These Angels Like to Work as a Team

Abstract: YOU would think that if a quarter of a million angel investors were pouring $25.6 billion into fledgling companies, as they were last year, finding one to put money in your own venture would not be hard. Think again: wealthy investors, or angels, don’t advertise themselves. “I’ve been an angel since 1980,” said William Payne, an entrepreneur who sold his dielectric-powder making company to DuPont in 1982. “I discovered that if I went to a conference and put ‘Bill Payne, Angel,’ on my badge, I’d leave the conference with 10 business plans, and I’m supposed to be retired.” That is why Mr. Payne belongs to the Vegas Valley Angels, a group in Las Vegas of about 50 entrepreneurs and businesspeople who have invested a total of $8 million in 12 seed and start-up companies since 2003. There are 265 of these seraphic choirs in the United States and Canada, with a total of about 6,000 members. Unlike solo angels, groups want to be found so they can stimulate a flow of deals to invest in. They operate Web sites where they list the companies they have invested in as well as the kinds of deals they want. They also have an online application process. CommonAngels in Boston even posts short biographies of its members. The Angel Capital Association lists groups in all the states, at angelcapitalassociation.org . Angels invest in 1 to 2 percent of the opportunities they review, Mr. Payne said. Groups can apportion the labor of screening applications, inviting the authors of promising ventures to make presentations, checking out the entrepreneur’s claims through due diligence and negotiating investment terms. The approach is somewhat similar to the venture capitalist approach, but angels invest at the start-up stage, while venture capitalists get in later. The average deal is $240,000 versus $7 million or more for venture capitalists. Mary Del Brady, the founder of Redpath Integrated Pathology in Pittsburgh, said that entrepreneurs should look for early financing from a group, because vetting deals “helps you formulate a better plan.” “It makes you move from intuition to validation,” she added. Her biotech company raised $120,000 in 2004 from BlueTree Allied Angels in Pittsburgh, and is now big enough to attract venture-capital money. As Eric David Greenspan, another entrepreneur, discovered, “Groups do nothing but provide you with support.” Mr. Greenspan came up with the concept for Make It Work, a company in Santa Barbara, Calif., that dispatches computer technicians in Mini Coopers to solve problems for residential customers. He raised $1.5 million in 2005 from Tech Coast Angels, a Southern California group. When he needed help negotiating an alliance with Verizon, John Harbison, who leads investments for the group and has written a book on such alliances, coached Mr. Greenspan through the negotiation. Before they part with their money, groups want to see a business plan that specifies the need the company will satisfy, the market for its product or service and how the money will be used. They want to invest in businesses that can grow enough to return 10 times their investment when the company is sold. The Angel Capital Association said, however, that the average return on investment for a deal is 2.6 times the investment over a holding period of three and a half years. Only 7 percent of the deals earn back 10 times or more. But entrepreneurs must also demonstrate passion for the business they are creating (as opposed to being caught up in the coolness of the technology behind it), and their coachability. “We view ourselves as offering mentoring and guidance, and if you don’t want that, you can always get your money someplace else,” Mr. Harbison said. Mark Geisler, a Milwaukee engineer, quickly understood. After a long career as an executive in medical electronics, Mr. Geisler had an idea for a sensor that measures anesthesia gases and does not need calibration, which is expensive in gas sensors. Mr. Geisler presented his concept to the Golden Angels group in Milwaukee last year. “All I had were slides,” he said. “My prototype looked like a science project and was too big to bring in a room.” Two angels who were listening operated an industrial gas company, and they realized that Mr. Geisler’s technology could have wider uses in markets like the automotive business. For the group to invest, however, Mr. Geisler would have to focus on the industrial market. “I thought an anesthesia sensor was really needed,” he said, “but as I drove home, I realized they were right. The industrial market was so much bigger, a thousand times medical.” He worked with the two angels to do a marketing study and produce a new business plan. The group agreed to invest a mid-six-figure amount to pay for a prototype to test auto emissions. An entrepreneur’s passion is demonstrated through superior execution, “and if you execute well, that’s better than a patent,” Mr. Harbison said. That is what impressed the Tech Coast Angels about Mr. Greenspan in Santa Barbara, who realized that at one point he had not heard from 300 of his 2,000 customers in more than a year. His employees called each of those 300 to find out why and discovered that 297 were happy with the service and had not needed more help. The remaining three were unhappy. “Now, for most entrepreneurs a 99 percent customer approval rating would be enough,” Mr. Harbison said. “But not for Eric.” The Mini Coopers fanned out and the three became customers again. “Now, that’s passion.”

Entrepreneurship
Venture Capital
Small Business
Advertising and Marketing


N.B.A. Sees an Opening in Shadow of World Cup

Abstract: Johannesburg Amadou Gallo Fall walked into his new office, looked out over Mandela Square and pointed to the looming statue of Nelson Mandela. What a great source of inspiration. This was Fall’s first day on the job. With little fanfare, he officially opened the N.B.A. ’s first office in Africa as the vice president for development of the league in Africa. Even if there were bells and whistles, no one would have heard them From Johannesburg to Cape Town, South Africa is being consumed by World Cup fever. Even the office complex, situated in the financial district, has been taken over by FIFA, the international governing body of soccer . Soccer is everywhere, which is precisely why Fall and the N.B.A. chose this moment to open shop. “The eyes of the world will be here,” he said. The N.B.A. needs exposure in Africa. Fall may have the toughest sports job in Africa. He certainly faces one of the most daunting challenges: planting the N.B.A. flag here and using the league’s enormous global brand to develop basketball on a continent where the game of choice is soccer. “There’s no question that we’ve got some work to do to get the game where it is really accessible,” he said. “That’s our main mission, not just in South Africa but throughout the continent. The good news is that we’ve been coming here for quite some time. We’re not starting from scratch. We have something to build on. It isn’t completely uncharted waters.” The challenge Fall faces is not creating interest in the game — there are thousands of young people who want to play, and coaches who want to coach. The challenge is facilitating access: building indoor courts, providing coaches and conducting clinics. For the last eight years, Fall has traveled to Africa as part of the N.B.A.’s Basketball Without Borders program. Building a presence requires a hands-on, day-to-day presence that Basketball Without Borders could not provide. “When you come in and do something once a year for five days, it’s difficult to sustain no matter how passionate you are,” he said. “The professional leagues don’t exist, and leagues, as we know them, do not exist. But there is a passion for the game. That’s why we’re here. We’re going to tap into that passion.”  The two-person office consists of Fall, who was born in Senegal, and Kornelia Semmelink, who was born in Cape Town and played basketball at the University of Cape Town. There are 25 players from Africa playing in the N.B.A. Many of them were identified by Fall, who worked for the Dallas Mavericks as director of player personnel and vice president for international affairs. He traveled to Africa as a facilitator with the N.B.A. and FIBA ’s global elite basketball development program. He also worked for the Senegalese Ministry of Youth and Sports and the Senegalese Basketball Federation. His passion for youth development grows out of his own experiences as a young athlete. “I grew up playing soccer, that’s the only thing that was accessible,” he said. “For the longest time there was only one indoor court in the entire country of Senegal. I was taller than everyone in my entourage. If there was basketball, I would have played. “I really think that if I had an opportunity to play at age 9 I would have been much more advanced. I could run fast and jump, but I started late. I was able to get a scholarship just from sheer natural talent. “Maybe in a crazy way that really is why I’m so interested in making sure the young people are exposed to the game sooner.” In the early 1990s basketball was touted as one of the sports that was going to take off in South Africa. The Premier Basketball League was founded in 1993, though it disbanded in 1996. Semmelink recalled seeing Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley and other N.B.A. stars visit Cape Town, and remembers the excitement they generated. Fall wants to duplicate that excitement by bringing a new generation of star players to South Africa. The larger challenge will be working with existing federations and programs to facilitate more far-reaching access for young people. “When people have access, when people can feed whatever hunger they have for an activity in sports or the arts, and when that desire is nurtured and allowed to flourish, the sky is the limit,” he said. Fall has an ambitious five-year vision that includes other offices in Africa, indoor and outdoor courts throughout South Africa, secondary school basketball teams and basketball as part of the curriculum. “This game could bring about some very important social transformations,” he said. “It’s just inevitable that as interest grows and leagues grow, you will get elite talent. People will succeed and they will not forget where they came from.” This is one of the league’s most ambitious initiatives yet. There will be great challenges, though whenever Fall feels discouraged or simply needs inspiration, he can look out his window at the towering statue of Nelson Mandela and draw strength from the knowledge that with determination, purpose and a noble cause, all things are possible.

National Basketball Assn
Johannesburg (South Africa)
Basketball


Seeing Automakers’ Trouble, Madison Avenue Cringes

Abstract: EACH year, the employees of the Detroit office of Mullen, who work on advertising for General Motors’ used cars and credit cards, usually throw a Christmas party to which they can bring spouses or partners. Not this year. With the crisis confronting G.M. and the other American automobile manufacturers, “they toned it down to an employee-only dinner,” said a spokesman for Mullen, David Swaebe, “a very low-key dinner.” And the employees added a charitable component to the event, Mr. Swaebe said, providing holiday gifts for a needy family. At the main office of Mullen, an Interpublic Group of Companies agency based in Wenham, Mass., Mr. Swaebe said that the annual holiday party — typically a lavish affair with a string quartet and dessert bars — is being replaced by a day of community service on Thursday, helping 16 area charities, to be followed by a no-frills reception in the cafeteria. So it goes for the advertising industry as the automotive industry retrenches amid its worst sales in decades. That is wounding Madison Avenue — along with media companies selling commercial time and ad space — because national automakers and local auto dealerships spend almost $20 billion a year on ads, more than any other category of advertiser. This week, as agency executives begin to issue forecasts for ad spending in 2009, several say they intend to revise their estimates downward because of the deteriorating condition of the auto business. “A lot of dealer spending is linked directly to sales,” said Tim Jones, chief executive for North America at ZenithOptimedia, a media agency owned by the Publicis Groupe. “If they’re not selling cars, they cut spending.” For that reason, Mr. Jones said, ZenithOptimedia is reducing significantly its estimate for ad spending next year at local broadcast television stations, which rely on auto commercials for about 25 percent of their annual revenue. The previous forecast was for a 3 percent decline from 2008; it is being lowered to a 12 percent decline. “That’s a major adjustment,” Mr. Jones said. The 2008 estimate for local broadcast is being slashed, too, to a decline of 8 percent from 2007, versus a previous forecast for flat spending. The decision by the auto industry to hit the brakes is a major reason for ZenithOptimedia’s decision to reduce its forecast for all ad spending in North America for 2009. The previous estimate was for a gain of 0.9 percent from 2008; the new forecast, to be issued on Monday, will be for a decline of 5.7 percent. The GroupM unit of WPP, which operates media agencies like MediaCom and Mediaedge:cia, is predicting in a report, also to be released on Monday, that ad spending in the United States next year will decline 3 percent from 2008. “Advertisers are scrutinizing every penny,” said Adam Smith, futures director at GroupM, citing the automotive category along with financial services. The result of the wrenching changes in the auto industry is likely to be wrenching changes in the ad industry, well beyond the making over of holiday parties. “The industry’s going to have to rethink itself,” said Chris Foster, chief executive for the North American operations of Fallon Worldwide, part of the SSF Group division of Publicis. The downsizing of “the big-paying, agency-sustaining types of businesses” like autos, Mr. Foster said, is “going to force agencies to do great work — or die.” For decades, landing an automotive account was a rite of passage for an agency seeking a national profile, a must-have client along with an airline, a beer and a cigarette. Just as cigarette accounts have fallen off that list, cars may do the same. Fallon had a major automotive account — the North American operations of BMW — for a decade, losing it in 2005. Its client roster now includes companies like Holiday Inn, NBC Universal, Nestlé, Sony and Travelers. “These are the guys that turn the lights on,” Mr. Foster said, offering the agency “long-term, sustainable businesses” for which to create campaigns. Even those executives whose agencies work on auto accounts acknowledge the need for change. “What has transpired has rocked people to the core,” said Miles S. Nadal, chairman and chief executive at MDC Partners, which owns agencies like Crispin Porter & Bogusky, the creative shop for Volkswagen of America. “I think it’s going to be longer than shorter,” he added, “18 to 24 months of tough times.”Still, “it’s a terrific opportunity,” Mr. Nadal said, a chance to “wipe the slate clean.” “Life is about opportunity costs,” he added. “You give up something and get something else.” For example, the turmoil could generate “a lot more start-up agencies,” Mr. Nadal said — more nimble operations that would be more comfortable with social media and other new ways of reaching consumers than “the organizations that have been around for 100 years.” And “there could be incredible acquisition opportunities for people who have capital, who have cash,” he added, saying “three companies in the last two weeks have come to us because the banks just cut back their availability of credit” or would not offer additional credit “even though the businesses have grown.” The ability to survive adversity has been demonstrated before by automakers. Chrysler, Ford and General Motors made it through the Great Depression as competitors like Cord, Duesenberg, Hupp Motor and Jordan Motor Car faltered. Now, however, G.M. is considering closing, selling or scaling back brands like Pontiac, Saab and Saturn. According to an analysis by the trade publication Advertising Age, they accounted for about $400 million in ad spending last year, or around 20 percent of the total for the company.

Advertising and Marketing
Automobiles
Subprime Mortgage Crisis


U.S. and Cuba Set to Discuss Diplomatic Ties

Abstract: HAVANA — Seeking to restore relations ruptured more than five decades ago, the United States and Cuba began talks here on Wednesday by agreeing to disagree on a central issue dividing them — the privilege of Cubans who arrive in the United States to automatically qualify for residency. As the State Department’s top diplomat for the Western Hemisphere, Roberta S. Jacobson, arrived on Wednesday, American and Cuban officials held another in a series of meetings on migration. On Thursday, a meeting will be held to begin addressing the reopening of embassies and the establishment of closer diplomatic ties. The migration meeting, normally held twice a year but imbued with heightened interest because of the thaw between the countries, was supposed to take place sometime in January, but recently was scheduled to coincide with the American delegation’s arrival. The American and Cuban diplomats commended one another for collaboration and communication among their law enforcement agencies involved in immigration, with the Cubans saying further talks would be held to stem immigration document fraud. Both sides, however, held fast to their positions on aspects of American immigration policy that Cuba has long blamed for luring people into dangerous journeys by sea to reach Florida, 90 miles away. Under the “wet foot, dry foot” policy, Cubans who reach American soil can stay and qualify for residency after one year, while those caught at sea are returned to Cuba. There has been a large increase in the number of Cubans trying to reach the United States by sea — the Coast Guard has reported intercepting some 3,722 in the past year, double the number of 2012 — and there have been concerns expressed here that the normalization of relations could bring an end to the policy. Video The president discussed the move to normalize relations with Cuba during his State of the Union address. Credit Credit Ramon Espinosa/Associated Press But Alex Lee, the senior American diplomat at the migration talks, said the policy would continue. “The policy locally known as wet foot, dry foot very much remains in effect,” he told reporters after the meeting. He added that the migration increase had slowed in January. Josefina Vidal, the Cuban foreign ministry representative for American affairs, reiterated her government’s view that the policy was “the main incentive” for people to embark on the perilous journeys, and she said that some migrants intercepted at sea were allowed to enter the United States after all. She also complained of an American program in place since 2006 that has granted thousands of Cuban medical professionals serving countries around the world the right to enter the United States immediately. “This is reprehensible," she said, calling it “a brain-drain practice that deprives many countries of a vital resource.” On Thursday, Cuban and American officials will discuss how to proceed on re-establishing diplomatic ties, after President Obama and President Raul Castro agreed to do so Dec. 17. In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Obama hailed the move toward diplomatic relations and called on Congress to end the trade embargo. Cuban officials agreed, but they have been more circumspect about their expectations for the talks and focused on more practical matters, like the desire to resume banking ties that would make it easier for Americans to use credit cards here and getting off the State Department’s list of terrorist states, which the Obama administration has said it is reviewing. “Cuba is not normalizing relations with the United States but rather re-establishing diplomatic relations with the United States,” a senior foreign ministry official told reporters, in remarks carried in state news media. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because such statements are supposed to come from higher-ranking officials, added, “Normalization is a longer and more complex process.”

Cuba
US Foreign Policy
Immigration
US
Josefina Vidal
Roberta S. Jacobson


Ikea Fires 2 Executives in Russian Bribery Case

Abstract: MOSCOW — Ikea , the Swedish furniture retailer, has dismissed two senior executives in Russia for allowing a contractor to pay a bribe, the company said Monday in a statement, calling the payment “totally unacceptable.” While bribes are common in Russia, the revelation of a lapse by Ikea executives is deeply troubling for the company because it had been in a long public campaign against government corruption. The two executives were not accused of acting for personal gain, Camilla Meiby, a spokeswoman, said in a telephone interview, but had agreed to a plan by a contractor to pay a bribe to an electrical company official. Ikea operates a dozen stores in Russia that are popular and profitable, but its efforts to expand have been thwarted by bureaucratic setbacks. The company, in an e-mail message, identified the two executives as Per Kaufmann, a director for Ikea in Eastern Europe, and Stefan Gross, a director for Ikea’s shopping mall business in Russia. “We are deeply upset and disappointed,” Mikael Ohlsson, the chief executive and president for the Ikea Group, Ikea’s largest franchisee, which includes the Russian operation, said in a statement. “Corruption is totally unacceptable for Ikea, and therefore we take this matter very seriously and will act fast and determined.” A call to Ikea’s press office in Moscow to seek comment from Mr. Kaufmann and Mr. Gross was not returned Monday. Details about what the men were accused of doing were not disclosed, but the payment involved electricity supplies at two malls in St. Petersburg, an indication that it may be related to an extensive corruption case that has involved the Swedish company. The dispute over the electricity supplies in St. Petersburg stems from a practice that executives at Ikea initiated as part of its Russian expansion. In an effort outfox bribe-seeking utility officials, the Swedes began renting diesel generators to power Ikea stores so that the malls could never be shut off during negotiations. The plan, though, failed to prevent corruption at the St. Petersburg stores, and Ikea is now arguing in court in Moscow that the generator rental company found a Russian executive in Ikea’s ranks willing to take kickbacks. The Russian former Ikea executive and the director of the generator rental company have denied wrongdoing. In exchange for the payment, Ikea said, the Russia executive had encouraged Ikea’s Swedish leadership, including Mr. Kaufmann, to overpay for the generators. It was unclear whether or how the dismissals announced on Friday and confirmed in a statement Monday would affect the litigation. In the statement, Ikea did not identify the contractor that it said had paid a bribe. Still, Mr. Kaufmann’s dismissal paints a picture of a company troubled by both official and corporate misdeeds in its Russian branch, even as the furniture it sells is hugely popular among people who had been starved of such wares during the Soviet period. Just six month ago, Mr. Kaufmann himself issued a statement seeming to underscore the company’s anticorruption stance in Russia. While steering clear of direct accusations of corruption against Russian government officials, Mr. Kaufmann’s statement said bureaucracy had so bogged down a store opening that Ikea would suspend all future investments in the country. Ikea intends to open an investigation of its business in Russia and “will turn over every stone and find out what really happened,” the spokeswoman, Ms. Meiby, said.

Executives and Management
Ikea
Frauds and Swindling
Bribery
Russia


Giants’ Jason Pierre-Paul Is a Project That Pays Off

Abstract: EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — His coach took notice when Jason Pierre-Paul, in his first practice a week before the first game of his only season of major college football, sent a 315-pound offensive lineman tumbling sideways onto his ear during a pass rush drill. “It was, ‘Oh, my God, did you just see him?’ ” said Kevin Patrick, Pierre-Paul’s defensive line coach last year at the University of South Florida. “If you watch closely, you’ll see him do things and you’ll stand back and go, ‘Oh, my lord.’ ” Such powerful moves, requiring little skill beyond stunning speed, enormous hands and long arms, propelled Pierre-Paul to the N.F.L. as the Giants’ first-round draft pick in April. They might have been his greatest obstacle, too, until a few weeks ago. Pierre-Paul had two sacks in each of the Giants’ previous two games, both victories. To put that in perspective, consider that the Jets’ Vernon Gholston has no sacks since being drafted in the first round in 2008, and he did not have to fight his way through Justin Tuck, Osi Umenyiora, Barry Cofield and Chris Canty in the defensive line rotation. The prospect of Monday’s game at the Minnesota Vikings in what could be Brett Favre’s final season has meaning to some of the Giants. But Pierre-Paul’s reaction underscores that he is a 21-year-old with an unlined face and limited football touchstones. “I never grew up watching Brett Favre,” Pierre-Paul said. “I know he’s one of the greatest quarterbacks in the game.” “An old man,” he added, with a smile. If he is able to play with his injuries, Favre will probably be an easy mark for the Giants’ pass rush, which could enhance Pierre-Paul’s numbers. Pierre-Paul’s development was slowed, in part, by what he was able to do with little training under a searing summer sun on the west coast of Florida. It allowed him to become a top prospect with scant football knowledge. It was understood that Pierre-Paul was a project when he was drafted by the Giants, who may place more value on a stable of pass rushers than any other N.F.L. team. Although Pierre-Paul played just one year of high school football — he had been a basketball devotee — and two junior-college seasons before transferring to South Florida, some scouts considered him the best pass rusher in the draft — an extraordinary but spectacularly raw prospect. When asked what Pierre-Paul did not know when he got to the Giants that those who have played organized football for years take for granted, the defensive coordinator Perry Fewell chuckled and said, “We don’t have that long.” The Giants’ expectations, and perhaps their concerns, too, are evident in Pierre-Paul’s placement in the locker room: next to Tuck, a team captain and leader of the defense. At 6 feet 5 inches and 270 pounds, Pierre-Paul can run the 40-yard dash in 4.7 seconds, and his arms each stretch to nearly 35 inches. South Florida’s opponents were overmatched, and Pierre-Paul had 6 ½ sacks, 6 quarterback hurries and 16 ½ tackles for a loss while still so new to the game that rudimentary aspects of defense like gaps and containment were foreign to him. At this time last year, Pierre-Paul was in Tampa, Fla., preparing to play in the International Bowl in Toronto, where he earned his claim to fame. He was captured on video doing 13 consecutive back flips and became a YouTube sensation. He had no real ambition to be a first-round draft pick. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t know I could go that far playing football,” Pierre-Paul said. “I never grew up thinking I could be a football player.” Fewell said that learning the Giants’ terminology had been Pierre-Paul’s biggest struggle because he had nothing to relate it to. He did not have the years of practice and film study that form the backbone of a football education, that allow the best players to react without thinking. The Giants, Fewell said, began by “spoon-feeding” Pierre-Paul a few situations to study at a time. Pierre-Paul called his ability to play a gift from God but said that his lack of knowledge “was holding me back.” Pierre-Paul is soft-spoken, almost shy, and he acknowledged that his head was swimming when he joined the Giants. Linval Joseph, a fellow rookie defensive lineman, said Pierre-Paul was frustrated, but Joseph advised him to wait his turn behind what has been a healthy defensive line. “People expect rookies to make mistakes,” Pierre-Paul said. “But they expect first-round draft picks to contribute to the team real quick.” His teammates were among the impatient ones. At training camp, Pierre-Paul was subjected to the usual rookie hazing. Teammates parked his car in the middle of a dusty field. They made him sing. But once the season started, the expectations soared and the cutting remarks grew sharper. What stuck with him was that the other defensive linemen, including Tuck, asked when they could expect to see a return on the first-round investment. “I got tired of the D-line saying I didn’t have any sacks yet,” Pierre-Paul said, “so I made a commitment to myself that I’ve got to go out and play even harder and faster and that’s what I’ve been doing. I was sitting at home, thinking, and talking to my girlfriend, and she was telling me, ‘There’s no pressure, you’re a rookie; rookies are expected to not have a breakout season.’ I told her, ‘I know that I want to be competitive.’ ” Tuck said: “In the beginning, he was kind of a goofball. He didn’t take things as seriously as we would have liked him to. Now, he’s come around to understanding what we expect from him. I give him a lot of credit. Our room can be tough at times. We’re not shy about giving rookies, or giving anybody, a hard time. He’s had a tough skin. It’s paying benefits for him now.” About four weeks ago, Pierre-Paul said, everything snapped into place, as if he walked into a math class he had been slogging through and suddenly grasped calculus. He paid more attention in meetings, asked more incisive questions and the plays made more sense. That allowed Fewell to add more roles for Pierre-Paul. On the versatile Giants line, he has sometimes played defensive tackle, other times as an end. Against Washington last week, Pierre-Paul got one sack by using his speed to go inside to pull down Donovan McNabb. On the other sack, he went outside. Now that the Giants have Pierre-Paul up and running, the benefit of taking a risk on a project is upon them: he still should improve over the next few years. The ribbing has stopped for now. One day last week in the Giants’ locker room, Pierre-Paul dressed quietly at his neat locker — his mother supported the family as a hotel housekeeper — buckling his gray shoes, then picking up his notebook. Instead of the barbed words Pierre-Paul used to hear from teammates, Tuck relayed information about the next defensive line meeting. “If they say I have raw talent, then I have raw talent,” Pierre-Paul said, betraying a hint of irritation with a description that may no longer apply. “But when I get on that field, I’m going to try to do things the best I can do.”

Pierre-Paul Jason
New York Giants
Football


I.O.C. Expects ‘Stringent’ Tests in Sochi

Abstract: The International Olympic Committee said that the drug-testing program for February’s Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, would be the “most stringent” in the history of the Winter Games. The I.O.C. president Thomas Bach said there would be 1,269 pre-competition tests for Sochi, a 57 percent increase over the Vancouver Games in 2010. There will be 2,453 tests in Sochi, a 14 percent increase.

2012 Summer Olympics
International Olympic Committee
Doping
Sochi


U.S. Urges Swift Action in Pakistan After Failed Times Square Bombing

Abstract: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The Obama administration has delivered new and stiff warnings to Pakistan after the failed Times Square car bombing that it must urgently move against the nexus of Islamic militancy in the country’s lawless tribal regions, American and Pakistani officials said. The American military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, met with the Pakistani military chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, at his headquarters here on Friday and urged Pakistan to move more quickly in beginning a military offensive against the Pakistani Taliban and Al Qaeda in North Waziristan, Americans and Pakistanis familiar with the visit said. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of continuing diplomatic efforts here. The Pakistani-American man who admitted to the Times Square attack, Faisal Shahzad , 30, told American investigators that he had received training in North Waziristan, the main base for the Pakistani Taliban, Al Qaeda and other militant groups. The new pressure from Washington was characterized by both the Pakistani and American officials as a sharp turnaround from the relatively polite encouragement adopted by the Obama administration in recent months. And it comes amid increasing debate within the administration about how to expand the American military’s influence — and even a boots-on-the-ground presence — on Pakistani soil. Though the bombing in Times Square failed, Mr. Shahzad’s ability to move back and forth between the United States and Pakistan has heightened fears in the Obama administration that another attempt at a terrorist attack could succeed. “We are saying, ‘Sorry, if there is a successful attack, we will have to act’ ” within Pakistan, one of the American officials said. That issue has been a source of growing tension between the countries. Pakistani officials, already alarmed by the increase in American drone aircraft attacks against militants in northwestern Pakistan, have been extremely sensitive about any hint that American ground troops could become involved in the fight. And attempts by the United States to increase the presence of Special Operations forces there even in an advisory or training role have been met with great resistance by the Pakistanis. The Pakistani military has stepped up its campaigns against militants in the past year, including an offensive in South Waziristan that has been praised by American officials. It has said that it is preparing to take up the fight against militants in North Waziristan. But Pakistani officials have insisted that the expanded campaign will happen completely on their own terms, and they have warned the Obama administration not to push so hard that it uses up the good will it has tried to foster here. But the Americans’ urgency has been increasing on multiple fronts. With an intensified American military campaign raging against the Taliban next door in Afghanistan, and now with the renewed evidence of Pakistani sources for plots to attack on American soil, it was clear the Pakistani government had to do more, and more urgently, a senior American official said Saturday. General Kayani, with whom General McChrystal has forged a positive relationship, was essentially told, “ ‘You can’t pretend any longer that this is not going on,’ ” another American official said. “ ‘We are saying you have got to go into North Waziristan.’ ” The American ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, met Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, after the failed bombing and used “forceful” language to convey the American point that the Pakistanis had to move more assertively against the militants threaded through the society, a Pakistani official said. “The element of threat is definitely different from the last few months,” said Tariq Fatemi, a former Pakistani ambassador who also served in the United States. . The Obama administration was planning to use the failed terrorist attack to impress on the Pakistanis of the urgency of getting American development aid in place in the tribal areas where militancy thrives, and into Karachi, the biggest city, where radical religious schools, known as madrasas, are popular. “Last week’s incident makes it more urgent and more true” of the need to bring stability and security to these areas where the militants have multiplied, an American official said. About $150 million was appropriated by Congress for assistance to the tribal areas in the coming period for reconstruction and other projects. But a host of problems, including American insistence on being able to monitor the money being spent, has made it a slow process. Since Mr. Shahzad’s arrest in the Times Square attack, each country has, to some extent, blamed the other. Many Pakistanis insist that Mr. Shahzad is an American citizen who was radicalized in the United States by the difficulties he found living there as a Muslim. The Americans stress that Mr. Shahzad has traveled more than a dozen times back to Pakistan from the United States since 1999, and appeared to have received his military training in the epicenter of militancy, North Waziristan. Mr. Shahzad’s background as the son of a senior Pakistani military officer has embarrassed the Pakistani Army, the most powerful institution in the country, and which receives generous financing from the United States. Mr. Shahzad’s father was a vice marshal in the Pakistani Air Force, and it appears that Mr. Shahzad grew up around senior military officers. After Mr. Shahzad told American investigators that he was trained in bomb making in North Waziristan, the Pakistani Army tried to play down that claim, portraying it as unlikely. The Pakistani Taliban took initial responsibility for the bombing attempt. Days later, though, their spokesman denied any involvement, a statement that may have been prompted by fears that their early claim of ownership of Mr. Shahzad might result in a direct attack on the North Waziristan enclave by the Americans, or the Pakistanis.

United States Defense and Military Forces


Federal Cuts Are Concern in Modest U.S. Growth

Abstract: It’s not great, but it’s still probably the best growth the American economy is going to see for a while. Economic activity picked up in the first quarter of this year, with output expanding at an annualized pace of 2.5 percent, according to a Commerce Department report released on Friday. The number was a welcome improvement from the unusually sluggish growth at the end of 2012, but significant government spending cuts and the pinch from recent tax increases look likely to keep the economy in stall speed in the months ahead. “We just have not been able to hit escape velocity, to get us growing fast enough to make up for the ground we lost during the recession,” said Steve Blitz, director and chief economist at ITG Investment Research. He forecasts growth around 2 to 2.5 percent for the rest of the year, which is slower than the economy’s long-term average. “Government spending is clearly a negative, but the reason why it’s such a strong negative is because there’s nothing else in the private sector really driving things forward.” Economists noted that even the decent growth in the first quarter was probably somewhat overstated, with some of the improvement caused mostly by a rebound from the bare 0.4 annual growth rate in the fourth quarter of 2012. Businesses drew down their back-room inventories at the end of last year, so they needed to replenish them at the start of 2013. But that stockroom rebalancing appears to have restored inventories to acceptable levels and probably will not drive much more business spending growth later in the year. Similarly, consumer spending was stronger in the first quarter, growing at its fastest pace since late 2010. But Mr. Blitz discounted even that apparently good news because so much of the extra spending was in housing and utility costs, which could have been driven by unusually cold weather. Image Part of a modular home on the line at DeLuxe Building Systems in Berwick, Pa. Housing grew strongly in the first quarter. Credit Ryan Collerd for The New York Times It also seems unlikely that consumers will spend as freely in the months ahead, economists said. Consumer sentiment and retailer reports suggest that households are starting to feel squeezed from the lapse of the two-year payroll tax holiday. That meant the Social Security tax rate rose 2 percentage points in January, adding about $700 a year to the typical worker’s tax bill. Wage stagnation may also put a crimp in spending. Much of the job growth, after all, has been concentrated in relatively low-paying areas like food services and retail, and household incomes have been more or less flat since May, according to Sentier Research . On the bright side, gas prices have fallen sharply in the last two months, which means households have more money free for other kinds of purchases. The most immediate concern for many businesses and consumers is the shrinking government. In the first quarter of this year, government spending fell at an annual rate of 8.4 percent, after a decrease of 14.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012 — with the cuts driven by sharp declines in military spending. Both declines happened largely before the bulk of Congress’s across-the-board spending cuts took place. The so-called sequester is scheduled to strip $85 billion out of federal spending before Oct. 1, cuts that will have secondary effects throughout the private sector. Furloughed federal workers, for example, will spend less money at local businesses. While lower government borrowing and spending can help free resources for business when the economy is operating closer to its capacity, that is not the case today. What may moderate the drag from federal spending cuts is the prospect that state and local governments may stop cutting and start spending more now that their tax revenue has risen in the last year, said Paul Dales, senior United States economist at Capital Economics. Still, more federal cuts will probably overwhelm whatever may happen at the state and local levels. “With fiscal tightening weighing on the spring and summer quarters, we expect weaker growth ahead,” Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomic Advisers, said in a note to clients. “We have seen good quarters before, but what counts is sustainability, and on that score we are deeply unconvinced.” The pace of economic activity may have already begun to slow, given recent disappointing reports about economic indicators in March. Hiring slowed sharply last month, for example, and orders for durable goods like aircraft and metals fell more than analysts had expected. Some economists are keeping their fingers crossed that unusually cold weather was responsible for these dismal numbers, which would mean the slowdown was temporary. Image Even some of the other bright spots in the latest gross domestic product report showed a slight slowdown from last quarter. Business spending on equipment and software, for example, rose at an annual rate of 3 percent in the first quarter of 2013, but not as quickly as in the fourth quarter of 2012, when it rose 11.8 percent. Residential investment spending — housing, essentially — had its third consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, but again, the pace in the first quarter was not quite as robust as it was at the end of last year (12.6 percent annual growth in the first quarter, compared to 17.6 percent the previous quarter). The housing recovery is “becoming an important driver of economic growth and will probably continue to be, which is one thing that really sets the U.S. out from other countries right now,” Mr. Dales said. Strength in the housing market, particularly the rise in home prices, could make consumers feel richer and therefore more willing to spend, said Joshua Shapiro, chief United States economist at MFR Inc. He cautioned that the housing market might not be a strong driver of growth for very long, because the current rebound is coming from “unsustainably low levels of activity from the depths of the recession.” In the future, he said, “we’ll probably see a calmer rate of growth.” Nothing in Friday’s report looks likely to change Federal Reserve policy, economists said. The Fed has indicated it will slow its asset purchases and raise interest rates only after considerable economic improvement. Justin Wolfers, an economics professor at the University of Michigan, said the government’s fiscal policy was a drag on the economy. He suggested that the Fed might also not be doing enough to bolster employment, given that inflation rates are still below official targets. “The bigger picture is that we have a fledgling recovery which needs help but isn’t getting it,” he said. Friday’s report was the Commerce Department’s initial estimate for gross domestic product growth, and the numbers will be revised substantially in coming months. This summer the department will also will also release its benchmark revisions, which are a more comprehensive overhaul of how it calculates the size and growth of the economy. Those revisions will probably affect all of the numbers released over the last several decades.

US Economy
GDP
Commerce Department
Federal Budget


Police Inspector Rules Out Racial Profiling

Abstract: It promised to be a clarifying moment in a federal lawsuit against the New York Police Department : A commander whose comments about race had been secretly recorded by a patrol officer took the stand on Monday to address what he had said. But just as a lawyer for the city began asking the commander, Deputy Inspector Christopher McCormack, about the words that appeared to hint at a racial component in street stops conducted by the police, the judge hearing the case stepped in. “It’s a matter of interpretation from the transcript,” the judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, said. “That’s for me to decide.” The city’s lawyer, Brenda Cooke, tried to pose the question differently, but Judge Scheindlin stopped her before Inspector McCormack could respond. “Based on what is intelligible,” the judge said, referring to portions of the February recording that was unclear in spots, “I will decide what a reasonable person would have understood him to say.” The exchange, coming nearly two months into the trial, left open the question of whether a police commander had been describing targets for police stops when he referred to “male blacks 14 to 20, 21,” during a wide-ranging and surreptitiously recorded conversation with the officer , Pedro Serrano. Inspector McCormack said that in general, he did not tell officers under his command to use race as a basis for stopping, questioning and sometimes frisking suspects. “Absolutely never,” he said. He said he would share descriptions of suspects at roll call meetings before officers’ shifts, and those could include race. But that information, he said, came from victims of the crimes that the precinct was trying to address. Image Deputy Inspector Christopher McCormack testified in federal court on Monday. Credit John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times “Male blacks 14 to 20, 21 years old, robbing people like it’s free out there,” he said. “We got that from the victims being robbed.” Later in his testimony, which lasted most of Monday and could continue on Tuesday, Inspector McCormack was asked by Jonathan C. Moore, a civil rights lawyer representing the plaintiffs, whether he was concerned that such descriptions could be “misunderstood” by officers. “No,” the inspector said, because he also gave locations, times and other details of the crime patterns involved. As an example of the specificity of these roll call discussions, he briefly discussed a series of assaults on the corner of 151st Street and Courtlandt Avenue, in the South Bronx. “We had male blacks beating up Mexicans on the late tour,” Inspector McCormack said. After his officers addressed the issue, he said, the victims appeared to become the aggressors. “It led to, unfortunately, a stabbing homicide,” he said. He disputed the suggestion, by Officer Serrano during testimony, that the officer had been given poor performance evaluations and was later punished for not reaching a specific quota. “I have never told anybody that at roll call, not at roll call, not personally, not ever,” Inspector McCormack said. “I don’t need numbers for numbers.” But he said that given the numbers of summonses, arrests and street stops in 2012 — two stops during the whole year — by Officer Serrano, “I don’t think he made an effort.” He said Officer Serrano had not conducted stops in a way that addressed the sort of crimes that plagued the neighborhood. “I was worried that with his action, he was not handling his conditions,” Inspector McCormack said, referring to criminal activity in areas where Officer Serrano was assigned. “His judgment is completely off.” “I do look at the numbers,” he said. But, he quickly added, it matters what those numbers are, where they are and whether they serve the purpose of reducing crime.

NYPD
Racial profiling
Christopher McCormack
Shira A Scheindlin
Pedro Serrano
Lawsuits


From Former Teammates, Words Tinged With Regret

Abstract: The heart of the case against Lance Armstrong is the sworn testimony of nearly a dozen of his former teammates. Officials with the United States Anti-Doping Agency on Wednesday made clear the hard choices Armstrong’s fellow riders faced: “Coming forward to testify in this case has been at considerable cost and substantial risk for virtually everyone who has provided testimony to Usada. As a consequence, many of Usada’s witnesses have had years of their competitive results disqualified, they have risked their employment, a number have accepted suspensions, and five lost the opportunity to compete on the 2012 United States Olympic team.” With the release of the evidence against Armstrong, some of those former teammates issued their own statements, excerpts from which follow: George Hincapie “For over 30 years I have dedicated my life to cycling. I have always been determined to compete at the highest level, in one of the most physically demanding sports. With hard work and success have come great blessings from the sport I love. ... Because of my love for the sport, the contributions I feel I have made to it, and the amount the sport of cycling has given to me over the years, it is extremely difficult today to acknowledge that during a part of my career I used banned substances. Early in my professional career, it became clear to me that, given the widespread use of performance enhancing drugs by cyclists at the top of the profession, it was not possible to compete at the highest level without them. I deeply regret that choice and sincerely apologize to my family, teammates and fans. ... About two years ago, I was approached by U.S. federal investigators, and more recently by Usada, and asked to tell of my personal experience in these matters. I would have been much more comfortable talking only about myself, but understood that I was obligated to tell the truth about everything I knew. So that is what I did.” Christian Vande Velde “As the son of a track cycling Olympian, I was practically born on the bike, and my dream, ever since I can remember, was always to be a professional cyclist. I have failed and I have succeeded in one of the most humbling sports in the world. And today is the most humbling moment of my life. ... We’re in a good place now; young riders of the new generation have not had to face the choices that I did, and this needs to continue. By looking at the mistakes of cycling’s history, we have an opportunity to continue to shape its future.” Tom Danielson “I don’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a professional cyclist. It has always been my dream. Along the road to following my dream, I’ve had several ups and downs, but I stuck with it because I love the sport. I never set out thinking I would cross a line, I set out simply wanting to compete, to race my bike and do what I love. And that is exactly what I did, clean. Then, after years of doing things the right way, I was presented with a choice that to me, did not feel like a choice at all. In the environment that I was in, it felt like something I had to do in order to continue following my dream. I crossed the line, and that is something I will always be sorry for.” David Zabriskie “Cycling was a refuge for me. Long, hard training rides were cathartic and provided an escape from the difficult home life associated with a parent with an addiction. My father had a long history of substance use and addiction. Seeing what happened to my father from his substance abuse, I vowed never to take drugs. I viewed cycling as a healthy and wholesome outlet that would keep me far away from a world I abhorred. ... Ironically, the sport I had turned to for escaping drugs turned out to be rampant with doping. ... I questioned, I resisted, but in the end, I felt cornered and succumbed to the pressure. ... It was a violation — a violation not only of the code I was subject to, but my personal and moral compass that I had set out to follow. I accept full responsibility and was happy to come forward and tell Usada my whole story; I want to do my share to help bring this entire issue to the fore and ensure a safe, healthy and clean future for cycling.” PUNISHMENTS: Hincapie, Vande Velde, Danielson and Zabriskie each received six-month bans beginning Sept. 1, and they were prohibited from participating in the 2012 Summer Olympics. They were also required to forfeit all results, medals and prizes for periods that varied for each rider.

Armstrong Lance
United States Anti-Doping Agency
Hincapie George
Danielson Tom
Vande Velde Christian
Doping (Sports)
Cycling Road
Zabriskie David
Bicycles and Bicycling


Health Dept. Worker Suspended. One Complaint: He Talked Like a Robot.

Abstract: Office rebellion takes many forms. Some workers loot the supply cabinet. Others play computer solitaire or photocopy their derrières. Then there is Ronald Dillon, who works on a help line for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. He answered customer-service calls like a robot. “You have reached the help desk.” And he would not stop, despite warnings from his supervisor, a judge found. For that, and other acts of insubordination, Mr. Dillon was suspended without pay for 20 days. His appeal of an administrative judge’s decision was denied this month by the city Civil Service Commission in a case reported by DNAinfo. Mr. Dillon, 66, has been a civil servant since 1975, mostly working in computer-related jobs for the health department. His current post entails taking calls on an information-technology line, both from the other city workers and from the public through a service called N.Y.C.M.E.D . For a six-month period in 2012 and 2013, the city said in court filings, Mr. Dillon abandoned service requests, improperly transferred tickets to another desk and failed to provide correct descriptions of requests. In addition, the city wrote, he “answered the phone in an unprofessional, robotic voice.” The administrative judge, Kara J. Miller, listened to tapes and agreed. In three recordings, she wrote, Mr. Dillon “states in a slow, monotone, and over-enunciated manner: ‘You have reached the help desk. This is Mr. Dillon. How may I help you?' ” Judge’s Decision Suspending City Worker for Talking Like a Robot The judge, Kara J. Miller, ruled that Ronald Dillon answered calls “in an unprofessional, robotic voice,” among other offenses. He would gradually modulate his voice to a “normal tone” as the calls progressed, but callers found the initial contact off-putting, the city said. According to court papers, one caller “asked whether there was a new automated answering system, and had hung up when she heard ‘the robot’ answer the phone because she needed to speak to a human about her issue.” “This is truly getting out of hand now,” the help desk supervisor wrote to Mr. Dillon’s boss. “More people are calling on the daily with complaints about his telephone manner.” Mr. Dillon countered that he was being unfairly singled out and was simply speaking carefully because he has a Brooklyn accent that people sometimes have a hard time understanding, the judge wrote. He said he had not been properly trained on answering phones. (“Respondent acknowledged that customer service is not one of his strengths,” the judge wrote.) And Mr. Dillon said that his boss, Barry Novack, was constantly “harassing” and “belittling” him, and that he tried to minimize variation in his phone greeting so as not to give Mr. Novack reason to harass him further. Judge Miller was unswayed. Mr. Dillon, she wrote, appears to be a “disgruntled employee who is acting out” in response to a change of duties and a new supervisor. She concluded, “I find respondent guilty of answering the phone in an unprofessional, robotic voice,” and declared him guilty of three other offenses. Noting Mr. Dillon’s long tenure and prior record of good service, Judge Miller wrote, he should be capable of appropriate behavior. “With minimal effort,” she wrote, “respondent should be able to perform his job duties in accordance with his supervisor’s directives.”

Health and Mental Hygiene Department NYC


The Tax Fix for America's Jumbo Deficit

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama, in confronting the U.S. government’s chronic problem with budget deficits, should consider the counsel of a former Bush official and propose a radical new consumption tax that most Americans oppose. Sounds nuts, especially with the president nearing the end of a bruising health care fight. It really isn’t. Just follow along for a bit. Most experts, and ultimately markets, see the deficit problem as systemic and lethal; partial fixes involve tax increases for the middle class and painful spending cutbacks. The promise of the president’s bipartisan fiscal commission, due to make recommendations after congressional elections in November, was set back this month as five of the six Republicans named to the panel by congressional leaders are theological opponents of any tax increases (the exception being Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire). No one seriously believes the deficit can be controlled without cutting spending on entitlements and raising taxes. With this background, the proposal by the Columbia University law professor Michael Graetz, a top Treasury official in the first Bush administration (the better Bush years in the view of most Democrats and independents), to partially replace the U.S. income tax with a consumption tax may start to look like more of a winner — on the substance, certainly, and perhaps even politically. Last year, Mr. Graetz published a book on this notion: “100 Million Unnecessary Returns: A Simple, Fair, and Competitive Tax Plan for the United States.” In a recent interview, he said he had tweaked his proposals to adjust for the worsening deficit realities and some new data. A look at the options in fiscal year 2015 is instructive. Using reasonable economic assumptions, to reach Mr. Obama’s target of a deficit that is 3 percent of gross domestic product by that year would require about $400 billion in spending cuts or tax increases (that assumes terminating the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, which most Republicans resist). Mr. Graetz would impose a 14 percent value-added tax on goods and services; it would be collected piecemeal at each stage of production. Small businesses, those with gross receipts of less than $500,000, would be exempt. He then would eliminate the U.S. income tax for taxpayers making less than $100,000 a year. A 25 percent rate would be slapped on income above that level and, he says, a 30 percent or 35 percent rate on income above $500,000. This would remove up to 150 million Americans from the federal income-tax rolls. The corporate tax rate would be slashed to below 20 percent from the current 35 percent. This would make American corporations more competitive globally and the United States a more attractive place to invest. Almost 150 nations have a value-added or consumption tax, the outliers being some African and Middle Eastern countries, Greenland and the United States. Payroll taxes would be unchanged and, with cost-of-living adjustments, Social Security recipients unaffected, as would be expenditures in education and most health care. Adjustments would be made so the working poor, recipients of the current earned income-tax credit, would do just as well. An important question, Mr. Graetz says, is exactly which current deductions would be eliminated; this is a political and budgetary consideration. He envisions doing away with state and local tax write-offs, as incentives would be created for states to piggyback off the value-added tax. Charitable deductions would be unchanged. There would be savings in compliance costs; Mr. Graetz dismisses complaints about that. “If Sri Lanka can administer a value-added tax, we can,” he said. A bottom line, he sees, would be a tax system that — even if it isn’t more progressive and more simplified than the current one — at least encourages economic growth and investment, and is easier to adjust for changing economic circumstances. “We can no longer afford the luxury of a tax system that relegates the goal of economic growth to the back burner,” Mr. Graetz said. The most compelling case for the Graetz tax may be the alternatives. To reduce the deficit by $400 billion five years from now, assume half from spending cutbacks and half from more revenue. On the spending side, a big contributor would have to be the politically sensitive pension programs like Social Security. Reducing the cost-of-living increases, raising the retirement age and doubling the wages subject to Social Security taxes would get about a third of it. The other two-thirds would have to come from cutting the defense budget — that means more than a handful of the big, politically potent weapons systems — and freezing most discretionary, while killing more federal, programs than the government has done combined over recent decades. On the tax side, curbing or killing deductions for state and local taxes, mortgages, charitable contributions and the exclusion from taxes for employer provided health coverage would get fairly close; the goal could be met by a carbon tax. All this would be with the current U.S. income tax. Remember the terrible tempest over any part of this package — limiting the exclusions for employer health plans or charitable donations or cutting the home-mortgage deduction. Yeah, political realists say that any consumption tax — also known as a national sales tax — is suicidal. It cost Al Ullman his seat, they say. Since almost no one outside of Oregon remembers the late Democratic congressman, he was the House Ways and Means Committee chairman from 1975 to 1981 whose Washington duties caused him to lose touch with his sprawling district. He most likely would have lost even if he had never mentioned a value-added tax. Yes, a consumption tax would be politically perilous. Yet, this autumn, voters and the press should ask every congressional candidate if it is acceptable, five years into the recovery, to run a budget deficit that by some estimates may reach almost $1 trillion. If not, they should be forced to spell out precisely how they would get it to $500 billion. The alternatives then will seem more perilous than Michael Graetz’s value-added tax.

Obama Barack
National Debt (US)
Taxation


With Farms Fading and Urban Might Rising, Power Shifts in Iowa

Abstract: LAURENS, Iowa — Pocahontas is running out of students. Public school enrollment in this corn-blanketed county in northern Iowa has plummeted 32 percent over the past decade as the population steadily shrinks. Schools have merged, classes have combined, and sports teams have consolidated, wiping out generations of tradition and rivalry. As Joe Kramer, a school superintendent in the county, sifted through the cruel math of his latest casualty (a girls’ varsity basketball program), he wore the weary look of an overbooked funeral director. “It’s a struggle for a community to make decisions like this,” he said. “It’s so much a part of our identity.” Two hours south, Dallas County faces a very different problem: It is running out of schools. With the population swelling, in what used to be farmland ringing Des Moines, enrollment in its largest district has doubled over the same 10 years. As soon as a gleaming new high school is completed, construction on another begins. The hard conversations here, said Dave J. Wilkerson, the local superintendent, are telling parents that their children’s schools have become overcrowded. “I apologize that we will have to send your children off to a new, state-of-the-art school,” he said. “I would rather be dealing with this challenge than with what Pocahontas has.” Iowa, the quintessence of heartland America, is undergoing an economic transformation that is challenging its rural character — and, inevitably, its political order. As Iowans prepare to elect a new United States senator for the first time in three decades, the scale at which people and power have shifted from its rural towns to its urban areas is emerging as a potent but unpredictable undercurrent in the excruciatingly close race, offering opportunity and risk for both sides. The state’s once ubiquitous farms are supporting fewer workers, the towns built around them are hemorrhaging younger residents, and a way of life eroding for decades is approaching a denouement. Farm fields are yielding to the new headquarters of banks, insurance companies and health care providers, whose rapid expansion is luring waves of Iowans to cities and suburbs, and contributing to the state’s enviable 4.5 percent unemployment rate. In jarring and telling tableaus, new housing subdivisions, with names like Stone Prairie and Walnut Creek Estates, are rising up in the Republican precincts west of Des Moines and downtown office buildings in the Democratic-leaning state capital are being remade into loft-style apartments. When researchers at Iowa State University studied population trends between 2000 and 2013, they found that the state’s metropolitan areas had grown by 13.3 percent. The population of communities outside those urban areas fell by 3.6 percent, a gap that far outstrips the rest of the Midwest. Those changes have turned Iowa’s older, Republican precincts even redder and its younger, Democratic districts even bluer, while giving rise to suburbs whose politics can be harder to categorize — a mixture of millennial generation religious conservatives, baby boomer libertarians and Generation X liberals. Image Iowa 80, on Interstate 80 in Walcott, bills itself as the world's largest truck stop. Credit Luke Sharrett for The New York Times Such places “are not red state or a blue state. There are a lot of pastels in there,” said David A. Yepsen, the director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University and former political writer for The Des Moines Register. The Republican Senate nominee, Joni Ernst, who is trying to become Iowa’s first woman elected to Congress, has appealed to conservative rural voters, portraying herself as a hog-castrating, gun-firing daughter of Iowa’s agricultural roots. The Democrat, Bruce Braley, a fourth-term representative, has embraced a more urban-friendly agenda, speaking out forcefully on climate change, advocating a higher minimum wage and backing same-sex marriage, which the Iowa Supreme Court legalized in 2009. In the campaign’s highest-profile blunder, Mr. Braley was caught on tape belittling Iowa’s senior senator, Charles E. Grassley, a Republican who would become chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee if his party won the majority, as “a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school.” He later apologized. The potency of that urban-rural divide was captured in a Des Moines Register poll in September. It showed that Ms. Ernst had built a nearly 4-to-1 advantage over Mr. Braley among rural voters, which Ms. Ernst underscored in a debate by questioning whether Mr. Braley had forsworn his rural roots. Mr. Braley shot back: “I have not forgotten my rural values.” No matter what the outcome, it is clear that Iowa, eternally satirized for monochromatic, pitchfork simplicity in “American Gothic,” is a swing state grappling with changes that defy long-held assumptions. Its farmers are emerging as leaders in sustainable energy, its rural towns are becoming magnets for Latinos, and its cities laboratories for high-tech start-ups. Image Top, Joni Ernst, the state legislator who is the Republican candidate in the Senate race in Iowa, at a campaign stop in Davenport, Iowa. Below, Bruce Braley, a congressman, is the Democratic nominee; he was campaigning at the South Side Senior Center in Des Moines. Credit Top, Daniel Acker/Bloomberg News, via Getty; bottom, Luke Sharrett for The New York Times Senator Tom Harkin, the Democrat whose retirement sparked this year’s race, said the election would turn on which candidate acknowledged the new landscape. “There is this ideal of Iowa,” he said. Those who have left its farmlands “aren’t too far removed from those small towns.” But, he added, “they know they are not going back there.” Rural Collapse John Stumpf is not going back. A generation ago, Treasure Chest, the consignment business his grandmother operates on the forlorn retail strip in Laurens, in western Pocahontas County, would have passed unthinkingly into his hands. Now business is agonizingly slow, and Mr. Stumpf, a 21-year-old film major at the University of Iowa, said small-town living ill suited him. “There is nothing for me here,” he said, sitting in the store’s stockroom as his grandmother, Millie Burnham, nodded in reluctant agreement. An air of diminishment, of something slipping away, surrounds them. “Everything is closing,” she said. “School will, eventually,” he said. Laurens, which flirted with a population of 1,800 in the 1960s, was down to 1,476 in 2000, then 1,258 in 2010. The story is similar across Iowa: Once-vibrant communities have been shattered in two waves, first by the farm crisis of the 1980s, then by technological improvements that encouraged far bigger farms and required far fewer farmers. As of 2011, Pocahontas’s farming industry employed 764 people, about half as many as in 1980. Those who stay are largely Republican. Susie Mayou, a 55-year-old conservative, described herself as heartsick that Democrats had carried Iowa in six of the last seven presidential elections. “If Iowa gave power based on land ownership, the state would swing 180 degrees,” she said. “The city people push the agenda.” That now includes people like the city-bound Mr. Stumpf. Despite his grandmother’s Republicanism, he plans to vote for Mr. Braley, quoting from his campaign commercial attacking Ms. Ernst for opposing a federal minimum wage. Downtown Revival It is known as Silicon Sixth: a stretch of Sixth Avenue in downtown Des Moines that houses about two dozen technology start-ups. A few blocks over, the Des Moines Building, an old office building, is undergoing a makeover into a 136-unit apartment building, complete with a dog-walking terrace. Up the street, the downtown’s first full-service supermarket is under development. The once sleepy core of Des Moines, known for its commuter-friendly 9-to-5 hours and drab overhead skywalk system, is taking on cosmopolitan hues. The population downtown has doubled over the past decade, and 1,500 new units of housing are planned. As a result, Des Moines’s home, Polk County — where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by about 20,000 and President Obama’s margin of victory widened between 2008 and 2012 — is growing even more influential in statewide politics. Mickey Davis, a 23-year-old musician, was so confident he would leave Iowa after college that on his arm he tattooed the corporate emblem of Travelers Insurance Company, a mainstay of downtown Des Moines, to take a bit of the state with him. Video Mickey Davis is a manager at the Des Moines Social Club, an art and performance space in downtown Des Moines. He is now the program manager at the Des Moines Social Club, a hive of cultural activity inside the Art Deco quarters of an erstwhile firehouse, which hosts operas, poetry readings, bands, art exhibits and yoga classes. “Des Moines,” he said over lunch, “is actually a happening place.” Hispanic Growth City Councilman Pete Rodriguez navigated his white Toyota sedan down Main Street, jabbing his finger at the passing houses. “Hispanics live there,” he said of a white ranch. “That’s a Hispanic house,” he said of a beige Victorian. The phrase echoed like a soundtrack. Hispanic house. Hispanic house. Hispanic house. Iowa, with its 92 percent white population, remains a place where diversity seems oxymoronic, “so white that you almost need special glasses to pick the people out from the snow banks,” Wade Rathke, the founder of Acorn, the social activist group, wrote in 2008. But in the city of Denison, in far western Iowa, decades of stereotypes are falling away, revealing corners of the state where Latino immigrants are remaking the landscape. Here, where meatpacking plants crave low-wage workers, Hispanics make up 42 percent of the population, more than twice as much as a decade ago. Video Pete Rodriguez, a City Council member in Denison, Iowa, says that he was ignored when he first arrived, but that the city is becoming more accepting of new immigrant groups. These migrant towns now pepper the state: West Liberty, Storm Lake, Muscatine and Marshalltown. State data shows that the 168,000 Latinos in Iowa are now its largest minority, 6 percent of the population, and the figure is expected to surge because Latinos are significantly younger than their white neighbors and have far higher birthrates. The Denison school system is now recruiting Spanish-language teachers. The Walmart Supercenter has dedicated an aisle to “Hispanic food.” The City Council has its first Latino member, Mr. Rodriguez. But for now, the power of the Latino vote is more potential than reality. The Latinos of Denison have a dismal record of casting ballots. Not long ago, the mayor, Brad Bonner, cracked open a binder containing the city’s voting rolls in search of Hispanic names. “There were 12 of them,” he said. “They don’t vote.” Patricia Ritchie, a community activist, chose a coffee shop in the city’s quaint downtown to explain why. Inside, Denison’s aging power brokers — about 15 bankers, lawyers and farmers — held their weekly breakfast meeting over slices of egg, sausage and Velveeta casserole. They were all white. “See?” asked Ms. Ritchie, a 41-year-old Hispanic and an Army veteran. Hispanics in Denison, she said, “are afraid of the white power structure.” Those who have participated in the past have not always been heartened by the results. Vicenta Cardenas, 43, who crossed into the United States illegally from Mexico but is now a citizen, registered to vote in time for the 2008 general election, casting a ballot for Mr. Obama. She did the same in 2012. They were votes, she believed, to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants. Amnesty has not come. “Personally, I feel Obama tricked Latinos,” she said, sitting at her kitchen table. Asked if she intended to vote this year, Ms. Cardenas shrugged. Conflicted Farmers The campaign commercial opens with a rural tableau of windmills and rows of soybeans. “I grew up walking beans on our family farm,” Ms. Ernst says. The ad concludes with an appeal to Iowa’s of-the-land pride, suggesting the triumph of entrepreneurial farmers over the bureaucracy of Washington. “I’ll take our values there,” she says of the Senate. But Iowa’s rural values, conflicted by farmers’ deepening reliance on government and colored by a growing investment in the green economy, are no longer reflexively Republican. The crosscurrents are on display at Campbell Grain Farms in Clinton County, near Iowa’s eastern border. Its owner, Dennis Campbell, a sixth-generation soybean and corn farmer, acknowledges that he is a walking contradiction: both a victim of an overreaching federal government and a poster child for the benefits of federal intervention. He walked up to a gas tank on his property, a totem, he said, of federal rules run amok. To cut down on fuel deliveries — reducing costs and carbon emissions — he bought a 10,000-gallon behemoth. But for one that size, the government mandates a double-walled model, to prevent leaks. That cost him tens of thousands of dollars extra, an expense avoided by neighboring farmers who stick with tanks that are smaller, older and riskier. “I’m being penalized by the government,” he said. But a few feet away, he showed off a wall of 256 solar panels on the roof of his shed that will generate enough electricity to power his farm. It is a money-saving technology whose economics, he conceded, work only because of some $80,000 worth of tax credits from the same federal government that insisted he buy the pricier gas tank. “I am talking out of both sides of my mouth,” said Mr. Campbell, who intends to support Ms. Ernst. Image Sami Hudson, homecoming queen contestant, backstage during the 2014 homecoming coronation in the gymnasium at Laurens-Marathon High School in Laurens, Iowa, in Pocahontas County. 1 / 6 Iowa farmers received more than $1 billion in federal aid and subsidies in 2012, according to the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation.. It is no wonder that the most heated policy debate in the Senate race here is over a federal measure, coveted by farmers, that guarantees a market for corn-based ethanol by requiring energy companies to blend billions of gallons of the biofuel with gasoline for cars. Ms. Ernst, a Tea Party favorite, declared herself philosophically opposed to rule, known as the Renewable Fuel Standard. That prompted a series of attacks from Mr. Braley, and ever-firmer assurances from Ms. Ernst that she would nonetheless fight to protect the fuel measure. The Iowa Corn Growers Association PAC was not satisfied: In a move that stung Ms. Ernst’s campaign, it endorsed Mr. Braley. A similar dissonance has surrounded the issue of climate change. Ms. Ernst, skeptical about the role of human activity in global warming, is wary of any government mandates to cut carbon emissions. Mr. Braley is a proponent of government measures to curb climate change, such as strict fuel efficiency requirements for carmakers. But as the candidates debate the urgency of action, Iowa farmers have reached their own conclusion about sustainable energy: It is profitable. Harold and Virginia Olson, farmers in Calhoun County, have no computer in their home. But they do have a windmill on their farm. Gamesa, an energy company, pays them $6,000 a year for allowing the company to use the family’s land. “It’s our air,” Mr. Olson said. “We should capitalize on it.”

Iowa
2014 Midterm Elections
Joni Ernst
Bruce Braley
Rural area
Agriculture
Tom Harkin
Hispanic Americans
K-12 Education
Senate races


Despite Vaccination Efforts Measles Kills 350 Children a Day, Report Says

Abstract: LONDON — The number of deaths from measles has fallen by 79 percent worldwide since 2000, thanks mainly to mass vaccination campaigns, but more than 350 children still die from the disease every day, global health experts said on Thursday. In a report on global efforts to “make measles history,” the United Nations Children’s Fund, or Unicef, the World Health Organization and other health agencies said the fight against measles was being hampered not by a lack of tools or knowledge, but by a lack of political will to get every child immunized against measles. “Without this commitment, children will continue to die from a disease that is easy and cheap to prevent,” said Robin Nandy, Unicef’s head of immunization. The report said measles vaccination campaigns and a global increase in routine vaccine coverage had saved about 20.3 million young lives from 2000 to 2015. But coverage is patchy, and, in some countries, a majority of children are not vaccinated. In 2015, about 20 million babies missed their shots, and about 134,000 children died from the disease. According to the report, half of all unvaccinated babies and 75 percent of deaths from measles occur in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and Pakistan . Measles is a highly contagious virus that can spread by direct contact or through the air. It can be prevented with a widely available and inexpensive vaccine. Published by Unicef, the W.H.O., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; the report said that outbreaks of measles in various countries — caused by gaps in immunization — are still a major problem. In 2015, outbreaks were reported in Egypt, Ethiopia, Germany, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia, the report said, with those in Germany and Mongolia mostly affecting older people. Those outbreaks, the report went on to say, highlighted the need to immunize young people who had missed out on vaccinations. Measles, the report added, also tends to flare up during conflicts or humanitarian crises, evidenced by outbreaks last year in Nigeria, Somalia and South Sudan.

Measles
Vaccines Immunization
UNICEF
WHO
Children


Two Bronx Youths Indicted in Roommate's Death

Abstract: A Bronx grand jury has indicted two teenagers in the rape and stabbing death of their 26-year-old roommate, Monique Hattan, whose body was found in a garbage can on the roof of their building. The teenagers, Dashawn Harris, 16, and Raymel Poole, 18, were indicted on Tuesday. The Bronx district attorney's office said that they would be tried as adults. Ms. Hattan was killed between May 1 and May 16, when her body was found by the building's superintendent. Mr. Harris and Mr. Poole had continued to live in the one-bedroom apartment on the Grand Concourse they shared with Ms. Hattan and her boyfriend, Meek Hall. Mr. Hall, who prosecutors said was not involved in the crime, said he had thought Ms. Hattan had gone to stay with friends.

Murders and Attempted Murders
Bronx (NYC)
Sex Crimes


Willie L. Williams, Head of 2 Police Forces in Turmoil, Dies at 72

Abstract: Willie L. Williams, the first African-American to lead the police forces in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, cities in which hostilities between the police and black citizens had recently flared into violence, died on Tuesday at his home in Fayetteville, Ga. He was 72. The cause was pancreatic cancer, said his sister-in-law Patricia Odoms. Mr. Williams was a 28-year veteran of the Philadelphia force when he was named commissioner in 1988, three years after a house owned by a black militant group known as Move was bombed by the police, resulting in 11 deaths and leaving the neighborhood in ruins. The police force there had been known for corruption scandals and a history of brutality. Mr. Williams’s tenure of three and a half years in Philadelphia was marked by relative peace. Embracing the concept of community policing, he was credited with hiring and promoting more women and minority group members and with restructuring the police department to add mini-stations and foot patrols. A man of measured temperament, he was held in general esteem in Philadelphia neighborhoods where there was history of mutual disrespect among residents and the police. But he was lured away to Los Angeles — at more than twice his Philadelphia salary — in April 1992. There, he replaced the combative chief Daryl F. Gates, who had presided over what many considered an arrogant, physically aggressive force that had been hostile to minority neighborhoods. In March 1991, Los Angeles officers were videotaped beating a motorist, Rodney G. King, as they arrested him and two passengers after a high-speed chase. Four of the officers were charged by the state with assault and use of excessive force under color of authority. Mr. Williams was named the new chief the next spring, just as the trial was being held. Less than two weeks later, before he officially assumed his new post, the four officers were acquitted on just about all counts. (On one excessive-force count against one officer, the jury was hung.) The city erupted in six days of racial violence, and Mr. Gates and his force were widely criticized as being ineffective in their response. Mr. Williams managed to calm the antagonism between the city, especially its black residents, and its police force. (It helped that in a subsequent trial in federal court, two officers in the King case were convicted of violating Mr. King’s civil rights, and they served time in prison.) Mr. Williams addressed sexual harassment and discrimination on the force (he named the first female commander in department history), and was an advocate for reforms in police training and discipline laid out by a 1991 commission appointed by Mayor Tom Bradley after the King episode. But over all, Mr. Williams had a rocky time of it in Los Angeles. Brought in as the anti-Gates, he was held in suspicion by many Gates loyalists in the department, who distrusted him as an outsider and, as some have charged, because he was black; many thought he was insufficiently supportive of the department during the investigation of the 1994 murders of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman and the subsequent trial of O. J. Simpson. Mr. Williams also ran afoul of some Los Angeles business and political leaders, who found his management of the department slack. And he was frustrated by what he saw as the competing agendas of the City Council; the city’s Police Commission, a citizens’ board that oversees the department; and the mayor, Richard Riordan, who succeeded Mr. Bradley in 1993 and who clashed with Mr. Williams on expansion of the police force, among other issues. Two years into Mr. Wiliams’s tenure, his leadership came under harsh criticism, which was exacerbated when a retired deputy chief raised questions about rumors of unethical actions. The Police Commission began an investigation into allegations that Mr. Williams and his family had used city cars, drivers and cellphones for private purposes and that he had improperly accepted free rooms at casino hotels in Las Vegas. He denied any wrongdoing, but the commission members reprimanded him, saying he had been dishonest when he was asked if he had received free rooms at Caesars Palace. He left office in 1997 after serving a five-year term and was replaced by Bernard C. Parks. Willie Lawrence Williams Jr. was born in Philadelphia on Oct. 1, 1943, the oldest of seven children of Willie Sr., who worked in a meatpacking plant, and the former Helen Stansbery. He attended local public schools and earned an associate degree in business administration from the Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science. He joined the Philadelphia police force when he was 20. He married Evelina Edwards, Ms. Odoms’s sister, in 1966. In addition to his wife, he is survived by his mother; two brothers, Roger and David; two sisters, Catherine Walker and Christine Nutt; three children, Willie III and the twins Eric and Lisa; and five grandchildren. As his time in Los Angeles came to an end, Mr. Williams reflected on his tenure there in an interview with The Los Angeles Times. “Politics has greatly intruded, for the right or the wrong reasons, into the day-to-day management activities of the Los Angeles Police Department,” said Mr. Williams, whom The Times described as “sometimes contemplative, sometimes bitter.” He spoke about the fractiousness that characterized much of his time in Los Angeles. “Let me tell you something,” he said. “When you’re a chief of police, when you’re a leader, you have to do what you think is right.” He added: “Willie Williams would not be able to look in the mirror, look at his family, look at his children, look at his friends and neighbors, look at people in this department if I just packed up my bags and went away when someone says: ‘Chief, we don’t like what you’re doing. Get out of town.’ I didn’t walk into Los Angeles to be tossed out of town, and I wasn’t going to be tossed out without expressing my concerns.”

Obituary
Willie L Williams
Philadelphia
LAPD
Police


Bomber Kills at Least 43 Near Capital of Algeria

Abstract: PARIS — A suicide bomber rammed an explosives-filled car into a police academy about 35 miles east of Algiers early Tuesday, killing at least 43 people, mostly civilians and young people who had been waiting to take an entrance exam. The Algerian Interior Ministry said in a statement that the death toll from the explosion, which took place at 7 a.m., was a “preliminary estimate.” Forty-five people were wounded in the attack in Issers, a town in northern Algeria , it said. The Algerian government has strived in recent years to convince the outside world that its crackdown against insurgents was working and that the threat from terrorism inside Algeria had diminished. The country enjoyed a period of relative peace after the suppression of a bloody insurgency in the 1990s that claimed the lives of more than 150,000 people. But the violence returned in 2006 after an insurgent group, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, swore allegiance to Al Qaeda. The calm was broken by a double suicide bombing in the capital, Algiers, in December that killed 41, including 17 United Nations workers. Other bombings followed, including a coordinated attack in April 2007 that killed 33. Last Sunday, 12 people were killed in an ambush of a military commander and his escort. While Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claimed responsibility for the earlier bombings, the identity of the group behind Tuesday’s attack was unknown, officials said. “What is certain is that it was an attack aimed at hitting a large number of people — they were above all civilians and a number of recruits,” said an official at the office of the Algerian president who was not authorized to speak publicly but who confirmed the details of the Interior Ministry statement. “It was in the morning, at the moment when the young recruits were lining up to take an exam,” he added. Of the dead, 42 were civilians and one was a gendarme — a member of the national police force, which falls under the Defense Ministry — the Interior Ministry said. Of the 45 who were wounded, 32 were civilians and 13 were gendarmes, the ministry said in comments relayed by the official Algerian Press Service. “It’s a blood bath,” a security official at the school told The Associated Press, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter with the news media. Witnesses quoted by Reuters said that the explosion had been the work of a suicide bomber who rammed his vehicle into a line of potential recruits waiting outside the academy. “Most of the dead were young men aged between 18 and 20,” one witness told Reuters. “They were in line waiting to enter the school for recruiting exams when they were mowed down by the blast. The car explosion destroyed part of the outer wall of the school and blew a huge crater into the ground, about three meters from the main gate.” Photographs of the site showed palm trees shredded by the explosion, and the skeletal remains of a building. Firefighters hauled bodies from the scene in army blankets and black plastic bags; other bodies were on the ground covered in yellow plastic. Bomb disposal experts in white overalls combed through the debris for clues. Accompanied by security officials, Algeria’s interior minister, Yazid Zerhouni, visited the scene on Tuesday. “These terrorist gangs are seeking through attacks against civilians to loosen the net closing around them as the security forces drive them to the wall,” the Algerian Press Service quoted him as saying. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France condemned “the barbaric and blind violence” of Tuesday’s attack. Algeria is a former French colony.


Jailed Freelance Journalist Loses Request for Rehearing

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 16 — A federal appeals court has denied a request for a rehearing from a freelance video journalist and blogger who has been jailed for three months for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury investigation of a violent anticapitalist protest. The decision Wednesday by a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals means that the blogger, Josh Wolf, could be kept in jail until July, when the term of the grand jury expires, said his lawyer, Martin Garbus. If that happens, Mr. Wolf, who has served 88 days, will be the longest-incarcerated journalist in recent American history, according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Vanessa Leggett, a freelance journalist from Houston, served 168 days in 2001 and 2002 for refusing to surrender information about a murder case. Federal prosecutors have sought to force Mr. Wolf, 24, to testify about a July 2005 protest in San Francisco timed to correspond with a Group of Eight conference of world economic leaders in Scotland. Mr. Wolf videotaped the protest, following anarchists who eventually clashed with police officers. An officer was injured and some property was damaged when a smoke bomb or a firework was put under a police car. Mr. Wolf was subpoenaed this year by federal prosecutors considering charges of attempted arson in the case. They asked him to testify and turn over all of his video, but he refused, saying he had to protect the identities of those on the tape. He was jailed in August. In September, Mr. Wolf was granted bail but returned to jail when bail was revoked by a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court. In October, Mr. Garbus petitioned for a hearing of the full court, arguing that “the right of a reporter to conduct legal newsgathering activities without fear” was at issue. On Wednesday, the court denied that petition. Mr. Wolf has attracted some high-profile supporters, including the Society of Professional Journalists, which has contributed to his defense fund. On Thursday, Lucie Morillon, a spokeswoman for Reporters Without Borders, an international press freedom organization, called the decision to hold Mr. Wolf “absurd and unjust.” “Even if he’s not an experienced journalist with 20 years behind him, he wants to protect his sources, and it’s a decision we respect and support,” Mr. Morillon said. Mr. Wolf did sell some of the video of the protest to local television and posted other parts on his Web site, joshwolf.net . Mr. Garbus said he had offered prosecutors the full tape in exchange for his client’s release and exclusion from grand jury testimony. Luke Macaulay, a spokesman for the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, said his office had been consistent in asking for both the tape and the testimony. Mr. Wolf’s mother, Liz Wolf-Spada, said in an e-mail message, “Every hope that is destroyed leaves me feeling like a deflated balloon.” Mr. Garbus said his client, held in a federal prison in Dublin, Calif., would serve as long as he had to. “He’s not going to give up,” he said.

Wolf Josh
Blogs and Blogging (Internet)
Freedom of The Press
Computers and the Internet
Society of Professional Journalists
Reporters Without Borders


Warren Buffett Vows to Stick to Friendly Strategy, Rebuffing Activism

Abstract: Activist investors may be on the rise and takeover efforts may have become more aggressive, but Warren E. Buffett is committed to a strategy he has pursued for the better part of 51 years. “We go only where we are welcome,” Mr. Buffett wrote in his annual letter to shareholders on Saturday. Mr. Buffett, who buys stakes in publicly traded companies as well as whole companies outright, reiterated in his letter that his company, Berkshire Hathaway, would not engage in unfriendly takeovers. “To be sure, certain hostile offers are justified: Some C.E.O.s forget that it is shareholders for whom they should be working, while other managers are woefully inept,” the billionaire investor wrote. “We, though, will leave these ‘opportunities’ for others.” Activist investors have gained steam in recent years, with hundreds of billions of dollars being funneled into funds that focus on acquiring stakes in companies to agitate for change. These investors often publicly push for steps like stock buybacks, management reshuffling and even the sale or spinoff of a company — events that they believe will increase shareholder value. Video Employing his typical folksy humor and optimism, the billionaire investor said that "our goal is to add to the fundamental earning power every year." Credit Credit CNBC But rather than criticizing the leaders of what he calls his “Big Four” investments — American Express, Coca-Cola, IBM and Wells Fargo — Mr. Buffett said those companies were “run by managers who are both talented and shareholder-oriented.” Mr. Buffett said he preferred to own a sizable stake in a “wonderful” company than the entirety of a so-so company. “It’s better to have a partial interest in the Hope Diamond than to own all of a rhinestone,” he wrote. When it comes to acquisitions of whole companies, Mr. Buffett tends to use a similarly passive approach. He explained in the letter how he makes acquisitions only where the managers are already avoiding bloat. That contrasts with a deal partner, the Brazilian investment firm 3G Capital, which eliminates costs immediately after buying a company, he said. Berkshire Hathaway is an amalgamation of businesses, including daily newspapers, car dealerships and ice cream stores. Conglomerates have become prime targets of activists, who have sought to break up large companies into smaller, more focused businesses. Mr. Buffett defended his hands-off, buy-and-hold style, however, recalling a line from Berkshire Hathaway’s 92-year-old vice chairman, Charlie Munger. “If you want to guarantee yourself a lifetime of misery,” he wrote, “be sure to marry someone with the intent of changing their behavior.”

Berkshire Hathaway
3G Capital Management
Warren Buffett
Shareholder Rights
Charles T Munger
Mergers and Acquisitions
Stocks,Bonds
Letters