Danger Is Part of Race’s Allure

Abstract: With 49 deaths in 29 years, the annual Dakar Rally off-road race has been panned by the Vatican newspaper as “the bloody race of irresponsibility.” But each year, Ronn H. Bailey is drawn to it nonetheless. Bailey, the founder and chairman of a software security firm based in Las Vegas that protects sensitive corporate and government computer systems, willingly puts himself at risk to compete in the race. “Statistically and factually speaking, the Dakar is the longest, the toughest, the most grueling and, no question about it, the most dangerous race in the world,” Bailey said in a recent telephone interview. “It is the only race that I know of that has a human mortality rate associated with it. So yes, it’s very dangerous. But you know, I don’t live in fear.” Instead, he lives in hope that he will hold his own among the 570 teams, which include many professional drivers. The race will begin Jan. 5 in Lisbon and cover more than 5,700 miles, over sometimes treacherous terrain. The route winds down the western coast of Africa, with competitors finishing Jan. 20 in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. Bailey expects to be there in the end. His company, Vanguard Integrity Professionals, counts United States government agencies and banks around the world among its clients. The firm has poured millions of sponsorship dollars into helping the Nascar driver Robby Gordon attempt to become the first American to win the Dakar Rally. In return, Bailey, who has competed on his own the past three years, will race as Gordon’s teammate. Both drivers and their navigators will race in equally prepared Hummers. “He has a passion,” Gordon said in a telephone interview. “I think all of us want to show testosterone at times, right? And I think Ronn is no different than every successful male that has done well. If it’s offshore powerboat racing, or if it’s off-road racing, or owning a Nascar team, or whatever it may be. Successful businessmen love motorsports as well. “I think it’s just cool that he likes it this much and that he wants to participate at the level that we’re wanting to participate.” The goals are different, of course. Gordon is a professional driver who competes for his own Nascar team, Robby Gordon Motorsports; he finished 26th in the Nextel Cup points standings this year. He is also an accomplished off-road racer, and has won the Baja 1000 in Mexico three times. Gordon finished eighth in last year’s Dakar Rally, and he has a 40-man team at his off-road race shop in Anaheim, Calif., preparing for this year’s event. He is even skipping a critical Nascar test at Daytona International Speedway to make another run at the Dakar Rally. “Our car is quite a bit better than it was a year ago,” he said. “So I feel very confident in the vehicles. I think we have a legitimate shot at winning this thing.” For Bailey, who fancies himself an adventurer in the mold of Sir Richard Branson, simply finishing would be a first. He has raced the Dakar Rally three times but has failed to complete it on time. He is certainly not alone. Many competitors are unable to make it through the event, with the Sahara doubling as a junkyard of destroyed vehicles. In his first attempt at the race, Bailey got lost for three days in a sandstorm in Mauritania in the 2005 Dakar Rally. Last year, he said, he survived a spectacular crash in which his buggy flipped over and was nearly destroyed. The event’s death toll includes 24 drivers, along with some bystanders and children. Even the race’s founder and organizer, Thierry Sabine of France, died when his helicopter crashed in a sandstorm during the 1986 rally. None of this dissuades Bailey, who said he was involved in military intelligence in the Air Force in the 1970s. He said that once, for kicks, he rode his motorcycle to the northernmost land mass in the Arctic Circle. On another vacation, he rode from the United States to the Darien Gap in Panama and back. “You know, I don’t really think I’m any different than guys like Branson,” Bailey said. “There’s a lot of men and, by the way, women, who do these things. And while, statistically, they’re very dangerous — this isn’t the kind of thing people should practice at home kind of stuff — there’s a lot of people that do these things.” Bailey, 58, said he believed he would be the oldest driver in the Dakar Rally, but he figures to be among the more competitive ones. Gordon has been giving him driving lessons. “He’s taught me some really good technical skills for driving even better off-road,” Bailey said. “Everyone who’s in the Dakar that are racing against me, they’re going to be not necessarily looking in the rear-view mirror at me this year. They will be perhaps looking in my dust cloud.” But if Gordon has taught Bailey anything, it is to take it easy and make sure to reach the finish in one piece. “The gas pedal isn’t a switch; you can slow down,” Gordon said. “Nobody says you have to go crazy every day. So it’s going to be important for me, and Ronn, to use our heads and survive the thing. If Ronn survives, there’s no reason why he can’t finish in the top 10 in the vehicle we built him.” And in the Dakar Rally, it is all about survival.

Dakar Rally
Automobile Racing
Dakar (Senegal)
Lisbon (Portugal)
Gordon Robby
Bailey Ronn H


Somalia: Soldiers Killed in Rebel Attack

Abstract: At least 15 government soldiers were killed in an ambush by fighters from the Shabab, a Somali rebel group, one day after the group killed a dozen people in an attack in the capital, a military official said late Monday. The ambush happened near Walaweyn, a town in the Lower Shabelle region, about 58 miles south of Mogadishu, the capital, said Col. Ahmed Muse of the Somali military. The Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack, according to the group’s online radio station, known as Andalus, saying that 30 soldiers had been killed. It was not possible to independently verify the group’s claims.


Mortgage Rates Creep Back Up and Crimp Affordability

Abstract: If you are a prospective home buyer waiting for the bottom of the housing market, there is another fact you need to take into account: mortgage rates are rising. Rates on a 30-year fixed-rate loan, which were as low as 5.89 percent in mid-April, have been climbing and now remain near a one-year high of about 6.7 percent, according to the financial publisher HSH Associates. The financial troubles at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the nation’s two largest mortgage finance companies, are one factor behind the increasing rates. The two companies continue to reduce the number of mortgages they buy from lenders and have also imposed new fees on the loans they do buy and guarantee, a cost that ultimately is passed on to borrowers. At the same time, mortgage bond investors want to be paid more to make up for the risk that borrowers may default on their loans. So the question is whether higher mortgage rates will offset slumping home prices, and crimp buyers’ purchasing power. Or, to put it another way, is it better to jump into the market now before it hits bottom? The answer depends on where you live. In some parts of the country where prices may fall much further, it could pay to hold off even if mortgage rates do continue to rise. But in places where houses no longer look so overvalued, like San Francisco, it may be tempting to start testing the waters. “You might find more desperate sellers because rates have gone up,” said Keith T. Gumbinger, vice president of HSH Associates in Pompton Plains, N.J. “When rates go up and that impacts affordability, it tends to pressure prices downward even further.” Economists at Moody’s Economy.com expect the average 30-year fixed rate to increase to 7.01 percent by the end of next June and home prices over all to drop about 9 percent more over the same period. If everything follows their model, the economists say property values should bottom out by mid-2009. Using those projections, Celia Chen, director of housing economics at Economy.com, did some calculations on the impact of rising interest rates on a potential home buyer’s budget. Take, for instance, a couple who buy a $500,000 home and make a down payment of 20 percent, or $100,000. With a 6.43 percent interest rate on a 30-year fixed loan, their monthly payment would be $2,510. Over the 30-year life of the mortgage, they would pay a total of about $1 million for the home, including the down payment. But what if that couple had waited and the home price dropped 9 percent to $455,000 but mortgage rates rose to 7.01 percent? Now, the 20 percent down payment would be $91,000, and the monthly payments $2,424. The buyers would end up paying a total of about $964,000 for the house, or nearly 4 percent less. If the buyers were able to refinance to a lower rate a few years later, the total cost could be even lower. The calculations change, however, when mortgage rates go even higher. Once the rates move above 7.36 percent, they begin to lose the benefits of the 9 percent drop in the house price. If you are looking for an apartment in Manhattan, where prices are near their highs and are not expected to fall as much has they have elsewhere, the rise in mortgage rates quickly starts to affect how much you can afford. A $500,000 apartment (which could be a studio, since this is Manhattan we’re talking about) with a $100,000 down payment at a 7.01 percent rate means your monthly payments would be nearly $2,664. The total cost of the property, including down payment, would be $1.06 million. “Prices have come down quite a bit since the top of the market, and home values are better than they were a year ago,” Ms. Chen said. “But I am still cautioning to wait and see how much further prices will fall, particularly in regions that were most overblown during the housing boom. If you’re looking for bargain basement prices, I don’t think we’re there yet.” Mortgage rates, on the other hand, may be even less predictable. For all we know, “they might go down next week or the week after,” she added. “In the longer term, rates are still relatively attractive to where we think they might be next year.” That is why it may be wise for homeowners looking to refinance out of, say, an adjustable-rate mortgage, to lock in a rate now. If your house drops in value, and rates continue to balloon, you may be out of luck. “There is a real risk to sitting back in hopes that mortgage rates decline to make for a more attractive refinancing,” said Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com , a personal finance Web site based in North Palm Beach, Fla. “You could win the battle but lose the war if a further decline in your home price keeps you from qualifying.” There is one more thing to keep in mind as you shop around for mortgages. Lenders are demanding ever-higher credit scores to qualify for the best price on loans. Mr. McBride said credit scores, also known as FICO scores, which are calculated by the company Fair Isaac, now need to be at least 720 to secure the best mortgage rates. “Nine months ago, 680 was the line of demarcation,” Mr. McBride said. “Now, you can get a loan at 680, but the rate will be higher.” The difference could be a quarter to a half of a percentage point more than someone with a 720. “Even though mortgage money is somewhat more expensive and loan availability continues to be impaired, if you have a good credit score, a down payment, are able to document your income, and assets and debts aren’t too out of line with your income, the mortgage market is still open to you,” Mr. Gumbinger of HSH said. “But the price of that credit is somewhat less acceptable.”

Mortgages
Housing
Personal Finances
Credit
United States Economy


On Paper, U.S. Women Have Enough

Abstract: Can we win? That is the biggest question — really the only question — Americans are asking about the United States team that begins play in the Women’s World Cup this week. Rest assured, those same words are also swirling in the heads of the players. The United States won two of the first three Women’s World Cups — in 1991 and 1999 — but has not won since. That drought is a delicate topic among the current players, and they are looking to put it to rest once and for all. But can they win? In 1991, the first Women’s World Cup, no one asked me that question. Frankly, I never asked it of myself either. I knew the answer. I saw it. I felt it. I lived it. In my mind, it was already done. How did I know? I just did. I knew we’d win, just as I knew I’d wake up in the morning with curly hair. It just wasn’t a question. The feeling was the same for the 1996 Olympic Games and again for the 1999 World Cup. No doubt. Not for a moment. The 1995 World Cup, on the other hand, was different. We prepared to win just as we had for the others, and the core of the team was much the same, but there was something missing. That absent force, whatever it was, never showed up, and although we fought hard, we lost to Norway in the semifinals. The only way I can describe the difference in that ending is that something was missing. I picture it as two rivers running along side by side. The current is swift and strong. The river is wide and endless. One river welcomes you; you enter it without trying and you ride it without effort, like bodysurfing a massive wave in the ocean. It carries you and nothing is impossible. Even your opponent seems to yield to the will of the river. The other river is just as powerful, but it is filled with boulders, rough water, undercurrents and jagged shorelines. It causes you to struggle and fight as you try to navigate downstream. You give all you have, but nothing you do changes the outcome. In the end, you do not have what it takes to win. Before every one of my World Cups, I always told interviewers that we would win. Whether people believed me or not, I’m not sure. And I’m not sure if my teammates felt the same way, either, or if I was alone in my river of destiny. But I just knew. This year, in this World Cup, the question of “knowing” can be answered only by the team and the players themselves. Do they know? I have watched them play. I have read articles and listened to their interviews. But from the outside, it’s difficult to make a prediction. Can the United States win? Absolutely. The team has the talent, including some of the best players in the world at their positions: Hope Solo in goal, Carli Lloyd in the center of the midfield and Abby Wambach and Alex Morgan up front. It is deep coming off the bench, and there is experience and leadership in both the attack and defense. Not to mention fitness, speed and muscle that can be matched by only a few other teams. (The United States also has won before, which will be an edge against teams new to the mix.) On paper, those are the ingredients of a trophy-winning mix. On the other hand, this team is still soft in critical areas. Namely, the defense isn’t tight enough in the penalty area, allowing too many opportunities for opponents to score; and even though some recent opponents haven’t capitalized, the good ones will. The team’s defending must also be better — and more punishing. I haven’t seen many crunching tackles or messages sent to opponents to not dare enter the United States’ half of the field. The midfield needs to better control the pace and variety in the attack, too, and to transition quicker into a more balanced defensive shape through the middle when it doesn’t have the ball. And I die a thousand deaths each time a United States player doesn’t shoot on frame or doesn’t finish a chance that needs to be put away. So the question remains: Can we win? That is the beauty of any United States women’s national team. No matter how it may seem from the outside, it can never, ever be counted out. It has the ingredients. The only thing left is what only the team can know, and that will be revealed 90 minutes at a time. First against Australia. Then Sweden. Then Nigeria. And so on. Each game will provide the answer to our question, maybe in storybook fashion. I can’t wait to see the last page.

United States Women's National Soccer Team


From the Vault of the Roosevelt House Institute: F.D.R.’s Rarely Seen Family Photos

Abstract: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt ’s Hyde Park home may get more press, but their double townhouse on East 65th Street was the scene of quite a lot of family drama in its own right. In 1905, Franklin’s mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, gave the joined houses to her only child, Franklin, and his distant cousin and new wife, Eleanor, for Christmas. The recently widowed Sara Roosevelt continued to live at the Neo-Georgian-style edifice at No. 47 while the couple moved into the adjacent No. 49. Mrs. Roosevelt senior also asked the buildings’ architect, Charles E. Platt, to add several doors for easy access into the future president and first lady’s marital confines. At one point Eleanor chose to arrange furniture right in front of one of the offending entrances so as to block the door, and toward the end of her life she wrote of this intrusive setup, “You were never quite sure when she would appear, day or night.” In 1942, a year after Sara’s death at the age of 86, the president sold the property to Hunter College for the charitable sum of $50,000 (the four-year renovations, ending in 2010, cost $24 million). Now the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College occupies the structures, with the F.D.R. Library on the second floor used for exhibitions from the institute’s collection of family ephemera (of note: Franklin’s desk; original posters of Norman Rockwell’s famed Four Freedoms illustrations based on the 32nd president’s famous speech of the same name; an original document of politicians urging Roosevelt to run again in 1936). In the archives is a small, leather-bound photo album accompanied by a note written on White House stationery, dated March 17, 1942, that reads: “Dear Jimmy: I found an old album at Hyde Park belonging to Sis and as it had pictures of all of you when you were younger, I thought each one would like to have a copy. I had it Photostatted and am sending it under separate cover. Affectionately, FDR.” “Jimmy” was the commander in chief’s eldest son, James Roosevelt, and the “Sis” who had originally collected the images was his daughter, Anna. Its 244 images (from around 1916 to 1920) include such diverse subjects as family vacations, action shots of the family German shepherd, and Roosevelt’s failed 1920 campaign when he ran for vice president under the Democratic presidential nominee, James M. Cox. There are lots of photos taken during summer vacations at Hyde Park with all five of the Roosevelt siblings running about in various degrees of ruddy-faced tomfoolery. Anna’s handwritten captions (she was about 14 when the photos were taken) are particularly eye-opening. Image The reverse of a mug made at Prohibition’s end said: “Happy Days Are Here Again.” Credit Fred R. Conrad for The New York Times Anna (who eventually worked as a human-rights activist under President Kennedy, and died of throat cancer in 1975) wrote on one 1920 picture featuring the future president and an unknown woman carrying a golf club: “Father and an ugly lady.” The critique is particularly telling when one notes that, for years, Anna served as an unwilling middle woman within her parents’ strained marriage and reluctantly broke the news to her mother that Franklin was with his longtime mistress, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, when he died of a stroke in 1945. “I’ll leave it up to historians to debate the complexities of father-daughter relationships, particularly as it relates to them,” Jennifer Raab, the president of Hunter College, said when asked about Anna’s caption. “I’m sure Anna was kidding around,” said Deborah Gardner, head of history, tours and exhibits at the institute. The house is where, in 1921, Franklin, newly stricken with polio, lay for months in the back bedroom on the third floor. Upon learning of the stage-to-microphone commute he would have to make to endorse Al Smith at the 1924 Democratic convention, Franklin mapped out the 12-foot route and practiced the agonizing walk, enabled by leg braces and crutches. Less than a decade later, he made his first radio broadcast as president-elect from the nearby drawing room. “He was very good at conserving his energy,” Ms. Gardner noted. “He would make a point of receiving people at the home — versus going to them.” The Dalai Lama spoke at the house in 2010. Ms. Raab said he told her that one of his first memories after being recognized in 1942 as the 14th reincarnation of the Guatama Buddha was of getting a Rolex from President Roosevelt in the mail. “The Dalai Lama told me he was more a fan of the box it came in, and played with it a lot, than the actual watch,” Ms. Raab said.

Eleanor Roosevelt
Hyde Park
Sara Delano Roosevelt
Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute
Archive
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Photography


Chinese Leader Gets More Sway on the Economy and Security

Abstract: HONG KONG — President Xi Jinping of China emerged from a Communist Party leadership conference on Tuesday with a mandate to give the market a “decisive role” in the world’s second-largest economy and to consolidate new decision-making authority in his own hands. After a closed-door meeting of party leaders, officials announced that Mr. Xi would establish a new national security committee — which experts said took inspiration from the National Security Council that serves American presidents — as well as a leadership group that would push through a raft of economic overhauls. The two new agencies suggest that Mr. Xi aims to circumvent the ruling party’s cumbersome bureaucracies and overcome resistance that deeper economic changes are likely to bring. Mr. Xi has signaled that he intends to overhaul a wide range of long-entrenched policies, including restrictions on land ownership in rural areas and state control of interest rates charged by banks. He and Prime Minister Li Keqiang have also vowed to wean China’s economy from its dependence on highly polluting industries and extravagant government spending. A full list of overhauls discussed at the party meeting is expected to be made public in the coming days, though many are expected to be phased in only gradually. A year since assuming party leadership, Mr. Xi is also showing that he intends to govern in a more assertive, authoritarian style than his predecessor, Hu Jintao, who presided over a decade of rapid growth but failed to push through changes that many economists argue are needed to modernize the economy. “He’s demonstrating that he’s really in charge,” said Christopher K. Johnson, an expert on China at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, in a telephone interview from Beijing. “It’s the clearest statement we’ve seen so far of his power inside the system.” The new party leadership group on economic policy will oversee the introduction of market-oriented changes, and officials said there would be “decisive outcomes” in major policy areas by 2020. Yet they also emphasized that party control must remain paramount even as China embraces more market forces in the economic sphere. “Most important is maintaining the party’s leadership,” said a communiqué. “We must be bold and our steps steady.” Mr. Xi, 60, has defied expectations that a new Chinese leader must tiptoe politically in his first years. Instead, he has moved quickly to reshape many policies and consolidate his control of the party’s levers of power: the military forces, ideology and propaganda, the domestic security apparatus and anticorruption agency — and now economic policy making. Many analysts say Mr. Xi’s background, as the son of a Communist revolutionary who served under Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, has made him more confident than recent party leaders in wielding power. By establishing the leadership group, Mr. Xi has wagered his credibility on his ability to push through changes that are likely to face resistance from government ministries, local governments and big state firms, said Chen Ziming, a commentator in Beijing who closely follows party affairs. Mr. Xi is almost certain to lead the group, which economists have long called for to help accelerate economic restructuring, Mr. Chen said. “This is placing responsibility on his own shoulders,” he said. “It’s concentrating power in one person, so the responsibility will also be his.” At the meeting, Mr. Xi and the other leaders vowed a more determined and concerted effort to act on promises of a bigger role for markets after a decade in which state power has swollen. The 204 central and provincial officials who attended as voting members of the Central Committee endorsed broad proposals for overhauling taxation, better integrating urban and rural society, and improving government services. Image Mr. Xi has defied expectations that a new Chinese leader must tiptoe politically in his first years. Credit Lan Hongguang/Xinhua, via Associated Press China’s main evening news broadcast showed delegates to the conference seated in long rows of desks, listening attentively and taking notes as Mr. Xi and other officials spoke from a dais. “We must establish fair, open and transparent market rules,” said the communiqué from the meeting, which was issued by the official Xinhua news agency. “The core issue is properly handling the relationship between the government and markets, giving markets a decisive role in the allocation of resources while better applying the role of government.” The party leaders emphasized, however, that the party-state, as well as state-run firms, would continue to play an important role in economic life. The communiqué said that both the public and private sectors were “important foundations” for economic growth. “The key point for me is that the market has a clearly defined role — resource allocation — where it is to be promoted, but the role of the party and government in managing everything else in society is primary,” said Arthur Kroeber, the managing director at GaveKal Dragonomics, an economic research firm. Those resources could include land, minerals and fossil fuels. “It represents a pretty ambitious agenda, although of course the details won’t come for a while.” Mr. Xi’s immediate predecessor, Mr. Hu, also started his 10 years in office with a Central Committee Third Plenum that promised to drastically alter China’s economy. But for all the changes under Mr. Hu, many analysts said he failed to defuse growing problems with pollution, local government debt and a recipe for growth too dependent on state-mandated lending and land confiscations. Some analysts said that the momentum for change could falter again, as it did under Mr. Hu, with even more risky consequences. “Xi’s main concern will be that there have been promises of major reform before, but promises without action,” said Deng Yuwen, a Chinese current affairs commentator who formerly worked for a newspaper published by the Central Party School. “I think the communiqué makes clear that China will probably lean to liberalization and relaxation in the economy, but will remain quite conservative politically — not unchanging, but conservative.” Mr. Xi has accompanied his vows of economic rejuvenation with a drive to stifle political opposition to one-party rule at home and a tougher position on foreign policy issues, particularly in maritime territorial disputes with Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines. In what appeared to be an effort to impose greater control over those areas, the conference approved establishing the new security committee. The formal English name of the new body was unclear, but state news media used the same Chinese name for it as it uses for the National Security Council in the United States. For many years Chinese officials have studied the workings of that body and other foreign security councils. The new committee would be a “Chinese version” of the National Security Council in Washington that serves as the coordinating body on foreign policy for American presidents, said Jin Canrong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing. “The situation needs that — the external strategy is becoming more complicated,” he said. The creation of the new committee is likely to magnify Mr. Xi’s influence in foreign policy, Mr. Jin said. The committee is also likely to have a major say in domestic security issues, and Mr. Xi’s ability to win approval for it — after his predecessors had explored the idea and set it aside — showed Mr. Xi’s influence, said Mr. Johnson, the expert on China. The initial reports about the new security body did not explain how it would either coordinate with, or possibly replace, other party committees that steer policy on foreign affairs and domestic security. Mr. Xi and Mr. Li have said they want to encourage more confident consumer spending, and break down barriers excluding millions of rural migrants from access to schools, welfare and housing in urban society. Many experts have said that those changes will not be feasible unless the Chinese government gives farmers a firmer and more lucrative stake in their land, so they can sublease the land more easily, use it to raise loans and perhaps sell their leasehold rights if they decide to move permanently to towns and cities. The party leaders hinted that they were exploring how to give rural residents more control over and income from their land, which mostly remains under “collective” — effectively, state — ownership. “Grant farmers more property rights,” said the communiqué.

Economy
Xi Jinping
China
Hu Jintao
Politics
Communist Party of China


Florida: Tape Released in Hospital Parking Lot Death

Abstract: A woman who collapsed and died after being forcibly removed from a Blountstown, Fla., hospital lay in the parking lot beside a police officer’s car for nearly 18 minutes before a doctor readmitted her, according to police dashboard camera tapes released on Wednesday. Lawyers for the family of the woman, Barbara Dawson, renewed their claims of negligence by Liberty Calhoun Hospital and the Blountstown Police as state agencies continued their investigation into the Dec. 21 death. Ms. Dawson, 57, collapsed while being taken in handcuffs from the hospital, where she had gone for treatment for breathing difficulties. She was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct and trespassing when she refused to leave. “We have heard that time and time again how everyone was acting with due speed to assist her, said one of the lawyers, Darryl Parks. “Now that we have that tape we know that is not true.”

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Kremlin Applause Is Faint as Obama Hails Arms Pact

Abstract: MOSCOW — On a Friday that began in Washington with a triumphant presidential news conference about the conclusion of arms talks with Russia , Moscow seemed to have its mind on other things. President Dmitri A. Medvedev was in Sochi, scolding Olympic trainers over their athletes’ dismal showing in Vancouver. Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin gave a speech on the dangers posed by spring flooding. The highest-ranking Russian official to address reporters about the treaty was Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, who hastily gathered the press at dinnertime in a tiny ministry conference room. Mr. Lavrov called the agreement “real progress” in the relationship between Russia and the United States, but added that Russia could pull out if it concluded that the American missile defense plans had compromised its nuclear deterrent. Indeed, unease over missile defense was seeping into commentary even as officials hailed a mutual success. Mikhail V. Margelov, the chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of Russia’s Parliament, said the document was “neither a Russian gift to America nor an American gift to Russia.” He acknowledged that the reception had been quiet, saying that was because negotiators were focused on finishing the job. “We are on the edge of signing a treaty, so why make noise?” Mr. Margelov said. “I mean, speaking in colloquial language, let us drink Champagne when we accomplish the task.” In recent months Russian leaders — notably Mr. Putin — have pushed openly for a pact that explicitly links reductions in strategic weapons to limits on the American missile-defense program. Aleksei K. Pushkov, the host of the political talk show “Post-Scriptum,” said he feared that the text of the treaty included only a “soft linkage” between offense and defense. For many Russians, the first question will be, “Where have we made concessions to the United States?” he said, and they will look for the answer in those phrases. “The treaty will be criticized by a number of people — people who are connected to the military, and political experts who will say it is a fig leaf which allows Russia to save face, but does not allow Russia to ask anything of the U.S., at least anything of substance,” Mr. Pushkov said. “Should we have signed a treaty which does not give us any kind of serious guarantee?” he said. “This is something which will be debated.” But if that conversation had begun on Friday, it was a quiet one. As Russia’s arsenal ages, the treaty will allow Moscow to maintain parity with the United States, which can afford a larger force, and arms talks serve to reassert its status as a nuclear superpower. Gen. Nikolai Y. Makarov, the chief of Russia’s general staff, spoke in favor of the pact, saying it “will eliminate concerns on both sides and is fully in line with the security interests of Russia.” One reason for Russian caution is the looming ratification vote in the United States Senate, where any note of Russian triumphalism might play badly. Russia’s opposition is too weak to block ratification here, though Mr. Margelov said he expected vigorous criticism from Communists in Parliament, for whom, as he put it, “any agreement with the United States is considered a kind of betrayal of the motherland.” He said he hoped they would all come to see the agreement for what it was: a compromise. “All foreign policy is compromise,” he said. “I don’t think we have to report to our public that it was a great diplomatic victory for Russia. And our American colleagues should not deceive their public by saying it was a great American victory. It was a compromise. There is nothing wrong with that word.”

Russia
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty
Medvedev Dmitri A
Putin Vladimir V
United States International Relations
Defense and Military Forces


Jose Antonio Vargas, Immigrant Activist, Is Released by Border Patrol in Texas

Abstract: McALLEN, Tex. — Jose Antonio Vargas, who has chronicled in minute detail the twists and turns of his life as a Filipino living illegally for years in the United States, was detained by the Border Patrol for most of the day on Tuesday and then released with a notice to appear before an immigration judge. The detention of Mr. Vargas, probably the most high-profile leader of the immigrant rights movement, posed an awkward dilemma for the Obama administration. The surge of Central Americans, including many children , crossing the border illegally — saying they are fleeing criminal violence at home — has made all decisions about immigration politically fraught, and administration officials were keenly aware that the backdrop to their decision to release Mr. Vargas was a border where thousands of migrants are being held. Mr. Vargas was detained at a Border Patrol checkpoint in the airport of this city in the Rio Grande Valley before he was to board a flight to Houston, on his way to Los Angeles. In a terse statement, Department of Homeland Security officials said they had released Mr. Vargas because he had no prior immigration or criminal record. They said their focus was on deporting immigrants who posed security threats. Here's a photo of @joseiswriting in handcuffs, because the Border Patrol has nothing more pressing to do apparently pic.twitter.com/dN8KewqeZr — Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) July 15, 2014 It was the first time Mr. Vargas, who has been living without papers in the United States since 1993, had been arrested by immigration authorities. Lawyers assisting him said that they would seek to have the action against him suspended, and that it was unlikely he would be deported. Mr. Vargas insisted that he never intended to be detained when he came to South Texas. But he and his supporters wasted no time turning his arrest into a day of high drama, using it to publicize their cause on social media and at a news conference in front of the Border Patrol station where he was held. “I was released today because I am a low priority and not considered a threat,” Mr. Vargas said by telephone shortly after his release. “I would argue that the 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country are not a threat either.” Children at the Border The number of children crossing the U.S. border alone has doubled since last year. Answers to key questions on the crisis. President Obama, seeking to stem the influx across the Rio Grande, has moved to deport recent crossers more quickly. He is also considering executive actions to expand protections from deportation for immigrants, like Mr. Vargas, who have lived here for years and pose no security threat. Republicans argue that Mr. Obama’s leniency with those immigrants has encouraged the border surge. Mr. Vargas has been traveling around the country with a Philippine passport that is valid but has no United States visa. Because of this valley’s proximity to the Mexican border, airports and roads leading out have Border Patrol checkpoints at which officers confirm travelers’ immigration status. Mr. Vargas’s arrest revealed the patchwork quilt of immigration enforcement that has allowed him to travel freely to 43 states in the last three years, since domestic airport security officials did not check his immigration status. But once he came to this heavily patrolled border region, he had to pass through a checkpoint to leave. As he approached the airport checkpoint on Tuesday morning, he built suspense, sending out two posts on Twitter. “About to go thru security at McAllen Airport. I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he wrote, including a link to his advocacy organization. And then: “The only IDs I have for security: Philippine passport and my pocketbook US Constitution,” with a photo of both documents. The police in Minnesota had held Mr. Vargas in 2012 on a traffic violation, but immigration officials declined to detain him then. Mr. Vargas’s mother sent him to the United States when he was 12. Now 33, he was too old by a few months to qualify for a deportation deferral under a program Mr. Obama started in 2012 for young immigrants in the country illegally. Immigrants with deferrals can travel legally within the United States. Mr. Vargas has been the main narrator of his story: in a first-person article in The New York Times Magazine in 2011 in which he declared his illegal status; in a cover story for Time magazine; and, most recently, in a documentary film, “ Documented ,” for which he was both producer and star. He started a media campaign, Define American, to cast light on the lives of immigrants in the country illegally. The group organized watch parties for a national broadcast of his film on CNN last month. He came to McAllen last week for a news conference and vigil organized by United We Dream , a group for immigrant youth, outside a shelter for recently released Central Americans. Image Jose Antonio Vargas in June. Credit Kevork Djansezian/Reuters In an interview before his arrest, he said he had flown frequently in recent months to showings of the film around the country. “I didn’t even think twice about it,” Mr. Vargas said of accepting the invitation to come here. When immigrant advocates familiar with security in the Rio Grande Valley asked him how he was planning to leave, Mr. Vargas said he responded , “No, this can’t be for real.” Cristina Jimenez, a leader of the group that extended the invitation, said that Mr. Vargas’s arrest “was never the intention or part of a broader plan. When the truth sunk in, we looked at each other’s eyes in disbelief.” But Mr. Vargas and his followers moved to take maximum advantage of the news exposure. Advocacy networks were buzzing all day with text messages summoning people to call the Border Patrol station and demand his release. As a journalist for The Washington Post, Mr. Vargas shared in a Pulitzer Prize in 2008. In February 2013, he testified before a Senate panel, sitting not far from a federal deportation officer. Homeland Security officials said the Border Patrol agents at the airport had arrested Mr. Vargas “after he stated he was in the country illegally.” After his release, Mr. Vargas said, “I came down to this border, and I realized that it is a militarized zone.” Anticipating criticism that he had received special treatment because of his high profile, he said he was no different from most immigrants without papers. “President Obama should go big and bold with executive action to give us relief,” he said.

Jose Antonio Vargas
Texas
Illegal Immigration
US Border Patrol


Suicide Bomber Kills Guards at Afghan Police Compound

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — A Taliban suicide bomber killed at least four foreign security guards on Tuesday, steering an explosives-laden motorcycle into an Afghan police compound and past several checkpoints before blowing up in an area occupied by trainers from DynCorp International, an American military contractor. The victims, three from Nepal and one from Peru, were guarding the entrance to buildings used by DynCorp within a fortified compound run by the Counter Narcotics Police of Afghanistan, said Sayed Mahdi Kazemi, a spokesman for the counternarcotics force. Seven other people were wounded, he said, including an Afghan prosecutor. Mr. Kazemi said the Afghan police staffed multiple checkpoints between the DynCorp offices, where police trainers work, and the main entrance to the police compound, which also houses the offices of Afghanistan’s deputy interior minister for counternarcotics. Though he refused to discuss how the bomber had made it past the police, Hashmatullah Stanikzai, a spokesman for the police in Kabul, said the attacker went undetected because he had been wearing the same uniform as the foreign guards. An official from the NATO-led military coalition said there were suspicions that the attacker had inside help. An Afghan in a uniform worn by foreign guards would “strike me as more suspicious, not less, right?” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing his Afghan counterparts. The compound is close to Kabul’s airport and near the scene of a Taliban assault last week that disrupted flights into and out of the city for hours. That attack, the Taliban said, was partly aimed at cutting off the Afghan capital from its main link to the world beyond Afghanistan. The insurgents also took credit for the attack on Tuesday. Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, called DynCorp’s part of the counternarcotics compound “the center of foreign intelligence forces” and claimed that 15 foreign soldiers had been killed or wounded. Security guards from countries like Nepal and Peru are common at foreign military and diplomatic compounds in Afghanistan. The guards, many of them Nepalese veterans of the British Army’s Gurkha regiments, usually provide a layer of security behind the Afghan police and security guards, who staff the first line of checkpoints. The setup is used because of deep concerns about the efficacy and loyalty of the police, a force that is riddled with corruption and drug use. It also provides a final layer of defense should Afghan guards turn on the foreigners they are guarding.

Kabul
Afghanistan
Taliban
DynCorp International
Afghanistan War
Bombs
Terrorism


Letters to the Editor

Abstract: To the Sports Editor: Re “The Mascot Will Sit This One Out, Thanks,” Nov. 9: A tiger’s home range is thousands of times bigger than Mike VI’s enclosure at Louisiana State. Tigers shun human contact. Being on display on a busy college campus and periodically hauled in front of huge, noisy crowds is undeniably stressful for a wild animal. It’s no wonder Mike is balking at participating in the pregame tradition. Tigers exist to control large territories, to seek out prey and hunt, and to roam far and wide. Being denied these fundamental drives is cruel. Mike has nothing that gives his life meaning. It’s time for this institution of higher education to put this cruel mascot tradition in its history books. PHILIP TRIPP Buffalo In Morocco’s Defense To the Sports Editor: Re “Africa Cup Disrupted by Ebola Concerns,” Nov. 12: Since the beginning of the Ebola outbreak, Morocco has been a constant partner to Ebola-affected countries. Royal Air Maroc remains one of just two airlines that have continued flights to the three countries most affected by the disease. Morocco has taken strong measures to protect against Ebola by increasing health screenings at airports and providing training materials to medical staffs. The decision to request a postponement of the African Cup of Nations tournament until the outbreak is under control is yet another sign of the country’s leadership on this issue. We should commend the country for standing firm even as organizers barred the Moroccan team. EDWARD M. GABRIEL Washington The writer is a former United States ambassador to Morocco, and he currently advises the government of Morocco. Another Mets Blunder To the Sports Editor: Re “Mets Make Statement, Signing Rockies’ Cuddyer,” Nov. 11: This is another disastrous move for the Mets for three big reasons. First, Michael Cuddyer has always been a defensive liability, well below average at first and in the outfield; that’s bad news for Mets pitchers. Second, at the start of next season, he will be 36, an age at which nearly all hitters in the post-steroids era are in decline. Third, Cuddyer’s resurgence over the past three years, including a batting title and an All-Star selection, is 100 percent attributable to his playing half his games at Coors Field in Denver, where offensive statistics are inflated. Prediction: Cuddyer will play fewer than 100 games in 2015, hit about 10 homers, drive in roughly 50 runs, slug a bit above .400, clog up the base paths and give away dozens of runs in the field. And 2016 will be worse. Slightly above average, perhaps, but certainly not worth $21 million over two years. DAN GREENBLATT Seattle

Tiger
Morocco
Ebola
Mets
Michael Cuddyer


Victory Restores Swagger

Abstract: SAN JUAN, P.R. — José Reyes received a text message from Carlos Delgado, his Mets teammate, on Saturday afternoon. It was not an invitation to dinner. Delgado wondered how the big, bad players from the Dominican Republic had lost to the neophytes from the Netherlands. “Good question, I said,” Reyes explained on Sunday. “You watch the game?” Reyes tried to answer the question that was asked from fields in Santo Domingo to street corners in Washington Heights and plenty of places in between. How did the Dominicans let a team of mostly unknown players defeat them Saturday in the World Baseball Classic? Reyes tried to be respectful toward the Dutch. Reyes said anything could happen in any game, but, without much prodding, he added that the Dominicans were “way better” than the Netherlands. That may be true, but the Netherlands left the Dominicans a loss from elimination. “If we don’t win this one,” Reyes said before facing Panama, “we go home.” For now, the Dominicans are staying here. They capitalized on Panama’s sloppiness, displayed their power with three home runs and showed they still had a pulse in scampering to a 9-0 victory at Hiram Bithorn Stadium. Panama was ousted from the double-elimination tournament. On Tuesday, the Dominicans will oppose the loser of Monday’s game between Puerto Rico and the Netherlands. So there is a possibility they will get a chance for redemption against the Netherlands. Reyes said he would send a text message to Delgado, who plays for Puerto Rico. “Talk now, we win,” said Reyes, in describing his message. “Make sure you’re ready when we play you.” The Dominicans received some much-needed relief in the third when they scored three runs off Ramiro Mendoza on two hits, two infield errors and an intentional walk to Reyes. It was not a muscular display, but the power soon came. Miguel Olivo had a two-run homer in the fourth and a three-run shot in the eighth, and Nelson Cruz added a solo home run in the sixth. Johnny Cueto started and pitched four and two-thirds scoreless innings. Reyes, benched against the Netherlands in favor of Hanley Ramírez, started at shortstop Sunday. Even though Manager Felipe Alou does not want to play Reyes or Ramírez at a different position, the Dominicans would be much better with their two most dynamic players in the lineup. Reyes volunteered to move. “If he wants me to play another position, I’m going to play,” said Reyes, who went 0 for 4 Sunday. “I’m here to represent my country anywhere on the field.” As noble as it was for Reyes to say he would switch positions, the Mets would undoubtedly balk at having one of their most important players at another position. Reyes played 43 games at second during the forgettable Kazuo Matsui experiment in 2004, but he has not played second since. Making the blind pivot as a second baseman could be dangerous for Reyes. The Florida Marlins do not want Ramírez playing anywhere else, either. Still, when Reyes was asked how he thought the Mets would feel about him playing a new position, he theorized that they would agree with him. “They know I want to represent my country,” Reyes said. “I’m here to play the game.” The Dominicans have too many shortstops. They have a shortstop playing third base in Miguel Tejada. They have no steady first baseman because David Ortiz is the designated hitter, and they have some light-hitting outfielders. Alou had hoped to start Ortiz at first and use Ramírez and Reyes as his shortstop and designated hitter, but Ortiz has a stiff left shoulder so the Boston Red Sox do not want him playing the field. Ortiz, who did not play a game at first last year, laughed and said “I don’t know,” when asked last week about the prospects of playing first in the Classic. Alou mentioned the possibility of starting Ortiz at first on Tuesday, but that seems unlikely. For the last few days, Alou has lamented how many players are absent from his roster and how he has tried to patch together a lineup. Alex Rodriguez, who will have hip surgery Monday, and Adrián Beltré, another third baseman, left the team a few days before the tournament. Albert Pujols, Alfonso Soriano and Vladimir Guerrero are among the other Dominicans who cited concerns about injuries in deciding not to play. “We don’t have the best Dominican players here,” Alou said. “It tells you things about the Classic. We have two of the best shortstops in the business and then we play a different guy at first base every day. Our third baseman is a shortstop.” If Alou rotates shortstops each game, Reyes will be benched Tuesday. That is another game the Dominicans must win, another game in which Reyes would be valuable. Even Reyes seemed uncertain how he would try to squeeze both shortstops into the lineup if he were the manager. “That’s a good question,” Reyes said. “I don’t have an answer for that.”


Swede Has Gold-Medal Celebration Down Cold

Abstract: SESTRIERE, Italy, Feb. 22 - There were no more awards celebrations more joyless than Anja Paerson's accepting her two bronze medals in the women's combined and the downhill earlier in the Turin Olympics. She forced a wave to her fans in the grandstand, but Paerson, the reigning overall World Cup champion from Sweden, did nothing to hide her disappointment. The 24-year-old Paerson came to Turin with a silver and a bronze medal from the 2002 Salt Lake City Games. Two more bronze medals did not fill the prominent hole in her ski racing résumé. So Wednesday, when Paerson finally won her first Olympic gold medal, in the women's slalom, she threw her arms in the air, and performed her trademark belly slide, which she calls the walrus. Paerson gets a running start and flings herself down the finish-area slope on her stomach with her arms and legs splayed outward. And she cried on the top step of the medal podium. "It is a day when I felt in total harmony," said Paerson, who slightly injured a knee practicing during the race's warm-up period. "Even when things seemed to be slipping away, when the other girls skied well and I hurt my knee, I was calm. I was sure this was the day, an amazing day." The night race was contested with light snow and dense fog obscuring the lighted racecourse nearly from gate to gate. Paerson led after the first of two runs, but several top racers put pressure on her with swift second runs. Paerson, the last elite skier waiting in the start gate, could hardly coast to a victory. Her aggressive and efficient second run gave her a total time of 1 minute 29.04 seconds, which was 0.29 seconds ahead of the silver-medal winner, Nicole Hosp of Austria. Hosp's teammate Marlies Schild won the bronze medal with a sparkling run that allowed her to jump from sixth place after the first run. The Austrian Alpine team has won 11 medals in the 2006 Olympics, and 101 in Olympic history. The next closest country is Switzerland, which has won 53. Paerson's dramatic second run also knocked her chief rival, Janica Kostelic of Croatia, off the medal podium. Kostelic, who was the runner-up to Paerson in the overall World Cup standings last year and whose relationship with her had been sometimes frosty, finished fourth. Kostelic, who has six medals in the past two Olympics, failed to win a medal for the first time in seven Olympic events. Afterward, she said she might not race in the giant slalom Friday because of a lingering illness. Paerson said her knee injury hurt enough that her father and coach, Anders, asked if she wanted to skip Wednesday's race to rest for the giant slalom. "But I said, 'No, I'm doing this today,' " Paerson said. "There had already been days at these Olympics when I felt a little bit unlucky. The snow conditions were against me, and things weren't working out. I wasn't going to dwell on any negatives anymore." Paerson's victory was aided by the disqualification of Kathrin Zettel of Austria in the first slalom run. Zettel, ranked third in the world in the slalom, was on a pace to knock Paerson off the top of the leader board halfway through her first run when she suddenly skied off the course. "I don't know what went wrong," Zettel said. "I felt so good, and now I feel so bad." Kristina Koznick, the United States' best slalom skier for the past several years, skied Wednesday despite a torn anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee, an injury sustained in training just days before the Olympics. On Wednesday, she struggled through her first run and finished 34th, more than 3 seconds behind Paerson. Koznick withdrew before her second run. She will have knee surgery Monday in Vail, Colo. "It took a lot of courage to go from being on crutches to being here," Koznick said afterward. "I wanted a fairy tale, and I guess it didn't happen. But I'm happy I tried." The 30-year-old Koznick said she might retire. "This has been very hard, and I spent a lot of time crying at the timing of it all," she said. "I don't know if this is the last race of my career or not. It's hard to think about going out this way." Sarah Schleper, in 10th, was the top American finisher. Lindsey Kildow, still recovering from a back injury sustained during a downhill training crash last week, was 14th.

SWEDEN
SKIING
AUSTRIA
PAERSON ANJA
SCHILD MARLIES
HOSP NICOLE
ALPINE SKIING
OLYMPIC GAMES (2006)
WINTER GAMES (OLYMPICS)
OLYMPIC GAMES


Returns Suggest Gingrich Pays Higher Rate in Taxes

Abstract: Newt Gingrich and his wife, Callista, reported income of $3.16 million in 2010, according to tax returns posted on his Web site on Thursday night, and paid an effective tax rate double what Mitt Romney, one of his rivals for the Republican nomination, has said he pays. The couple’s income included $450,245 in salary from companies they control and about $2.53 million in income from partnerships and corporations, including Gingrich Productions. Mr. Gingrich also earned $41,625 in speaking fees and payments for serving on the boards of directors of various companies, as well as a $76,200 pension from the federal government. The couple, who live in Virginia, paid $994,708 in federal taxes, leaving them with an effective federal tax rate of 31.7 percent. Mr. Gingrich and other Republican candidates have repeatedly called on Mr. Romney, whose family wealth is estimated to be as high as $250 million, to release his taxes. While Mr. Romney has so far refused, he acknowledged this week paying an effective tax rate on his income of about 15 percent. That is about half of the rate Mr. Gingrich’s returns reflect, though Mr. Romney and his wife had at least three times as much income during 2010 and part of 2011 as Mr. Gingrich and wife reported on their 2010 returns, according to personal financial disclosures Mr. Romney released in August. Mr. Romney, who has said he will release a return in April, also reported earning speaking fees of about $374,000. The two men pay different effective tax rates because of how they made their money. The vast majority of Mr. and Mrs. Romney’s income comes from investments of millions of dollars, much of which would typically be taxed at the 15 percent rate for capital gains and dividends. Most of Mr. Gingrich’s income comes from salary and partnerships. The couple also reported $4,184 in short-term capital gains, $32,541 in net long-term capital losses, and about $18,000 in dividend income, along with $6,853 in rental income from real estate holdings. The tax return — which appeared to be the first Mr. Gingrich has released in his long political career—also shows how much wealthier the former speaker has become since he resigned from the House of Representatives in 1998 and began building political advocacy and consulting businesses. In the federal financial disclosure forms Mr. Gingrich filed for 1997, he reported income between $376,324 and $450,909. Mr. Gingrich, who angrily denied allegations on Thursday from his second wife, Marianne Gingrich, that he asked her for an “open marriage,” also reported paying $19,800 in alimony in 2010. Mr. and Mrs. Gingrich reported paying income, Social Security and Medicare taxes on the wages paid to the couple’s household employees. Their charitable contributions totaled $81,333 — about 2.6 percent of their adjusted gross income. The affiliated companies listed on Mr. Gingrich’s return include Gingrich Productions, the company that produced the couple’s documentary films and where Mrs. Gingrich serves as president, and Gingrich Holdings. Gingrich Holdings also contributed $152,609 to the Gingrich Foundation, a tax-exempt charitable organization, for which Mr. Gingrich’s campaign also released tax returns on Thursday night. The foundation, in turn, made $120,000 worth of grants in 2010, including contributions to the American Museum of Natural History; Luther College, Mrs. Gingrich’s alma mater; and the Atlanta Ballet.

Presidential Election of 2012
Income Tax
Federal Taxes (US)
Gingrich Newt
Personal Finances


Anonymous Site Spurs Talks Between Nikki Finke and Ex-Boss

Abstract: The journalist Nikki Finke has long struck fear into the hearts of Hollywood executives and entertainers, publishing a blend of vitriol and scoops on her blog Deadline Hollywood. In recent weeks, though, she had gone silent in the face of a legal dispute with the company that bought Deadline, Penske Media Corporation. It looked as if her career as a chronicler of Hollywood might be over. But now, a book deal and possible return to journalism are in the works. Ms. Finke made headlines this week after an anonymous group calling itself “The Committee for Decency in Journalism” published a website, NikkiStink.com, that posted pictures and video of the rarely photographed Ms. Finke. It also threatened to disclose more secrets about Ms. Finke’s private life if she did not stop publishing her biting journalism. Though most of that was taken down by Thursday, the website caused a stir in Hollywood. It also had an unintended effect, prompting a series of conversations between Ms. Finke and her former employer, Jay Penske, said a person with knowledge of the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions. Those talks could mean she will write again for Penske, which also owns Variety. The two recently signed a settlement agreement worth millions to Ms. Finke. Ms. Finke has also nearly completed a nonfiction book on Hollywood that will be published by Simon & Schuster, its president, Jonathan Karp, said in an email. Mr. Karp, who said he was editing the book himself, declined to provide details about its contents and said a publication date had not been set. “Whenever we publish,” he wrote, “the book will be an event.” A book by Ms. Finke will likely be met with dread in movie and television industry circles. An open letter to Ms. Finke, published this week on the mystery website, said that for years she had “threatened and bullied the Hollywood community into providing you information so that you could use it to ridicule, abuse and destroy people.” The website listed 79 insults she had directed at stars like Robin Williams and executives like the former Disney chief Michael Eisner, most of them unprintable. Beneath them, under the bold headline “GOTJA!” — a dig at Ms. Finke’s habit of writing “TOLDJA” in her posts — were photographs of Ms. Finke that appeared to have been taken secretly. The site also included some personal information, including pictures of her apartment, and it mocked Ms. Finke for her weight, calling her “large.” By Thursday, the site’s content was replaced with a shorter letter. “We think we’ve made our point,” it said. “Should it become necessary to add even more powerful content we will. Believe us, we have it.” It is unclear who is behind the site. It is registered to Domains by Proxy, a company in Scottsdale, Ariz., that protects the identities of people who sign up for websites. Its source code reveals little about its creators, except that the site had been set up with technology intended to serve large quantities of web traffic quickly, without crashing. The creators also appeared to have stripped identifying information from the pictures. “This is like the board game Clue,” said Matthew Belloni, the executive editor of The Hollywood Reporter, which was among the first to report the site’s existence. “Everyone in this town is a suspect.” Some, like Mike Fleming Jr. of Deadline, denounced the site, calling it “ reprehensible, meanspirited and disgusting .” Others said that it was, if anything, too easy on her journalistic tactics, though they would not say so for public attribution. Ms. Finke started her blog in 2006, just as people began to exploit the web’s potential to spread stories that would not have found homes in traditional newspapers. She became known as a machine for scoops, and for her tough, personal style of reporting and writing. In 2009, Penske acquired the site. And then, in 2012, it also bought the industry trade magazine Variety, a competitor to Deadline. That set off a dispute that caused Ms. Finke to leave the company. This June, she started NikkiFinke.com, her own site, and again began reporting on Hollywood in apparent defiance of a noncompete agreement with Penske. She stopped writing on Aug. 11. Because of restrictions connected to the settlement negotiations, neither Ms. Finke nor Penske representatives can speak publicly on the split or its aftermath. Ms. Finke has also been approached by Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, about potentially writing for his magazine. On Twitter Thursday, Ms. Finke raised another possibility for her future to her 233,000 followers. Jack Shafer, a media columnist for Reuters, had suggested she “pack up my act and bring it to DC,” she wrote . “Others saying the same thing. Should I?”

Nikki Finke
Penske Media
Books
Jay Penske
Simon & Schuster
Movies
News media,journalism


Who’s Alvin Greene? State Asks After Vote

Abstract: WASHINGTON — For a few hours this week, it looked as if South Carolina might ditch its never-fail reputation for political scandal in favor of a genuine history-making event. There was Nikki Haley , a lawmaker of Indian descent, beaming on election night with her husband and children after taking a major step toward becoming the first female governor of the state. It was a feel-good image to obscure the stain of a campaign marked by ethnic slurs, accusations of marital infidelity and yet more national marveling over how a single state can produce a string of political embarrassments as long as the Appalachian Trail. But then, the television cameras started rolling on Alvin Greene’s overgrown lawn. “Yeah, it’s been pretty nonstop for a few days,” said Mr. Greene, 32, in a phone interview Friday. Because everyone wants to know how Mr. Greene, an unemployed Army veteran who had been completely unknown until Tuesday, inexplicably defeated a heavily favored former legislator and judge to become the state’s Democratic nominee for the Senate — and the state’s latest political circus act. Mr. Greene had just a few peaceful hours to savor his victory in the tiny, ramshackle home he shares with his elderly father along a quiet highway in Manning, where he has been bunkered since election night. Then, The Associated Press reported that Mr. Greene was arrested in November and is facing a felony obscenity charge; he is accused of showing pornography to a University of South Carolina student. He had been discharged “involuntarily” from the Army and showed no signs of having waged an actual campaign in recent months — no advertising, no staff, no money. Mr. Greene, who declined to comment on the obscenity charge, would not say how he came up with the $10,440 to register his candidacy. Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina and the House majority whip, suggested that Mr. Greene was a “Republican plant” and that the circumstance reeked of the “shenanigans” that have become the state’s trademark. “We have embarrassment fatigue here,” said Dick Harpootlian, the former Democratic chairman of the state. “If there is an embarrassment equivalent of post-traumatic stress disorder , South Carolina has it.” Even casual observers across the country can recite the recent litany of Palmetto State political antics. The Republican donnybrook between John McCain and George W. Bush in 2000 left more scars than any presidential primary campaign in recent memory. Gov. Mark Sanford ’s public swoon over an Argentinean mistress — an affair he carried on while claiming to have been hiking the Appalachian Trail — remains a spigot of late-night punch lines (while Mr. Sanford remains the state’s governor). The Republican primary campaign to succeed Mr. Sanford featured two operatives claiming to have had extramarital affairs with Ms. Haley (who strenuously denied the accusations) as well as a Republican state senator dismissing her with an ethnic slur. Now comes Mr. Greene, adding Democratic balance to the state’s Republican-dominated scandal sheets of recent vintage. Mr. Clyburn immediately called for someone to investigate Mr. Greene’s candidacy — who paid for the campaign, who was behind it, how did he ever win? Mr. Harpootlian, a former district attorney, wants to know why Mr. Greene had not filed any papers with the Federal Election Commission , and Don Fowler, a former Democratic National Committee chairman from South Carolina, said he suspected that someone tampered with the voting machines. “There is something genuinely mysterious about this whole thing,” said Mr. Fowler, whose wife, Carol, the current chairwoman of the state’s Democratic Party , has called for Mr. Greene to step aside. Mr. Greene said he had no intention of doing so. He said the whole gambit has been his idea, that he paid the entry fee and that his was — and remains — “a self-managed campaign.” He said he would challenge his Republican opponent, Senator Jim DeMint , to a debate in September. “It will be one hour. Live. On a major network,” he proposed. Mr. Greene said he was determined to go through with this, which would seem to belie the somewhat shell-shocked demeanor he has projected in several interviews over the last 72 hours. “Can I end this?” Mr. Greene asked in the middle of a brief interview with a local television station in front of his house Wednesday. It might as well be his campaign’s official motto, or wish, at least as far as leading Democrats are concerned. “Sad,” Mr. Clyburn said, referring to the spectacle that Mr. Greene has become on the cable and YouTube circuits. Even in Manning, a town of 4,000 where everybody knows everybody, nobody seems to know Alvin Greene. “He just all of a sudden shows up and — boom!” said L. G. Mathis, 61, the owner of L. G.’s Cut and Style, a barber shop downtown. It is another embarrassment for South Carolina, said Carl F. Jackson Jr, a graphic designer at a local newspaper, The Clarendon Citizen. “Anybody who got beyond eighth grade is a little astounded by this,” Mr. Jackson said, adding his own theory of how Mr. Greene had won. “Maybe voters thought it was the singer, Al Green.” When asked in a phone interview Friday whether he was having “fun,” Mr. Greene quickly answered yes, before asking for clarification. “What do you mean by fun?” Without waiting for an answer, Mr. Greene said he was not interested in “fun,” or signing autographs (which he has yet to do) or indulging any of the trappings of his unlikely celebrity. He is interested in sticking to the issues that are important — jobs, education, justice — and to conveying why he is “the best candidate for the United States Senate in South Carolina.” Before elaborating on why he was, Mr. Greene excused himself, saying that he had to finish another interview.

Alvin Greene
South Carolina
Politics
Election
Primaries
US Politics


The Statistician Edward Tufte Illustrates Geometry in Sculpture

Abstract: It is rare for a show of outdoor sculpture to be both visually beguiling and intellectually stimulating. But “Seeing Around,” the first major museum show of the work of Edward Tufte , is both. To better accommodate his work, Mr. Tufte has reconstructed the topography of the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum’s three-acre garden — mounds and walls were built, and dozens of new white pine, spruce and red cedar trees planted. The remodeling took five months. Before the opening, in June 2009, almost nobody in the art world had heard of Mr. Tufte, who lives and works in Cheshire and is a well-known statistician and a professor emeritus at Yale — and the author of influential books in analytical design using data and information. But in the last decade, Mr. Tufte has produced about 50 large-scale sculptures and 100 smaller table pieces, along with numerous prints. Showing here are examples of all three groups of work, including 20 of the outdoor sculptures, and, in the museum’s Project Space gallery, many smaller objects, models and prints. Mr. Tufte’s best works are his sculptures, especially the outdoor pieces, usually fabricated from milled steel or an amalgam of bits and pieces of scrap metal. All of them tend to be abstract, frequently inspired by geometry but almost always asymmetrical. To a degree, the outdoor sculptures can be understood as a response to the artist’s academic studies of visual displays of data and information. For instance, the geometries of these works are noticeable for the ways in which they are designed to absorb, reflect and alter sunlight to create a multiplicity of shadows and interesting visual effects. This is science as much as art. Take, for instance, the five stainless steel pieces included in the “Bouquet” (2006-8) series showing here, in which changes in surface texture — including grinding, scraping, brushing, polishing and scratching — yield all kinds of subtle adjustments in reflected light. Meanwhile, cuts, bends, folds and perforations in the steel result in interesting, overlapping shadows. Yet as nuanced and clever as these works are, you do occasionally get the sense that they are almost too mathematical, too thought out, leading to an absence of spontaneity and feeling. It is one thing to know that a sculpture is designed to encompass endless, complex experiences of space, light and color, and another to encounter it. Two of the most impressive pieces on display outdoors are monumental sculptures: “Rocket Science # 2 (Lunar Lander)” (2009), a bizarre contraption that looks like a massive ray gun, and “Larkin’s Twig” (2004), three narrow steel beams arranged to create a 32-foot-high tripod structure that has been carefully integrated into the landscape, rather than simply imposed on the site. “Rocket Science # 2 (Lunar Lander)” incorporates discarded scrap metal, including materials from a nuclear power plant, and the main shaft is made from a monopole, used to hold up high-tension wires. I cannot recall seeing a work of outdoor sculpture on this scale — it is 70 feet long and weighs 48,000 pounds — outside of Storm King. The shadows it gives off are pretty amazing. It is also impressive to enter the museum parking lot and see the huge, rusted skeleton of a tractor jutting into the air, balanced on a steel pivot. This is “Skewed Machine” (2006), one of the more playful, eccentric works in the show. Here the artist has done little to enhance an existing object, but by changing its orientation, he makes us see it in a new way. Walking through the garden, the visitor’s attention is drawn to other pieces, so many in fact that I suspect the outdoor display is slightly overhung. Never mind, for the sculptures add a pulsating energy to the landscape. I saw the exhibition before the snow arrived, and I look forward to returning to view the works under different weather conditions. This is a show for all seasons.


Hurricane Matthew Makes Old Problems Worse for Haitians

Abstract: The first reports to arrive were of vast flooding and destruction, rivers of brown water pulsing through streets and homes shorn of tin roofs. Eventually, the talk turned to livestock lost, a veritable fortune for those living in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. But three days after the worst storm to strike Haiti in more than 50 years, the death toll is rising, and fast. From initial estimates of five dead, the government is now saying more than 280 people have been killed in Hurricane Matthew and its aftermath, the worst natural disaster to strike the nation since the earthquake of 2010. Others are reporting even more deaths. Reuters said that its own compilation, based on information from civil protection and local officials, showed at least 842 had been confirmed dead on Friday. The storm left a broad tableau of devastation: houses pummeled into timber, crops destroyed and stretches of towns and villages under several feet of water. In the southern city of Jérémie, 80 percent of the buildings were destroyed. The numbers of known dead soared as officials and aid workers ventured deeper into areas cut off from rescue efforts in the south, discovering more bodies interred in flooded homes and streets. Until Thursday, there had been no connection to the south of the country — neither electronic nor physical, owing to severed phone lines and collapsed bridges. “This is a very, very partial assessment of the damage and death,” said Annick Joseph, the country’s interior minister, during a news conference earlier in the day. Among other things, he added, dead were also being discovered in the mountains of the country, where communities are more isolated. The sudden surge in numbers reflects, in some ways, the very nature of the many challenges that Haiti faces. The country’s infrastructure had been in decline for decades, even before the earthquake and other storms weakened it further. A fragile communications system, too, was unreliable even in the best of times. These challenges and others are part of the reason the government so vastly underestimated the number of deaths, and why, many think, the number will continue to rise. More fundamentally, it meant that there was little the government was capable of doing to prepare — and to respond. “That many people died because they never believed what the authorities told them when they said they had to evacuate,” said Jean Senozier Despreux, who lives and works in Les Cayes and weathered the storm there. “They resisted it.” Image Homes lay in ruin in Les Cayes, Haiti. Credit Dieu Nalio Chery/Associated Press In a telephone interview, he said the surge in death numbers was not surprising to him. “We knew we would continue find people under the rubble,” he said. “It was so intense there was no way out.” Enzo di Taranto, the head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Haiti, said there would “be a severe impact on the environment, agriculture and water systems.” “Schools, hospitals and police stations, everything that was there when the hurricane hit was in some way damaged, because of the strengths of the wind,” Mr. di Taranto said. On Wednesday, officials said the hurricane’s heavy damage had forced them to postpone an already-delayed presidential election set for Sunday in the country of 11 million. This latest disaster revives unresolved questions that continue to haunt the country from the 2010 earthquake, when international aid groups practically usurped the role of the government. The government has been clear that this time around it will take the lead on coordinating aid, as donors bring in fresh water, food and money. Yet that approach, too, has its limitations. The current government is an interim administration that was to be replaced in the Sunday election. There is no word on when that vote will be rescheduled. For international aid organizations, striking a balance between working with the government and delivering lifesaving assistance expeditiously will define the coming months of the crisis, many say. “There was a lot of taking stock of what lessons were learned after 2010,” said Jake Johnston, research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. “And then you see a disaster and it all goes out the window and it’s immediate, whatever we can do as fast as possible,” he said. Image Crossing the Digue River in Petit-Goave. A bridge collapsed during the hurricane. Credit Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images At the same time, he said, for donors, “bypassing the government is not going to save the day in the end.” Aid groups especially fear cholera, a waterborne infection that has stubbornly plagued Haiti since shortly after the earthquake, when it was believed to have been inadvertently introduced by United Nations peacekeepers assigned to the country. CARE Haiti, a charity, said in a report that three cases of cholera had already turned up in southern peninsula hospitals. Partners in Health, an international charity that has long worked in Haiti, said there had been 26,000 cases of cholera this year. According to the United Nations, more than one million people have been affected by the storm in Haiti — and at least a third of them will require humanitarian assistance. Mr. di Taranto’s United Nations office, which is helping coordinate assistance between the government and humanitarian groups, said that more than 15,000 people were in emergency shelters. The Civil Protection Force of Haiti put the figure countrywide at closer to 27,000 people, with the majority in the south. At least 20,000 homes were wrecked and hundreds of Haitians were injured, officials said. In the largest banana-growing area of the country, more than 80 percent of the crops that feed 20,000 families were destroyed by the winds and flooding, according to Mercy Corps. In Jérémie, the capital of the southern department of Grande Anse, there was near-total destruction. In Les Cayes, another southern area where the storm wrought the most damage and across the peninsula from Jérémie, people lost their homes, livestock and possessions. Southerners in particular rely on subsistence farming, on lands that have now been flooded. “We’re very worried about the country’s future in terms of food security,” said Hervil Cherubin, country director in Haiti for Heifer International , a nonprofit that works with more than 6,500 farming families in the south. “Most of the crops are gone. Many of the farm fields are like landfills. They’re full of trash, seawater, gravel and other debris.”

Hurricanes Haiti UN Fatalities,casualties


Webster Carwash in the Bronx Votes to Unionize

Abstract: Maintaining that they face widespread minimum-wage violations, workers at a Bronx carwash belonging to one of the city’s largest carwash owners voted to unionize on Saturday, making it the second of New York City’s 200 or so carwashes where workers joined a union. The workers at Webster Carwash, nearly all of them immigrants, voted 23 to 5 to unionize after a six-month campaign, according to officials with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which joined with several worker advocacy groups to organize the employees. The effort was part of a campaign to unionize dozens of New York City carwashes with the aim of achieving better wages, worker treatment and safety conditions. Last month, workers at Astoria Car Wash and Hi-Tek 10 Minute Lube in Queens became the first carwash not just in New York, but on the entire East Coast, to unionize, voting 21 to 5 to do so. Webster Carwash is owned by Lage Management Corporation, which owns several dozen carwashes that have faced a wave of wage lawsuits and investigations. The company, headed by John Lage, agreed to pay $3.4 million in back wages and damages in 2009 to 1,187 current and former employees to settle a lawsuit accusing it of many wage violations. And last spring, officials in the office of the New York State attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, said they were investigating Mr. Lage’s carwashes over possible wage violations. Ernesto Salazar, an immigrant from El Salvador who has worked at Webster Carwash for six years, said he was delighted about the vote. “This is a time for immigrant workers to earn a voice through their union to speak up to their bosses,” Mr. Salazar said in Spanish through an interpreter. “The union will support us in pushing to raise wages. You can’t afford to live here on the amount they pay us.” Mr. Salazar says he earned $6.50 an hour, 75 cents below the federal minimum wage. He said he had been earning $5.50 an hour, but received a raise after the unionization drive started. He said he does receive some cash tips. He added that the workers wanted better safety training and conditions in light of the many chemicals they use in cleaning and polishing cars. An employee at Webster Carwash who answered the telephone on Sunday said that no manager was available to answer questions from a reporter. And an employee who answered for Mr. Lage’s main corporate office in Pelham Manor, N.Y., said to call back on Monday because the office was closed. Mr. Lage’s son Michael Lage, who is also part of the business, has in the past denied accusations of wage violations, saying that the lawsuits and claims the company’s carwashes face were part of an effort by the union to attract new members — and their dues payments. The retail workers union had worked closely with two advocacy groups, Make the Road New York and New York Communities for Change . The groups have submitted petitions to unionize two other Lage-owned carwashes, one in SoHo and one in Queens. There are an estimated 5,000 carwash workers in the city. “We are proud of the employees at Webster, who have taken a significant step toward improving their jobs and their lives by voting to join the union,” said Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. “These brave workers stood up to their employer, like David slaying Goliath.” Last April, the city’s public advocate, Bill de Blasio, pointing to the wage violation charges, urged city agencies to stop using Lage-owned carwashes to clean city vehicles. He said that since 2010, the city had paid the Lage Management Corporation more than $170,000 for cleaning city cars.

Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union


Illinois Not Alone in Struggling to Pass a State Budget

Abstract: CHICAGO — As a new fiscal year opened on Wednesday, Illinois’s leaders had no state budget, no hint of an agreement on the horizon, and no consensus about what all of it will mean for services to residents and for paying public employees and state contractors. Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican in his first term, said that state employees would work and be paid as usual, and that he planned to minimize disruptions in the state. But some Democrats, who control the state legislature, said payments to contractors and workers would stop in a matter of weeks without a budget or some special dispensation. As Wednesday progressed and lawmakers heard testimony about how a shutdown might disrupt state services, the two sides struggled even to agree on a method of temporary funding. “We’ve got a mess,” Mr. Rauner told state workers on Tuesday, days after he vetoed much of the Democrats’ budget, which included a deficit. “It’s going to take a little while to fix.” Illinois is not alone in its budget impasse. New fiscal years began on Wednesday in most states, but leaders in at least four others, including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and North Carolina, had yet to reach final spending plans. In about a half-dozen other states, including Connecticut, Delaware and Washington, budgets were approved only in the final days or, in some cases, the final hours. While governments routinely wrestle with budgets, experts said the number of states with unfinished plans and the amount of discord over questions of tax level, pension policy and education spending were unusual. Increasingly, states are grappling with a new array of questions in a changing climate: whether to tax online purchases, whether to expand taxes on services, and how to manage previously allowed tax credits and exemptions. Image Lobbyists waited Monday outside the House chamber at the Washington State Capitol. Late Tuesday, the governor signed a $38.2 billion budget. Credit Rachel La Corte/Associated Press “This all goes to show what intractable budget situations we have even seven years after the recession,” said Sujit M. CanagaRetna, fiscal policy manager at the Council of State Governments. “States are still struggling to come up with revenue. The big elephant in the room — taxes — is the issue that is underlying this whole discussion. And I think we’re going to see more of this going forward.” Some of the most intense fights have emerged in states with divided control of government, like Illinois. In Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, late Tuesday vetoed a Republican-backed spending plan. The governor had called for more spending on education and a severance tax on natural gas, while Republicans sought the privatization of state liquor sales and pension changes. A long standoff could affect the timing of state payments to contractors, but Pennsylvania officials said that no immediate shutdown was expected and that state facilities, including parks, would remain open, according to Jeff Sheridan, a spokesman for Mr. Wolf. Yet even states with a single party in control of government have found themselves mired in budget battles this year. In Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker is expected to announce a presidential run in the coming weeks, his fellow Republicans have clashed over the governor’s budget proposal and over road construction, financing a new Milwaukee Bucks arena and the state’s prevailing wage law, which sets standards for pay on public construction. On Wednesday, legislative leaders announced the framework of a budget deal, which did not include the basketball arena or prevailing wage, both of which will be considered separately. A legislative committee was expected to take up the budget bill later this week. Provisions in Wisconsin allow for government to continue functioning in the new fiscal year before a budget is passed. In South Carolina, Gov. Nikki R. Haley, a Republican, signed a budget but issued dozens of line-item vetoes on Monday. The legislature, dominated by Republicans, is expected to consider overrides next week. Image The newly approved $40 billion Connecticut state budget on Tuesday before it was signed by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. Credit Jessica Hill/Associated Press And in Kansas, where Republicans control the Capitol, legislators passed a budget bill after a tense session that was the longest in state history. Parts of that agreement were threatened by a court ruling that the method of funding schools was unconstitutional, but that ruling has been stayed by the Kansas Supreme Court. In some states, lawmakers in essence granted themselves extensions, passing resolutions that permit the government to operate temporarily so they can continue hashing out budget disputes beyond the new fiscal year. Massachusetts officials funded the government through July as lawmakers continue to meet in conference committee. In New Hampshire, Gov. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat, vetoed a two-year budget from lawmakers in part because of tax breaks it granted to businesses, but she signed a short-term plan that allows the government to function. And in North Carolina, a continuing resolution will finance government operations through mid-August, giving the House and Senate a chance to resolve a standoff over broad parts of the budget. State Representative Chuck McGrady, a Republican who serves on North Carolina’s House Appropriations Committee, said a budget agreement was far from certain, even now, with extra time. “I wouldn’t say I was optimistic,” Mr. McGrady said. “Is it possible? Yes. Is it possible we’ll be coming back and needing more time? Yes.” In Illinois, officials were scrambling to sort out what having no budget will mean. “We’re going to try to manage through this as best we can,” Tim Nuding, Mr. Rauner’s budget director, told lawmakers on Tuesday. Image Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania after a news conference. He wants more education spending and a severance tax on natural gas Credit James Robinson/The Patriot News, via Associated Press Democrats pushed an “essential services” budget on Wednesday that would have funded state government for a month, but it failed in the House after clearing the Senate. Lawmakers will be back at the Capitol next Tuesday. Mr. Rauner and the Democrats, who control the legislature, have battled for months with few signs of progress. He has demanded sweeping change, including an overhaul of workers’ compensation rules, term limits for lawmakers and a freeze on property taxes. Democratic leaders have said new revenues were needed to fill a budget deficit of more than $3 billion. Another issue has loomed over budget negotiations here: a significant problem with the financing of government pensions for the state as well as for Chicago and the city’s public schools. Chicago Public Schools borrowed money to make a required $634 million payment on Tuesday to a teachers’ pension fund. That payment followed a long debate over whether the state might allow a delay and warnings that paying the full cost would affect classroom instruction. Hours after paying the pension fund, the public school system announced $200 million in cuts. Around 1,400 employee positions “will be impacted beginning Wednesday,” the district said, leading to a rebuke from the teachers’ union. Chicago Public Schools has about 41,000 workers. For his part, Mr. Rauner spent part of the day visiting state workers, urging them to keep coming to work while negotiations continue. “We’re going to try to minimize the stress on your families,” he said. “I want to make darn sure you’re paid.”


A Different (and Surprising) Economic Tale of New York City Emerges

Abstract: When Bill de Blasio ran for mayor in 2013, he declared that New York City’s middle class wasn’t just shrinking, but also stood “in real danger of disappearing altogether.” The claim was part of the tale-of-two-cities theme that drove his campaign, the gilded metropolis indifferently snuffing out its gasping work force. Meanwhile, there was Julian Soto of Jamaica, Queens, who was making minimum wage as a warehouse man for a newsstand company at Kennedy International Airport two years ago. Now, said Mr. Soto, 25, his annual salary with overtime is “pushing $50,000” at the James Hotel in SoHo. As a new employee, he is being paid 75 percent of the full union contract rate for his first two years. “Put it this way — my refrigerator is never empty,” Mr. Soto said. Be careful around anecdotes; they are the black ice of reality. Vast and varied, New York is so textured that pixel-size facts can be mistaken for larger truths. But Mr. Soto is not a fluke. Far from disappearing, midlevel jobs that pay $50,000 to $100,000 a year are expected to account for 42 percent of the job growth in New York over the next four years, according to a forecast by the city’s Independent Budget Office . No one drinks champagne for breakfast on $50,000 or even $75,000 in New York. Still, this is a vital shift: Over much of the last decade, most new jobs in the city paid less than $50,000. It was the core critique of Michael R. Bloomberg ’s mayoralty by Mr. de Blasio as a candidate. Just last week, during a budget presentation, Mr. de Blasio emphasized how much of the city’s current expansion was in low-wage jobs, and said fighting “income inequality” would remain a focus of his administration. Mayors have little power over big economic trends. They cannot print money. That does not mean there is nothing they can do. Mr. de Blasio has lobbied for a higher minimum wage, and is requiring developments subsidized by the city to pay higher salaries — both measures that Mr. Bloomberg resisted or blocked. Yet Mr. Bloomberg also put his shoulder against inequality; history just takes its time telling unexpected truths. He said the city’s economy could not rely simply on Wall Street, because it would always go through downturns. The city used tax cuts to lure back the film and television industry, which had taken many of its good-paying union jobs to Toronto. It developed land north of Bellevue Hospital Center along the East River into a biotechnology center that is now 310,000 square feet of lab space. Construction has started on a two-million-square-foot campus on Roosevelt Island for graduate engineering studies that will be run by Cornell University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. The city encouraged the expansion of three other universities for technology research and study. In its first 400 years of European settlement, New York grew because its superb natural harbor made it a hub for trade and manufacturing. With the decline of the waterfront and factories toward the end of the 20th century, New York needed new advantages. It depended heavily on the finance, insurance and real estate sectors — FIRE for short — which was good for high-wage earners, and created a service and retail economy for people at the other end of the ladder. But with every bad downturn, the whole city was knocked around. The efforts to diversify worked, as a front-page article in The New York Times on Monday noted. “You’ve got to play to the strength of the city as an idea capital,” said John Sexton, the president of New York University. The city’s strongest assets, he argued, were intellectual, cultural and educational . Mr. Bloomberg held similar views, said Seth Pinsky, who was a senior mayoral adviser on economic development. “In the 21st century, the most important natural resource a city can have is its talent base,” Mr. Pinsky said. “Companies and businesses are going to follow talent.” The vibrant cultural life, and the molting of New York’s image as a crime-ridden jungle, led to a tourism boom. Dozens of hotels have opened, many of them governed by a strong union contract . An uncle to Julian Soto, Reynaldo Soto, who has been working since he was 16, said he made $10 an hour working overnight in a Kmart a few years ago. Now 26, he got a union job last year at the Lucerne on the Upper West Side with a base salary of $50,000. “Plus all the overtime I need,” he said. Nearly two million New Yorkers fall below the official definition of poverty, and about the same number are close to it. But “a tale of two cities”? That’s an undercount. There have to be 20 or 30 other ones, in plain sight, with plenty to teach us.

Bill de Blasio
Jobs
Income Inequality
NYC
Mike Bloomberg
Wages and salaries
Unemployment