Andy Murray’s Chance to Join the Big Three at the U.S. Open

Abstract: The door is ajar, not yet open, but knocking or even lowering a shoulder will not necessarily get Andy Murray onto the court of contemporary tennis royalty. So Darren Cahill, who helped match Murray with his wily coach, Ivan Lendl, would advise Murray to bring the same metaphoric weaponry he used on Roger Federer in the Olympic gold medal match to the 2012 United States Open . “It was not so much a tactical thing; he just took out a sledgehammer and beat it down,” said Cahill, a former tour player who has coached Andre Agassi and Lleyton Hewitt. “Listen, these guys at the top have staked out their territory. They’re not going to just let Andy in.” Murray is seeking his first Grand Slam championship and full-fledged membership into an exclusive club that has created what Cahill called “the most intriguing era of men’s tennis.” Murray’s continuing mission: put a ceremonious end to the characterization of the current elite, in so many words, as the Big Three and maybe. .... This year’s final major, on the hardcourts that suit his versatile game, may well be Murray’s best chance yet. That is taking into account his recent thrashing of Federer, the withdrawal of the injured Rafael Nadal and the retreat of Novak Djokovic from virtually unbeatable in 2011 to more vulnerable, at least in the supercompetitive confines of Club Fed (in deference to Federer’s 17 career Grand Slam titles). With membership in the group that has claimed a head-spinning 29 of the last 30 Grand Slam titles comes a growing confidence that at times borders on an understandable arrogance. “I think we are setting standards for a lot of new generations,” Djokovic said. “We make each other better players, and we need to work harder because we know that the competition is getting bigger and more intensive.” Publicly and abstractly, the Big Three are typically generous enough to include Murray and even Juan Martín del Potro — the one Grand Slam interloper (United States Open, 2009) — or a Jo-Wilfried Tsonga when discussing the enhanced physicality of the sport since the days when shorts were really short, rackets did not pulse with power and the game was less global and less attractive to a higher brand of athlete. Even Lendl — a proud fitness fanatic who reached eight consecutive finals at Flushing Meadows and won there three times — has said that he would have stood little chance against the mix of 21st-century athleticism and powerful baseline arsenals. But he also knows that making the most of one’s physical tools demands a mastery of competitive psychology that has separated Federer, Nadal and most recently Djokovic. Can Lendl help Murray think and feel like a champion? Even after beating Federer in straight sets at the Olympics, Murray withdrew after one match from the Rogers Cup in Toronto with a sore knee, then was upset in the Western & Southern Open in Mason, Ohio, by Jeremy Chardy. That left him short on match preparation heading into New York, and hedging on the psychological benefits of Olympic gold. “Yeah, I mean, I’ll need to see over the next few weeks whether it’s changed my mind-set going forward,” Murray said. “I’m sure I will have gained a fair amount of confidence from it. But confidence in individual sports comes and goes very quickly.” Therein lies the difference between a Club Fed member and a contender, said Paul Annacone, who as Federer’s coach (since 2010) was by his side for a seventh Wimbledon title in July and what most thought was an improbable return to the No. 1 ranking . “I think Andy Murray’s a great player — I’ve thought that for a while,” Annacone said. “I can’t imagine he’s not going to win a Grand Slam; he’s too good. It’s just getting over that hurdle, believing once and for all that he is right there with those guys.” Born in 1963, Annacone was a young sports fan during a golden era of heavyweight boxing, when Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier and George Foreman formed a trilogy largely defined by matchups. Ali struggled against Frazier’s unorthodox left-handed style, Foreman annihilated the smaller Frazier, and Ali’s hand speed and wits befuddled Foreman. Tennis is not as beholden to such precepts, given the multitude of times the best players engage one another and with conditions varying from outdoors to indoors and surface to surface. But Annacone agreed that the Federer-Nadal-Djokovic triumvirate mimicked Ali-Frazier-Foreman in that Nadal’s southpaw topspin forehand can be overwhelming for Federer and for his one-handed backhand, but is in a more comfortable ball-striking zone for the two-fisted Djokovic. Although Djokovic ascended to No. 1 last year and beat Nadal in seven straight matches, Federer was hardly overpowered by his flatter ground strokes, denying Djokovic a shot at a calendar Slam in the French Open semifinals and holding double match point against him at the United States Open. This summer, Federer stopped Djokovic in the Wimbledon semifinals and recorded a rarity at the top, a 6-0 set, en route to beating him in the final of their final Open tuneup in Ohio. In his career, Nadal holds an 18-10 edge over Federer, defeating him in six Grand Slam finals on three surfaces. That has created the sense that Federer fears Nadal, but 12 of Nadal’s victories against Federer have been on clay, where, Cahill said, playing Nadal is “mission impossible.” And if Djokovic was in Nadal’s head while dominating him in 2011, Nadal has responded by winning their last three matches, including this year’s French Open final. On and on they go, imperiously imposing their will on all but one another except for the rarest occasions. Reporters and fans relish in making grand pronouncements after episodic developments in the continuing game of king of the hill, but as Annacone said: “These guys appreciate the drama and the moment; they just don’t let it define them. They don’t get hung up by the sensationalism of one or two matches. To them, that’s life. You play another great player, you lose sometimes.” Federer’s return to No. 1, after beating Murray at Wimbledon in July and before he turned 31 this month, spoke not only to his lasting greatness, but also to his steadfast belief in himself. Brad Gilbert, who has coached Agassi, Murray and Andy Roddick, said: “Roger seems to be the most comfortable at the top, like the guy who really enjoys wearing the yellow jersey at the Tour de France . But the three of them are constantly working on ways to attack, to get into the other guy’s head, to figure out something that will work.” In the 1980s, the enmity between John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors was palpable; in the 1990s, a persistent uneasiness existed between the personality opposites Pete Sampras and Agassi. In the era of European ascendancy and general amiability, the competitive dynamic has been more nuanced, with more to read between the lines. Was there a psychological gamesmanship at work when Nadal would defer to Federer as the greatest after another beatdown on the Grand Slam stage? Are Federer’s occasional immodest comments subtle reminders to Nadal and Djokovic that he is the club’s founding member? Early in Djokovic’s career, with his raucous relatives irritating the Federer and Nadal camps and with his on-court impersonations of his rivals and others, he seemed to be a prime antihero candidate, provided he could be as successful as he was entertaining. Djokovic and family have since toned the act down. And three years after he won his first Grand Slam event (Australian Open, 2008), the exclamation point to as good a year as Federer ever had happened last year in New York when Djokovic defeated Nadal in the final after barely surviving Federer in the semis — most memorably with a rousing forehand winner return of a Federer first serve on match point. The artiste in Federer was stunned by Djokovic’s go-for-broke audacity at such a moment; he considered the shot “very hard to understand.” But had Djokovic pushed back his return, the odds were that Federer would have put the point and the match away. That relates to Murray and his envisioned Grand Slam breakthrough. As the television analyst Jimmy Arias, a former American top-10 player, said: “The problem for Murray is that for his entire career, he’s been able to massage the ball in and defend so well, and that beats everybody except those other three guys. He’s got to think aggressively from the start of the tournament to the finish.” In other words, don’t bother knocking and asking for admission to Club Fed, because there is no secret code word or application process. In the athletically enhanced state of men’s tennis, the metaphorical sledgehammer makes the case much better than the slice.

United States Open (Tennis)
Djokovic Novak
Federer Roger
Nadal Rafael
Tennis
Lendl Ivan
Murray Andy (1987- )


Abstract: How’s the Economy? Just Look at How Much Celebrating ‘The 12 Days of Christmas’ Will Cost By Elizabeth Olson As far as the economy goes, the literal meaning of holiday songs is hardly a typical indicator of consumer sentiment. Yet, there are hidden economic lessons, if you delve into the costs of goods and services. It is with this spirit (and some creative back-of-the-envelope calculations) that we have again turned our thoughts of fancy to the “The 12 Days of Christmas.” For those willing to give their true love extravagant memories for the days running from Christmas Day until Epiphany, act now! All told, the whimsical splurge will run a little less than 1 percent more than last year, largely because of slow economic growth. That works out to a grand total of just $34,363.49. The Christmas price index closely mirrors the government’s Consumer Price Index, which tracks the prices of more pedestrian goods and services such as housing and transportation. The C.P.I. rose 1.7 percent over the 12-month period ending in November. The good news is that prices for goods have remained static in the last year, according to the PNC index. But entertainers — including those 11 pipers piping and 12 drummers drumming — have enjoyed a bit of a boost in their paychecks, reflecting this year’s increase in average hourly earnings . All the same, gift givers are advised to act soon, said Thomas P. Melcher, chief investment officer for the PNC Asset Management Group, a division of PNC, because interest rates are likely to increase, leading to higher consumer borrowing rates. “As the economy continues to expand,” Mr. Melcher noted, “it is likely the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates this month or early next year. That will affect the Christmas index but not necessarily by much.” This year, there were wide fluctuations in the price of some products, based on the data that PNC gathered from retailers, hatcheries and dance companies. A Partridge in a Pear Tree Cost: $210 Image Credit Alaa Badarneh/European Pressphoto Agency The true bargain in the gift package, the partridge price fell 20 percent, to $20, as a result of a larger supply of the game birds. Last year, the price soared because the partridge became a popular dish among foodies, but supply apparently met demand. Adding in the pear tree, which cost $190 — the same price as last year, according to Cinnaminson Nurseries in New Jersey — the grand total for the set is $210, or 2.3 percent less than last year. Two Turtle Doves Cost: $375 Image Credit Phil Coale/Associated Press The costs of two turtle doves, sometimes considered a symbol of true love, are adding up this year. The brace of lovebirds cost $375, or 29.3 percent more than last year, because of a shortage of birds. According to PNC, a turtle dove lays eggs, called clutches, only two or three times a year, and each clutch has only two eggs. Three French Hens Cost: $181.50 The brood of imported hens, sometimes called faverolles because the breed was developed in the 1860s near the French villages of Houdan and Faverolles, came in at $181.50, the same price as 2015. Four Calling Birds Cost: $599.96 Once called colly birds — an ancient term for blackbirds — they are ringing up at $599.96, the same as last year. Prices for these, and other birds, can swing from year to year. Five Golden Rings Cost: $750 Image Credit Shah Marai/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The price of gold rings held steady for the fourth year in a row. Even though gold commodity prices dipped earlier this year, they later evened out. (According to some, the reference to five golden rings in the classic carol might have actually been to five ring-necked pheasants — which would be more in keeping with the lineup of birds in the song.) Six Geese a-Laying Cost: $360 The gaggle of geese remained at $360, holding steady from last year. Prices of the birds, sometimes associated with Christmas dinner, have varied, according to information PNC gathered from a waterfowl farm. Seven Swans a-Swimming Cost: $13,125 Image Credit Michael Kirby Smith for The New York Times The cost for swans has historically been volatile. This year, the wedge of elegant birds had an impressive $13,125 price tag — or $1,875 each — the same as last year. But the price on their heads can be so variable that it skews the index’s outcome in some years. Eight Maids a-Milking Cost: $58 With no increase in the federal minimum wage — it’s been the same since 2009 — the eight maids received the same basic compensation as last year. Three decades ago, the maids earned an even more meager $26 for such toil over the holidays (not adjusting for inflation). Nine Ladies Dancing Cost: $7,552 Image Credit Andrea Mohin/The New York Times As with the farm workers, the price tag for nine ladies dancing was static this year. The group (priced at a rate for professional modern or ballet dancers) was paid $7,552 this year, the same as 2015. Sorry, ballerinas — no raise in 2016. Ten Lords a-Leaping Cost: $5,508 Male entertainers did not fare any better than their female counterparts this year. They were consigned to performing their athletic feats for the same price, $5,508, as in 2015. But compensation for their work has increased nearly continuously since 1984, when their performance ran about $1,600. Eleven Pipers Piping Cost: $2,708 Image Credit Bryan Thomas for The New York Times The cost to have 11 of these lively wind-instrument players rose for the first time since 2013. It is up 2.8 percent from their previous level of $2,635, according to a Philadelphia union for musicians. Their pay began to get a boost in the early 2000s and has risen steadily since then. Twelve Drummers Drumming Cost $2,934 Image Credit Justin K. Aller/Getty Images To have the dozen drummers at your true love’s doorstep will cost some 2.8 percent more than last year. Compensation for the dozen drummers will be $2,934, their first raise in several years. No calculations were factored in to compensate the neighbors for noise complaints. Ship, or Buy Everything Local? For Christmas shopping this year, it is significantly less expensive to gather your gifts in person rather than order them online. Assembling the parades of fanciful fowl and the troupes of entertainers from the comfort of home will cost the giver $10,239 more this year — bringing the grand total to a hefty $44,602. The overall price tag soars, however, if the sender of the gifts believes that the song requires that the presents have to be added each time the verse is sung. The cost of all the items repeated in the song’s verses means buying 364 gifts, and would put the giver out of pocket an eye-popping $156,507. Children’s Fun The entire PNC index, including a coloring book, is available here .

Christmas
Price
Gifts
Inflation
Interest rate
PNC Financial Services


Envoys to Meet on Possible Sanctions Over Iran Nuclear Program

Abstract: UNITED NATIONS — Senior diplomats from the five permanent members of the Security Council and from Germany are scheduled to meet in New York on Saturday to discuss imposing new sanctions on Iran , with the Western nations seeking tough measures while China appears to be stalling for time. Before that meeting, the Chinese have let the other participants know that He Yafei, the vice minister of foreign affairs, an official with sufficient clout to give an answer on sanctions proposals, would be unlikely to attend. Instead, Zhang Yesui, China’s permanent representative to the United Nations, is expected to represent Beijing. Mr. Zhang said at a news conference this month that the Iranian nuclear issue “needs some more time and patience.” China, which is generally reluctant to impose sanctions on any country, particularly of an economic nature, has a history of dragging out the negotiations in the Security Council by repeatedly saying its representative must await further instructions from Beijing. At issue for the other diplomats is whether to push for tough sanctions and risk a Chinese abstention. Such an outcome could inspire some of the other nations on the 15-member Council to sit on their hands, calling into question whether proponents could muster the nine votes required for the measure to pass. Turkey questions the wisdom of imposing sanctions now, echoing the Chinese position that further negotiations might coax the Iranians to export some of their stockpile of uranium for further enrichment abroad, rather than enrich it themselves. Lebanon and Brazil, both new members of the Council this year, might be reluctant to vote for strong measures, given their ties with Iran. There is also a debate in Washington over whether tough, immediate sanctions would be the wisest course, diplomats here said, with some arguing that pushing for harsh sanctions now would be an admission by the administration that its policy of engaging America’s adversaries had failed. Both Russia and China supported three previous rounds of Council sanctions that basically took aim at Iranian organizations and individuals involved in the nation’s nuclear program. The sanctions are meant to push Iran back to the negotiating table and to prevent it from gaining nuclear weapon technology, which Iran denies seeking. Russia has signaled that it will support at least weak sanctions. It feels rebuffed after Iran first accepted and then rejected a deal broached last October, under which Iran would have sent much of its enriched uranium to Russia for processing. The three Western permanent members of the Security Council — the United States, Britain and France — along with Germany, would like to impose sanctions in at least three areas. They would try to restrict the ability of Iranian banks to work abroad; single out senior members of the Revolutionary Guards, the entity that runs the nuclear program; and try to hamper Iranian shipping companies. The Russians have previously opposed travel bans against the Revolutionary Guards leaders because they travel to Moscow to negotiate deals, diplomats said.

Embargoes and Economic Sanctions
Iran
Security Council (UN)


Trump May Stay at His Hotel, Not Blair House, Before Inauguration

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump is considering spending his last nights as a private citizen ensconced in his new Washington hotel, rather than at Blair House as many of his predecessors have, according to people briefed on the planning. The plans, which aides cautioned are not final, would represent a break from protocol for an incoming president, though are in keeping with Mr. Trump’s approach to the role so far. Not since Jimmy Carter took up residence in Blair House in December 1976 has a president-elect stayed anywhere but the sprawling compound, known as “the president’s guesthouse,” in the final days before taking the oath of office. But neither has an incoming president owned a luxury hotel just blocks from the White House that bears his name and sits along the Pennsylvania Avenue inaugural parade route. Image Every president since Jimmy Carter has stayed at Blair House before Inauguration Day. Credit Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Should he stay there, at the Trump International Hotel Washington, D.C., Mr. Trump would be joined by members of his family, a small group of aides and his most generous financial supporters, those familiar with the discussions said. They requested anonymity because the plans are not yet complete. Exactly what Mr. Trump’s accommodations there would look like is less clear. The hotel’s largest suite, known as the Trump Townhouse, is a 6,300-square-foot duplex with a private entrance. Before the election, the suite was being offered as part of a five-night inaugural package for $500,000. It was not clear if the package ever sold. A hotel staff member said Friday that the entire property was “fully committed” for inauguration week. Mr. Trump has made his properties the backdrop for his transition, inviting a parade of job applicants and advisers to Trump Tower in Manhattan and decamping on weekends to his golf course in Bedminster, N.J., or his private Palm Beach club, Mar-a-Lago. Opened in the weeks before Election Day, the Trump hotel, which occupies the government-owned Old Post Office building, was a frequent pit stop during the campaign, where Mr. Trump would hold news conferences that often turned into promotion of the property. But an inaugural eve stay would likely bring another order of attention — from the media, supporters and, potentially, protesters. The site has already become popular with Republican groups and visiting dignitaries, and a point of discussion among Democrats who say such bookings present a conflict of interest. A stay there would offer another sign that Mr. Trump, a first-time politician who campaigned as a political outsider, has little concern for the protocols that have come to accompany the modern presidency. Mr. Trump, for example, is widely expected to spend a significant amount of time at Trump Tower in Manhattan as president. His wife, Melania, and youngest son, Barron, will remain there after the inauguration until the end of the school year. Since Mr. Carter spent more than a month on and off in Blair House in the winter of 1976-77, Republicans and Democrats alike have followed his example, though often for much shorter stays. George Bush, when he was vice president, stayed there for two days. The complex has 14 bedrooms and 35 bathrooms spread across 70,000 square feet. In 2009, the Obamas requested an early Blair House move-in date so their daughters could begin the school year in Washington, but ended up staying at the nearby Hay-Adams Hotel until Jan. 15 because the departing Bush administration said the property was not yet available. An inauguration morning ritual has taken shape in recent decades: a private breakfast for family and friends at Blair House, a religious service at one of the nearby churches, and a private meeting with the departing president at the White House before the inauguration ceremony. Mr. Trump’s own schedule for inauguration day and the days leading up to it has not been released, but he is expected to attend a welcome rally for supporters, and he will most likely make stops at candlelight dinners for donors on the eve of the inauguration.

US Politics
Donald Trump
Trump International Hotel
Washington DC
Inauguration
Palm Beach


Presto! A Leader

Abstract: Over the course of more than 400 interviews with C.E.O.s and other leaders for the weekly Corner Office feature by Adam Bryant, an intriguing fact emerged: Several of the C.E.O.s — including Aaron Levie of Box, Janet Elkin of Supplemental Health Care and Daniel Lubetzky of Kind Snacks — were professional magicians earlier in their lives. Just a coincidence? Or did those experiences help make them better leaders? “First of all, magicians practice a lot,” said Mr. Lubetzky, who performed magic shows from the time he was 8 years old until he was 19. “It requires a lot of discipline. Second, you can’t be afraid to be a leader, to go onstage, and you learn to have presence. You need to be able to visualize and connect and create. Most important, you learn to think outside the box.” In the accompanying video, he elaborates on how his training as a magician helps him lead.

Management
Magic
Kind Snacks
Daniel Lubetzky
Janet Elkin
Aaron W Levie
Supplemental Health Care
Box


Mathieu Ngudjolo, Congolese Warlord, Is Acquitted of War Crimes

Abstract: PARIS — The International Criminal Court in The Hague said Tuesday that it found testimony against a former rebel leader “too contradictory and too hazy” to convict him of a gruesome 2003 attack on a village in the Democratic Republic of Congo in which some 200 people were hacked to death and female survivors were raped and held in camps as sex slaves. The acquittal of the leader, Mathieu Ngudjolo, was only the second verdict issued by the court since it opened its doors a decade ago. It drew harsh criticism from rights groups, who faulted prosecutors for not assembling a stronger case. The trial had been tightly focused on the events of Feb. 24, 2003, in the eastern Congolese village of Bogoro. Prosecutors said the attackers used machetes to preserve bullets and burned some civilians alive. In their ruling, the judges said that they did not question that the villagers had suffered atrocities but that there was not enough evidence to convict Mr. Ngudjolo of murder, rape and using child soldiers. “This does not necessarily mean that the alleged fact did not occur,” the presiding judge, Bruno Cotte of France, said of the prosecutors’ failure to prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt. André Kito, a coordinator of Congolese rights groups, said the verdict was “a hard blow for the victims and affected communities.” He added that people in the region had placed much hope in getting justice from the court after enduring years of terror at the hands of militia fighters jockeying for control of mineral-rich areas. The court has indicted suspects in seven African countries. Tuesday’s verdict was the second case in which prosecutors faced criticism for their handling of a case from the Ituri region of Congo. Another Congolese rebel leader, Thomas Lubanga, was sentenced to 14 years in prison in July after being convicted of recruiting child soldiers in Ituri. That verdict followed a troubled trial that was halted twice as judges and prosecutors wrestled over the nature of the evidence. After Mr. Ngudjolo was acquitted Tuesday, prosecutors asked the judges to keep Mr. Ngudjolo in detention, saying they intended to appeal the verdict. Human Rights Watch called Tuesday for the court’s prosecutor to investigate the leaders behind the bloodshed. “The I.C.C. prosecutor needs to strengthen its investigations of those responsible for grave crimes in Ituri, including high-ranking officials in Congo, Rwanda and Uganda who supported the armed groups,” said Geraldine Mattioli-Zeltner, an advocacy director of the rights group. Mr. Ngudjolo, who had pleaded not guilty, showed no emotion when the verdict was read. The court had been criticized for spending significant sums for Mr. Ngudjolo’s wife and six children to visit him during his confinement. Mr. Ngudjolo, 42, a former nurse, was arrested in 2008 in the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, accused of crimes that took place while he was chief of staff for the Front for National Integration, an armed militia that was made up mostly of fighters from the Lendu ethnic group. He was put on trial with Germain Katanga, who led an allied militia also accused of participating in the attack on Bogoro. Mr. Katanga’s trial will continue.

Congo Democratic Republic of (Congo-Kinshasa)

War Crimes Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity


Echoes of the Past as David Cameron Enters Talks on Britain’s Future in European Union

Abstract: LONDON — The British prime minister holds high-stakes talks before a crucial referendum on whether to abandon European integration. Though distracted by other problems, the German chancellor tries to help him out. Back home, British critics snipe, hoping the negotiations will collapse. That is broadly the position faced by Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain this week as he enters delicate discussions over his country’s membership terms in the European Union, ahead of a plebiscite on whether to quit the bloc. But it was also the situation more than four decades ago, when Britons last had the opportunity to vote on their European destiny. And pro-Europeans are hoping that history will repeat itself. Under pressure from critics of European integration within his Conservative Party, Mr. Cameron has promised to hold a referendum by the end of 2017, and at a summit meeting in Brussels on Thursday he will press for a “better deal” from partners on the Continent. At stake is not just Britain’s membership in the 28-nation bloc, but also perhaps the future of European integration, because the union can ill afford the shock that a British exit would bring. Mr. Cameron, who is seeking concessions from the other European nations that would help assure that British voters choose to stay in the union, has borrowed heavily on tactics deployed in 1974 and 1975 when Prime Minister Harold Wilson used a similar approach to keep Britain in the bloc, then called the European Economic Community. As now, Britain’s governing party was split over Europe at the time (it was Labour four decades ago, the Conservatives now), and the referendum pledge helped paper over divisions. In 1974, Germany was crucial in the negotiation, but it was preoccupied by other issues: Then, it was the economic fallout from the oil price surge; now, it is the influx of a million migrants this year and the aftershocks of the debt crisis in the 19-nation eurozone. But by the spring of 1975, talks had concluded successfully, and Britons voted later that year to stay in a bloc that they had joined just two years earlier. In one sense, current British diplomats have things easy because, while the Conservative Party may be divided on Europe, those who openly want to leave the bloc are not prominent in government ministries. That was not the case in 1974-75, when some senior Labour ministers hoped the renegotiation would fail so that Britain would leave. In a confidential internal report on the 1974-75 negotiation, only recently published, a senior British official, Nicholas Spreckley, wrote, “There was throughout the sensation of living in dangerous times and success seemed very far away.” The demands in the 1970s included a mechanism to lower British budgetary contributions, changes in agricultural policy and concessions for exporters of farm products from former British colonies like New Zealand (to which the British felt special ties). Bernard Donoughue, a close aide to Mr. Wilson at the time and now a member of the House of Lords, recalled that “it was not anticipated that Europe would make major concessions, because it is in the nature of the beast that they cannot without major treaty change.” Changing a treaty is even harder now, he added, because all 28 nations need to ratify a new one. “We targeted a couple of key areas where we knew we would get something,” Lord Donoughue said. Mr. Cameron’s objectives include an end to Britain’s obligation to forge an “ever closer union,” measures to increase economic competitiveness, greater powers for national parliaments to block European legislation, and guarantees that Britain — which uses the pound instead of the euro — will not be materially disadvantaged. Mr. Cameron also wants to restrict welfare benefits for European Union citizens who come to Britain to work, until they have lived in the country for four years. That is highly contentious because it threatens to breach the rule that no European Union country should discriminate against the citizens of another. David Hannay, a member of the House of Lords and a former British diplomat, said that, as in 1974, the dispute today involves a split within the governing party. And then as now, the other European countries generally wanted Britain to stay but were unwilling to make wholesale changes to accommodate British demands — and had bigger problems of their own. “But one of the main differences was that Britain had only joined in January 1973; if we had left in 1975, nothing much would have changed,” Lord Hannay said, adding that Britain is now far more integrated into the bloc. Sir Stephen Wall, a former British diplomat and historian of Britain’s relationship with the European Union, said that Mr. Wilson achieved little on his central demands. The concession on British budget contributions never helped, and the whole issue resurfaced a decade later under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Few substantial changes to European agriculture were achieved, and Britain asked for guarantees against several things that were never likely to happen anyway. Mr. Cameron may be in a stronger position, Sir Stephen added, because “I think our partners would have been less reluctant to see us go then than they would now, partly because our economy was weaker then.” For Mr. Cameron, success may ultimately depend on his chemistry with other leaders, and he has worked hard to cultivate ties with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. Four decades ago, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt played a crucial role, both by wooing some skeptical Labour Party members with an accomplished pro-European speech at a party congress, and by smoothing diplomatic relations between Britain and France, then a dominant force in the bloc. Yet a warning to Mr. Cameron reverberates through the decades from Mr. Spreckley’s confidential note. In 1974, he wrote, other European nations “attached importance to British membership, but they were not prepared to compromise on the principles of the Community in order to maintain it.” In a phrase that rings as true now as it ever did, he added that it was “almost impossible to guess how much they would be prepared to give way.”

EU
David Cameron
Great Britain
Germany
Eurozone
Referendum
International relations
Brexit


Warning at Deere After Soft Results

Abstract: Deere & Company , the world’s largest maker of farm machinery, reported disappointing quarterly results on Wednesday and warned that soaring raw materials prices would pressure profit margins for the current period, sending shares down as much as 12 percent. High steel prices, driven by demand from India and China, have hurt earnings in its equipment divisions. Rising freight costs also ate into profit. Deere warned that escalating costs would have an impact on margins in the current quarter. That forecast overshadowed sharply higher revenue and profit in its farm segment in the quarter ended June 30 and a 17 percent rise in total revenue. “Farmers are buying tractors — period,” said Brian Langenberg, principal of research and asset management company Langenberg and Company. But, he said, “relative to other industrial companies that buy a lot of steel, they are clearly lagging in terms of their ability to capture price.” Net profit rose 7 percent, to $575.2 million, or $1.32 a share, in its third quarter. A year earlier Deere earned $537.2 million, or $1.18 a share. Analysts on average expected Deere to earn $1.36 a share. “Results and guidance may disappoint the market somewhat but are not a huge surprise given materials costs that have spiked since Deere’s May 14 guidance,” an analyst at Morgan Stanley, Robert Wertheimer, said in a research note. Total revenue rose 17 percent, to $7.74 billion, while equipment sales were $7.07 billion, short of the $7.17 billion forecast by Wall Street, according to Reuters Estimates.

Deere & Company
Company Reports
Agriculture
Machinery and Equipment


No Clear Winner in Debate Between Merkel and Challenger

Abstract: BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Social Democratic rival, Peer Steinbrück, fought each other to a virtual draw in their sole television debate of the German election campaign on Sunday night. The face-off was a mostly decorous 90-minute affair that commentators had cast as Mr. Steinbrück’s last chance to show his mettle and overcome earlier stumbles. Mr. Steinbrück, 66, who was finance minister in Ms. Merkel’s first coalition government from 2005 to 2009, came across to undecided voters as more persuasive and readier on the attack, according to polling by ARD , Germany’s main state television network. Ms. Merkel, 59, a physicist raised in East Germany who entered politics as a novice in 1990, was rated as more sympathetic and fair, ARD said. The two quite swiftly laid out contrasting views of the euro crisis and Germany’s role in helping countries like Greece, but it was more than an hour into the debate before they discussed other international problems, including Syria. Ms. Merkel stated more clearly than she had before that Germany would play no part in any military response to the apparent chemical weapons assault outside Damascus, and she stressed that Germany would always need some kind of international mandate — with NATO, the United Nations or the European Union as possible authors — before taking military action. Until Sunday, the popular Ms. Merkel consistently outscored Mr. Steinbrück in polls asking Germans whom they wanted to win the Sept. 22 election. Ms. Merkel, who is seeking another four-year term, is very much the focus of the campaign by her center-right Christian Democratic Union. However, Germany’s parliamentary system and complex coalition arithmetic mean that Ms. Merkel may not secure enough seats or votes to win re-election at the head of her current coalition, with the business-minded Free Democrats. If the two largest blocs — Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democrats and the center-left Social Democrats — are forced into a so-called grand coalition, Mr. Steinbrück has already said that he will not join it. That refusal led to the most lively exchange on Sunday, near the end of the debate. Pointing to polls saying that many Germans favor such a grand coalition, one of the four moderators, the popular television host Stefan Raab, pressed Mr. Steinbrück on how voters should mark their ballots to reach that outcome. Flustered, Mr. Steinbrück ended up recommending a vote for him and his party. For her part, Ms. Merkel was pressed to declare allegiance to her current coalition partner, and did so in a way that commentators interpreted as leaving some room for the Social Democrats. She said that unlike her rivals, she was not acting out of partisan considerations. “It is always first about the country,” she said. Ms. Merkel has deftly ducked contentious issues in the campaign so far — even over the extent to which American intelligence agencies have spied on Germans, a highly delicate subject in a country scarred by its Nazi and Communist past. Mr. Steinbrück accused Ms. Merkel of reacting too passively — “I will wait and see,” as she said in a July news conference — rather than defending German interests. Ms. Merkel has admitted that she had not realized the extent of the National Security Agency’s surveillance activities, but has insisted that she believed White House assurances that the agency had not abused its access to German data to spy on millions of Germans. Her government has said it was seeking a new agreement with the United States that neither country will spy on the other. Asked why that was necessary if she believed the White House, Ms. Merkel parried the question. While Mr. Steinbrück laid out a vision of creating a “fairer” Germany and reiterated that his party was prepared to raise taxes on the “Oberen,” or the better-off in society, Ms. Merkel reiterated her message that she had done well for eight years, and that she deserved four more. Campaign posters have shown the chancellor smiling but not triumphant, with slogans like “Successful together” and “Germany is strong — and should stay so.” As the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper noted Sunday, even 20 percent of voters who lean toward the Social Democrats said they would prefer her as chancellor. “She is too pragmatic and keeps her distance too well for any kind of emotional connection to move voters to choose the chancellor’s party,” the newspaper wrote. “But she has managed to make many associate her with feeling good.” Mr. Steinbrück’s party introduced welfare and labor policies a decade ago that are credited with bolstering Germany’s competitiveness, but the party remains deeply split over those policies, and has struggled to run a strong campaign. Another factor that could affect the election result is the showing of a new party , Alternative for Germany, which wants to pull out of the euro. Pollsters have warned that surveys showing the party below the 5 percent threshold needed to win seats in Parliament may understate its support, with some voters reluctant to admit backing it. The mass circulation Bild newspaper had its own verdict on the “duel,” referring to the popular moderator: “ Raab won .”

Election
Germany
Peer Steinbruck
Angela Merkel
Political Debates


X Still Marks Sunken Spot, and Gold Awaits

Abstract: The discovery of sunken gold conjures up visions of instant riches: Swiss bank accounts and lazy afternoons on faraway beaches, daiquiris in hand. But the quest to salvage the S.S. Central America — which went down in 1857 in a hurricane off South Carolina carrying 425 souls, as well as thousands of coins, bars and nuggets of California gold — has produced a quarter-century of broken dreams and legal nightmares. The bones of the side-wheeler were discovered in 1988, nearly a mile and a half down. The finder hauled up glittering coins and boasted of treasure worth $1 billion. But paralysis ensued as waves of insurers and angry investors filed rival claims. Recovery of the shipwreck languished as courtrooms echoed with charges of fraud. In 2012, the finder became a fugitive. Now, with the legal obstacles cleared, a private company working with a court-appointed receiver has become the first to revisit the shipwreck in two decades. It is, the team was delighted to find, still heavy with treasure. On April 15, the company, Odyssey Marine Exploration, lowered a robot into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean and hauled up five gold bars weighing 66 pounds — worth about $1.2 million as metal and more as artifacts. That step, the company says, opened a new chapter in the saga of the Central America that will include raising the rest of the gold and exploring the deteriorating shipwreck. “We want to show that it can be done right,” Gregory P. Stemm, Odyssey’s chief executive, said in an interview. “It’s a great opportunity.” When it sank, the Central America was steaming toward New York with a cargo meant to strengthen the city’s banks. The 280-foot vessel was carrying so much gold — commercial and personal riches from the California fields estimated at three tons, as well as a rumored secret federal shipment of 15 tons — that its loss contributed to the Panic of 1857, considered the first global financial crisis. From the start, the locus of the recovery drama has been Columbus, Ohio — a landlocked city not known for treasure hunters. It is, however, home to the Battelle Memorial Institute, a private contractor specializing in science and technology. Thirty years ago, Thomas G. Thompson, a plucky Ohio native who was a young engineer at Battelle, began wooing investors with dreams of finding the Central America. Soon, the Columbus America Discovery Group was formed to finance the hunt, including a robot with lights, cameras, arms and claws. The team hit pay dirt in September 1988: Piles of gold coins and ingots lay scattered across the ship’s rotting timbers, and overnight, the investors became millionaires — in theory, at least. Image An Ohio billboard shows Thomas Thompson and Alison Antekeier. Credit Jay LaPrete for The New York Times In all, the team lifted up about two tons of gold. If sold today as pure metal, it would fetch $76 million. But as news of the sensational find went public, the group’s investors were not the only ones paying attention. Claims to the fortune came from an order of Catholic monks, a Texas oil millionaire, and Columbia University, where an oceanographer had provided Mr. Thompson with sonar imagery of what turned out to be the shipwreck. And scores of insurance companies insisted that the treasure was rightfully theirs because of claims paid more than a century earlier. Thus began a legal battle that kept the gold locked away. The disputes crippled Mr. Thompson’s ability to raise new funds, and treasure. It was not until about 2000, when insurers were awarded $5 million in gold, that his hands were untied. He sold much of the remaining treasure that his team had recovered, making a reported $52 million. But his 251 investors got nothing. In 2005, some of them sued. John G. McCoy, a Columbus mogul who had invested $219,000, told Forbes in 2006, “I think he was dishonest from the word go.” Mr. Thompson avoided courtrooms, always speaking through intermediaries. One dispute centered on 500 coins that had seemingly vanished. In a 2012 filing, Mr. Thompson said they had gone into a trust in Belize, and in August of that year — when he failed to show up for a hearing — a federal judge ordered his arrest. It turned out that Mr. Thompson and his assistant, Alison Antekeier, for years had lived in Vero Beach, Fla., in a mansion set on four acres. By the time federal marshals went there to arrest Mr. Thompson, they had fled. The Columbus Dispatch, whose parent company had invested $1 million in the gold hunt, reported that the couple had left behind empty coin boxes, currency wrappers marked $10,000 (used to band $100 bills in stacks of 100), a bank statement listing a balance of more than $1 million, and a book on assuming a new identity. Federal marshals had billboards put up in Ohio and Florida seeking information about Mr. Thompson and Ms. Antekeier. Mr. Thompson’s last known lawyer, Shawn J. Organ, in Columbus, no longer represents the gold hunter. “He’s incommunicado,” said Liberty P. Casey, Mr. Organ’s office manager. “We haven’t seen him or been able to track him down.” Last May, the marshals auctioned off Mr. Thompson’s 180-foot ship, the Arctic Discoverer. Its safe was empty. An important part of the legal drama was resolved that month, when Judge Patrick E. Sheeran of the Court of Common Pleas in Franklin County, Ohio, named as receiver Ira O. Kane, a Columbus lawyer and businessman whose task was to recover as much gold as possible for the benefit of creditors and duped investors. This March, Mr. Kane picked Odyssey — based in Tampa, Fla., and publicly traded — to resume the hunt. The stakes? Mr. Thompson recovered 532 gold bars and some 7,500 gold coins whose total face value, in 1857 dollars, was $1,126,000. Experts hired by Mr. Kane estimated the likely face value of the remaining gold at $760,000, but put the range at $343,000 to $1,373,000. In other words, more than half the treasure could still be sitting at the bottom of the sea, at least in theory. Mark D. Gordon, Odyssey’s president, told investors in March that the remaining treasure, thought to be mostly gold coins, would fetch at least $85 million if sold for its value to collectors. On eBay, $20 coins from the original haul sell for up to $26,500. Not included in the receiver’s estimate was a cargo long rumored to be aboard the wreck: 15 tons of Army bullion. A best-selling book about the discovery, “Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea” by Gary Kinder, published in 1998, called it a secret shipment meant to shore up the faltering Northern industrial economy, and said the Army had recently declassified its existence. In an interview, Mr. Stemm of Odyssey said the reconnaissance dive and retrieval of the five gold bars on April 15, as well as two gold coins, was important for demonstrating that, contrary to rumors that the site had been looted, the deteriorating shipwreck was still tantalizingly rich with treasures. “It’s clear they didn’t do a complete recovery,” Mr. Stemm said of the original team. He added that the dive “confirms that the site has remained untouched” since the last retrievals more than two decades ago. Helping direct the April 15 operation was Bob Evans, the chief scientist and historian of the Recovery Limited Partnership, one of Mr. Thompson’s insolvent companies and the legal owner of the shipwreck. “I’m elated,” Mr. Evans said in an interview. “I’m fulfilling my dream.” On April 23, the new recovery ship, Odyssey Explorer, sailed from Charleston to renew the hunt. As a prelude to recovering the remaining gold, Odyssey is surveying the wreckage and will perform an archaeological excavation of the remaining artifacts. The company also plans to collaborate with a scientist from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to study deep-sea life colonizing the site, and to continue science experiments initiated by Mr. Thompson’s team. Odyssey will absorb the expedition costs if little treasure is recovered. If the take is substantial, the company will get 80 percent until it recoups its costs. After that, Odyssey’s share will drop to 45 percent. Judge Sheeran, like the surviving investors, is eager to see what develops. The new plan, he wrote last year, bodes well for “the rebirth” of the enterprise and a renewed sense of awe as “more treasure, both historical and monetary, makes its way from the depths of the seas.” As for Mr. Thompson, it seems likely that he, too — wherever he is — is giving serious attention to what emerges next from his ship of gold.

Shipwrecks
Gold
Boat Accidents
Atlantic Ocean
Odyssey Marine Exploration
Ira O. Kane


A Clash of Religion and Bioethics Complicates Organ Donation in Israel

Abstract: JERUSALEM — In the Book of Genesis, it is written that when the great flood submerged the land it extinguished “all in whose nostrils was the breath of life.” Across nearly 2,000 years of Talmudic debate, Jewish scholars have returned to that verse in holding that life ends at the moment when breathing stops. One 19th-century code instructed that if a person appeared lifeless, a light feather was to be placed before his nose: “If it does not flutter,” the text advised, “he is certainly dead.” The sages could not have anticipated that their writings would provide the underpinnings for cultural resistance to organ donation from the deceased in 21st-century Israel. But their definition of mortality, which can conflict with modern acceptance of brain death, is cited among several reasons Israel has among the lowest rates of deceased organ donation of any developed country. The resulting five-year waits for a kidney from a cadaver help explain why this tiny nation has played an outsize role in the global organ trade, experts say. Since 2000, one trafficking prosecution after the next has implicated Israelis in some way. Although recent legal changes have made it less enticing for Israelis to seek transplants overseas, they have contributed to longer wait lists at home. That has kept organ brokers in business. “The continued driving force is the lack of deceased donation in Israel and the concept that every rich person worldwide would rather put a stranger at risk than a relative,” said Dr. Jeremy R. Chapman, an Australian nephrologist and past president of the Transplantation Society. Despite its advanced medical infrastructure, Israel trails comparable countries in most measures of organ donation. In 2012, it had 7.4 deceased donors per million population, ranking it in the bottom third of countries surveyed by the Council of Europe. The rate was 18.5 in Britain, 25.8 in the United States and 35.1 in Spain. About 15 percent of Israeli adults are registered as donors, according to the Health Ministry’s National Transplant Center , compared with nearly half in the United States . “If someone is planning on going through a transplant, waiting to get a kidney in the country, there is a greater chance that the Messiah will come,” said Amos Canaf, founder of an Israeli advocacy group for renal patients. Opposition to organ donation from the deceased runs contrary to both government policy and pronouncements of the chief rabbinate. But it has been embraced by a core of ultra-Orthodox rabbis with trickle-down influence. Although many Israelis are secular, even nonreligious Jews grasp for the faith’s instructions at the end of life. “At times of death and mourning, a person remembers his roots,” said Rabbi Shlomo Amar, a former Sephardic chief rabbi who accepts the brain death definition. The collision of ancient theology and modern bioethics reached its apotheosis with the high-profile case of Avi Cohen, an Israeli soccer legend who was declared brain dead after a motorcycle accident in 2010. Informed that Mr. Cohen, 54, was a registered donor, his family initially granted permission to recover his organs. As a matter of practice, hospitals in Israel will not proceed without a family’s consent. But with his breathing maintained by a ventilator, Mr. Cohen appeared lifelike. His devastated wife and children could not drown out the voices of visitors to his bedside who cautioned he might still revive. “We wanted to believe in anything,” recalled Dorit Cohen, Mr. Cohen’s widow. “To take the last step and end his life is something I could not do.” Today, Ms. Cohen regrets her reversal. “Avi would do anything to help people,” she said. “I’m sure he would not have agreed with my decision.” Among the religious obstacles to donation is a belief by some traditional Jews in physical resurrection, and a conviction that the body should not be desecrated before burial. Physicians and ethicists also remark on a cultural resistance to asking relatives to donate. For years, state policy essentially supported transplant tourism by allowing insurers to reimburse patients who went overseas. Video Amos Canaf, founder of an advocacy group for renal patients, argues that the kidney shortage leaves patients with few choices other than to go overseas for a transplant. “The general mentality of the public, and of many rabbis, is that they don’t see why people should risk their lives if there is somebody in Ecuador willing to sell them a kidney,” said Dr. Yechiel Michael Barilan, an Israeli physician whose book, “Jewish Bioethics,” was published this year. “There is no sensibility about the social dynamics of exploitation.” While Jewish law commands that almost anything can be done to save a life, it holds that one life is not to be sacrificed to save another. Because the risk of death from kidney retrieval surgery is low, organ donation by the living is encouraged. But some Jews consider it murder to retrieve organs before the heart and lungs stop functioning. Rabbi Yeshayahu Heber, who received a kidney from a friend seven years ago, became so convinced of the blessedness of altruistic living donation that he started an organization to encourage it among observant Jews. His group arranged 60 living-donor transplants last year. And yet, Rabbi Heber said he accepted the teachings of revered rabbis that it is against Jewish law to recover organs from the brain dead. The concept of brain death, defined as the irreversible cessation of brain function, started gaining worldwide acceptance in the late 1960s. It is considered the optimal circumstance for deceased donation because the patient’s organs continue to be oxygenated through mechanical ventilation, maintaining their viability. In 1986, Israel’s chief rabbinate — two Orthodox rabbis elected by peers — endorsed it as a criterion for determining death. But fearful that doctors would rush brain death determinations in order to retrieve organs, they insisted that brain death panels include a rabbinical representative. Resentful of the intrusion, the medical establishment refused. That prompted some rabbis to continue to discourage donation and to avoid taking public stands against organ trafficking. “As a matter of public policy, we really didn’t hear any voices,” said Rabbi Avraham Steinberg, a neurologist and leading medical ethicist. In 2006, responding to reports that Israelis were buying kidneys in places like China and the Philippines, the Health Ministry prohibited insurers from paying for illicit overseas transplants. In 2008, the Israeli Parliament passed legislation that criminalized organ brokering and established panels to scrutinize whether donors are being compensated. It also provided for government payments for a donor’s medical care and related monetary losses. And in a unique move, the law authorized the Health Ministry to give preferential status on transplant wait lists to registered donors and those who have consented to a relative’s donation. “It is deviating from pure altruism to reciprocal altruism,” said Dr. Jacob Lavee, a heart transplant surgeon who helped shape the law. A second law established protocol for determining brain death and gave rabbis seats on a committee that monitors doctors who make those decisions. The signs of improvement include a record 261 kidney transplants last year, driven by a significant increase in living donor transplants. There has been a corresponding drop in the number of patients who are known to have gone abroad, to 43 in 2013 from a peak of 155 in 2006. Donor registrations have increased by two-thirds. But other results have disappointed. The kidney transplant wait list of about 750 people is 40 percent longer than when the laws passed. And the rate at which families refuse to donate a relative’s organs — about 50 percent — is virtually unchanged. The refusals meant 260 lost donation opportunities over the last four years. Some Israelis favor the more radical solution of legalizing compensation for donors. Government regulation could reduce the risk of exploitation, they say, by controlling pricing and ensuring quality care. Video Rabbi Yeshayahu Heber set up an organization to promote living donation amongst Orthodox Jews but believes that organ donation by the brain dead violates Jewish law. “I don’t really see the strong argument for letting someone die when you have the option of saving someone’s life,” Rabbi Steinberg said. Although opposed by global health organizations, legalizing commercial donation is not the fringe position it once was. In July, the American Society of Transplantation and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons called for pilot projects to test incentives for donation, potentially including cash payments. Such changes would require amending a 30-year-old federal law . Dr. Daniel R. Salomon, past president of the American Society of Transplantation, said it was no longer enough to rely on altruism. “We have been passive over the last several years during a time at which it’s clear that our waiting list is continuing to go up much faster than we can get organs,” he said. Researchers in the United States and Canada have estimated that payments of $15,000 for a kidney could produce a meaningful increase in available organs. Dr. Sally L. Satel of the American Enterprise Institute, a proponent of compensating donors, said she thought the price might need to be $50,000. “The lower you go, you get closer to exploitation,” said Dr. Satel, a psychiatrist who received a kidney from a friend in 2006. Others favor experimenting with alternative compensation, including long-term health coverage, tax credits and tuition vouchers. Video Rabbi Shlomo Amar believes that recovering an organ from someone who is brain dead does not violate Jewish law. Those who support compensation argue that there may be no other way to destroy the black market. They also question whether buying a kidney is different than paying for gestational surrogacy or for eggs, sperm and plasma. Opponents fear commercialization would undercut altruistic organ donation. And transplantation experts like Dr. Luc Noël of the World Health Organization, insist it will reinforce class divisions. “If you have a line of naked individuals,” Dr. Noël said, “devoid of external signs of societal position, and you can recognize the rich from the poor simply by counting their kidneys, is that the kind of world you want to live in?”

Israel
Organ donation
Transplants
Medicine and Health
Kidney
Judaism
Rabbi
Brain
Black market
WHO


Pennsylvania: Wife Who Helped Abortion Doctor Gets Prison Term

Abstract: The wife of a Philadelphia abortion doctor who helped him perform very late-term abortions, saying Wednesday that she was sorry for trusting him, was sentenced to 7 to 23 months in prison. The woman, Pearl Gosnell, pleaded guilty to racketeering and to performing an illegal abortion. She said her husband, Kermit, had told her the abortions were within the legal limit. He was convicted this month of three counts of first-degree murder in the case.

Abortion
Criminal Sentence
Kermit Gosnell
Philadelphia
Murders
Pearl Gosnell


I.M.F. and Pakistan Agree to a $5.3 Billion Bailout

Abstract: LONDON — The International Monetary Fund and Pakistan reached a provisional agreement on Thursday on a $5.3 billion bailout package that aims to bolster Pakistan’s flagging economy and its perilously low foreign exchange reserves. The rescue package is expected to soothe Western fears about the state of Pakistan’s economy, which has slumped in recent years amid unrelenting Taliban violence and deeply rooted corruption that have shaken investor confidence. The I.M.F. package also would provide a tangible lift for the newly elected prime minister , Nawaz Sharif, who has already become bogged down by a seemingly intractable energy crisis. The I.M.F. has an unhappy history with Pakistanis, some of whom are likely to see the package negatively. The last government failed to meet the terms of the previous I.M.F. package six years ago, and the country is still struggling to repay billions of dollars of that debt. Moreover, Mr. Sharif’s government is ideologically hostile to international financial assistance, and he campaigned before the election on a platform of economic autonomy. But, analysts say, his administration had little choice but to accept Thursday’s deal. The $5.3 billion package will be used in part to service the existing I.M.F. debt, but also to create confidence in the economy and alleviate the severe energy crisis, which has included crippling electricity cuts across the country, even in the capital, Islamabad, in recent months. “It was a necessary thing,” said Sakib Sherani, an economist who advised the last government. “Everyone’s been on tenterhooks about the balance of payments crisis, and a possible run on the rupee. At least this will provide some stability so the new government can work on implementing its own agenda.” At a news conference on Thursday evening, Jeffrey Franks, head of the visiting I.M.F. mission to Pakistan, said the package included provisions for a reduction in Pakistan’s budget deficit — which almost hit 9 percent of gross domestic product last year — and a comprehensive energy sector overhaul. Power shortages have been sapping Pakistan’s economic growth potential, Mr. Franks said, and the bailout aims to put the energy sector on more stable footing. The $5.3 billion loan is subject to approval by the I.M.F. executive board, which is scheduled to meet in early September. If the loan proceeds, it will carry an interest rate of about 3 percent and be disbursed over three years, Mr. Franks said. Ishaq Dar, the Pakistani finance minister, denied that his government had reneged on its election pledges of economic independence. “We are entering into a new program for the good of the country,” he said. “A better tomorrow dawns only when requisite pains are borne today.” The I.M.F. loan is unlikely to be used to directly finance the oil imports needed to get Pakistan’s power stations working at normal capacity, Mr. Sherani said. But it may provide a jolt of confidence among other international institutions that, in turn, would help finance oil imports. Mr. Franks acknowledged Pakistan’s failure to repay previous loans from his institution. But Mr. Sharif’s government will not be punished for the sins of its predecessors, he added. “We’re not going to turn a country down because previous governments did not do what they had promised to do,” he said.


Live on ESPN, It’s the U.S. World Cup Roster

Abstract: Bristol, Conn. The call came after 2 in the morning, but DaMarcus Beasley was not asleep. His roommate, Oguchi Onyewu, gave him hugs and handshakes, and that was how Beasley knew he was going to the World Cup again. Most of the American players did not sleep well Tuesday night, even the ones who pretty much knew they would be flying to South Africa on Sunday. Cut-down day is never easy, whether in daylight or the middle of the night. This cut down was for the World Cup, the biggest sporting event on the planet, which only comes around every four years. Even Americans are getting the picture. “We’re going live on ESPN ,” said Sunil Gulati , the president the United States Soccer Federation, delighted that the network was displaying the 23-player squad at 1:20 p.m. on Wednesday, the first time an American World Cup squad has been introduced on national television. As the American players ambled onto the main quadrangle of ESPN University, imagination said some of them were floating an inch or three off the ground. Landon Donovan had known he was going to South Africa. Tim Howard had known. Beasley did not know. He was a prominent player in the run to the quarterfinals in 2002, a little less of a force in 2006, and was now, at best, a comeback project. In recent weeks he showed he could still run the entire field and take a hit from bigger men and bounce back up. But in the midnight hours, he did not know he had made the team until he was called to a meeting with Coach Bob Bradley. Then it was time to look around, like some after-hours version of a twisted reality show, to see who had survived. There was Herculez Gomez , out of Las Vegas, the leading scorer in the Mexican league, who played in only his third national team match Tuesday night, a loss to the Czech Republic. And there was Edson Buddle , out of New Rochelle, N.Y., a leading scorer in Major League Soccer , who played in his second senior national team match. The decision to keep Gomez and Buddle suggests the United States opted for more firepower, which it may need since its back line is suspect. For Gomez and Buddle to make the squad meant that people at the top had done some creative thinking. “Players who are on a good roll come in handy,” Bradley said. But his decisions also meant he had to drop familiar players like Brian Ching and Eddie Johnson, who have contributed to the national team in the past. “It’s hard,” Beasley said. “They are your friends, great guys. I feel bad for them. I wished them luck.” The survivors will visit the White House on Thursday, play a final tune-up against Turkey on Saturday afternoon in Philadelphia and then fly to South Africa on Sunday. Their first match will be against England on June 12. There has never been a televised introduction of the national team since the United States began a string of five straight appearances from 1990 through 2006. • Bit by bit, the U.S. is learning about the World Cup. In 2006, the telltale sign was yuppies in suits in Midtown Manhattan pubs screaming at the television set at the strategy of Bruce Arena, the American coach. Suddenly, Americans were experts, which helps to explain why ESPN and ABC are carrying every game of the World Cup, with Spanish and other languages as alternatives. “We see this as a unique event,” Scott Guglielmino , the vice president for programming at ESPN, said Tuesday, adding: “We can’t set the bar high enough. We are very bullish on the sport.” Soccer is not about to supplant American football, said Jed Drake , the senior vice president and executive producer. But he called the World Cup “a one-off event.” Cutting the squad is a national preoccupation elsewhere. “It’s horrible,” said Jürgen Klinsmann, the great German player who coached his homeland to third place in 2006 and is now an ESPN analyst. “You are telling a player that he’s not going to the greatest sports event in the world.” Klinsmann, who played in three World Cups for West Germany and Germany, said: “It’s not a long discussion. The player can’t say anything. The coach can’t say anything because if he does the player can say: ‘Well, this guy has this issue. This guy has that issue.’ It’s a quick talk, but not a pleasant one.” • Alexi Lalas , who is an analyst for ESPN, remembers 1994, when the mystical multilingual United States coach, Bora Milutinovic, had to cut the squad. Lalas, whose spot was secure, knew his roommate, Jeff Agoos, was right on the edge. Lalas decided to avoid the sad moment. “I got in my car and went for a drive,” Lalas recalled. When Agoos got the word, he tossed his uniform in the fireplace in the team lodge. “Shirts, shorts, socks,” Agoos later said. “Anything with a U.S. Soccer emblem on it, I burned them to a crisp.” There were no reports of burned uniforms on this fateful day, when the cut down of an American World Cup squad became a national spectacle.

World Cup (Soccer)
United States Soccer Federation
Soccer
ESPN
Bradley Bob
Beasley Damarcus
Onyewu Oguchi
Gulati Sunil


Terence Flynn Quits Labor Board Over Leak

Abstract: The National Labor Relations Board announced on Sunday that one of its five members, Terence F. Flynn, had resigned after the board’s inspector general found that Mr. Flynn, a Republican, leaked documents to G.O.P. allies. The board’s chairman, Mark Gaston Pearce, said Mr. Flynn, who joined the board in January, had submitted his resignation on Saturday evening by fax and e-mail. The N.L.R.B.’s inspector general, David P. Berry, issued a report in early May that found that Mr. Flynn had committed serious ethical violations by leaking drafts of board decisions and details of internal deliberations to Peter Schaumber, a former labor board chairman who had been co-chairman of Mitt Romney’s labor advisory committee. Mr. Berry’s report said, “Mr. Flynn’s public statement that he has engaged in no wrongdoing strikes at the very heart of the board and all but eviscerates the due process procedures that the board has established.” The labor board oversees union elections, organizing drives and labor-management relations at private sector employers. Mr. Flynn has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. After Mr. Berry issued his report, Mr. Flynn’s lawyer, Barry Coburn, acknowledged, according to The Associated Press, that Mr. Flynn’s actions did not reflect “perfect judgment in every instance.” But Mr. Coburn said Mr. Flynn’s actions had not been illegal and that there was “not a shred of evidence that they were undertaken for any improper purpose.” In his May report and one in March, Mr. Berry said the ethical violations occurred in 2010 and 2011, when Mr. Flynn was a staff lawyer for a Republican member of the board, Brian Hayes. Mr. Flynn joined the board in 2003 as chief counsel to Mr. Schaumber, then an N.L.R.B. member. Mr. Berry found that Mr. Flynn had leaked information to Mr. Schaumber and to Peter Kirsanow, a former Republican N.L.R.B. member who was serving as outside counsel for the National Association of Manufacturers. The Romney campaign said Mr. Schaumber had stepped down from his advisory position in December, which was after Mr. Berry’s investigation began. The inspector general’s reports did not accuse Mr. Schaumber of using the material he had received from Mr. Flynn to help the Romney campaign. In one instance, Mr. Berry found that Mr. Flynn had secretly helped Mr. Schaumber write an opinion column that denounced an N.L.R.B. decision that favored labor unions. Mr. Berry called that action by Mr. Flynn “an abuse of his discretion.” The Flynn case has been referred to the Justice Department for investigation and to the Federal Office of Special Counsel, which is looking into possible violations of the Hatch Act, which bars federal employees from participating in partisan political activity. Mr. Pearce said that Mr. Flynn had asked that his resignation be effective on July 24, but would immediately recuse himself from all agency business. Mr. Flynn, who was a recess appointee with two Democratic board members, also asked that President Obama withdraw his formal nomination to the board, which was awaiting Senate confirmation. The inspector general also issued a report in March that revealed examples of Mr. Flynn sharing confidential board information. The inspector general said he had expanded his investigation after Mr. Flynn publicly denied any wrongdoing. In response to Mr. Berry’s findings, Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, who is chairman of the Senate Labor Committee, and Representative George Miller of California, who is the ranking Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee, called on Mr. Flynn to resign. Senator Harkin said Mr. Flynn’s actions “potentially violated the due process rights of the parties, undermined the enforcement of laws enacted by Congress, and demonstrated a fundamental lack of integrity and the professional judgment required of a public servant.”

Flynn Terence F
National Labor Relations Board
Suspensions Dismissals and Resignations
Republican Party


Governor’s Office Suspends 40 Tax Preparers for Not Filing Own Returns

Abstract: The governor’s office announced on Wednesday that it had suspended 40 tax preparers who, despite their profession, did not file personal income taxes. The suspensions are part of a larger effort to regulate the tax preparation industry in the state, which serves over 7 million people and has been tarnished by examples of incompetence and fraud. The 40 people named in this round of suspensions were accused of a more mundane transgression: not filing their state income taxes in 2011 and 2012. “It’s this simple: If you don’t file your own taxes, you shouldn’t be allowed to file returns for other New Yorkers,” Thomas H. Mattox, the state tax commissioner, said in a statement. Tax preparers are overseen by the state, but work with private organizations to help individuals and small businesses assemble their annual tax filings. Some of the 40 preparers said on Wednesday that they had not been told of the suspensions, though a spokesman for the state’s Department of Taxation and Finance said all had been notified by certified mail and email. One of the tax preparers, Louis Chicca, who works in Astoria, Queens, said he had always filed his taxes. “Until I get something in writing, I don’t know what they’re talking about,” he said. Leval Moore, a tax preparer who works for ARMS Corporation in White Plains, said that he likely did not send tax returns in 2011 and 2012 because his income was too low to require filing. “I don’t think it’s fair that if you have no income that you should file taxes,” Mr. Moore said. “That’s not a requirement.” Cary B. Ziter, a tax department spokesman, said he could not immediately say whether Mr. Moore had been required to file. But Mr. Ziter said Mr. Moore had not appealed his suspension. Under regulations that went into effect this year, the state’s roughly 40,000 tax preparers have to pass a competency examination, do continuing education and have at least a high school, or high school equivalency, diploma. They do not have to be accountants, but must be “tax compliant,” Mr. Ziter said. Fifty-six tax preparers, including the 40, have received suspension letters, and 16 are challenging them, the state said. Calvin Preston, who works at an H&R Block in Manhattan and is one of the 40, also said he did not know he had been suspended. When asked if he filed income tax returns in 2011 and 2012, he said, “No, I didn’t, but I’m working on it now.”

Tax Evasion
New York
Income tax
Tax
Regulation and Deregulation


3 North Korean Sailors Defect to South After Ship Strays

Abstract: SEOUL, South Korea — Three North Korean sailors have defected to South Korea after their ship strayed into the South’s waters over the weekend, the government here said Tuesday. A North Korean ship with five sailors on board was found adrift on Saturday in waters near Ulleungdo, an island off the northeast coast of South Korea, the Unification Ministry in the South said in a news release. Their ship was sinking when the South Korean Coast Guard came to their rescue, the statement said. Three of the five sailors told South Korean officials that they wanted to defect, the ministry said, while the others expressed wishes to return home. The South told the North on Monday that it would send the two home on Tuesday through Panmunjom, a village along the border that serves as a contact point between the two nations. “The North demanded that all five be returned,” the ministry said. “But our Red Cross told the North that from a humanitarian standpoint we will respect the wishes of the three who have clearly expressed their intention to defect. We again told the North that we would repatriate the other two.” North Korean fishing boats occasionally drift into the South’s waters after developing engine trouble, and South Korea returns the sailors home unless they want to defect. When such sailors have chosen to stay in the South, the North has accused South Korea of holding them against their will. South Korea has also accused the North of holding hundreds of fishermen from the South against their will after their ships strayed into or were taken in North Korean waters in the decades after the 1950-53 Korean War. More than 28,000 North Koreans have fled to the South since famine hit their isolated and impoverished country in the late 1990s. Nearly all of them traveled through China. But some have defected through the heavily guarded land or maritime borders dividing the Koreas. In June last year, a North Korean fisherman defected to the South after his boat was found adrift in South Korean waters. Last month, a North Korean soldier defected after walking across the Demilitarized Zone, the border that is guarded by checkpoints, minefields and tall fences with barbed wire.

North Korea
South Korea
Korean War
Red Cross
Panmunjom
Defection


Green Bay Coach Mike McCarthy Has Fans in Pittsburgh

Abstract: PITTSBURGH — Down at the bottom of the hill, not far from the river and near where a steel mill buzzed for generations, the place has not changed much in the years since it was called Joe McCarthy’s. There is still a long bar on the left, a pool table in the middle and Steelers posters decorating the walls. Near the pull-lever cigarette machine is an autographed photo of Green Bay Packers Coach Mike McCarthy, who was raised a couple of miles away at the upper end of Greenfield Avenue and as a teenager helped out at the family bar. Scattered around the place on Monday night were people who, despite being born and raised in this blue-collar neighborhood with views of downtown, will be rooting for Green Bay to beat their Steelers in the Super Bowl on Feb. 6. “We’ve been waiting for this,” said Bernie O’Connor, sipping a beer and eating 50-cent chicken wings, a Monday night special. “We can’t lose.” O’Connor is a cousin of Mike McCarthy’s; their mothers are sisters. “If you’re related, you root for the Packers,” he said. On his bar stool rested a leather Steelers jacket. The can’t-lose approach is a popular one in the Greenfield neighborhood, a wedge of Pittsburgh that rises from the Monongahela River and widens along a two-mile uphill stretch of Greenfield Avenue. The area is squeezed between other neighborhoods like Hazelwood and Squirrel Hill. This is fervent Steelers territory. It is fervent McCarthy territory, too. In Greenfield, it is far more difficult to find someone who does not know McCarthy than someone who does. “If the Steelers lose, it’ll at least feel good that he won,” Tim Zielmanski said. He wore a Steelers cap and told stories of McCarthy, a former classmate and basketball teammate. McCarthy is more than a hero to Greenfield’s roughly 8,000 residents. He is a friend, a neighbor, a cousin, a brother or a son. Joe and Ellen McCarthy, parents of Mike and his four siblings, were raised in the neighborhood. They still live on the upper end of Greenfield Avenue. Like a smattering of houses in the neighborhood, theirs displays their counterallegiance openly — in this case, with a green-and-gold scarf that reads “Go Pack Go” wrapped around a Christmas wreath on the front door. Mike McCarthy, 47, was born and raised here, a devoted Steelers fan from the Steel Curtain days in the 1970s. His father was a Pittsburgh police officer, then a firefighter. For a time, the family owned a bar and grill that provided postshift fuel for workers at a couple of nearby mills. The mills are gone, and a freeway hums high above the little valley, but the old family bar that sits inside a nondescript little house survives. It is now called Chasers in the Run. Everyone there, it seemed, had a Mike McCarthy connection. Duke Lamanti played baseball with him as a boy. (“Family,” Lamanti said in describing McCarthy. “He’d take his shirt off his back for you. Well mannered, just the way his parents taught him to be.”) A woman handed over a cellphone and said her brother was on the other end; it was Jim Gregg, who coached McCarthy and countless other boys in grade school over the past 40 years. (“One thing about Mike — he never forgot where he came from,” Gregg said.) A man asked if one of McCarthy’s high school football coaches at Bishop Boyle should be summoned. Minutes later, Tim Kelly walked through the door wearing a Property of Green Bay Packers sweatshirt. (“I think I’m going to have to root for the Packers,” he said. “But it’s a win-win.”) When McCarthy was not playing sports — not often — he helped at the bar, everything from pouring beers to cleaning the bathroom. Through eighth grade, he attended St. Rosalia Catholic school, built in 1912, where he led Gregg’s basketball team to a 39-1 record one season. A bit farther up the road is Magee Field, with basketball courts and a swimming pool where McCarthy and his friends whiled away their summers. Visible from the street, large painted letters across the front of the bleachers proclaim Greenfield “a fine residential community.” The neighborhood is tightly lined with houses built in the first half of the last century along a tangle of impossibly steep streets. The houses are filled with people who have ties that go back several generations. The web is bisected by Greenfield Avenue, a curvy two-lane road lined with everything from auto shops to well-manicured brick homes. Bill Smith has lived in Greenfield since third grade, and his ties to the neighborhood date to his grandparents. Now in his 50s, he is the executive director of the Greenfield Organization , a community center on Greenfield Avenue that does everything from sponsoring food drives to providing tax assistance. The organization also publishes a monthly neighborhood newspaper. (How small is the world in Greenfield? Smith’s 8-year-old daughter is coached in basketball by one of McCarthy’s three sisters and her husband.) When McCarthy was growing up in the 1970s, Smith said: “It was all big families. There were tons of kids. I had five brothers and sisters. Mike comes from a big family. You had families with 8 or 10 kids in them. It was a different time.” Then the last part of the J & L steel mill closed, part of an industrial downturn that temporarily crippled the Pittsburgh area. But Greenfield suffered less than most areas. Families served as anchors in the stormy economy. Greenfield’s location, just a few minutes southeast of downtown and near the city’s university and hospital district, made it appealing. Housing prices remain cheaper than in neighboring Squirrel Hill, seen as more of a bastion of white-collar workers. “A lot of places in America, especially in the Rust Belt, full neighborhoods packed up and disappeared,” said Doug Shields, a Pittsburgh councilman whose district includes Greenfield. “Greenfield didn’t.” Like any urban area, though, it could always use more help. And McCarthy is revered, in part, for doing his share. He left in the 1980s to play tight end in college, ultimately at Baker University in Kansas. His first coaching break came when Pittsburgh’s Paul Hackett let him be a volunteer assistant in 1989. To make ends meet, McCarthy worked as a toll collector on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. But he followed Hackett to the Kansas City Chiefs in 1993, when Hackett became Marty Schottenheimer’s offensive coordinator. McCarthy built his résumé with stops in Green Bay, New Orleans and San Francisco before the Packers hired him as the coach in 2006. McCarthy donates $100,000 a year to his old neighborhood. Some goes to the Greenfield Organization. Some goes to the Greenfield Baseball Association. Most of it goes for tuition assistance to St. Rosalia , which has 175 students from preschool through eighth grade. “It has been a blessing — a complete blessing,” said Sarah Tonski, the principal. In the school’s entry is a framed 2007 letter from McCarthy, on Packers letterhead, thanking the students for naming him a “distinguished graduate.” Next to that is a photograph of McCarthy on the Green Bay sideline. He signed it and wrote, “St. Rosalia — No place like home.” But signs of the neighborhood’s conflicting emotions are everywhere. McCarthy’s autographed photo hangs outside Tonski’s office, near a placard that reads “Here We Go, Steelers.” Tonski proclaimed next Tuesday as Gold Day, a time for students to shed their school uniforms and wear their true colors — blue and gold for St. Rosalia, black and gold for the Steelers or green and gold for the Packers. On the windows of the sixth-grade class, in large block letters on construction paper, students had spelled out “Go Steelers” and “Go Packers.” The people at the old bar are comfortable with their rooting ambivalence. To them, the potential sting of a Steelers loss to Green Bay is mitigated by the thrill of a neighborhood boy hoisting the Super Bowl trophy. “This way,” said O’Connor, McCarthy’s cousin, “we’re assured a win.”

McCarthy Joe
Green Bay Packers
Pittsburgh (Pa)
Super Bowl
Pittsburgh Steelers
Football
Coaches and Managers


What About Joe?

Abstract: JOE THE PLUMBER spent Election Day running vent lines for a new McDonald’s going up in Coney Island, chomping a breakfast of baby carrots as he hauled 10-foot lengths of four-inch No-Hub pipe from his van to the construction site around the corner. A few miles away, Joe the Plumber spent Election Day inspecting the boiler at a French-Caribbean Seventh-day Adventist church and installing an under-sink water heater for a construction company in Canarsie, then responding to a no-heat call at a home and unclogging a sewer stoppage at a McDonald’s in Queens. They are hardly famous, these plumbers named Joe, first cousins who have known since grade school that they would follow their fathers into the Brooklyn-based family business, J. Caiazzo Plumbing and Heating, which their grandfather — Joe, naturally — started in 1951. They do not earn anything close to $250,000 a year: Big Joe, who is 25 and handles construction, makes $17.50 an hour; Little Joe, 24, who does “jobbing” — last-minute calls like boiler inspections, new water heaters, no heat and sewer stoppages — $18. Neither lasted very long in community college; both learned the trade they love riding the truck, from the time they were big enough to hold a flashlight over Dad’s shoulders to the high school summers they spent as apprentices. Now, though it will be years before they invest up to $10,000 in the licensure exam, they are the teachers, training younger brothers, cousins and other green Caiazzo recruits. “I go home with cleaner pants now,” said Big Joe, who was wearing a burgundy company T-shirt over jeans that, while freshly laundered, had dirt stains deep in the denim. “I am a lucky plumber. They know I work hard, but at the same time, I know they’re not going to fire me.” Little Joe has the dirtier job; he wears sneakers and carries his boots, so as not to muck up people’s carpets. He is not worried about the economy because “plumbing’s a business that people are always going to need.” “Once the winter hits, pipes start freezing and people need their heat a lot more,” he said. “The business can go under, but you can always go out and get a job and say, ‘I know this.’ ” Senator John McCain may have lost the presidential election, but he succeeded in adding “Joe the Plumber” to the American lexicon, making a household name of Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, the Ohio journeyman whose question about taxes led Barack Obama to say he wanted to “spread the wealth around.” Mr. Wurzelbacher apparently has a book deal in the works and has hired the management firm that handled country, rock and pop musicians including Grand Funk Railroad, Leon Redbone and the Gatlin Brothers. At cafepress.com , you can buy a Joe the Plumber trucker hat ($11.99), baseball jersey ($29.99) or baby bib ($7.99). In the waning days of the campaign, Republican rallies were wallpapered with “I Am Joe the Plumber” signs, Spartacus-like. And on Halloween, 12-year-old Finlay McCracken, whose father, Todd, is president of the National Small Business Association, popped a pillow under a T-shirt that read “Joe’s plumbing,” put a plunger through his belt loop and collected candy in an old plastic bucket. “What’s better than a plumber?” Mr. McCracken, of Arlington, Va., said when asked why he thought the character had so captivated the public imagination. “A plumber is someone who, yes, has a great deal of skill to do the job, but it doesn’t require a Ph.D. It’s something that even an American who doesn’t go to college can aspire to and be a part of the American dream, but not part of the elite. “If it had been Joe the Business Consultant — because he’s a small-business owner, too — that wouldn’t have worked out so well.” While Mr. Wurzelbacher’s question concerned Mr. Obama’s plan to raise taxes on people earning $250,000 a year, the median wage of the nation’s 436,000 plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters in 2007 was $44,090, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Mr. Wurzelbacher was talking about buying the business where he worked, and, indeed, 12 percent of all plumbers are self-employed. Broadly speaking, about three-quarters of small-business owners report business income as personal income; of these 11 million owners, about 4 or 5 percent make more than $250,000 a year, Mr. McCracken said. According to a 2005 survey by the Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors Association — whose president, of course, is a plumber named Joe (Schmitt, of Englewood, Ohio) — about a quarter of its 4,000 members have less than $500,000 in annual revenue, and 29 percent have more than $2.5 million. J. Caiazzo has $3 million in annual revenue and 29 employees (six of them Caiazzos). It has a 4,000-square-foot warehouse on a semi-industrial four-lane stretch in central Brooklyn. It has 12 trucks — vans, really — and its work is roughly 30 percent new construction (McDonald’s and Washington Mutual are among the major corporate clients), 35 percent rehabbing (including Matt Damon’s downtown loft), 25 percent “jobbing” and 10 percent installing fire sprinklers. Lately, the company has been busy updating McDonald’s franchises — for up to $15,000 each — to accommodate the fancy French coffee drinks the chain has added to its menu. “I’m very active in the paperwork industry part of it,” said the company president, 57-year-old Anthony Caiazzo — the oldest son of the Original Joe and the father of Big Joe. “I had two fights with inspectors yesterday — I’m going to win them both. I’m on a subcommittee to the New York City buildings department. I’m the blue-collar guy who comes up and sits with all the architects and engineers and says, ‘Guys, you’re thick, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’ I’m probably one of the few up there who can still clean out a sewer.” He added: “Yeah, I’m successful, but I’m not a businessman. I’m more like, ‘Let’s go out and make money today.’ ” Wages at Caiazzo, a nonunion shop, start at $8 an hour for, as Anthony Caiazzo put it, “a guy who knows nothing” and top out about $52,000 a year (he declined to discuss his own salary and that of his brothers; the three are the co-owners). Twelve of the 29 workers are in their 20s, six in their 50s; 16 have been with Caiazzo more than five years, four of them more than 20. “Most of these guys start out from scratch, they start out on the truck,” Anthony Caiazzo said. “Education I don’t ask about. Driver’s license is what I insist on.” Insurance — health, auto, liability, worker’s compensation — is the company’s biggest expense after payroll and materials: about $400,000 a year, double what it was in 2000. The company offers health benefits, splitting the premiums with employees, but many of the workers do not participate in the plan because, Mr. Caiazzo said, “the young guys don’t want benefits; the young guys want the money.” Before Joe the Plumber, the big jokes about plumbers were that they kept you waiting longer, and charged more, than doctors. The waiting, Little Joe explained this way: “I work on old houses, so you touch old pipes, they start leaking.” Of the clients, he said, “They’re usually nice until we give them the bill.” Back at the office, Uncle Anthony gets the complaints. Why did it cost $120 to install a nickel washer? “I say, ‘Well, bring your sink down to me, I’ll charge you $25,’ ” he explained. “Going from one spot to the next spot is time, and someone’s got to pay for it.” And those fancy $2,500 cameras that see through walls, so you don’t have to tear up the whole thing to find the problem spot? “It costs money to buy ’em,” he said. “It’s got to cost money to use ’em.” Big Joe and his girlfriend, a social worker, live with his parents and his four siblings in the Long Island home where he grew up. He and Anthony often cook dinner together in the kitchen they recently renovated, and they’re planning to turn the basement into a suite for the young couple. When gasoline prices were high this summer, Big Joe parked his pickup truck and counted on friends for rides; now, given the economy, he feels pretty lucky to be getting plenty of overtime and to have enough money for a recent weekend in Pittsburgh to visit old friends. He went to Nassau Community College for a year and a half to please his mother, a nurse, but really never considered any other job. “Plumbing is like a puzzle, and I have to figure it out,” he explained. “Mentally that’s tougher than doing the work.” Standing among the metal beams and plywood that would someday be a McDonald’s, he pointed to a spot on the floor, “This is a mop sink.” Then, to an identical-looking spot, “This is going to be a hand sink right here.” Of a square between metal bars, “This is the bathroom area.” Big Joe does not miss the two years he spent overhauling the Queens Plaza subway station (“It’s hot in the subways in the summer; it’s sweltering”), and he is the right guy to ask if you want to know where the bathrooms are in a bank (“By my fourth or fifth Washington Mutual, it was a piece of cake”). A bad day is driving to New Jersey to pick up a part rather than getting his hands dirty. Or getting his hands too dirty. “The worst part is cleaning out a grease trap,” he said. “There’s nothing fun about that.” Little Joe, too, counts the worst days as those spent in traffic, shuttling from Brooklyn to Staten Island to Long Island and back. “When you’re working, the day goes a lot quicker,” he said. After high school, thinking “maybe I should not start working for the rest of my life already,” Little Joe enrolled in Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn. But September brought “a stretch of real good waves” in the Rockaways, where he still lives with his parents, so he skipped a lot of classes, and then he skipped them all. “I could have studied business,” he said. “But I could learn that off my father or my uncle — they’ve been doing it for years.” Besides the annual boiler inspections required for all public-access buildings in New York — 10 or 15 minutes jotting down model numbers and filling in a page-long safety checklist that requires no tools beyond a flashlight and a pen — Little Joe likes fixing boilers. “You think; you use your brain,” he explained. “You’re going from control to control to see why it’s not firing — a boiler is just one big circuit. I like using my head.” So, about that election: Big Joe watched all three presidential debates , and got up early to vote — for Mr. Obama. “I’m not making $250,000 a year, so I’m not going to be taxed like that,” he noted. Anthony Caiazzo voted for Mr. McCain because, he said, “there’s some things about Obama’s ways that just don’t sit right with me.” And Little Joe, who gets the Joe the Plumber treatment virtually every time he introduces himself on a service call — which is to say four or five times a day — did not vote. “I don’t know enough about it, never really took interest in it,” he shrugged. “I think it’s all just an act.”

Presidential Election of 2008
Small Business
Brooklyn (NYC)
Plumbing