With Financial Overhaul Near, Lobbyists Focus on Regulators

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Well before Congress reached agreement on the details of its financial overhaul legislation, industry lobbyists and consumer advocates started preparing for the next battle: influencing the creation of several hundred new rules and regulations. The bill, completed early Friday and expected to come up for a final vote this week, is basically a 2,000-page missive to federal agencies, instructing regulators to address subjects ranging from derivatives trading to document retention. But it is notably short on specifics, giving regulators significant power to determine its impact — and giving partisans on both sides a second chance to influence the outcome. The much-debated prohibition on banks investing their own money, for example, leaves it up to regulators to set the exact boundaries. Lobbyists for Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and other large banks already are pressing to exclude some kinds of lucrative trading from that definition. Regulators are charged with deciding how much money banks have to set aside against unexpected losses, so the Financial Services Roundtable, which represents large financial companies, and other banking groups have been making a case to the regulators that squeezing too hard would hurt the economy. Consumer groups, meanwhile, are mobilizing to make sure that regulators deliver on promised protections for borrowers and investors. They worry that the shift from Capitol Hill to the offices of regulators could put the groups at a disadvantage. “It’s out of the public eye, so a natural advantage that we benefit from — public outrage — we lose that a little,” said Cristina Martin Firvida, a lobbyist for AARP, which advocates for older Americans. “We know there’s still a lot here left to do.” The legislation is intended to expand federal oversight of the financial industry to police risks to the broader economy and to protect consumers of financial products. It would also impose federal regulations for the first time on the trading of derivatives, the complex financial instruments that can be used to make large bets. But Brett P. Barragate, a partner in the financial institutions practice at the law firm Jones Day, estimated that Congress had fixed in place no more than 25 percent of the details of that vast expansion. “Congress is doing this in broad strokes,” said Scott Talbott, a lobbyist for the Financial Services Roundtable. “Where the rubber meets the road is the regulatory process.” President Obama hopes to sign the bill into law by the Fourth of July. In his weekly address on Saturday, Mr. Obama said, “I urge Congress to take us over the finish line, and send me a reform bill I can sign into law, so we can empower our people with consumer protections, and help prevent a financial crisis like this from ever happening again.” His signature will start the clock on dozens of deadlines embedded in the legislation for regulators from a host of agencies, including the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, to make those decisions. Interest groups have been preparing for months. When the Consumer Bankers Association convened its annual meeting in early June, there was still plenty of time to lobby Congress. But the group’s president, Richard Hunt, told his board that the group should shift its focus to the rule-making process. The board voted to increase the group’s budget and staff. “Now we hope to have a good give and take with the regulators on the best interests of the consumer and the industry,” said Mr. Hunt. Shaping regulations is a different game than shaping legislation. Political considerations carry less weight. Instead, regulators crave data that can be used to justify decisions. Consider the new restrictions on the fees that merchants must pay to banks when customers swipe debit cards. The Nilson Report, a trade publication, estimated that last year, those fees averaged 1.63 percent of the transaction amount. The legislation directs the Federal Reserve to cap those fees at a level that is “reasonable and proportional” to the cost of processing transactions. It gives the Fed nine months to gather data and decide. Trade groups for retailers, which want a lower cap, and banks, which want a higher one, are standing by to weigh in. “We have the data ready and we have the right people ready to go to the Fed, and we’ve had an ongoing dialogue with the Fed,” said John Emling, a lobbyist for the Retail Industry Leaders Association. The debit card regulations are unusual, however, in pitting the interests of two industries against each other. Many more of the new regulations pit the interests of consumer groups against financial companies. Historically, industry groups have dominated these information wars, plying regulators with exhaustive studies and detailed analyses of the options at hand. Trade groups have more money and more people, and they often produce and control the relevant information about their business and customers. Seeking an equalizer, the AARP decided several months ago to begin preparing research that could be presented to regulators on several parts of the bill that it favored. The group was gambling that the provisions — like a requirement that investment brokers act in the interest of their clients — would end up in the final bill. “We took a risk,” said Ms. Firvida, the group’s government affairs director for financial issues. “Success will depend on how much quality information is in front of the rule makers.” The legislation would hand consumer groups a series of important victories , most notably the creation of a consumer protection bureau inside the Federal Reserve. But Ms. Firvida and others said there could be a sharp distinction between the authorities granted by the legislation and the results. Affected companies are nervous as well and are banding together. In the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis, trade groups lost members as banks cut back on spending. That trend has now reversed. The Consumer Bankers Association has added seven members in recent months, bringing its total to 60. Mr. Hunt, the group’s president, said its role was expanding in direct response to the plan to create the consumer protection bureau, which would focus on regulating his membership. “The entire financial services industry understands that what happens in Washington affects them,” he said. “It’s something other industries found out many years ago, and we’re finding it out now.” In a recent letter to the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, the American Bankers Association estimated that banks had been hit with 50 new or expanded federal regulations in the last two years. A single example, the credit card bill that passed Congress last year, landed on the desks of bankers as 252 pages of new regulations. And that count does not include the impact of the new legislation. “It’s a massive compliance burden,” said Edward L. Yingling, the group’s president. “And there is going to be massive uncertainty in the financial industry about how all of this will play out.” One clear consequence is a surge in the demand for lawyers with expertise in financial regulation , particularly those who have worked for regulatory agencies. Most of the major trade groups are hiring lawyers. The major banks say they are employing more, too. “I don’t know that there has been a bill that has touched as many different substantive areas as this one,” said A. Patrick Doyle, a partner at Arnold & Porter who has worked on financial issues for three decades. “Clearly there’s going to be a lot of work.” The surge in hiring has sent a joke bouncing around Washington: Congress finally passed a jobs bill — full employment for lawyers.

Lobbying and Lobbyists
Banks and Banking
Regulation and Deregulation of Industry
United States Politics and Government
Law and Legislation


Manhattan: Garbage Strike Ends

Abstract: Waste Management, a private garbage-hauling company, announced yesterday that it had reached an agreement with Local 813 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to end a nearly four-month strike by 115 drivers, maintenance workers and helpers who collect trash from 10,000 businesses in New York City and Westchester County. The new contract, which workers approved last week, lets them keep their existing health plan, but they will contribute to the premiums for the first time, said Eugene G. Eisner, a lawyer for the union. The two sides also reached an agreement on overtime, which was the other major issue in the dispute. The strike, which began on April 3, was the first against a private garbage hauler in the city since a five-day strike in December 1990.

Manhattan (NYC)
Waste Materials and Disposal


As His Wife’s Campaign Winds Down, Bill Clinton Remains Wound Up

Abstract: MILBANK, S.D. — Former President Bill Clinton took the microphone here on Monday and began with a lament that it might be his last day as a campaigner. If so, he went out venting the kind of anger that has punctuated his efforts to put his wife in the White House. He jumped energetically around South Dakota to what were likely to be the final small dots on the Clinton campaign’s 2008 electoral map — a campaign that at times seemed to be about Bill Clinton and the baggage he had brought to the race as much as it was about Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and her efforts to leave all that behind. After a weekend in which his aides sought to discredit an article in Vanity Fair that, relying primarily on anonymous sources, raised questions about his judgment, the company he keeps and whether he was spending time with other women, Mr. Clinton unleashed a tirade against the article’s author, Todd S. Purdum, a former reporter for The New York Times. Mr. Purdum is married to Dee Dee Myers, a White House press secretary under Mr. Clinton. According to the Huffington Post Web site, Mr. Clinton, as he worked the rope line at an event here, called Mr. Purdum “sleazy,” “slimy” and “dishonest.” Speaking to a reporter for the Web site, Mr. Clinton said the article was part of a pattern of media bias against Mrs. Clinton and in favor of her rival for the Democratic nomination, Senator Barack Obama. An audio recording of the encounter revealed that the reporter did not identify herself as a journalist and called the article a “hatchet job” before asking for Mr. Clinton’s reaction. By the end of the day, Mr. Clinton’s aides had issued a statement saying that he had been “understandably upset about an outrageously unfair article,” but that the language he had used about Mr. Purdum “was inappropriate and he wishes he had not used it.” It was the kind of episode that has gotten Mr. Clinton into trouble throughout the campaign season, and it again overshadowed his tireless stumping on behalf of Mrs. Clinton. A day before voters in Montana and here in South Dakota complete the primary voting, Mr. Clinton plowed through five solo events Monday, trundling from one rural town to another in a small motorcade, delivering hourlong appeals on behalf of his wife, before he finished the day in Sioux Falls with a final joint appearance with Mrs. Clinton and their daughter, Chelsea. The campaign events were vintage Clinton — full of a dizzying range of policy details that would daunt even the most devoted wonk, but smoothed over with a healthy dose of folksy storytelling and political emoting. Dressed in a gray suit with a blue tie, his face red, his hair white, Mr. Clinton wagged his index finger, dropped his trademark hoarse voice to a whisper to emphasize a dramatic point, even letting it catch at times, and plunged into rope lines with gusto. His prelude at an appearance here was sotto voce, with the kind of aw-shucks modesty he has perfected for small towns like this one, where 200 or so out of a population of 3,640 had gathered to hear him at their community’s “visitors center.” “I want to say also that this may be the last day I’m ever involved in a campaign of this kind,” Mr. Clinton said. “I thought I was out of politics until Hillary decided to run, but it has been one of the greatest honors of my life to be able to go around and campaign for her for president.” He introduced that touch of finality on a day Mrs. Clinton’s advisers were sticking, at least publicly, to their contention that it was not over yet, even as there were signs that her campaign was winding down. The remark appeared to be a momentary lapse — it would be the only time Mr. Clinton brought up the possibility of anything ending during a day of campaigning in which he outlined again and again his case for his wife’s lengthy candidacy. It added an element of nostalgia, however, to what could very well be the final day of campaigning for an inveterate campaigner whose political skills, to his fellow Democrats and to many Republicans as well, were long a marvel to behold. But the Vanity Fair article injected back into the campaign subjects that Mr. Clinton’s supporters have sought to tamp down as baseless and unfair. Aides to Mr. Clinton and to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign spent much of the day fighting back against the article, which asked, above all, what had become of Mr. Clinton, once considered by some a politician without peer. Mrs. Clinton’s campaign aides responded vigorously, turning the full force of their “war room” — a term epitomized by Mr. Clinton’s 1992 campaign — against Mr. Purdum and the magazine. In a memo that was nearly 2,500 words long and addressed to “Interested Parties,” the campaign accused Vanity Fair of showing a “penchant for libel.” “We believe pretty strongly that if someone is attacking you — and there’s only one way to read that piece, as an attack piece — you have to set the record straight as quickly as possible,” said the primary author of the memo, Jay Carson, a communications aide to Mrs. Clinton and a former spokesman for Mr. Clinton. Mr. Purdum issued a statement late Monday saying the article spoke for itself and was “based on interviews with dozens of high-level people who either still work for the Clintons or have worked with them or known them for years, and who continue to admire the former president in many ways.” Mr. and Mrs. Clinton’s aides have complained all year that the former president has received uneven coverage in the news media, with attention mainly focused on flare-ups and gaffes and not on his daily successful campaigning. “Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, he has been the happy warrior on the campaign trail,” said Terry McAuliffe, the Clinton campaign chairman and a close confidant of Mr. Clinton’s. “The other stuff doesn’t make news.” Defenders of the former president were quick to argue on Monday that Mr. Clinton’s prodigious political skills still far outweighed his liabilities. “The only people I know who think Bill Clinton should not be campaigning for his wife are people who don’t want his wife to win,” said Paul Begala, a former senior adviser. Many of the people interviewed at Mr. Clinton’s events Monday said that, while they disapproved of some of his personal failings, they believed the country was in much better shape while he was president. “His personal life was such a minor thing,” said Peter Vergeldt, before an event in Sisseton. “It didn’t affect how he ran the country at all.” As for how he did Monday in a final push for his wife, Mr. Clinton garnered warm, although not necessarily boisterous, applause during his appearances. One woman did faint at an event inside a barn in Webster. But the aura clearly felt more James Taylor than Mick Jagger.

Presidential Election of 2008
Clinton Bill
Purdum Todd S
Clinton Hillary Rodham
Vanity Fair
Huffington Post


Mikaela Shiffrin Easily Wins United States Slalom Title

Abstract: Mikaela Shiffrin added another title to her collection, winning the slalom by a large margin at the United States Alpine Championships in Carrabassett Valley, Maine. Shiffrin, 20, finished in an unofficial combined time of 1 minute 33.02 seconds, beating Paula Moltzan by 4.31 seconds. Megan McJames was third.


Arsenal Can’t Avoid Collapse, or Paying Its Stars

Abstract: MANCHESTER, England — It is late in coming, but it has at last arrived. According to Premier League lore, there is one month more than any other in which Arsenal is likely to collapse. Now, just when it seemed that this year might be the exception, the team is experiencing its traditional November implosion in mid-December. “We have had a horrible week,” Manager Arsène Wenger said. “Absolutely horrible.” That is no exaggeration. At midday Dec. 11, Arsenal sat proudly atop the Premier League. Seven days and two defeats later, Wenger’s team was in fourth, trailing the runaway leader, Chelsea, by 9 points. Those bare numbers are bad enough; worse still, as Wenger acknowledged, was the manner of the collapse. At Everton on Tuesday evening, Arsenal was coasting, sailing serenely to victory, all the way up to the point that it dashed itself against the rocks. An early lead provided no protection. “We did not look like we could lose the game,” Wenger said. Arsenal, though, can always be relied upon to find a way. There are mitigating circumstances, of course. After a 2-1 loss to Manchester City at Etihad Stadium on Sunday, Wenger pointed to the contentious nature of Manchester City’s goals, either of which could have been negated by an offside call. He also cited Arsenal’s arduous recent schedule to explain why his players seemed to wilt “physically and maybe mentally.” Image Raheem Sterling, middle right, scoring the go-ahead goal for Manchester City in the 71st minute against Arsenal. Credit Dave Thompson/Associated Press “We have played four out of five games away from home,” he said. “We played in Basel, against Stoke City, then played on Tuesday at Everton, so we had one day less recovery than everyone else. There are plenty of big teams who are not in Europe who could have played on Tuesday, and we could have played on Wednesday. I believe it is the accumulation of games away from home.” It is not exactly cast-iron logic — Arsenal might have had only three days between appointments with Stoke and Everton, but that does not adequately explain any fatigue the team had at Manchester, after a five-day rest — and it is not likely to hold much water with Arsenal’s supporters. This sudden sinking feeling is far too familiar for that. Arsenal may have held out for longer than normal, but that does not disguise the fact that it is happening again: a genuine title challenge downgraded from realistic ambition to fanciful aspiration; that cocktail of frustration and despair rising in the belly; the sense of the season, so recently so rich in promise, fluttering from the club’s grasp. The outlook would be gloomy enough if that were the only cloud on Wenger’s horizon, but the storm front is broader still. Sunday’s game was not, it is safe to say, one in which either of Arsenal’s crown jewels did a vast amount to justify his demand for a salary increase. One of them, Alexis Sánchez, created a Theo Walcott goal with a flash of inspiration and buzzed around with his usual intent but struggled to make much of an impact as City seized control. The other, Mesut Ozil, was little more than a peripheral presence, a mere observer of the proceedings for great stretches of the game. Each was overshadowed by his opposite number: Kevin De Bruyne, City’s most dynamic figure, always bristling with ingenuity, and David Silva, as impudent and imaginative as Ozil was plodding and pedestrian. While neither Sánchez nor Ozil will instruct his agent to use highlights from this game as part of his negotiating strategy, it would be a knee-jerk reaction in the extreme to suggest that the match provided a compelling case for Arsenal to hold its nerve and deny its stars the wages they believe they warrant. After all, it could just as easily be said that this serves as proof that it is only when one of them slips into gear that Arsenal does the same. Certainly, if Arsenal ever wants to escape this seemingly inexorable existence on the fringes of success, the club must do all it can to retain both, for the performance they provide and for the intent they symbolize. Each has 18 months to go on his existing deal. Both players — conveniently for their representatives — are apparently desired by clubs in the cash-soaked Chinese Super League. Each is said to be demanding double his current contractual pay to keep him from walking away. It is always difficult to sympathize with athletes asking for more money. Ozil, after all, is already Arsenal’s highest-paid player, earning 140,000 pounds ($175,000) per week. Sánchez is just behind him, at £130,000 per week. Neither is exactly on the bread line. Soccer salaries at the elite level, though, are only rarely about pounds and pence. They are, essentially, about respect. Players want to know how much their clubs value them — what they are worth in relation to their peers. Unfortunately for Arsenal, that suggests that Ozil and Sánchez are in line for a sizable increase. Both are among the 15 highest-paid players in England, but Sánchez, for example, earns only half what Wayne Rooney does at Manchester United — in return for what many would suggest is about twice the effect. Ozil, too, is well short of the £290,000 picked up every seven days by another of Manchester United’s pricey stars, Paul Pogba. Thanks to the Premier League’s new television deal, the sums being paid to Sánchez and Ozil — and a clutch of others who signed contracts before that £5.134 billion arrangement was announced — are now a little on the low side, compared with what others receive. It is hard to conceive it, given their wealth, but both are now underpaid, given how the market has shifted. Arsenal will, ultimately, have to accept and reflect that, if that sinking feeling is ever to be lifted.

Soccer
Arsenal Soccer Team
Manchester City Soccer Team
Alexis Sanchez
Mesut Ozil


Pebble Beach Was Made for the U.S. Open

Abstract: PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — The United States Open is returning this week to a golf course that was made for it, a spectacular site where seaside topography, strong strategic design and a dry summerlike climate have meshed in a way that has never failed to produce a national champion worthy of the title. Although best known as the stage for the annual AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, the February frolic that first gave us Jack Lemmon in his role as golf’s Sisyphus who never made the cut, the Pebble Beach Golf Links transforms every decade into possibly the best United States Open site in modern times. Since hosting its first Open, Pebble is 4 for 4 in producing Hall of Fame winners: in 1972, Jack Nicklaus; in 1982, Tom Watson ; in 1992, Tom Kite ; and in 2000, Tiger Woods , an all-but-certain first-ballot selection when eligible. “You look at the scorecard and you see it’s 7,040 yards and it’s a par 71, the first thought is that it’s very short by today’s standards,” said Mike Davis, the senior director of rules and competitions for the United States Golf Association, who has set up the Open courses since 2006 at Winged Foot. “You wonder how that can really test the world’s best players.” For Davis, 45, this is a rhetorical question. He annually oversees all 17 U.S.G.A. national championships. He knows how Pebble can best test the world’s best players. He has weighed input from current tour players, from Arnold Palmer (who oversaw the most recent redesign work on the golf course), from the Pebble Beach superintendent Chris Dalhamer, from some U.S.G.A. executives and from others. The answers are spread out across the links in ways subtle and overt, from the first hole to the last and from the easiest to the hardest. Strips of graduated rough line all fairways except those abutting the Pacific. Where possible, the tiny greens — average size: 3,300 square feet, about half the size of average Open greens — feature closely mown chipping areas; rough has been removed from the leading edges of bunkers, making them true hazards. Mix in a northwest wind, which usually prevails at this time of year, and there is a recipe for a memorable tournament. To have a good sense of how the firm, fast course will play for the 110th United States Open, start by looking at the hole that has played the easiest in relation to par in all four previous Opens here, the par-5 sixth. The sixth is the first hole on the front nine to expose the player to the full-on, breathtaking beauty of Pebble’s promontory that juts like a jaw into the Pacific. It flows uphill to an elevated green that sits next to the elevated tee for the seventh, which is the shortest hole in major championship golf, 109 yards into a desk-size green framed by crashing waves and Carmel in the distance. The eighth, with golf’s most intimidating second shot, starts with an iron or fairway wood to a cantilevered fairway that leans right and has been nudged slightly closer to the cliff. The vertigo-inducing shot across the chasm with a 5-iron or a 6-iron to the small target has been made a little friendlier by reopening the front to allow a run-up shot from the rough, something Davis also did to the left of the par-3 fifth and the 10th. This has not gone unnoticed. “I don’t think the players could ask for anything better,” Padraig Harrington said. “If a player doesn’t like something about this course setup, they need to be somewhere else.” On the heels of the difficult eighth come the a pair of par-4 terrors, the 505-yard ninth — the most difficult hole at the 2000 Open — and its brother, the 495-yard 10th. These famous par-4s run downhill, and usually downwind. If a competitor has not had a birdie by the time he reaches the 8-9-10 triangle, he could be in for a long day. Which is what makes a birdie at the 523-yard No. 6 is almost imperative, though hardly automatic. The tiny sixth green sits on a plateau some 60 feet above the fairway, which also has been moved right to bring the ocean into play on the right and is protected on the left by Arnold Palmer’s enhanced bunkering. Through the years, the right side of the hole had become overgrown. But recently, two of the large trees by the cliff were lost to disease and the bank has been shaved cleaner than the top of a Marine recruit’s head. Drives pushed in the direction of Stillwater Cove will ride the left-to-right slope of the fairway and plummet to the rocky beach below. “You remember the second shot Tiger hit in 2000 from the rough, the 7-iron from about 220?” Davis said. “That shot won’t be here this year. If you get the ball moving this way, as firm and fast as it is, it will just keep going. “The hole will probably play the easiest on the course relative to par, but it’ll be fun. I think you’ll see some eagles, but I think there will be some bogeys and even doubles if players get too aggressive.” The keys to Pebble Beach at the Open are controlled aggression. At No. 9, a drive down the left side that carries just short of the brow of the slope will feed down to the garden spot in the fairway. A carry beyond that runs the risk of bouncing down the slope and into the fast lane that leads to the world’s largest water hazard. Pebble’s finish is imprinted in the mind’s eye of any golfer who has seen it. The 17th, where the two-tiered, left-to-right sloping green sits like a strip steak surrounded by seven inverted dollops of mashed potatoes. It is where Jack Nicklaus hit the flagstick with a 1-iron in 1972 and Tom Watson figuratively hit Nicklaus a decade later with a sand wedge shot that went into the hole, denied Nicklaus a fifth Open and secured for Watson his first — and only — Open title. The winner’s triumphal walk up the fairway at the last — the par-5 18th, which may be the most-photographed hole in golf — will finish at a green framed by twin grandstands that seat thousands, obscuring part of the Lodge and rising majestically at a 45-degree angle. The fast fairway and a surprise hole position will be enticing for players who want to risk two shots and bring the ocean into play to reach the green. An eagle is a possibility, as is a bogey or a double bogey. The elaborate stage will be set for a fitting denouement to another Open at Pebble that will, if all goes as planned, crown another worthy champion at a site that has done nothing else.

United States Open (Golf)
Pebble Beach (Calif)
United States Golf Assn


Three Drivers to Watch at the Indy 500

Abstract: Three drivers to watch in Sunday’s Indianapolis 500: GRAHAM RAHAL Rahal, the 20-year-old son of the 1986 Indy 500 winner, Bobby Rahal, starts fourth, behind Helio Castroneves, the two-time champion. Graham Rahal finished last in his first Indy 500 last year, but he has won two pole positions in four IndyCar Series races this year. He is in eighth place in the standings. WILL POWER Power, a 28-year-old Australian, is the third driver for the team owned by Roger Penske, joining Castroneves and Ryan Briscoe. Power, who will start ninth, is in his second season in the IndyCar Series. As a rookie, he drove for KV Racing Technology, starting 23rd in his first Indy 500 last year and finishing 13th. PAUL TRACY Tracy, a 40-year-old Canadian, will start 13th, and will be driving in the Indy 500 for the first time since 2002. That year, Tracy finished second to Castroneves in a Team Green car in a controversial finish. Tracy passed Castroneves for what would have been the lead late in the race, but officials said a yellow flag had been waved. DAVE CALDWELL

Indianapolis 500 (Auto Race)
Automobile Racing
Power Will
Tracy Paul


Colts and Others Begin N.F.L. Season With Clunkers

Abstract: Late last week, Kerry Collins was musing about the odd turns his career had taken, the latest being the head-spinning journey from retiree to rescuer of the Indianapolis Colts less than three weeks before Sunday’s season opener. “This is much better than sitting on the couch watching games,” Collins said. Collins might feel differently now. He might not be alone. The lockout that wiped out the off-season gave the N.F.L. an unexpected gift: this was the most anxiously anticipated start to a season in history. On Sunday came the expected booby prize for all those weeks of inactivity: a day of wildly uneven, sometimes sloppy play, even from teams that made the playoffs last year and have similarly lofty goals this year. There were penalties (seven by the Cleveland Browns in the first quarter alone against Cincinnati), dropped passes, missed tackles and botched assignments. The Eagles, even in victory, still could not handle the blitz, sending Michael Vick scrambling. The Steelers had as many turnovers as points (7). The defending A.F.C. West champion Kansas City Chiefs gave up 41 points to the Buffalo Bills, who last year ranked 28th in points scored. Last year, 50 percent of games were decided by 8 points or fewer. Before the Jets’ game kicked off Sunday night, 7 of 12 games were determined by at least two touchdowns. For every eye-opening pass by Carolina’s rookie quarterback Cam Newton (who set the record for passing yards by a rookie in Week 1 with 422 yards, in the best individual performance), there was a misfire by St. Louis’s Sam Bradford, who completed 17 of 30 attempts with no touchdowns and four sacks before sustaining nerve damage in a finger. A breakout road victory by the Detroit Lions at Tampa Bay contrasted with an oddly flat performance by the Atlanta Falcons, who were blown out by the Bears. The 42-34 display of offensive crispness by the Packers and the Saints on Thursday night now seems like a throwback game — to at least last season. For most teams, the first-week foibles are tolerable because, just as the lack of preparation created jarring mistakes, the routine of the season is likely to smooth out the rough edges. The Steelers’ defense looked slow — old? — against the Ravens, but it is hard to imagine that Pittsburgh will repeatedly give up 35 points just one year after allowing a league-low 14.5 points a game. “It’s incredibly humbling,” Steelers safety Troy Polamalu said. “Which, obviously, we needed at this point. It will be interesting to see how we persevere.” But for Collins and the Colts, the first game merely might have confirmed for future opponents what they had suspected all along. Peyton Manning , probably out for the season after neck surgery, covered up a multitude of deficiencies sprinkled throughout the team, proving, if possible, that he was even more valuable than his four league Most Valuable Player awards indicated. In the Colts’ 34-7 loss to the Texans, the offensive line, with center Jeff Saturday the only starter playing in his normal position, could not protect Collins, who is much slower to release the ball than Manning is. The pocket collapsed quickly and on multiple occasions. Tight end Dallas Clark had an unenviable matchup with the Texans’ best pass rusher, Mario Williams, drafted specifically to get to Manning. Collins fumbled on consecutive snaps early in the game. The running game, an afterthought in the Manning-centric offense, remained so, rushing for just 64 yards. The defense, built small and fast to chase opposing quarterbacks who are forced to pass after their teams have fallen behind Manning’s offense, was overwhelmed by the Texans’ offensive line, giving up 167 rushing yards. And that was with the league’s leading rusher in 2010, Arian Foster, out with a hamstring injury. Worse, the pass defense looked terrible while allowing Matt Schaub to throw for 220 yards. And special teams, long a weakness, gave up a touchdown on a punt return. Those had all been issues before. They had all been rendered largely irrelevant because of Manning’s ability to score points quickly. Texans Coach Gary Kubiak called the first half, in which his team raced to a 34-0 lead, the best half Houston had ever played. For the Colts, it was something else entirely, a troubling display of vulnerability that they may simply not have the personnel to correct, although Coach Jim Caldwell said all the problems were correctable. Manning is so central to the offense that he leads the meetings with coaches, doling out assignments to find plays to support or dismiss the impressions of the opponent he has gleaned from his own film study. Even his coaches have said that most of the game plan is of Manning’s making. That command of the offense cannot be replicated, the fear and hesitation that Manning puts in defenses at the line of scrimmage not replaced, no matter how comfortable Collins eventually becomes. Collins will surely improve as he learns the playbook. The question is whether the rest of the Colts — including other Pro Bowl-caliber players like Clark, Reggie Wayne and Dwight Freeney — who were outplayed can improve, too. “This wasn’t the day, obviously, that we’d hoped for, but it’s a long season,” Collins said. “I don’t care what the situation is; we just can’t do those things and expect to have a chance to be in the ballgame. We’ve got a lot to do, obviously. We’ll get back to work.” Unfortunately for the Colts, so will the rest of the league.

Football
Indianapolis Colts
Pittsburgh Steelers
Manning Peyton
Caldwell Jim
Newton Cameron J


Garden Is a Seedbed for Green Cosmetics

Abstract: ECKWÄLDEN, Germany — You know you are not in an ordinary garden when a man in dirt-covered trousers, tending witch-hazel plants, describes his work in words that could come from Nietzsche. “It demands a higher level of consciousness and a force of will to garden at this level,” said Joscha Huter, 40, who cultivates the plants and flowers used to make the popular, expensive line of German natural cosmetics, Dr. Hauschka. “There’s a point where gardening becomes an art.” There’s also a point where it becomes a crackerjack business: this rarefied garden in a southern German valley is the seedbed for an environmental marketing phenomenon that has captivated Hollywood. Julia Roberts, Jennifer Aniston, Richard Gere and Robert Downey Jr. are among the celebrities who have publicly extolled Dr. Hauschka’s skin care products. While the stars may not express themselves like 19th-century German philosophers, their devotion has helped to win Dr. Hauschka a cultlike following from Beverly Hills to the Upper East Side. Sales of WALA Heilmittel, the maker of Dr. Hauschka, have more than doubled in the last five years, to nearly $150 million, about 8 percent of that from the United States, where it also sells herbal remedies. The 73-year-old company, which labored for decades in obscurity, now finds itself in the sweet spot of a booming market for green cosmetics. Estée Lauder, L’Oréal, and other giants are pushing all-natural brands. “Dr. Hauschka is shining because they’ve been doing this for a long time, and now everybody wants to do it,” said Joe Smillie, the senior vice president of Quality Assurance International, a San Diego firm that certifies the organic content of food, fabric and other goods. WALA is one of dozens of German companies — from windmill manufacturers to organic beverage producers — that are benefiting from a growing global appetite for environmentally friendly products. Germany’s recent economic renaissance has had an unmistakably green hue. Even in this Birkenstock land, WALA is uncommonly chaste. Visitors to the garden are asked to switch off their cellphones, for security reasons and to avoid disturbing the harmony of nature. The fact that WALA’s green label comes with a dash of Hollywood glitter makes its German managers squeamish, given that they run the company almost as a collective, with all the profits either plowed back into operations or handed out to the 700 workers. “If celebrities like Dr. Hauschka, we’re happy, of course,” said Philip Lettmann, WALA’s chief financial officer. “But we’re even happier if an ordinary person with a skin problem finds help by using our products. Our philosophy was here long before the green trend began.” Indeed, the company’s roots are in herbal medicine. WALA was founded in 1935 by Rudolf Hauschka, a Viennese chemist who sought to develop remedies using only natural ingredients. In 1967, it added the skin care line, named after the founder, who died two years later. The company’s name — an acronym that stands for Warmth and Ashes, Light and Ashes — suggests a crystals-and-karma sensibility more suited to Northern California than southern Germany. But WALA is based on a school of early 20th-century European philosophy known as anthroposophy. Developed by the Austrian theorist Rudolf Steiner, the philosophy is predicated on the existence of a spiritual world that can be accessed by the human intellect. Mr. Steiner’s thinking was also influential in more down-to-earth matters. He championed biodynamic agriculture, a rigorous form of organic farming that shuns pesticides and uses no fertilizers that were not already present in the garden. An acolyte of Mr. Steiner, Rudolf Hauschka planted a biodynamic garden in this town, 28 miles west of Stuttgart, in 1955. There, a team of eight gardeners cultivates more than 150 plants, flowers and trees, ranging from Echinacea to monk’s hood. They are harvested by hand, then crushed and dried. Extracts are taken with water, never alcohol. For the company’s rose cream, one of its signature products, it buys large amounts of rose oil from suppliers in Turkey, Bulgaria, Iran and Afghanistan. The trade allows WALA to engage in more planetary good works. In Afghanistan, it is encouraging farmers to plant roses in place of opium poppies, said Antal Adam, the chief spokesman. A public relations executive who used to work in Cologne, Mr. Adam took a pay cut to join WALA. Like so many of the employees, he seems to have drunk the organic Kool-Aid — only in this case, it is bitter elixir, a foul-tasting herbal remedy that he cheerfully swigs after lunch to aid digestion. The same fervor, Mr. Adam said, applies to WALA’s celebrities, who get free samples but no money for their endorsements. “We could always buy a face,” he said. “Our celebrities do this because they are convinced of the product.” Dr. Hauschka’s success in the United States owes much to Susan West Kurz, a beauty expert and author who transformed a tiny import business into a franchise. The key was introducing Hollywood makeup artists to the products, which she did with the help of her first husband, the character actor J. T. Walsh. “Right up until the end, he was talking about it,” Ms. West Kurz said of Mr. Walsh, who died in 1998 after a career playing memorable villains in films, including “Pleasantville.” “There was a mystique around it.” Even today, Dr. Hauschka clings to its image by shunning department or convenience stores. It is available in natural product stores, pharmacies and from licensed skin care specialists. In 2007, it left the Sephora chain of cosmetic stores, which is known for thoroughly training its saleswomen, because it says Sephora balked at training them adequately to sell Dr. Hauschka. The company has also refused to sign on to industry certifications in the United States for organic or natural products, because it says its methods are more rigorous than competitors that claim to be organic or all-natural. “Over the last 30 years, every major brand has usurped some of our language,” Ms. West Kurz said. While Dr. Hauschka’s image is powerful, it is not bulletproof. Sales in the United States have sputtered in recent weeks, after a strong first quarter. Executives chalk it up to the soaring price of gasoline, which they say has discouraged shopping for cosmetics. Perhaps the fullest expression of WALA’s philosophy is its unorthodox ownership structure. The original owners gave up their stakes in 1986, creating a foundation that is legally owned by the German public, and hence cannot be sold. A similar legal arrangement in the United States makes it impossible to sell the American distribution rights. Many suitors have tried. In 1997, Estée Lauder paid $300 million for Aveda, a maker of natural beauty products, while L’Oréal paid $1.1 billion for the Body Shop in 2006. “I get called by private equity firms every day,” said Mirran Rephaely, the chief executive of Dr. Hauschka in the United States. In Eckwälden, Mr. Lettmann also gets calls. Before joining WALA, he worked for a private equity firm in Munich. Now he keeps a bottle of bitter elixir next to his desk, and sounds less like a finance whiz than a soul mate of Mr. Huter, the philosophical gardener. “WALA exists in the economic world, but we don’t work for profits,” he said. “Our primary impulse, from the beginning, is healing.”

WALA Heilmittel
Cosmetics and Toiletries
Sustainable Living
Flowers and Plants
Agriculture
Environment
Hollywood (Calif)
Germany


Tunisia: Islamist Group Granted License

Abstract: Tunisia ’s government has granted a license to the hard-line Islamist group Hizb al-Tahrir to allow it to become a legal political party, making it the second such group to join the political mainstream after renouncing violence. Hizb al-Tahrir seeks to re-establish the caliphate, a defunct form of Islamic empire. It does not endorse democracy or take part in elections, focusing mostly on preaching. The group is banned in several countries and was repressed in Tunisia before last year’s revolution ousted the secular dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and brought the current moderate Islamist Ennahda party into power. In May, the government granted a political license to another Salafi Islamist party, Islah Front, drawing criticism from secularists.


A ‘Do It’ Kind of Woman Waits for the Strength to Get Back to Being Herself

Abstract: Try as she might, Carolyn Davidson knows she can no longer deny that at 67, she is starting to feel her age, especially the past few months. Her body aches, colds linger, her steps more deliberate, her energy easily sapped. Her apartment, a tidy, decorated nook in Queens she shares with her three cats, reflects her less mobile life. Clutter, or rather the few stray items she designates as such, tends to accumulate more often. The wooden floors are overdue for a waxing. Laundry has piled up. The kitchen stove is mostly cold these days, with months passed since it lit up under fried chicken, beef stew and liverwurst. It will all have to wait. “I’m not going to wear myself out until I’m back to Carolyn,” she said. And there will be a return of the spry Carolyn, she asserts. She cannot bear to think otherwise. “I might do it a little at a time, but I’m not going to let nothing put me down,” she said. “I can’t, because if I do I’ll just wither away, and I don’t want to wither away.” Even when Ms. Davidson retired in 2011, after decades as a social worker supporting older clients, she took on a part-time job at the Robert Couche Senior Citizens’ Center in Jamaica, Queens. “They’re the forgotten population,” Ms. Davidson said. “There are so many things that seniors don’t know they are eligible for, it’s ridiculous. That was my calling.” Retirement has left her on a fixed monthly income of $1,088 from Social Security, which suits her just fine. She also receives $194 in food stamps and gets help from a local food pantry operated by Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens, one of the eight organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. “I live a real simple life,” she said. “I’ve already had my turn out there.” Contentment comes easy. Helping others is gratifying work. In her downtime, Ms. Davidson enjoys gabbing with her twin sister on the phone or catching up with her two sons. She has friendships with many neighbors in her corner of Astoria and has regularly walked their dogs to stay active. “Whatever I’ve got to do, let’s go do it,” she said. It is a simple but fulfilling life, but it has not been the same since one morning in 2015. While applying lipstick in the mirror before volunteer duty, Ms. Davidson spotted a lump on her neck that had not been there the night before. “It was just sitting there,” she said, before pausing. “I knew what it was.” Ms. Davidson had squamous cell carcinoma, a skin cancer, and underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatment at Montefiore Medical Center. Her final radiation treatment was last December; she has been in remission since. But the disease and the draining aftereffect of treatment have prevented her from working. “My heart was there, but my body isn’t any more,” she said. “It hurts. For me it hurts because I can’t give out the services they need.” Because Ms. Davidson’s income disqualified her from receiving traditional Medicaid, she had to enroll in a reduced Medicaid plan for higher earners and has had to use her own money to pay off portions of medical bills. After paying her $663 monthly rent and more in utilities, she has only $389 remaining each month to pay for everything else and any unexpected costs. In April, she received a hospital bill for $239. She could not afford it. The debt halted her Medicaid benefits. “I told the billing company I can’t give you what I don’t have,” Ms. Davidson said. She approached several charitable organizations for help, not expecting to find relief from the same organization stocking her kitchen, Catholic Charities. The organization does not typically pay for medical bills but made an exception in her case. Catholic Charities secured $239 in Neediest funds to cover her debt, allowing her Medicaid plan to resume. “I really don’t know what I would have done without them,” she said. Cancer-free and optimistic, Ms. Davidson still waits for her strength to return. Her immune system is slow to recover nowadays. Patience was never her strong suit, not with so much still to do. “They say it takes time,” Ms. Davidson said. “But I wanted it yesterday.”

New York Times Neediest Cases Fund
Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens
Skin cancer


German Businesses Urge Fiscal Discipline for Euro Zone

Abstract: BERLIN (Reuters) — Germany’s main business lobbies on Sunday called on countries sharing the euro currency to adopt tough rules on fiscal discipline at a summit meeting on Friday aimed at sorting out Europe’s debt crisis. In an open letter to euro zone leaders, the chiefs of four industry associations urged countries to adopt the German proposals. “We thus support the government’s proposals for solid budgets and competitive European economies,” they wrote. “Collectivizing debt — as is being debated — would on the contrary overburden strong states and weaken Europe.” Germany, with the backing of France, wants euro zone countries to make a competitiveness pact at the meeting in Brussels in exchange for increasing the scope and capacity of an emergency bailout fund. Financial markets are monitoring the situation, particularly because Germany is reluctant to pour more money into the fund. The surprise announcement last week that the European Central Bank may raise interest rates this spring heightened anxiety about Europe’s ability to contribute to the global recovery. In comments released Sunday, Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, said he hoped a basic agreement would be reached on the pact. The industry associations also want Europe’s next bailout fund, which is to replace the current fund in 2013, to be activated only as a last resort when the stability of the whole bloc is in danger. They say it must include an orderly procedure to deal with state insolvency.

European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- )
Credit and Debt
Stocks and Bonds
Schauble Wolfgang
Germany
Europe
France


Worker Who Killed 8 in 2010 Was Not Bias Victim, Police Say

Abstract: MANCHESTER, Conn. (AP) — There is no evidence to support a man’s claim that he was a victim of racism before he fatally shot eight co-workers at a beer distribution company last summer, the police in this central Connecticut town said Thursday. The man, Omar S. Thornton , who was black, “did not seem to understand the concept of seniority” and believed that he was subjected to racism in his job at Hartford Distributors, Police Chief Marc Montminy said, releasing the report of his department’s investigation into the shootings. The company’s most senior drivers pick the best routes, leaving the remainder for less senior workers like Mr. Thornton, Chief Montminy said. Mr. Thornton shot 10 people, eight of them fatally, within three minutes on Aug. 3 before killing himself. Chief Montminy said it was the worst mass shooting in Connecticut’s history. Immediately before the shootings, Mr. Thornton was fired for stealing beer. Afterward, he called 911 and told an operator: “This place is a racist place. They’re treating me bad over here and treat all other black employees bad over here, too. So I took it to my own hands and handled the problem.” Mr. Thornton’s friends and family have said he had long complained about racial injustice. Chief Montminy said investigators found no evidence of racism at the company, but were told that a drawing of President Obama with a noose around his neck was seen on a bathroom wall months before the shootings and was quickly removed by the company. The union at the distributorship said last year that of 69 dock workers at the company, four were black, nine Hispanic and one Asian. The police report said Mr. Thornton had made racist comments himself. A co-worker told the authorities that Mr. Thornton asked him if he knew any good white men and said, “You got to kill them before they go bad.” The police say the shootings appeared random. Mr. Thornton, 34, shot several workers with whom he had disputes and others with whom he had little contact, Chief Montminy said. He did not shoot two disabled workers, one who was in a wheelchair and one who is mentally disabled, “when clearly he had the opportunity to shoot them,” the police chief said.

Thornton Omar S
Murders and Attempted Murders
Discrimination
Hartford Distributors
Labor and Jobs
Connecticut


Costly Last-Minute Deals for the Super Bowl Crowd - On the Road

Abstract: HOW much? For corporations and individuals headed to New Orleans for the Super Bowl this weekend, the answer is: a lot. Super Bowl weekend and related pregame activities represent the biggest single-event corporate travel and entertainment spending spree of any year. This year, the Super Bowl will probably generate about $185 million in local spending by visitors on hotels, meals and entertainment, according to a report released on Monday by PricewaterhouseCoopers. That’s an increase of almost 25 percent from the $150 million that the firm estimated was spent in Indianapolis during Super Bowl week last year. But it’s down from the $200 million spent in Dallas for the 2011 Super Bowl, where a new stadium and two teams with big followings, the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers, helped increase spending despite a slack economy. Adam W. Jones, the director of the sports and tourism sector at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said the increase over last year was an affirmation of perceptions about a successful recovery in New Orleans. So what are your prospects for finding a last-minute hotel room in New Orleans for the weekend? You’re pretty much out of luck — unless you have a prime contact at the National Football League or its corporate affiliates, which long ago booked more than 25,000 of the estimated 37,000 hotel rooms in the area. On Monday, the only hotel accommodations I could find in New Orleans were at LaPlace Motel near the airport (a motel about which a review last year on Hotels.com says succinctly, “It’s cheap and we needed a dog friendly so we pick this one.”) LaPlace could still accommodate you (and your dog) on Saturday and Sunday night for $839.48. But come back a week later and the Saturday and Sunday night price is $169 — a difference that would cover a lot of dog biscuits. Image Credit Chris Gash Some Super Bowl packages offered by brokers include game tickets costing more than $7,000 each (one offers a luxury suite that holds about 30 people for $300,000). Another offered a room for two at a modest three-star hotel and two end-zone tickets for $14,000. Airlines have also raised prices for the Super Bowl — at least in the markets for the two teams, the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens. On Monday, San Francisco-to-New Orleans round-trip coach fares were listed in the $1,300 to $2,000 range on booking sites like Orbitz and Travelocity. But it always pays to check the airlines’ Web sites. On Monday morning, American Airlines still had an available flight departing San Francisco on Saturday and returning on Monday at $560 for the cheapest coach seat and $1,013 for first class. But a few hours later, American’s Web site listed no available flights. Of course, you could always fly private. Super Bowl destinations always experience a big influx of corporate jets. And assuming you don’t already have your own corporate or private jet, or at least a fractional share in one, it also pays to shop around. This year, demand for private flights to the Super Bowl is “just not as high as we’ve seen in the past,” said Chet Dudzik Jr., the president of JetWay Private Air, a broker for charter flights on private jets of all models. Last year, with the Super Bowl played by teams from New York and Boston, a record of about 1,100 private jets descended on Indianapolis. This year, with teams from smaller markets playing, flights and parking slots for planes at area airports were still available. How much? Well, there’s a vast range of prices for chartering a private jet, often with numerous extra fees to cover things like fuel and repositioning a plane or crew. JetWay Private Air, which Mr. Dudzik says has “no surprises” in hidden fees, was offering charter flights at these prices last week: For a light-jet round-trip flight seating six to eight passengers between San Francisco and New Orleans, $34,998. For big heavy-jet models, with cabins seating 10 to 16 people, $71,998. Private jets also offer the convenience of using general aviation airports to avoid the hassles of commercial airports. For one thing, there are no Transportation Security Administration checkpoints. Instead, after being cleared against security watch lists, passengers simply stroll on board. On the other hand, commercial airlines will be taking off as usual from New Orleans right after the game. But for security reasons, the Federal Aviation Administration imposes special restrictions on noncommercial flights in airspace over New Orleans in the hours before, during and immediately after the Super Bowl. Traffic jams for private planes trying to take off on Sunday night are notorious. For clients who insist on leaving right after the game rather than staying the night, “you just have to warn people” about takeoff delays, Mr. Dudzik said. “We’ll order additional complimentary catering, a few extra bottles of wine or more food,” he said. Crews are trained to deal with impatient passengers, often wealthy individuals who “are able to control a lot of things in their lives, and who think they can control when they depart right after the game — but they just can’t.” Oh well, as Gilda Radner usually said woefully in character as Roseanne Roseannadanna years ago on “Saturday Night Live”: “It’s always something. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”

Super Bowl
Business travel
Airlines,airplanes
Hotels
Football


An Ice Sheet the Size of New Mexico Hidden in Martian Crater

Abstract: An ice sheet with more water than Lake Superior may slake the thirst of future astronauts living on Mars. Using radar soundings from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft, scientists probed what lies in Utopia Planitia , a 2,000-mile-wide basin within an ancient impact crater. For decades, the region looked intriguing because of polygonal cracking and scalloped depressions in the landscape. In places on Earth like the Canadian Arctic, patterns like these arise from ice beneath the surface. The ground cracks as ice underneath expands and contracts with the changing temperatures; the scallops, as if carved by an ice cream scoop, are places where the surface sinks as the ice melts. “We’d say, ‘It looks like there’s ground ice there,’” Cassie Stuurman, a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, said about Utopia Planitia. “What we haven’t known is how much is there.” An older NASA orbiter, Mars Odyssey , found the region dry, but its instruments could only investigate about a yard beneath the surface. Ground-penetrating radar on Reconnaissance could peer much deeper into the ground, collecting data as the orbiter made more than 600 passes. Ms. Stuurman, the lead author of an article in the journal Geophysical Research Letters that described the findings, said the radar reflections revealed that the ice sheet, ranging in thickness from 260 to 560 feet, covered an area larger than New Mexico. The ice is fairly pure — at least 50 percent frozen water — with dirt, rocks and porous empty spaces mixed in, researchers believe. “That’s kind of what I’m imagining,” Ms. Stuurman said. Water ice is plentiful at the Martian poles, but Utopia Planitia might be a more attractive landing site for future astronauts, because it is in the more temperate mid-northern latitudes. Water ice cannot persist on this part of the Martian surface. The solid ice would transform to water vapor and float away. But hidden by a layer of soil, the ice remains. In addition to providing something to drink, water could be split into oxygen and hydrogen for rocket fuel. Ms. Stuurman said the vast deposit of ice suggests that it accumulated as snowfall during one of the planet’s ice ages and was later buried. She said there were no signs that this snow ever melted into a lake.


74 State, in Albany, Prepares for Inauguration Guests

Abstract: Albany is, in some ways, a part-time destination. When the Legislature is not in session, government, the city’s most vibrant industry, clears out. But in anticipation of Andrew M. Cuomo ’s inauguration as governor on Saturday and his State of the State address next week, the capital city, speckled with snow and some holdover Christmas wreaths, is gearing up. When the business of government comes to life, one address has gained a reputation for being the place to be to mingle with politicians and those interested in what they do: 74 State. “We’re sold out in the hotel for the State of the State, and we’re very close for the inauguration,” said Terri DeVoe, the general manager of 74 State , a boutique hotel, restaurant and bar, down the hill from the Capitol. The 74-room hotel, which opened at the end of 2006, is a haunt for lobbyists and some legislators. It pulls this crowd by virtue of its atmosphere, which some liken to a New York City locale’s, and its proximity to the Capitol. “It’s incredibly convenient,” said Jack O’Donnell, a lobbyist based in Buffalo. “On a cold winter day, they’ll have a little fire going. You can’t underestimate that.” The hotel, which has made headlines this year for its financial troubles, is the sort of place where the bartenders are likely to know more about pending legislation than some lobbyists do. “We indoctrinate our staff,” Ms. DeVoe said. “What you hear goes in, and it doesn’t come out.” Striped Tie or Fish Print? One Saturday morning in October, Mr. Cuomo stood in a crowded restaurant in Sherburne, N.Y., campaigning for governor. He spoke, shook hands and patted a few backs. Then, he fielded questions from reporters: Mr. Cuomo, what’s on your tie? “You know, that’s the hardest question of the day,” he said, holding the tie in his hands and peering down. “Fish,” he said. Then, flipping it over to glance at the label — Ferragamo. “Italian fish,” he added. Mr. Cuomo is in many ways a prototypical politician. He is cautious when staking out a position. He is careful with his public utterances. He wears the obligatory dark suit. But one thing stands out in his well-rehearsed image: he eschews the usual sober neckwear of fellow politicians for ties that are often, well, cute. And while Mr. Cuomo has given a great deal of thought to what promises to be the muted scale of his inauguration, there is no word on whether he has chosen his tie. Instead of the standard blue stripes, he could wear a tie with an underwater scene showing crabs crawling across his chest. Or perhaps he will leave the solid red at home in favor of teeny American flags waving against a baby-blue background. An aide who had been briefed on the issue said that these rather darling ties started popping up in Mr. Cuomo’s wardrobe a few years ago at the insistence of his three daughters. They still pick out most of them. Though Mr. Cuomo does not have a lucky tie, per se, he is partial to one dotted with sea lions. Perhaps there will be little sea creatures poking out from behind his palm when he takes the oath of office. “His daughters,” Josh Vlasto, Mr. Cuomo’s spokesman, said, “have not rendered their verdict yet.” Looking for a Rental When Mr. Cuomo takes the office of governor, he will move in to the Executive Mansion, a Victorian home on Eagle Street in Albany, with 40 rooms, a large wraparound porch and a turret. His lieutenant governor, Robert J. Duffy, will be looking for a month-to-month rental apartment. With each governor, the questions come: Will he move to Albany? Will he occupy the mansion? But what of his No. 2? “Nobody’s ever asked me where the lieutenant governor lives,” said Gerald Benjamin, a political scientist at the State University of New York at New Paltz. “But I would not condemn anybody for keeping his house. Lots of elected leaders make temporary housing arrangements in Albany and function perfectly well having done that.” Unlike many lawmakers who commute, Mr. Duffy does not foresee a simple back and forth from home to the office — a good thing, since the drive from Rochester, where he has been mayor, to Albany takes about four hours. Instead, he sees himself as Mr. Cuomo’s itinerant other half. He will be “doing whatever the governor needs me to do and being wherever the governor needs me to be,” Mr. Duffy wrote in an e-mail, “whether it’s in Albany, New York City, Long Island or Rochester.” While Mr. Duffy wanders the state, his wife, Barbara, will hold down the family fort in Rochester, where the younger of their two daughters is living while she finishes college. Mr. and Mrs. Duffy plan to reassess the dual households in about a year. Mr. Duffy has only two requirements for his rental: It must come with a month-to-month lease, and it needs to be a good starting point for a jog. He has run the New York City Marathon three times and does not intend to let his running regimen slide in his new position.

Politics and Government
Hotels and Motels
Cuomo Andrew M
Albany (NY)


Consumers Win Some Mortgage Safety in New Rules

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Banks and other lenders will be prohibited from making home loans that offer deceptive teaser rates or require no documentation from borrowers, and will be required to take more steps to ensure that borrowers can repay, under new consumer protections to be announced on Thursday. The rules, being laid out by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and taking effect next January, will also set some limits on interest-only packages or negative-amortization loans, where the balance due grows over time. Banks can make such loans, but the new rules would not protect them from potential borrower lawsuits if they do so. And mortgage originators will in most cases be restricted from charging excessive upfront points and fees, from making loans with balloon payments and from making loans that load a borrower with total payments exceeding 43 percent of income. With the sweeping rules, financial regulators are trying to substantially overhaul the market for home mortgages by creating a legal distinction between “qualified” loans that follow the new rules and are immune from legal action, and “unqualified” mortgages that continue practices that regulators have frowned on. The new rules are also aimed at getting banks to lend again, something they have been slow to do since the financial crisis and since the Dodd-Frank Act required new limits on bank activities. Gone, the regulators hope, will be the unbridled frenzy that encouraged lenders to ignore whether borrowers could repay as long as the lenders could sell the mortgages to third parties, usually investment firms that sliced them up and resold them as part of complex financial derivatives. By following the new rules , banks will be given a “safe harbor,” which ensures that they cannot be successfully sued for reckless or abusive lending practices, federal officials said Wednesday. Lenders must document a borrower’s ability to repay a loan; one way of doing that is to follow several guidelines issued Thursday that make a loan a “qualified” mortgage. “When consumers sit down at the closing table, they shouldn’t be set up to fail with mortgages they can’t afford,” said Richard Cordray, the director of the consumer bureau. “Our ability-to-repay rule protects borrowers from the kinds of risky lending practices that resulted in so many families losing their homes.” Image Richard Cordray is the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Credit Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times Mortgage bankers generally applauded the new regulations, saying that they clear up uncertainty that has hung over the home lending business since the financial crisis. In fact, most of the types of loans now being restricted, which were rampant during the inflation of the housing bubble, have been relatively rare in the last couple of years because many banks have tightened lending since the financial crisis. “These rules offer protection for consumers and a clear, safe environment for banks to do business,” David Stevens, chief executive of the Mortgage Bankers Association, said in an interview. “Now everybody knows if you stay inside these lines, you are safe.” He added that he believed the consumer bureau “did a great job listening to stakeholders” in shaping the rule. The new rules will not necessarily lead to an immediate expansion of credit, Mr. Stevens said, because nearly all mortgage loans being made currently are being sold to government-sponsored enterprises like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Their underwriting standards are not affected by the new rules. In certain circumstances, the new lending rules can be bypassed for up to seven years, regulators said. New loans can be considered to be a “qualified loan” even if the borrower has a payment-to-income ratio of more than 43 percent as long as the loan is eligible for purchase or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, for example, or by one of several executive branch agencies, like the Department of Veterans Affairs. The consumer bureau said that the exception was created “in light of the fragile state of the mortgage market as a result of the recent mortgage crisis.” Without the exception, the bureau said, “creditors might be reluctant to make loans that are not qualified mortgages, even if they are responsibly underwritten.” Similarly, the new rules allow balloon payments in mortgages that are originated by and retained in the portfolio of small lenders that operate primarily in rural or underserved areas. The legal protections offered to lenders by the qualified mortgage rule are not absolute. Lenders do not receive complete immunity from lawsuits in all circumstances. Some higher-priced loans, given to consumers with weak credit, can be challenged if the borrower can prove that he did not have sufficient income to pay the mortgage and other living expenses. And the rules do not affect the rights of consumers to challenge a lender for violating other federal consumer protection laws. “We believe this rule does exactly what it is supposed to do,” Mr. Cordray said in a statement prepared for delivery Thursday morning in Baltimore, where the rules are being announced. “It protects consumers and helps strengthen the housing market by rooting out reckless and unsustainable lending, while enabling safer lending,” he said.

Mortgage loan
Banking and Finance
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Consumer protection
Personal finance
Dodd Frank
Real Estate
Housing
Richard Cordray


Mets Fall to Astros in Battle for National League’s Worst Record

Abstract: On a chilly, wet night at Citi Field, two teams tied with the worst record in the National League played a game that would hand sole possession of the league’s cellar to the loser. The Mets could not have been more deserving of the honor. Looking as inept as they have all year, which is no idle claim, the Mets lost, 6-1, to the Houston Astros in a game that may have marked the lowest point of the season so far, and that includes the two consecutive doubleheader losses. They made two errors, one of which lead to a run, they balked in a run in the eighth inning as the Astros scored three times to pad their lead, and they went 0 for 6 with runners in scoring position. In summation, they were swept aside by a team that could easily go on to lose close to 100 games. Perhaps the only positive aspect of the game was that so few people actually witnessed it. The announced attendance was 27,032 hearty and loyal souls, but by the time it was over, only a fraction remained, and only one team was left standing with the title of worst team in the league. The Mets’ record stands at 5-12, which tied them with the 1974 Mets for the third-worst record after 17 games. Only the 1962 Mets, who lost 120 games, and the 1964 team, which lost 111, got off to worse starts. With Tuesday’s loss the Mets have lost 11 of their last 13 games. “This has to stop," said Carlos Beltran, who homered in the seventh for the Mets’ only run. “We are better than this. There’s no magic formula. We just have to play better in every aspect of the game — hitting, pitching, fielding and running the bases.” On Sunday, when the Mets earned their lone victory in their last nine games, they used two starting pitchers in relief in a game that Manager Terry Collins managed as if it were a playoff elimination game. That tactic cannot be used every game, and on Tuesday, Collins reverted to convention by using strictly relief pitchers after starter Jon Niese left. The result was not good. The Astros scored four runs off the Mets’ bullpen, including three runs in the eighth. Collins said he was worried about the bullpen continuing to give up runs late in games. “We’ve got to stop it,” he said. “I’m very concerned about it. Late in the games we’re continuing to give up big numbers and that’s killing us.” With intermittent drizzle and a first-pitch temperature of 51 degrees, this game between two weak teams, played on the same night the Knicks and the Boston Celtics were playing a hotly contested N.B.A. playoff game, was never going to be widely attended. But considering the conditions, the fact that the Knicks were on television, and the quality of competition, the audience was relatively large, at least for a few innings. Before the game, the Mets hoped to shake up their offense with a roster move, ending their brief infatuation with Brad Emaus. That came to an abrupt halt Tuesday when the Mets decided they have been playing too poorly to have the luxury of watching Emaus stumble while they wait him to develop. So 16 games into the season, the Mets began the process of sending Emaus, a Rule 5 pick, back to the Toronto Blue Jays, a move that could mean more playing time for Daniel Murphy at second base. “It’s ultimately about where we are right now and what we’ve got to do to get this thing rolling,” Collins said, “and that’s why we thought a change had to be made at second.” Less than a month into the season, the Mets have already given up on two players they brought north from spring training: Emaus and relief pitcher Blaine Boyer. INSIDE PITCH Jason Bay could be back Wednesday after he hit two home runs and went 4 for 4 in a rehabilitation game for Class A St. Lucie. There is a strong chance the Mets could put Bobby Parnell on the disabled list with discomfort and numbness in his right middle finger, to make room for Bay. ... Fans holding tickets marked Tuesday, April 19 — Game 8 can redeem them at the Citi Field ticket office beginning Wednesday for a complimentary ticket to one of the May 30 to June 2 games against the Pittsburgh Pirates, subject to availability.

Baseball
New York Mets
Houston Astros
Parnell Bobby
Collins Terry L
Emaus Brad


Yankees Send Shawn Kelley to Padres for Johnny Barbato

Abstract: In another transaction that adds youth to the team and saves a few dollars, the Yankees traded the veteran right-handed relief pitcher Shawn Kelley to the San Diego Padres for a 22-year-old minor league right-hander, Johnny Barbato, a promising pitcher who missed much of last year with an elbow injury. Barbato had a 2.87 earned run average and 33 strikeouts in 311/3 relief innings for Class AA San Antonio in 2014, but the Padres shut him down because of a sore elbow, and he may eventually require surgery. The Yankees were aware of the extent of the injury before making the trade. In two years with the Yankees, Kelley, 30, was regularly called upon by Manager Joe Girardi to pitch in the seventh inning with the team ahead. Kelley had a 4.46 earned run average and gave up 13 home runs in 105 innings over 116 games. While Kelley’s statistics have declined over the past two seasons, the Padres feel he will have great success in their more spacious ballpark and against National League West hitters. Kelley made $1.765 million in 2014 and is approaching his final year of arbitration. Next year he is eligible to become a free agent. Barbato was a sixth-round draft pick by the Padres in 2010 out of Felix Varela High School in Miami. Among the players the Yankees have acquired this off-season are Didi Gregorius, 24, for the 26-year-old pitcher Shane Greene. They also traded Martin Prado, 31, and David Phelps, 28, for the 24-year-old Nathan Eovaldi, the 33-year-old Garrett Jones and the 22-year-old Domingo German, and signed a 26-year-old lefty pitching prospect, Jose De Paula.

Baseball
Shawn Kelley
Johnny Barbato
Sports Trades
Yankees
Padres


University of Miami Establishes Chair for Study of Atheism

Abstract: With an increasing number of Americans leaving religion behind, the University of Miami received a donation in late April from a wealthy atheist to endow what it says is the nation’s first academic chair “for the study of atheism, humanism and secular ethics.” The chair has been established after years of discussion with a $2.2 million donation from Louis J. Appignani , a retired businessman and former president and chairman of the modeling school Barbizon International, who has given grants to many humanist and secular causes — though this is his largest so far. The university, which has not yet publicly announced the new chair, will appoint a committee of faculty members to conduct a search for a scholar to fill the position. “I’m trying to eliminate discrimination against atheists,” said Mr. Appignani, who is 83 and lives in Florida. “So this is a step in that direction, to make atheism legitimate.” Religion departments and professors of religious studies are a standard feature at most colleges and universities, many originally founded by ministers and churches. The study of atheism and secularism is only now starting to emerge as an accepted academic field, scholars say, with its own journal, conferences, course offerings and, now, an endowed chair. “I think it’s a very bold step of the University of Miami, and I hope there will be others,” said Richard Dawkins , an evolutionary biologist and atheist luminary who is the author of “ The God Delusion .” “It’s enormously important to shake off the shackles of religion from the study of morality,” Mr. Dawkins said in a telephone interview from his home in Britain. The percentage of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has risen rapidly in a short time, to 23 percent of the population in 2014, up from 16 percent in 2007, according to a report by the Pew Research Center . Younger people are even less religious, with 35 percent of millennials saying they identify as atheist, agnostic or with no religion in particular. Secular Americans are beginning to organize themselves politically. Next month, nonbelievers are headed to Washington to lobby Congress and hold a “ Reason Rally ” at the Lincoln Memorial to showcase their numbers and promote the separation of church and state. With atheists still often stigmatized and disparaged in this country, it took some persuading for the University of Miami to agree to create a chair with the word “atheism” in the title, according to Harvey Siegel, a professor of philosophy who has helped to broker the arrangement. He said that more than 15 years ago, when he was chairman of the philosophy department, he and Mr. Appignani first began discussing the idea for a chair to study atheism and secularism. “There was great reluctance on the part of the university to have an endowed chair with the word ‘atheism’ in the name, and that was a deal-breaker for Lou,” Mr. Siegel said. “He wasn’t going to do it unless it had the word atheism in it.” The university had reason to be cautious, Thomas J. LeBlanc, executive vice president and provost, said in an interview. “We didn’t want anyone to misunderstand and think that this was to be an advocacy position for someone who is an atheist,” he said. “Our religion department isn’t taking an advocacy position when it teaches about Catholicism or Islam. Similarly, we’re not taking an advocacy position when we teach about atheism or secular ethics.” Asked whether he anticipated any backlash, Mr. LeBlanc said: “This is an area where people can get overly excited if they don’t actually look carefully at what’s happening. The idea that there are nondeity approaches to explaining our surroundings is not controversial in the academy.” Mr. Appignani said he rejected a last-minute proposal from a dean to call it a chair in “philosophical naturalism.” Instead, he and the university leaders worked out the title, broadening the scope by including humanism and secular ethics. Mr. Appignani was raised a Roman Catholic in the Bronx by Italian immigrant parents. His father was a clothing presser in the garment district. He attended Catholic schools and said he became a nonbeliever at the City College of New York when he discovered the work of Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher and Nobel Prize winner. With the money he made from the Barbizon school, he said, he created the foundation that has given grants to groups like the American Humanist Association and the Secular Coalition for America , and the Appignani Humanist Legal Center. Over the years, Mr. Appignani has sponsored two public lectures by Mr. Dawkins at the University of Miami. The discussions about a chair gained momentum last year with the arrival of a new university president, Julio Frenk , Mr. Siegel said. Dr. Frenk announced that he intended to recruit new talent by creating 100 new chairs in time for the university’s centennial anniversary, in 2025, said Margot S. Winick, an assistant vice president at the university. The chair in atheism is the fifth he has added so far, she said. Pitzer College , a liberal arts school in Southern California with about 1,000 students, became the first to begin a program and major in secular studies five years ago. Phil Zuckerman , a sociologist of religion who founded the program, said it now offered four courses on secularism of its own and many others by the six professors associated with the department. Only two students have chosen to major in secular studies, he said, but the courses are popular. For its “Secularism and Skepticism” class last year, he turned away 25 students, more than the 22 he was able to admit. Scholars have formed a “ Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network ,” which is holding its fourth conference this summer in Zurich. A peer-reviewed journal, “ Secularism and Nonreligion ,” is now up and running. “There is a real need for secular studies,” Mr. Zuckerman said. “As rates of irreligion continue to rise, not only here in the U.S.A. but all over the world, we need to understand secular people, secular culture, and secularism as a political and ideological force.”

College
Atheism
Louis J. Appignani
Philanthropy
University of Miami


AT&T and T-Mobile Withdraw F.C.C. Merger Application

Abstract: WASHINGTON — AT&T and T-Mobile USA edged closer to scrapping their proposed merger, saying on Thursday that they had withdrawn their application to the Federal Communications Commission to join their cellular phone operations. Deutsche Telekom, the parent of T-Mobile, and AT&T said in a joint statement that they still intended to pursue the $39 billion merger and would prepare for a federal antitrust lawsuit that is seeking to block the deal. But the companies also said that AT&T planned to take a $4 billion charge against earnings to reflect the potential breakup fees that AT&T would have to pay Deutsche Telekom if the deal failed to go through. The actions followed the decision this week by Julius Genachowski , the F.C.C. chairman, that the merger did not meet the commission’s standard for approval. Mr. Genachowski sent other commissioners a proposed order to refer the case to an administrative law judge, the first step toward a commission move to block the deal, which would combine the second- and fourth-largest cellphone carriers in the United States . The application withdrawal appears in part meant to prevent the F.C.C. from making public AT&T and T-Mobile records about the potential effects of the merger, records that could then be used by the Justice Department in the antitrust trial. The companies have maintained publicly that the deal would not lessen competition and that it would create jobs in the United States. But the Justice Department has said that the merger would severely restrict competition, and F.C.C. officials have said that AT&T’s confidential filings indicate the merger would eliminate jobs. The withdrawal of the F.C.C. application “is a tacit acknowledgment by AT&T that this story is all but over,” said Craig Moffett, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. “The fat lady hasn’t started singing yet, but she’s holding the mike, and the band is about to play.” The efforts by the Justice Department’s antitrust division and the F.C.C. to block the merger reflect a reinvigoration of federal efforts to rein in excessive business practices after a prolonged period of deregulation that preceded the 2008 financial crisis. President Obama came into office pledging to take a harder look at the antitrust implications of proposed mergers, but the Justice Department was criticized by consumer groups in its first year for appearing hesitant to follow through on that promise. Similarly, the F.C.C. drew rebukes for its approval last year of the merger between Comcast and NBC Universal , which critics claimed would concentrate too much power over both television content and its transmission to consumers. The move this week to conduct a hearing on the cellphone deal was the first time the F.C.C. had done so on a merger since the 2002 proposed alliance between Echostar and Direct TV, which ultimately was scrapped. In the current case, however, AT&T has noted that expansion of the nation’s Internet infrastructure is one of Mr. Obama’s top goals to help rebuild the economy, and the F.C.C. itself has predicted that its recent initiative to expand broadband Internet access to rural areas would create hundreds of thousands of jobs. Consumer groups, which generally have opposed the merger, said this week’s combined actions indicated that the deal was falling apart. “The chances that AT&T will take over T-Mobile are almost gone,” Gigi B. Sohn, president of the consumer group Public Knowledge, said in a statement. “While you can never count out AT&T entirely, the fact that they pulled their F.C.C. application speaks volumes about the company’s lack of confidence” in getting approval. Deutsche Telekom, based in Germany , said in a statement that the withdrawal “is being undertaken by both companies to consolidate their strength and to focus their continuing efforts on obtaining antitrust clearance for the transaction from the Department of Justice. As soon as practical, Deutsche Telekom and AT&T intend to seek necessary F.C.C. approval.” AT&T issued its own statement saying that the companies were taking this step “to facilitate the consideration of all options at the F.C.C.,” as well as to consider other options. The company said the $4 billion pretax charge, to be taken in the current quarter, reflects a $3 billion cash payment and $1 billion worth of cellular airwaves, or spectrum, that AT&T must pay to T-Mobile’s parent if the merger does not receive regulatory approval. Tammy Sun, an F.C.C. spokeswoman, confirmed that the commission had received the AT&T and T-Mobile request to withdraw the application. The commission is not obligated to grant the request, however. It could deny the request, going ahead with its consideration and judicial hearing, or it could grant the request with prejudice, meaning that AT&T could not later refile the application. That would essentially kill the deal. When AT&T agreed to buy T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom in March, the deal looked like a happy ending for T-Mobile, which had been bleeding customers and battling against declining sales. The company has struggled to retain and add new customers as AT&T, Verizon and Sprint have attracted new mobile phone shoppers with popular handsets like the iPhone and the promise of faster networks and data services. Over the last eight quarters, the mobile industry over all has added a net 33 million customers in the United States; T-Mobile has added only 89,000 of those, according to Chetan Sharma, an independent wireless analyst. A dissolution of the merger could leave T-Mobile in a much worse position than it was prior to March, when the acquisition was first announced. Analysts say that since then, the company most likely froze any major negotiations with smartphone and tablet manufactures like Apple to avoid interfering with any deals under way between AT&T and those hardware vendors. That could severely limit T-Mobile’s ability to lure customers from competitors over the coming quarters if the merger is abandoned. But the spectrum that T-Mobile would receive from AT&T in a breakup could help the company, perhaps making it attractive to another company or investment group looking to get into the cellular and mobile broadband business. Deutsche Telekom has made clear that it no longer wants to be in the mobile phone business in the United States, saying it would stop investing in cellular infrastructure here to concentrate on its European operations. If the merger falls through, the German company may decide to spin off the unit as an independent entity, sell it at a less attractive price to a rival like Sprint Nextel or sell it off in pieces. Possible proceeds from the deal had been earmarked to reduce debt and buy back stock. While there has long been talk about a possible combination of T-Mobile with Sprint, the Justice Department’s opposition to the AT&T combination would seem to indicate problems for Sprint, the No. 3 cellphone carrier. Verizon is currently the largest carrier, but the AT&T purchase of T-Mobile would have vaulted the combined entity into first place. For AT&T, the acquisition of T-Mobile and its wireless spectrum could mean improved service and network quality, crucial for helping the carrier ramp up its rivalry with Verizon. AT&T has been looking for ways to keep an edge over the other carriers since losing its exclusivity as the sole carrier of the iPhone in the United States earlier this year. Analysts expected that acquiring T-Mobile would give AT&T the ability to price its plans and handsets more aggressively, since hardware makers might be willing to offer AT&T a lower rate for large volume purchases of new smartphones and tablet computers. Even if AT&T wins its case with the Justice Department, it must receive F.C.C. approval to be able to take over T-Mobile’s licenses to operate its network on the public airwaves. The decision by the F.C.C. to request a judicial hearing on the merger had already caused Christopher C. King, a telecommunications analyst at Stifel Nicolaus, to put the probability of the deal being completed as low as 10 to 20 percent. “At some point,” Mr. King said, “AT&T is going to have to face the reality that this deal is pretty much dead.”

T-Mobile
AT&T
Mergers and Acquisitions
Mobile phone
Wireless
Competition law
FCC
Deutsche Telekom
Lawsuit


In Democratic Stronghold of New York City, Trump Finds Support Among Orthodox Jews

Abstract: In the blue sea of New York City, where Hillary Clinton crushed Donald J. Trump in the election on Tuesday, there were still some districts — working-class areas in the southeast Bronx, Mr. Trump’s childhood neighborhood in Jamaica Estates, Queens, and most of Staten Island — that did not go Mrs. Clinton’s way. But of all the outlying pockets of Trump supporters in New York, perhaps the most distinct lay six miles south of the Clinton campaign headquarters: the Orthodox Jewish community of Borough Park, a neighborhood in Brooklyn that would seem to have little in common with Middle America, where Mr. Trump drew most of his support. With its Judaica stores, kosher pizza shops, men in traditional black coats and hats and women with long skirts, Borough Park is home to thousands of Orthodox and Hasidic Jews, belonging to a range of sects, including Bobover, Belz, Satmar, Ger and Viznitz. The vast majority of voters in the neighborhood are registered Democrats, but they often vote Republican, and this year was no different. In Brooklyn’s 48th Assembly District, which encompasses most of Borough Park, Mr. Trump got 69 percent of the vote, while Mrs. Clinton got 27 percent. Interviews on the streets of Borough Park on Thursday did not turn up a single Clinton voter. Some people said that they did not trust Mrs. Clinton or that they viewed her as corrupt or a liar. Others said that they did not dislike Mrs. Clinton but preferred Mr. Trump’s policy positions or simply wanted to try something new. Many said they thought that Mr. Trump would be a stronger supporter of Israel. But some cited other issues, such as immigration and security. Image State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who represents Borough Park’s district, in his office. “My community represents what happened in America, except we’re not the suburbs,” Mr. Hikind said of the election. Credit Christian Hansen for The New York Times “She’s corrupt, but I don’t care about that,” said Shaya Stern, 32, a teacher and rabbinical student who voted for Mr. Trump. “She had no message for the voters. She didn’t give any good reason to vote for her.” Mr. Stern pointed out that the overwhelming Trump support was comparable to deep red states where Mr. Trump got his highest vote percentage. “It’s like West Virginia, Wyoming, and you’re talking the heart of New York City,” he said. Borough Park has consistently voted for the Republican candidate in recent presidential elections, even more so than this year. Mitt Romney got 75 percent of the vote in the 48th Assembly District in 2012, compared with 23 percent for the Democratic candidate, President Obama. In 2008, the Senator John McCain got 70 percent, versus 27 percent for Mr. Obama. That is not true, however, for all Orthodox communities in Brooklyn. Leaders of the Satmar Hasidic sect, which has its urban base in the Williamsburg neighborhood, endorsed Mrs. Clinton. While some election districts in Williamsburg had a majority of Trump votes, it was not as lopsided as in Borough Park. In Crown Heights, where the Lubavitch Hasidic community is centered, some election districts also showed a majority of Trump votes. Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka, who converted to Judaism when she married her husband, Jared Kushner, an Orthodox Jew, made a splash shortly before the election when she visited the grave of the Lubavitch leader Menachem Mendel Schneerson. A cellphone video of her visit went viral among Orthodox Jews in the area. “It resonated with people,” said Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt, a journalist who often writes about Orthodox issues. “The biggest joke in the Orthodox community right after the election was that Chabad won over Satmar,” she said, using another term for the Lubavitch movement. “The rebbe’s blessing worked and the Satmar endorsement didn’t.” The state assemblyman for the district is Dov Hikind, a conservative Democrat. Mr. Hikind said that Orthodox voters preferred Mr. Trump because of what he said about Israel, which included a pledge to move the American embassy to Jerusalem. Mr. Hikind said that Mrs. Clinton’s support for the nuclear deal with Iran, which was intended to keep that country from developing atomic weapons, disqualified her in his view. Image A voter enters the election center in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, home to the Satmar Hasidic sect, which endorsed Hillary Clinton. Credit Christian Hansen for The New York Times Mr. Hikind said that he did not vote for either candidate and instead wrote in House Speaker Paul D. Ryan on his ballot — because he was put off by Mr. Trump’s penchant for insulting language and comments about groping women. But he said that many Orthodox voters were able to look past that. “My community represents what happened in America, except we’re not the suburbs,” Mr. Hikind said, adding that the Democratic Party had moved too far to the left, especially on social issues. “The Democratic Party has abandoned us.” Orthodox Judaism preaches the importance of strict moral behavior, but Mr. Stern said that he was not dissuaded by Mr. Trump’s very public peccadilloes, such as his multiple divorces and a recording of him talking about groping women. “I think that’s not appropriate but I think he’ll handle better the situation of our country now,” Mr. Stern said. “I don’t really care that he’s not a model.” Ms. Chizhik-Goldschmidt said that the Orthodox judged non-Jewish politicians differently. “I don’t think people expect gentiles to follow those rules,” she said. “People are not looking to the United States president to be a representative of some sort of morality in the way that other Americans might. People are looking for a strong leader, a tough leader.” Moses Steinmetz, 31, a Hasidic Jew who lives in Borough Park, said that he preferred Mr. Trump because he was not a traditional politician. “We need new people in office,” Mr. Steinmetz said. Mr. Trump, he added, would “bring back the United States the way it was.” “It was the capital of the world,” he said. “Now everybody laughs at us. Now Russia’s on top.” Referring to the neighborhood’s support for Mr. Trump, he said, “Borough Park was a red state.”

2016 Presidential Election
Judaism
Donald Trump
Borough Park Brooklyn
NYC
Brooklyn