said. They noted progress in the talks, saying that it remained “imperative” that Iran take steps to prove it is not developing nuclear weapons.

Germany
Angela Merkel
US
Barack Obama
Edward Snowden
NSA
CIA
US Foreign Policy
Spying and Intelligence Agencies


Texas State House Full of Strangers Calls for a Shrewd Leader

Abstract: Ross Ramsey, the executive editor at The Texas Tribune, writes a column for The Tribune. While the voters were having their say on Tuesday, State Representative Bryan Hughes, Republican of Mineola, sent a note to his fellow House members saying he would be running for the chamber’s top job. A few days later, he sent another one that started to lay out his case against Speaker Joe Straus, Republican of San Antonio. He said the election results showed the incumbent’s weaknesses — mainly that he didn’t protect legislators as well as Mr. Hughes thought he should have. These elections are weird — like running for class president. Every candidate knows every voter. Every voter knows every voter. It’s more about power than popularity, but it’s all about relationships. Mr. Hughes is attacking Mr. Straus for not protecting the rest of the kids in class. The implication is that Mr. Hughes or someone else might. Redistricting years are precarious for speakers. The changes in the political maps force turnover. The people who put Mr. Straus in place are not all coming back. Thirty House members decided not to seek re-election, and with runoffs still ahead, voters have already added seven more to those ranks. And the last class of new representatives was unusually large, mainly because voters used the 2010 general election to purge as many Democratic lawmakers as possible. It’s possible that half of the House will consist of freshman and sophomore members next session. In a place that runs on relationships, that’s a lot of strangers. Some of them are replaced by allies and future allies, some by potential foes. Because these are political people and they’re in this for a shot at the power they need to get things done — whatever those things are — they’re each guided by ambition. Supporting the right leader means better positions, more power and better ability to get things done. It takes time to figure out what everyone wants, how to help the ones you can help and how to neutralize the rest. Mr. Straus isn’t in any particular danger at the moment, but this is one of those posts where defending the position — maintaining power against continuous challenges — is part of the job. Mr. Hughes is one challenge. Another started earlier and ended Tuesday. Opposition from the other political party is no surprise, but it’s unusual for a speaker to draw an opponent in his own primary. Matt Beebe, a San Antonio businessman, filed against Mr. Straus and, with significant third-party support, ran a vigorous and time-consuming campaign against him. Mr. Straus spent a lot of money, worked hard, and won handily, with 62.9 percent of the vote. Before he had much time to savor that, he was answering questions about what kind of night his team had. Three of the Republican House members who were defeated were committee chairs, lieutenants to the speaker. Two more chairmen face runoffs. Mr. Straus had a couple of wins, too: Two representatives who didn’t support his re-election as speaker in 2011 were ousted by voters. Mr. Straus has been hounded by outside parties since 2009 when he and a coalition of angry Democrats and disaffected Republicans unseated Speaker Tom Craddick, a Midland Republican popular with conservatives. Mr. Straus won re-election in 2011 despite a challenge by conservatives promoted by outside groups who slurred him as a moderate. One of the loudest critics, Michael Quinn Sullivan of Empower Texans, helped promote Mr. Beebe’s challenge to Mr. Straus in the primary. And on Wednesday, Mr. Straus lashed out at Mr. Sullivan — a move that left some of his friends wondering why he was adding fuel to the fire. “He was spectacularly unsuccessful,” Mr. Straus said. “And frankly, I don’t consider him much of a factor. His biggest problem with me is that I keep succeeding. We’ve got a conservative House here, and he’s not part of it.” It is a conservative House — that part is right. Mr. Straus easily won re-election, so there’s that. But Mr. Sullivan and others helped take out some of Mr. Straus’s allies in the primaries, and are a more effective foil than others — Democrats, for instance — against the leadership. It’s clear that many Republican House members fear them and their influence with other conservative groups in Texas. Mr. Straus wants to reduce Mr. Sullivan to an inconsequential noisemaker. Mr. Sullivan contends that Mr. Straus isn’t listening to the voters. Who will House members listen to?

Texas
Elections
United States Politics and Government
Republican Party
House of Representatives