Yankees Take Cautious Approach With Posada

Abstract: ARLINGTON, Tex. — Jorge Posada said his previous concussion came in September 2007, when Eric Hinske barreled into him during a bone-jarring collision at the plate. That night, he was taken to the hospital for a CT scan, which came back negative. But Posada played the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that, too. There will be no immediate return this time for Posada, who sustained what the team called a mild concussion Tuesday night when a foul ball clipped the side of his head. After testing Wednesday at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Posada was cleared to play, but he was held out of the starting lineup for Friday’s game against Texas. Manager Joe Girardi said Posada will not catch again until Sunday at the earliest. “We’ve seen what has happened to some of these guys who’ve gotten concussions, how long it’s taken for them to come back,” said Girardi, who mentioned Jason Bay, Ryan Church and Justin Morneau as examples. “Jorge’s had three or four in the past, so that is our big concern.” By Posada’s count, this is his fourth, though he said this did not feel like a concussion. He acknowledged that more have likely gone undetected, the nature of his position. “It’s not like I haven’t experienced them before,” Posada said. “You get the headaches, a little foggy and stuff. But I don’t think I’ve felt like that this time.” Posada said he had trouble sleeping Tuesday night, and when he arrived at Yankee Stadium before Wednesday’s day game, he had ImPACT testing — a computerized evaluation that gauges memory and reaction time. He said the results showed abnormalities when compared with his baseline test from spring training, and that was when the Yankees decided to send him to the hospital. Posada said he had not experienced any symptoms other than a headache, which he considered normal, and that he was available Friday to pinch-hit. If he were to call for Posada, Girardi said he would use a pinch-runner. There is no extra equipment Posada can wear or precautions he can take to reduce the risk. “It all depends on where they hit you,” Posada said. “If it hits you on the right spot, you’re obviously going to feel it. It’s part of being back there. You are going to get hit.” PETTITTE SET TO RETURN Andy Pettitte is lined up to rejoin the Yankees’ rotation on Sept. 19 in Baltimore or Sept. 20 against Tampa Bay, as long as he is able to make another start in the minor leagues without a setback to his injured groin. Girardi said he was “extremely encouraged” by the reports he received on Pettitte, who worked four innings Thursday for Class AA Trenton. To keep him on turn, the Yankees want Pettitte to pitch next on Tuesday, when they hope to have three options of where to send him. One materialized Friday night when Trenton defeated New Hampshire to advance to the Eastern League’s championship series. If Class AAA Scranton/Wilkes-Barre wins one of its next two games against Columbus, it will play at home on Tuesday in the International League finals. For Pettitte to pitch near the Yankees, who open a three-game set Monday at Tropicana Field, Class A Tampa’s series would have to go to a fifth and deciding game. “We’re hoping that the schedule cooperates,” Joe Girardi said. “I’m not sure what the schedule’s going to be.” HUGHES AVAILABLE For one night and one night only, Phil Hughes was available to pitch out of the Yankee bullpen Friday. With his turn in the rotation skipped because of his mounting innings, Hughes said he would welcome the work to stay sharp in advance of his start Wednesday night against Tampa Bay. Joe Girardi said he would use Hughes strictly for an inning, and only if the situation presented itself. “The one thing is, you think about a guy facing hitters on a regular basis,” Girardi said. “And if he doesn’t, he won’t face hitters for like 9 or 10 days. That’s a little bit of a concern of mine.” CY YOUNG FACEOFF Two of the leading contenders for the American League Cy Young award will face each other Monday night, when C. C. Sabathia (19-6, 3.14 earned run average) is set to pitch opposite David Price (17-6, 2.87) as the Yankees begin a three-game series at the Tampa Bay Rays.

Concussions
Posada Jorge
New York Yankees
Pettitte Andy
Baseball
Hughes Phil


For Chelsea, More Questions Than Ever

Abstract: LONDON — The loneliest place on a wet and windy night in Naples is standing with your back to the crowd. Your team is defeated and divided as to whether the players are with you or not. Your boss is nowhere to be seen, but he has a reputation for firing coaches who lose matches. Welcome — or perhaps not — to the world of André Villas-Boas. After his Chelsea side scored first but then lost, 3-1, against Napoli in the San Paolo stadium on Tuesday, Villas-Boas did not hide. “Speculation will continue as long as results don’t happen,” he said. “But it won’t be a distraction. “We have to focus on reorganizing the relationship between the back four. We need to get this concentration right and this efficiency right. That’s for sure.” Not far from where Villas-Boas was facing his interrogators, Ezequiel Lavezzi, the darting Argentine whose two goals cut through Chelsea’s error-prone defenses like a lancet through flesh, was also being interviewed. “Please,” he pleaded on Italian television, “Don’t call me Diego. I am El Pocho.” The words “El Pocho“ translate as “the Chubby One.” On Tuesday, they could have described Lavezzi’s ability to poach goals. And the reference to Diego is, of course, to Diego Maradona, the idol whom Neapolitans have dreamed of these past two decades since he left them. Lavezzi is right to dismiss the comparisons. He is a fine player, creative, quick of eye and certainly a favorite of the home crowd after joining Napoli in 2007. But even if you added Edinson Cavani, the remarkable goal scorer who feeds Lavezzi and feeds off him, the pair would not equal the genius that was Maradona in his prime. That said, they were too hot for Manchester City earlier in the Champions League, and much too hot for a confused Chelsea defense Tuesday. It was a match played as far as anyone could imagine from the old-style Italian mentality. It was played almost like a basketball game in which the opponents took turns. You attack and go for the net, and now we attack. Except that Chelsea, with its £50 million striker, Fernando Torres, once again sitting in silence on the bench, had no one as sharp around the net as the Neapolitan imports. “Napoli was efficient in front of goal, and we were not,” admitted Villas-Boas. “We made a couple of mistakes, and Napoli took advantage of those opportunities,” he added. But the first mistake, the first gift goal, had been made by Napoli’s captain, Paolo Cannavaro. His attempt to kick away a bouncing ball ended up with him shanking the ball nicely into the path of Juan Mata, whose left-footed finish was as precise as Cannavaro’s had been comical. Had David Luiz not misplaced a simple header over the bar when the home goalie, Morgan De Sanctis, misjudged a corner kick, Chelsea would have been two up. Then the Chelsea errors kicked in. With John Terry out with a knee injury that needed surgery on Wednesday to cure, the heart of the defense was a new partnership of Luiz, the gifted but unpredictable Brazilian, and the recently acquired England center back, Gary Cahill. They needed midfielders to defend in front of them, but Raúl Meireles abdicated that responsibility when he stood idly by, allowing Lavezzi plenty of time and room to guide a right-foot shot low inside the far post from the edge of the penalty box. And just before halftime, the other half of the Naples act, Cavani, scored. He ghosted in behind the back of Branislav Ivanovic to score with his shoulder. The movement of Cavani, and the schoolboy error of Ivanovic, who watched the ball but not the man, was a simple lesson rarely seen at the level of the Champions League. The third goal combined the Napoli strikers and once again punished defensive frailty. Luiz could have cleared the ball, but struck it against Cavani, who quickly moved to control the rebound and offer his mate, Lavezzi, another chance to score. With such naïveté, the wonder was that there were no more goals. With such natural predators, Napoli deserved their triumph. But the contest is over two legs, and the manner in which both sides defended suggests that nothing can be taken for granted when they meet again in London on March 14. By then, who knows whether Villas-Boas will still be in his job? Who can say whether aging English players like Frank Lampard and Ashley Cole want to be a part of any Chelsea revival? And nobody knows how long Roman Abramovich, who has treated Chelsea coaches as expendable as paper tea cups, will back his new, young Portuguese team manager? “Napoli edged this game,” Villas-Boas conceded. “But I don’t rule out Chelsea going through at Stamford Bridge. We have to solve these mistakes at the back. We need to get this concentration right and this efficiency right. “The first two goals, we had numbers back, and if we were more organized, they wouldn’t have scored.” Villas-Boas believes he will be given time to work on that organization, and to build a new Chelsea beyond this season. The records show that Abramovich does not understand, or tolerate, the need for time. And very few, certainly not the media or the critics or even the coaches who lie in wait to take Villas-Boas’s role if he is fired, know what the Russian will do. The word inside Chelsea is that this time he really does intend to stick with the guy he chose, at great expense. With Villas-Boas, or someone else, the reality is that Chelsea needs to go through a process of painful rebuilding because the team is near the end of its cycle.

UEFA Champions League (Soccer)
Chelsea (Soccer Team)
Soccer


At Least One Justice Is in Play as Supreme Court Hears Affordable Care Act Case

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday took up the Affordable Care Act in one of the most anticipated arguments of the term, and it seemed closely divided over the fate of President Obama’s signature legislative achievement. The court’s four liberal members voiced strong support for the administration’s position. But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who cast the decisive vote to save the law in 2012 , said almost nothing on Wednesday, and did not indicate his position. In a pleasant surprise for the administration, however, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who was in dissent in 2012, made several comments indicating that his vote was in play. “Perhaps you will prevail in the plain words of the statute,” he told a lawyer for the challengers. But, he continued, “there’s a serious constitutional problem if we adopt your argument.” Wednesday’s arguments suggested that the coming months will be tense for the administration as it waits to hear whether about seven million low- and middle-income people in some three dozen states will continue to receive subsidies to help them buy health insurance. Should the court rule that subsidies were not authorized by the health law , most of those people would no longer be able to afford insurance. And insurance markets in those states could collapse. Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said it would be “unwise” to draw conclusions based on the questioning by the justices. Such efforts, he said, can produce “some erroneous predictions about the likely outcome.” After the 2012 arguments, many commentators said the law was doomed. It survived. The court is not likely to issue its decision in the case, King v. Burwell, No. 14-114, until late June or early July. The 2012 health case ruling came on the last day of the term. Image Kathleen E. Sebelius, the health and human services secretary when the health care law was passed, spoke with reporters. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times Michael A. Carvin, who represented the plaintiffs in the 2012 case , was back at the lectern on Wednesday, again facing the administration’s top appellate lawyer, Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. The argument, which lasted about 80 minutes rather than the usual hour, started with a presentation from Mr. Carvin that was tied closely to the text of the law. “This is a straightforward case of statutory construction where the plain language of the statute dictates the result,” he said. He was referring to a provision in the law that seems to say that subsidies are available only to people living where the insurance marketplaces, known as exchanges, had been “established by the state.” Mr. Carvin faced a barrage of questions from the court’s liberal wing focusing on the health care law as a whole. “We don’t look at four words,” Justice Elena Kagan said. “We look at the whole text, the particular context, the more general context, try to make everything harmonious with everything else.” Justice Stephen G. Breyer echoed the point. “If you want to go into the context,” he told Mr. Carvin, “at that point it seems to me your argument really is weaker.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said Mr. Carvin’s reading of the law would have devastating consequences. “We’re going to have the death spiral that this system was enacted to avoid,” she said. The Health Care Supreme Court Case: Who Would Be Affected? A look at the major issues at stake in King v. Burwell and the results of the ruling. Those kinds of observations from those justices were unsurprising. Justice Kennedy’s comments were another matter. He repeatedly asked whether Congress had the constitutional authority to make states choose between setting up their own insurance exchanges and letting their citizens lose tax subsidies to help them buy insurance. “Your argument raises a serious constitutional question,” he told Mr. Carvin. Justice Kagan made a similar point, saying that a properly drafted law would have made the choice more stark. “That’s not the clarity with which we require the government to speak when it’s upsetting federal-state relations like this,” she said. Mr. Carvin’s style is brash and impatient, and some of the justices tried to slow him down. “Take a breath,” Justice Sotomayor told him at one point. Justice Kagan tested Mr. Carvin’s reading of the law with a hypothetical question involving three of her law clerks. Suppose, she said, that she asked Will to write a memorandum and asked Elizabeth to edit it. “And then I say,” she said, “ ‘Amanda, listen, if Will is too busy to write the memo, I want you to write such memo.’ “ “Now, my question is: If Will is too busy to write the memo and Amanda has to write such memo, should Elizabeth edit the memo?” Justice Kagan asked. Her question tracked the structure of the health care law, which requires the federal government to step in when states decline to establish their own exchanges. Obamacare, Back at the Supreme Court: Frequently Asked Questions A list of frequently asked questions about the King v. Burwell Supreme Court case and its implications for Obamacare. Mr. Carvin gave a vague answer, and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. provided a different one. “ ‘This is a great memo, who wrote it?’ ” he imagined asking the clerks. “Would the answer be, ‘It was written by Will, because Amanda stepped into Will’s shoes?’ ” Justice Kagan seemed impressed. “He’s good, Justice Alito,” she said. She reminded Mr. Carvin that he had a different position on the subsidies in the 2012 case. “You said the insurance exchanges cannot operate as intended by Congress absent the subsidies,” she said. Chief Justice Roberts suggested a reason for Mr. Carvin’s shift in position. “Mr. Carvin, we’ve heard talk about this other case,” the chief justice said. “Did you win that other case?” When the laughter died down, Chief Justice Roberts added, “So maybe it makes sense that you have a different story today?” Four plaintiffs , all from Virginia, sued the administration, saying they did not want to be forced to buy insurance. The subsidies, they said, made them subject to the law’s requirement that they buy insurance or pay a penalty. If not for the subsidies, they said, they would have been eligible for a hardship exemption from the penalty. Both lawyers discussed whether the plaintiffs had suffered the sort of direct injury that gave them standing to sue. But the court did not seem likely to dismiss the case on standing grounds. Mr. Verrilli gave a forceful argument that had none of the halting quality of parts of his 2012 appearance before the court. He said the challengers’ interpretation “produces an incoherent statute that doesn’t work” and “revokes the promise of affordable care for millions of Americans.” Video How King v. Burwell, the latest Supreme Court challenge to the Affordable Care Act, could create two American health care systems divided by access to care. “That cannot be the statute that Congress intended,” he said. But Mr. Verrilli had to walk a fine line in response to Justice Kennedy’s concerns that the law may violate the Constitution. “I’m not prepared to say to the court today that it is unconstitutional,” Mr. Verrilli said. “It would be my duty to defend the statute.” But Mr. Verrilli added that the doctrine of constitutional avoidance, which requires courts to try to interpret laws to avoid constitutional problems, supported the administration’s reading of the law. But for that doctrine, Justice Kennedy seemed inclined to reject the administration’s position. “That seems to me to go in the wrong direction for your case, not the right direction,” he said on hearing Mr. Verrilli’s interpretation of the law. Justices Alito and Antonin Scalia were consistently critical of the administration’s position. Justice Clarence Thomas asked no questions but was in dissent in the 2012 case. Justice Scalia said the law “means what it says” even if that has “disastrous consequences.” “How can the federal government establish a state exchange?” he asked. “That is gobbledygook.” He added that Congress could promptly address a ruling rejecting the subsidies. “You really think Congress is just going to sit there while all of these disastrous consequences ensue?” he asked. Mr. Verrilli sounded skeptical. “Theoretically they could,” he said. Justice Alito said states could act, too. “It’s not too late for a state to establish an exchange if we were to adopt petitioners’ interpretation of the statute,” he said. “So going forward, there would be no harm.” Justice Alito added that the Supreme Court could defer the effective date of its decision. Mr. Verrilli responded that it was “completely unrealistic” for states to be able to move fast enough even with additional time.

Health Insurance
Supreme Court,SCOTUS
Obamacare,Affordable Care Act
Anthony M Kennedy
Donald B Verrilli Jr
Michael A Carvin


City Students Get a Lesson in Slow Justice

Abstract: AN appeals court ruled yesterday that New York City schools were being shortchanged by at least $4.7 billion annually in state aid, adding more firepower to the city's plea for more education money as lawmakers try to wrap up work on a state budget. -- from Friday's New York Times Huzzah! Pop the corks. Get smashed on Snapple! More judges found New York City on the losing end of the education money game. For advocates of the city schools, oh joy. Oh my. It's not that easy. It never is. An Appellate Division panel did indeed say last week that the city schools are being shortchanged. But now it's back to the Legislature and the governor, who are obligated to some day make political and budgetary decisions on the matter -- for the whole state, as Attorney General Eliot Spitzer noted on Friday. "This is a statewide issue, by the way," Mr. Spitzer, who could easily be the next governor, told NY1 News. "Do not believe it is New York City only." Take a bow for candor, Mr. Spitzer. If New York City gets more school dollars, all the other cities and towns in the state will line up to get more money, too, and will be have to be satisfied, too -- the underlying reason for Albany's infamous gridlock, especially on education aid. For the record, the plaintiffs in this case first sued 13 years ago. The case has been the subject of four major decisions by a justice of the New York State Supreme Court, three by the Appellate Division, two by the State Court of Appeals. A judicial finding that the city schools rate more education money has been affirmed and reaffirmed by the courts and appealed and re-appealed by Gov. George E. Pataki. The political establishment in Albany complains that school funding is the job of elected officials, not of the judiciary. But the governor buys time -- in the courts. "We've never had a case where we've had a governor and Legislature just blatantly defying orders of the highest courts," said Michael A. Rebell, a lawyer representing the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, a coalition of parents and community groups that brought the lawsuit in 1993. After opponents tried to get the case dismissed, it went to trial at the turn of the century. On Jan. 10, 2001, Justice Leland DeGrasse of State Supreme Court in Manhattan issued his decision. He said that the state's method of financing public schools deprived New York City students of a "sound, basic education," and handed the Legislature the task of coming up with a new system within eight months, or facing judicial intervention. Then came the appeals, culminating so far in last week's Appellate Court decision, which had something for each side. The appellate panel made the plaintiffs happy by directing the Legislature and governor to appropriate $4.7 billion to $5.6 billion in operating money for the city schools over the next four years, and about $9.2 billion in capital resources over the next five years. But the court delighted the governor and the Legislature by leaving to them the determination of precisely how much money will go to New York City's schools, and on what timetable. IN other words, the matter is right back in the Albany maelstrom, perhaps to be appealed, perhaps not; perhaps to be carried out in some way soon -- perhaps not. Does this sound too terribly negative? Consider: Legislative leaders have already gotten into a verbal exchange about the ruling. The speaker of the State Assembly, Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat who has been fighting for more city school aid, said that the Legislature "better address the matter this year" and noted that the decision specified a spending range. The majority leader of the Republican-dominated Senate, Joseph L. Bruno, who labeled a lower court ruling for additional city school aid "lunacy" just two months ago, sounded reluctant to move quickly and decisively. Mr. Pataki, in his last year as governor and dabbling at running for president, sounded characteristically risk-averse as he called the decision fair -- but did not rule out another appeal. What's next? As Mr. Spitzer advised: "Fast is good in this case. Delay is the enemy of progress." Can seasoned Albany watchers be forgiven their skepticism if they foresee more delay? Metro Matters E-mail: purnick@nytimes.com

NEW YORK CITY
NEW YORK STATE
CAMPAIGN FOR FISCAL EQUITY
FINANCES
PATAKI GEORGE E
EDUCATION AND SCHOOLS
SUITS AND LITIGATION


Englewood Public Preschool Program Uses Reggio Emilia Approach

Abstract: ENGLEWOOD IN a small classroom here, sunlight streams through bottles filled with orange, red, blue and green water arrayed along a window ledge. Woven baskets and glass jars holding birds’ nests, wire, feathers, pine cones, pipe cleaners, beads, tissue paper and paints sit within a child’s easy reach on open shelves. Children’s artwork hangs from the walls. Children in Englewood’s Reggio Emilia-based prekindergarten use this art studio as a laboratory to investigate ideas together with their teachers. Recently, a teacher asked several of the school’s 4- and 5-year-olds to help solve a problem: How would visitors to the school find its new indoor garden? The children chatted among themselves and came up with a sign — a big green circle like a green traffic light — that would show visitors the way to go. “How do we know that green means go?” a teacher, Breigh Miller, asked. Anisa Sharisf, 5, said: “Because green is light and bright. With the sunshine in back of it, it goes.” In Manhattan, affluent parents scramble to get their toddlers into the handful of private and expensive preschools based on the Reggio Emilia philosophy developed in Italy after World War II. The approach, combining child-initiated learning with teacher-directed activities — usually involving art — became popular in the early 1990s after Newsweek magazine described the Reggio Emilia approach to preschool education as the best in the world. There are now about 1,200 North American Reggio Emilia Alliance programs across the country, most of them private. The Englewood school district program, which the state says is New Jersey’s only public Reggio preschool, serves 125 children who share five classrooms and an art studio in a drab brick building with the Bergen Family Center , a social services agency. “I wanted to offer a public prekindergarten program that was the equivalent or better than the expensive private schools nearby,” said Barbara Berger, the director of the program, who helped bring Reggio Emilia to Englewood about seven years ago. Parents of children enrolled in the program appreciate the respect its teachers give children, its dual-language (Spanish-English) classrooms and the heavy emphasis it places on art. “I like its ethnic diversity,” said Darius A. Hicks, 31, a minister. He and his wife withdrew their son Darius, now 4, from a private preschool after they attended an open house and talked with Ms. Berger about the program. “It’s a blessing to have it as a public program,” said Reginald Jenkins Jr., 42, a lawyer whose daughter, Ellary, 5, attended the preschool. He said that the prekindergarten is fulfilling its mission — teaching kids how to think. This month, the Englewood school district and the Bergen Family Center will host their second Reggio Emilia conference, featuring two of the approach’s leading experts: Amelia Gambetti, Reggio international coordinator from Italy; and Lella Gandini, the program’s United States Reggio liaison. Over 300 educators from 100 schools across the country are expected to attend the conference, tour the prekindergarten classrooms and learn more about the approach. There are critics who challenge the ability of Reggio Emilia’s seemingly spontaneous and relatively unstructured classrooms to help young children learn basics like letter and number recognition and simple math concepts. The approach’s passionate advocates resent such objections. “Reggio Emilia requires a more rigorous and challenging curriculum than any other method,” said Sonya Shoptaugh, a Reggio consultant who has worked with the Englewood prekindergarten teachers. The approach encourages children to explore and test new ideas that are expressed through different vocabularies, including language (both oral and written), clay, paint, dance, wood and music. Reggio Emilia teachers use observation and conversation with children to develop and deepen curriculum. “It’s a rich, collaborative way of learning, where the child is seen as part of the social network,” said Roseanne Regan Hansel, a program development specialist with the New Jersey Department of Education’s Division of Early Childhood Education. Half of Englewood’s 200 public school kindergarteners are graduates of its Reggio Emilia program. “The program helps kids learn essential vocabulary for early reading and school learning,” said Richard Segall, Englewood’s superintendent of schools. “The Reggio Emilia kids are just so far ahead in how they approach the world.” In 2010, the Reggio Emilia preschool is scheduled to move into Englewood’s Donald A. Quarles School, which will evolve into an early childhood learning center. In its new home, the prekindergarten will be able to accommodate more children. The school’s kindergarten will begin to incorporate Reggio Emilia-inspired practices. “As a result of their increased exposure to Reggio Emilia, our teachers are changing their attitude about what kids can accomplish,” Dr. Segall said.


Index Shows Increase in Consumer Confidence

Abstract: Consumers have more confidence in the American economy than they have had since the sudden collapse of Lehman Brothers in September, which nearly caused the global banking system to implode, a survey showed on Friday. The Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers said its preliminary April reading of consumer sentiment rose to a level of 61.9, up from 57.3 in March, and was the highest since 70.3 recorded in September. “The upshot is that everyone is now looking for upside surprises in the data, which tells you that all this is pretty much priced in,” said Carl Lantz, United States interest rate strategist with Credit Suisse in New York. The survey’s index of current economic conditions rose to 66.6 in April, from 63.3 in March, and was the highest reading since December. The index of consumer expectations rose to 58.9 in April, from 53.5 in March, and was the highest since September. “While consumers believe the economy may have hit bottom, most consumers believe that when the rebound starts the economy will gain ground very slowly,” the survey director, Richard Curtin, said.

Economic Conditions and Trends
Surveys and Series
Consumer Behavior


Defending Champion Seminoles Are No. 1 in Preseason Poll

Abstract: The Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Jameis Winston and Florida State, the defending national champion, were No. 1 in the Associated Press preseason poll. The Seminoles will start the season No. 1 for the sixth time — the first since 1999, when they became the first team to hold the top spot for the entire season. Florida State received 57 of 60 first-place votes from the news media panel. No. 2 Alabama, No. 3 Oregon and No. 4 Oklahoma each received one first-place vote. Ohio State is No. 5, and Auburn is No. 6. The rest of the top 10: U.C.L.A. at No. 7, followed by Michigan State, South Carolina and Baylor.

Polls
Jameis Winston
College football
Florida State University


China’s Outflows of Money Slowed in February

Abstract: HONG KONG — Few economic statistics have gone as quickly from obscurity to the center of attention from international financial markets lately as China’s foreign currency reserves, widely seen as the best barometer of how long China can avoid a possible devaluation someday of its own currency. Monthly changes in the reserves these days mainly reflect how much money is being sent out of the country by Chinese companies and families nervous about the country’s economic slowdown and sweeping anticorruption investigations. Over the last five weeks, the Chinese government has waged an aggressive campaign to stem the outflow , through almost daily pledges by officials not to devalue and through much tighter enforcement of the rules on sending money overseas. Late Monday afternoon came word that the policies are starting to bear fruit: the erosion in China’s foreign exchange reserves slowed sharply last month from the pace of $100 billion a month that prevailed through the winter. Reserves fell by $28.6 billion last month, to $3.202 trillion. Most economists had anticipated a somewhat larger drop in reserves — Barclays had expected a fall of $70 billion, for example. The decline announced on Monday “is an encouraging sign because the concern amongst a lot of the bears was that the outflows would keep accelerating — the fact they’ve eased is reassuring,” said Julian Evans-Pritchard, the China economist for Capital Economics, a research firm based in London. Yi Gang, the senior deputy governor of the Chinese central bank, dismissed concerns about the nation’s currency during remarks earlier in the day outside the National People’s Congress session in Beijing. “The cross-border capital flows are in the normal range,” he said. At a time of turmoil in world financial markets, the renminbi is actually among the most stable currencies, Mr. Yi added. “Our volatility, the fluctuations of the renminbi against the U.S. dollar and also the fluctuations against a basket of currencies, in reality and from a global perspective, are fundamentally the smallest.” China had caused alarm overseas and at home by devaluing its currency by 4 percent over three days in August , and by almost as much again over five weeks in late December and early January. The drop has prompted individuals and companies to move money overseas or make other moves. Many companies, for example, have repaid loans denominated in dollars before they become even more expensive in renminbi terms. But since January, the central bank, the People’s Bank of China, has set the daily fixing of the renminbi against the dollar in Shanghai with no clear trend toward the strengthening or the weakening of the currency. And state-controlled Chinese banks have also intervened heavily in the less regulated Hong Kong market to protect the currency’s value here. China’s Exodus of Capital As the economy stumbles, individuals and companies are pulling money out of China en masse, leaving the government scrambling to limit the outflows. Defending China’s currency, the renminbi, could nonetheless remain a challenge for Beijing. Prime Minister Li Keqiang announced on Saturday that his government would step up China’s already brisk expansion of its money supply, further flooding the economy with renminbi in an effort to make sure that banks can keep pumping out loans to companies. Mr. Li included the money supply target in a broader panoply of measures aimed at maintaining economic growth at 6.5 percent or higher through 2020. Monetary stimulus helps economic growth by holding down interest rates. But lower interest rates also make it less attractive to invest in a currency, which could fuel further outflows of money from China. The reserves are a far from perfect measure of money leaving China. For starters, the change in the total value of the reserves is not influenced just by how much the central bank spends in currency markets to offset the outflow of money by Chinese companies and families. Changes in the value of China’s vast hoard of government securities and some equities denominated in euros, yen, pounds and other currencies also affect the overall level of the reserves, which is quoted in dollars. Economists estimate that about two-fifths of the reserves are held in currencies other than the dollar, and the dollar weakened slightly against most currencies during February. That suggests that the overall value of the reserves increased by about $13 billion last month because of currency moves — and indicates that the outflow of money in the last month may have been $13 billion greater than the figure of $28.6 billion that was announced on Monday morning. Another consideration is China’s huge trade surplus, which brings another $50 billion or so into the country each month, although the surplus narrowed to $32.6 billion last month, partly because of the Chinese New Year. The decline in reserves last month suggests that capital outflows may have totaled about $75 billion, using all of the nearly $33 billion from the trade surplus and the $13 billion or so from valuation changes, in addition to nearly $30 billion from the reserves. The change in central bank reserves does not include one other variable that will not be released until later this month and will provide a further clue on outflows: how much state-controlled banks spent on intervention last month. In the last two weeks, Chinese officials have said repeatedly that they do not see a need to devalue the country’s currency against the three baskets, or weighted averages, of various foreign currencies against which the central bank measures it. The Chinese central bank strengthened the renminbi against the dollar by nearly 0.3 percent on Monday morning in fixing the daily band of values within which the renminbi is allowed to trade in Shanghai. Based on one model of reserves adequacy proposed by the International Monetary Fund, China needs a minimum of $1.5 trillion if it bars practically all investment flows in and out of the country. A minimum of $2.7 trillion is needed if China allows money to move in and out of the country freely. The central bank has been gradually tightening the enforcement of its regulations on capital flows. The level of China’s reserves has become a subject of intense international interest as some large American hedge funds, like Hayman Capital Management in Dallas, have placed big bets in financial markets on a Chinese devaluation in the coming 12 to 18 months. “I’m not someone who hates China,” said J. Kyle Bass, the founder and principal of Hayman Capital, in a telephone interview last week. “What I’m good at is spotting credit bubbles.” But Chinese officials and many Chinese economists disagree with that gloomy prediction. They contend that official statistics showing limited bank exposure to nonperforming loans are credible, and that bank reserves to handle these loans are ample.

China
Economy
Renminbi,Yuan
International trade


Opera Maestro Ensnared in Brazilian Graft Scandal Lashes Out at Accusers

Abstract: SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Before taking the helm of this city’s opera house, John Neschling wielded the maestro’s baton in European venues from Lisbon to Vienna. He resurrected the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, moving it into an imposing concert hall housed in an abandoned railway station . He composed the scores of films such as “Kiss of the Spider Woman.” The only child of Austrian émigrés who fled to Rio de Janeiro to escape the Nazis, Mr. Neschling, 70, emerged as one of Brazil’s most towering contemporary figures in the classical music world, winning praise for his conducting prowess even as critics blasted his domineering management style. But in a stunning fall from grace, Mr. Neschling now finds himself entangled in the far-reaching ethical crisis consuming one Brazilian institution after another as a graft scandal engulfs the Theatro Municipal, the high-culture landmark in São Paulo’s old center where he was named artistic director in 2013. The authorities fired him in September after administrators who embezzled millions of dollars from the theater implicated Mr. Neschling in illicit enrichment schemes. Scrambling to salvage his reputation, Mr. Neschling is now going on the warpath against his enemies, upending a rarefied classical music scene in Brazil, where art and politics have long been intertwined. “I’m being attacked by liars and thieves in a witch hunt of the lowest caliber,” Mr. Neschling said in an interview, arguing that he is the victim of a smear campaign by self-acknowledged lawbreakers who are seeking leniency through plea deals. “It makes me sad that I have to undergo this humiliating situation at my age, after having done so much for this country.” Elsewhere in Brazil, prominent figures across the ideological spectrum are also lashing out at the plea agreements used to advance corruption inquiries, notably the colossal graft investigation around Petrobras, the national oil company. The scandal has resulted in the jailing of more than 40 construction moguls, oilmen and politicians. Beyond the Petrobras case, the country is witnessing a staggering array of other scandals, leaving many aghast as to how graft permeates Brazilian society. Just in São Paulo, reports of a kickback scheme by cardiologists are rattling the Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein, one of the country’s most respected medical institutions. Another scandal involves claims of bribes for politicians who had a hand in awarding huge contracts to supply meals in São Paulo’s public schools. In yet another jaw-dropping case, investigators charged the Rev. Osvaldo Palópito, a Roman Catholic priest and chaplain of São Paulo’s police force, of embezzling millions in tithes from his own congregants. By taking his fight to the court of public opinion, Mr. Neschling, who has not been charged with any crimes, is questioning whether Brazil’s anticorruption crusades are entangling innocent people along with the truly guilty. In the case involving Mr. Neschling, two administrators of the Theatro Municipal, José Luiz Herencia and William Nacked, admitted embezzling about $3 million from the opera house controlled by São Paulo’s municipal government. After reaching plea deals, the two men claimed that Mr. Neschling illicitly profited from hiring international opera stars through agents who also represented Mr. Neschling to arrange conducting jobs abroad, placing the maestro in the cross hairs of investigators. His accusers also claimed that Mr. Neschling made illicit gains from arranging a project with La Fura dels Baus, a theatrical group from Barcelona, which never materialized. “The public prosecutors don’t have the slightest idea about opera administration,” said Mr. Neschling, contending that he was an easy target for such accusations because of envy over his success. “There are hundreds of examples in history of people who have been attacked because they shine by those who are mediocre,” he said, comparing his predicament to the venomous campaign to drive the composer Gustav Mahler from his post as conductor of the Vienna State Opera a century ago. Supporters of Mr. Neschling have rushed to his defense, pointing out that up until now he has never been accused of doing anything illegal in a career spanning five decades. “My personal knowledge makes it impossible to believe that his personal dealings have even a hint of illegality or dishonesty,” said Yoram David, an Israeli conductor who has worked with Mr. Neschling. “If this man is collaborating with his own agents, this is perfectly normal in the music world.” Still, by Mr. Neschling’s own admission, his abrasive, hard-charging personality did him few favors before he was caught in the whirlwind of the Theatro Municipal scandal. As the grandnephew of both the composer Arnold Schoenberg and the conductor Artur Bodanzky , Mr. Neschling was born into a family immersed in classical music. At 17, he left Rio de Janeiro for Vienna to study music and remained there for nine years, living much of the time like a pauper. “Vienna drives anyone crazy,” he once told an interviewer, describing how he scraped by on a meager scholarship, enduring loneliness while taking refuge in psychoanalysis. He returned to Brazil, composing the soundtracks for prizewinning films, but still felt Europe’s tug. He returned to conduct at the Opéra de Bordeaux in France, the Teatro Nacional in Lisbon and the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, Italy. In 1996, he moved to São Paulo, taking on the task of reviving the state’s moribund symphony orchestra. Mr. Neschling won plaudits for raising the orchestra’s quality and moving it into a state-of-the-art concert hall in a cavernous, remodeled train station. He wed Patricia Melo, 54, a writer whose 2003 novel, “ Black Waltz ,” describes an obsessive, divisive, misanthropic Brazilian conductor who leaves his first wife to marry a younger woman. At the orchestra, some of the musicians called Mr. Neschling dictatorial. He chafed at the criticism, quarreling with a board that was overseeing a succession plan. He called José Serra, the São Paulo governor who is now Brazil’s foreign minister, “a spoiled boy,” before the authorities fired him in 2009. “Look, I deliver the goods,” Mr. Neschling said. “Then the Brazilian mediocrity that’s never delivered says, ‘Oh well, if that’s the way he does it, I can do it, too.’ But they can’t.” São Paulo’s mayor, Fernando Haddad, gave Mr. Neschling another chance by naming him the Theatro Municipal’s artistic director in 2013 with an annual salary of more than $500,000. Mr. Neschling set about improving the theater, which was designed by the architect Ramos de Azevedo and completed in 1911, mixing Renaissance, baroque and Art Nouveau styles. With all the grace of a bull in a china shop, Mr. Neschling likened the opera house’s restoration to “putting lipstick on a corpse.” But he lifted the theater’s international profile, luring opera stars like the Italian baritone Ambrogio Maestri and the Argentine tenor Marcelo Álvarez . Still, Mr. Neschling retained his capacity to alienate those around him. Carlos Augusto Calil, a former municipal official overseeing cultural policies in São Paulo, likened Mr. Neschling’s browbeating style of leadership to “an empire of fear,” arguing that the conductor neglected plans intended to use the Theatro Municipal to enhance access to dance and choral projects beyond traditional opera. “Neschling took over with his customary arrogance, embracing an outdated concept of the opera from the previous century,” Mr. Calil said. “Now he wants to cast himself as the victim of politicians, of traitors, of those who are mediocre, of the country.” Mr. Neschling is stewing as he contends with such views, contemplating how to react to the tumultuous bookend of what had been an illustrious career. “Two types of animals inhabit my soul,” Mr. Neschling recently wrote in a Facebook post. “In one corner, sheep are grazing and doves are fluttering. In the other, wild dogs are growling, yearning to mangle anything that gets in their way.” “I confess,” he continued, “that I don’t know what to do with the little sheep and white doves.”

Opera
Brazil
John Neschling
Classical music
Music
Theatro Municipal
Embezzlement
Corruption
Bribery and Kickbacks


Harvard Needs a Steady Endowment Manager

Abstract: Harvard University is struggling with postgraduate life. Its giant endowment lost 2 percent in the year to June, falling short of its own yardsticks and the 3.4 percent gain generated by David Swensen at its rival, Yale. More than a decade after the departure of its architect, Jack Meyer, the Harvard Management Company is finding it hard to get past being the sort-of hedge fund it once was. The $36 billion under its care makes it the largest fund in the country of its kind. Performance has lagged lately. The last year’s effort missed Harvard Management’s own blended benchmark return of 1 percent, about what its neighbor, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, managed with a pot about half the size. In his 15 years at the helm, Mr. Meyer helped turn the Harvard endowment into something like a hedge fund, with teams inside the organization managing money directly as well as farming out money to external investment firms. His track record was strong, but it came with unsustainable levels of pay, as well as organizational challenges. After the unexpected departure in July of Stephen Blyth, who was in charge for just 18 months, Harvard is looking for its fourth fund boss since Mr. Meyer left in 2005. Its hybrid internal-external model requires overseeing at least 200 employees, the executive search firm Charles Skorina estimates, in addition to the investments themselves. Mr. Skorina says no other big endowment employs more than 70. Yale, which distributes its $25 billion among outside managers, gets by with about 30 people. The Harvard fund’s annual report refers to a reduction in the internal equity management team and to deeper partnerships with outside managers. That suggests that the existing model may on the way out. Both internal and external equity holdings underperformed last year. Indexed investments would have done better. A focus on selecting the best outsiders, without the distraction of internal portfolios, could improve that. After all, the new Harvard endowment boss will have plenty to worry about: the challenges of investing such a big endowment, the low-return market environment and setting clear long-term goals. The aim, perhaps, should be to achieve something steadier — something, perhaps unthinkable in Harvard Yard — more like Yale’s 31 years with Mr. Swensen.


In the Cubs’ New Kingdom, Bliss and Wonder Reign at Every Level

Abstract: About a month ago, when the Chicago Cubs had baseball’s best regular-season record but were still far better known for what they had not won, I spent a week embedded with five central characters in the team’s taut drama. It was a way of assessing the temperament and zeitgeist of the club, and by extension its national following. These people — from various sectors of the Cubs’ constituency — were at once confident, distraught, defiant, unruffled, excited and deathly afraid to be excited. In other words, it was the Cubs’ experience as we have known it for decades. But now the Cubs are World Series champions and enveloped by a community liberated from a 108-year burden. After the biggest week in the franchise’s history, I revisited the five characters to learn how they had experienced the nearly monthlong theater. The Fan Carol Haddon, a Cubs season-ticket holder for 45 years, drove with three friends from Chicago to Cleveland for Wednesday’s tense, climactic Game 7. It seemed like the right thing to do until the Indians wiped out a three-run Cubs lead to tie the game in the eighth inning. “That broke my heart; I was devastated,” Haddon said Thursday morning as she drove through western Ohio on her way back to Chicago. “I was as pale as a ghost.” Just after the eighth inning Wednesday night, it began to rain in Cleveland. “That felt like tears from heaven,” Haddon said. After the ninth inning, with the score still tied, the umpires halted the game. Haddon, who says she is in her early 70s, has never believed in any of the curses that seemed to shroud her team. “I believed in the sport,” she said. “We just were not good enough before. So I don’t believe in jinxes, but I will always believe the rain delay in Game 7 was a godsend.” After a roughly 20-minute reprieve, the Cubs weathered the shock of the Indians’ comeback and regrouped to regain the lead in the 10th inning. With two outs in the bottom of the 10th, from her seat in the upper deck, Haddon watched a slow ground ball dance and hop toward Cubs third baseman Kris Bryant. “I did not start jumping up and down when Bryant went to field it,” Haddon said. “I waited.” Cubs fans are good at waiting. “It was worth it,” Haddon said. “When the ball was in Anthony Rizzo’s glove at first base, then I jumped up and down.” After the game, and before visiting some Cleveland pubs, Haddon and her friends remained in the stands, which were nearly half-full with Cubs fans. “I’ve never had anything to cheer for this late in the year before,” she said. “It’s a new Cubs world. We can look forward now. We don’t have to look back. It’s wonderful. What we have now is a future.” Image Rocco Caputo, a beer vendor at Wrigley Field for 34 years, received text messages from his regular customers shortly after the Chicago Cubs won the World Series. Credit Joshua Lott for The New York Times The Beer Vendor It was not long after the final out of the 2016 World Series that Rocco Caputo, back in Chicago, started receiving text messages from his regular customers at Wrigley Field. “They were telling me how much they were crying,” said Caputo, who has sold beer, hot dogs and peanuts at Cubs games for 34 seasons. “These were grown men. But it was that kind of night.” When Caputo, 49, was not reading texts, he looked out the window of his Aunt Barbara’s house, where he had gone to watch Game 7 with other family members. “Fireworks were going off left and right for about two hours,” Caputo said. “All the cars in the street were beeping — and this was three miles from Wrigley.” The mood was not nearly as festive when the Indians had tied the game in the eighth inning. “The whole neighborhood went so quiet,” Caputo said. “Where I was, nobody said a word. We just looked at each other and put our heads down.” Caputo was at Wrigley Field the night in 2003 when Steve Bartman, a spectator, deflected a fly ball and ruined a potential pivotal out in the National League Championship Series. The Cubs collapsed soon after. Caputo worked through the 1984 season, which held such postseason promise but instead ended in stunning, deflating disappointment. Caputo was there last year when the Mets swept the Cubs in the playoffs. He has committed each demoralizing defeat to memory. “Honestly, I didn’t think it was ever going to happen for us,” he said Friday morning. “But these Cubs players are just young kids, and that was a blessing, because they didn’t believe in curses.” Later on Friday, Caputo attended the city’s parade honoring the new champions. And though it was five months away, Caputo was already flashing forward to his next work day at Wrigley Field. “Opening day will be nuts: everyone back in the park with the monkey now off our backs,” Caputo chortled. “That is going to be a great day.” But in a quieter voice, Caputo also conceded there will be bittersweet moments as well. “I can still see the faces of all the die-hard fans who passed away and never got to see a Cubs championship,” he said. “They were my regular customers and friends, too. Part of me will feel bad for them. They won’t get to celebrate with us.” Image Jon Lester lifting the Commissioner’s Trophy at a World Series rally in Chicago. Lester signed as a free agent when the Cubs were mired in last-place finishes. Credit Dennis Wierzbicki/USA Today Sports, via Reuters The Player When the Cubs first approached Jon Lester, a coveted pitcher, about signing a free-agent contract in the fall of 2014, Lester, who had played his entire nine-year career in the American League, was not entirely sure where the Cubs had finished in their division that season. Dead last, he was told, 17 games out of first place. And the year before that? Last place again, 31 games out of first place. The year before that was even worse: 101 losses and 36 games out of first place. But Theo Epstein, the Cubs’ president for baseball operations, had a trick up his sleeve in the pursuit of Lester. Epstein had become the general manager of the Boston Red Sox just a few months after the team drafted Lester in 2002, and Epstein knew that Lester had been pitching in the club’s low minor leagues during Boston’s curse-busting season of 2004. Yes, Lester later became part of two other World Series-winning teams in Boston, but he had missed the momentous, unforgettable victory that freed Red Sox fans from 86 years of torment. “Come to Chicago,” Epstein beseeched Lester. “Imagine being on the Cubs team that finally wins.” Lester took the leap. On Friday, he was seated in the last row of the last bus on the Cubs’ parade route, gliding along Chicago’s Michigan Avenue. With his baseball cap turned backward, he leaned forward and shouted at the crowds lining the streets: “How about this? Do you believe this?” After pitching three pivotal innings in Wednesday’s climactic victory, Lester lugged a bottle of Champagne in the Cubs’ clubhouse. “I was convinced by Theo to believe in a 100-loss team,” Lester said. “This right here is why I came here. I wanted to be a part of this. I missed out on Boston. I was too young.” Though now only 32, Lester has been a voluble veteran presence on a Cubs team filled with precocious talent. He has been able to make important personal connections from locker to locker, a friend to the starters and the lesser players alike. The All-Star first baseman Anthony Rizzo got to know Lester in 2008, when Rizzo was an 18-year-old Red Sox minor leaguer who had been found to have Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a blood cancer. Lester, who had overcome non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma just two years earlier, counseled Rizzo about what to expect in the coming treatments. The two have remained close, like brothers. And Lester is a longtime friend to the reserve catcher David Ross, a team elder and the spiritual leader of the 2016 Cubs. “Even if he’s not an everyday player, Lester is like the beating pulse of this team,” Ross said last month. “He came here to beat a so-called curse, and he never stops reminding the guys of that.” Standing in a chaotic Cubs locker room after Game 7, Lester smiled at the scene. His third World Series championship will stand alone in his mind’s eye, and he said he knew it. Looking around the room, Lester said: “They’re so young. I don’t think they really understand what they just accomplished. I don’t think they’ll understand it until they get a little bit older.” Image The Cubs hired Joe Maddon after he had spent nine years managing the Tampa Bay Rays. “I came here after all the heavy lifting had been done.” Credit Tannen Maury/European Pressphoto Agency The Manager Epstein has said that hiring Joe Maddon was the final major piece in the construction of a Cubs’ World Series championship team. But after Game 7, Maddon, the scruffy-faced manager with an eternal twinkle in his eye, had a different view. “Listen, I am late to the party,” he said with a laugh. “I came here after all the heavy lifting had been done.” But Maddon, who joined the Cubs in 2015 after managing the Tampa Bay Rays for nine seasons, made some indispensable contributions, none bigger than embracing the Cubs’ dispiriting postseason history with an unflinching candor. He talked about black cats, billy goats and Gatorade-soaked mitts. He mocked 1908, the year when the Cubs had last won the World Series. “My mom wasn’t even born,” he said. After the Cubs had sprayed celebratory Champagne throughout the visitors’ clubhouse in Cleveland, he doubled down. “I totally respect what’s happened in the past, and I totally respect our fan base,” Maddon said. “But if you just want to carry the burden with you all the time, then tonight would never happen.” From the day he arrived in Chicago, Maddon’s message has been as blunt. “Running toward expectations and running toward pressure was really important,” he said, “as opposed to running away from it.” It was Thursday morning by the time Maddon made his way into a postgame news conference. He had ski goggles on his brow, gym shorts around his waist and what appeared to be a cutoff black wet suit on his torso that was embossed with a classic Cubs emblem. Maddon answered questions with his eyes wandering around the room, and he smiled and waved at Cubs employees standing in the back. He winked at his wife, Jaye, seated nearby. The journey will always be the destination to someone like Maddon, but he nonetheless liked where he had ended up. “This is really great for our entire Cub-dom to get beyond that one championship moment,” said Maddon, who has spent 42 years working in baseball, half of them in the minor leagues. “Because now, based on the young players we have in this organization, we have an opportunity to be good for a long time.” He added, “And now, we can do it without any constraints, without any of the negative dialogue.” Image Tom Ricketts, the team chairman, during the World Series victory parade. When his family bought the Cubs in 2009, he scoffed at talk of a curse. Credit Jerry Lai/USA Today Sports, via Reuters The Owner Sitting in his downtown Chicago office early last month, Tom Ricketts, whose family owns the Cubs, said the impending quest for the Cubs’ first World Series title in 108 years was not costing him any sleep. “I’m pretty chill,” Ricketts said with a winsome smile. Late in Wednesday’s game, Ricketts, who has dark hair, sent a text to Epstein. It read: “If you see someone after the game who sort of looks like me except he has completely gray hair, say ‘hello.’” In a telephone interview from his home north of Chicago on Saturday morning, Ricketts laughed when he recalled his missive. “I had lost my Zen-master calm,” he said. Ricketts, whose title is team chairman, has been a Cubs fan all his adult life. He lived across the street from Wrigley Field as a student at the University of Chicago. He met his wife, Cecilia, in the Wrigley bleachers. Years later, when he had become the team’s most visible owner, walking through the cozy ballpark’s aisles became a more demanding experience. But even in seasons when the Cubs were consistently losing almost two-thirds of their games, the genteel sensibilities of Midwestern baseball fans protected Ricketts from being heckled. “People were patient,” Ricketts said. “But they would also usually say, ‘But this year is the year we win, right?’” It was the memory of those conversations that left Ricketts most at ease — now he really was chill — once the Cubs had claimed the 2016 World Series. “I’ve literally had thousands of people say to me, ‘Please win the World Series before I die,’” he said. “For many years now, I’ve carried with me the understanding that for generation after generation after generation, the Cubs have been like a member of the family. “It’s great to have a World Series trophy to pay them back for that faithful support.” The Ricketts family, whose fortune derives from TD Ameritrade, the brokerage founded by the patriarch Joseph Ricketts, bought the club in 2009. In his first news conference after the purchase, Tom Ricketts addressed Cubs fans everywhere. “There is no curse,” he said. That proclamation was often quoted. Some wondered if Ricketts had been too bold too soon. But even with the wait at 108 years and counting, Ricketts would not back down a month ago. “There is no curse; that’s crazy talk,” he insisted. On Friday, Ricketts stood at the front of the second bus as the Cubs’ parade began outside Wrigley Field. “I looked down the route and saw the hundreds of thousands of people — and we were just getting started with several miles to go,” Ricketts said Saturday. “That’s when it hit me: This championship is much bigger than I imagined.” The procession journeyed from the city’s North Side and through downtown before ending with a rally in a lakeside park. The buses moved slowly so fans could wave and cheer at the players, coaches and executives — and vice versa. During the previous two days, legions had visited cemeteries around the Chicago metropolitan area. Perched on tombstones and laid across grave markers were an assortment of Cubs caps and pennants, both new and vintage.


Lou Jacobi, Critically Acclaimed Broadway and Film Actor, Dies at 95

Abstract: Lou Jacobi, the mustachioed, scene-stealing Canadian-born actor and comedian who made a film and stage career playing comic ethnic characters but was lauded for serious dramatic roles as well, died on Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 95. The death was confirmed by Leonie Nowitz, a social worker who had been overseeing his care for several years. Mr. Jacobi made his Broadway debut in 1955 in “The Diary of Anne Frank,” playing a less-than-noble occupant of the Amsterdam attic where the Franks were hiding, and reprised the role in the 1959 film version. When Bosley Crowther, reviewing the movie in The New York Times, described Mr. Jacobi as “irksomely sluggish and pathetically lax as the weakling Van Daan,” it was high praise. As his career continued in New York and Hollywood, spanning five decades, Mr. Jacobi became accustomed to favorable reviews, mostly in comic roles and often when the film or play itself was less than warmly received. When he starred in the short-lived Broadway comedy “Norman, Is That You?” in 1970, Clive Barnes of The Times did not care for the play, but took time to wax rhapsodic about Mr. Jacobi and his character. “Mr. Jacobi is a very funny actor who hardly needs lines to make his point,” Mr. Barnes wrote. He added: “He has a face of sublime weariness and the manner of a man who has seen everything, done nothing and is now only worried about his heartburn.” The 10 Broadway plays Mr. Jacobi appeared in also included Paddy Chayefsky’s “Tenth Man” (1959); Woody Allen’s “Don’t Drink the Water” (1966); and Neil Simon’s “Come Blow Your Horn” (1961), in which he portrayed the playboy protagonist’s disappointed father. His reading of the line “Aha!” stuck with the Times columnist William Safire so vividly that he cited it when writing about the meaning of the word 36 years later. Mr. Jacobi also made two dozen feature films. His supporting roles included the philosophical bartender in “Irma la Douce” (1963), the young hero’s unsophisticated uncle in “My Favorite Year” (1982), a lucky florist in the Dudley Moore comedy “Arthur” (1981) and a middle-aged transvestite who gets caught with his hostess’s clothes on in “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex” (1972). In Barry Levinson’s “Avalon” (1990), he played a dramatic role, one of four Russian brothers trying to build a future in Baltimore in the early 20th century. Louis Harold Jacobovitch was born on Dec. 28, 1913, in Toronto. He began acting as a boy, making his stage debut in 1924 at a Toronto theater, playing a violin prodigy in “The Rabbi and the Priest.” He did play the violin, then and for most of his life. After working as the drama director of a Toronto Y.M.H.A., the social director at a summer resort, a stand-up comic in Canada’s equivalent of the Borscht Belt, and the entertainment at various weddings and bachelor parties, Mr. Jacobi tried his luck in London. There he appeared in shows including the American musicals “Guys and Dolls” and “Pal Joey,” and was part of a command performance at the London Palladium in 1952. He made his film debut in “Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary?” (1953), a British comedy with the country’s blond sex symbol of the moment, Diana Dors. In the United States, he began making guest appearances on a variety of television series, ranging from “Playhouse 90” to “’The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”’ to “That Girl,” and appeared on series and in television movies until he was in his late 70s. In the summer of 1976, he was the star of a CBS comedy series, “Ivan the Terrible,” in which he played a Russian headwaiter living with nine other people in a small Moscow apartment. He was a regular on “The Dean Martin Show” on NBC for two seasons in the early 1970s. Mr. Jacobi made successful comedy recordings with titles like “Al Tijuana and His Jewish Brass” and “The Yiddish Are Coming! The Yiddish Are Coming!” In his last film, “I.Q.” (1994), he played the logician Kurt Gödel, one of Albert Einstein’s professor friends at Princeton. His last Broadway play was “Cheaters,” a 1978 comedy about two adulterous middle-aged couples. But he continued to do theater elsewhere. When he appeared in a 1983 Connecticut production of Clifford Odets’s “Rocket to the Moon,” at the age of 74, his reviews were as positive as ever. Mr. Jacobi married Ruth Ludwin in 1957. She died in 2004. He is survived by a brother, Avrom Jacobovitch, and a sister, Rae Gold, both of Toronto. “As you make your way through life, sometimes you happen upon people who know how to be happy,” the film critic Roger Ebert wrote in The Chicago Sun-Times in 1999. He was interviewing Mr. Jacobi on the occasion of the dedication of his star on Canada’s Walk of Fame. “I look at Lou, and I’m not afraid to be 85, if I can get there in Lou’s style.”

Movies
Theater
Deaths (Obituaries)
Jacobi Lou


An App That Builds Wonder

Abstract: Like so many Brooklyn parents, Raul Gutierrez was fed up with the way his children behaved after being exposed to screens for too long. They would engage in mindless digital tasks and then be restless. But Mr. Gutierrez’s solution was unusual. He didn’t place a limit on screen time. Instead, he started a company called Tinybop, hoping to encourage more creativity and imagination in children’s interactions with digital devices. Robot Factory is Tinybop’s latest product, and the first in a planned suite of digital toys. The app is a digital engineering studio, and feels like a combination of Tinker Toys and littleBits starter electronic sets, except that it exists only on a phone or an iPad. Each part of the app is beautifully animated by the British illustrator Owen Davey. Children can piece together robots with sets of bodies, arms, legs, magnets, grappling hooks and other robotic ephemera, including a brain in a jar. Once the robots are built, their ability to move, jump and avoid obstacles can be tested in the app’s simulator. The robots’ movement, modeled on physical reality, is surprisingly lifelike (and quite clumsy if you’ve forgotten to give your robot feet). The app looks like a game but really does feel like a set of toys. It comes with almost no instructions and very few rules. This can be frustrating for someone used to the gaming experience, in which the goal is often to get from Point A to Point B. But the app teaches patience and rewards innovation. The best part of the app is the factory setting itself, where humanoid body parts mingle with trash cans and what appear to be flaming escape pods. Players can record sounds that their robot will make when it is feeling happy, sad or neutral, translated into a cold, robotic voice. I programmed one of my robots to complain about its body whenever it was sad, which quickly grew depressing when it kept falling over. The testing environment is the least stimulating part of the app, which is a shame, because it holds such potential. Currently, multiple robots cannot interact, or do much at all other than move around. The environment is somewhat gamified in that it records how far your robot gets, but because the movement is so often graceless, treading each clunky mile doesn’t bring much satisfaction. Eventually, all the robots fall apart in the testing setting, which sends users back to the drawing board: a good thing for creativity at least. Tinybop plans to add more features to the testing environment, like a shrink button, or a “high-five tree” for multi-armed robots. But Mr. Gutierrez maintains that the app as it currently exists is more than enough to stimulate the imagination of children ages 4 to 9. His true goal is to move children to interact with their robots, naming them, talking about their qualities and exploring their strange and various parts. Since the app has only been out for a couple of weeks and more than 800,000 robots have been created, it seems that he is on to something.


Additional U.S. Battalion Going to South Korea

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Pentagon announced Tuesday that 800 soldiers, about 40 Abrams battle tanks and 40 armored infantry fighting vehicles would be deployed to South Korea next month as part of the Defense Department’s “rebalance” of forces across Asia and the Pacific. Pentagon officials emphasized that the nine-month deployment of a battalion from the First Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Tex., had been under discussion for a year and was not tied to any specific security concern or provocation from North Korea. “This addition of forces to Korea is part of the rebalance to the Pacific,” said Col. Steven H. Warren, director of Pentagon press operations. “It’s been long planned and is part of our enduring commitment to security on the Korean Peninsula.” Pentagon officials confirmed, though, that the additional troops and armor would increase combat readiness and war-fighting ability for the United States and South Korea. Pentagon officials said the rotation of the additional Army battalion into South Korea would still leave the number of American service members there below 28,500, as set out by treaty. Some brigades that historically had been based in South Korea were moved to the Middle East for the wars of the past decade, and President Obama had vowed to rebalance the efforts of the government — diplomatic, economic and military — to the Asia-Pacific region as the conflict in Iraq ended and the one in Afghanistan wound down. The order to rotate an additional Army battalion into South Korea may be viewed as a step to quiet critics who have complained that the new Asia-Pacific policy has been mostly talk, with little done to specifically carry it out. Over recent months, the Pentagon has ordered a number of measures to deter North Korean aggression and to reassure an important ally, South Korea. At times of tension, in particular over North Korea’s nuclear or missile program, the Pentagon has sent advanced fighters, stealth bombers and ballistic-missile-defense warships on temporary assignment in and around South Korea. The troop rotation was announced as Secretary of State John Kerry met here with his South Korean counterpart, Yun Byung-se. “The United States and the Republic of Korea stand very firmly united — without an inch of daylight between us, not a sliver of daylight — on the subject of opposition to North Korea’s destabilizing nuclear and ballistic missile programs and proliferation activities, and the international community stands with us,” Mr. Kerry said.

South Korea
Pentagon
Fort Hood
North Korea
US Military
International relations
Barack Obama


Christmas Holiday Hours for Some Major Stores

Abstract: Christmas is upon us! But perhaps you have run out of wrapping paper. Or you have to do some last minute shopping. Or you really need a cup of coffee that wasn’t made by someone you are related to. What do you do? Where can you go? Which stores are even open? Take a few deep breaths. It’s going to be O.K.. The New York Times is here for you. We called a bunch of America’s most popular retailers and asked them their holiday hours, so you don’t have to. First and foremost, coffee. Starbucks said most of its stores will be open on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day for those of you who need caffeine to power through late-night gift wrapping or the crack-of-dawn frenzy of kids unwrapping presents. (Also known as “the joy of a child’s Christmas.”) If you are more of a Dunkin’ Donuts person, you may be in luck. Michelle King, a spokeswoman, said many of its locations will be open until 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve and some will be open on Christmas Day too. Image A Dunkin’ Donuts “croissant doughnut” in New York City. Credit Andrew Burton/Getty Images For last minute gift-shopping and unforeseen household needs, Walmart will be open until 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve but is closed on Christmas Day . Target will close at 10 or 11 p.m. on Christmas Eve and will close on Christmas Day. What if those cousins you weren’t expecting suddenly show up for dinner, leaving you short on food? You might have a tough time, as several major grocery stores will be closed on Christmas. Trader Joe’s will close at 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve — unless you’re in Foxborough, Mass., in which case the store will close at 3 p.m. All locations will be closed on Christmas. You’ll have to buy your subs from Publix before 7 p.m. on Christmas Eve. It will be closed on Christmas Day. Some Giant-Landover stores in Maryland, Virginia, Delaware and the District of Columbia will remain open on Christmas, and you can check if yours is one of them here . All will close at 7 p.m. on Christmas Eve. Giant-Carlisle stores in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia will close at 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve and remain closed on Christmas. You might be wondering if your local Giant is of the Landover or Carlisle variety — a fair question, since they’re sister companies. If so, you could look up your location on the store locators for Giant-Carlisle’s or Giant-Landover . If you need to buy in bulk, you’d better plan ahead. Costco and BJ’s will both be closed on Christmas; Costco will close at 5 p.m. on Christmas Eve, while BJ’s will close at 6 p.m. Christine Wilcox, a spokeswoman for Safeway and Albertsons , said anyone interested in stopping by to pick up some last minute groceries should call their local store first. That was a common response we received from large retailers: many leave holiday scheduling up to local branch managers or individual franchise owners. CVS is also open on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, although hours will vary store to store. “It would be best for customers to check with their store,” said Stephanie Cunha, a spokeswoman. Tim Horton’s , the Canadian coffee spot with many American locations, is leaving schedules up to local franchises, too. Walgreen’s will be a sure bet, though. Its 24-hour locations will operate on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and its non-24-hour stores will be open from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Christmas Day and until midnight on Christmas Eve. (Some but not all of the chain’s numerous Duane Reade stores in New York will be open on the holiday.)

Christmas
Retail
Starbucks
Safeway
Supermarkets
CVS Caremark
Dunkin Donuts
Walmart Stores


St. John’s Coach Steve Lavin Prepares for His Lead Role

Abstract: Just about every coach can break down film, but Steve Lavin takes it to a different level. Lavin, the new boss at St. John’s, is married to an actress, Mary Ann Jarou, whose television roles include an appearance on “The King of Queens.” After her husband was introduced at a news conference Wednesday in Taffner Field House in Jamaica, Queens, Jarou dished some Hollywood gossip. “A lot of people don’t know this but Steve is quite the amazing film critic, he can break down a movie better than Siskel and Ebert,” Jarou said. “He’ll say, ‘The editing — they could’ve done a better job,’ or ‘That scene was pretty powerful.’ ” Jarou said Lavin’s cinematic sensibility grew from his youth in San Francisco, when his parents took him to see everything from the Three Stooges to Charlie Chaplin. He is, indeed, a West Coast guy. Lavin last coached at U.C.L.A. in 2003, finishing a seven-year stint with a university-worst record of 10-19 (145-78 over all) before his career dissolved into a job with the cameras and microphones of ESPN. When asked which film actor Lavin most resembled, Jarou replied: “Gene Kelly,” a star perhaps best known for “Singin’ in the Rain.” But it will take more than a song-and-dance routine to make St. John’s relevant again nationally or in the Big East or even in New York, where the basketball recession is extreme at Madison Square Garden. St. John’s has not been to a Final Four since 1985 under Lou Carnesecca, who sat beaming on stage alongside Lavin, Athletic Director Chris Monasch and the college’s president, the Rev. Donald J. Harrington. Lavin said he would talk basketball with Carnesecca over coffee. Another elder who might get a bigger role is Gene Keady, a retired longtime Purdue coach. Keady was Lavin’s mentor, hiring Lavin as an assistant in 1988 at Purdue. Lavin said he planned to attend the Final Four and talk to Keady there about a staff position. If Keady accepts Lavin’s offer, it would not technically be a full-time assistant position, Lavin said, but might involve sitting on the bench in games. That could help Lavin with game strategy, not always thought to be his strength at U.C.L.A. Another aspect of the job, recruiting, could be bolstered by the hiring of assistants familiar with high school and amateur leagues in New York and the Northeast. Although Lavin would not confirm any names, one often mentioned for such a role is Barry Rohrssen, the Manhattan coach whose recruiting helped elevate Pittsburgh when he was an assistant there. But Lavin said he also knew how to charm high school players. U.C.L.A. was a brand name and he attracted some top talent by recruiting nationally and internationally. To describe how he will negotiate New York gyms, Lavin used a television analogy. “It’s not as though I’m going to be Mr. Magoo, wandering around,” he said. Lavin looked and acted bi-coastally suave. His appearance and words were the sort that come from a man accustomed to being watched and heard, his hair combed and jelled in Pat Riley fashion. He described himself as “the youngest of six children, clearly an Irish-Catholic family.” As for not being a New Yorker, he noted that not every pope is Italian, a line that drew smiles in the audience at this Catholic university. At the very least, he proved he could mix metaphors with the best of them. “As you can see, I’ve got a full plate,” Lavin said. “I look at it as the glass is half-full.” Lavin, who replaces Norm Roberts, was hired after a search that was at times awkward and included the public wooing of Billy Donovan of Florida and Paul Hewitt of Georgia Tech. Lavin inherited a team that went 17-16 and could return five starters. Roberts, said Lavin, “really stabilized things here; there’s momentum here.” After the session ended, Lavin and Jarou were ready for their close-up, brought together for the benefit of photographers, a bouquet of red roses placed in her arms, no thorns apparent. She said she hoped to work in television or theater. He spoke of a different Midtown stage. “New York City, Madison Square Garden, the Big East, the tradition,” Lavin said. “How do you beat that?”

Basketball
Lavin Steve
St John's University
Coaches and Managers
College Athletics


Pope Benedict Urges Pakistan to Repeal Blasphemy Law

Abstract: MILAN — In a forceful appeal for religious freedom, Pope Benedict XVI urged Pakistan on Monday to repeal contentious blasphemy laws as he called on governments worldwide to do more to enable Christians to practice their faith without violence, intolerance or restriction. The pope was speaking in an annual address to diplomats accredited to the Vatican , a long-scheduled event. But this year his words came after bomb attacks in Iraq and Egypt — the most recent in the Egyptian city of Alexandria less than two weeks ago — and the assassination last week of a leading Pakistani politician who had opposed his country’s law that makes blasphemy against Islam punishable by death. The politician, Salman Taseer, had campaigned against the law and had petitioned the government to re-examine the case of Asia Bibi , a Christian woman who was sentenced to death last November under the legislation. Mr. Taseer’s “tragic murder,” the pope said, “shows the urgent need to make progress in this direction: the worship of God furthers fraternity and love, not hatred and division.” Referring to the attacks on Christians in Iraq and Egypt, Benedict called on the governments of those predominantly Muslim countries to adopt “effective measures” to better protect religious minorities. Urging Pakistan to repeal its blasphemy law, the pope said the legislation was being used “as a pretext for acts of injustice and violence against religious minorities.” The pope has often spoken out against religious intolerance, but his condemnations increased after recent attacks on Christian communities in several countries, including Nigeria and the Philippines, where churches were bombed during the recent holidays. The plight of Christians in the Middle East has been of particular concern to the Vatican, which hosted a meeting of bishops in October to address the issue. The concerns have deepened in recent months in the face of what clerics see as sustained violence. After a New Year’s Mass at a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria, a suicide bomber killed at least 23 people and wounded nearly 100. In October, a siege at a Baghdad church killed 53 people, prompting yet another exodus of Christians from the country. On Monday, the pope cited a message to Christians in the Middle East that he delivered during the bishop’s synod in October. “It is natural,” he said, that “they should enjoy all the rights of citizenship, freedom of conscience, freedom of worship and freedom in education, teaching and the use of the mass media.” The pope also took Western nations to task for marginalizing religion and minimizing its role in contemporary society, and he called for dialogue between faiths to promote “a common commitment to recognizing and promoting the religious freedom of each person and community.”

Assassinations and Attempted Assassinations


Sexual Abuse Case at Poly Prep in Brooklyn Is Settled

Abstract: An elite Brooklyn private school agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by former students accusing the school of covering up decades of sexual abuse of hundreds of boys by a star football coach. The settlement, between Poly Prep Country Day School and 12 plaintiffs who said they had been abused, closes a case with all-too-familiar allegations of abuse shielded by power and prestige: Philip Foglietta , the football coach who took the Poly Prep team to great heights after his arrival there in 1966 and who died in 1998, is said to have groped and raped boys on campus, in his car and on trips, while administrators enamored with his success ignored a series of allegations made against him. The terms of the settlement, first reported by The New York Daily News , are confidential. The original claim was filed in 2009 in Federal District Court in Brooklyn. The parties released a joint written statement, capping an often-contentious negotiation with a unified voice. The school’s headmaster, David B. Harman, said, “We hope that the settlement brings a measure of closure to those members of the Poly community who were abused by Philip Foglietta.” He added, “We will do everything in our power to insure that nothing like this ever happens again.” Kevin Mulhearn, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs and also a graduate of Poly Prep, said the settlement was “the end of a long and difficult journey for these 12 plaintiffs who were victimized many years ago.” He called those plaintiffs “special men, who fought long and hard for justice.” Both men praised Cheryl Pollak, the magistrate judge who pushed the parties together. The lawsuit tells of how boys and their parents approached Poly Prep administrators with accusations of abuse by Mr. Foglietta over many years, only to have those administrators protect the coach. Mr. Foglietta was hired by the school as its football coach in 1966, and a student spoke out that same year. William Jackson, then an eighth grader, told his parents that Mr. Foglietta abused him, and he and his parents took those allegations to the school. Administrators “proceeded to conduct a sham investigation,” the complaint says, and told Mr. Jackson and his parents that the accusations were lies and that any further complaints would result in severe consequences. That was a dark turn for Mr. Jackson, one of the plaintiffs: he lost his parents’ trust, and they died estranged from him. He struggled with drug and alcohol abuse and depression, and tried to kill himself in 2004. The complaint describes similar trajectories for the other plaintiffs and says hundreds of other victims probably followed suit. Another plaintiff, Philip Culhane, took a broader view of the case. “This is meaningful, the picture fuller now, and life and history can resume,” he said. Their case was almost blocked from going forward because of the statute of limitations. Indeed, a similar suit against Poly Prep in 2004 over the abuse was dismissed because the statute of limitations had been exceeded. Survivors of sexual abuse that occurred while they were children must file a case by the time they are 23. But a ruling by a federal judge, Frederic Block, set the stage for a hearing to determine whether the school had actively covered up the abuse and whether those actions had prevented the plaintiffs from bringing the case sooner. That ruling could have implications for former students at Horace Mann , a top-tier private school in the Bronx that has also recently faced accusations that former faculty members abused students.

Poly Prep Country Day School
Foglietta Philip
Brooklyn (NYC)
Suits and Litigation
Sex Crimes
Education (K-12)
Child Abuse and Neglect
Private and Sectarian Schools


Duhon’s Arrival May Be Marbury’s Exit Sign

Abstract: The Knicks publicly insist that Chris Duhon’s arrival does not indicate Stephon Marbury ’s departure. But the team president, Donnie Walsh, said little Wednesday to dispel the notion. Walsh called Duhon, who signed a two-year contract, a “true point guard” and a “defensive-oriented” player who could “fill in some of the blanks that we had” and be “the kind of guy that coaches will rely on.” It sounded like a list of things that Marbury failed to do as the starting point guard for much of the last four years. Walsh playfully waved off reports that he intended to waive or trade Marbury, but he did not deny them. Nor did he give a strong indication that he wanted Marbury on the roster. “I haven’t projected it that far,” Walsh said. “Right now, the players that are on this team are on this team. And we’re trying to fill in the blanks and give ourselves guys that we think can fit in on this team.” Walsh said Duhon would compete for the starting point-guard job — a role that Marbury would be expected to win easily. Duhon has been mostly a backup in Chicago. Of Marbury, Walsh said: “All I know is the guy’s got a lot of talent. He’s a very good player. And that’s it.” Close associates of Walsh’s and Coach Mike D’Antoni’s said last week that the Knicks had resolved to cut ties with Marbury before training camp in October. Those who were briefed required anonymity because the discussions were private. Team officials believe that chemistry was the Knicks’ greatest problem last season, and that cutting ties with Marbury is a critical step in changing a losing culture. Walsh is in no rush to make a move and will at least attempt to trade Marbury before proposing a buyout of his $22 million contract.

Basketball
New York Knicks
Duhon Chris
Marbury Stephon


Minimum Wage Increase Would Have Mixed Effects, C.B.O. Report Says

Abstract: WASHINGTON — A popular Democratic proposal to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, championed by President Obama, could reduce total employment by 500,000 workers by the second half of 2016. But it would also lift 900,000 families out of poverty and increase the incomes of 16.5 million low-wage workers in an average week. That is the mixed conclusion of an assessment on how raising the minimum wage would affect incomes, employment and the federal budget. The report was released on Tuesday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, whose views often have a powerful influence on the fate of legislation. The nuanced analysis provided instant fuel for both supporters and critics of raising the federal minimum wage, a policy heavily favored by Democrats but viewed skeptically by Republicans in Congress. Republicans contended the policy would be a job-killer, while Democrats asserted it would help alleviate poverty. Economists said both might be right. And the White House, in an unusual twist, openly disputed the budget office’s math. Jason Furman, the chairman of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, said that the office’s estimate of the potential lost jobs might be too high. In a call with reporters, Mr. Furman said that finding no jobs effect at all would be a “perfectly reasonable estimate.” The analysis does not reflect “the consensus view of economists,” he said. “Sometimes, you have to have respectful disagreement.” But the report was embraced by leading Republicans, who have opposed the legislation despite its widespread popularity in public opinion polls. “Raising the minimum wage could destroy as many as one million jobs, a devastating blow to the very people that need help most in this economy,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader. “If and when Democrats try to push this irresponsible proposal, they should be prepared to explain why up to a million Americans should be kept from having a job.” Democratic lawmakers and liberal groups joined the White House in challenging that view. “I haven’t seen Republicans this excited about something that bucked the trend in their favor since the last poll showing Mitt Romney was about to be elected president,” said Brad Woodhouse, the president of Americans United for Change, a liberal advocacy group. “But sorry to rain on their parade — one report does not a trend make.” The budget office found that lifting the federal minimum wage, currently $7.25 an hour, would have a complicated effect on the labor market, acting as a boon and a burden for businesses and workers. Over all, the budget office estimated that lifting the minimum wage to $10.10 and indexing it to inflation would reduce total employment by about 0.3 percent, or 500,000 workers. But it cautioned that the estimate was imprecise, with the job losses likely to fall in a range from practically nothing to one million. The proposal would result in winners and losers among the low-wage workers it would target, the report found. Some businesses, squeezed between increased costs and the inability to raise prices or sell more goods, would hire fewer low-wage workers because of a higher minimum wage, the report said. But increasing the minimum wage would bolster the earnings of about 16.5 million workers: providing $5 billion a year more for families living in poverty, $12 billion a year more for families earning from one to three times the poverty threshold. Several top labor economists said on Tuesday that the budget office was overstating the proposal’s effect on the job market. Lawrence Katz of Harvard, for instance, said that the budget office had used “a lot of off-the-shelf estimates” of the jobs effect, and that if it had emphasized findings from higher-quality studies, it would have found a smaller or negligible impact on total employment. More conservative economists said that the profession had long viewed raising the minimum wage, like any increase in price, as having an effect on the demand for jobs. “The Congressional Budget Office confirms the president proposes an unprecedented increase in the minimum wage that will cost hundreds of thousands of jobs,” said James Sherk, who analyzes the labor markets for the Heritage Foundation, a right-of-center research group. Liberal economists said that quibbling over the jobs numbers neglected a central finding in the report: that many workers would benefit from an increase in income. “The C.B.O. chose a higher number than I think reflects the best work, but they’re not way off the reservation,” said Jared Bernstein, a former Obama administration economist now at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “Even if they’re right, the beneficiaries far, far outweigh the people who are hurt by this.” The budget office analyzed two proposals in its report. The first would increase the minimum wage to $10.10 by mid-2016 and would tie it to the Consumer Price Index, so that it would increase with inflation over time. It would also increase the minimum wage for workers who receive tips for services. The second proposal would increase the minimum wage to $9, without any indexing for inflation. That would have much smaller effects, the budget office found. It would reduce employment by 100,000 workers by the second half of 2016, and push about 300,000 people above the poverty line. The higher minimum wage would reduce employment in two main ways, the budget office report said. Businesses facing higher labor costs would raise prices, passing those higher costs on to their customers. That would lead their customers to cut back on their purchases, meaning that businesses would need fewer workers. Raising the minimum wage would also make hiring low-wage workers more expensive relative to other investments, like new machinery. Businesses might then reduce their use of low-wage workers and shift their spending toward other things, like automated systems. But a higher minimum wage would offset at least part, if not all, of that effect by helping increase spending by lower income workers throughout the economy. Several Democratic lawmakers said that the budget office’s findings only underscored the need for the $10.10 minimum wage to pass. “The C.B.O. made it absolutely clear: raising the minimum wage would lift almost one million Americans out of poverty, increase the pay of low-income workers by $31 billion and help build an economy that works for everyone,” said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the minority leader.

Minimum wage
Congressional Budget Office
Jobs
US Economy